Bugger still doesn't work right!

The bugger in question is two-fold:

the Crimson Brick is still not quite there, but as has already been said that is of little import. Providing always that I manage to safely negotiate the highways and byways as I potter about the North Midlands and West Yorkshire. And it is rather more there than it was - it only takes about ten seconds of embarrassed stick-it-into-neutral-turn-the-key-gun-the-throttle-and-swear-a-blue-streakness for it to pick up and scoot off again (albeit with the accompaniment of a degree of chuggery), and the fuel consumption appears a little better. So there is some improvement. But the outlaw still hasn't found his new car. And I still need Chicken the Oven Ready to have his car and the outlaw's old car at the same time for a while while he transfers the numberplate from one to the other.

The other bugger is of course my broadband connection, or rather lack of it. I ran a test on the outlaws' computer to see how long their telephone-line based cable (different ISP but same make of modem) takes to initialise the ADSL line. Answer: ten flashes of the right hand green light. Not, in any way shape or form or indeed by any stretch of the imagination does it take between four and five hours, nor depend on making a phone call out first to get it to pick up the connection.

Some nights it plays ball. I mean, on Wednesday night I was on for about five hours. Long enough to download iTunes (only to find that all the music in my account that was authorised on this computer is inaccessible from the other computer, even having authorised that computer, which I am bloody well annoyed about - I am NOT allowed to download iTunes back again onto this machine because CtOR has heard horror stories about the Bonjour gateway service). And also long enough to download the driver for my soundcard - hence the iTunes download. I have downloaded other essentials too, of course, such as AdawareSE and AVG (first thing I downloaded above all was ZoneAlarm, even when I was on dialup, and that took best part of four hours to load and install. And don't talk to me about Java!!!!).

Other nights, I can get on for 3 and a half minutes tops. But only after I make a phone call, which has to be answered so it means either ringing home to speak to himself or leaving gibberish on the answermachine, which he is really not happy about. But then as he has spent most of the last two weekends moaning at me about trivial little things I am in all honesty beyond caring. But let us not go there.

It hasn't been that bad so far, I suppose.