Hot and bothered

After the Hollyoaks omnibus it was time to do some overdue research into present buying (some success, but not as organised as I'd like to be). A bit of brekky, then it was time for me to head home to return to the grindstone. I decided that I had enough time to manage a quick stop at the farmers market in the People's Park in Dún Laoghaire, which is where I spotted this display of chillies.

It was between 2.30 and 3.00 by the time I left there, little suspecting what lay in store for me when I got back to 'the office'. The first thing I did was wake the downstairs machine to check email for further word from the client or the proof-reader. Strange: Airport Utility was telling me I didn't have an ethernet cable plugged in to the Airport base station upstairs. Sometimes these error messages aren't to be taken literally, of course, so I didn't think much of it, expecting to be able to solve the problem by switching the ADSL modem off and back on. NO WAY !!! The modem hadn't just dropped the broadband connection: it looked sad and forlorn and lifeless, with not a light in sight on its front. I phoned Carl and tried connecting to the internet using dialup (which worked, but was unbelievably slow compared to what I'm used to, and would no way be able to cope with Basecamp, which I rely on for managing this project.

So I went in to town to try to find a new ADSL modem. For some reason I thought of Maplin's first. No sign of bog-standard modems on the shelves, and no sign in the catalogue either when the guy checked. Back at the shelves it seemed I had no choice but to fork out for an over-the-top router. I'd explained several times that all I needed was a modem which would take my ADSL connection in and give me ethernet out. The guy finally opted for something which had four ethernet ports out (overkill indeed, but better than nothing). So I forked out my 40-odd euro and took it home.

It was after 5.00 pm when I opened the box and saw immediately that I'd been given something totally useless: more an ethernet splitter than anything else, without any way of getting my broadband connection in. I tried phoning Maplin's to see what time they closed, still hoping to get what I actually needed. The number in the phone book was out of service, and their other branch didn't answer. So I phoned Carl with a radical suggestion: that I pack up my gear and bring it over to his place and use his broadband connection.

He agreed immediately, so off I went. By this stage I'd wasted half the day, of course, so it took until 1.30 am for me to finish the work and get proofs uploaded to the Basecamp system. What a day!