Some things just work

People are always quick to whine when something goes wrong, especially if it is maliciously bad service at the hands of British Gas etc who never turn up when they promise, so I think it's only fair to point out when something goes smoothly.

As previously mentioned, the broadband had been intermittent for the past week or two. I 'phoned Virgin NTL on Thursday morning, who tested the connection remotely, agreed that it was dodgy and promised to send a chap out on Saturday between 8 and 12 a.m. Said chap duly turned up shortly after 9 a.m. and established that the problem was to do with the box in the street, as other people had complained as well. He promised that an engineer would attend to it within the next few hours, made his excuses and left.

Said engineer was on the spot within an hour. I popped out to offer him a cup of tea, which he declined, and he explained that he would have to replace a twelve-year-old transformer-amplifier-splitter-type-thingymajig in the green box, which would take him about five minutes.

Five minutes later, I tried t'internet again, and hey presto, it worked. The engineer even rang the bell before he set off to make sure.

Suitably emboldened, I went into town and bought a new router* to replace the Linksys one that we'd had for years and which had died a death. I followed Step One on the Quick Installation Guide, Step Two looked a bit tricky so I just clicked Explorer on the off-chance it worked, and again, hey presto, it had sort of installed itself.

There. I've said it. Hardly makes for a gripping post though, does it?

* Sitecom DC-202, from Maplins, £25 a pop. It is amazingly teeny-tiny.