Rooting the booter
What is wrong with you people?
I take a couple of days off and yiz all start moaning and leaving comments and sending me emails. Have you nothing better to do? When I was a nipper and made the mistake of telling the Ma I had nothing to do I’d be packed off to peel a bucket of spuds, or tidy my bedroom or hang some washing on the line or something equally tedious. I very quickly learned to be fully occupied with my own pursuits at all times, I can tell you.
Strangely enough, the fates were with me not long after posting on Thursday as my Interwebs packed up.
I had noticed that my speeds had been dropping for a while and was down to 50 megathingies from around 90. I wasn’t complaining as I considered anything above a 3 was a bonus. But then on Thursday the phone started acting up and the dial tone sounded like a raging forest fire. My Interwebs suddenly became very iffy and then packed up altogether.
I rang the company.
A very pleasant woman answered the phone. She was foreign but spoke excellent English with a lovely sexy accent. She started by complaining that she couldn’t hear me through all the crackling on the line and asked for my mobile number. She rang me back and said she assumed I was phoning to complain about a crackling noise on my phone. She was smart!
We went through all the usual rigmarole – had I fucked around with the wires, and when did it all start and had I tried rebooting the router. I assured her I had done nothing at all except reboot the router. She said she had to do some tests and would ring me back. I was about to hang up when she started talking again, telling me that she was testing connections and impedance and attenuation and stuff like that. I realised that “I’ll ring you back” was her way of saying “Hold on and I’ll be back to you”.
To cut a long story short, she announced that I had a problem on the line. This was a relief as it proved it wasn’t my Tinnitus that was causing the crackling. She somehow managed to give me back a reduced broadband [around 10 megathingies] and said the bloke would be out to check my installation within three working days. Bugger! That meant anything up to Monday.
My mobile rang at eight the following morning. Of course, by the time I realised that it was my phone that had woken me, and had rummaged around the clothes on the floor to find it, they had hung up. Then the main phone rang. By the time Herself had woken enough to reach for it [it’s on her side of the room] they had hung up again. However there was a message on mine to say that the techy-bloke was on his way and was just around the corner.
I dressed as quickly as I could [bearing in mind I was still asleep] and got to the front door just as he arrived.
He was a nice, slightly taciturn bloke. He set to work pulling cables and unscrewing things and grunting and muttering to himself. After making a right mess of the cables behind the router [or rather a different mess from the mess they had been in] he announced the fault was on the garage roof.
So he got his ladder and put on a hard hat. I asked him what the hard hat was for as the only thing above his head was a few clouds and was he afraid that a bird would drop a half ton shit on him. He muttered something rather uncomplimentary about Elf and Safety so I left him to it.
He fixed it. It was a broken wire in a junction box apparently. He gave me a new [better] junction box. I tested my Interwebs – 10 megathingies. I mentioned this. Ah, says He, I apparently have to ring “The Office” and get them to bump up my speed again.
I phoned and got on to some bloke who obviously hated Friday mornings and was pining to be back in his native African village.
After a lot of confusion where he insisted I couldn’t get more than 80 on my line and I insisted I had been getting up to 98 before. There was no telling him though. He insisted I get 80 and he was the one with the finger on the button so there was fuck all I could do about it. He gave me 80.
So my phone is now working perfectly and my Interwebs is running at nearly full speed.
I’m not complaining.
80 is still slightly better than 3 ?
Welcome back.
I am pleased it was only a small break, about as small as that rubbish snooker player, (insert name of snooker player here) who doesn’t do very well.
Not necessarily a small break…. It’s more a case of shifting priorities where this site gets shoved down a notch or two. Setting the world to rights is quite tiring, but I think it’s quite capable of fucking itself up without regular intervention from me?
That’s just fine with me. I’ve missed your stories about sending tourists up to the bogs, neighbors and all their antics (and your retaliation thereof) and other such things. And you’re right of course, the world (meaning ‘people’) will do it’s utmost best to fuck things up no matter who attempts to intervene.
I’m completely disgusted. Not at you, GD, mind you. I’m just completely disgusted for general purposes–woke up that way and it hasn’t left yet. Just thought you ought to know.
However, I am a bit proud of the fact that I haven’t moaned and groaned or sent you emails during your (forced?) break. And I’m glad you got your innerwebs thingy fixed even though you only have 80 instead of 98. Me? I have all of 25 and I pay dearly for it. Bit envious you know.
A lot of people seem to be disgusted these days. In fact I would be so bold as to suggest that this will be known forever as The Age of Disgust?
The reason I mention my speed is to get a dig at al those who used to gloat whenever I mentioned my old 3 connection. No names – no packdrill.
In that case I’d prefer using the term, ‘disgruntlement’. It fits so much better into the lyrics of “Age of Aquarius” than ‘disgust’ (Do you have the song firmly in your head? Okay…):
This is the dawning of the Age of Disgruntlement…
See how well it fits?
Great to see you back GD , been suffering dire forebodings since your last post
hoping for the best and fearing the worst but not wishing to intrude on your privacy.
With any luck this hiccup will be the nadir of 2017 and the remainder will be sunshine lollipops and roses .
As I said, it’s purely a matter of priorities. Posting once a day was a habit that needed to be broken. Scribbling for the sake of scribbling is not the way to go. There was no other reason [apart from a few things that needed my attention over the last coupe of days]. Maybe I’ll get stuck back in the rut and start posting my Daily Shit or maybe I’ll eave things until I have something to say. Or not say. Or whatever. The future is eternally fluid.
Good on you, mate. You do what you want. I can see where you’re coming from – once a pleasure starts feeling like an obligation, the pleasure aspect starts seeping away. You’re not here to provide a service (although accidentally you do, insofar as you provide many with a pleasurable read), you’re here because you want to be. Or not. The choice is yours, and yours alone. So, much as I like to read your posts, I fully support your wanting to take a step back for a while. Or forever. Whatever.
Did you try connecting it to your water meter? It’s not much use for anything else and is not connected to anything.
My water metre is fully functional if you don’t mind…… as a conversation piece [and the butt of a few jokes].
JHC on a stick. You had all of two comments telling you to pull your head out your rectum.
I just watched you sink slowly down Mr. Puddlecote’s blog roll – a depressingly regular occurrence.
And you still haven’t fixed that irksome bug where if you click on HR at Dick (and Junican’s) place, it defaults to an October brain fart.
You didn’t count in the mails I got.
I can’t answer for Mr P’s pace. If all the people on his list stopped writing, I would stay at the top? I just nipped over and both links work perfectly for me – the header goes to the main site and the link goes to the most recent post. ???
Ha! We did it! Thx to all (other) moaners!
:-)))
I’m very glad my daily coffee break is starting to look like it could include a bit of fun and / or shared disgruntlement / disgust again. I was getting bored, and there were no spuds to peel.