| Network imperfections |
[Feb. 16th, 2004|11:54 pm] |
Went over to Kingston today to buy a laptop: we're sick of lugging ruddy great PCs and monitors to remote country cottages if we want to get some work done.
Since it'll mostly be used at home I've just been hooking it up to the network I set up here a few weeks ago. This now has three machines on it: the new WinXP laptop, a WinXP tower and a Win95 desktop.
Naturally, as with everything I touch, it hasn't quite worked. The machines all communicate and can all use both printers. But can I share the internet connection? Can I bollocks. I think the problem is that in order to get the Win95 machine on the network I've had to use NetBui as the network protocol, but the internet connection wants TCP/IP. And if your eyes glazed over at reading that, fear not - mine did writing it.
Which is possibly half the reason why I can't get the connection sorted.
While in Kingston I took the sneaky opportunity to grab lunch at Wagamama's - rice with tofu, mushrooms and spring onions, miso soup and edamami. Yum, is all I have to say about that.
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Thanks to an unfortunate similarity of numbers between our second phoneline and the main line into Brent Council's Streetcare Department, we get a lot of phonecalls from people in the Wembley area wanting their bins emptied, their pavements repaired, and the removal of the stickers placed on their cars by the council declaring them to be abandoned. Some, when told this is actually a private home on the other side of London, apologise. Some flatly refuse to believe it and continue to tell their tale of woe. Others become abusive. At one point we were getting 15 of these calls a day and the council asked us to log them. We gave up after 500. It's very tedious.
Occasionally however we get a pleasant conversation out of it - like today. I ignored the phone when it rang as I was at the other end of the flat, and instead 1471'd it the next time I was by it. The number wasn't a Brent area code, so I called back on the offchance it might have been a client. Answerphone. I left a message.
Five minutes later an apologetic woman rang up. She'd already worked out how she'd misdialled (which people *never* usually understand, it took us months to realise how it was happening ourselves) and was strangely sympathetic when I told her gloomily 'that's alright, I'm used to it'.
Turns out her phone number contains the digits 456, in that order. Little children who play with telephones when their parents aren't looking often dial her once they've exhausted the fun to be had from the speaking clock on 123.
She sounded quite a 'mumsy' type so I thought she'd be indulgent. Not a chance - it's happened so often that she'd quite cheerfully strangle the little bleeders if she could work out a way of reaching down the phone line and seizing them.
I know how she feels... |
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