COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

Thanks Kev.....

[Big Kev]

Probably good that you did have your trousers down, I have had sickness and diarrhoea for most of the day. I suspect I've ingested some water, from the kitchen drain, while jet washing around it yesterday. That's the only conclusion I can reach and I wouldn't be popular passing it on. I've been sleeping, between the other shenanigans, and do feel much improved but haven't managed to est anything yet, just a gentle fluid intake.

[Stanley]

Thinking about you Kev. I hope the affliction is passing....

[Big Kev]

Thank you. Back on form today, I suspect something I ingested that my body didn't want.

[Stanley]

That's always the reason.....

[PanBiker]

I have just changed my Facebook password after being prompted to do so by Facebook. They sent me an email with code numbers nd stuff to enter to reset said password. Five minutes later they sent me another email to ask if it was me who just changed my password!

[Stanley]

Google do exactly the same thing every time they make you jump through hoops to sign in. They then send you mail asking if it was you who just signed in.....

[Stanley]

Question..... Why could the early evening of April 23 be bad news for some people?
Answer..... Because that's when the government is going to test its new nation-wide alarm system which will be a loud ten second long squawk which must be replied to to re-establish the connection (as proof you have heard it....)
When I heard this I thought what a sensible idea and probably the only time I would ever hear it. But this morning I heard something that made me think some would regret it. Evidently there are people who, for whatever reason, keep their phones secret and hidden. They will all squawk loudly on the 23rd and some people might have a job explaining why they owned one.....

[Wendyf]

There has been a warning to people who might be riding horses when the alarm goes off, apparently you can turn emergency alerts off in your phone's settings.

[Big Kev]

My old Android phone doesn't have the 'Emergency Alerts' functionality installed so it won't be 'squawking' here

[Tizer]

My phone is switched off most of the time. If it's off on the 23rd but if I switch it on two days later will it still squawk at me I wonder? The 23rd would be a good day for a foreign country to invade Britain because we'd all fail to take notice and think it's just the test alert!

[Stanley]

From the way it was explained in the news item I got the impression that it would squawk even if the 'phone was switched off.

[PanBiker]

Another telephone related matter but land line this time. When I switched to full fibre to premises the new router has a VOIP socket on for the land line. Talk Talk have various add ons that you can attach to the phone service such as caller display, withhold number, enhanced messaging etc. Some are free and some are chargeable monthly. We have always had the free UK Calls to land lines and mobiles boost which means that we don't pay for any UK calls at all, (up to 60 minutes duration each). I have noticed though that this boost has increased dramatically in price. You can usually swap and cancel boosts at any time using radio button selectors in your online account. So I went online to cancel this boost which should just have been a case of deselecting the option.

Not so this time, updating systems is the message with a phone number provided to ring to make any changes. Did as I was told and after a few minutes of selecting numbered options I got through to where I needed to be. Unfortunately the message there was that there was an unprecedented number of calls and the wait to be put through would be quite long. There was an option to receive a text and do the necessary via that method. Postcode and name to verify the account then enter mobile number for the text. All done and text received almost instantly asking for my query. I said that I wanted to cancel the boost on my phone account. Message came back to say the text service was closed for the day! It added that an agent would contact me when available. Two minutes later I got another text from them but unfortunately the person on duty was in the wrong department to help me and suggested that I ring them.

[Stanley]

Sounds like the British Gas school of customer interaction Ian. I have noted their price adjustments and decided that we are probably helpless in the face of a world where inflation is not only inevitable for economic reasons but embedded in everyone's thinking. That being the case I have to lie back and think of England....

[PanBiker]

As it turned out I needed the land line this morning for quite a long phone call so was glad of the boost which made it free. This is not the norm though and we would be hard pressed for our normal usage to come to anything like what the boost is costing at the moment. The monthly bill has just come so it's paid on for the next 30 days. I will check next week if functionality has been returned to the radio button option on the website or I still have to run the gauntlet again.

[Stanley]

I needed to use the land line a couple of weeks ago and it was a long call (British Gas I think....), I seem to remember it was over £8.

[Big Kev]

From the way it was explained in the news item I got the impression that it would squawk even if the 'phone was switched off.

If it's switched off it won't 'squawk', it will if the phone is set to 'silent' though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65178240

[Stanley]

[Pluggy]

Another couple of years and we'll all be going through the full fibre landline hoop. I think I'll be in two minds whether I'l bother keeping the landline when I make the switch (probably when they kill off the old copper network in 2025) My friend has just done it and he elected to keep his landline number but he had to furbish his own adapter to be able to plug his old landline phone into the VOIP connector on the back of the new router.

[PanBiker]

The VOIP socket on my fibre router is just a bog standard RJ11 phone socket.

[Pluggy]

So is his, he has some old modem cables that fit, but they don't work, presumably because they are wired back to front. The point being he wasn't provided with a suitable cable to make the VOIP work with his phone.

[Stanley]

I shall bother about that when I come to it. I am still on copper connection. I ignored the offer of free fibre from Talktalk the last time they did an upgrade.....

[plaques]

The point being he wasn't provided with a suitable cable to make the VOIP work with his phone.

An interesting subject. We went Sky satellite with a new router but still connected to the old BT copper lines the engineer said we needed VOIP phones. The phones came with a cable RJ45 ? to plug into the router and then into the phone base. (RJ45) These were walk-a bout phones. Although the copper goes to a modern BT box and out again to the router all the old phones became obsolete and so did the outlets in each room. The new phones are OK but the the sound volume is pathetic.
The question is are the old phones totally obsolete and could the outlet boxes be put to some better use than leaving them stuck on the walls.?

[Stanley]

When I rewired this housed almost 30 years ago I made sure there were telephone outlets in every room that needed one. All redundant for a long time because in the early days, the reason why I had problems with my 'broadband' was that I had all those connections. So let me know if there is a use for the old system.....

[Pluggy]

You can use voip phones for voip but the cheaper option is using old school analogue phones with a voip adaptor. I had a voip system for my business back in 2010, but then it went over the standard ADSL broadband which wasn't even FTTC. It was so I had a separate landline number to my home landline number. I used an old analogue phone I had kicking around plugged into A VOIP adaptor. The new fangled "full fibre" aka FTTP provide a router with a built in VOIP adaptor and its sorted by the broadband provider instead of an entirely separate VOIP provider. Its more than possible some fibre providers don't bother with putting a VOIP adaptor in the router at all and just say you have to buy voip phones if you still want a landline phone

I wouldn't call sky satellite anymore, all their recent offerings are bring their content in over usually fibre internet. They still have satellites for the old school dish mob but I suspect they'll be pulling the plug when they think they can get away with it. You can get satellite internet of course but the new LEO type (Musk's Starlink being the best known example) is expensive and I wouldn't wish the old GEO internet on anybody.
.
Anybody else notice you can gauge the age of housing stock by the number of satellite dishes mounted on them. ? In Barlick, old houses pretty much all have dishes, recentish housing (for example Scothern Close) has maybe a third with dishes and the new stuff don't have any..........

Mine was coming down when I had the roof redone recently but the roofer coudln't find his angle grinder to remove the rusted out bolts so its still there.......