Rick's b.log - entry 2017/03/30

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FYI! Last read at 17:36 on 2024/04/28.

Phone woes

Having only barely had the phone line fixed, I got up Monday morning and read The Register and the ROOL forum. Then I got ready to go to work. Upon mom's return, she noted that the Livebox was saying there was no ADSL signal being received.
We both came to the same conclusion, that the numpties who were digging up the road to lay water pipes had hacked through the phone cabling. I mean, just look at the quality of this...work:

Clearly, the contract was awarded to the lowest tender.

So on the way back from work I stopped and took a look. Yup.

Let's be honest. My heart fell through the floor. This mess was going to take an eternity to repair.

I reported it to Orange, which was a Kafkaesque conversation. I'm still not entirely sure they weren't looking at my previous fault report (which is still pending, it seems?!?).
I then reported it to 1013.fr, and flagged it as a "grave danger". I reported it this because:

It was a deep hole right by the side of the road.
Outside of the commune limit, so no street lighting and a greater speed limit.
Though living (and sometimes cycling) here, I know that far too many treat speed limits as optional on country roads.
There's a bend with heavily reduced visibility to anything smaller/lower than a tractor.
The "barrier" is some old rusty junk held together by bits of plastic twine.
There are no reflective patches in functional order, and no blinky yellow lanterns.

In short, leave that there, some prat with too much speed and not enough attention is gonna crash into the hole.

Wednesday lunchtime, it was fixed. Because, as my friend Rob later said to me we've all seen news footage of what happens when you upset French farmers...and cutting off a bunch of farms was going to make 'em angry!

But, damn. That was unbelievably fast.

Flutterby love

We have some of those spinny wind-thingies in plant pots. A little yellow butterfly was absolutely taken with the green one.

Sakura

It's Hanami, or time to view the flowers. We don't have ornamental pink cherry, ours are mostly white-flowered bird cherries.

Photobomb!

My Samsung S7 can do some really outstanding slow motion videos. Stepping the resolution back to 720P gives the camera the ability to record at 240fps (!) for some crystal clear non-jittery slow motion recordings. This one of our waterfall is like a drone traversing a lake and circling around the waterfall itself. Watch it, the reflections and clarity are sublime.
Pay attention and see if you can spot the photobomb.

Did you see it?

It's near the end.

It's a Coypu.

It looked at me, I looked at it.

Then it realised that I was of the species that has a predilection for blowing their brains out with pieces of metal, usually travelling at high velocity.

Having run about as far as his Aaargh! Panic! Aaaargh! would take him (about three metres), he slowed down and ambled along up the stream.

I could hear his thoughts: Me? Frightened? Nah, there's absolutely nothing to worry about here. I'm not bothered. Nothing's wrong...

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	Rick's b.log - 2017/03/30
It is the 28th of April 2024 You are 3.21.162.87, pleased to meet you!

Rick's b.log - 2017/03/30

Phone woes

Flutterby love

Sakura

Photobomb!

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