blog.species5618.net

Well, it is a bank holiday, during which i HAD (note the past tense) planned a day out. Possibly a foolish thing to concidure, bearing in mind I am on call, but hey nothing has gone wrong for months. So through the laptop in the car (I need an excuse to try out the the VPN from a PUB via open openzone or something similar) and the fact i have remembered to take it usually ensures nothing will go wrong….

Well it goes a little like this
0928 power cut at home, UPS does the business
0939 power back up, check over the kit and find the UPS software is not working, so re install,
0945 another power cut, the unconfigured UPS software, decides to shutdown immediatly (DOH)
0955 power back on ,
10:00 spend 45 minutes sorting out email server which refused to start?
10:57 almost ready to enjoy a lovely bank holiday when a get a text message on my WORK phone, which says
Device PING Warning , DYCFxxxxxxx not available
now that is BAD news , on a scale of 1 to 10 about 200 !!

To cut a long story short, it is now 14:55 and i have not been out at all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and i am in the DOG box to boot !

Having recently been to a company event at the said hotel, I was initially please to discover the has swisscom Wifi available through out the hotel
I was soon to be very disappointed,
The hotel is divided into two areas the rooms and the conferacne suite,

in the rooms Wifi Is ??15 for 24 hours, however in the conference suite iit is ??10 for 30 mins, (OOOUCCHH). Then , you will like this (NOT) both location have the SAME SSID, so when you are in the lounge, which seem to have coverage from both areas, you have no control over which area you connect to. So moving the laptop can make it roam from one access point to another, from one zone to another and suddenly you access code is not longer valid !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Than just to make it even WORSE, it is a satellite broadband with 750mS ping times, over which trying to run a VPN and open you email, well horay for web mail !!!!

So I did some digging on the BT ADSL site, te FAX number for the hotel is 01242 254880, which can have 2Meg BroadBand, SO why the satellite, needless to say I wont be going there again.

Fortunately not all swisscom sites are like this, the moathouse in Watford works very well !!

For Telephone Number 01242254880 on Exchange CHELTENHAM
Our initial test on your line indicates that you should be able to have Broadband from BT with speeds up to 2Mb.

not sure how , or what tools she is using but seconds after my sister visted this site , google did tooo

2005-05-25 12:47:18 24.233.63.xx – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /Default.asp – 200 Opera/8.0+(Windows+NT+5.1;+U;+en)
2005-05-25 12:47:23 66.249.66.68 – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /robots.txt – 404 Mediapartners-Google/2.1
2005-05-25 12:47:23 66.249.66.68 – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /Default.asp – 200 Mediapartners-Google/2.1
2005-05-25 12:48:17 24.233.63.xx – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /journal/default.asp – 200 Opera/8.0+(Windows+NT+5.1;+U;+en)
2005-05-25 12:48:17 24.233.63.xx – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /journal/journal_images/web_wiz_journal.gif – 200 Opera/8.0+(Windows+NT+5.1;+U;+en)
2005-05-25 12:48:19 66.249.66.83 – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /journal/default.asp – 200 Mediapartners-Google/2.1
2005-05-25 12:48:23 66.249.66.83 – xx.xx.xx.xx 80 GET /journal/default.asp – 200 Mediapartners-Google/2.1

Why is at that the water company sends you a bill, 10 days after payday, (when you have already spent or allocated your pitance) , DEMANDING payment within 14 days.

So you think , they will have to wait until next payday, however in the mean time they send you not one but TWO letters threatening legal action if you dont payup, the Later usualy dated 4 days after you sent them the money.
If they do that with a significant number of customers, they must waste thousands of pounds in this way, which must add to their running costs….

However on the plus side, i bet their debt recovery stats look good, keeping someone is a well bonused job……………….

So many things in life have started to annoy me, this may be because? I am getting old, but the time has come to VENT my anger on the world