It's been a while dear play chums. And in the interlude, I've left the big smoke of old London town; swapping it for the rolling countryside of Somerset (south western county in England). Come summer I'll be supping on cider and surfing at the weekends – and all without the three hour drive to the coast. However, the transition has been less than smooth, so settle yourselves for a tale of woe.
Even as I write, my monitor is sitting on the box containing my sub and speakers. I have no desk because we can't find the crucial screws, which were "packed" by my significant other. As there is no desk, I am sitting on the floor with the keyboard on my lap. Any workstation diagnostics professional (you know, those people who tell you to spend $500 on a chair and dangle some crystals around the place to help your back) would be having kittens just looking at me.
Having said that, I am sitting in my own home office – oh yes, this is no longer a mere corner of my bedroom, but a room in its own right. So, despite being surrounded by flip flops with no box, bags of various crap with no place to go and the aforementioned up-turned desk, which is awaiting its screws, I'm feeling pretty good about my workspace – a converted loft, providing with a neat, airy space that I can close away at the end of the working day.
Things are looking up, dear play chums, but before the light there is always darkness.
I haven't been online for over a week.
And well may you gasp.
For some inexplicable reason it takes five working days to connect someone to broadband. Maybe there is a team of dwarves mining through adamantium, as we speak, to bring me my broadband connection, but somehow I think it's probably some slack-jawed office numb-nut picking his nails with a paperclip in charge of the whole operation.
Needless to say, I am without Internet for the foreseeable future. My PC is like a cat without nine lives and an elephant with no trunk – somewhat pointless. What on earth did people do with PCs before the internet was invented? There are only so many all singing all dancing letters you can write and excel spreadsheets should never be used outside of working hours unless you're deranged.
No wonder bedroom coding is a thing of those halcyon days of yesteryear. Now, we have the Internet people have better things to do. No time for coding our own space dungeon game, when you can be googling the name of every Tom, Dick and Harry you meet. Who'd have thought that guy whose beer you spilt, down the pub on Tuesday, would have his own coy carp fancier's website? And do you know what comes up when you put clover clamp into Wikipedia?
My life is empty without the Internet and it's so much more inconvenient. Everything takes time and you have to leave the house or worse, use the phone and speak to people! I could have informed all the necessary parties of my new address in five minutes, instead I had to phone my mobile phone company and spend 10 minutes going through security questions. And to add insult to injury, whenever you phone a company these days you get a message saying "you can access all our services quickly and easily at www.nameofcompany.com."
Yes, thank you, I bloody know that, but tell it to the broadband mining dwarves who seem to be on five days worth of tea breaks!
I hope you appreciate the fact that I will be walking this article down to the library in order to email it to our illustrious editor. Thankfully, next week I will be back with the world of the living, instead of this technological no man's land.
I've managed to unpack my 360, so maybe I can put my offline time to good use – I guess there's always a silver lining.
Most played: hunt the screws
Most wanted: a box free zone