I haven’t felt that ill in quite a while. At least not since I stopped drinking.

A couple of years ago I thought about smoking cigars. Obviously to learn more I bought a book called The Sensible Cigar Connoisseur and read it. I didn’t quite realise how complicated it can be. It isn’t just a case of lighting the flat end and puffing away you know.

All this undoubtedly stems from watching Gomez Addams and Groucho Marx, the similarity is uncanny. Both these fine gentlemen must have been an influence as well as a film called Smoke, about the customers, and the proprietor, of a cigar and tobacco store in Brooklyn, New York. Another subliminal influence is a cigar store in the Royal Exchange in Manchester that I used to walk past, when I was at Manchester Polytechnic, back in the day. The window would be full of these big heavy glass jars full of cigars of all shades and sizes.

After I finished reading the book I looked around on the internet for cigar stores that would deliver bundles of cigars by post. Yes, I could have just walked into the store in Manchester and asked for a couple to try. But I’m not all that comfortable knowing nothing about a subject and asking for help. So, I look at the prices of the ’starter kits’ on a few web-sites and think that it’s a lot of money for something that’s just going to go up in smoke.

Rachael at work came back from her honeymoon in Cuba with a cigar for us in the office. Just the one mind. So Andrew and myself try it out in the smoking tunnel at work. I think I was more eager to give it a go as I was the one who cut the end and brought in matches specially. Leo didn’t want anything to do with it, muttering something about his oppressed brothers in the plantations and being symptomatic of the white regime.

A few weeks ago my Dad is sorting out his office and holds up this box of cigars still with the cellophane around the box. To be completely accurate, the glue holding the cellophane together had turned to dust with age. The box was labelled ‘Alvaro Especiales’ and contained 25 ‘Elegantes’ all individually wrapped. They must date from my Grandma’s visit to California back in 1979 I think. Could they really be any good? I took them any way and with my fathers words, “You’ll make yourself sick!”, still ringing in my ears I headed home.

They can’t be any good after all these years surely.

Just to check I did manage to find them on the internet. And they are sold in exactly the same box. The problem now was that if I smoked one how would I know if it was bad or not? Simply Cigars sell a starter pack of a humidor pouch, matches, a cutter and 6 cigars (3 varieties) for about £45. Before Easter I placed an order. That order arrived today.

Because I didn’t want to stink-up my little semi-detached penthouse flat with cigar smoke I had decided to walk to the cemetery and smoke there. I had put one of the new cigars, and another out of the box, into the zip lock bag that the cigars came in. So with my cutter and matches headed out.

Cutting the end of the new one wasn’t a problem. Getting it lit was a little tricky. It only seemed to light in the centre but another match sorted that out. Remembering the cigar smokers mantra, “DON’T INHALE!”, I just started puffing away, swirling the smoke around my mouth. From what I read on the internet this afternoon if you smoke it too much it could leave a nasty taste, if you smoke it too little it’ll go out. The ash was nearly an inch long before it fell off of it’s own accord.

I can’t say that I got a buzz from it, like booze or coffee, I just enjoyed strolling around, listening to my iPod, smoking a good cigar after work. The first one done I started on the second.

I didn’t notice any difference between the two. The aged one certainly didn’t taste all that dramatically different from the recent purchase.

After 2 hours walking around, looking at gravestones and shopping trolleys in the stream, I headed home.

I switched on the TV, sat down on my sofa and haven’t felt that ill in a long time. Honestly all the blood drained from my head and my face was covered in a cold sweat. Not good. Not good at all. I did think that I was going to be sick. Only one thing for it… bed, under the duvet with my eyes closed all I could see was smoke rising out of my mouth.

I heard about TED, it stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, on the net@night podcast with Amber and Leo. After watching the first three that came down the intertubes I must say I really enjoyed them. They are just short 18 minute talks given by fascinating people who have done extraordinary things in their lives.

Really inspirational stuff.

Check out the TED web-site or the TEDTalks (video) page in iTunes. Ideal for watching on the Apple TV.

The router, supplied free by O2 when I signed up to them for broadband, has proved a little problematic to say the least. Because it’s just on a shelf under the desk I could hear it clicking occasionally. This was when it was resetting itself, for whatever reason. If I was browsing web-sites I’d have to wait a minute or two before I could continue. Not ideal, so I’ve switched back to my Belkin F5D7633 wireless router. Here are my settings if anyone else want’s to switch to a more dependable router :-

• VPI/VCI - 0/101
• Connection Type - Dynamic IP (1483 Bridge)
• Encapsulation - LLC
• DNS - Auto
• IP Address - Automatically Assigned
• SSID - changed from the default
• Broadcast SSID - Off
• Security Mode - WPA/WPA2
• IP Address - changed from the default

The SSID has been changed, and switched off, to stop anyone trying to access the router. That’s using the principle that if they can’t find it they can’t hack it. I’ve also switched to WPA from WEP for extra security.

Most of this information I found in the forums at Think Broadband.

I received an email from Tiscali Provisioning this morning saying… well it’s all a little difficult to make out as the subject and the three sentences are crammed with codes and references. Essentially they say that the customer, me, is still active with another ISP and that BTOR(!) is currently in Cancellation Pending state, whatever that means. And that we, them, need to monitor the order for the next 24 hours.

Obviously I have replied as I certainly don’t want them cocking-up, a technical term, my excellent internet connection with O2.

It is good to see that Tiscali are about as on the ball as Pipex were. This sorry saga started on the 4th of March so I could have been without a connection since then, if I had been stupid enough to stay with them.

