Three Mobile Broadband

I noticed last Friday that my outlook email appeared to be going into a spasm. It kept telling me that it couldn’t send or reply to anything as my settings had changed. I wouldn’t mind if I had spent the previous ten minutes attacking my settings with a blunt spanner, but since I hadn’t, then just exactly what was wrong?

I still can access the Internet, so I peered around Three’s website for some help. They do live web chat help for mobile problems, but anyone with broadband problems can bog off, apparently. Well, it doesn’t say that of course, but for broadband you have to fill in a form and hope that it doesn’t ping off into a vortex. I waited ten minutes for a response, which is very patient for me, if a tad unrealistic on my behalf, and then I called them.

I got through to a very helpful young man who may or may not have been sitting in a call centre across the world. He wanted to help me. He asked lots of questions, and then asked me to check my SMTP. He wanted me to type in exactly the same SMTP as I already have – this stumped him. He said he had to elevate my problem (I picture some cranky lift, filled with cranky folk). He said they would call me back.

They called me as I was in a silent art gallery on Saturday. Luckily my mobile is always on vibrate just in case these embarrassing moments crop up unannounced, and so I could answer and hiss that this was a bit inconvenient without annoying everyone else. I took it outside and then repeated everything that I had already said to bloke number one. Bloke number two said a lot of customers were reporting this strange phenomenon that I was going through. He said they would get back to me.

And since then nothing. Surely the answer is obvious, somewhere someone has spilt a cup of coffee on an important server, and the result is sending everyone’s emails into outer space. I am probably waiting on a cleaner, working for the equivalent of fifty pence, in a tiny country with no heating, to come along and wipe an oily rag across the server that holds my email connection.

I really need to be able to send emails. I need to apply for jobs! I need to pitch for jobs! Don’t Three know its hard enough getting a signal with their dongle of doom, let alone trying to conduct a life through its wavering blue light? I get the feeling I will have to call them again tomorrow, explain again my problem, and then be told again that they are working on it and will call me back. It was my fault for hissing on Saturday, I knew at the time that was a bad move, like complaining about food in restaurants, especially when you are still going to eat there. I’ll call it the dongle of delight if only my email works tomorrow!

Job Applications

I spent all last week preparing a cracker CV with which to impress potential employers, and the first job I apply for doesn’t want CV’s, as it has its own application system online…

I managed to connect my wibbly wobbly mobile Internet early this morning, and then clicked on the job description. The page slowly unfolded before my eyes – a veritable online assault course of an application form complete with clicky hoops for my Internet dongle to jump over. I narrowed my eyes at the dongle; it saucily winked its blue connection light at me. Healthy enough at the moment, it seemed to say, but you just wait until you want to submit that form ho-ho!

I told it sternly that I’d had enough of its shenanigans over the weekend (it took me simply hours to watch the whole series of Moondial on youtube) and set to with the application form. My word. I have never applied for a job that seemingly wanted me to sweat blood through my finger tips and pass out over the keyboard in order to get within sniffing distance of an interview. When I started that form, I thought the job sounded interesting and it was worth a punt. When I ended that form, I thought if they don’t call me back tomorrow first thing straight away with interview date / job offer then I shall demand their heads on a pike. Seven hours that form took me – that was a day’s work just even applying! It’s not like I’ve asked to be Prime Minister, or a brain surgeon. I’d understand if it took seven hours then, and possibly a multi-choice quiz. And of course the dongle loved me trying to press submit – oh the fun we had!

I’m sitting here at the moment with all my windows open, which is very strange for me, but I’m desperate for some fresh air. This is because the whole house smells of bad fish. Sigh. It really has been one of those days.

My mum said to me there was some smoked salmon fillets in the fridge if I wanted some for lunch. This is the same mum that once made me green bread sandwiches to take to school – the day blindly trusting youth went in the bin along with the sandwiches. So, ever wary, I went downstairs at lunchtime and poked at the salmon fillets – use by October 9th, said the label. Not a chance, I thought, but it was then I made my first mistake. I put them back in the fridge.

Later, mum was home and clattering around in the kitchen. I, upstairs with the door to my domain firmly shut, didn’t notice anything odd until I felt a slight rumble of tummy and decided to go downstairs to see if there was anything worth rumbling about in the kitchen. One step outside and the smell almost bowled me over. Mum, oblivious, had decided there was nothing wrong with fish smelling fishy and thought she’d cook the little blighters anyway. Cue teenage like explanations of why you shouldn’t cook old fish (‘Yuck! Urgh! Oh My God I’m going to die!’) as I whipped them out of the oven, into a bin-bag and away down the garden.

So now I am back, door once again closed, internet connection all perky from its daily bit of fun, and am off smoked salmon fillets for life. Apart from that, all is well. I might try and watch Moondial again…

It’s the Internet, Jim, but not as I knew it

Since I might not be back at my mum’s for long, I decided I didn’t want to sign up for broadband, mainly because of the bother of installing and running cables everywhere that mum can eye suspiciously. So I have gone for a ‘3’ mobile pay-as-you-go internet dongle - and look! Here I am at home, online, and posting to my blog – surely all is well!

Except…

I’m not altogether sure me and my new little dongle buddy are going to get along. It says my connection is HSDPA, which stands for How Slow Does Piddly Attachment go, or something… although to be fair I have been insisting it downloaded the 600 or so emails I had stacked up in the ether waiting for my Inbox to become active again. I also expect it to be able to handle youtube, posting pictures, opening more than two web pages at once, and not choking if I have outlook and photoshop open at the same time. So far my expectations are very high, and the reality is everything is rather s-l-o-w. And since my standard response to slow websites is to click refresh repeatedly, I can see me and the dongle are shortly going to be having words.

But at least for now I can read your blogs, and catch up a little with the outside world without feeling furtive at work. So I’m back, but not at full throttle just yet. Still, its nice to be home!