Jailbreak!!!!

Good heavens!

Firstly, warmest seasonal wishes to one and all.
Secondly, profuse apologies ditto ditto.
Thirdly, never use Blogger on an Ipad in a foreign country.

I have no idea what I did, either literally or to deserve what transpired, but whilst in France I exited Blogger one day, and could not get in without it insisting that I use the French version. That, I could have coped with, but the French version seemed to want me to do many other things upon which I was less keen, and before I knew it, I had been denied access to my own blog.

Subsequent life issues (I WILL blog about some of them) have left me with little time to delve into the engine-room problems and break back into my blog, until now.

It is 3.30 a.m. on Christmas morning, and I am trying to avoid catching some form of virus from TH. The prodigal children have returned for the festivities, and I am waiting for TH (too ill to socialise, well enough to work) to arise from his slumbers and toddle off to work. Yes, on Christmas Day. At which point I will go to bed.

Much has happened since we last spoke, to me and, I am sure, to you. I also lost my Google Reader rights in the general meltdown, and I have much reading of others' blogs to catch up on.

For the time being, however, I wish you a Happy Christmas and an excellent 2013. For myself, I wish nothing more than to find this tab still open when I switch my computer back on.

SO....what's been happening??

An interesting and fairly packed week in Nowhere-in-France for me last week. Or, as I sometimes call it, “the land the internet forgot”. I manage without the internet whilst in France, apart from checking for e-mails on my phone or falling upon the kindness of friends for a WiFi connection. The other alternative is McDonald’s, and I really HAVE to be desperate to darken their door.

Last week, however, N-i-F also became the land that TV forgot.  

Whilst I am by no means a TV addict, I do find it useful for keeping in touch with the world outside, and when I’m alone in France I enjoy curling up on the sofa to watch the odd programme.  Last week, however, the Freesat box decided to die a death.  No UK TV for me…

 Image: Wikipedia

“What’s wrong with French TV?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s like this: we can’t get French TV. There’s a perfectly serviceable ariel on the roof, but it’s never managed to convey whatever signal it receives from up there to down below. I did think that, with the advent of digital TV in France I might have a chance of getting something, but having borrowed the neighbours’ French free-to-air digital receiver and plugged it all in, it showed me what I could be watching, alongside a blue screen with the words of doom “pas de signal”.

Despite being a woman with vertigo, desperation saw me leaving the house via the bathroom window, sidling along the roof like spiderwoman (well, a sort of “off duty” spiderwoman  in shorts and a t-shirt), gripping the chimney and climbing onto the garage roof, and thence to the satellite dish, in order to do as exhorted by the error message on the TV and “check all cables and connections”. They were all fine. I checked, several times.  Don’t worry, I had the foresight and common sense to execute this manoeuvre in the company of visiting friends, in order that if things went wrong then my decomposing remains would not later be discovered on the patio below by a passing neighbour. One friend was stationed by the TV looking for signs of life, whilst the other shuttled back and forth in the garden, passing information between us and limbering up in case called upon to rush forward and catch my plummeting body.

Having read several times on the internet prior to the event that “the French” (for whom many British expat residents seem to believe themselves the official spokesperson) would not give a hoot about the Diamond Jubilee, and that any slightly patriotic gesture on the part of British expats would result in shame being brought upon the rest by association, I had to spend the rest of my stay confessing that I had no idea how wonderful it all was, as I didn’t see any of it. My unofficial and unwilling straw poll of “the French”, comprising most of my friends, the couple who run the tabac, the boulanger, three men in the bar and my neighbours, seems to indicate that they did give at least a small hoot, and were somewhat surprised that I couldn’t add any comments or observations of my own. 

TH will be present on the next visit. I’m relying on him (and on the purchase of a new box) to fix the problem. A week without TV is fine. Three months without TV is NOT.

Enter the Cavalry..

Following my last post, I thought I should let you know what happened.  The cavalry (and there were THREE of them) came, and spent SIX hours fiddling about with my broadband connection. They used two ladders, lots of wire, many gadgets and gizmos and not one single cup of tea (although I did offer!). 

