Ain’t Technology Grand? Not!!!!

As the recent crash of the XT network in New Zealand fades into a distant memory for many, especially those that chose to go elsewhere for their service some of us are wondering when we are going to get a decent broadband service.  I’m sorry but this is a bit of a rant.  You see since 13th December my broadband service has been nothing short of appalling.  Phoning for ‘technical support’ leads me to an offshore set up that after this that and the other form of checking my computer eventually decides to put me through to the technicians here in NZ. Again I went through this little exercise this morning starting at 7.30a.m. after hours of tooing and froing a whole morning was totally wasted, grrrr.   It was supposed to be my day off and I did have plans to get out with the dogs, huh!  About 3 this afternoon the modem light eventually went from red to green and it was all systems go.

What has really peeved me is the fact that I had learnt to rely on internet usage for everything from shopping sprees to banking, the latter has caused a lot of grief, especially for my suppliers.  I went from sending cheques to on-line banking after far too many going missing in the mail.  What is next, carrier pigeon?Tell me, am I the only one this is happening to?  I’m sure when I explain to people that my internet has been down they don’t believe me.

As far as I can see,  the only upside of having internet is contact with DH, and the contact I have with all my blogging friends. To all of you, thank you for being there when and if I manage to get on-line.

hugs

Grrrrrrrrrr!

My patience has been well and truly tested over the last three days at least.  Our Broadband connection  went down, apparently it’s a Telecom fault, but I only found this out after many flipping calls to their call centre (which is probably on some distant shore on the other side of the world) and after doing the ‘most unhappy dance’ on more than one occasion, the powers that be have put me onto a dial up connection until the problem is solved – better than nothing, but my god is it slow.  Communications with my man in Timor has almost ground to a halt, and phone calls are just too expensive to chat to him as often as I would like, another grrrrrrrrrrr.

Goodness knows when this problem will be sorted, meanwhile loading any photo’s takes sooooo long I just give up on it.  As a result any posts will be text only for the time being so my apologies for the ‘wordiness’, but it’s not my fault.

I have been asked which pattern I used for the little container I posted  earlier.  It was a freebie from Handmade, Country Christmas. Vol 27 No4.  I have only one suggestion with this pattern and that is to add an extra half inch to the side lining to allow a proper fold over on the top.  Otherwise it’s awesome.

thank you for all you kind words about the 100km, because of the slowness and time constraints I can’t responds individually just yet, but will when things are back to normal.

have a wonderful stress free day

Miche’le

Waterlogged and messing about with men

Yep, it’s still raining, over 240mls in just less than a week!  What’s a girl to do? Housework? No. Baking? No.  Ironing? Not likely.  So it seemed like the only thing left to do was to start a new quilt, I mean it’s not as if I have any UFO’s to finish – yeah right!  Besides I had this lonely layer cake just begging to be used, it caught my eye and my imagination every time I looked at it, so I gave in.  So far the result today is twenty five 9” ‘churn dash’ blocks.  Somewhere on the net recently I saw this block and decided to make sure that I made it soon, so I’ve started, it's a doddle of a block. 
Today was the shops UFO day and we were blessed.  Four fantastic ladies came along, each one working on something different, what a great day so motivating and so much fun, time just flew.  Meanwhile outside the rain came down, how much rain can fall from our sky?

Once our ladies had  left I realised that it had been sometime since I had updated my blog, so with coffee in hand and camera at the ready I got settled down for some serious blogging – aha- unable to log in.  Time to phone the help desk.   After an hour of talking with a chap that I struggled to understand from the help lfinally he politely  put me on to the next level,of help. If I hadn't been so frustrated about the whole thing I would have thought that I had been promoted, but no, another man, another long explanation of what is not happening.  So here I was, one man on the phone, type this, unplug that, switch the other, press connect – ugh, just too much.  I really thought that I had messed the whole thing up and both of these ‘delightful’ men had allowed me to do that, another promotion, up another level, yeah!  Someone with sense (and a man at that!), “no it’s not you Miche’le, it’s a fault with the server”.  Mmmmmmm, after messing around with men for over an hour I discovered that this technophobe was not doing the wrong thing – why couldn’t they say that to begin with?  I mean I’m a woman, I can handle their apologies, but did I get one? Not a chance, and it’s still raining!
Keep dry, keep happy Summer will  might come one day

p.s. couldn’t post this straight away, live writer has a ‘problem’, I give up!!!!!!!!!!

Minima and sidebars

Never being one to embrace technology I knew writing a 'blog' was going to be challenging however I never expected to spend so much time getting all the thingmajigs in all the right places.  That was until today, I learnt about minima and sidebars.  At long last text that I typed weeks ago now looks similar in format to what I typed and all those club bages and logo's now sit nicely in the right column.  Why can't some of these clever designers aim their instructions at the lowest common denominator (me) and use language that we all understand an example of this is 'widget', well the mind boggled when I first came across that word!  Even my trusty old dictionary didn't have it. Anyway through accident and not education I finally got to place things in 'sidebars' (the right column) and those things were called 'wigets' ( I think).  So now we are slowly looking like so many other blogspots - organised, yeah.
Getting on to things that I know, whew.  I watched with absolute pleasure as our youngest grand-daughter, Faith, got to explore her big girls 'eye spy' quilt that I had put together for her 1st birthday.  After being a member of a 5" club for many years I had collected a huge assortment of childrens squares and chose to make a scrap quilt surrounded by a lime green border and a rich electric turquoise, both from the Micheal Miller, Krystal range.  As soon as Faith stood on it (well she is only 18 months old and quilts make great things to stand on at that age) she started pointing out butterfly's, bees, angels and fairies and so many other things.  Awesome just what I hoped she would do.

Lost ladybirds and close ups

Wow, I've had some lovely feedback regarding my wee blogspot, especially about the photo's in it.  Some of you have e-mailed or phoned me and asked for close ups of a couple of the little wall hangings that can be seen, so I'll have a go at putting them on the site.

Earlier today I had a go at editing a few things and lost my ladybirds!  Honestly I spent ages trying to find the site that I got them from - lesson learnt, keep track of all places I get things from, mmmmmm.  Anyway, they are back, albeit looking a little slow on it.

The weather has turned nasty, perfect weather for a bit more stitching, which once I've got to the photo's is exactely what I will do.