We currently have an exhibition in Leeds highlighting the sewerage systems’ problems. One of the most significant issues is so called “Wet Wipes”. It seems that these do not degrade over time, and will stay as they were made forever. Thus eventually blocking the sewer pipes.
This is my argument: “How are manufacturers allowed to get away with creating a product that can only go into land-fill?” The water companies say they should be placed in the bin! That is fine for the odd one or two to go in the bin, together with the polythene bin liner. But if you have a young baby, that can amount to a lot of wipes, in polythene bags, every day. Surely it is in the interest of everyone for these wipes to be fully biodegradable?
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We get our broadband and television services from Sky. Recently we were informed of the latest price increases. However, we had been told last year to contact them before the increase to see if anything could be done to keep the increase to a minimum. So about 3 weeks ago, K**h rang Sky to see what could be done. After about an hour of talking, a deal was agreed upon. The agent explained that the current router we had was rather old (about 4 years old) and a newer, much better one was available. We were told that it would be here within the week, and to be honest, it was.
The youngest was on his biweekly home visit (he is Autistic and lives in a residential care home) so I waited until he had returned before attempting to install the new router.
It all went fine at first. All the devices, laptops, phones, and tablets were connected without any problems. I then had to connect the router to the “Sky Box”. Now, this was a two part operation. Firstly, the main box had to be connected, and then I had to connect the “Sky Mini Box”.
To cut, a long story short, it simply would not connect. I went through all the guides I could find, but eventually we had to call Sky. After about 50 minutes in a queue were connected to a “service engineer”. This gentleman attempted to get me to go through all the things I had already attempted. After another 30 minutes, a supervisor (I believe) took over the call and asked me to reinstall the old router and that an engineer would visit to get us back up and running.
The engineer arrived the following week. I explained that I had connected all the devices without a problem, but just wasn’t able to connect to the Sky Box. He replied, in a very patronising way that ” … it is a very simple procedure …” I had to go out for a blood test (another story!) and when I returned we had another new router, which was working. It seems that he had tried everything he knew and was getting very flummoxed. It was then that K**h suggested that ” … could the router be faulty?” He said that he didn’t think so, but he would try another one from his van. Ten minutes later and this new router was connected and he was on his way. Simple as that!
But wait! There’s more.
The youngest son (R**s) was due home on Friday. He would be expecting that everything IT-based would be the same. To all intense and purpose, it was. Everything was going smoothly until the early hours of the morning. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but R**s likes to have his television on all night. It’s on very quietly, but we understand it is a comfort for him.
At around 4am I heard him call out. I got up to see if there was a problem with him and noticed that his Sky Mini Box was off. I went downstairs to check the main box and that was off also. I pressed a button on the handset, and the box began to start up. I made the assumption that the box had had an update and needed to restart.
The same thing happened last night/this morning. The main Sky Box had turned off. I got it restarted and everything was okay again. When I got up, I Googled the problem and found that one of the settings had been set to “Eco” mode. This meant that at 02:30, the box would power off and restart at 05:50. The idea being that it saves money.
We had never had this before, so it must have been changed by the engineer without asking or mentioning it.
Problem solved! We can all sleep easier in our beds tonight!
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On a lighter mood. The half-term holidays are over here. I don’t know why it is but at half-term, some parents of very young children (and I’m talking 3/4 year olds) like to bring their offspring to the cafe for lunch. The cafe where I work two days a week is an older persons cafe. It’s not a place for young children to work off their youthful energy. But still, they come and the majority of them enjoy making a mess. Food dropped to the floor, drinks spilt, cups and glasses broken, are all things that happen during half term. But it’s over for the time being and we can get back to being a “grown-ups” place.
with this kind of thing, as I don’t have the patience and whilst on the call on Monday asked about a new Router. We have always been told, by 
Sky to ask about equipment whenever we renew, even if there’s not a problem, which there wasn’t. The person that she dealt with said that there would be no problem and that there would be a new one in the post that day. As good as her word, the new router arrived on Wednesday morning.
round. It also was an upright one as opposed to the flat one we were used to. This meant a whole rearrangement of my desk for the thing to fit. After a bit of “huffing” and “puffing” I managed to place it in the best position. Now came the mammoth task of setting up all the devices with the new router. However, I was in my element doing this. It brought many memories from my work life. Dashing from device to device with my check-list and passwords, I was like a pig in a muddy puddle.
work either. Not although he probably won’t be back here until April, we needed to get it fixed straight away. My wife rang Sky and after a 45 minute wait in a queue managed to explain the problem. The phone was passed to me to go through some troubleshooting (which I had already done) before the help-desk operator decided that an engineer was required. He was booked in for Thursday between 12:00 an 17:00. 
bit annoyed. I looked online at the HP printer site and followed all their ‘helpful’ ideas, but to no avail. In the end, Google came to my rescue. And it was a simple fix. All I needed to do was to uninstall the printer, then reinstall it. Next problem. The printer installation media was on a DVD and this laptop does not have one. I ended up downloading the installation software from the internet. After that, it all went really smoothly which just left the Sky Q box not connected and the help desk advised that the engineer would get everything working, one way or another.
asked what the new router was. When he saw it he said there had been some problems with that type. We proceed to try and connect using an ethernet cable, which worked straight away. But as soon as the cable was removed, the connection was lost. He came up with two solutions: number one was to permanently connect with a cable, but that would mean lifting the carpet to hide the cable which was not a good idea. Option two was to revert back to the old router. That seemed the best idea, and he gave us the latest model of the old one. Once plugged in, all the problems went away, although I still had to reinstall the printer again.
From the keyboard of Tony 
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