Tuesday 10 January 2006

Pic of the day: Girls, you can start calling me in your underwear again!
"Again? What do you mean, again?"
Actually, please use my mobile phone for voice call, because the telephone is active enough, but not where I live. Not that I actually expect any voice calls except wrong numbers as usual. Probably not even an e-mail. (I can still read those at work, you know!)

Telephone day

Today was the day when Telenor had promised that I would get my old telephone number in my new apartment. This also came to pass, strangely enough. The guy who called me was not from Telenor but from Eltele, a company I don't know but I think I have heard about. Evidently Telenor has outsourced the actual installation work, which can be nothing but a good idea in my opinion. What he did was to locate my telephone contact in the wall, remove the cover, attach a small gadget, then drive off to the nearest central and connect my line. There seem to be small, automatic telephone centrals (or perhaps just big switch boxes?) even out here in the suburbs. I am a bit surprised that they couldn't identify the line without putting a howler on it, but I guess it could be because this line has not been in use for five years. The previous inhabitant used only cell phone, a trend that is increasingly common among young people here in Norway.

***

That reminds me! RIGHTEOUS ANGER! I just recently got a letter from my mobile phone provider, Netcom.no. They had the temerity to boast about their new offer to families: If all of the family uses Netcom.no and receives a common invoice, the family members can call each order for free (as long as they stay in Norway, at least). That's right, it is no longer enough that I pay for other people's codependency through my taxes. Now I'm also supposed to subsidize them over my telephone bill. What's up with that?

Don't get me wrong, someone needs to have children: I would be truly sad to see our species go extinct. No, really! I'm not such a misanthrope. But two people who live together already save a lot of money. A couple with one child is still easily better off financially than a single, if at least 1 1/2 of them is working, as they usually are here in Norway. I don't mind subsidizing families with a larger number of children, at least if the parents are a contribution rather than a liability to society at the outset. But this has nothing to do with my telephone. We have taxes for this kind of thing. If we didn't, I would certainly consider supporting some organization for the benefit of large worthy families. But the idea that a man and a woman -- or two women, for that matter -- have some inherent right to make me pay their phone bills just because they have chosen away the privilege of being single... NO. If they want me to pay their bills, let them beg me on the streets. They are not entitled. They are not Born To Be Paid For.

***

Back to the near and dear, namely ADSL. The point of having a fixed phone line (as opposed to just mobile phone) is of course a fast Internet access, all day, all the night, at a reasonable price. So after a friend from work has helped me take a carload of garbage from my apartment to the local recycling station, she also graciously drove me and one of my computers over to the new apartment as it was raining too hard to carry computers for even one minute, much less 20. I set up the computer and connected it to the ADSL equipment which I again connected to the phone line. As expected (hoped? feared?) I didn't get a connection, just a blinking light on the ADSL lamp which should be shining steadily if all was OK. I shall have to contact my DSL provider on the morrow.

Home is where the DSL is, so as soon as that is fixed (hopefully in a day or two, since this is not Telenor) I will be pretty desperate to move down there. Having gotten rid of much of the garbage already, I still need to move the furniture. But that's for another day, or more likely several other days.

(P.S.: It was not a day or two, but an enormous span of time.)