Back to the drawing Board.

Remember how I said I was so not counting on getting internet today? Man, sure wish I could do stock or lotto picks that way.
There were two appointments this week. The one on Monday morning (yesterday) was a couple electricians that the landlord send around to have a look at a bum circuit. These two looked like they were barely out of knee pants, but fine, the problem was solved.
See, I know that when it comes to electrical installations back home, any Canadian inspector wants to see a little copper showing on both sides of the terminal. There's a reason for that, since whoever hooked up the dining room light had put the wire into the bus too far and had pinched the insulation. It's called insulation for a reason, since no power was getting through.
So much for electrical inspections in Austria.
Took them perhaps ten minutes, and off they went. I now have a better understanding of the goings on in our breaker panel, since the circuit breakers are the nifty relay types that are built by the company that cannot be named. Well, maybe I'll sneak in the trade name here, since it's Moeller, and yes, they are nifty, since the switching itself is actually low voltage, and the high voltage is only at the device. So all the light switches are actually low voltage.

But I digress.

As any of you who have been following along already know, today was once again going to be “internet day”. My expectations were ...well....low, and guess what? They were met! (sort of along the lines of our recent encounter with Austrian Airlines)
The same guy who was here in December was back, along with a trusty sidekick (who apparently forgot that we have traffic in Vienna, 'cause he was late. Bonehead)

After the better part of an hour, they came to the conclusion that it could NOT be done.

See, the existing phone lines are on the right side of the hallway and stop at the floor below us, while we are on the left side of the hallway....one floor up.

Gee,  that's a tough one.

Now, to my way of thinking, a hammer drill and a honkin' big masonry bit would have solved the problem in my world, but we ain't in my world as it turns out, so these chimps were baffled. (ooh, guess I should have said “Baboons”, since then we would have at least had some alliteration)

So....ya. They couldn't see any way to get a wire from the panel outside our door to the small box in the wall one floor below.
(I was somehow visualising conduit but like I said,  not my building....)



I think I now need to stop going on about this, since I'm getting getting myself worked up again.

Just a tad disappointed is all.

Wanted to give a call to our relocation lady for some help, but couldn't find her number for the life of me, so I decided to give Gabe a call, who was somewhere up in the mountains on her way to Munich, where the “team” will be doing some bonding this week. She was a little surprised that I wasn't calling from our “new” number, since she was also counting on having some means of calling home instead of using her crackberry. Financially speaking of course, I'd much sooner she run up the tab on the crackberry, but it's not totally user friendly even though the company that cannot be named is paying, it's still more liberating to use one's own phone.

At least that was her argument.

I'll go along with it I suppose.

Suffice to say, I've put the hounds on the trail of some other means of having internet.
Meanwhile, I went down to the cafe to go online, and briefly struck up a conversation with the one guy who is there every single day it seems, and he lent me his usb stick internet thingy!

I'm pretty sure that's the technical term.

We plugged her in, installed yet another program (seriously, I think this thing has more programs than an orbiter space shuttle) and I can go online from my couch here! (um ya, I'm back upstairs...cafe gets uncomfortable at some point and I wanna go home)

Here I was on the verge of going postal....

Turns out, there's this company called “Orange”, (like, “Orange you glad you're in Vienna?” *snort*)
...and he got this deal where, for something like €20 or €30 a month, you get a small notebook and this usb device as a package. Since he's at the cafe pretty much all the time, he can use the freewave at the cafe, which is also heaps faster, so he just gave me this stick.



How cool is that?



Now, this is not a long term solution, since I want to be able to download entire movies and use Site Speed or Skype, so we're still going to be looking into something a little quicker than sending smoke signals. Well, to be honest, it's not that bad, and is all I need in the mean time to upload text.
I'll be giving it a try in a few minutes here. Right before I head out to the store.

...and if you're reading this,  it seems to be working just fine....

Keep yer sticks on the ice.