I got back from holiday this week to discover that the work on my kitchen and bathroom was far from the completed state it was supposed to be. Considering that we left the house to avoid being without these facilities it is very annoying. The upshot of this is that the family is now stationed at my father-in-laws house. This is not a hotbed of new technology. Until I go back to work and pick up my 3G card I am forced to revert to dial-up for my Internet access.

Just getting online this way proved to be a challenge. The modem in my laptop has never been used. Luckily I’m a pack rat so I still had the driver CD in my case. With the modem making sounds and dialing my home number I only needed to work out what number to actually dial. I tried calling my broadband provider, no luck there. I also tried my phone provider as they might have a dial-up service. They did and would let me use it if I signed up for a 1 year plan at the bargain price of 75 dollars. Finally I tried my work helpdesk and found that our VPN supplier has a dial-up option.

So with a tortuously slow dial up connection I can only use when no-one wants to use the phone I am effectively still off-net and finding it very frustrating. It is serving as a great illustration for me though of how our opinions of a situation are affected by the power we have over that situation. The previous weeks I had been offline by choice and did not feel stressed in the least. After my first hour trying to get online yesterday and I was cursing and things went downhill from there. On an objective level I was more connected than I had been, only now my lack of access was not by my own choice. Maybe I’ll leave the family here and go back home. I’m sure the neighbors will let me use their bathroom. I am actually looking forward to getting to work on Monday to get an Internet hit.

I did have a nostalgic moment when my father in law picked up the phone and complained it was making strange noises. Actually he cursed it out in Italian, but it still dropped my connection. And for some strange reason every time I connect I expect to hear Todd start speaking.