10 am Thursday morning, I’m innocently sitting at my computer trying to look at one of my regular web haunts, when I get a ‘cannot connect to server’ message. I tried another site thinking that one was just having trouble, but I got it again. So I went to power cycle the modem, which is usually my first port of call when Darrin isn’t home and the internets are broken. Nothing happened. Checked all the cables, tried again. Still nothing happened. Pick up the telephone receiver…dead silence. Ah. So that’s the problem. Got out our brand spankin’ new laptop and tried to find an unsecure wireless network. Only one wireless network comes up, and it’s a secure one. Drat. Eventually I rang up the Telstra fault report number on my mobile, punched in our phone number, and was told by a computer that a line had been cut somewhere and they expected it to be resolved by 7pm that night. Okay, so one day with no internet is annoying, but not the end of the world. I can cope. I’ll just go do some sewing & gardening, stuff I’d been meaning to do for a while anyway.

7pm comes and goes. Still no dial tone on our phone. So Darrin’s home by now and rings the fault number, and stays on to talk to a real live person. They tell him it’s been pushed back to Friday evening at 7pm. Boo, hiss.

Friday morning, keep checking the phone to see if there’s a dial tone. Nope. Rang it from my mobile a few times and it RINGS. From past experience setting up my phone line when I lived at Campbelltown, this tells me maybe they’ve hooked it up to the wrong house. But anyway. I keep ringing the fault number now & then to see what’s going on, and all they say is ’service difficulty’ and ‘as soon as practical’ for return of service. That doesn’t fill me with confidence.

So anyway. I was catching up with some friends in North Adelaide, so I thought I’d take the laptop along and see if I could find a wireless network while I was there. Nope. So when I left I started looking again, with the laptop open on the passenger seat. North Adelaide was looking pretty good for wireless networks, even unsecure ones (for instance Internode, our ISP, has several around the city). But I couldn’t connect to any of them. I’m thinking being in the car was interfering with the signal. So anyway, we start driving home. And I decide what the heck, McDonald’s has free wireless, and a playground, and I’m desperate. So we stopped for lunch and Caleb played in the playground while I surfed the net a bit. And then we went home.

And I kept checking the modem/phone/fault number for updates, but nothing changed. And Darrin decided to ring them just as I was going to bed, and talked to a real live person again, and they told him: Monday.

MONDAY?! Could they be any more slack? (Well, yes, it’s Telstra. Slack is their middle name.)

Oh, and also Friday evening, I was trying all night to get into online banking from Darrin’s Blackberry, but it kept telling me the service was too busy and to try again later. Argh.

So Saturday morning I got up, tried the Blackberry again, and still no luck. And then I showered, got dressed, and headed off to the library to use one of their computers. And here’s where it starts to get funny. Not.

I sat down at a booking computer and punched in my card number & PIN. And it told me that bookings aren’t allowed on my account. Huh?! I’ve used computers there before, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been ‘naughty’ with them, so why the heck is it telling me that? I tried another one. Same message. So I go to the desk and tell the librarian what’s happening, and she checks my card, and tells me there’s a fine on my account that has to be paid before I can use a computer. Great. So I check in my wallet, and as I expected, I don’t have anything even closely resembling two dollars. And I tell the librarian that I need to get into online banking, so I can transfer money into another account, so I can withdraw it and pay the fine. She doesn’t look too happy about it, but gives me a temporary login so I can get in and transfer the money. Yay.

So then I walked down to the ATM, got the money, went into the shops, got some meat for tea, and went back to the library. Paid my fine, sat down at a booking computer, and it told me the next available computer would be 45 minutes away. And have I mentioned that Darrin needed the car that afternoon to go orienteering? Yeah, so that wasn’t gonna work. So I went around to one of the quick use computers, 15 minute sessions, and used that one. Logged back in when time was up, went for another 15 minutes. About 4 minutes from the end of that session, Darrin sends me a text to ask what we’re doing for lunch and that he WAS planning to leave in 40 minutes. Oops.

So I went to a takeaway shop & grabbed a couple schnitzel packs. Came home, had lunch, Darrin sat down at his computer and said “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I gave him a funny look. He said “The good news is our internet’s back. The bad news is our internet’s back so we can sit around wasting time.”

And there was much rejoicing (yay).

1. Just noticed my potatoes are coming up! There’ll be a big garden update in a bit.
2. Our phone line was dead for 50 hours. Rant on this coming later.

So I had a few hiccups with the Wordpress sites, so that some things weren’t showing up, or showing up correctly, but now I’m pretty sure I’ve got it all fixed. Let me know if you see something odd (AFTER you try reloading the page and/or restarting your browser, in case it’s something on your end).