At the end of their stay, and just before I started wondering if I should start cooking dinner for five and make up the spare room, they pronounced things “fixed”. They’d replaced just about all the wiring to the house, tested everything to within an inch of its life, and offered to pop back the following week to check that we were happy. Result.

Well…not quite. They’d only been gone a short while when TH entered the room, clutching his laptop and wearing a hangdog expression. “Is it working for you?” he asked. “Yes” I replied. It was evident from his general demeanour that it wasn’t working for him.

The rest of the evening was spent doing tandem speedtests with two, and then three laptops, and watching the internet speed fluctuate wildly from megafast to zilch and back again. I did explain to TH that it had been mentioned that the age of his laptop could possibly affect the speed, but he wasn’t having that.  His laptop still works, and by golly, he’ll keep it until it explodes.

Enter Karl-with-a-K. Janice (cf my previous blog entry) had gone on holiday for a week. Dealing with me does that to people… Karl was her cheerful substitute, and phoned me on Saturday to find out if all was well. I confessed that it wasn’t. Karl got me into the bedroom (in a manner of speaking: it’s where the modem lives) and had me linking first my laptop, then TH’s to the modem, and testing the speeds on each. We finally came to the conclusion that it was the wireless connections that were the main problem and that TH’s computer had the wrong type of wireless card. Karl recommended the purchase of an n-range wireless dongle. If I sound as though I have a clue what I’m talking about, then let me tell you, I haven’t. I only know that you can buy these mysterious gadgets on the interweb for a fiver or so, and they are the answer to your prayers. Or at least, they’re the answer to your prayers if those prayers involve a fervent request to whatever higher being might be listening, begging them to stop your other half from speaking of nothing other than internet speeds every time they start a conversation with you.

A few days later, the Man from the Cavalry called by. He was very concerned for our internet welfare, and offered (“We shouldn’t, really, but you’ve been so nice and we want you to be happy”) if necessary, to pop back and move the whole internet gubbins downstairs. I told him we were waiting for the Magic Dongle. He still remained chatting for the best part of half an hour…

Then, oh frabjous day, the dongle arrived! Of course, TH couldn’t activate it, so it was left to me. That’s yet another hour of my life I won’t see again.

The bottom line, if you’re still reading, is that all seems to be well, at last. Or, at least, TH hasn’t mentioned the internet speed for a whole 4 days. He even muttered something about reinstating the Direct Debit…

Superfast Broadband...or a carrier pigeon?

As part of a fiendish plan to rid my life of Orange (after they increased their prices JUST enough to hurt, but not quite enough to fall foul of an OFCOM regulation that would have allowed customers to leave them for breach of contract), I changed internet provider in early February.

After much deliberation (in which I included TH, even though he has barely mastered the internet and still types with two fingers), we decided to opt for BT. Not just any old BT contract for us. Oh no, we decided to go for BT Infinity – “superfast” broadband, delivering our internet pages to our screens  faster than a speeding bullet. If, indeed, a bullet speeds at less than 40 megabytes per second: who knows?

On February 7^th, the engineer came (don’t tell TH I called him an engineer: he gets very precious about how they’re not real engineers...). He climbed up ladders, round furniture and so on, and declared the new internet “installed”. And it was. Browsing the internet was speedy and all was well. We had been advised that things might take a few days to settle down, and that our speeds could fluctuate, so for those first few days we weren’t too concerned when “superfast” slowed to a trickle. However, as time progressed, we were getting a lot more trickle and a lot less superfast, so I called the BT helpline.

