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Setting up
Sep. 20th, 2005 02:47 pmSunday morning was our first ever shopping trip, to get things to stock up the cupboards, fridge and freezer. It came to £57.68 rather than the heart-attack-inducing sum that I'd expected, and further trips will be less than that. I am increasingly convinced that clubcard points are useless, but according to the receipt I earned 57 today, bringing the card up to a total of twelve. Admittedly I failed AH Maths, but I suspect something's gone wrong there. We've even been so efficient to sort out a budget file to keep track of our spending - even though we have money now, I'm not quite used to spending this much, as the trip this morning came to over four times my weekly budget last year.
In the afternoon, we visited St Andrews for the first time this academic year. Ironically, after escaping from it long ago, I found myself back in Melville to use the computer room for Internet access. It was the first time I'd used it since the room was upgraded from Scrapheap, and it was pleasant enough, though busy as ITS have decided to get people to apply online for their network connections this year. While there, Whitney sorted out our broadband account, which should be available in about a week - this update's being put up over the dialup account that we've been given as a backup.
Yesterday we were awoken by my mobile phone at 8am, which was caused by the startlingly efficient phone engineer. He seemed a bit odd at first, but when plied with coffee he became more talkative. It seemed we had three phone ports - two extensions in the bedroom and the main one in the living room - but only one phone, which looks like something left over from the Spanish Armada and is hilariously labelled the "Phonanza Dialatron". You can hear the pulses in your ear while dialling as it simulates a rotary phone, so automated services don't work.
To add to the meagre telephony hardware, we went to Nickel 'n' Dime to get another phone, eventually coming out with miscellany like picture frames and a hair trimmer. The receipts from that place are patently useless, as every single item is marked down as "Shop sales", and the itemised receipt called the shop "Nickel 'n' Dime" but the card confirmation argues that its name is "Nickle & Dime". Nevertheless, we now have a working phone line - if you want the number, phone and ask me for it.
I also had the experience of joining the library that day. That's not something that I'd ever done before, as my previous library card had been taken out for me when I was about three and it somehow found its way into my wallet between then and when I was actually inspired to use it. Cupar library's system involved us writing all our details on to cards and then the librarian painstakingly entering them all in to the computer - there's room for more efficiency there. When we eventually got on to the computers, the machine I logged on to warned of some kernel process giving illegal instructions and then warned me that it had serious hard drive integrity issues, so it's probably just as well that we've got backup dialup access here.
And now that you can read this entry, you can see that the backup dialup access is actually working - I was panicked when it didn't connect at all last night, no matter how much I fiddled with settings, changed from tone to pulse dialling and back, got it to dial more slowly so that the pension-drawing phone line could understand, told it to ignore the fact that it couldn't hear a dial tone when there clearly was one, ran checks on the modem, pleaded with it, or hit it with a sledgehammer. Eventually a new cable from the modem to the wall solved the problem - we had been using the same one as from the Dialatron (the Dialatron!), but evidently there's some difference that I didn't know about.
In the afternoon, we visited St Andrews for the first time this academic year. Ironically, after escaping from it long ago, I found myself back in Melville to use the computer room for Internet access. It was the first time I'd used it since the room was upgraded from Scrapheap, and it was pleasant enough, though busy as ITS have decided to get people to apply online for their network connections this year. While there, Whitney sorted out our broadband account, which should be available in about a week - this update's being put up over the dialup account that we've been given as a backup.
Yesterday we were awoken by my mobile phone at 8am, which was caused by the startlingly efficient phone engineer. He seemed a bit odd at first, but when plied with coffee he became more talkative. It seemed we had three phone ports - two extensions in the bedroom and the main one in the living room - but only one phone, which looks like something left over from the Spanish Armada and is hilariously labelled the "Phonanza Dialatron". You can hear the pulses in your ear while dialling as it simulates a rotary phone, so automated services don't work.
To add to the meagre telephony hardware, we went to Nickel 'n' Dime to get another phone, eventually coming out with miscellany like picture frames and a hair trimmer. The receipts from that place are patently useless, as every single item is marked down as "Shop sales", and the itemised receipt called the shop "Nickel 'n' Dime" but the card confirmation argues that its name is "Nickle & Dime". Nevertheless, we now have a working phone line - if you want the number, phone and ask me for it.
I also had the experience of joining the library that day. That's not something that I'd ever done before, as my previous library card had been taken out for me when I was about three and it somehow found its way into my wallet between then and when I was actually inspired to use it. Cupar library's system involved us writing all our details on to cards and then the librarian painstakingly entering them all in to the computer - there's room for more efficiency there. When we eventually got on to the computers, the machine I logged on to warned of some kernel process giving illegal instructions and then warned me that it had serious hard drive integrity issues, so it's probably just as well that we've got backup dialup access here.
And now that you can read this entry, you can see that the backup dialup access is actually working - I was panicked when it didn't connect at all last night, no matter how much I fiddled with settings, changed from tone to pulse dialling and back, got it to dial more slowly so that the pension-drawing phone line could understand, told it to ignore the fact that it couldn't hear a dial tone when there clearly was one, ran checks on the modem, pleaded with it, or hit it with a sledgehammer. Eventually a new cable from the modem to the wall solved the problem - we had been using the same one as from the Dialatron (the Dialatron!), but evidently there's some difference that I didn't know about.
