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!

Curse these meddling distractions

Why can I not just leap out of bed and get started? Eh? Eh?

I have lots to do - jobs to apply for, and article ideas to send away - ooo, tons of stuff. Yet it is hard to get motivated when working at home, especially when you are used to fulltime employment and working in a busy office environment. The change now to working for myself from home is immense - I haven't worked from home since 2002, so this year is definitely all change. So my day goes as follows:

I get up roughly when John leaves the house, so around 8.30 am. Shuffle downstairs, make porridge, have lemon tea. Read post. Laugh at bills. Turn on computer.

Now here is where the time wasting factor creeps in, as I check four email addresses for anything work orientated or interesting, and then my favourite blogs to see what they have been up to (more on these later) and read any news articles that catch my eye. Then I pop here to update and already it is 11 o’clock!

My gaze flicks at this point to the time and I start feeling a little panicked I still haven’t actually done anything of note. This puts me into ‘tidy the flat’ mode, as I cannot work until everything around me feels right (see the first ever post). Why is this – an excuse to put off doing anything? I often wonder about that. Maybe my special skill is creating plausible excuses.

So this tidying takes me to midday, as even though this is a flat, it is a rather large flat and the two of us seem to make an awful lot of mess for some reason. Also, it doesn’t help that the majority of our clothes and shoes are still wet and dripping from being viciously de-mudded yesterday.

At this point I will put on inspiring ‘let’s get going!’ type music. A swift look at my ipod playlist and it seems Pink Floyd, Grandmaster Flash and Buddy Holly are all waiting to inspire me. Hmm, Pink Floyd will either inspire me or make me want to creep into a small dark corner…

At 12.30 I will feel peckish and head over to the kitchen. We haven’t been shopping for a while, so the choice for lunch is as follows. Old bread, old fruit, one sachet of miso soup, rice, Branson pickle, cream and old potatoes. Now I am no chef, and barely a cook, so that list doesn’t make me think ‘oh – Branson Pickle Cream Pie!’ or anything like that at all. It make me think blend the old fruit to make a fruit smoothie and go to Tesco’s.

This will be now 1pm (after having to clean up from the mess the blender made) and I will be back checking emails / writing articles / polishing CV. I will also be tempted to pop on MSN and chat to my pal over in France. If I resist the MSN temptation, then I will have remembered that I have to pay some bills, and check my next driving lesson doesn’t clash with meeting up with another pal, (who just sent me a book today - ‘How to be a Social Diva’ – wonder what she is trying to tell me? Heh!)

The upshot of checking and thinking about paying will mean I have to go into town and go sort these things, as well as buy some food. So then, although it is only 14 minutes away, it will take me around two hours just to get everything done, as I also have to parcel up some pickled onion monster munch crisps to send to my good pal Suz in Cape Town. Apparently you don’t get pickled onion monster munch out there, and my friend misses them, and she has just got engaged which means she and her hubby-to-be really need pickled onion breath for a while, so I think.

I will be then back here for around 2 / 3, providing that I don’t get further distracted in town. Ah – but I still need to go to the library don’t I, and research these London magazines – ah phooey.

Okay, back here at 4pm. Then I will again check my emails, see if anything new has happened (5pm) and only then do I settle down and start working. At 5pm. This is pants. As John comes back from a days honest toil at 6.30pm and from then on I find it hard to work, not because he interrupts me, but because I like to sit with him and play chess / chat / watch Top Gear, as well as anything I can quickly flick over to on UK Gold / ITV4 / Men & Motors without him noticing.

So where am I going wrong? I need some direction!