Well, that was… different. After getting them back online, and after having their original problem fixed by Steve, who I used to work for, their firewall decided to die completely. Its network card isn’t very happy and refuses to talk to anyone, it even pretends its not plugged into the switch and that it has no network cable. It does this randomly, randomly enough that I can’t be bothered spending time working out what’s wrong.

So onto plan B… plan B being executed while my dad was coming into the Center to visit. So, while unpacking his car, putting a wheel on my bike (and noting the rust… gaah) and moving a telly and Atari Jaguar up the stairs I was giving commands out over my mobile. After a bit of messing around I got them to renumber their ADSL router and remove their firewall machine completely. They now have their ADSL box as the firewall doing all masquerading. It’s not the safest option, but it seems to be working for now. Hooray for redundancy. They can now get on with completing the thousands of credit card transactions and other worky stuff they need to do (the poor people had resorted to using their mobile phone at 9600bps to do it!).

My dad is now lying on the bunk opposite me, reading. I have my new speakers plugged in, and for 30 quid they don’t sound that bad. I’ll have to experiment with the placement of the sub so the bass comes into this room and not the one below me, but other than that it’s a lot better than my laptop’s speakers. My Jag is connected to the telly, and my newly acquired Gamecube would be if it weren’t for the lack of a remote control. I can’t tell the telly to go into AV mode without its remote, and the remote was lost ages ago. I’m getting some pictures sent up to me by post so I’ll get one of those all-in-one multi remotes posted up too. For now I’ll need to hijack the telly in the telly room and use that. I wonder what pins you need to short to make a TV automatically tune into its SCART sockets…

Discovered the shop down the road sells PG Tips and I bought a proper mug so I can have some real tea at last! Cheap tea from a plastic cup tastes nasty. Vending machine tea is even worse. The shop also sells spices (but no chilli powder strangely) so I might try and make a curry sometime.