technology sucks

I've just spent 2 days without the internet, because BT broke some fancy bit of equipment in a deep dark hole somewhere in Croydon. Or Chichester. Or maybe in Siberia, who cares. The point is, that despite there being several hundred of us on different ISPs without the internet, it took BT over a day to admit that it was their fault.

So I had find things to do that were not internet related. For TWO DAYS. This ranks high up on the horrible chart. In fact, it's right up there with going without coffee. Almost. There is nothing that really ranks as high as coffee. But it was pretty painful overall.

You probably think this post is going to be all about how rewarding I found that time. How I reconnected with nature, found my inner self, discovered the joy of just being me, caught up with reading, wrote my novel or just enjoyed the peace of sitting in the sun and doing nothing.

Not a pinch.

For a start, we haven't seen sun here since 1967. I am not going outside because it's either wet or freezing or both and the back yard is a quagmire of dirt with the occasional lottery win of fox poo.

I don't knit. Not even a teacosy.

I have a tendancy to fart and ruin the moment while meditating, so there is no peace to be had.

I have a cold and feel grumpy, and besides - I need to use IMDB.com in order to look up who on earth that young man in Glee is, and what's the ditzy red haired actress's name who was also in Ugly Betty.

I might even need to look up what I can do with fennel.

I have pressing needs.

And more importantly - I work for a living. My working day revolves around my kids school hours. I drop them off at school. I work. I stop work. I pick them up from school.

I have 6 hours in which to fit in my work, and lets face it - as a web designer there's going to be a high percentage of work that relies on the internet connection being up. Up as in functional. Up as in "hello internet, are you there?" "Why yes, I am. I live to serve."

What I got was "hello internet... hello?" "The internet is not available. Please leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeeeeep... no, just joking. You can frick right off."

I rang my ISP. 400 other customers rang my ISP. My ISP looked into it and lay the blame at BT's door. BT on the other hand refused to open the door. I guess they expected that the flaming bag was really full of dogshit. Yes it really was. But it was BTs dogshit in the first place.

My ISP very kindly raised a fault report for me. And they very kindly sent me a message about it.

Via email.

And in that email they gave me a very handy link to a webpage where all updates to my fault would be posted.

That would be on the internet, access to which would be necessary in order to see the updates.

Now I'm lucky, I have a way to access the internet that doesn't involve my computer. But the more I use my iPhone to access the internet without my wifi connection, the bigger my phone bill is going to end up. So I don't want to do that too often. I used it solely to send and receive emails to my clients. I avoided all other apps that might try and access the internet.

And yet... can you even guess what one app I did use in my isolation?

Yes, gentle reader. Despite posting about how pointless twitter is, I used it to give myself the illusion I was still in touch with unreality.

And here's the strange thing.

I twittered about my internet outage, uttered the mere acronym of BT, and moments later @btcare was asking if they could help.

How weird is that?

They told me to email them and they'd look into it.

So I did.

But they didn't.

I have a theory about this. I think that some companies think that it's good PR to have lovely little helpful messages out in public showing how "hip" and "with it" they are.

See that little juxtaposition there? They are "with it" and I am "without". I slay myself.

Here is how my twitter conversation with @btcare started:

I won't bore you with the rest, suffice to say that I emailed bt as instructed and received no reply. The next morning I tweeted about it and up popped @btcare again - telling me to email him.

Erm... nope. Not again!

He also pointed out that I could get all my updates from the BT status webpage. Again with the webpages. Isn't there some vital flaw in the idea of keeping people updated about their lack of internet access with messages posted on the internet??

It's like telling people that the ferry times and service alerts are posted at their destination. Um - useful much?

According to my ISP (who I rang on the telly phone) BT finally admitted it was their fault at 1pm today. And at 2pm it was fixed. I spent a glorious hour sending emails and catching up with work, then I had to pick up the kids from school.

When I got home, the internet was gone again. It's kind of like snuffaluffagus isn't it. When he was still an invisible friend that is. Maybe not quite as hairy.

This time my ISP helpline was swamped. I was in a queue for a long time, and when I got through I found out why. This time 3000 of their customers were without internet. It was a different fault, but it was still BT's fault.

