Now the internet...

December 29, 2004

We finally have internet at home also. After a few frustrating false starts, it is finally up and running, a wireless connection that means we can log in anywhere in the house. Sounds impressive to a technophobe like me, but Inspector gadget says it is the best thing.

Just getting the wireless box was another completely dutch customer service thing. Stuart signed up and they said that it would be 4-7 days, he thought to receive the box, what they meant was that it would take 4-7 days to receive a letter telling you when the box would arrive, which turned out to be 4 weeks.

It finally arrived, followed two days later by another one identical to the first. We tried to install it but the instruction manual was in dutch and stuart is no technician, tricky even for him. So Stuart organised a technical wizard from work to come and install it for us, very nice guy to give up his time on a Friday night to install our computer. The funny thing was that he couldn’t install it as KPN had not reconfigured our line properly as the previous tenants had isdn that we did not want. After several calls to the help desk (at Euro1.15/min), we discovered why it wasn’t connecting. We then had to wait a further 4 days while they fixed the line problem.

We waited the four days and bingo, we were wired to the world for the first time in four months. I had just about got used to the heft mobile texting bill and the total isolation.

But three days later it all turned pearshaped again as we were shut down by a nasty computer virus, no connection to the net once again. A few days later and some new programmes installed we were on again, only this time our wireless connection wont connect us. So, ironically we can only use our wireless network with the laptop connected to the receiver with a cable.