Well, it's been over two years now since I returned to the UK, and I finally got around to getting an internet connection again. I must admit that not having even touched keyboard in all that time has been refreshing - I did indeed have a life outside of the tech industry, just waiting for me to go and find it.

True to form, within 24 hours of picking up the phone to order broadband the bullshit began all over again. Six weeks and several visits from British Telecom's engineers to sort out their wiring and I am online again.

Now came the fun bit. Isn't it funny how you can pack computers in so many layers of reinforced, shock-absorbant packaging so that a laptop is encased in something the size of a shipping container, and a server requires the police to close roads to traffic so that you can transport it. Upon arrival at it's new home, you carefully unpack everything and check inside the cases for dislodged heatsinks, loose cables, illegal immigrants etc... The bundles of cables that you lovingly labelled and bound with cable ties appear to have had some kind of orgy and now resemble a popular pasta dish.

The care invested in packing however, seems to have paid off. You plug everything in and it still works! Silly me. The problems start when you attach said computers to the network. Hard drives fail. CPUs start to slowly cook themselves. Strange beeps emanate from the speaker on boot, which sound more like techno music than anything in your motherboard documentation.

Oh yes! I have really missed computers.

I have to be more careful not to leave my Slashdot cookie on Dusan's PowerBook!