You might think it’s a day late, but it did take the BBC a whole day to make it the top Europe story on their website. I’m talking about Milan’s new Congestion Charge – called the Ecopass, here.
And the weather was truly fantastic. On Sunday from about 11.30 a.m. for about 3 hours or so, we sat outside a café, in the sun, without coats, watching the lake and the people, Rufus lying at our feet (having had several long walks already that day).
Like Second Life, the blogosphere (the world of bloggers) is not real life. It has similarities but is almost like some sort of game to many people. The trouble is that many of the Real-Life people don’t actually know about this Blog-Life. But, it can be compared to the old Wild, Wild West. Laws (and by that I mean the ‘rules of living together’) have yet to be fully defined.
Following Alex Fear’s (although, unfortunately, the blog no longer exists) comment on this post, I thought it would be well to advise the settings I found afterwards.
You may remember, if you read this blog regularly (that’ll be you, D), at the end of April I had a small problem with my Belkin router. No, well you can read about it here.
Had a few problems over the last few days. As you may know by this post, I had the problems with ADSL. At the end of it, methinks, it was almost certainly Alice’s fault (Alice being the brand name for Telecom Italia’s ADSL service and not some random girl; it’s actually pronounced aleechay and not aliss).
Then, 2 days ago, I found I couldn’t send email through Outlook. This meant I couldn’t reply to anything unless I used the web mail site, which is not so convenient, to say the least.
Of course, the first thing I do is search the web with my error and I find that ZoneAlarm may be the cause. Recently it suddenly, without my asking, put a spam filter on my Outlook. Now, actually, I thought this was quite good and I quickly got over my initial reaction of ‘why are you doing something to my machine that I didn’t ask for?’.
So, I have been watching it rather closely since then to see how it goes. I had almost got to the stage where I was trusting it and then, I find, it may be the cause of the sending emails function to fail.
So, how to switch it off? Well the ZoneAlarm console says it IS switched off. A check on the forums shows that it was an accident with one of their updates and that it did cause problems with Outlook and provides a link to be able to switch it off.
So, that’s what I do. But there is only a slight change in the error message that I can display when it won’t send. But then on another part of the forum I find you have to also do something else. Which I do. And the error message changes again.
And then I remember that I read on one of the forums that a persons ISP had suddenly blocked port 25 (used to send mail) except for their own smtp mail function. So I try, just in case. And then it works.
So was the problem Alice or ZoneAlarm or, even, both at the same time?
Either way, I’m now thinking that I will try and find another Firewall product (I haven’t really liked ZoneAlarm since Checkpoint took over) and then, if Wind/Infostrada get their act together, I’ll let them move me after all.
Of course, that almost certainly makes me a little, no, probably completely, crazy, but Alice have annoyed me twice in a week now. Cazzo Alice, and ZoneAlarm is only slightly better!
I know I’m not the first and I know I’m not the last, but it doesn’t help really. The story goes thus:
About 4 weeks ago or more, Alice (the ADSL arm of Telecom Italia) rang me up and I spoke to a very nice lady, in English, of course, who informed me that I could upgrade my ADSL from 4 MB to 20 MB for no extra money and I would have to do nothing. ‘What, nothing?’ No, not even change my modem! I would notice no difference except, if my modem could handle it, a faster speed. OK, I said (I know, my first stupid mistake).
Then, about 2 weeks ago, Wind (otherwise known as Infostrada) said that they were doing this special deal whereby a call to the UK would cost 20 cents. What, per minute?, I asked. No, for the whole call! AND they would give me a cheaper ADSL line (only 4 MB – but my modem can only handle that and it’s quick enough). But, I said, last time I tried to change, I was told that I would be without ADSL for 1 week. No, the nice man, who spoke English very well, said, you will only be without ADSL for a maximum of 1 hour. But what about the password, etc. I said. Don’t worry, he said, we will email you the password and connection settings. Wow, I said, OK then, sign me up! (My second stupid mistake).
So, last night, after going to a Gospel concert (which was really crap – I don’t think white people have the correct voices for Gospel and V agrees) and a beer and so forth, we returned home to find – no ADSL!
A message on the screen says that the new set up is available via my Alice mail account. Except it has been over two years since I accessed that account – and I only have it because they made me have one when I first set up ADSL. So I have absolutely no idea how to get the information to access ADSL. I may be without internet access for the whole weekend or, God forbid, longer. It’s like being in a desert without water. What will I do? How will I manage to live? And is this problem because of the upgrade I signed up for or the change to Infostrada? How the hell do I know?
Oh, and now nobody in the Technical area speaks English – surprise, surprise. I must speak Italian, apparently. Yet, of course, when they try to sell me something they always speak English. How very convenient. So I ask a colleague here to help as he is our network man. At which point he tells me that he is with Infostrada – well, sort of. He has been without ADSL and telephone line since 7th May!!!!
He will help me this afternoon. I do hope we can sort it. If we do, then I will cancel everything else and NEVER, EVER CHANGE AGAIN!
On the bright side, I’m already thinking that, instead of being stuck in front of the computer I may read some books, write some letters, go for walks, prepare some food, clean the house and many, many other things. Actually it will be more like being on holiday!
In the meantime, I found this somewhere on the internet the other day and thought it was useful to remember this. (I’m sorry, I don’t know where from or who posted it).
“Well there is a difference [talking about Bush and the leaders of the Iraq resistance, I think, but could apply to many, many situations]. The one is like a pirate, the other an emperor. From St Augustine’s City of God, said the pirate “Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.”
It’s a thought, isn’t it?
Update: Now, as I’m able to put the picture up and add this update, you can tell that I’m back online with ADSL – Hurrah! However, it still annoys me that Alice can happily sell me stuff in English but can’t support me unless I have someone who speaks Italian with me. Bah!
Today, in Milan, the sun turned green! Yes, that’s right, it was only a slight hue of green, but green it was. It was very strange walking around in this slightly green light. It seemed to make the leaves on the trees (yes we have a lot of them in Milan although how they survive in the pollution beats me) much greener than normal. Walking around, people were just staring up towards the sun or there with their hands in front of them, examining them, as if they had some dread disease. It was quite freaky, just like some sort of Science Fiction film. Except that we were here and it wasn’t some film set.
I thought it was about time that I looked at some of the blogs I like and add them to the list on the side. But, maybe, a little introduction for them would be good.
