Life's tedious moments

Lodged my income tax return online. It wasn't very complicated once I got started, but I'm glad to get it over with. Now hanging on the phone waiting to get my internet banking password reset so I can pick up my credit card statements.

Facebook and Firefox

Just got this message from Facebook: "You're using an old web browser to browse Facebook. ... please upgrade your browser. Switch to Firefox." Actually I'm using a beta version of a forthcoming version of Firefox. Not everything is working yet, of course.

Internet news

Our internet connection's been upgraded to a higher speed, the best we can get in this area. Alas, ADSL2 is not available where we live. Google Maps has a new satellite photo of our area, so our house is now visible (if you know where to look). We're not on StreetView, as Carlyle Gardens is private property and AFAIK hasn't given permission for the Google car to come through.

Wireless router now working

Eric finally got the Belkin wireless ADSL modem/router to connect to the Internet. Several default settings were wrong for Australia. Hard to diagnose. Once the settings were sorted, the gadget worked just tine. Eric's blog has the technical details. Note: his blog is written in valid xhtml, so Internet Explorer does not display it.

Back on broadband, despite hardware issues

The broadband service at our new house is now active. Unfortunately, our new wireless modem refused to connect to the internet. Eric spent a lot of time trying to work out what was wrong, without success; he'll work on that some more this weekend and try it out on our service at Airlie Beach. We did have an ancient modem, which worked, so we know the connection at Carlyle Gardens is working. Unfortunately, the ancient modem runs only one ethernet connection (not wireless), so we're a bit limited until Eric gets the technical problems figured out. He's gone off to Airlie Beach for the weekend he was planning to go anyway), where he can use our connection there and try to find out what's going on with the modem -- and how to fix it. (We both assume the modem will work fine there; one of the corollaries to Murphy's Law...) Meanwhile, I'm on broadband again at the new house.

Wireless dial-up internet

Eric now has a wireless network working with our dial-up connection, so we can both be online... slowly.

Phone on, broadband internet coming

The telephone technician showed up right on time today, so we've now got a landline in the new house and I can at least use dial-up access to the internet through the ISP (iinet) that we've been using at Airlie Beach.. Slow, but better than nothing. I immediately applied for a broadband internet connection from them. We've been happy with their service, and we especially like the fact that they provide a dial-up number at no extra charge to use if needed (like now) and they are friendly to Mac and Linux users.