Thanks, my arm is now tanned.

Oh good :)

Well, part of the arm. There's an abrupt end halfway down my biceps, where the sleeve of the T-shirt sat. But all the small bumps and blisters are gone.

I fell asleep on the deck of a ferry taking us from Piraeus to Lesbos some years back, and woke up striped all over. They lasted about two years.

Also, the nice weather is gone. Rain. Storm. Lightning. Thunder. How boring that can be all of a sudden, when you had it for three days. ;-)

We've had a lot today. We had some the night before which was lovely to go out barefoot in. Or rather it was lovely, until I slipped almost immediately going down the ramp from our front door, and tripped over a brick. It was just after I finished collecting myself from the gate that I heard my other half say: "How are you still alive after all these years?"

It is a bit of a mystery but I do hope the rain doesn't interfere too much with your holiday plans, Jord :)

I fell asleep on the deck of a ferry taking us from Piraeus to Lesbos some years back, and woke up striped all over. They lasted about two years.

And were called the family-zebra for the duration of that time? (behind your back). ;-)

Don't start about other halves...

Walked into the bank today to do a deposit for the company, two actually. Sitting next to the wall behind the teller about 16 boxes labeled Dell. Computers on the desks labeled Lenovo. Running back and forth, crawling under and over things, two guys who obviously were not in bankers clothes. One was chewing on a twisty tie. Finally saw the logo on the shirt and it was for a cable TV Internet company. Don't need to be told something is up.

The transaction took about three times longer than normal.

Now I wonder, do those new Dell's have the banking world's favorite O/S loaded? XP? Or have they had to abandon that for something modern? 7?

I feel for you Jord.

And were called the family-zebra for the duration of that time? (behind your back). ;-)

No. Straight to my face usually.

It was even suggested I could offer myself to the council as a temporary zebra crossing. Or be a horizontal version of a school lollipop lady.

It's also around that time I mastered multi-tasking the withering stare with a wounded blink. I've never regretted that. No

;)

As for the other thing - I feel for you too, Jord

@Gary
Weirdly... when I got to the bit where someone was chewing, (here) and then a bit later a cable got mentioned, everything that was said in between tumbled straight out my head, and I'd convinced myself I'd read this



...sort of. Which I hadn't, but now we all have.

I had another chat with the ISP helpdesk, as today I received two emails.

One told me that the 'call for free for a set price' package on my land line was stopped, even though I had let it continue on my new subscription. Apparently it has to be stopped on the one and started on the next, so for the next five days I have to watch out who I call, as now it costs 10 cents start tariff plus 10 cents every minute thereafter. Great. (Calling the ISP is free, via their 1200 toll-free number)

The other email was a mystery to me as it told me I had ordered something from them and they had sent it to me. For the life of me, I couldn't figure what it was then. Can't log in to my account there either as that's still unavailable (and has been for the greater part of this week!)

Now, I went from an All-in-One package (250Mbit internet/telephone/Digital TV with 77+ channels) to a cheaper one called Complete (200Mbit internet/telephone/TV Online and 45 default channels). They were trying to send me the MediaBox that comes with the Digital TV... a thing I was sure I turned off! Plus I already have the old one (a Cisco PVR). Yes, but this was easy to record with, the lady said. Uhm, the last time I recorded anything was in 2016, the last time I watched TV on the TV and via that box was before the summer. We don't use it. I even plan to take the PVR out of the equation and connect the cable directly to the TV, once all this has been acted out.

So I cancelled the MediaBox, could still do that. It's not needed.
Wonder what happens next week... ;-)

Wonder what happens next week... ;-)

The disconnection department arrives to physically cut the cable. :-D

The saga continues: the MediaBox that I cancelled has come in! I still cannot log into my account to check what they've made of my order. Fun!
I'm not going to call them again.

Surprisingly, they called me. They had a negative answer to a question I'd placed in email about the WIFI password: it won't take spaces or Boolean characters. The helpdesk couldn't tell me if this was going to be fixed in the future.
So if I had any other questions? I asked about the MediaBox XL that was dropped off. Well, egg on their face, I shouldn't have had that thing. He's going to send me a return box in which the thing will fit. Best send it back as well, as else they'll have to charge me for it. Err right.

I see that nobody - even in the consumer entertainment business - has a customer service department that works over the weekend.

Ah... but they do. My ISP's helpdesk called me yesterday, on Sunday.

