My first Christmas in the van! I spent it in the peaks as I’d been over in Stoke with that useless shower of fools trying to get the satellite to work. It still doesn’t!
I’ve made a full Christmas dinner though using chicken instead of turkey as I don’t like turkey that much. At least there’s snow here!
Still at Isatlan. Musa spent the entire day working on the equipment, I even fed him lunch and tea.
After starting at 9:30am he finally left at 5pm after somehow getting the unit to work. I was not elated that he’d got it to work, I knew something was wrong and I knew I’d be back.
Nevertheless he went home and I played for a while on the internet thinking what a wonderful thing technology is.
Later that night I drove up the motorway for a few miles and pulled into a service station and set the dish away to connect to the internet. Heh heh I heard that whirring sound that I’d become accustomed to over the last 2 days but no way was it going to connect.
I phoned Musa who told me a few things to try and somehow we got it working. It feels very much like Musa actually doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.
I am seriously not happy with this. £8,000 for equipment, it should just work. I have a very bad feeling about this. 🙁
What a farce.
I met Musa and Chris from Isatlan and drove down to some unit they had in Alsager in Stoke. They spent most of the day fitting the Datastorm to the roof whilst I mooched around a rather small and uninteresting town.
When I returned they had a problem. Although I had specifically asked what power requirements the equipment had and been told 12 volts, what it really needs is 230 volts from a mains inverter! This is a completely different requirement. Musa after a while went and found an inverter that was laying around and sold it to me for a tenner. Bloody bad show though not being prepared like that.
Not only that, but they had damaged the roof of the van and put a small dent in the side at the top. I never really got to attend to this as the equipment wasn’t working anyway. We finally agreed that I would stay the night outside the unit and Musa would come in tomorrow and resolve whatever problem was there.
Disappointing to say the least.
Damn them! Isatlan who are providing the satellite dish and other equipment, have dropped the date back to 16th December now. I’ll have to change the ferry booking grrr!! I’m still annoyed at them for taking nearly £8,000 out of my account without asking. I got it back within 2 days but even so…
Apparently the delay is due to the late arrival of an expected shipment from America. They have the router and modem and some other stuff, but the base unit hasn’t arrived yet.