You may recall, if you’ve read any other posts on my blog, that when I was having computer problems I was practically begging for a call centre on the Indian Sub-continent. I take it all back…

The BT call centre is now on my speed dial. I will spare you the need to be dragged kicking and screaming through my personal hell, but suffice to say that, with our broadband speed dropping quite often to speeds so low that it would be more effective to send messages by carrier pigeon, I’ve rung them often. They seemed to believe that, if I could get a good speed by sitting on the floor of my first-floor study with an Ethernet connection, then there wasn’t a problem. The fact that we mostly use the internet on wireless connections, sitting in the comfort of a chair or sofa downstairs, wasn’t quite getting through. We’ve had two further visits from a tech…er…engineer, and a nicer man you could not wish to meet. However, after his second visit, he confessed that he believed the fault to lie with BT Wholesale (the ultimate service provider) and not us, our house, or any of the equipment. He also suggested we complain like mad. So we did. Letters of complaint, e-mails to ISPA (The Internet Service Providers’ Association) and more phone calls. In the end, TH cancelled our Direct Debit.

This came at a point where BT India had left us two messages, and then failed to try and call us back again. Instead, they sent TH a text, saying “We are pleased to hear that your internet problem is solved”. Where and how they came to that conclusion may forever remain a mystery, but it wasn’t anything we’d said!!

It’s funny how the mind of Big Business works…within 48 hours of cancelling our Direct Debit, we had a call from BT (left in the form of a voice SMS) to say that, as we’d cancelled the DD, we would henceforth be paying £5 a month extra in processing charges. Within 3 days, someone phoned to say “We see you’ve cancelled your DD. Would you like to reinstate it?” at which point the red mist descended. I pointed out (quite politely, I thought, under the circs) that I couldn’t get an answer or an incoming phone call from BT internet, but that as soon as we stopped the DD we were practically inundated with calls. Odd, that, isn’t it? In fairness, the lady I was speaking to did point out that the payments department and the technical department aren’t related, but she did agree to look further into the background.

So, yesterday….after about twelve phone calls and two house visits to date….someone from BT in the UK phoned. Janice. Janice was nice, friendly and helpful. She was also a Geordie, but this time, unlike the man from HP, I understood every word. We talked through the situation and she arranged ANOTHER visit from an engineer. We had it all planned for Saturday, so that TH and I would both be here. That lasted all of half an hour before she called back to change it to today.

As I sat waiting for the man to come, about half an hour ago, the phone rang. To my surprise, it was a lady from BT in India. The conversation went like this:

BT Lady: “I’m ringing about your letter. I understand you’re having problems with your broadband connection” (Full marks for noticing, I thought…)

Me: “Yes, that’s right. But I’m not sure why you are ringing now” (Backing noise of BT lady saying “Mmm…..Mmm..” in an empathetic and understanding way).

BT Lady: “I’m going to put you through to our technical department right now and we will fix the problem”

Me: “But I have an appointment this afternoon for an engineer to come to my house and try to fix the problem. I’m not sure what good it’s going to do for me to speak to someone right now” (Same understanding/empathetic Mmmm-ing from BT lady throughout)

BT Lady: “Can I call you back in two minutes?”

Me: “Yes, no problem”

TWO MINUTES LATER…..

BT Lady: “I’m ringing about your letter. I understand you’re having problems with your broadband connection” (Is it Groundhog day? Am I having a déjà-vu experience?)

Me: “Yes, that’s right. But as I was just saying, I’m not sure why you are ringing now”.               (“Mmm…..Mmm..” again…) “I spoke to your UK technical department yesterday and they’ve arranged an appointment for someone to come and have a look at the internet this afternoon”

BT Lady: “So, I’m going to put you through to the technical department now, and we will help you to fix the problem right away”

Me: “I’m sorry, but have you been listening to a word I’ve just said?”

Sound of dead line as BT lady hangs up…..

So, I rang my friend Janice. She was very apologetic. I explained that I spend most of my working life speaking to non-native English speakers, and I don’t think I have a problem with speaking clearly and simply to make myself understood, but that BT Lady had apparently defeated me. She clearly had her script, and had been trained to stick to it through thick and thin…

Cavalry has just arrived…I will keep you informed.

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye...