Numbers maketh the man however - with 3000 customers from one single ISP, BT fixed this one in two hours. Funny that. They must have felt like they got a shot up the rear from Oscar the Grouch.

And I'm back. It's a kind of special internet present to all of you.

Like digital herpes.

A while ago, when the world was frozen - Mr Boxer Shorts and I made a huge mistake. It was a mistake that only the lack of heating and a damp smell can provoke. We live to regret that decision every day. Brace yourself for a revelation of the most mundane variety...

We sold our leaky cold SAAB and bought a heated Renault Megane Scenic.

I am sorry, this is a post about cars. But don't worry, there are rubber bands in this post. Just hang in there.

As a rule, I don't like cars. I don't wish to talk about them. I have no particular knowledge about them. The type of car that I like is usually pistachio green. And shiny.

But I now know what I don't like. And I don't like Renaults. (And I'm not too keen on red now, neither)

We didn't just have to crack the ice off the car in order to have a look at it when we bought it. We had to pour hot water into the lock to open it, and our fingers were in danger of sticking to the key. We were so frozen from sitting in the SAAB with no heating that we were nearly suffering from hypothermia. We should have known that looking at a car under those circumstances was likely to make us skip over the details, and buy a dud purely based on the fact that it had heating that worked.

We were also slightly swayed by the cup holders. What luxury - somewhere to actually put my coke! And the fact that the car opened with a button, instead of having to use the key in the door. We were almost giddy over the little tables behind the seats for the kids to use which also had drink holders. But those high end features didn't make the Renault Scenic a quality car. It was a dud.

Like a firework filled with sand, or a man wearing tighty whiteys that are just too tight.

In the light of day not long later, we saw the proof of dud-dom. The first obvious thing being the fact that the sunroof over the front was broken. It doesn't open. 

The next obvious thing being that the car feels like it's made out of plastic. When you open and close the doors you might as well be driving a barbie car, for all the solidity you can feel in it. It feels like junk.

And junk it proved itself to be. Very soon after we bought it, the drivers window made a nasty sound, and the glass suddenly dropped loosely into the door. The window no longer winds up or down, but instead can be pushed about. Most of the time we tried to shove it upwards to wedge it closed, but by the time we came back to the car it had slipped down again and was open. Even in the rain.

Is it a telling point that no-one could be bothered stealing the car, despite the wide open driver's window? The damn thing is a great big pile of plastic crap, and even burglars have better taste!

So I taped it shut with gaffer tape, which didn't hold it, looked terrible, but did leave a sticky residue on the window so nasty that eventually it stayed closed when jammed upwards, and never opened again.

Apparently this is a well known fault on Renaults, and they would like £200 to fix it please. No thanks Renault.

We're now those people that you hate to be stuck behind when going into the shopping centre carpark. We have to open the car door to try and take or insert the ticket. Actually, we're getting quite good at that manoeuvre to be honest. But it's not something I WANT to be good at.

But while we chose not to spend money to repair the window or the sunroof, I had no choice about paying for the repairs when the power steering drive broke off and took out the alternator and cooling system while I was driving to orchestra. Have you ever coasted down a hill with no side roads in a car that is shutting down on you - not enough power to keep the radio or headlights on - with a massive bus on your tail? It was a little eeky, to say the least.

After a three hour wait for the RAC, and then a tow home we had to pay nearly £500 to replace the broken power steering drive.

And the legacy of THAT is that now the radio no longer works, as since it was disconnected to repair the power steering it needed a code to reset. We have the book, we have a code written down in the book... and yet it won't accept it.

So now the car is windowless, sunroofless and soundless.

But the fun doesn't end there. Just before christmas we drove to the airport in the pouring rain and the wipers stopped working. We had to abandon the car in Battersea, transfer all our bags to a "streetcar" and continue our journey in that. To get the streetcar pickup point in the first place we had to drive along at snails pace with our heads sticking out the windows like dogs in order to see where we were going. The children thought it was funny, but we were less amused.

Add wiperless to my imaginative list.

And by the way - those drink holders I mentioned? Useless. Guaranteed to totally FAIL to hold an ordinary can of drink upright. And yet perfectly guaranteed to remain sticky when the can spills the total of its contents as it falls over. 

The sunroof, the window and the radio are all annoying, but don't affect the driveability of the car. The wipers on the other hand - pretty much a necessary item in this recent snow and sleet.

