The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 20/02/15
limey! 
errific! (Volume 2)
It's only fair to record these events when they happen.
I was browsing the ever-estimable Philip Challinor's Twitter feed early yesterday evening, and clicked on a link which was supposed to bring up a photograph.
Nothing. A blank white box.
Knowing that my set-up of Firefox can be a bit cranky with these things, I clicked on the 'X' to close the window, and then clicked on the link again.
Blank White Box The Second.
I glanced to my left, and saw that the line light on the router was flashing amber. "Thod!", thought I, "It's disconnected."
It took a long time to go to green, and then it went off completely. It then did the traffic-light fantastic for a few minutes, before finally settling back on green.
Checking in to the router control panel, I found that it had reconnected at scarcely 2.5Mb (or is it 'mB'? Or 'MB'? I've never been sure), this being about half the speed I had been getting.
Picking up the phone handset, I found that I had no dialling tone.
Now, you may recall that I'd had problems with the line a few months back. I checked the upstairs phone. Nada. I unplugged the main phone from the extension socket in the living room and plugged it straight into the main socket in the hall. Zilcheroonie.
At least I still had some sort of broadband connection, so I went to BT's website to report the fault. After it had ground its slow way through the diagnostics (Ah! Sweet memories of dialup!), the automated fault-sniffing doobrie told me that there appeared to be a fault at the exchange, and that it would be repaired by 5pm on Saturday (according to the acknowledgement e-mail I had), or within three working days (according to the website itself).
My thoughts on proceeding with my modding duties at 45cat and 45worlds having been short-circuited, I browsed the evening in a rather desultory and frustrated fashion (any page containing an image was an exercise in patience which I didn't really need).
I came home from work early this afternoon and, just for the sake of it, picked up the handset. Dialling tone! Now all those bloody sales calls can come through again!
Router line light was showing green, but then it had been anyway, so nothing to be ascertained there. Shortly after four, I fired up the trusty Windows 7 and checked, fully expecting to have to reboot the router to get a reasonable speed. It must already have done so - presumably at the time that the fault was fixed - and I was now getting a touch over 5 Meg. So I'm sorted on that score as well.
Scarcely eighteen hours to fix the fault. I'm more than happy with that.