Tomorrow I’m off to France. If I ever get there. We’re in the grip of a cold snap. Well, it’s cold to us, but if you live in Siberia, then what we’re currently experiencing would probably have you reaching for a t-shirt and shorts. As it is, people across Europe are locked in competition. The mere mention of the current outdoor temperature wherever you happen to be produces a flurry of “Ha! That’s nothing, it’s minus 27 here and my tongue has just frozen to the roof of my mouth!” “Ha! Call that cold! I had to have my pyjamas surgically removed by the fire brigade this morning because they’d frozen to my body overnight!”

Not to be outdone, I’m heading for my house in the French countryside, where the heating is currently switched off and, according to the neighbours, the fridge has stopped working in protest, because it’s realised that the outside temperature in my kitchen has now fallen below the temperature inside the fridge itself and, being a French fridge, it has decided not to waste its time any further and gone on strike. The internet tells me it’s going to be around -10 to -12 C for the next couple of nights over there, and that the daytime temperatures are unlikely to rise above freezing. I could stay here in the relatively balmy south-east of the UK, where we are forecast a slightly warmer zero to +3 degrees, but then, in the “Who’s the coldest” stakes, I’d be out of contention. It’s a question of pride. Why, even TH has been in on the act. He’s spent the day in Zurich, and the first thing he said as I walked in the door tonight was “It was *&^* cold over there! Minus 10!”. 

Actually, I’m lying. The first thing TH said to me when I came home from work was “Grummmhungbruung”. Or something similar. Owing to his absence in Switzerland, you see, he has been unable to address the problem of his car. I discovered yesterday that his battery was flat, when the nice man from BT came to install our new superfast internet connection. The nice man needed to put up a ladder outside the house, but TH’s car was in the way. I offered to move it forward, which was when I discovered that the battery was flat. So, when I came home this evening at 9.30 pm, it was to find TH outside in the cold, removing the battery from his car so he could charge it. 

So, I’ll be back soon with tales of How I Survived the Cold. Unless I’m recovering from having my pyjamas surgically removed..

Oh, the “Grummmhungbruung” ?? It’s just the way TH talks when he’s holding a torch in his mouth.

Epilogue blogue

OK, not many people are following me at all, but if you have stayed with me through my personal computer hell, here's THE END.

Yesterday, Steven promised me that my new laptop would be delivered on the 24th. He was quite specific. They couldn't do it any earlier, but if the 24th wasn't convenient, he could change it to a later date. I agreed that it would be fine, and that if I had to go out, I would arrange with a neighbour to sign for the parcel. Today, I arranged my workload so that I could be at home for most of the day next Tuesday.

Steven also assured me that the carrier would send me an e-mail with tracking details for my parcel, so that I could see roughly when the delivery would take place.

10 minutes ago, there was a knock at the door...............

Lucky I was at home, because so far I haven't had any e-mails.

The end is nigh.....Maybe

There is a light at the end of the tunnel in the ongoing saga of my dead laptop. I just thought you’d like to know.

For the last few days, I have been in regular telephone contact with Steven (or Stephen, I don’t know). He’s my “dedicated” contact in the complaints department. I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, but he’s very hard work. VERY hard work. Steven, you see, has one of the most impenetrable accents I’ve heard for a long time. This is all the more remarkable considering I spend my every working moment with people who have accents from every corner of the globe, and Steven is a fellow countryman. He’s a Geordie, I think. Although I could be completely wrong, but if I am, then my next best guess is “Martian”. He left a message on our phone two days ago, and TH and I spent a good few minutes trying to decipher it, so it’s not just me.  It’s not every day you find yourself wishing that someone’s customer service call centre was in Mumbai, but this time I’m wondering if it mightn’t have been easier. He’s tried his best to help, and if it wasn’t for his accent, I’m sure we could have got on a lot better. Maybe he’s their secret weapon..it’s harder to be angry when your brain is still decoding the message!

