on week-end happenings and technology fails..

Week end was ok. Saturday I only made it to two of the many parties, missed quite a lot of other stuff happening. Both beric and featheredwings's, on the one hand, and logothetes and hotel_noir's parties were fabulous.

Sunday was some last taking stuff from the old flat, taking the car to the mechanic in Watford and just one lesson and, in the evening, birthday drinks for bootpunk which was a very pleasant occasion at the Pipeline near Bishopsgate.

Had been using a T-Mobile 3G dongle for the last couple of years; was paying £9 a month -or so I thought; a few days ago browsing my bank statement I find that t-mob have been charging me almost £20 since May,which, on checking, is the date of the end of the contract. No advance notification, no notification of any kind. So I ditched them and got myself a Huawei E5830 from 3. I would like to say it is a fantastic device and I love it. But unfortunately I can't. The idea is indeed fantastic, a 3G access box which is a little wi-fi router. The device refuses to work, though and although it gets full signal,, etc, it trickles along at unusable tiny fractions of a Mb/s. It doesn't seem to be malfunctioning in the sense that I can use it as a wireless network router. Maybe it is a dud? Will have to take it back to the shop... shame, I liked the idea (although the implementation is not that great; it is clumsy to have to press for several seconds each of the tiny buttons to get first power, then 3G connection and then Wi-Fi. Oh well. And this is while I'm still waiting for British Telecommunications Plc to finally install my phone line so I can have proper internet...