We need a MAC and it's not even raining

The saga of the failed broadband will be into its third week tomorrow and, whilst we have been promised that it will be back on Thursday, we aren't exactly confident. This sorry situation has highlighted a number of serious problems in the broadband system. Somewhere down the supply chain a company called Aspire Internet had a "contractual dispute" which resulted in their broadband supply being switched off.You can't run a business today without broadband so we contracted with a new supplier. But you can't move to a new supplier without a code known as a MAC from your current supplier. But as the current supplier Freeezone can't get a MAC from Aspire, the new supplier BE can't switch the broadband. I have spoken to OFCOM, Freezone and the new suppliers and nobody can get around this problem. Short of getting BT to install a new line there's not much we can do other than accept Freezone's assurance that it will all be back on Thursday at which point we will be off like a shot to the new company. We also need to get a back up supplier as it is intended that all our accounting system will be run on broadband via our Australian group offices one day in the future and this episode would have left us with no book-keeping for two weeks. Time for OFCOM to sort this MAC situation out as hundreds of Aspire customers have been without broadband for a fortnight.



I'm following Kirsty Allsop on Twitter.I've always enjoyed her property shows with co-presenter Phil and it seems that they are working on a new travel programme at the moment.She's currently campaigning on Twitter against homework for young school kids and I have to say that I totally agree with her.Our children had no homework other than reading until they were into secondary school and it didn't do them any harm.They were encouraged to enjoy themselves after school and given as many books to read as they wanted and allowed to watch telly too although they tended to enjoy playing and reading more and only tended to watch the programmes they loved.It was before computers really took of so I don't know how different it would be today but who can forget the enjoyable times we had with books and audio books to quote "The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark" - "That was nice - what's next?"



We went to see Tamara Drewe at Vue last night. A break from the usual Wednesday night routine as Liverpool are playing at Anfield then and I somehow subscribed to buy tickets for League Cup games. The film is based on Posy Simmonds graphic novel in The Guardian and it was a very Guardian sort of comedy based around a literary retreat full of middle class aspiring writers. It was a bit of a rom(p) com and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Posy Simmonds observes the British middle classes with uncanny accuracy and of course,as always with her,there is much more to it than just straightforward comedy with an underlying Thomas Hardy theme (echoes of Far from The Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbevilles)running throughout.The cast is very strong and there is a brilliant performance from young Jessica Barden playing tearaway teenager Jody.Do catch it if you can.

A dog plays a big part in Tamara Drewe. I've never been a dog owner and people sometimes think I am a dog hater although that is not true. I like other people's dogs very much as long as I don't have responsibility for them for 365 days of the year. Who could resist a dog like this who gets a little bit confused about a trip down an escalator?



Taking the dogs theme one step (ok fifty steps) further are the wonderful OK Go. You will all know OK Go as the group who made the famous treadmill video on YouTube and then the paint video last year. Here's their latest. I hope that one day they will record a song that gets played on its musical merits alone but until then let's all marvel in the wonder of their videos. Thanks to Glinner on Twitter for pointing me in the direction of both of these little canine wonders.

Back In The Office

The excitement and glamour of the Hotelympia show is fading to a memory now as we get back to the office and the hard grind. I would class the show as a success in that we had a lot of very positive feedback on the new range, we won a prize for excellence and we got to meet some of our new colleagues from Zip. We had a good quantity of leads.Although the majority of them were from existing customers it was an opportunity for them to see the new features and for Marion and me to say our goodbyes.The show ran without hitch with the only snag being my failure to bring a pair of cuff links. I bought a few posh shirts for the show and didn't realise that they were so posh that there were no buttons on the cuffs. Fortunately Nick (who wears them all the time) had a spare pair. (We must be paying him too much).



Our Zip colleague yesterday was UK Group General Manager Chris Binnie. Chris is a very keen sportsman. He loves a lot of sports but especially enjoys playing cricket and golf. He is a devoted father to son Kieran and tells me that Kieran, who is just four years old is already playing golf. Before I went to Hotelympia I was talking to Chris about driving to the show. I said that I thought I would be driving about 500 miles. Here is my dashboard trip reading for when I arrived home last night. Talk about accurate forecasting!



I mentioned the glamour of Hotelympia at the start of today's blog . If you had seen Marion at 10 last night unloading the car, glamour would be the last thing that you would be associating with the show. She had taken her shoes off during the drive home and her feet had swollen so much from being on the stand that she couldn't put them back on again had to help me to unload wearing a pair of my slippers. And the glamour continued as we sat on the bed and ate a Tesco pasta salad at almost midnight when all the unpacking was finished.



Like Lewis Carroll's whit rabbit, I'm afraid that we have been a bit late with orders this week. We ran down all our stock of the old models last month but unfortunately underestimated demand and, as a few suppliers also underestimated demand we have not been as well stocked as we would have liked and a few customers have had to wait a few days. We always pride ourselves on holding good stocks so please bear with us. Everything is on schedule for us to start getting the new products out within the next ten working days and then we should be back to normal. Apologies if this causes any inconvenience. (Mind you our BSI quoted aim is to get all machine ordered out within ten working days and here I am apologising for doing just that).

Apologies to Paul at Calomax for my calling him Michael the other day on the blog. Where did I get Michael from? (I know where I got it from but I'm not saying. Let's just say I've got a memory like a sieve).

Remember when YouTube was just becoming popular and OK Go and their treadmill song was all the rage. Well, the OK Go boys have done it again and this one is quite spectacular (shame about the song).