Monday 22 August 2005

Pic of the day: Screenshot from the anime Honey & Clover. Come on, tell us how you really feel about your ISP!

Telenor sucks

In the morning I called my ISP, Telenor, the former telecoms monopoly of Norway (and which seems to still think so from time to time.) I whined about the disappeared DSL, told about the blinking DSL lamp on the "ADSL modem", and yes I had tried turning everything off and on again. They would look at it today. Except less than half an hour later, I got a message on my mobile phone that it would be fixed within the next day at 20:00. Fine.

In December they had promised 3 days, and it took 14. Still, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Don't try this at home, kids. Don't give Telenor the benefit of doubt. Just doubt them without benefits. This is likely to cause good things to happen, such as switching to a cheaper ISP with the same abysmal service. More about that later, God willing, or at rather "God not aggressively hindering me". Yeah.

I have broadband access at work now. This is good. Sadly, I also have work at work. More about that if I ever retire, I guess. For now, I can't write about work. Suffice it to say, it's not a place where you use chat clients or play MMORPGs. I have enough breaks to read my mail once a day or two, and stay on top of my rather short LiveJournal friends list. (Why don't you all use LiveJournal? It is still free, and very simple. If you can't use LJ, you can't read this. Actually lots of people who don't understand English can still write a LiveJournal.)

The worst thing about not having Internet access, I found out after I came home, is the feeling of being cut off. I might have been playing The Sims and Civ3 anyway, even if I had been connected. But it would have been by my own choice. It is the reduced freedom that hurts. Freedom has a value even if you don't use it. I guess it is kinda like sex. Even though I have every intention of never having sex for the rest of my life, I would object violently to having my genitalia removed. Go figure. Internet access is slightly less crucial to my self-image. I wouldn't kill anyone outright to protect my Net access, but the idea of performing small cursing rituals has occurred to me... I did resist, though. Actually I am still resisting, as my DSL is still not back.