Monday, December 29, 2003
'I blow you a kiss, it should reach you tomorrow, as it flies from the other side of the world.'
- Elbow, 'Fugitive Motel'.
That one's for Plums as she's gone on her little holiday. I've suddenly discovered I like Elbow and have been listening to their Cast of Thousands album. It wasn't a Christmas present, I got it from the library just before I left and have probably been giving it more listening time than either Blur's Think Tank or the Dandy's Welcome to the Monkey House (and that was a mistake, making a Christmas present list for my parents before I actually got to hear it). It's fragile bleakness is most appealing.
Anyway, yes, I'm back. Christmas was a pretty good one really, with one exception which I'll come to momentarily. No family crises, which might have been due to only having stayed with the parentals for five days. But Jesus, people in Maidstone are the rudest bunch of fuckers on the planet! Now, I've complained about Maidstone before, and rightly so as it is a terrible little pisshole which would see carpet bombing as a step up, but we went in on Saturday for the annual returning and swapping of the unwanted/wrong Christmas presents. Now, even allowing for people being a little bit tense because of post-Christmas bargains to be had, you'd have thought they would have made some allowance for the fact that we were pushing our Mum around in a wheelchair. Nope. We had to fight for practically every inch of space we covered, and that was just outside. I opened a door and people were scooting through as though I was a doorman or something. When I let it go, did the gormless cow coming through catch it? Nope, it banged into her and she acted as though I should have waited until the end of the day before moving from the spot. This seems to be a particular kind of idiocy which they must breed for in Maidstone, I haven't found it in other parts of the county, like Chatham or Dover.
Anyway, I come home this Christmas to find Dad's big idea is broadband. His idea of the internet is somewhat sketchy, but he seems to think that paying £28 to Freeserve each month is a great idea for Broadband. So we're walking through 'the Chequers Centre' (think central Baghdad with more tinsel) and decide to pop into Dixons. And we end up buying the last two Broadband Freeserve boxes, because for some reason I've decided that I'd also like to pay Freeserve more money.
Well, registering with Freeserve certainly was easy, but we had fun and games with everything else. I haven't tried connecting my modem up yet, mainly because I want to post this message in case it turns out to be my last communique. But the cables you get with the box are far too short, the one for connecting to the phone socket assumes that your computer is about two inches away from your phone socket, so we had to go to PC World the next day for longer cables. Dad assured me that the 'just short of five metres' long cable would also be fine for my flat, I took some small pleasure in proving that was incorrect when we got back here today. Anyway, once the wires were also sorted out, I tried to install the software yesterday on Dad's laptop. Although the Autorun didn't (and the instructions helpfully assume that you will have Autorun working, so don't tell you which files to run), I was doing pretty well, until halfway through the installation of the modem it decided it needed files from the 'Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition' CD-ROM. Which my Dad never got, because he got the laptop through a friend of the family. Phoning around friends and relatives didn't do much good, although we did find someone who is going to try installing Windows 2000 on the laptop which he thinks will solve the problem.
But Freeserve make it a part of the proceedure that you HAVE to sign up FOR A MIMIMUM CONTRACT OF 12 MONTHS BEFORE you can install the software and modem. Paying money for something that doesn't work is one thing, but committing to pay over £300 when you haven't yet established that the stuff works seems rather a dodgy practice. I suppose we've only got ourselves to blame. Anyone else thinking of Freeserve Broadband (additional keywords: danger, warning, problem, problems, subscription), be warned!
Anyway, we drove to my place today, the car downloaded with presents and whatnot, such as The Pythons Autobiography, by the Pythons, another book about Monty Python's Flying Circus but a good one, copies of Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass and, from my sister's boyfriend History in Quotations, a monster tome which, as it's name suggests, looks at historical events through the eyes of those who lived them. I also got a Father Ted DVD, Eddie Izzard's 'Sexie' DVD and Pop Art, the Pet Shop Boys video retrospective, which I've been watching with their commentary over the top. I also got a new computer chair as my old one was moulting.
But yes, so I tried to lay out the extension cable to connect the modem by my computer to the phone socket. Just under five metres turned out to be way too short. Dad tried to encourage me to move my room around completely to accomodate it but it just wasn't possible, the cable had been so tightly bound that it was in large curls which we couldn't unwind, so all I needed to do was stumble one day and I'd rip the cable out and do damsge to my computer and/or the phone socket. So all we could do was drive to my local PC World, through the rush hour traffic, for longer cable. I'd phoned PC World ahead and been told that they had loads of different cables at different sizes and they could even cut me a length to suit if needbe. When I got there I found they didn't do cutting and the only length in, 9 metres, didn't have the right attachment at the end, though once I managed to find an assistant who a) wasn't helping someone else already and b) knew his way around the store (I had two who claimed they didn't know where anything was in the store, not very assisting there), he managed to find me an adapter. Anyway, it stretches all the way to where the computer is so there's no need to move anything round, but I'm probably not going to risk installing the broadband stuff tonight, I don't think I could take it if something went wrong. Also, although Freeserve is set-up to take your first subscription money from the instant you phone up and register (and they insist you must do so within forty-eight hours of purchasing the set), you don't actually get Broadband access for anything up to ten days, so no hurry yet.