I was unable to drive anywhere. And I had to sing to myself when I did drive.

On the up side... I like my singing. But no-one else does.

I'd had enough. I put on my determined hat (it's stripy) and headed off to Renault in downtown Elmers End to get the radio code checked. Apparently the code is correct, and it's the radio that's broken. It will take £60 just to look at it and tell me if it's fixable or not. If it needs replacing, a Renault one will be a couple of hundred. Thanks Renault, and no thanks.

Then the more important issue - I headed off to a local repairer to ask him about the wipers - he phoned up and found out that the part costs about £150, and then £60 labour. Thanks Renault, and no thanks.

I don't want to spend £210 on a car that will probably fetch about £400 when we sell it on ebay later this month (that's what it's come down to!)

But the bottom line is - until I have something else, I need to be able to drive the car. I'd LIKE to be able to listen to the radio as well, but we don't always get what we want. It's the wipers that need sorting.

And that's why, last week my neighbours watched me jemmy open the front panel of my car - and armed with a pair of scissors and bag of rubber bands - semi blindly fish about under the plastic housing until I'd fixed my wipers.

Yep, I now have an advanced degree in mechanics, as long as rubber bands are involved. I have fixed my the wipers of the car with 3 rubber bands bound around the movable arm mechanism. And a week later it's still going strong. Total success.

Now I am wondering just how many rubber bands it will take to fix the window (and just where I attach them).

By the way, if you see a red Renault Megane Scenic for sale on ebay... don't ask about the wipers!

I don't love my car at all. In fact, I am pretty sure that the Renault megane scenic is about the worst car that I've ever been within 40 feet of. It's certainly not very scenic.

I may have neglected to mention in my post about flying to Australia that we actually had problems getting to the airport in the first place. It was pouring rain and the wipers stopped working completely. It was impossible to drive with no wipers in that weather.

We ended up phoning streetcar, which is only possible because Mr Boxer Shorts has a work account with them. They had a car just a few streets away and the delay was only half an hour, so all in all it was pretty smooth.

But that doesn't excuse our car from its appalling behaviour in the first place.

Mr Boxer Shorts pulled the front of the car apart and found the problem with the wipers, which he duly fixed. Or so we thought.

This morning we had a family dentist appointment over in Wimbledon Park. We like our dentist, so despite having moved to the other side of London, we still ramble back over there for dentist appointments. The girls and I took off in the car, with Mr BS following on the scooter.

We got as far as Streatham when the wipers stopped working. And of course, it was raining. What did you expect? It's London.

I immediately phone Mr Boxer Shorts, but I didn't expect him to hear the phone, since he was presumably en route in the scooter. Luckily for me, instead of following us, he'd taken a phone call at home and hadn't even left yet. He jumped on the scooter and arrived in due time.

But we didn't have any way of unscrewing the front part of the wiper housing, so his presence was really about as useful as a syphallitic tortoise at that point.

I got the fun job of walking up streatham high street and asking the shop owners of every open grocery store if they knew where I could get an allen key. Apparently none of them had any idea. I am not convinced the half of them understood what I was asking for actually. 

I phoned Mr Boxer Shorts and told him that I couldn't find any, so he decided that he'd get back on the scooter and ride around looking for somewhere to buy them. But as I walked down the street I spotted one of those shops that sell almost everything, so I headed over.

They did indeed have allen keys, plus screwdrivers, so I got a set of each and tried to pay. But I had no cash on me (other than Australian fivers) and so needed to pay on the card. I had to bump the total up to over five pounds, so I came out with the allen keys, screwdrivers, and a muffin baking tray.

The allen keys turned out to not work - the reason why isn't clear, but the net result was that Mr Boxer Shorts used the screwdrivers to levy the housing off without unscrewing it. Snapping plastic was heard. But we were in, and the arm of the wipers was re-attached to the mechanical driver. The screwdriver was also now shaped like a banana. That's what you get when you spend £1.99 on a set of six screwdrivers! 

I phoned the dentist to let them know we were on our way, and we set off, all systems go.

Or not. 

It was only about two streets later that the wipers stopped again. I bipped the horn and pointed at the frozen wipers. There was little point in  trying to fix them, since it obviously didn't work. So Mr BS let me pull up beside him at the next lights, and then he leaned over and manually moved the wipers. 