Ah... but they do. My ISP's helpdesk called me yesterday, on Sunday.

I expect they missed you. BT missed me once and rang me too. But when they did that for a customer satisfaction survey, afterwards. I got told they wouldn't be asking me again. Which I think meant they stopped missing me rather completely.

One of my boxes has lost it's mouse, luckily it is not my daily driver and it continues to crunch. I've tried all sort of rebooting schemes and nothing has worked. The keyboard does work. Grrrrrr

Oooh ... that sounds frustrating. I hope you've found a way round that. My son's laptop has lost its mouse-pad thingy - and then it's keyboard too :/ Fortunately he's been able to plug in a spare keyboard and a mouse, to get some functionality back, but that's all his usb ports taken up - which isn't exactly ideal either.

Oooh ... that sounds frustrating. I hope you've found a way round that. My son's laptop has lost its mouse-pad thingy - and then it's keyboard too :/ Fortunately he's been able to plug in a spare keyboard and a mouse, to get some functionality back, but that's all his usb ports taken up - which isn't exactly ideal either.

You can get USB hubs, from about £7.50 for USB2 that use the computers power up to ~£35 for USB3.1 with power supply these quite often have a couple of high output sockets for charging phones/tablets/etc. quickly.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=usb+hub

---

You can go even lower than that - £4.32 for one designed for travelling with a short lead that won't get tangled up. But buy from a local shop - silly to pay half as much again for postage. Trust HU-4440P 4 Port USB 2.0 Mini Hub

I should have remembered I had a grumble in here. I also should have remembered that boinc is a place where solutions can rain down like that manna stuff was supposed to have done. Remembering either one would have meant I'd have said thank you to both of you much sooner than the now I'm about to do that.

Thank you WK, and Richard too :) I have passed both links to my son and it seems tomorrow we shall be acting upon them in person, in Stratford :)

Yesterday was a day that will live on in infamy. I'd brought home the old electric oven/gas stove my mom had used. I myself had an all gas version. So disconnected the one I had, reconnected the 'new' one. The gas was flowing normally, and at first sight the electric oven did as well.

That even I would bake a baguette, so turned the oven on, put it on 200 degrees, setting 2. That went on for a couple of minutes when BAF, everything in the house was dark. The RCD (residual-current circuit breaker) had flipped off. Turned the oven off, flipped the switch back to on, tried the oven again but the RCD would flip to off again. Okay, a fault in the oven then. Sucked for the baguette, but really not much I can do about that. (The oven has since died completely btw).

So okay, flipped the switch again and everything seemed to be all right... but for that we were back to the problem we had before with our new ConnectBox modem/router, that just one computer had internet and none of the mobile devices had WiFi.

I called my ISP and asked for them to factory reset the modem. They tried but it didn't catch, I knew that already because my phone connection to them through the same modem, kept working. I had to manually reset the modem, which I did. That did disconnect the phone line, but didn't do crap for resetting the router. Still only one computer could have internet and no WiFi. Called the ISP again, they'll send me a new modem that'll be here in three days.

Well, that sucks for being internet active. So I just went to bed early last night.
This morning I thought about my old Netgear router and for a test put it back, connected it to the modem. WiFi immediately. Okay, all the connected devices needed to have their password reset, but that wasn't much of a problem. The NAS did have a problem, that although it was wired it kept stuck on its old IP address, so had to reset that as well, then figure out what the default password was on the thing (1234, really?)

Leaves the printer, but as long as I am not really needing it the next few days, I'm not gonna fiddle with the USB connection again to my computer and reset all that. As then in 3 days time I'll have to do that all over again.

Anyway, will now be on the lookout for a power strip with surge protector for that corner there. I don't want this to happen again.

Got the new modem in yesterday, and have been busy trying to get it to work since 1 pm. How fricking difficult can it be? Disconnect one modem, connect all cables in the exact same order onto the next modem, turn it on. But no, apparently the modem/router needs to activate itself and the initialize itself and that takes absolute fricking ages. Definitely a thumbs down here.

Edit: one of the people at the helpdesk found out that the modem was set into Bridge mode. No wonder it didn't work. All fixed now.

Edit: one of the people at the helpdesk found out that the modem was set into Bridge mode. No wonder it didn't work. All fixed now.

Yep, because you need to know what IP it has to get to the configuration page and in Bridge Mode ...

Grumble, use recommended fluid, follow manufactures schedule for service, apparently not often enough, radiator still plugged. HISSSS