Dongle Disaster 2

Having decided I needed a dongle I have not been easily put off by the troubles outlined in "Dongle Disaster".

Last week I finally managed to buy a dongle and get it working. That does not mean it was without issues - thanks to Windows 8 it took forty minutes to get the thing to work. Having learned my lesson at the hands of phones 4 U I did not leave the Vodafone shop until it was doing what it should.


Start of grumpy rant against Microsoft Windows 8

For anyone unfamiliar with Windows 8, let me help. It is an operating system - Microsoft's latest but definitely not best. It has hidden menus which means that if your cursor does not hover over the right place on the screen you will never find them. I found this out when I tried to switch my laptop off for the first time. Gone is the "start" button which you click and then select "shut down"; enter the hidden menu for settings, this in turn hides the "power options menu" (which I would have thought related to battery saving) and inside this subterranean menu is the option to shut down. Call me a Luddite but if you have to use a different and now out of date PC to find out how to switch off your brand new laptop something is wrong!

End of grumpy rant against Microsoft Windows 8
Start of grumpy rant against Microsoft Outlook 2013

Twenty minutes after I had left the shop I was in a cafe trying to use my dongle. Good old Microsoft did it again. Outlook 2013 - this time. The dongle worked fine - the green light flashed then went blue and flashed, finally I had a solid blue light and a stable connection. I opened up Outlook 2013 to check on emails. Or rather, I tried to open up Outlook 2013 to read emails. It opened and then promptly told me that it had detected a "metered connection" (Microsoft speak for - we have found the dongle you are paying for and it is working) and that as such it was switching me to work offline!! Thus they rendered my dongle useless unless I overrode the Outlook basic instinct to ruin my life.

Swiss-nephew-blog learned at the age of two how to operate the Apple IPad and he could not speak or read at the time. How do MS get it so wrong?

Start of grumpy rant against Microsoft Outlook 2013

Colds and milestones

Two messages for this post!

First thanks to all the fans of Drivel and Wisdom, we passed 25,000 hits this week!

Second, Swiss-nephew-blog returns to these pages. (Check out Carrot Mystery, Cooker Problems and More Cooker Problems.Top left on the page is a search facility).

Swiss-nephew-blog is now three and along with his two older sisters suffered a cold two weeks ago. He alerted Swiss-sister-blog to the fact by saying, "I've got a walking nose." She was baffled for a moment or two until she realised he meant a "running nose" but clearly not quite as bad!

Dongle Disaster

Yesterday I popped into the Vodafone shop to try to buy a Dongle - for the technically challenged - a device which lets me connect my laptop to the internet via a mobile phone signal using a device the size of finger.

"Sold out" they told me.

Deflated I walked through the shopping mall and saw a "phones 4 U" store.

"Do you sell dongles?" I asked.

"Yes, Vodafone, T Mobile etc" said the spotty lad called Mark.(I have avoided stating the obvious about Vodafone)

"Which would you recommend?" I enquired.

"T Mobile, they have the best coverage these days."

£30 lighter I left the shop with my new dongle.

Two hours later sitting in Starbucks (I was looking for a WiFi signal and a good cup of coffee, got one not the other!) the dongle did not work. The dongle not working was why I was in Starbucks using their WiFi to try and sort out T Mobile's dongle problems. Having read all the instructions and registered the device I was nowhere nearer a solution. I returned to the Phones 4 U store.

Mark was still there.

"Hi, I bought this dongle from you and I cannot get it to work."

Mark took the packaging and read the instructions.

"Are you able to get a signal?" he asked.

"Yes, look can you see the green light, according to the instructions that means I have a signal."

"Is ti not connecting then?"

I kept calm and avoided any hint of sarcasm..

"No that is why that light is green. It should turn blue when it connects to the internet."

"Oh. Have you topped it up?"

"No, because you told me that it came with three months free!"

"Oh yeah!"

Eventually using a WiFi signal I showed Mark where I had set up my account on the T Mobile site. It asked for a PIN.

Mark entered the PIN number having chosen the number with "PIN" written next to it. This number was rejected as incorrect.. Mark thought the PUK number might work until I explained what a PUK is for.

The site said it would send me a new PIN so I said "yes please" and it decided not to.

By now Mark was sharing my frustrations. He rang T Mobile who passed him through three different departments and left him none the wiser. I sensed that Mark, spotty youth as he was, was fast becoming a grumpy old man.

"They said that they are sorry and would you like a free £30 top-up?"

"Mmmm. How would I use a top up voucher on a dongle that doesn't work and through a website that won't let me access it?"

"Ah. I see your point."

In the end Phone 4 U agreed to give me my money back, although that did require a clearance from senior people in London first. Still maintaining my calm outlook I asked Mark...

"How do Phones 4 U make any money when you have spend two hours of your time trying to sort out T Mobile's mess and have lost a sale in the process?"

"To be honest, we have nothing but major problems with T Mobile, they are absolutely rubbish!"

I smiled and decided to wish him a pleasant day.

Another guy lets the side down

The continuation of inept blokes is entirely coincidental.

I was searching curry recipes and saw a thread of posts. One post asked when the lemon juice should be added...this was the first reply,

Depends what you want to achieve. I normally add it to the chicken after I’ve chopped / diced it, or into the pan at the same time as the chicken, but I’ve also tried adding it at the end which can give you an almost sweat/sour effect. Why not try both and let me know which you prefer?

Read more: Is this the BEST Chicken Madras Recipe Ever? http://www.currytastic.com/best-chicken-madras-recipe-ever/#ixzz2deY7eznA