That's how we drove on for the rest of the journey. Every set of lights he'd pull to the right and I'd slide in beside him for a bit of manual wipage. I also had to use a bathroom squeegee to wipe the inside windows because they keep fogging up and the heating has stopped working. The drivers window cannot be wound down as that's been broken for months. (Have I told you how much I hate this car?)

We made it to the Dentist only about 10 minutes late.

The trouble is now that Mr BS is going to go straight to work on the scooter. I won't have my mobile wiping assistant driving home with me! Where are those window cleaners who stand on street corners when you need them? One of those guys strapped to the roof would be perfect. Maybe not legal, but is that important?

So Mr Boxer Shorts showed me what I need to do to reattach the arm, and the girls and I set off home. I figured that I probably had a set number of wipes before the arm fell off, so I started to be very economical with my wiping. I let the visibility get to double blur before I would allow the wipers to do one wipe. 

That got me all the way to Herne Hill before the arm fell off. I stopped and reattached it, and continued. We only got as far as Penge, so rather than pull over and do the full fix again, I started getting out at the lights (when they were red that is) to manually push the wipers back and forth. This elicited a few strange looks too.

So as you can imagine, my car is not my friend. Does anyone want it? I am quite happy to swap it for a nice SAAB.

They say that bad things come in threes. I don't know why that is. Google doesn't know why that is. (Google doesn't actually "know" anything, since it's just a bunch of code magnetised in the shape of a huge statue of Bob Geldof - bet you didn't know that.) According to some random guy going by the handle of "sleidman" bad things come in three because three is your brain's favourite number, and so if two bad things happen, then your brain wants a third thing to come along just make up the numbers.

Sleidman, what are you ON? My brain did not use the power of ESP to short out the lights in George. I quite fancy the number none when it comes to shit happening. So let's ignore Sleidman, and his theory of threeativity, as well as his other snippets of random information (apparently his first kiss was "amazing , extra good , delicious" Did we want to know that? No.)

My threesome is a mechanical tango of extremely musical proportions, which started on a thursday night on the way to orchestra. Our car, a plastic renault megane with all the personality of a tonka toy (and probably the safety features too) had been making a ticking noise that sounded like the fan hitting something. You know those noises that you think you should get someone to take a look at before it's too late... And then don't? This was one of those noises. It had got louder and louder in the past week. Then about half way between home and Orpington I heard a stranger sound not unlike what you'd hear if you ran over a cat. Without the yowl. But oddly the ticking noise suddenly stopped, so I called home to ask Mr Boxer Short's advice.

Me: Darling, you'll never believe what happened, that awful noise in the car has just stopped. Now there is a strange slapping noise... what should I do?
Mr BS: I think you should try drive home and then take George to rehearsal instead.
Me: Thanks for that advice, I think I'll try and keep going instead, then ring the RAC when I get there. Oh, and by the way - the power steering seems to have completely disappeared.
Mr BS: Why'd you bother asking me then? Wait, WHAT?

So I continued on in late rush hour traffic, with no power steering, and a rhythmic slapping on my undercarriage that in any other circumstances might have been kinky. And the car didn't like me. Not one bit.

It started juddering after a while, once I'd got a mile or so further on, and was irretrievabley stuck in stopped traffic down a hill with no sideroads. The radio died suddenly, then the headlights. I was stuck between two buses, and had to put on my hazards and roll along.

Luckily for me, someone put a vetinary surgery on the corner and flattened a parking lot out front, so I rolled on into that and stopped. I was exactly 1 mile away from where I wanted to be.

I rang the RAC. Now, Mr Boxer Shorts has been a member of the RAC since he was about 2. And wore short pants. (He still wears short pants.) There is loyalty to the RAC in spades here. But loyalty begins to waver when you get told that the waiting time for a call out is 2 hours. TWO FRICKING HOURS??? That's how long my rehearsal would have been. The rehearsal that was 1 mile away in downtown Orpington. I begged the woman to hurry. I am alone! I am single! No, well, not in that way. I am in ORPINGTON for God's sake! Hurry!

