alexist

(25.04.06 14:48)
Came home, still no Internet. At 16:00 I'm calling and demanding to speak to someone who knows something. I'm sick of "we'll call you back". I've been a pushover long enough. (Oh, and they didn't phone back while I was gone. No message light blinking, nothing on my mobile and Neil would have told them to ring me.)

(And I had to fork out to T-Mobile today as the open networks were slow as sludge. £5/hr! Should have just paid £10 for a 24h pass but I didn't think I'd use it.. of course I was there for the full hour!)

(26.04.06 05:52)
Argh... Stop toying with me! Lights came on the router. They stayed on for 2 minutes. I tried BBC News. It worked. I thought "OMG! We have the Internet!"

Then 2 minutes later it died again.... then it came back... we'll see!

(I do hope we haven't got a defective modem/router on top of it... seems unlikely as they did diagnose a line fault. It's a problem because I can't return it: it's on Neil's card, not mine! Also, he bought it at PC World in Enfield, which I can't get to, but presumably I could exchange it at the branch in Tottenham Court Road.)

More VH1 annoyance: They have decided that the top 4 Number Ones of the 80s are as follows:

4: Duran Duran, "The Reflex"
3: Europe, "The Final Countdown"
2: Band Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas"
1: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Relax"

This leads to 2 possible conclusions:
1) VH1 countdown lists are compiled by morons.
2) VH1 countdown lists are compiled by twisted people who just want to cause arguments.

(PS: The hair, the hair! My god, what drugs were people doing in the 1980s to make them think these hairstyles were attractive?!)

10 minutes on the phone with BT where they claimed it was working and I told them I was looking at the modem and it wasn't.

I get off the phone, the DSL light goes on and stays on... and it's been steady for a few minutes. *crosses fingers*

oooh, anti-breastfeeding article in today's Independent! Actually, I wasn't impressed by her half-hearted attempts to pretend that breast isn't best. The article as a whole was rather scattershot and didn't focus on its points well enough. For example, it's true enough that natural doesn't necessarily equate to best. But she compares apples with oranges: death in childbirth is an unfortunate side effect that we've managed to reduce. With breast feeding, we're attempting to change the procedure itself--comparable to finding an alternative to childbirth. Here, we haven't managed to improve on nature; we've simply devised an adequate substitute. As for relative nutrition, while formula is adequate, I do find it difficult to believe that science has managed to replicate every element of breast milk (including the various antibodies that pass through into the milk and help boost an infant's immune system in the first few months).

But there were good points in there, although they lead to different conclusions than the ones she might like. The first is that there's a small but vocal group of breastfeeding Nazis (the "natural parenting" brigade) who can make women feel inferior at best and antagonistic at worst. (They're also the same women who make you feel horrible about giving birth in a hospital, having epidurals, etc.) The second is that women are often ill-supported and badly informed about breastfeeding. If a first time mother gets different messages from 4 different midwives about what to do, how is she supposed to know who is right? Even without having done it myself, I can see that it would make it much more difficult if I couldn't even get a consistent message from the so-called professionals!

What this says, to me, is not that we should throw in the towel on breastfeeding because, after all, formula is "good enough", but that the system is great at sending the message to prospective mothers, but poor at enabling women to follow through on it. And that makes the lofty messages about "breast only for 6 months" even worse, and makes women even less likely to achieve what they could. The larger the gap between ideals and reality, the less women will achieve or believe in the messages being sent.

*grumps* Paying T-Mobile again :-(

Tonight we're going to try exchanging the router, just to be 100% sure. Of course, when I told BT it wasn't working (and then it did...) they probably did something else. Who knows. It does seem to go down more quickly if I actually try USING it...

This is so frustrating--you can't speak to anyone who knows anything and if you call the main BT repairs line, you get redirected through a set of menus and told to call India. Neil sent a complaint e-mail from work, and the same muppets replied to it! They handle return calls as well--they act as relays for the actual engineers.

I'm going to threaten to ask for a MAC code and switch to an LLU line.

Don't need it, of course. Mmm, though. 30th birthday pressie? ;)

We exchanged the router. Our internet seems to be working! It's been up for like 20 minutes.

Shame Neil's computer doesn't like it....

(There was definitely a line fault, BT diagnosed it. So we managed a fried router, a defective router, and a dead line!!!)

Annoying programme on BBC4 about some bloke and his 7 "wives"... He was referred to as a "messianic rabbi" but in the same paragraph, the filmmaker referred to "synagogues" and the "Jewish community". It's really unclear about the status of this guy within Judaism. Obviously, this guy's a loon and any viewer will see that (it's not just the 7 wives; it's the fact that he believes he had a vision from God telling him to marry all these women, and he treats them like garbage). But it leaves viewers really unclear about what so-called "Messianic Judaism" is. (Basically, it's Christianity dressed up with Hebrew words. A few of the believers are born Jews, but what they believe is NOT Judaism, and having a so-called "messianic rabbi" on TV talking about the Torah is just not good.)

(The filmmaker is either Jewish or knows quite a few as he said he remembers Philip DJ'ing at his friends' bar-mitzvahs. So it's not like he doesn't know the difference.)

Wonder if Philip has ever really read Tanach... it may not prohibit multiple wives, but it's not the best advertisement for it!