You've got to laugh...... or you'll cry.....

About three months ago our broadband connection decided to drop from 2.8Mbs to a pedestrian 1.2Mbs, so after leaving it for a month or so in the hope that it would improve, actually that's not true....I was dreading the idea of ringing up Gupta (BT) broadband helpdesk in India and being made to do things with my BT Home hub that even a chimpanzee would get bored doing over and over again, it is pretty frustrating really considering I could run rings around their help desk technically and I've forgotten more about computers and ADSL and DSLAM units than they've ever been taught, but that's another story....

In total I complained FIVE times before they admitted that they would need to send around an engineer but they did warn me that if the fault was in our house I would be charged accordingly....blah....blah....blah....I categorically told them that the fault wasn't in our house, laughingly at first they wanted to send around an "Accelerator" Engineer at £95 an hour, who would "tweak" our computers for maximum smoke regarding the broadband.... I said "first off I'm not paying £95 for some monkey sorry "accelerator" engineer, to come around with a CD or USB stick to run a few programs which optimise the TCP/IP stack on my computers.... it's already been done, they are tuned for maximum smoke already".... I think at this point Mrs Gupta was detecting a rather sarcastic tone in my voice and promptly hung up...."nice" I thought followed by "RIGHT!!!".... you have to understand that I had been in contact with them FIVE times previously and they had done NADA, ZILCH... ZIP... my blood was already boiling ....

I composed a withering catalogue of their ineptitude, and fired it off, it must have worked because less then two minutes after sending it the phone rang with a very apologetic Mr Gupta who immediately arranged for an engineer to come around, well I say immediately it was the next day... but good enough for me :)

next day the engineer arrived he wasn't from this area he usually covered Swansea, so had no history of the area, I took him through the fault, "hmmmmmmm to be honest at 5.2km from the exchange 1Mbit seems pretty reasonable"

to which I replied "reasonable it might be, but we used to get 2.8Mbs !!" I detected that he thought I might be trying to pull the wool over his eyes, but fortunately I had some screen caps I had taken of the connection page of the BTHomehub some time ago and showed them to him...."Hmmmmm yes you did didn't you, this is very strange, we usually make it go faster not slower"

so off he went pulling at wires and exchanges by the end of his allotted two hours to sort the problem, he had obviously sorted it out....erm no he didn't

we were now 300Kbs slower then when he started, "Fan-bloody-tastic!" I thought,.....I was just about to ring up Mr Gupta when the phone rang with a jubilant Mr Gupta thanking me for my patience on this matter and that he hoped that now the speed was back up to normal everything would be OK in my world...

I stopped him dead in his tracks so as not to waste his gushing apologies, should he need to use them on some other BT Broadband customer, I had to stifle a laugh when I explained that the speed had actually dropped by 300Kbs since the engineer had done his thing..... which was followed by a long pause then....... "oh deary me" in full "it ain't half hot mum" style (for those of you that remember that far back) ;¬)

so he arranged for another shinier engineer to turn up and that happened today at 10am, he was very polite said he would look into the problem then after about an hour and a half he rang back saying he had done a "swap and lift" whatever the hell that is, but apparently he said the DSLAM unit was faulty so he replaced it and that everything should be ok now.....

Wronggggggggg.... the BTHomehub was now connecting at an even lower speed than the previous pedestrian speed it had dropped down to a blistering 700 KBs.....

"Oh" he said "I'll have to arrange for another engineer to come out"..... "What a shock!" I thought...

So all I'm waiting for now is the triumphant call from Mr Gupta stating how wonderful BT Broadband is..... again

A short post ..... Freya claps :)

Just thought I would share this.... ignore the high pitched gimp in the background that was me attempting to get Freya to clap... it seemed to work ;¬)

And my special power is ........

Man Flu

I'm not sure where I picked it up from, but we've all had it so I suspect one of the kids dragged it back from school, seeing as they haven't long gone back to school, I progressively felt worse over the days until I couldn't bare the thought of going to work one morning and sitting in front of my desk suffering, it's not fair on the other members of the team either, last thing they want is to be struck down with it.

I've had my provisional redundancy notice from the HR department, which basically means the axe is above my head and they are just lining up the blade on the back of my neck, most of the responsibilities of LAN support have now gone across to India, so there is very little to be done at work, so I don't feel so bad taking time off sick. I'm still looking on a daily basis for new employment but thus far nothing has turned up.

That's the problem with living in such a rural area the jobs are few and far between, if push comes to shove then I'll just have to find "something" to pay the rent and keep food in our mouths, either way it's a pretty worrying time but there isn't a lot I can do about it, except what I'm doing already, I suppose the only good thing is that the CSA won't be able to take one third of my my wages any more, which has hit us very hard I have to admit and looking at the pay for more local jobs when I do get a new job they won't be able to take anything from me then either because I'll fall under their radar.... life could be a lot worse, but despite all the doom and gloom, we are still very happy..... :)

One thing for certain, if I had a nemesis, which I don't, I wouldn't wish the CSA on them one little bit.....because once they have their hooks in you and there are many, you can't get them out..... they are a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger as the "Terminator" , they never stop, they never rest and they NEVER leave you alone until they have successfully turned you upside down and emptied all of your pockets of all of your hard earned cash..... and once they have you in their sights there is no escape, you could hide at the very the top of Snowdon or Ben Nevis or the darkest deepest cave or even hide in some croft in a remote Scottish glen, they will find you and once they do....... the meter starts ticking and you know that because they also take great delight in sending you many, many letters saying "Kerchinnnnng" "Kerchinnnng" on an almost daily basis......In fact the ONLY way to escape them is to die.... hmmm maybe Arnie would be the better option ;¬) mind you I joke but there have been quite a few suicides relating to the CSA and that is no laughing matter ......

Anyway enough of this depressing talk :) ....... Freya has started on the slippery slope towards walking, she stood the other day unaided for quite some time then took her first faltering step, it's a joy to see and she is such a happy little girl, full of smiles and giggles, she never fails to brighten up my day no matter how unpleasant a It might have been. We are so lucky with her, she sleeps through, is no bother at all, all you could want in a baby really :)

Anyway I'm off now to watch "Heroes" with the rest of the tribe :)