More Shoddy Service

Well, here I am composing a post on the Dutch-language version of Blogger. Why? You might well ask. It all has to do with my pathetic excuse for a cable provider. I really should have known better than to give them a second chance after that last outage earlier this year. But once the problem was fixed, it all seemed to work so well - until now. The service is still up, the problem is that they've assigned me an IP which is causing a DNS error with some sites. Now, this quite often happens with this ISP, but usually the sites blocked aren't that vital to me and I can work around it by going through a proxy. However, this time the sites blocked include The Sleaze and its back end, making site administration near impossible. OK, I can get some access to the back-end via a proxy (one based in the Netherlands, hence the Dutch Blogger), but I can't use a proxy for FTP, so updates are impossible. Under the system used by my cable supplier, a new IP won't be assigned until next week at the earliest, and when I've e-mailed them on the subject, they have been obtuse in the extreme, trying to deny any knowledge of such issues. As they now charge 25p a minute for their broadband 'helpline' (which, on past experience, anything but that), it looks like they have no intention of doing anything to sort the problem out.

The upshot of all this is that, with updating virtually impossible, there's little point in me writing new material for The Sleaze at present. As I had the good sense to change my phoneline back to BT (a traumatic experience chronicled in a series of earlier posts), I'm in the process of having an ADSL broadband connection set up by a different ISP. However, that won't be up and running for at least ten days. This is all very frustrating, as I was going to attempt to install some new software at the account which hosts The Sleaze, with a view to gradually automating the site with a content management-type system. But without a viable FTP link, I can't do this either. NTL/Virgin Media really are a bunch of incompetent bastards. Take my advice and avoid them like the plague. You know, reading all that back, with its talk of IP addresses, proxies and FTP, I realise that I'm beginning to sound like a geek. Jesus! It just gets worse!