Sitting in Starbucks this morning having a break from working at home all the time and a chap approached me and said “hello”. Turns out someone I used to work with in North London now has a job in docklands. I can’t really see a former programmer working with the city-types we have around here, and he was wearing a suit – which was probably the bigger shock.
Anyhow, had a mare of a problem with the T-Mobile Wi-Fi service and had to phone up customer care to try and figure out what is going on. I loathe calling customer care people, especially when it is computer related as they invariably just read off a script and spend 20 minutes running through all the tests I have already done myself. I am no IT guru, but I know how to debug basic problems. You can imagine my delight then to get a chap on the phone who not only seemed to know what he was doing without needing a script, but his suggestions actually sounded sensible for once.
Alas, it seems there is some sort of issue with Windows XP generating IP addresses for the T-Mobile routers – and it is a recent issue which is cropping up all over the place (someone has done a software update I bet), so they need to get a human to come and visit the coffee shop to get it fixed.
Fortunately, as I have a monthly account with T-Mobile, I am able to roam on to BT’s local Wi-Fi service, and while nothing like as stable as the T-Mobile platform, at least I don’t have to work at home this morning, and hence can have the surprise of a former work colleague coming up to me to say “hello”.