You may well have been wondering where I have been of late. There I was telling you of my excitement at playing the jet-setter and whizzing off to Ireland for the weekend then straight off to France for a week, well that was a while back and anyone would think that maybe I had got lucky and stayed on in France for an extra two weeks. Hmmmmmmm maybe not!
I got home as planned on Tuesday 21st and was all prepared to tell all in blog posts and facebook musings. That excitement lasted all of fifteen minutes until my Internet connection vanished into thin air. There then followed hectic calls to Netgear, Demon and BT and over 2 weeks of frustration on my part and pathetic passing-the-buck and lets-blame-the-other-company shenanigans on the part of the three protagonists.
Oh we have had internet problems here before, part and parcel of the rural existence up here on Walton’s Mountain, but things have always been sorted and we have stayed with the companies we are used to. This time it all went too far.
When one of the Mums came to collect after Idgy’s party last week I was moaning about my lack of Internet and she mentioned that they had endured similar problems but had moved to a local company who specialised in rural properties. This was music to my ears and I badgered her for the number. Well a few phone calls after the bank holiday (why do all these incidents always happen when the entire country is at a standstill) had me registering with Speednet and a plan for imminent Internet connection.
I got thoroughly over excited at the prospect of returning to the land of cybernetting so you can imagine my horror when the chap phones next morning to say he’d got days off wrong and the technicians couldn’t come till Monday (another 4 days away), I very nearly cried.
But it wasn’t until this morning (Tuesday) two strapping technicians knocked at my door and put up a mini satellite dish, fancy wiring and rejigged my computer.
Not only am I now back online with a local company with real assistance within my own country (wayhey sod those crappy overseas call centres that drive you batty) but I have been elevated from the embarrassingly slow 1.3 megs of Internet speed that means even watching a 2 minute YouTube video is a buffering fiasco, to a fast and fabulous 10 megs of all out Internet power.
I have never had this sort of Internet connection before and am thoroughly enjoying myself. We can both be online at the same time, jet from one site to another and watch videos with ease, hell we can even stream Netflicks if we get really ambitious!
So I can now look on this past 2 weeks of Internet frustration as that elusive silver lining we all hope to find in any adverse situation. If it hadn’t been this bad this time around I would have meekly accepted all the to-ing and fro-ing between the big companies as I always did and never thought to seek outside help and a whole new system for my Internet. So big thanks to good old Demon and Netgear and the hellish BT, if you all hadn’t been so useless I wouldn’t now have super fast Internet and a decent support system.
Silver linings are funny things, they really do suprise you sometimes.
Loads of posts for you with all my news of the Plate To Page course in Ireland, my fab time in France, Gardening Scotland Show and lots more.
See ya tomorrow!
Karon x
Betty says
June 4, 2013 at 1:43 pmYEAH!!!! So glad you are back. I have really missed you! Can’t wait to hear about Ireland and France and Idgy and the animals and the mountain and all the fun things you are doing.
Karon Grieve says
June 4, 2013 at 2:16 pmThanks Betty, thrilled to be back, can’t tell you how frustrating this has all been. Loads of great chat and pix to show in posts.
Kx
nan says
June 4, 2013 at 3:12 pmYay! You’ve been missed – so glad you are back in action! xo, Nan
Sue says
June 4, 2013 at 7:45 pmNice to have you back and I’ll keep Speednet in mind for after our move to rural Wales, we’ve had nothing but problems with BT since we’ve lived in the sticks!!