Starlink is great, but Muskrat sucks!

Starting way back in November, our cell service became an off-and-on thing, sometimes for days at a time.  When the cell service was down, we lost both our phone and our internet, so that we were essentially incommunicado with the rest of the world.  Not a great situation, considering how isolated we are.

Several years ago, Telus and Citywest (out of Prince Rupert) went together on the “Connect the Coast” project—an underwater cable that was supposed to bring Internet to all the coastal rural and remote communities in British Columbia.  So, we waited and waited and waited to be connected.  Well, after much ado, they connected the cable to the only aboriginal home in the Inlet about 8 miles away.  I had suggested that they bring the cable out on Crown land, then build a small cell tower on the ridge north of the mouth of the Inlet, which could then provide coverage not only to that one home, but to the two aboriginal reserves at the end of the Inlet, the dozen or so privately owned properties, and a good section of Johnstone Strait.  Unfortunately, no one listens to me.  The one home they serviced is largely abandoned … no one lives there now. 

Our cell signal still comes to us via the Newcastle Ridge cell tower, which services a huge area of remote coast along Johnstone Strait and up into the mainland Inlets.  However, now that the “coast is connected” (ha, ha), they have reduced the maintenance of this tower, and it is offline more often than not!  We looked into Xplornet a few years back, but they insist that they must install and maintain their equipment, which would be horrifically expensive.  Also, they have a very poor reputation for service.  We also looked into Amazon’s Kuiper satellite system, but that is yet to come.  So, whether we liked it or not, it was going to be Starlink or no communication coverage at all.  With all the crazy politics going on right now, I wish I could say that I was supporting a Canadian initiative, and I feel quite badly that I’ve been forced into the choice that I have.

We ordered our “dishy” in November— a Starlink mini dish which had just became available in Canada and with a $100 discount to boot—and managed to pick it up in December, after more cell outages and despite the Canada Post strike.  Now,  I can actually surf the net again, download music and books, and put in orders for supplies.  So, it’s great to be connected to the rest of the world!  The dish is very small and light … smaller even than most notebook computers.  It’s easy to mount and move.  So far, it runs at about 2 amps max, which we can easily supply if we have solar, and can just manage on our picohydro system (which brings in just a little over 2 amps).  It has both a DC and an AC plugin, so you can operate on either system.  We signed up for the Roam 50 plan, which gives us 50 GB of data for $70.00 Canadian per month.  After 50 GB, additional data can be purchased at approximately $1.50 Canadian per GB.  That’s way cheaper than what we were paying for our Internet on our cellular plan.

Of course, after all my happiness with Starlink, Muskrat became a real #$%^& .  Not sure what will happen now—whether Starlink will survive Musk’s descent into madness or if a truly useful Canadian option will become available to us in the future.

Saying good by to another old friend

We’ve been struggling with another big decision in our lives.  Our almost 25 year old truck needed new tires.  In fact, the front passenger tire was so bad that I didn’t want to drive on icy roads the last time we were in Sayward.  The biggest problem was that the rust monster has been busy chewing away at the truck’s frame, even though the engine and drive train were still working fine.  I suspected that a new set of tires would long outlive the rest of the truck.  Just to make a point (or mark its place), the old truck blew a back shock and bled an oily blot in its usual parking spot.  Both Ken and I thought it was (another) corroded brake line, and headed directly to the local mechanic that fixes things up for us.  He had already warned us that we were “living” on borrowed time, as the saying goes, with our truck, but he did manage to get it repaired and switched our tires around for us—put the back tires on the front, and the snow tires on the back—which temporarily looked after the leaking front tire.  That gave us the time we needed to make some decisions.

I had hoped that when the old truck wore out, there might have been some sort of public transport available on Northern Vancouver Island, and that I might not have had to get another vehicle.  However, that hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not sure if or when it might happen in the future.

We considered getting another old, used, gas-guzzling vehicle, but with the cost of gas and maintenance, I’m not sure how economical that really would have been.  I’m quite certain that the cost of gas is going to keep rising over the next 10 to 20 years during which I might be owning a vehicle.

