Thursday 23 December 2004

Pic of the day: The overly eager conversationalist is Miyu's father from the anime Daa! Daa! Daa!, who is willing to even talk about wives. The irony is that he is talking to an alien in disguise. So how was MY day?

DSL irony

Today I helped (at least a little) with installing DSL somewhere else. (Officially a "small company ADSL", although that is not a precise description of the actual location. It fit the demands though.) The irony is, of course, that my own DSL is down, and the people setting up the DSL line for this (in the central) are probably the same that should repair mine. It's the same company and roughly the same area, at least.

Even so, I came home and my DSL lamp was shining with a bright and steady light. I was like "Allahu akbar!" since I had been told it might take three workdays, and Christmas Eve isn't exactly a normal workday here in Norway so probably it wouldn't be until over the weekend. Happily I turned on my computer and started to connect. It didn't, of course.

Once again I called Telenor's customer support. They've taken a lot of flak in the press likely, but also got some backing from their bosses, who say that it's not their fault. I'm not sure what to say about that. They are only human, and this is very obvious in some of them, but they do have the wits to pass on a call if they are out of their depth, and eventually I always end up at someone who understands the problem at least as well as I do. It can take some time, but talk is cheap at their helpline, another sympathetic trait. As long as you don't try to get them involved in things they are not responsible for, in which case it could be expensive quickly.

Anyway, seems they need to send out a technician to the central again, so estimated arrival of connection is now on Tuesday. After Xmas.

***

Played Morrowind in the evening and caught up with the latest three episodes of the anime Naruto. Got online on dial-up long enough to read my LJ friends page and exchange the mail.

Got a letter from my youngest older brother and (mostly) his wife. It was printed and pretty obviously one of several copies sent to various family and friends. I am not sure why they would pay for that when they could just have e-mailed me the original document before printing it. Faster and cheaper. There's really no point in using snail mail unless you send something that cannot be transferred electronically. That said, I was glad to hear from them. Seems they are all alive.

Evidently my brothers are all STILL fairly happily married, and this one was the latest into the frying pan, now 10 years ago. Guess they must be doing something right. (If you assume that marriage is a good thing, and I dare say it is if you are going to have kids, which they all have as well. Besides, it increases life expectancy for men, strangely enough.)

That was my day, and then some. Now I have to decide whether to try to get some sleep before I go to work. I have to go to work early on Christmas Eve if at all, since we close not long after I usually arrive...