BT sucks the big one

As you mostly might be aware, BT was once the government owned monopoly telephone supplier in the UK. It was privatised, but continues to act as though it were part of the government. This extends to having a license for stupidity.

I got a new BT Hub last week, but had to add a switch so that it would serve all my wired devices. So today I bought the switch and a short patch cable, and thought, “Boy, now I can go to town”.

Well.

I set up the switch first, and made sure that it worked with the old router. Then I disconnected the old one, and set up the new one, attached the cordless phone (we get VOIP on this plan as well, with a cordless phone attached to the router), and plugged it into the ADSL socket and the electricity.

The switch worked, and my printer, my Sun box, and my main computer worked fine. However, using the instructions, I entered the SSID and the key printed on the back of the router into the software on our living room laptop. As usual, I couldn’t get it to work.

After a while, and after some time wrestling with the interface to the router controller (which was “improved” to make it easier to use, of course), I discovered that the SSID and the key were totally different from those printed on the box itself.

Fiddlesticks!

It is finally working, and tomorrow I’ll make sure the iMac and the Dell laptop in the kitchen are working.

The router is quite stylish:

but, a pain to configure.

Worst of all, as is my wont, I was swearing a bit as I was trying to figure out what was wrong. That gets HWMBO all riled up. I’ve discovered that statin drugs (of which I take 40 mg every night) sometimes have the extra special added attraction of making people more irritable. Oh joy. Not only can’t I drink grapefruit juice because of it, I’m cranky too.

4 Responses to “BT sucks the big one”

  1. besskeloid says:

    Oh willies!

  2. spwebdesign says:

    I’m going to need to get a wireless broadband provider at my new place. Should I avoid BT?

  3. chrishansenhome says:

    No, BT has good service. Just crap routers. I have two that I’m not using at the moment so you can have one if you like.

    When r u moving?

  4. spwebdesign says:

    That’s up in the air. At my current household, they ask that I stay till Jan. 20, as that would be 1-month notice. My new housemate is expecting me in mid-Jan., which he may take to mean Jan. 15. I need to talk to him today and get that nailed down.