It doesn't friggin' stop! My Alice woes are now in their second week.
Yesterday, the new router (and all the other hardware from Alice) arrived, and I exchanged it completely. It arrived while I was at work, and one of the Metropolitans took the package upstairs and handed the router (only the router, not the rest of the stuff, which is apparently unimportant) to the GLS delivery bloke.
Hip-hip-friggin-hurrah!
With the one down side that it didn't help at all. There is still no DSL signal on my line, and it is definitely not the hardware not receiving it, because all the hardware is totally shiny and new. So they tested the line again. And again. And now, when I was on the train to work, somebody from Alice rang me, asking whether I was at home and whether they could do the test over -- it needs me disconnecting the equipment, then re-connecting it after a minute or so. I'm not, so she said she'd try and arrange to have me called back when I am -- at six tonight. Which is, perhaps, iffy, as at that time, their call centers are hopping with customers who just came home from work and have questions. It was hopping so badly last night, I spent about 90 minutes waiting on the phone until I got to speak to some competent woman (it's always the women in the Alice call centers that get down to where it counts, for some reason), and at the end, I was bloody frustrated, and my cats were sulking because I had shooed them away from the new hardware while I was installing it, and finally even banned them from the kitchen.
This is costing me time and money, not to mention my very last nerves. It must be something on the last mile between Alice's network and my home, that is, if I am unlucky, it might involve a visit by a Telekom 'technician' (= Saxonian grunter barely instructed in a three-week-class to do certain things by rote). It might take time. Lots of time, even.
The upside: I read:
- Terry Pratchett, "Wintersmith"
- one Fat Acceptance book in German (as found by Sphinx, of all people, and on the radio -- my sister is a radio kind of person, to the point where she won a day in a chocolate workshop on the radio once, which I linked, but can't link now as I am posting by email, from work)FA matters are still in that larval stage here where sociologists and nutrionists and the like write debunking books from an outside perspective; the Nazgul suggested that I would be the right person to write the first real one. I am not at all convinced -- but have ideas for a blog. Which I might put into practice once I do have home internet again. I have a URL at blogger.de and a user name to post under already. First the blog, then maybe a book if I do manage to get the message across in a way that gets noticed. Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding did it that way, too.
- Tad Williams, "Tailchaser's Song".
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saphyria described it correctly as 'Watership Down with cats'. I liked it a lot -- another book to give to my Little Lady, if the translation is any good. The currently available German translation of WD itself is so unspeakably grottaceous, I'm not even considering giving it to her. Let her learn English for another two years or so, and then she gets it in the original.
- Started on the next Pratchett, "Nation", but found it so depressing that I felt justified to return it to the stack for a time when I am not subliminally annoyed with the universe for messing with my internet anyway.
- Now started reading Neil Gaiman's "Graveyard Book" which is just about the cutest thing evah. Really, never was creepy so heartwarming! I love that tale of a little boy raised by the inhabitants of a cemetary, complete with a suave vampire and a Romanian werewolf lady who cooks the kid terribly healthy East European food consisting mostly of beetroot. **giggle** And the scene where the police woman and the university lecturer go "I'm a tax payer and your wages are paid from my taxes!" at each other; that one is just a throwaway line, but I totally giggled my head off at it. That is one for the Little Lady as well. I have an awful lot of books I need to give to the Little Lady.
I will try to get online from the Mets' at some stage on Friday evening or Saturday morning, for the sake of new Doctor Who and Supernatural, and will most likely spend a part of Saturday afternoon at the Indian internet café, while my laundry is at the laundrette, drying. During the week, I'm online from work every day, and I can drop by the baker's by the train station here in the Miserable Village to get at that which I don't get at from work, namely my mun flist and the comms, Milliways and Morningstar Manor. But other than that, I'm steeling myself for the long haul.
I know Alice does a mobile option, but that is phones -- I wonder if they do dongles, and if they are willing to send me one for free to avoid my getting pissed off terminally...![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
