Orange EE blues

I did bother to get up early this morning and get to Morning Prayer in College as my dear near neighbour on the upper corridor Dr John Wilks was addressing students and staff for the first time in the Tuesday Reflection assignment. John is an experienced Methodist lay preacher and a theological educator with a long and interesting track record in working with people training for ministry and mission. It was good to hear him engage with one of the high points of New Testament writing - 1 John 4 - and the challenge that faces every community to make love of each other and love of God consistent with each other.

After breakfast, I had a go at sorting out my new study, which has two computers. One wired up and ready to go, the other just dumped surplus to requirements somewhere else in the building I guess. The one wired up took half an hour to boot up and attach itself to the network. The hard drive wasn't all that full. It was probably eight or nine years old, same age as my oldest functioning laptop from which Windows XP was banished in favour of more efficient and speedy Linux several years ago. 

I went home for lunch to collect the old HP laptop. It had much the same specification as the machine I inherited. It booted up in 3-4 minutes, attached itself to the College network, then blew an adaptor plug fuse. Idiot that I am, I picked one from my collection with a 1amp fuse when a 3amp is needed for the laptop's replacement transformer. Ah well, it can wait. The time for urgency in reading College emails and shuffling documents is past. Thank heavens.

Fr Mark came to the evening's tutor group for a get-to-know-you session. It's not as if students don't know much about him already, but it is as important for them to make their own personal relationships with him as it is for me to step back. 'He must increase while I must decrease', as St John Baptist would say. 

After the session it was satisfying to get away in good time to attend the first of the new term Chi Gung sessions, which did me a power of good. Then I went over to Owain's place to pick up the misplaced SIM card. It worked perfectly after a re-boot. Even so, it's yet a poor advertisement for Orange EE's customer service. Just as well I didn't have cause to rely on a connected phone that I'd paid for to be in urgent contact with someone during a minor personal crisis. Having emergency service access on any phone is all well and good, but why overwhelm 999 with non-critical stuff because your providor cannot deliver accurate and timely information about the phone service you've paid for?