OFFLINE RANTS

My internet is down this morning. Actually rather frustratingly the 
internet connection itself is working, but Telstra's account 
manager system seems to be stuffed up and it's treating me as if 
I'd run out of data/time even while saying that I've still got data 
and time in that USSD message thing that I talked about setting up 
ages ago. So I can access Telstra sites (except the one that 
Firefox tries to connect to with the "you need to log in to access 
the internet" prompt that it gives at such times, that link hasn't 
worked for ages), but everything else is off-limits. Still it's not 
nearly as annoying as when it did the same thing to me yesterday 
when I'd arranged a meeting with someone to pick something up that 
they had listed on Gumtree and then lost the piece of paper where I 
wrote down their phone number shortly before leaving, then had to 
get online to access it again (requiring a log-in _and_ a Google 
Captcha), except I couldn't because Telstra picked that moment to 
start doing this to me. I ended up ransacking the house and messing 
up all my notes to eventually find the damn piece of paper where 
I'd managed to slip it inbetween some completely unrelated stuff. 
Why oh why I didn't leave it on top of the printer like I usually 
leave stuff to take with me I'll never know. True it's a silly 
place, in the way and at risk of getting blown off by a draught, 
but I can see it there. Unfortunately seeing things is about the 
only way that I can keep track of their existance, which at the 
same time doesn't lend itself to convenient organisation.

Well that's good, in the time I spent ranting on about all that the 
internet finally started working again. I was going to work my way 
to a more meaningful topic, but I guess you've missed out on that - 
blame Telstra for actually providing the service they sell for 
once. I notice that the modem has connected on 3G again though, not 
the first time it has fallen back to that since I mentioned in an 
earlier post that they seemed to have upgraded the 4G transmitter 
in preparation for shutting down 3G next year. So all that talk 
about my fears of reception problems after the 3G switch-off being 
ill-founded because it was really someone else's problem were 
probably nonsense. Presumably every time it falls back to 3G will 
be a time that reception  drops out altogether next year. Cantenna 
back on the to-do list again I suppose...

 - The Free Thinker