ABC Wednesday - I is for Ice cream & Internet Connection

ABC Wednesday - I is for Ice cream & Internet Connection.

My apologies first for my inability to comment on more than a handful of blogs at present. The reasons for this will come clear, if you care to read the rest of this post.

As those who saw my early-posted piece for last week will know, I was on holiday in Paignton last Wednesday which is when I took this photo of an Ice Cream Kiosk on the beach. It wasn't there the day before. If it had been put there much earlier it would have probably been blown away by the gales that pounded these shores on Sunday night. A kiosk on the pier was blown over and much sand was deposited on the promenade.

Whilst in Paignton I battled my way through the stormy winds to the local library where, as a vistor, I was allowed half-an-hour's free internet access each day. I could keep abreast of my emails, and since I always get email notification of comments made on my blogs, I could keep up to date with what was being said. I couldn't however visit any blogs as Torbay in their wisdom have put a block (though they call it a filter) on all blogspots. I could visit wordpress and aminus3 blogs and even blogger profiles but no blogspots! There was a link, supposedly to a page explaining why the sites were filtered, but the page had a javascript error or something that prevented it being displayed.

Ah well, no huge worries, one can't do much more in half an hour than check emails, dump the spam and reply to the more urgent messages and check the weather to see that back home it was just as cold but a little less windy.

After we had arrived home on Thursday, I switched on my router. When I tried to access the internet, I discovered that my DSL connection was down. After fiddling for a while, I phoned my ISP. At least they answer quickly, use a normal, geographical number, do not keep you hanging on and will phone you back if they are busy. They said there sounded to be a lot of noise on the line and to ring BT on 151 to get the line checked.

But I'm not with BT and pay my rental to another telecoms company. I had to phone a premium number and go through two menus to get to someone who sounded as though they were based in a different continent! They said that before they could get someone out I needed to plug a corded phone into the socket and try that first. Well of course I didn't have one!

For a short period in the evening I found my router had kicked in and I got some access to the internet but it was running at around 100kps instead of the normal 5Mbs. Later it failed again.

On Friday I had to wait for the postman to deliver the week's mail that had been "kept safe" before I could go out. He turned up at 12.30pm. So in the afternoon I bought a new old-style phone for £7 and on my return home phoned my telecoms provider again. They had me unscrewing half the socket off the wall and connecting inside the socket. They said that if I requested an engineer to come round and the fault lay with my equipment it would cost £120.

I tried again with just the router and corded phone plugged in and I got online at treacle-speed. I phoned my ISP who got me to run the BT speed test and give them the result. The line profile is 135kps instead of 6000kps. It would appear that the fault lies with my old (18 months?) cordless phone. They say that now the cordless phone is disconnected and a corded phone attached, the line should stabilise over the next three days.

On Saturday evening I lost the connection altogether. On Sunday morning I messed about a bit completely unplugging the bits and pieces of the cordless phone and unravelling all the wires. When I phoned my ISP they moaned at me (in as nice a way as possible) saying that I shouldn't have disconnected the router from the line and that the three day stabilisation period would now start over again.

All of a sudden at 10.45am on Sunday it kicked in, still at only around 100kps but at least I could get a few things done. At 6.30pm I lost the connection again. When I got up on Monday morning I was back connected again. That is still my position as I write this Tuesday evening. I have a dismal 100kps internet connection, an old-style phone, no answer machine, no caller-ID, no portable handset.

I can do quite a bit on the internet but visiting photo-heavy sites is painfully slow and video-clips are unwatchable. We shall see if normal service is resumed soon. If not, I fear for my blood pressure!

Links to other ABC Wednesday I posts can be found at Mrs. Nesbitt's Place.