Today was the last chaotic day in the run up to Christmas, I didn't manage any running, although things should start to get better from now on. Christmas preparations have centered around repairing the internet and sorting out the front room and the kitchen so they are at least habitable enough for Christmas.

There was a touch of Murphy's law when the internet started to wobble yesterday afternoon, the rest of this paragraph is very geeky - unless you are having problems with your Blueyonder cable modem - in which case it's essential reading... The internet connection was intermittently failing. Apart from the various plugs and sockets there are really only two things that can upset the internet throughout the house, they are the cable modem and the router - and sure enough power cycling them would restore connectivity, but only for a random  number of minutes.

It's a Cisco (linksys) router; the probability of it failing is approximately zero, but just in case I took it out and connected the "copper" PC to the cable modem, problems continued, I just managed to download the Blueyonder "Instant Support Tool" - it only told me what Windows and the Cisco box did - the modem seemed to fail (a better description is that it went offline). Eventually I phoned Telewest, and after the usual pointless resetting the browser options, I power cycled the modem - and they could see it online again, and things started to work out.

The cable modem webpage is 192.168.100.1 (at least the Scientific Atlanta DPX100 is), and 192.168.100.1/gscan.htm lets you set the frequency. Once the engineer cottoned onto the frequency being dodgy, he told me a new one (331 GHz) to type in - and we are restored to normal. ...I reckon that I'm fairly IT literate and it took us the best part of an hour on the phone to get through it, it must take some people all day!! - peace is restored to the Sian and Phil house - just before Christmas.