- Elbow, 'Fugitive Motel'.
That one's for Plums as she's gone on her little holiday. I've suddenly discovered I like Elbow and have been listening to their Cast of Thousands album. It wasn't a Christmas present, I got it from the library just before I left and have probably been giving it more listening time than either Blur's Think Tank or the Dandy's Welcome to the Monkey House (and that was a mistake, making a Christmas present list for my parents before I actually got to hear it). It's fragile bleakness is most appealing.
Anyway, yes, I'm back. Christmas was a pretty good one really, with one exception which I'll come to momentarily. No family crises, which might have been due to only having stayed with the parentals for five days. But Jesus, people in Maidstone are the rudest bunch of fuckers on the planet! Now, I've complained about Maidstone before, and rightly so as it is a terrible little pisshole which would see carpet bombing as a step up, but we went in on Saturday for the annual returning and swapping of the unwanted/wrong Christmas presents. Now, even allowing for people being a little bit tense because of post-Christmas bargains to be had, you'd have thought they would have made some allowance for the fact that we were pushing our Mum around in a wheelchair. Nope. We had to fight for practically every inch of space we covered, and that was just outside. I opened a door and people were scooting through as though I was a doorman or something. When I let it go, did the gormless cow coming through catch it? Nope, it banged into her and she acted as though I should have waited until the end of the day before moving from the spot. This seems to be a particular kind of idiocy which they must breed for in Maidstone, I haven't found it in other parts of the county, like Chatham or Dover.
Anyway, I come home this Christmas to find Dad's big idea is broadband. His idea of the internet is somewhat sketchy, but he seems to think that paying £28 to Freeserve each month is a great idea for Broadband. So we're walking through 'the Chequers Centre' (think central Baghdad with more tinsel) and decide to pop into Dixons. And we end up buying the last two Broadband Freeserve boxes, because for some reason I've decided that I'd also like to pay Freeserve more money.
Well, registering with Freeserve certainly was easy, but we had fun and games with everything else. I haven't tried connecting my modem up yet, mainly because I want to post this message in case it turns out to be my last communique. But the cables you get with the box are far too short, the one for connecting to the phone socket assumes that your computer is about two inches away from your phone socket, so we had to go to PC World the next day for longer cables. Dad assured me that the 'just short of five metres' long cable would also be fine for my flat, I took some small pleasure in proving that was incorrect when we got back here today. Anyway, once the wires were also sorted out, I tried to install the software yesterday on Dad's laptop. Although the Autorun didn't (and the instructions helpfully assume that you will have Autorun working, so don't tell you which files to run), I was doing pretty well, until halfway through the installation of the modem it decided it needed files from the 'Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition' CD-ROM. Which my Dad never got, because he got the laptop through a friend of the family. Phoning around friends and relatives didn't do much good, although we did find someone who is going to try installing Windows 2000 on the laptop which he thinks will solve the problem.
But Freeserve make it a part of the proceedure that you HAVE to sign up FOR A MIMIMUM CONTRACT OF 12 MONTHS BEFORE you can install the software and modem. Paying money for something that doesn't work is one thing, but committing to pay over £300 when you haven't yet established that the stuff works seems rather a dodgy practice. I suppose we've only got ourselves to blame. Anyone else thinking of Freeserve Broadband (additional keywords: danger, warning, problem, problems, subscription), be warned!
Anyway, we drove to my place today, the car downloaded with presents and whatnot, such as The Pythons Autobiography, by the Pythons, another book about Monty Python's Flying Circus but a good one, copies of Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass and, from my sister's boyfriend History in Quotations, a monster tome which, as it's name suggests, looks at historical events through the eyes of those who lived them. I also got a Father Ted DVD, Eddie Izzard's 'Sexie' DVD and Pop Art, the Pet Shop Boys video retrospective, which I've been watching with their commentary over the top. I also got a new computer chair as my old one was moulting.
But yes, so I tried to lay out the extension cable to connect the modem by my computer to the phone socket. Just under five metres turned out to be way too short. Dad tried to encourage me to move my room around completely to accomodate it but it just wasn't possible, the cable had been so tightly bound that it was in large curls which we couldn't unwind, so all I needed to do was stumble one day and I'd rip the cable out and do damsge to my computer and/or the phone socket. So all we could do was drive to my local PC World, through the rush hour traffic, for longer cable. I'd phoned PC World ahead and been told that they had loads of different cables at different sizes and they could even cut me a length to suit if needbe. When I got there I found they didn't do cutting and the only length in, 9 metres, didn't have the right attachment at the end, though once I managed to find an assistant who a) wasn't helping someone else already and b) knew his way around the store (I had two who claimed they didn't know where anything was in the store, not very assisting there), he managed to find me an adapter. Anyway, it stretches all the way to where the computer is so there's no need to move anything round, but I'm probably not going to risk installing the broadband stuff tonight, I don't think I could take it if something went wrong. Also, although Freeserve is set-up to take your first subscription money from the instant you phone up and register (and they insist you must do so within forty-eight hours of purchasing the set), you don't actually get Broadband access for anything up to ten days, so no hurry yet.
