Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

I have an unexplainable grump on today.

Bah.

 

Kids on your lawn?

 

Humbug?

 

…Bumhug?

 

Nope, no reason, that'd be a reason.

Damn, not had one of those for years.

Kind offer but I'll pass thanks

 

On the tipping tip - hotel (non-)recycling.

The amount of recyclable stuff we just had to put in the single universal room receptacle over the last week, x the number of rooms in the place, compounded by the fact they absolutely undoubtedly do not employ someone to sort this stuff through, to the power of having the willingness to have even done it ourselves had they provided the appropriate containers, equals me wondering why I even have to bother separating the "previously one pink bag" goodies into "all these fkg stupid multiple sacks that spill their guts all over the street in the slightest wafty breath even though the council doesn't then pick it up" whilst at home, other than because it saves them a job and thus cost at their end despite putting our rates up anyway.

Logic has left the building.

And the impact my recycling is having on the environment has now been put into context. Not to mention the fact that half of our recycling disposal is apparently subbed out to cheapest bidders abroad, then promptly dumped somewhere where people either don't care or have no power to complain about. If I can find the photos from our Maldives trip years ago showing the seabird nursery on a sandbar covered in the most obnoxious clearly-flytipped filth, I'll post them. It was sold as a "romantic day trip". But wasn't. Refunded.

Anyway. I'm cross about recycling but not sure if I hid it that well.

 

And that was apparently post number 666, so maybe this is the end of the world... via the medium of plastic.

 

I couldn't help but think about the futility of it all separating the bubble wrap from jiffy bags on Sunday.

This was due to remembering watching a news article, sometime ago, where UK recycling was getting burned on the edge of a village, somewhere, where the villagers just had to put up with the fumes.

 

Intermittent charging issues either being caused by one of the Pod Points at work or the Kia Niro-E (company EV). Has to of course happen at a time when the car is seeing greater than usual use to go to different sites.

Twice it has failed to charge beyond the 5 minute grace window despite the "Confirm charge" being selected. Tested it on both of our Model 3 and MG4 and it works as expected without a problem (bonus of free Elec from Solar).

Need to test the Kia out again (when its back from site) as it may have just been a glitch on the Pod Point software.

I have asked our users to check after 5 minutes to ensure the car is still charging as it's expected that the last to use it is responsible in ensuring it gets charged to at least 70%. Of course doesn't stop the general "End of the world" event when this hasn't happened - now compounded by it not necessarily being user error.

At least I turned off scheduled charging in the MG as otherwise I would have been even more confused!

 

Honeymoon period over with Virgin Broadband less than a week after installation.
I was initially disappointed when I realised that the guys pulling fibre on the street were working for Virgin and not Openreach. I was correct to be.

I've had a couple issues with intermittent drops in connectivity that have happened during a few work calls the last couple of days. I check the logs and turns out its been blipping quite regularly since it was installed, but failing over to my LTE which is still in contract until Sept has hidden it from me.

One saving grace is that the call centre didn't need me to jump through hoops troubleshooting my internal network before booking a technician for tomorrow. Fingers crossed its something obvious. It seems odd that the blips seem to all happen in the morning, I'd have put it down to a poorly terminated fibre otherwise, since its patched twice from the street.

 

Virgin man has been - shoddy terminations have been unshoddied and a kinked fibre that left him wondering how we had any connectivity at all has been rectified. Merely coincidental that it seemed like it was mainly in the morning and then fine in the evening I'm told.

Finger crossed that was the actual issue and not a red herring. Moral of the story, don't schedule installation for a Friday afternoon.

Now to research the viability of getting the VM hub to actually work in bridge mode or ideally ditching it entirely

 

I have mine in modem-only mode, it’s the only time the useless thing is reliable. It was just an config setting in the web UI. Although if you’ve just had it installed you’ll have a newer model than mine, so instructions likely wouldn’t be the same (and I couldn’t find out anyway without rebooting into router mode, and I do t really want to do that! )

 

I have the hub 5x, no page in the ui and while there’s a direct link that will take you to a page that claims to activate modem mode, it doesn’t work.

There are reports of some getting direct to their own router working with a specific SFP so that may be the way forward.

 

I don't think the hub5x ( xgs pon) has modem mode

 

This would imply that the stupidhub 5x does not have a modem mode but it *might* at some point in the future...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/Hub-5x-Modem-Mode/td-p/5459564

which given what VM are like [why fix things when they can try and sell you something]... don't count on it ever happening...

 

There is a page that's accessible directly that claims to enable it - most report it doesn't work, with one workaround that can supposedly get it working through a particular set of steps but, not on the 10g port. EDIT: 10g port seems to completely disappear in fake-modem-mode, 1g ports seem to be alive but no WAN.

I have found someone who says they've got a xgs-pon ONT-on-SFP working, which to me is the best option out of all of them, but its far from plug and play so I've got some homework to do there.

 

Ah, beans.

Well that sucks. I was planning to try and do the old “you’re charging me a bloody fortune, it’s way more than new customers - do better or I walk” dance. But if it’s going to involve a change of router, I might hold off.

Up until about 20 minutes ago, “do better or I walk” was an empty threat. No other service in our area could match Virgin Media, they couldn’t hit more than ~65mbit.

I’ve just learned that apparently some FTTP outfit called YouFibre now supplies our area… They’re offering gigabit at £29.99 per month with no price rises for the duration of the 2-year contract - Virgin have just put us up to £70, after starting us off 18 months ago at £60. YouFibre are also offering 2 gigabit for £49.99 p/m, and 8 gigabit - eight freakin’ gigabit! - for £129.99 p/m. And apparently their upload/download speeds are synchronous - Virgin are asynchronous, we have gigabit down but only 100mbit up… and I can only hit those speeds with my own network infrastructure.

From what I can see of some very quick research, there seem to be a lot of initial customer service woes and connection speed issues. More research is warranted, methinks.

 

You should be safe from this one - the 5x is for XGS-PON only, so would only be thrust upon you in the event of a network upgrade.

What are you getting for your £70? More than just broadband I hope! I'm paying £45 for 1.2gbit symmetric, and if at any point I can find a good reason to upgrade to the 2.4gbit symmetric (other than "ah screw it why not"), its £90.

 

Nope, broadband only



1000 down, 100 up.

We’ve been with them a very long time, more or less about 15 years so far. Their upgrade options for existing customers absolutely stink, and they flat out admit they only offer deals to new customers so that they can entice more customers. Every time I want to change or upgrade the package I have to call them and convince me to stay. I usually end up getting a better offer than what’s available on their website, but it does drive me nuts.

Definitely going to be looking into YouFibre a bit more.

 

Took aaaages to get setup but now we actually are it's been pretty good for the past couple of months with YouFibre. I mean we've only got the 500mb package at a reduced rate/with some free months to make up for the delays getting it installed but yeah, happy so far.

On the slightly more negative side I've got a technical test to do for a potential role that I'm really struggling to motivate myself to look at at all.