Hello Grumpies!

Thought I'd share the highlight of Christmas day with you.

Just before Chrimbo our oven died. We got a new one on Christmas eve and bright and early on Chrimbo morning I decided to "try it out". I was making my chocolate cake. The new oven looked just like the old one so I turned it on to heat up. Got my cake ready and popped it in the oven. Himself likes to do Christmas dinner and we were both pottering about the kitchen prepping veg etc. Himself looks at the oven and said ... "Should it look like that?" He opened the door and flames shot out.

So... Chocolate Cake 2nd attempt.

I turned the oven down and started again. Cake doesn't go on fire this time but looked well, sort of browner than it should when we took it out. We let it cool for a bit and sawed sorry cut the very brown top layer from it.

Time for turkey to go in the oven and this is when we discovered I'd grilled the cakes and not baked them.

The cake really did taste lovely and this time I managed to snaffle a little bit myself.

hi Pixie.....wow what a tale of endurance

morning all from East Angular..a warm EA, I must say.
We are out later....possibly all three of us if Ghostieboy is up to it...he has had what ever snot/grot thing that started with a sore throat on Xmas eve....

Belated Christmas wishes from the land of intermittent internet connection... latest theory Mr Sad has come up with is that next-door's flashing christmas lights may be to blame. I've volunteered to pop round and ask them to switch them on to test said theory...however as I'm not yet dressed this may be a tad premature

Rather hoping we can avoid the BT engineer call out that has been helpfully scheduled for tomorrow morning as we have something else scheduled for lunchtime onwards that I'd really like Mr Sad there for.

Christmassy vibes to all in need...please bung 'em back this way around 3pm tomorrow.

Love you lot

Have you tried connecting to the router via an Ethernet cable? I'd expect lights to corrupt the wireless signal but not anything else, I'd expect Ethernet to work (guinea pigs aside).

You could also try changing the wireless channel on the router, your wireless signals might be being interfered with by a neighbour's router. Choose channel 1, 6 or 11, whichever is different from what you have now.

Nah - himself is a techie and been googling - has all sorts of monitoring stuff loaded on his server and it's looking like line noise (don't ask me, I'm regurgitating techie stuff I can't even begin to understand and I'm way too logical for all this stuff ). Personally I think the original theory about overload at the exchange is more viable. It's probably just coincidence that there's been no drop out of any note this evening yet, and they haven't switched their flashing lights on.... ...said lights run right next to our telephone/broadband cable, y'see.

Anyway we've put the BT engineer off until Thursday now

ETA: himself's pc is cabled and has the same issues - wireless within the house network is fine and dandy, there's just no internet connection full stop when it goes. When it first happened we thought he'd been cut off for doing illegal downloads

^^^ Ooh. Interesting (to KJ anyway).

^^^^ whistles over Plum's head

Not much happening here. Work tonight. DopeyPup chewed a pc cable that OH had just given to no 2 stepson. Ahhh well, he'll learn not to leave cables lying around.

Had quite a nice Christmas day in the end. LittlePlum overjoyed with presents. Santa gets all the credit - dammit! Still happy that LP believes in him though Did I tell you this already? My memory is getting shocking!

Went round to our ex-rodger-the-lodger and his wife's house for brunch on christmas morning. It was good fun and much shooting with Nerf guns was done - chaotic happy Christmas fun and it was nice that LP and I got to share in that. OH was at work so it would have been a very quiet day otherwise. Quiet afternoon then sorting out LP's ipod touch and loading music and stuff on to that.

Anyway, hope you all are having a great christmas break. I'm off to take OH to work soon and then I have the joys of food shopping

A belated Happy Chruistmas to you all, lovely people!

Here come those vibes, Sad - a bit early, but you can grab them when you need them...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
((((((((Sad))))))

Rushing - back later!

woo hoo all

Woohoo snoWy and Plumsters and Handy and KJ and PQ and LL and Batty and everyone else.

Handy - vibes appreciated, more of the same for Friday would be good

Nothing much to report here other than that the neighbour's lights are on and the internet connection doesn't appear to have been directly affected. Back to the drawing board for Mr Sad

@MrSad: Maybe they've upgraded your exchange and your router is slowly adapting to it. I'm on 17 Mbits/s now. I know this sounds like the IT crowd, but turn off the router for an hour so it loses its memory, forcing it to recalibrate the line. It's also possible your router isn't compatible

I sense a "Dragons' Den" idea (dunno if that show is on Oz TV).

We sell nasty smelling (to pups and guinea pigs) PC cables. In fact its a good garage business, dunking standard cables in sekrit witches' brew and selling at a profit.

So grumpies, what's the recipe?

Ahead of you matey - new router was purchased (at huge expense ) on Xmas eve when the line first died, as the assumption when the ISP said all was well and we'd not been cut off was that the router might be at fault.

Throw us another

He's been monitoring line noise for 48 hours now and although the line speed is slower the noise is better. Whatever that means

The stuff mother in law boils her sprouts in for three weeks before Christmas should do it.

When I had a similar problem, it turned out to be a loose wire in their box which sometimes connected and sometimes didn't.

Thanks Biz That sounds entirely likely, IMO - the BT chap is coming out tomorrow so all we can do is hope it plays up while he's here as it's been fine for the past couple of days now - typical

It's exasperating isn't it? Since mine was fixed I've had no more trouble, so good luck.

We do get "Dragons' Den" here, just probably from several years ago We're going to be millionaires!! Woo hooooo!! Not sure I want to be in the factory while the sprouts brew! Also dogs are pretty disgusting and foul smells don't seem to trouble them so much, so sprout-juice might not work! I'm still going to be a millionaire though - woo hooo!!

Work hurt last night. Couple of blokes didn't turn up so that meant that we all had to do more of the heavier stuff which has left me a tad sore this morning. Hopefully I'll be fine by tonight as working again. 15 hours this week so that's better than it has been.

Biz! By strange coincidence I was thinking about you yesterday or the day before and then you appear! I must have magicial summonsing skills. I wonder if it works in person and who should I summons here?

Looks like a heap of bad weather is heading our way, the tail end of an ex-cyclone, so big rain in a couple of days. Mind you, it's raining again today anyway, so more rain - mehhhh, water off a duck's back!

I'm off now to get back to my book, 4th in the Shardlake series, Revelation and it's quite gripping!

Hi Plum. I've been enjoying your "Column from Down Under" - definitely worthy of a newspaper slot. You do have the gift - and not just one.

Something tells me you'll survive the weather storm intact.

woo hoo hi Biz

Hi snOwy and congratulations.

Congrats might be a bit premature as still have to pass the portfolio

You will.