Thwarted by technology

Sometimes I just fail when it comes to technology.

Last night, got home from work, sorted out the critters, did a bit of cleaning, sat down in front of the lap top ready to check mail, do some surfing and then write.... no net connection...

So I went through the routine of rebooting laptop, going upstairs and rebooting the modem, nothing.... so I phoned the broadband people... whose call centre lurks in some other country... to be told, oh all our systems are down, try again in two hours!!  Arghhhh! 

So I wrote for a bit, then tried again, and still they couldn't help.  So I stropped about for a while and went to bed early with a book.

I waited until 6am to phone the call centre back... and spent half an hour playing around with cables, ably assisted by the cats .... it's actually quite hard to switch wires between modem, router and pc box whilst bent around the corner of a desk, balancing a phone between your ear and your shoulder, with a cat determined to sit in the middle of your back or get between your hands and eyes!

Anyway, it appears my router is playing silly buggers... and as it's not one provided by the broadband people, they basically said, yep, thanks not our problem, good luck with that.......

I have managed to get the net connection on the desk top pc upstairs... but that's not particularly helpful as my "workspace" (ok, yes, kitchen table with lap top on, with wall filled with pictures, lyrics and stuff) is downstairs... if I try and work upstairs then rent-a-mob raise strong objections and threaten to find new homes where their owner doesn't abandon them.. they are quite vocal about it.

Add to that, when I got into work I realised that any website that has any form of age restriction/warning automatically triggers the "Naughty Internet User" warning, anything you can buy something from is also blocked, and to add insult to injury something they've done with the filters means that I can't get Twitter up properly either...... so dammit it looks like I am going to have to do real work, all day, without a break...