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("squeeze holiday" -- kids free from school)
All in all, it could have been worse. As noted, yesterday was lost due to
the problems of inadequate transport. To get to Copenhagen Airport from where
I live is just a hop across the Sound, but I had figured it would cost me
up to 8 hours travel and wait (bus and ferry) due to the few and badly timed
connections. The critical issue here was that we had heard that my mother-in-law
had fallen and hurt herself while away visiting relatives, and it was unclear
in what shape she would arrive. Fortunately, she was largely ok except for
numerous bruises, and much relieved that someone was there to meet her. It
had proven impossible to get that message across beforehand. Kudos to Swissair
staff in Denmark, who had expedited the meet&assist perfectly.
An onion or two to Swissair staff in Zurich, who had apparently shown
more of their typical "efficiency" than consideration. Nice airport staff
had been handled by the relative who had dropped her off -- in France you
apparently get things done by arguing forcefully enough in French
<grin>.
Be warned, it is almost impossible to use American Express plastic
in France these days.
I came via the usual airport bus from Malmö, one bus (2 hours) later
than intended. While late in terms of plane arrival, I was still in place
a few minute before my mother-in-law was wheeled out into Arrivals. Saved
a lot of waiting. Yet more waiting was saved when we found that, because
of the meet&assist getting her out very fast, we could catch an alternate
bus to Copenhagen center that connected with a catamaran shuttle to Malmö
harbour. The bus was leaving in a matter of minutes, so that meant we did
not have to wait the hour and a half for the regular airport bus to the ferry.
In any case, using the bus&ferry option was a bit iffy to begin with,
because on the way over, I discovered that the "new big cat" ferry lacked
elevators from car deck. It would have been difficult at best for my
mother-in-law to negotiate two levels of steep stairs to and from the bus
while on the ferry.
Ah well, all's well that ends well. Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) is becoming
a monster. It has been expanded considerably and is still a mass of construction
sites. The new bridge route between Malmö and Copenhagen has been laid
so that it emerges (from the long tunnel part on the Danish side)
right by the airport. This means extensive new roads and parking areas, new
terminals, and a train station underneath the new International terminal
-- the bridge is a dual deck one, car lanes on top and rail under, side-by-side
in the tunnel section. It is all scheduled for service next year. It had
better -- ferry services are supposed to stop this autumn already, after
the tourist season ends. Insanity...
Anyway, I was going to write more about ISDN...
The short verdict: I like it.
However, I find that, while on-demand Windows (NT) dial-up functionality
is reasonably solid, if not always transparent to the user, disconnect
when done has serious deficiencies. Both are excessively component
dependent, and I am surprised that there is no global control over this.
Heck, I had that under Win3.1, admittedly via third-party Trumpet
Winsock.
Pegasus Mail has, as usual, some informative background on this,
and a selection of ways to let it handle this reliably, but Office components
handle it their own way, usually via an IE component. For the time being,
I connect and disconnect manually, since so far this is the fastest and most
reliable :(
Trying to activate the bundled ISDN ISP service Wednesday was impossible,
since the DirectActivation server was down for maintenance or software
upgrade. Last night, after I got back home again, it was back up, so I got
my package registered. However, it failed to detect the originating phone
number and so decided to surface-mail me the account particulars. Therefore,
I will not have my account name and password before Monday at the earliest.
So, more next week. Until then I continue to rely
on my existing ISP and the ISDN dial-up there.
The DirectActivation (DA) theory is otherwise this:
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Customer purchases Internet package
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at telco/provider shop
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via reseller
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(orders online at telco website order page)
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Package in hand (software, manual, etc), Customer installs Internet software
on his system (or updates configurations of existing installation -- much
less obvious how since the installation software is geared to newcomers and
largely automated), along with any required hardware.
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Customer determines package ID and package password from enclosed paper that
uniquely specifies each package.
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Customer accesses DA server using installed Internet package (pre-configured
to automatically do this), or optionally via any other Internet connection.
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Customer enters package ID and password to activate service. Assuming originating
telephone number can be verified, further online configuration is possible
and Customer can use service.
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Otherwise, confirmation, account and configuration particulars are sent to
the address registered for the phone number specified.
The Telia 24/7 freephone support line included in the package was both helpful
and courteous when I used it. (For some reason, the order confirmation with
the DA info I needed to perform the DA access has still not yet arrived,
so I had to check in with support about this and how to do it manually,
without risking autoinstalling older Swedish versions of IE and
SP3. Supposed to be a precondition, needing my signature for the order. Oh
well...)
This is the wave of the future, so pay attention.
The next few years will see more and more telco services coming under full
configuration control by the customer. The goal is that the services and
their individual components can be ordered online, sold as prepared packages
in the shops, and set-up and used without much in the way of direct intervention
by telco/reseller staff except when problems arise. Need a voice mailbox?
-- order the component and activate it. Need another email account? -- go
to the configuration page, authenticate yourself and set it up. Want to change
your phone number, or add another two numbers to your existing (ISDN) line?
-- order it and program your ISDN unit to recognize the new numbers.
Absurdity of the month...
Active pedal stops speeders.
Seven hundred drivers in Lund (Sweden) will participate in a trial
called active gas pedal, which makes it easier to keep to speed limits.
Technical equipment in the car, in particular a computer, makes it
impossible to drive above the speed limit.
The idea is that the gas pedal is activated on those streets in Lund
inner city where the speed limit is 30 and 50 km/h respectively.
This was taken from this morning's newspaper. Saints preserve us.
The only way you are likely to get technically safer traffic is to go the
whole way and fully automate all traffic within a given
area or on designated streets. Doing it piecemeal will just have the opposite
effect, making traffic less safe.
I suppose the next step is automated stop on red light... Feh.
(afternoon) I got the above posted, but the whole Net seems flakey today.
At first seemed as if LeufNet server was down, but DNS service is
quite spotty as well, and the ISP service is also erratic. Now I can't connect
to much of anything with any degree of reliability, and my own domains definitely
not. Tracert times out in varying places along the AlterNet chain.
I suppose I should say to heck with it and concentrate on local writing...
(still later) web sites accessible again, though local ISP connection seems
to stop at modem pool at times. Slowly getting better -- maybe holiday crunch
on the web?
What the heck -- I opened the
SF wiki forum. More
discussion centered on fiction and associated with the
SFF author lists.
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See the
update-link (above) that points where I last added
some text, which should simplify your keeping up to speed. Of course, you
may still have to scroll back a bit and see if I've updated more than once
since you last visited, but that is easily done.
LeufNet
