Mike's musings

Home - via Somerset (and utter, utter incompetence)

(backposting) Yup, we left the cottage around 0900 (not so difficult, as we'd mostly been up since around 0530. Headed for my parent's place in Somerset, and got there whilst the morning was still fairly young. Mum was there, and we had doughnuts (and why not). My parents' new broadband was due to come live today, so I said that I'd investigate. I turned on their PC and rebooted the router. Good news: the router had an ADSL connection. Unluckily, the connection to Demon (their ISP) wasn't working. Odd.

A bit of history. Why, you may, ask, did they need "new" broadband? Well, they have two lines coming into the house: a main line (very old) and a fax line (newer). They decided that they never use the fax, so they might as well cancel it and save themselves some money. You're ahead of me, aren't you? One day, they tried to access the Internet, and it didn't work. Why? Because the ADSL was on the fax line. So, they recommissioned the fax line.

To their surprise, when they did this, ADSL didn't come back on. No problem: they phoned up BT, who said that it would take 5 working days. Today was the fifth day. Can you spot the mistake earlier in this paragraph? Yes, they'd not phoned _Demon_: they'd phoned BT. Some bright spark (a sales person, of course), said that it would be back just as before, and they'd still be able to use their old email addresses. These were both lies, but, as I discovered after about an hour on the phone, they now had BT Broadband.

Not what they wanted. After a great deal of discussion, they cancelled this, and reordered Demon Broadband. They shouldn't be charged by BT, as they were missold. However, in order to speed things up (they'd been without an Internet connection for over 2 weeks), they paid the standard £175 + VAT to fast-track things so they should be up on Wednesday. Cancelling the fax line did _not_ save them money. Somewhat the opposite...

If I hadn't spent nearly 2 hours on the phone, spoken to at least 6 people over at least 10 phone calls, I'd find it more funny.

Jim, Nina, Florence and Frankie joined us in the afternoon, and all the kids got on very well. We headed home after supper and a bath for the girls and got home around 2220. Jo went straight to bed, and Miri didn't. B*gger.

Labels: computing, family

Hospice day 1

(backposting) I've taken two days off work for my placement at St Helena Hospice, today being the first. I spent the whole day at the main site (and the Colchester Day Centre), attending meetings, meeting staff and patients, and discussing it with my supervisor Alan. People were very generous with their time, and it's one of those places where the staff - from volunteers to directors - really believe in the place. I had a very interesting time, and enjoyed myself very much.

Did a little more tidying in preparation for our visitors this weekend (Miri's baptism), and then did lots of ironing in front of Tuesday's episode of Spooks.

Oh - I hate providing IT support. Particularly for Windows. And even more when it's long distance, over the phone. That's one of the downsides of Polly and Lee moving out.

Labels: computing, ERMC, television