Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Bangalored again
Time to name and shame as it is only two weeks since BT Total Broadband (or whatever they call themselves today) have let me down again after the last week's outage - line went dead just as I was getting excited about spending £9.95 for six months' subscription to some family heritage website - jeans reunited or something. And no, the BH was not poking the equipment with the vacuum cleaner at the time in question. And yes, I am paying BT rather more than other people say they are getting their service for.
I am slightly consoled by the symptoms being new. That is to say rather than there being silence on the middle two lights of my Voyager 210 router, the DSL light is flashing in bursts, separated by about 5 seconds. But it is not holding after one or two goes - which is what is supposed to happen - and the Internet light is completely dead. Phone the Help Desk at 0800 yesterday. Lines very busy. Try again at 1800 and get through. Usual business with plugging and unplugging microfilters. No change with the lights though. Problem passed to the engineers who will be in touch within 48 hours. Very sorry for your inconvenience. Phoned me back at 0800 this morning. The desk has been in touch with the engineers. Can I try again? No change. Now awaiting the next development.
Some neighbours think that it is all down to the PC being three years old; I am suspicious about the lingering evidence of a previous dial up connection. But the symptoms are all the BT side of the router and the help desk are not suggesting that there is anything wrong at my end. So we sit on credit card and wait.
On Saturday, back to Dorking for the second course of the Brodsky quartet. Well designed programme with two starters - AM Wolfgang and Puccini - primo piatti Borodin's second quartet, secondi piatti Beethoven 59.1 - and for desert a peice of piano music adapted for strings by the quartet themselves. I forget who it was by originally. Borodin slightly anti-climactical - maybe I should not have heard it twice before going - but Beethoven just what it said on the tin. First violinist recovered well from losing a string as the thing built to a climax at the end. Must be a real pain to get back into it after that sort of thing.
The bar understood about sherry, which is more than can be said for many pubs these days. But slightly miffed to be paying slightly less for two sherries than the bottle would have cost at Mr S.. But we got our own back at the interval. The barman on that occasion did not know what sherry was and I got a large wine glass full of the stuff instead of a thimble full. So the score is now about half a bottle for the price of a whole bottle from Mr S.. Not so bad after all.
I am slightly consoled by the symptoms being new. That is to say rather than there being silence on the middle two lights of my Voyager 210 router, the DSL light is flashing in bursts, separated by about 5 seconds. But it is not holding after one or two goes - which is what is supposed to happen - and the Internet light is completely dead. Phone the Help Desk at 0800 yesterday. Lines very busy. Try again at 1800 and get through. Usual business with plugging and unplugging microfilters. No change with the lights though. Problem passed to the engineers who will be in touch within 48 hours. Very sorry for your inconvenience. Phoned me back at 0800 this morning. The desk has been in touch with the engineers. Can I try again? No change. Now awaiting the next development.
Some neighbours think that it is all down to the PC being three years old; I am suspicious about the lingering evidence of a previous dial up connection. But the symptoms are all the BT side of the router and the help desk are not suggesting that there is anything wrong at my end. So we sit on credit card and wait.
On Saturday, back to Dorking for the second course of the Brodsky quartet. Well designed programme with two starters - AM Wolfgang and Puccini - primo piatti Borodin's second quartet, secondi piatti Beethoven 59.1 - and for desert a peice of piano music adapted for strings by the quartet themselves. I forget who it was by originally. Borodin slightly anti-climactical - maybe I should not have heard it twice before going - but Beethoven just what it said on the tin. First violinist recovered well from losing a string as the thing built to a climax at the end. Must be a real pain to get back into it after that sort of thing.
The bar understood about sherry, which is more than can be said for many pubs these days. But slightly miffed to be paying slightly less for two sherries than the bottle would have cost at Mr S.. But we got our own back at the interval. The barman on that occasion did not know what sherry was and I got a large wine glass full of the stuff instead of a thimble full. So the score is now about half a bottle for the price of a whole bottle from Mr S.. Not so bad after all.
# posted by Jim @ 2:43 AM 