As for the laptop itself, things have almost reached a satisfactory conclusion, although not quite.  The offer of a replacement for my dead machine was finally forthcoming after I’d sent off e-mails to the MD and the customer service robot.  The caveat was that all the data in my old laptop will be lost, as there’s (seemingly) no option or chance to have it transferred. So, new laptop on the way, but I’ll lose all my i-tunes library AND a brand new one-time-one user version of Office 2010 that I’d had use of for five weeks only. The computer people say I should sort that out with Microsoft, Microsoft say I should sort that out with the computer people....

And then, this morning, Steven called again. To be honest, he’d called yesterday and left a message but I couldn’t really tell what he was saying, and besides, every time I phone him back I have to use a 5p-a-minute premium rate number.  And every time I do, I have to press 3 to be transferred to the technical department, then 1 so they don’t use my 5p a minute to recite their terms of service, then tell a technical representative my reference number, then wait for them to enter it into their system, then get put on hold, then wait to be transferred, and THEN, when I get through, someone answers and says “I believe you want to speak to Steven? I’ll just put you on hold while I transfer you”. My Personal Best for getting through to him is eight minutes, which is rarely the end of the saga as we then have to have a conversation twice as long as necessary due to me saying “Pardon?” and him repeating himself so I can get a handle on what he’s saying.  So, I decided yesterday that I’d leave him to get back to me.

The reason for this morning’s call was a tad baffling. He was ringing to get my address so they can deliver my replacement laptop. Luckily, I was at home, so it was his call, but I am left wondering why he needed this information. After all, they came here to pick up the dead laptop, and I filled in their online form with all my personal details...and at some point, had they been able to fix the previous machine, they would have had to deliver it back!  

It appears he’s almost as baffled by my accent as I am with his. Of course, it doesn’t help that most customer service people are well-versed in the “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie” thingy (I could be flash at this point and bandy about words like “acrophonic”, but nobody loves a smart-arse), but I’m not. As a result of our linguistic impasse, I had to spell out my address and then painstakingly correct his mis-hearing of what I’d said for a couple of minutes. As it was his call, I took consolation from the fact that I’d saved myself a good 10p there.

He’s due to call again later with a delivery date for my new machine.  I’m fervently hoping that this will be our last conversation, and that my next blog entry will be written on a machine with a screen that I can see! WIsh me luck!

And while we're on the subject.

I'm not the only family member who has been dealing with the demise of electrical goods this week. TH's stereo tuner passed away recently, and has been much missed (by him).

Like laptops, stereo systems (or whatever they're now called) have moved on over recent years. The last purchase of a "system" in this household coincided with son #1's 6th birthday, and he's 25 tomorrow. It was one of those stacking systems which included CD player, tape deck, record player, tuner, teasmade, black box flight recorder, toaster and  microwave, standing proudly within a glass-fronted cabinet about the height of the average pre-teen, and featuring many flashing blue lights. Since the day it entered the house, I estimate that 75% of its features have remained unused. Over the past 10 years, most of those features have faded into obsolesence, and even the ones that are still used (The tuner. Just the tuner) have fallen well behind the latest technological advances.

If proof of this were needed, it certainly isn't now. Today, TH bit the bullet, struck while the iron was hot, took the bull by the horns and bought a New System.

This New System is, in fact, a box. Its overall dimensions are just slightly bigger than  the largest available box of Weetabix. It's a tuner/CDplayer/Normal-DAB-internet radio/ipod dock and probably several other things too.

We are now staring at an obsolete cabinet full of obsolete stereo eqipment. Perched on the very top is a small silver box.....

The first of many nothings from Nowhere...Battles with my laptop.

So...after many moons of promising myself I wouldn't do it, I've demonstrated my normal levels of willpower and given in. Here I am, writing a blog.

I've already convinced myself that I have absolutely nothing to say, so this effort may well be extremely short-lived,  but what the heck, it's only another half-hour of my life, and I wasn't planning on doing very much with it anyway!