My advice to anyone still with Pipex is if your connection is fine, you consistently have fast download speeds, and you are happy with the service then stay. If you aren’t happy then switch as soon as you can but expect problems like I had. But 10meg download speeds, unlimited and £10 a month cheaper it has to be worth switching.

Taken from iTricks.TV Pick Of The Day: & Teller

Yes, yesterday I received an SMS message saying that O2 had connected my broadband that it was now safe to plug in the router. Why you can’t do it beforehand I don’t know. I just did what they told me.

After setting up the router, that is just plugging it in, I went straight to think broadband and did a speed test. 10 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up, which probably what you would expect from a 16meg line. On an 8meg line with Pipex the fastest down was just 3Mbps, but possibly I only ever tested the speed if it was really slow.

So the fun began, downloading email, news feeds and the podcasts that I’d missed over the last week. Then it was just a case of setting up the wireless connection for my Apple TV and the Dell laptop that I have for work. All connected to the O2 router fine.

I hit Send/Receive in Microshite® Outlook 2000 on the laptop and downloaded the three waiting emails. Then, for some reason, I had to send an email, no doubt to let the world know that I was back and online. The indicator kept saying that it was sending, sending, sending, failed. I hadn’t changed anything in Outlook. It had worked fine at my sisters house the other day. Try again… and again. Nothing. I phone the company tech guy and he suggests deleting the account and adding it again. I take screen shots of the settings, delete the account and add it again. Still nothing. SMTP was timing out, obviously when trying to send. I switch off the firewall in the router and try again… nothing. I delete the dial-up account that Pipex had given me that didn’t work… nothing. I change the sequence of the wireless connections, my sister’s being the top one… still nothing. But if I connect to the office I can send email fine. I install the O2 software from the disc that came with the router, just in case… nothing. I start looking at the firewall settings in the router again… nothing. Not a problem, I’ll switch to the Belkin router tomorrow.

This morning I reset the Belkin router and try to get it working with O2. You can see why O2 supply and support their own router. All this is tricky enough if know a little about how this stuff works, but if you don’t you’ll be screwed. I restored to factory settings and spent about an hour trying to get it to connect to O2 with no luck. Annoyed, very annoyed. Considering that my iMac worked fine with the O2 router and that my laptop worked fine with the O2 router… except this little problem sending email. I put the O2 router back tried to do some work. But a little problem like this just nags and nags. You think that it’s just going to be a little setting or a check-box that you’ve overlooked. So I downloaded Thunderbird. God knows why a software company should still be using Microshite® Office 2000 anyway. I set up my pop account and it sent email fine. I imported my contacts and old emails from Outlook and haven’t looked back since. It’s all working fine.

I just hate the fact that I wasted over a day trying to get something that simple to work, even if I was being paid for it. Good old Microshite®!

27/02/2008

The story so far… after the, so called, engineering on the line I receive another MAC code, which, coincidentally is exactly the same as the previous 3. I phone Pipex and they say that they can now see a cancel order on the line, which is good news as they couldn’t before, but with the MAC code due to expire there wouldn’t be enough time for O2 to use it and get me transferred over. They suggest phoning again to request another MAC code.

04/03/2008

Mid morning and my internet connection dies. I try re-booting the router and wait until after lunch before phoning Pipex, just in case it’s a temporary thing. The first people I call are the MAC code guys and I ask if the fact that I have no internet connection is something to do with the MAC code expiring the bloke on the other end of the line says, and this is important, “No, we would never cut you off!” I then phone the technical support line, they do a test on the line and do confirm that there is no internet traffic on the line. Voice traffic, fine, no internet. The suggest plugging the router into the test socket, trying another micro-filter, trying another router. All this I tried. Still nothing so I phone them back with my findings and they say that they’ll log it with their engineers who could take between 1 and 6 business days to fix the problem. Not good news for someone who WFH and uses his internet all the time when he’s not working.

05/03/2008

Luckily my sister, brother-in-law and niece have a wireless broadband connection. So I walk around to their house and work from their sofa for the afternoon.

06/03/2008

Phoned Pipex technical support again. Tried for about 20 minutes to get through and was told more than once by a recorded voice that the line was unavailable. Click. Finally spoke to a human he said it was all to do with the Tiscali re-engineering and that my line hadn’t been transferred over, for some reason. He didn’t know why but he knew people who would but they would take between 1 and 6 business days to respond. By this time I couldn’t wait to see the back of Pipex.

I check my email and see that O2 have sent me notification that my line will be connected on 12/03/2008. I was slightly happier, but only slightly as that was almost a week away. So why didn’t Pipex know that the disconnect was to do with my transfer to O2? Why did the MAC code guy say what he said? If I had known that my internet connection being cut was due to the transfer I would have phoned O2 immediately and told them to start connecting me up. As it is I’ve had no internet connection for over a week.

I don’t think that any time is a good time to lose your broadband connection, maybe before a long holiday overseas. But this wasn’t the best time for me. I’d just put all my notes and to do lists into Backpack from 37Signals after reading the first couple of chapters of Getting Things Done by David Allen. So all my personal stuff and work stuff was all in one place. All completely inaccessible. I’d even signed up for a paid Backpack account to use the extra features, pages and storage. You just don’t realise how much you rely on it all until it’s not there. So far I have 2 A4 pages of notes, things I need to do and things I want to look up.

O2 have been great so far. Little text messages keeping me informed and saying when the router will arrive. The wireless router arrived today but I’m undecided about using that or sticking with my Belkin.

Tomorrow’s the big day. I’ve never been this excited about getting something back.