Virgin Media went DOWN. So I survived 4 days without Internet this week.
Here’s a picture I pulled off the bird site. A foundation drilling machine hit the main fiber trunk for SW London in New Malden. It’s also where they have their main exchange. 90k locations without internet. It wrapped the cable round and around the bit damaging lots of equipment at the exchange etc. Madness.
The TCP-IP was designed to survive a Nuclear War. In 2019.. I’m not so sure it would. At All.
Anyhow. It was quite nice to have a couple of days away from all the nonsense that is 24/7 social media. I got a bunch of things I’ve been meaning to do around the house. And I also started cleaning up and archiving junk from my laptop etc. When the full fat internet did come back earlier today, It had 10Gbs of changes to synch so I’m glad I wasn’t tempted to tether my laptop at any point.
The internet, or rather the residence of SW weren’t too happy about the whole thing. I know it was an accident, but people were rightful unhappy about Virgin Medias handling of the situation. The communication from the organisation was atrocious. They should probably take a leaf out of the railways transparent reporting of issues. Huge props to the engineers working around the clock to fix it tho. I always imagine you repair fiber optic cables with a flashlight and sticky tape.
I also went for many Christmas drinks this week. couldn’t make one party because of the train strike. But I did get to spend an evening in the pub with his handsome boy.
A big welcome to any new readers who have followed the feed since last weeks blog on starting a blog. I’m always humbled that anyone might be interesting in what I have to say around here. If you stick around thanks!
A few folks I follow have resuscitated their blogs and posted a sign of life. If you are a reader and want me to follow yours, let me know your URL in the comments! I’m all for filling up my RSS with interesting people.
Thanks again for reading. I think I’ll do my yearly EOY round up next week talking about my year, fav music, books, things that happened in my life etc. Stats..
Permanently Moved
EOY 2019
S2E38
Wrapping up the year. Remember: It’s up to each and everyone of us to bring light to the world.See you in 2020.
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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymoWebsite: https://www.thejaymo.net/
Podcast: http://permanentlymoved.online
Zine: http://startselectreset.com
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
With the internet being down. I haven’t got to any of the emails I meant to replay too. Nor have I set my tax off to my accountant *Mwah Mwah Sad Trombone*
Dipping the Stacks
The history of PC Music, the most exhilarating record label of the 2010s | Dazed
London’s electric buses are getting fake noise, and it’s positively psychedelic – The Verge
The surprising ways that city and country kids think about wildlife | Anthropocene
Reading
I finished reading the Ravenor Trilogy. And now I’ve gone back to reading more Dan Abnett in the form of Ghostmaker the second in the 15 book ‘Sharpe in Space’ Gaunt’s Ghosts Series.
I *think* I might just be coming up on being all Warhammer’ed out. 90 books in one year will probably do that to you. We’ll see I have plenty more available to me..
Music
I honestly don’t think Run DMC’s Christmas track ever gets enough air play
Remember Kids:
5 Comments
Pete Ashton
December 22, 2019 at 15:57I am a reader and here are my blogs:
http://blog.peteashton.com/
https://notes.peteashton.com/
Jay
December 24, 2019 at 12:59Thanks Pete! Discovered Your notes feed from a referral but your full fat blog now added to the my reader too!
Pig Monkey
December 22, 2019 at 19:59As requested, I am a reader with one of them weblogs.
Jay
December 24, 2019 at 13:03Thanks for sharing Pig Monkey! Added to my Reader!
Lazy Reading for 2019/12/29 – DragonFly BSD Digest
December 29, 2019 at 13:57[…] Back In Time For Xmas. Linked for the picture of fiber wrapped around a large auger; the stuff of nightmares for anyone responsible for network infrastructure. […]