It's a crazy time to choose, if I'm honest, to start writing a blog, as I am typing to you from a netbook with the world's smallest screen, and my failing eyesight (one of the many signs from my body that I am no longer as young as my mind wants to be) means that I'm squinting at the screen and hoping that I can make out any typos through the haze. Maybe the reason for the netbook would be a good place to start? Here goes...




 As I am not a city worker or the CEO of a FTSE 100 company, money is a bit tight. So, when an appliance shows signs of giving up the struggle, I worry.  In late October, I started to worry about my laptop. I'd already popped it into the repair shop for major surgery in June, thinking that it would be fine once repaired, but then the screen declined to illuminate. There was something there, something very faint. I could make it out if I waited till darkness fell, then carried the laptop over to a nearby table lamp and got both the screen and my head positioned at just the right angle. Much Googling and reading about remedies later, I came to the conclusion that the screen backlight had died, and that whilst a repair or replacement was possible, the cost, on top of the cost of previous surgery, was too high to be justified. I'd managed to get hold of a cable to link the laptop to the TV, allowing the TV to act as a giant monitor, so I could just about use the old laptop for as long as it took to rescue any precious files, but it was clearly time to shell out for a new one.

Once upon a time, the received wisdom was that any sort of new technology would, once established, gradually reduce in price. For a while, this was true of laptops. What happened???

In the couple of years since my last purchase, it appears that laptop prices have soared!! Silly me. In those couple of years, the price of almost everything has soared. I was squinting in disbelief at the dinky screen of my emergency netbook, reeling from shock at the cost of a new computer.

Help, in the form of  The Husband (TH), was at hand....

TH is a dab hand at bargain hunting. He is also a dab hand at finding people who know people who have connections to people who can Get Things. He has a work colleague, who has a cousin who can Get Things like computers, ipods, etc. "I'll have a word with him" he said. It was only a short wait before he sent me an e-mail from work. "Not much choice at the moment" it said, above a picture of one solitary laptop. However, the solitary laptop looked fine, was a reputable brand and, most importantly, it was CHEAP.

I should add, at this point, to avoid any confusion, that at no time in its life had the machine dropped off the back of any lorries, and that this was a totally legitimate commercial transaction. Just in case you were wondering..

Meanwhile, back at the story, I agreed to purchase the solitary laptop. After a couple of weeks of waiting (the laptop was coming from far away, and one delivery attempt had to be aborted after an accident closed the M40), it arrived. All shiny and new and working and..well, basically a pretty ordinary new laptop. The date (for future reference) was November 18th.

Everything was tickety-boo until Christmas morning. I switched on my laptop to read and exchange festive messages of good cheer with various people, and all was fine. An hour or so later, I switched on again, only to be met with the Black Screen of Death. Not to be fooled (I'd been here before, remember) I did the squinty under-the-table-lamp thing, and the cable-to-the-tv thing, but to no avail. I checked the manufacturer's website help pages and did everything they said, too. Nada. So I sent them an e-mail. Their robot sent me one back, telling me to do all the things I'd already done. I should have known then that this was only the beginning.

I'll spare you too much detail. This is my first blog entry and I don't want potential readers flatlining. Suffice it to say that the manufacturer came and took my laptop away on December 29th. They were supposed to come on the 28th but they didn't turn up. They were supposed to deliver my repaired laptop back on January 4th. This became January 7th, 11th, 17th, 28th and now FEBRUARY 28th. I've lost count of the number of e-mails we've exchanged, they're only reachable on a premium-rate phone number (and I've racked up about an hour on the phone so far) and  their "we care about you and our MD wants your feedback" form actually limits the number of words you can write when you finally decide to let the MD know exactly what you think of their customer service.

Oh, and talking of "customer service"...a couple of days after the second of their 6 delivery dates had passed, they sent me a survey to complete. "We'd like your views on your recent experience". There's nothing better (and, it seems, more rare) than a joined-up after-sales department.

I've given them a deadline and suggested that, as they've already had my laptop for longer than I did, they might like to consider replacing it with one that works. I'm not holding my breath...