i woke up this morning to learn of the passing of jerry remy from cancer. he will be forever remembered as the voice of the red sox (along with don orsillo) when they finally broke their world series curse in 2004. i couldn't believe at first because i checked all the local news website and none of them were carrying this. when i turned to WCVB though, they had it as breaking news. he was just 68 years old, missed his birthday by about a week.

i went over to my sister's place in the late morning to take a look at her broken internet. i knocked on david's door before i left to say good bye (he was moving out today) but nobody answered.

my sister's cablemodem was still dead, steady power on, blinking upload, all other lights were off. on the floor nearby was the old modem we replaced. out of curiosity, i plugged in that modem while i went to go check on the cables outside. they seemed fine, i didn't see any undue slack, and the splitter seemed okay. when i went back inside, i was surprised to see the old modem with all 4 lights on, with upload and download blinking. could the new modem be broken? wasn't the old modem broken too? but how come all the lights are on?

so i contacted comcast technical support. often time when i call during non-business hours i get routed to an indian call center, and today was no exception. there was a wait time of 10-15 minutes, which gave me enough time to log into the free xfinity wifi and try to get into the comcast account. when i asked to activate the old modem my operator knew exactly what to do. it must be fairly routine now, i remember in the heydays of cablemodem, you had to jumpt through a bunch of technical hoops to switch modems, praying you get a tech support person who knew what they were doing.

after i gave her my MAC address, she was able to see the modem and put the address into their system to activate it. i waited then restarted the modem. the lights came on one at a time and turned steady. i tried going online and was successful, though it seems a little slow. however when i did a speed test, it said 100Mbps so speed wasn't an issue. i thanked comcast technical support and hung up. she also cancelled the technician appointment scheduled for tomorrow.

when we tried connecting to the internet however, it wouldn't allow us, said we had to activate the modem. but didn't i already do that? to activate the modem, they forced you to download the xfinity app either on your phone or tablet, you can't do it over the computer. and you need to use your own data first, as it won't allow you internet access without activation first. i used the account username and password and was finally able to activate the modem. after that the internet worked as expected. my sister contacted the tenants upstairs to let them know our internet was up.

i ended up staying there for nearly 1-1/2 hours. i didn't leave until after 1pm, cutting into valuable gardening time on this rare mid-60's degrees late october day. in the sky were some very dramatic clouds, and i even glimpsed a fragment of a rainbow through the airborne water droplets in the cirrus clouds. when i passed by the park i had to stop to take some photos, the clouds were super dramatic. i hurried home and ran into the backyard to fly the drone and get some better pics. unfortunately the samsung S9+ phone wasn't charged and had zero power. i came inside to quickly charge it up to 2%, managed to fly about a minute, before the phone went dead and i had to manually land the drone by sight. i then used my pixel 3XL phone. all was fine at first, but like before, the fly app would freeze, and i couldn't do anything but to bring the drone back manually.

i came inside to have some lunch, my mother made beef noodle soup. my parents knew i was at my sister's place fixing her internet because they were able to see my location in google map.

around 2pm my father and i went out to do some gardening. i had to be back inside by 4pm to watch the patriots game. the morning glory trellis by the quince bush had toppled over. while my father was busy detangling the trellis, i was digging up the rest of the siberian irises in the western perennial bed. later my father helped me trim the irises and sort out the larger ones suitable for planting. mixed in with the irises were foxglove plants which i carefully removed and set aside to plant later. i also dug up about a dozen gladiola corms. before we could plant however, it started raining unexpectedly by 3:30pm, forcing us back inside. i knew it was just a passing shower, and by 3:45pm i was back outside. i had a feeling we might see a rainbow since it was a sun shower event, so i looked with my back to the sun facing the direction of the moving showers, and sure enough, i saw a rainbow. not just *a* rainbow but a double rainbow! i ran inside to tell my parents and we went to the front of the house to check out the rainbow.

after some photos, i went back into the yard and sent my drone into the air to see if i can take a better rainbow photo. the rainbow was large enough that i couldn't capture the whole thing in just a single image. the higher up i flew, the less i was able to see a double rainbow, just a single rainbow. the rain clouds were also moving away and eventually the rainbow dissipated.

i continued working in the backyard, planting the foxgloves, the gladiola corms, some crocuses, and a solitary columbine. earlier i worked two buckets worth of grass compost into the soil. i saved the siberian irises for tomorrow, collected them in a water filled bucket. i went back inside by 4:40p. by then the game was already in progress. i missed the first quarter, the score was tied at 7-7.

it turned out to be a great game because new england won after a pick-six in the 4th quarter followed by a field goal kick. patriots' defense held the chargers to just a field goal and a garbage time touchdown that made it interesting but both times were out of timeouts and los angeles failed in their onside kick attempt. final score 27-24. the patriots are now 4-4 for the season. next weekend they face the panthers.

for dinner my parents made a stew of leftovers again, hyacinth beans, long beans, braised pork, and buttercup squash, along with some fat glass noodles. my mother asked me to make a bowl of smashed cucumbers.

i returned home by 8pm. i knew i had to ride carefully, as there were still trick-or-treaters wandering the streets. despite the ongoing pandemic and the fact that the vaccine was only just authorized for ages 5+ a few days ago, it couldn't stop children from going out and collecting their share of free candy. when i got back to the house, david had dropped off the upstairs housekeys in my mail slot.

my mother told me my taiwanese cousin's wife fainted recently as a result of an undiagnosed brain tumor that had burst and caused an aneurysm. she was rushed to the hospital where doctor's operated on her immediately. i contacted my cousin via line to get more details. he said they were lucky it happened at home, and he called the ambulance immediately. i just them recently, when my cousin and i were texting back and forth during the red sox post-season run. i wished her well and hoped she gets better soon.