No Internet!

I always have a feel of dread when the boys in my house come up with a good idea. This often happens when Nick comes to visit and this time the idea was about rationalising our telecommunication needs. With all the precision of an up and coming project manager, Nick listed all the steps required to change our current bundle to more meet our needs.

Now the thing with lists is that the jobs need to be completed then ticked off. The first was to cancel our Sky account. Sky turned off the sport channels last weekend, just in time for a friend to come around and watch the semi finals of the rugby. Imagine the blokes faces when, after they had settled on the couch complete with beer and chips, the blue screen with the no service message appeared. I told them pubs were where you watched rugby, so off they went leaving me in peace.

The long weekend was approaching fast and by Wednesday we had no TV at all. Some of the tick boxes remained unticked. No TV doesn't bother me too much. I had none the whole time I was in Qatar and I found other more amusing ways to amuse myself. No Internet, however, is a whole different story.

The Internet was shaky all week, constantly going off line and needing reconfiguring. It's a temperamental beast anyway and once you start mucking about with it, it can bite. It bit in the middle of a download of photos, almost there then halas. It bit in a final way on Friday, yes Friday of said long weekend.

I arrived home from a meal out to find Muzz sitting with the phone on speaker trying to get through to our provider. He had the good grace to look sheepish, he was being punished for riling the beast by having to wait 42 minutes for the first call and he was at 30 minutes on the second call when I found him. I could hear the quiet impatience in his voice as he talked to the overseas help desk. There was a problem apparently, one he had to call another provider to fix. And it went on like this until quite late.

So the upshot of this is that it's Sunday and we still have no Internet. Yes, someone will do what they need to do and it will all go faster and better than ever before. We did get the TV sorted later on Saturday, nothing to watch of course. At the moment I am sitting in my cold office doing some work and catching up on email. Sorry to those I haven't got to yet. I am hoping to have Internet at home tomorrow, yeah right!