New connections

Since everyone lately, particularly in the writing community, seems to be ditching X/Twitter for Bluesky, I’ve made the transition as well, though I’m keeping my Twitter account active for the time being. I don’t really use social media for much beyond reposting blog and Patreon content and promoting my writing, so the more outlets I have for that, the better. And I still have a few friends and connections who haven’t made the switch yet. Anyway, you can find me there at @clbennettauthor.bsky.social. I see that WordPress has added Bluesky to their share menu, so hopefully this post will share there automatically, though the automatic sharing hasn’t worked with Facebook for years.

So far, I like how things are going. I accumulated more followers on Bluesky in four days than I gained on Twitter in over three years, probably because my friend and colleague David Mack was kind enough to add me to his “starter pack” of Star Trek creators — a helpful feature Bluesky uses to allow people to build lists of members with shared interests or professions to help new arrivals find each other.

Meanwhile, my apartment building finally got fiber optic phone lines installed last week. Since it would’ve been prohibitively difficult to get inside the walls of the building to string the new cables through them like the old copper phone lines, the workers installed them along the walls and ceilings of the building’s hallways, which was very noisy with all the drilling into the brick to attach bolts. Now that they’re done, there’s a little plastic box above every apartment door, connected to the fiber lines that run along the tops of the walls and then down through protective sheaths to a cable running along the ceiling of the laundry room and into the utility room where the phone lines are connected. Before they put the covers on the boxes, I saw that each box contained a fair length of coiled-up fiber ending in a boxy green plastic connector of some sort that isn’t yet connected to anything.

I’m not sure what comes next, but I partially recall a phone tech describing the process to me sometime a year or two ago when he came out to repair my copper phone line. I gather that something will be installed inside the apartments that a modem and landline phone can be plugged into in place of the old phone lines — with the drawback that the landline will no longer work in a power outage the way it currently does, which is one of the main reasons I’ve kept mine in case of emergency. I assume the coils of fiber sitting in the box are just there to be available for uncoiling and extending inside the apartments when the final installation happens, though I don’t know when that will be. I’m wondering if that will involve drilling a hole all the way through the wall (which seems unlikely given how thick it is) or stringing it through the top or corner of the door frame (maybe cutting a bit of a channel for it to rest in so the door doesn’t squish it). The latter seems more likely.

Once the upgrade happens, I’m kind of hoping I can keep using my current modem, but if it isn’t fiber-compatible, I guess I’ll have to replace it, which would mean having to log four devices into a new one — computer, phone, TV, and robot vacuum. Such is the price of progress.

I hope I don’t have to wait too long, since the much faster fiber lines would probably cure my smart TV’s slow logons to the modem and occasional signal dropouts mid-program, while also helping with some slow-loading sites on my computer.

I suppose the other “connection” I’ve made recently is the discovery that the small chain department store next to the university, about three long blocks’ walk from my home, has recycling bins just inside the door that take plastic bags as well as cans and bottles. That’s very helpful given how many plastic bags I accumulate from picking up groceries. I occasionally remember to bring them with me when I drive to grocery pickup and give them to the store clerk to take for recycling, but I still tend to accumulate a whole bunch of bags in my closet. Now I have a closer place to recycle them, which helps a lot. At least, in theory. I gather that there isn’t really a lot of plastic-bag recycling actually happening, that it turned out to be more difficult than expected, and that the bags may not actually go anywhere useful. All I can do is hope it makes some difference.