I'm in for a long night at work tonight watching and praying that a couple of database building processes run to completion...
I took Frodo and Samwise for a back-to-school half termly haircut this morning - and had mine chopped at the same time too. They really know the routine at the barbers, so aren't at all fazed by it, like other kids are that I've seen. I've always thought that it's a good exercise in social interaction, so I've been taking them since they were young. They also get a much better haircut than any that I could do, armed with a pudding basin and a pair of shears ;)
My brother popped in for a cup of tea, on his way back to Blackburn. His wife had entered some sort of cookery competition that was being judged at St Georges Hall this morning. Unfortunately the judging lasted longer than they anticipated, so I only got to see them for 5 minutes before I had to dash off to work.
Saturday 31 May 2008
Friday 30 May 2008
Indiana Jones and the Lost Broadband Connection II
I've sent off a four page letter of complaint to Orange after being back online for 10 days, followed by another outage of 5 days before coming back online again, but at a much reduced download speed.
I've got a 12.5 hour or so release to do at work on Saturday afternoon/evening/Sunday morning. I reckon that I might find the time to do a "catch up" blog post on Sunday night - assuming that our internet connection stays for that long...
Meanwhile we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the local fleapit yesterday afternoon.
From what I'd heard from the critics I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Not as good as Raiders, or Last Crusade, but probably better than Temple of Doom.
I know that there's no way the hero should survive most of the things that happen to him in a flick like this, but there was one scene in particular that I thought - absolutely no way!
Harrison Ford plays an ageing, but has-still-got-what-it-takes Indy, although he's got to be the most destructive archaeologist since Auguste Mariette used dynamite to help locate the Apis Bulls.
I've got a 12.5 hour or so release to do at work on Saturday afternoon/evening/Sunday morning. I reckon that I might find the time to do a "catch up" blog post on Sunday night - assuming that our internet connection stays for that long...
Meanwhile we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the local fleapit yesterday afternoon.
From what I'd heard from the critics I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Not as good as Raiders, or Last Crusade, but probably better than Temple of Doom.
I know that there's no way the hero should survive most of the things that happen to him in a flick like this, but there was one scene in particular that I thought - absolutely no way!
Harrison Ford plays an ageing, but has-still-got-what-it-takes Indy, although he's got to be the most destructive archaeologist since Auguste Mariette used dynamite to help locate the Apis Bulls.
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Back Online
3 Week Outage!
I've lost count of the daily phone calls to Orange with them saying that the line should be OK, but with no internet connection at our end.
Eventually they agreed to send an engineer round to our house. He was due this afternoon. Mysteriously at 6am our internet connection came back!
I called Tech Support around 9am and asked them to update the case with this information. They said that the engineer would call anyway.
I called again at 10am to check that the case had been updated. No it hadn't. The engineer is coming at no charge... I insisted that they still update the case (getting paranoid here, but I didn't trust them not to claim that the chap fixed it our end when he turns up).
The engineer came at 3 or 4pm. He told Novelist Supermum that our setup was perfectly OK and that somebody had definitely fixed something at the exchange - but he wasn't allowed to say who or what.
I'm now too busy composing my letter of complaint to Orange Customer Services to be able to blog further.
I've lost count of the daily phone calls to Orange with them saying that the line should be OK, but with no internet connection at our end.
Eventually they agreed to send an engineer round to our house. He was due this afternoon. Mysteriously at 6am our internet connection came back!
I called Tech Support around 9am and asked them to update the case with this information. They said that the engineer would call anyway.
I called again at 10am to check that the case had been updated. No it hadn't. The engineer is coming at no charge... I insisted that they still update the case (getting paranoid here, but I didn't trust them not to claim that the chap fixed it our end when he turns up).
The engineer came at 3 or 4pm. He told Novelist Supermum that our setup was perfectly OK and that somebody had definitely fixed something at the exchange - but he wasn't allowed to say who or what.
I'm now too busy composing my letter of complaint to Orange Customer Services to be able to blog further.
Friday 2 May 2008
Orange Outage
Not much blogging here of late.
Partly due to much family activity going on around the time of Samwise' Birthday - I'll catchup with an update on this at a later date.
Mainly due to having no Broadband at home for over a week!! 4 frustrating calls to a call centre in Mumbai, plus one to BT to confirm that there's nothing wrong with the line, until I finally got an operative that knew what they were talking about.
Basically Orange have been doing some maintenance work, and they've botched the job, resulting in no internet access for us.
I could understand this, but the frustrating thing was the lies that I was given during the first 4 calls. They said they were doing a line check, but in the meantime could I just try resetting my router?
I went through this activity four times. The last operative said that in fact no line check had been made, so the router resets were just a stalling tactic, based on a supposition that most problems are at the user end.
I was told that in fact Orange had carried out maintenance activities at 3 different times over the past week. Looks like they still haven't got it right.
I've got the name of the last operative, who has made a lot of re-assuring noises, and will be calling me back with a status update whilst further maintenance activities are carried out to repair the problem.
(As you might guess I'm not blogging from home right now).
Hopefully we'll be back online soon - although there is a Bank Holiday coming up - what's the bet it won't be resolved until after Monday?
Partly due to much family activity going on around the time of Samwise' Birthday - I'll catchup with an update on this at a later date.
Mainly due to having no Broadband at home for over a week!! 4 frustrating calls to a call centre in Mumbai, plus one to BT to confirm that there's nothing wrong with the line, until I finally got an operative that knew what they were talking about.
Basically Orange have been doing some maintenance work, and they've botched the job, resulting in no internet access for us.
I could understand this, but the frustrating thing was the lies that I was given during the first 4 calls. They said they were doing a line check, but in the meantime could I just try resetting my router?
I went through this activity four times. The last operative said that in fact no line check had been made, so the router resets were just a stalling tactic, based on a supposition that most problems are at the user end.
I was told that in fact Orange had carried out maintenance activities at 3 different times over the past week. Looks like they still haven't got it right.
I've got the name of the last operative, who has made a lot of re-assuring noises, and will be calling me back with a status update whilst further maintenance activities are carried out to repair the problem.
(As you might guess I'm not blogging from home right now).
Hopefully we'll be back online soon - although there is a Bank Holiday coming up - what's the bet it won't be resolved until after Monday?
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