I haven’t been very supportive of the current push in our country to have an EV in every family—I would much rather see better public transport and delivery services.  I felt a bit like I had reached an ethical dilemma—I needed to replace my old truck with something, and after a great deal of research, it looked like an EV  or a hybrid might be the best choice.

Ken and I chewed over EVs, HEVs, and good ol’ ICEs.  I have to admit, I did worry about some of the new technology, not so much because it is computerized (my old 2001 Dodge Dakota had two little plug-and-play computers in it, one of which we had to replace, so there’s not much getting away from that), but rather because it’s new and unfamiliar to me.  There were some things I really wanted—a backup camera, a navigation system, a heated steering wheel (oh, isn’t that a luxury, but my hands really ache when they get too cold).  There’s lots of electronic stuff in newer vehicles which probably enhances their safety quite a bit, but which I could have lived without.  Some stuff just seemed weird, like electronic key fobs and shift-by-wire (or even drive-by-wire).  In a way, I wish I could own a vehicle that I could repair myself as needed, but I gave that up when I bought the truck 24 years ago.  It was all plug-and-play, and you needed a special reader in order to figure out what its computer error messages were.  I’ve pretty much had to have it shop-repaired since I got it, as frequently we’ve either lacked the equipment or the skills to do the repairs ourselves.  In addition, we never really had enough time when we were in Sayward to do much repair work.

Although there is now a charging station in Sayward, we were concerned about how we would fit charging into our busy town trips.  Most new EVs can be charged at home using a 120 V trickle charger, but we have no “home” at Sayward.  We also worried about running an EV in cold weather—the recommendations are to keep them in a garage (like where would we do that??) in cold weather and have them plugged in.  For these reasons, we finally decided not to get a full EV.  Instead, we looked at HEVs—vehicles that run on both gasoline and electricity—as they are significantly more fuel efficient than ICEs (our old truck made about 15 mpg), don’t require plugging in, and can be started on their gasoline engines in cold weather.  Hybrids are apparently more reliable than gasoline-fueled vehicles of the same age, according to the statistics.

Well, in the end, we finally did make a decision on a “new-to-us” vehicle.   In February, we made a trip to the Hyundai Dealership  in Campbell River to test drive a 2022 Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid.  I’d been researching this particular vehicle for about a month, and after driving it, we made our decision to trade in the old truck.

I was very sad to see the old truck go—I’ve been driving it for nearly 25 years—but unfortunately, we just don’t have the resources to keep it going.  It still drives well, and I suspect someone will buy it and nurse it along; however, this will be much easier for someone who is living in Campbell River and not 16 miles away from Sayward by boat!

The Santa Fe is quite a few steps up from our old plain Jane truck!   The “cruck”, as we are calling it, is a sweet and responsive drive, and having a rearview camera is absolutely terrific for parking.  It’s not quite as large as the old truck for hauling, and since it is an SUV, there is no “external” cargo space, but it has much more dry cargo space, which is a real plus in a wet environment (the canopy on the old truck always leaked, so “dry” was more of a state of mind than a reality).  It also has lots of space in it for sleeping (something the short-bed of the truck never did), and we’re going to rig it up for car camping.  This will make traveling (with border collie in tow) much easier for us.  Apparently, the climate control system of a hybrid can even be used to keep the car warm at night (if our sleeping bags aren’t up to it).  More likely though, we’ll camp in an RV site and plug-in if necessary.  So, with significantly better mileage, less worries about breakdowns, and the potential to camp in the vehicle, Ken and I are looking forward to doing a little more travelling on the Island (if we can find any spare time, ha, ha).

All in all, this was a BIG change!!  I’ve been learning all the electronics (beeps, warnings, etc.) in our “new-to-us” vehicle.  So far, we’ve had no issues or problems, and we’ve made two trips—to Campbell River and to Courtenay (for an eye appointment and family visit).  I’ve only used half a tank of gas (and it’s a smaller tank than the old truck).  That makes me pretty pleased!!  It’s an easy comfortable drive, stays warm and defrosted on miserable days (one of our drives was through a nasty storm), and feels very secure on the road even under conditions where hydroplaning was a potential.