So anyway. If you haven’t seen the new improved Little Para Pants site, go look.

So don’t panic, if you load the page & it’s hideous, it probably won’t stay.

Because I haven’t been able to post for so long, I’m catching up. So here’s a few more things to tell you all.

Darrin’s gotten the second week in September off work, for a big roadtrip to & from Canberra. We may even hit Melbourne on our way back & do Caleb’s American citizenship stuff if it’ll all work.

Little Para Pants has also been Wordpressed. And it’s got a nice little online shop plugin, so somebody go buy something! Still keeping the Etsy shop open as well, because it’s cheap advertising. I’ve got new nappies on display in both shops, and have more fabric on order, and waiting on a couple nappy samples from someone who sells them & wants me to design a new nappy with features from both of those. So I’ve got plenty to do.

And I don’t think I mentioned that I’m a sponsor of next month’s Great Down Under Nappy Hunt, so now I have.

For those of you who haven’t seen them yet, here are photos of Ian. In the next couple days I’ll try to get new photos of Caleb up there too.

How are we doing…well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? And you’ll get a million different answers, at least from me, depending on when you ask. Overall though, it’s sort of a rollercoaster – sometimes up, sometimes down, and you never know how long the up is going to last before something gets triggered. Physically though, I was feeling as good at two weeks post-Ian as I was at three MONTHS post-Caleb. And it seemed almost wrong in a way, what with everything else spinning out of control.

There are apparently people out there (though I haven’t run into any of them yet) who would say to just get over it & move on, but you know what? You don’t get over something like this. Sure, it heals over time, but just like with a broken leg that heals, a change in the weather or a bump in the wrong way will make it ache again.

The garden. In the last couple weeks I’ve done a lot. I was going to just give up on the stuff I planted before Ian was born, but then I saw new leaves forming, so I thought I’d mulch around them & see how they go. And now I’ve planted potatoes, and strawberry plants, and an apple tree & an almond tree. This morning I started off some seeds in egg cartons again – capsicum, lettuce, and celery. And peas in a planter box. And in a few days (when I find some room in the garden) I’ll put some carrots in too. Or, hmm, I’ve got a big plant pot that would be deep enough for good sized carrots. Might do them in there.

What’s up with Caleb? Full sentences. Empathy. Trains. Thomas. More Thomas. Still more Thomas. Warning: cute kid story ahead!

A couple weeks ago Caleb & I were out shopping. I’d bought some donuts, and gave him one (which he only ate a little of), and I had one, and I dropped the last bit of it on the ground. So I picked it up, put it in a bin nearby, and came back to Caleb in the shopping trolley. And right away he lifts his arms up to hug me, and goes “Aw poor Mum, sorry Mum, Mum ok?”

Every time we go into a shop now, he’s on the lookout for Thomas. When he first got into it, he’d spy something halfway down an aisle and say “Thomaaaaaas!” excitedly. Now, of course, he just remembers where ALL the Thomas things are, ALL over the store, and tells me how to get to them.

Okay, it’s bedtime. Gotta put my iced tea in the fridge before I go off though.

Been migrating this to Wordpress over the last few weeks, and finally got everything working like I wanted, and everything moved over, and tonight finally remembered to ask Darrin to point melvania to the new site instead of the old crappy Mambo site…and here we are.  All Wordpressed up and nowhere to go.

I didn’t want to post anything before we switched it all over, because then I’d have to move more posts over…and I didn’t want to.  It was nearly 700 items I had to move!

And Little Para Pants is all switched over too.  If you’re using IPv6, however, it’ll take a few more minutes for everything to synchronise.

{mosimage}Some people have told me they’re getting errors about suspicious activity when they’re trying to post a comment, but we haven’t been able to get the error ourselves yet. But we do know about it and we’re looking into it, so hopefully we’ll find the problem soon. In the meantime, keep posting comments, because some of them might actually get accepted.
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So we’ve been slack, I admit. We haven’t put up any new videos of Caleb in…well, let’s just say a long time. As of this morning, though, there’s twice as many as before. So those of you with the address can go look it up and see how cute he still is.

Those of you who don’t have the address, if you ask for it (and we know you) we’ll probably give it to you. We just don’t want the whole world able to access them, so we haven’t published it anywhere.

{mosimage}As you can see, I’ve added a couple new features to the comments. Firstly I’ve upgraded the comment component (and done it properly this time). Second, I’ve installed a bot that shows ON THE FRONT PAGE how many comments are attached to a certain post. And last, I’ve put in a module on the right with the five latest comments, so you can all know who’s posted last, and whether there’s been any comments since the last one you posted.
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Guess who’s been eating dirt…

More here.
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