After a moment of thinking, and a 2 degree drop in temperature in the car I rang them back to bargain with them. I figured I might as well walk to rehearsal (google said 18 minutes) and then if they could give me 20 minutes noticed, I'd be able to walk back in time. "Sorry, it will be ten minutes notice," said the automaton. But then she warmed up a bit - "I could organise to have someone at your car at a certain time though." Brilliant I thought - and we arranged for 9.45pm.

I set off walking down the road. A flute might not make much of a weapon against an attacker, but I am pretty sure that a few high notes on the piccolo could do irreversible damage to ear drums and be so truly uncool that they'd literally want to run away to avoid being seen with me. Despite that, I ran, rather than walk.

So I arrived at rehearsal, hot, sweaty, smelling acrid. And sweet talked the only person without a sense of smell into driving me back to my car afterwards. Sweet. But at 9.30pm, the RAC rang me back to inform me that no-one would be at my car at 9.45pm, as they were at least an hour away. Oh joy.

My very kind taxi driving friend took me home and fed me cheese and biscuits, while we made painful small talk. She tried to offer me wine, but FOOL that I am, I turned it down. 40 minutes later the RAC rang again. A jolly voice informed me that I had another hour to wait. I was too tired to even seethe properly!

Luckily, the next call was only 20 minutes later, and was from the patrol who was coming out to me. So I was driven back to my car in time to watch the RAC van totally miss the turn and drive on past while I jumped up and down on the spot. An hour later I arrived home with my totally dead car on tow. Why oh WHY did I turn down that wine? We pushed it into a parking spot, and there it sat for 3 weeks.

We have two cars. Loosely defined as cars. George, mentioned early on in this article is the alternative to the plastic Renault. (Did I mention that I'd rather have an Audi or a Saab? I don't mind driving sponsored cars by the way...)

George is a VW camper. He's been up and down the alps, and round Europe in a route reminiscent of south america, which included a ferry to sweden. He has class, he has personality. He doesn't have enough seat belts, and he doesn't have heating. But we love him anyway. He also doesn't have power steering either, the two of them are now equal on that footing.

We also have a scooter. So we are a three vehicle family. One down, two to go.

Did I mention that this was a mechanical threesome? I got kinda hung up on the first thing. The second one was more gruesome. Mr Boxer Shorts was knocked off the scooter by a pimply faced twat in his girlfriend's car who didn't see him, and was "waking from a dream". Dream in your bed, dickwad, not on the road.

Mr Boxer Shorts is ok, thankfully. A slight groin strain - nothing you can't get on a saturday night when the kids are in bed and you've got a bottle of wine to spare.

Mr Spotty Face wanted to sort the problems out with some cash in hand. He thought £350 would cover the bike. He wasn't best pleased to learn that my hubby had landed squarely on his laptop. The extra cushioned bag providing great protection for his back, but less so for the laptop, which is now bent in a nice back shaped arc. Mr Spotty Face disputed that the laptop was even in the bag at the time. And he got bent out of shape (like the laptop, only spottier) that we were going to claim for the helmet as well, and asked - if we didn't want it - could he have to give to his little brother. "Depends how much you dislike your little brother, mate" said I. "How do I know he was wearing THAT helmet?" he conjectured petulantly. Give me a BREAK!

By that point - in the middle of a discussion the next day at our house - I took over negotiations. He may have thought that Mr BS was a soft touch who he could bend to his will, but he didn't make allowances for the bolshy aussie who won't let go. When he kept trying to come back to points we'd already hashed through I eventually laid out his options in front of him, told him he'd have to wait and booted him out the door.

And now we need the third bad thing to come along, which apparently my brain is desperate for, in order to complete the trilogy. This one is yet again musical. With no car or scooter to ride, I opted for driving George to orchestra this week. George is nearly as old as me, and has similar flatulence problems. He's also wired up like a victorian house built by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson that has been buried in sand for 50 years.

I was driving along in complete darkness, as the dashboard lights have been off for a while, when it occurred to me that the dashboard lights were on a dimmer switch, and if I rotated the light knob I'd probably get them back. So I rotated the knob.

I didn't get any lights back, but instead got a zzzzzt and a smell of burning that was slightly off-putting. I would have opened the window to clear the smell, but the knob on that handle pinged off a week ago and can't be found. Luckily the smell did disappate, and by the time I arrived it was no longer noticable.