Now we are starting to get the vehicle geared up.  I’m replacing some of our old safety gear—we needed a jump starter that was suitable for a hybrid and a small, portable charger/maintainer that could be used on AGM batteries (the old one for the truck was only good for regular lead acid batteries).  The new stuff is way smaller, which allows it to fit in the storage compartments next to the battery.  We also needed to get good waterproof floor mats all around, and a seat cover to dog proof the back seats if we need to have Brennan ride back there.  I’ve also purchased, and tested during our Courtenay trip, a nice Garmin DriveSmart GPS (which doesn’t require cellular and has lifetime updates), which is incredibly useful.  Roads have been changing so quickly (to me, anyways) that I’ve been having a hard time keeping up, and the routes that I remember no longer exist.  Another piece of kit, untested as yet, is a rear view mirror dash cam.  One of the problems I’ve always had with vehicles that get loaded up with gear is that I always manage to obscure my rear mirror view.  This system allows me to mount a second rear view camera with a higher, wider angle view than the built-in backup camera, and the monitor fits nicely over a standard rear view mirror, so that I will actually be able to see without obstruction.  In fact, the system can have three cameras in operation—rear view, forward view, and interior view, has a built in GPS, and will record video under conditions where an accident is detected (sudden deceleration, etc.).  So, I’m looking forward to messing around with that (I should have had one for the truck long ago, but was too lazy to investigate the options).  We will be testing out the installation of a remote battery disconnect (some people use them for security) so that we can disconnect the 12 V battery during times when we think we might be away from the vehicle for a month or more.  We are worried about the slow battery drain from all the electronics.  And I found a good sized solar panel trickle charger that can be used with AGM batteries (again, my old one used to plug into the cigarette lighter and was only good for regular lead acid batteries, so not usable on the Santa Fe).  Finally, with luck, the next time we go into town (to vote), we should have our car cots at the post office.  Those, along with a little electric heater, should make the vehicle nice and comfy for car camping (where a plugin is accessible).  Looking forward to trying this all out!!

One last trip for the Blue Rocket

Before we traded in the old truck (the “Blue Rocket”) and took possession of the Santa Fe (the “Blue Ghost”), we needed to make one last trip.  Twenty-twenty-four was the year of outboard engines  breaking down.  We had finally made the decision, after Ken had worked for months trying to repair it, to replace the Honda 50 outboard on our MacGregor sailboat.  The truck was necessary to pick up a new Suzuki 9.9 outboard engine.  So I put some money down to hold the deal on the Santa Fe, and two weeks later, at the beginning of March, we were back in town to get the engine, and make the final exchange of vehicles.  

Playing with AIs: changes in the art scene

I’ve been keeping myself quite busy with computer stuff while the weather sorted itself out during this long and cold spring.  A while back, I was doing some illustration work for an e-zine that I edit, and I used a online generative AI program (based on something called “Stable Diffusion”) to create a few of the images.

Well … this led to a very interesting philosophical discussion about the use of AI for creative work.  Getting a good image from an AI is certainly an iterative process with lots of input required, so I wouldn’t say that the AI does all the work, but neither is it completely your own personal creative work (at least not as it is used online).  So, when I used AI for the e-zine, I just noted that the images were AI-generated and left it at that.

However, I got very interested in the potential of using AI to combine images and photographs that were my own creative work, or to enhance or modify those images.  As it turns out, generative AI is very good at this, although you pretty much need to set it up on your own personal computer so that it can be integrated with software like Photoshop, Krita, or Gimp.  It is recommended that you have a 4-core computer with a separated GPU to do this, but I’ve actually managed to get a portable system set up that runs on my little 2-core Intel tablet with no GPU.  It’s a bit slow, but not any worse than the waits that happen on the internet when there are lots of users in the queue.   I’m just getting to the point where I can start playing with my own work … kinda like “photoshopping”, but way, way better!