…wait. And wait some more.

I’m delighted to be able to say that at last I’m back online from the comfort of my own home. Having considered the various options from the seemingly endless stream of cowboy Internet providers in Dublin, I decided to take the plunge with Eircom. Having established that the line may work but that it was impossible to tell for sure until it had been activated and paid for, I decided that it was worth a try and luckily enough it worked! I even had the strange coincidence of having an Eircom salesman come to my door the day after I had ordered the line to be activated, offering a special priced bundle with Internet. Of course I signed his papers and sent him off happy to have made his easiest sale ever and me happy that at last the web was coming.

But then something happened. Maybe he was beaten up by knackers who then tore up all his papers because they like to do that kind of thing or maybe he suddenly realized that his commission wasn’t worth the shit he had to put up with and packed it all in. Whatever it was, those papers never made it to Eircom HQ and two weeks later when my smug glow of expectation was wearing off, I found out that the bleeding order had never gone through. And to extra little kick in the nuts was that I received a bill in advance for the rental of the phone that I didn’t even want if it wasn’t for the fact that I needed it to get connected! Baaa humbug!!!

A couple of calls later, I had ordered it again and this time my expectations weren’t at all as high. In fact, I fully expected to get a bonus invoice for something ridiculous like placing the order so imagine my surprise when I received a slip of paper yesterday saying that a package had arrived that I could collect from the post office the following working day. I picked it up today and again I was amazed when I set it up and got it working all during my lunch break! And all this a full week before I had expected to see any results or to find out that I needed to order it again. Having reduced my expectations to practically zero, Eircom have proven that they can in fact get things right…all you have to do is wait.

Apologies to anybody that has come to the site in the last month expecting some new content. As some of you know, I’ve been going through a lot of changes of late and by that I mean that I’ve moved away from Barna closer to home in cold, windy Dublin, I’ve hunted, found and started a new job with Yahoo! here and my latest big change came last Sunday when I finally moved in to my new place beside the offices here in East Point. As yet I don’t have an internet connection at home, which has obviously crippled my ability to add content to the blog, but that is something that I hope to rectify early in the new year. What’s more I’ve a long list of new photos that I want to fire up on the site. They will give you a rough idea of what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks and months.

All that’s left to say is Happy Christmas to everyone. At this time that means such different things to different people we should all spare a thought for anyone less fortunate than ourselves. Where is this coming from? Well today I donated $100 to a charity helping disadvantaged children in Poland thanks to a thoughtful Christmas gift from the company. Much better than a lump of cash that would more than likely be squandered on needless drinking (although that works too!).

Thanks to a really handy feature from Last.fm, I’ve been able to add my personalised music charts to the site. You’ll find them in the pages category of the sidebar. Note that I haven’t had access to Last.fm for the past few weeks, so some of the listings may be less than accurate, like the one saying that Sabina is my second favourite artist. Obviously he’s number one!

It’s kickoff time, and although this post won’t see the light of day until I have my styles in order, I’m gladly going to re-iterate that if you are reading this blog in Internet Explorer then you are a moron. If on the other hand your chosen browser is Firefox, or even Opera (which I’ve been getting more fond of as each day passes) then welcome and congratulations on not being a moron. Long live the fox!

Welcome to little_i, the online home of elbartoli.