My New Broadband Connection

Yes I have ordered it. Breeze Home Lite

At the moment I have Ripwave but the speeds
have been absolutely terrible for the last 3 weeks
so I was left with no option but to upgrade to
breeze which has a dirty 12 month contract!
But I think it is worth it. Most people that have
the service are extremely happy with it and it is
also meant to be very good for online gaming also.

It is going to cost me almost 50 euro per month
but I am going to be sharing the connection with
2 other people. Those being my roommate James
and one of my flatmates Simon. That will bring
down the cost considerably.

Also the girls in the flat upstairs have expressed
their interest in sharing the connection also so the
cost could become quite minute indeed. : )

The speed of the connection is 1 mbit up and 1mbit
down, so it is quite fast although it may now be fast
enough for more than 3 people. Hence I may have
to upgrade to a higher bandwidth antenna to cope
with all the extra traffic. The extra bandwidth will
also come with a hefty price tag and the price could
go up to as much as 100 euro per month. Yet I only
plan to use it at this rate for a few months and then
downgrade as it gets closer to exam time when the
usage rates from the people sharing will drop a lot.

Oh yeah I forgot to physically describe the product.
The connection is a wireless one. I will be connected
to the "Ballymun" mast which is about 500 meters
away from me. This is a perfect distance considering
that the range of the service is between 5 and 10
miles. The engineers will install a small dish on my
roof. It is basically a wire mesh with an antenna in the
center to focus the signal at the mast.

This is also the same mast that I am connected to
with the Ripwave. Wouldn't you think that the signal
would be good for the Ripwave too considering that
the mast is so close?
Well it was very good for a few months and then this
month it was absolutely decimated and it was almost
unusable with connection speeds equivalent to a 56k
modem!!!

Anyway there is a 5 week waiting list to get this thing
as it is so popular in Dublin at the moment. I ordered
it a few weeks ago and I should get an installation date
sometime in mid January. The installation should be
very easy also due to the fact that we have a flat roof.

I will talk about my new connection a bit more when I
have been using it for a few days. : )

Christmas Day

OK this is my second attempt at this post as the
electricity died the first time round. : )

Well it was snowing here this morning for a few
hours in central Ireland. As the country was wet
from rain the night before, the snow didn't stick
for long. : ( It only remained on the hedges, roof
and trees. Boooo.

The family are running around the house like
headless chickens getting everything ready for
Christmas dinner. hehe I stayed in bed for most
of the morning although I have done plenty of
decorating the last few days so I don't feel guilty.

Everyone else in the country seems to open their
Christmas presents in the morning. In terms of
the stuff you get from Santa that is ok but I think
that the rest of the presents should remain until
after Christmas dinner is over and everything has
been cleaned up. Then the whole family can go in
to the main room and open up all the presents
together. When I was younger I used to absolutely
hate the idea of "waiting", but now that I have a
bit more sense I realise that it is actually quite
fun holding out till later. Its something to look
forward to for the entire day! : )

I think the presents this year should be pretty
good all round as both my sisters have jobs now
and I have been working all year.
About 10 years ago I remember having about
20 euro to spend on the entire family and then
having to go into the pound shop and get every
thing in there. Man! They were terrible presents.

But in the years following the present quality has
improved dramatically. : )

Incineration

On my flight on the way over to Las Palmas, I noticed a huge plume
of white smoke coming from some building. It was so far away that
it was hard to tell what it was but I suspect that it was an incineration
plant.

These are places where residential and industrial waste is quite
simply burned into the atmosphere. I think that in this day and age
that having to burn rubbish is prehistoric!! Surely most of that waste
can be recycled or reused in some way.

I find it good to see that the government here in Ireland are
beginning to encourage people to recycle vegetables and waste
that breaks down quite quickly for other uses such as compost or
fertilizer.

Already thousands of people recycle their glass, tin cans and paper
which is good to see.

Eircom are a pack of B*******ds

Our main telecom operator in Ireland really is the spawn of
Satan. Here are some of the things that anger me:

4 gig limit on their basic broadband service (40euro for that).

Currently upgrading the telephone exchanges slowly as:

* They make more money off Dialup than BB.
* It prevents competitors from attracting customers.

Government offered them 1800 million to hurry up BUT:

* They refused the offer to speed up the broadband layout.

* Instead they intend to remove 450 million.

* This 450 million will go to investors.

* Will that completely fuck up the company ..... I think yes!

The telephone network is in a unacceptable state.

* Half the population are on "shared/split" phone connections.
* That rules out broadband for them.

