At LASTTTTTTTTTTTTT !!

We've had a BT engineer who showed a bit of grey cell action... he tested our line against somebody else who has Broadband and they are getting 2.4Mbits and they are 1/2 a kilometre further down the line than us !!! Yayyyyyyyyyyyy at last some progress.....

Yes Mr BT there IS something wrong with our line as I have been saying for the past 18 months or so.... Anyway the upshot is the engineer is going to try and swap out our crappy pair of copper wires for someone who doesn't have broadband and use their pair of wires instead....which may or may not improve our lot.... but that kind of scuppers the poor unfortunate people who end up with our two bits of wet string if they ever want broadband......but that's BT's problem not ours once the deed is done.... mind you the engineer didn't do himself any favours by stating that a village called Bronwydd nearby us were getting 7.6 Mbits and they were 6.9 kilometres from their exchange and yet we are only 5.2 kilometres and the best we can expect is 2.4Mbits ..... but to be honest anything above the dribble of broadband we are currently getting would be a bonus :) apparently it's all down to how thick the wire is they use, Bronwydd apparently has the thickest wires available but they did have the might of the Welsh assembly behind them smacking BT's backside to get them connected .....

Barbecue Summer.... not.....

Well the Met office shot itself in the foot this April when they announced that this summer would be a scorcher.... so far today we have had one months worth of rain fall on our house.... Hardly barbecue weather, apparently they have now back tracked on their first forecast and now it's umbrella weather through most of August !!! Well it's been torrential today. Unsurprisingly our broadband has dropped down to an all time low, I guess the string between here and the exchange is wetter than is necessary.... I complained bitterly to BT and they have agreed that I shouldn't really be paying for broadband when I'm not actually getting anything that can remotely be called broadband, even by stretching the definition somewhat... so they have agreed to refund any charges until it's sorted out, an engineer is hot footing his way here to tell me that "nothing is wrong with your phone line" ..... Oh to be Hannibal Lecter


Andrea (the mad one) has gone on her training run, she has a training schedule to follow for the London Marathon, she's just been waiting for a break in the weather, hopefully the window of moistness will last until the next torrential downpour, so she will only get soaked to the bone this time and not the soul.

I have the unenviable task of changing the front wheel bearings on the Pug (again)..... they are starting to sound like a Heinkel bomber over England, I have never known a car go through wheel bearings like this particular car, at the moment we are getting about 6000 miles out of each set if you average them out.... I'm tempted to put in genuine Peugeot ones, but the cost is prohibitive and it's simply not worth spending that much on Duran Duran... plus I'm not convinced the genuine article would last any longer... I am after all keeping this old lady on the road as more of a hobby than anything... I have to admit you do get a sense of satisfaction having done a repair that would have cost you at least £300 in a garage, or possibly more for a fraction of that.... Ahh well roll on Friday/Saturday groundhog bearings day.... the only up side I can think of is that the car knows the score and that I can do this job with my eyes closed.... although I think I'll keep them open to ward off spanner rash....

So proud :)

Andrea has just finished the Tenby 10k race in just over 1 hour !! I did question her mental health though because the forecast was for torrential downpours.... and for once the forecast was right, she got absolutely soaked but seemed full of beans and vitality when she rang me jubilantly after she had finished :) Well I guess that's what having a cold shower for over an hour does for you .... (click on the picture to see the route ....)

Her training is coming along nicely, I'm so proud of her commitment over this running business because I thought it would be a flash in the pan ... but it's been quite a few months now and she is going from strength to strength :)

Nothing really exciting happening with me, in fact the most exciting thing of late was having to rebuild the kids computer, it has/had four profiles on it and I've kept it limping along for months swatting the virus payload off it and the mountains of spyware it seems to collect.. they all cry "It wasn't me that downloaded it" ... Yeah right, that's why it's in your profile and nobody else's I guess ???

Anyway it died peacefully in it's sleep a few days back, refusing to boot just repeating itself on power on self test, so out came the spanners and screwdrivers, it's now flying with a fresh install of Windows XP but they have lost all their profiles... I did warn them... but who listens to the voice of reason ??? which is exactly why NOBODY is allowed on my computer except Andrea and myself :)

I've set policies on the kids computer now, it's going to be hard to download anything without an administrator (Moi :) ) ok'ing it .... tough... I really enjoy spending days trying to recover data for no pay !!! Anyway the PC is flying now, as XP does when it's first installed and then slowly grinds to a juddering halt after a few months of use ... roll on when Linux takes over the world ... I'll be a happier man :)