2011–07–18
lightning…
I was on holiday last week—a peaceful week of maths, gardening and drinking had been planned; and not too much messing with computers, some of course.
My holiday started Friday afternoon, my mother-in-law was visiting, we had a risotto with the first home-grown peas of the season and a garden salad [pretty good I thought], I had an afternoon bottle of wine and then we watched the exciting thunderstorm from the front door. Right up until the lightning hit the scaffolding in the playground about twenty-feet away from us. [I live in a playground].
I’ve never been that close to a lightning strike before, the sky flashed, the scaffolding fizzed and the noise—thunder, crack-crash and power. We didn’t think it was so much fun after that.
Now, I’d remembered to unplug the computers but…when the phone, the broadband and eventually television shut down. Oh dear. You need to unplug your phone-line too it seems.
It’s one thing planning to not use your computer when you have one to use, it’s quite another when you can’t. And my wife was cut-off too! This was serious.
technical support
Is always a bad-beast to deal with, but when you aren’t online, don’t have a landline, have only freeview crap to watch on television; when you can almost see the money leaking from your mobile as the muzak plays… I won’t regale you with the whole sorry saga of the hellish mess that I was sucked into.
My wife and I spent a lot of time, and money, in wifi-enabled pubs, her on the internet, me getting drunk enough to vent a proper fury upon the hapless employees of the useless for my plight.
After a couple of days and what seemed like a hundred phone-calls the truth dawned—it was all lies, people will say anything to get rid of you. [That rubbish about recording calls to provide a better service is just that—rubbish. All they want is an oppertunity to make you an unwilling YouTube star.]
So I gave in and bought a dongle. And then I, drunkenly, watched that eat my money too. Like me in my cups it was a slow and greedy thing.
Still, not too bad a holiday—at least I wasn’t interrupted by the phone and I achieved a third of my ambitions, in a spectacular way.
More than I usually do.