I must stop writing as this is making me mad as I remember all this
dirt on that ugly company. I hate them. I hate them.
You are going to die Eircom for being greedy at this stage in the
broadband market. You Will Die. muhahhahahaha.

Check out Irelandoffline for more information.
Pay particular attention to the forum.

Playing Munchkin!!

Such a funny game is Munchkin. We have been playing
the game here in the flat since 12am tonight. (2.54 now)
Basically its a turn based game where everyone has hit
points. You have to fight monsters and depending on your
level you may be able to beat it or not. Your fellow
players may also add hit points to the monster you are
fighting to make it harder for you.

They are basically trying to stop you from getting to
level 10 which results in a win.

It is a nerdy but fun game that results in lots and lots
of laughing and shouting and thickness (funny anger).

Putting things out of their Misery

A few minutes ago, there was a mouse outside my
house. It obviously had taken poison as it was slowly
shuffling around and kept falling over itself. It looked
like a young mouse as it was quite small.

I decided that it had to be put out of its misery as it
was clearly in a lot of pain due to the poison drying
out its insides.

Yet what is an acceptable method of killing a rodent as
quickly as possible? Could I bash it with a stick? Squash
it with a rock? Or throw it into a fire?

I decided that none of these methods were fast enough so
I resorted to my trusty firework collection. I used a Black
Cat and placed it beside the dying mouse and lit the fuse.
It was all over in a matter of seconds and I wont go into
the details but what I can say, is that the mouse definitely
died instantly.

A while after the incident, I kinda felt guilty. But didn't I do
the animal a favor? Sould I have left the animal to die in pain?

I don't think so.

Back to the Old Routine

Just came back up to Dublin there on the bus after
working in the Nursery for about 10 days straight.

Its like world war 3 in the city at the moment with all the
fireworks going off due to Halloween. Its kinda ironic due
the fact that Fireworks are actually banned in Ireland!!
Isn't that so f*cking stupid.

Every year tons and tons of shit fireworks are smuggled
into the country and sometimes blow off some kids fingers
due to the fact that they were manufacture in a unsupported
fireworks factory.

If the government were to legalise Fireworks and introduce
a strict screening process to filter out the crap fireworks
then maybe it would be a safer Halloween for everyone
including cats and dogs who get mutilated every year.
Mice dont count.

Irelands Typical Begining

It all started about 60 years ago. Around this
time England decided it was time to upgrade
their entire phone network. This action involved
replacing the entire wiring system.

Guess what?
Ireland saw an opportunity too good to miss!!!

Lets buy the old network from the Brits!
Rejoice !! Rejoice !!
A telephone system for cheap!!!

WE HAVE BEEN DOOMED EVER SINCE.

And we are starting to feel the effects of the botched
job right about now.

For Instance:

140 phones share 100 lines resulting in no broadband
for 40 unfortunates. (and that is a optimistic example)

Some phone lines in such poor condition that the phone
companies are supprised that voice works through them,
let alone data!!!

Phone system is so bad, the main telecom provider couldn't
be bothered upgrading the network resulting in the
Government having to install 17 MANs (Metropoliton
Area Networks) encircling 17 stragtic towns in the country.
These networks will then be rented out to all the ISPs.

to be continued....

I will probably moan more about this soon enough.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Work

Just back from work.
Absolutely wreaked.
I work in a Nursery by the way, not a
place for babies but a place for plants
and trees and shrubs and .....etc.

Just checking out the hardware tech
sites at the moment. Nothing usually
happens on weekends in the computer
world so I'm not exactly expecting much.
Hopefully someone will be complaining
here about something. : )

My girlfriend

I have just informed my gf about my
new blog.

Will she think its a stupid idea?

Will she be all paranoid that I'm talking
about her on the net? hehe

Feel free to comment hun. : )

and hopefully now the random posting
is allowed.

Settings and Advanced Micro Devices

O.K. the settings are pretty much sorted out.
I'm currently building my homepage at the
moment so all you will see is a Metal Holocaust
logo designed by Paddy( or ned or john).

Yet another fight on anandtech about why Dell
still aren't incorporating AMD processors into
their systems.

Personally I don't see why the enthusiasts are
getting so worked up about this. Many of them
would build their own system anyway so its
almost a waste of time crying about it.

Yet I'm sure many of them (including myself)
would like to see AMD doing well. God knows they
deserve it, with their A64 and Opteron Processors
they have earned the respect of the minority who
actually care.

First Post

Well dont really know what I'm doing at the moment but I'm sure
buy next week I will have this thing up and running.