Coming to you via a new Fibre Optic line!!

It still feels a bit like a dream, but we now have fibre optic, unlimited internet! Here in the subarctic!

Last Monday was the launch day in town. Northwestel, our internet provider, took over our local BonTon & Co cafe for a few hours. I had already signed up first thing in the morning, as soon as the sign up page was available, but then I swung by to see if I could get a sense of the timeline.

While enjoying a free cheddar jalapeño scone, a slice of loaf cake, and a chai latte, their representatives were so excited to share all the details, and actually a bit jealous of us here in Dawson City! They came up from Whitehorse, and Whitehorse only has cable internet, not the fibre optic we have now!

They had a living room set up outside on the porch of BonTon. If you took your picture and put it on Facebook, you had a chance to win their big flat screen TV. It was even heated with a propane porch heater!

Later that afternoon their rep called me to plan for an install, and we got the first one the next morning!!!

The installer was up from Ontario where he works for Bell Canada. They put out a call for a some installer technicians and a bunch of them jumped at the chance to come to the Yukon. After he was done, we went from a max of 15 mbps down, and <1 mbps up to this:

In addition to our big increase in internet speed, we were previously capped at how much internet we could use each month. Now it is UNLIMITED! Which is pretty live changing! We can watch Netflix, Youtube, anything we want! Without having to keep track of how much we’ve used to prevent overage fees!

We also signed up for their new TV offering which is all streamed online, and uses an app, or the free Amazon Fire Stick they provided for our TV.

But it isn’t cheap! Our internet is now $250 a month for 250 mbps down and 15 up. Plus another $45 for TV. Our Dawson City cable was much, much more than that, so bundled all up, it isn’t that much more in the long run. There are smaller more affordable packages too, but go big or go home.

Here’s how happy I am when my Zoom doesn’t freeze and stutter at work now!

Hallowe’en

On Hallowe’en we kept our door open to greet our favourite little parrot Cerys, then we closed the blinds and turned off the lights. Call us the biggest grinches. We just have a terrible front gate and steps, especially in the dark and ice, and then having to wrangle the pets, and we don’t have kids, and just… nah.

But my friend Tarie convinced me to not be too grinchy. She was coming into town with another friend Rose and we were going to visit our other friend Janet who always goes full out for every holiday. I waited out on the street in the dark, watching the teenage hooligan packs wandering around town, then they picked me up and we went for a drive around, seeing the people who had fires going in barrels for fun and heat for the trick-or-treaters and warm boozy drinks for their parents, and all the spooky decorations. Then we went to Janet’s, who was dressed up like a werewolf and read us a Hallowe’en story and fed us snacks! I guess Hallowe’en isn’t that bad.

What else?

We had a couple amazing nights of northern lights this past week. I slept through both, but they were still out pretty bright at breakfast. Here’s a quick look up at the sky between the back of our house and garage.

Here’s a trip to the dump yesterday. When we moved here, they had a big huge incinerator cone for burning cardboard. Then that was apparently an environmental no-no. And no one is going to haul cardboard in a truck south for days to get it to a recycler. So we just piled it up at the dump and burned it without the incinerator. There may have been a couple little fires get away, so now we can’t do that either, so the cardboard just goes into the building material waste. I’m so old school I guess, but I’m pretty sure they make some decent incinerators these days with minimal output that could take care of piles like this.

There are so many ravens at the dump, and bald eagles too! While the garage is all pretty fascinating, the ravens are even more so.

Not too much else new. I’m busy at work with my learning/apprenticeship year. It’s going well, and I’m starting to hit more of my stride now.

Jeff’s up the Dempster today snowmobiling! We don’t have that much snow, but he has a brand new machine this year and he needs to break it in so it can have his first servicing before he takes it on a trip, so he’s getting an early start. I’m at home cleaning the house a bit, got some groceries, made some chocolate chip cookies, and need to shovel the snow at some point.