I know some of us complain from time to time about our frustrations concerning Blogger and its glitches but let's be honest with ourselves, those are mere trivialities in life's rich tapestry. (Am I starting to mix metaphores yet?) Just think how much worse our lives would be if we were unable to get light at the flick of a switch or if we, like so many African people, had to walk miles to collect clean water. Yes, I know. That's a bit like when my mother used to tell me to think of all those starving African children when I refused to eat cabbage. I never could really see what good it would do those children if I did eat my cabbage or what harm would befall them if I didn't.
And those Blogger frustrations are as nothing compared to the frustration thrust upon me almost every day by my Internet service provider. My broadband Internet access is painfully slow - less than 2 mps - but I don't find that a problem. At least, not usually. I stream or download or whatever it is called films never and short videos only occasionally. Clips off YouTube are about my limit and a slow download speed is only a minor frustration then. Much more frustrating is the several times a day disconnection. Every now and then I will find a web site taking a long time to open and then I get the "unable to connect" message, or words to that effect. My broadband connection has become disconnected. This might last for just a few seconds or for several minutes. Either way, it is a cause of severe head-banging.
I called in at the Lions Housing Society office a week or two back and found they had a computer techie-type in doing some work to connect an extra PC to the web. I mentioned my frustrations with my IPC and he tried to tell me what the problem was. He talked about bandwidth and all sorts of other things I didn't understand. The upshot was that I should change my ISP.
I have, on numerous occasions, considered doing just that but every time I have considered doing so I have decided against it. It's not so much the little matter of changing my email address; that is not such a big deal. I already have two or three email addresses and all of them point to just one place. It would be a simple matter to switch the redirect from my personal domain and gradually notify people who have just the email address with my ISP. No, the reason for me not changing my supplier is simply that I am too miserly. My current supplier charges me comparatively little each month to cover phone line rental, unlimited broadband usage (when I'm not disconnected), a second phone number through my computer (which has been allocated to the 0845 number for Brighton Lions Club) and free phone calls 24 hours a day to all UK geographic numbers and 35 international destinations. For that, I'm prepared to put up with a little frustration.
9 comments:
If you have not done so already, I would suggest that you contact your current provider and get to talk to a technician. It may be that there is a problem at their end they can test for -- or you may have a faulty thing you put in the telephone socket so you don't get interference. It is possible that you need to upgrade your router -- I once found this solved a lot of my problems -- It does seem that you have a VERY slow connection. We have been talktalk customers since they first started and while there have been ups and downs -- the downs have been mostly on holidays, etc. when loads of people are on the Internet -- and before my husband got his new computer with Windows 7. Do you have a wireless connection? Is your computer near or far? If you are connected by a wire -- how long is the wire? Too long a wire can also slow down a connection. That's all the ideas I can think of besides the ultimate step of changing providers! Good luck...
I tell you what, sometimes I could happily throw the dratted computer out of the window.
Technology is fantastic until it blooing well stops working.
SP
Whenever my connection slows down I remind myself that I could have dial-up and live in one of our more remote areas.
That pretty much puts things back in perspective.
I think that computers cause as many problems as they solve. But it would be hard to go back to the days of writing on those transparent strips of airmail paper.
On the subject of mixed metaphors, I once worked with a world champion at it and unfortunately failed to write them all down. The only two I can still remember after 45 years are "This is like a game of chess, I'm snookered." and (my favourite) "The trouble with this place is there's too many indians and not enough cowboys."
One time, when my mother told me that starving children in Korea would love to have my food, I told her to box it up and send it to them. That didn't go over too well...
What Skip said. I moved to a rural community after years of Big City living and had to put up with a 250Kbps connection for three years until the town was wired for fiber broadband. While 250Kbps IS faster than dial-up it seemed to take FOREVER to do anything. Period.
My mother worried about the starving children in China...and look where they are today!
Thank you, Broad, for your helpful suggestion. I have been wondering if the long wire between where the phone comes into the house and my router has anything to do with the problem.
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