I have been having really strange intermittent problems with the net these last few days. At first I thought it was a problem with my blog, then with my server. I just could not post anything longer than about 256 chars. If I tried, I got a “connection closed by remote” message. But it wasn’t just happening here. I couldn’t buy a book from Amazon. From the downstairs computer, Rosie complained that she couldn’t post on Dogz boards. So, in despair, I rang NTL. Nice, competent Welsh person there took down my details and told me I didn’t exist.
The system had no record of my cable modem, though it was working as we spoke. Nicky advised me to contact customer service. Customer service knew I existed, because I’m on the billing system. I’ve been paying them
“Domestic violence” was hanging breathless in mid-air earlier on – at character no. 265 the resolution was impossible to guess. I’m glad you found a way round the leaves on the line in the Cambridge area.
Ah, now all is clear. This morning, the entry Domestic Violence had as its full body copy “Phone rings at half past eight” and I was moved to post that this may have been an over-reaction. I know that phone calls are a terrible intrusion, and I myself have as unshakeable policy never to answer before midday, but to blog it so. Well.
My last cable problem was that the modem gave up in hot weather. The June sun rose, and two hours later the connection fell. Come the evening and the cool crepuscular breezes, and the bits flood back. As the temperature inside chez Goodwins is fairly constant, I diagnosed a problem in the cabinet baking on the street below, or perhaps an intermediate connection. I might as well have blamed it on Martian woodlice playing whist for all the cableco cared.
Some sympathy is needed, though. When I was fixing televisions as a holiday job in Plymouth, one of the first skills I learned was how to deal with punters who knew exactly what was wrong with their sets, and weren’t having any nonsense about it. “Nothing much up with it,” they’d say as they handed over a box whose only response to mains was a loud thrumming noise and a faint reek of tortured bakelite, “just needs a new valve.” You’d invariably find that they’d swapped the insides for half a pork pie and a copy of the People’s Friend from 1954.
R