Fast forward two hours, and I came out of rehearsal to find that I no longer had headlights. Or taillights. It's 9.30 at night, and I have no way of legally driving home. And everyone else has already left. I have to call the RAC - AGAIN. They have really sorted out their response time. Not. It's going to be 90 minutes before anyone gets to me.

So I am sitting in the back of the van, wrapped in two sleeping bags, in the middle of an estate in Orpington. Funbags. The RAC guy arrives after 90 minutes and manages to rewire the burnt out bits so that I can drive home. Now, it's always good once they turn up - I can't fault the quality of service given by the guys, but to be honest - if there are not enough guys to provide quality coverage then the service isn't good enough.

Anyone got the number for the AA?

Ok, so (I've decided to start all my blog entries with "Ok, so...". This will probably last about 4 entries, and then I'll forget to do it completely for the rest of my life. But I digress...)

I just wanted to go back to the whole iphone topic, and make a point of saying how integral that small piece of technology has become to my life.

I have a saying whenever I need something... "There's an app for that".

OK, so it's not MY saying... but it's so true! Whenever I think of something that I need to accomplish, I always have a look in the apps store to see if there really IS an app for that.

And if I can't find the app that i want, I normally find other apps that it occurs to me might be useful too.

I started to use the voice memo to record random thoughts and ideas for blog entries. I did this because it exists. So if it exists, I should be able to find a use for it. I worked out that a good use of the voice memo app would be those times that I talk though ideas in my head, and can't note them down. Primarily, this is what happens when I am driving or walking.

The fatal flaw with this idea is that I am not in my car too often, and I am hardly likely to walk along talking to my phone like a twat.

This morning while riding in to work on the back of hubby's scooter I pretty much wrote half a dozen blogs in my head, and then promptly forgot most of them.

I know I forget a lot of thoughts that run through my nonce while riding. It's as though the helmet is both cathartic and absorbative. I know that the thoughts happen, but they just can't stay in my head.

I may well have cured the current global economic in my head, cushioned in my helmet with my cheeks squeezed to the front like a champion gurner.

It's also true that I spend a lot of time riding the scooter singing at the top of my lungs. This isn't something I'd like to record on my iPhone. It's not worthy of broadcasting. I am pretty sure that the people stopped in the cars beside me at traffic lights would prefer that they didn't have to hear it either.

On that note (get it?) my favourite app is my tuner. I spent £20 on a tuner which I don't love half as much as my £5 iphone one. And by tuner, I mean a device that tells you when you're in tune playing a particular note. For the flute. I'd say for the piccolo too, but then anyone who's heard most piccolos play would just laugh. There are jokes that go hand in hand with piccolos and most of them are about tuning and intonation (sorry to the non musical people, I'm just not going to define that word, so google it).

My next favourite app on the iphone has to be ragdoll blaster game, which is such a ridiculous idea, it's unbelievable how satisfying it actually is to fire small stick figures out of a canon!

The facebook app is one that I can't live without, as is obvious to anyone on my facebook friends list. And I'm getting quite partial to Twitterfon too. That's probably not a good thing.

But without fail, the app that I enjoy the most has to be the lolcats app. That really sums me up in one line. Unfortunately!

I have to confess to a serious iphone addiction now. I didn't quite realise how it was going to take over my life. I always swore that I could control it, and that I could put it down at any time.

I'm proud to announce the arrival of a new bundle of joy to our family... the Mac Mini. Yes, "mini me" was turned on and set up at 10.30am this morning, and is happily pootling away on my PC's monitor. The PCs are somewhat put out at being disconnected from their only monitor, but we don't really consider them part of the family anyway...

Mini me joins evinrude (g5), girlie (imac), hiho, ichipod, pinkiepod and pauliepod (ipods) to make our lovely apple family complete. Mini me will be used to play movies and tv shows recorded via eyetv, and has the advantage of being able to be plugged into the bedroom TV, as that one is also a computer monitor. No longer will I have to sit at my desk to catch up on ugly betty, desperate housewives, CSI, house, medium... er, the list is quite long.

The only thing that is a slight let down is the fact that the top of the mac mini would have been a really useful lightbox. Why didn't they think of that when they made it? They've really missed a trick there.