Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Yesterday was the big day for videoconferencing… I ran an IT meeting from here in the cave… 9 people in 6 locations in 3 countries – or rather attempted it.  After the biggest downpour of rain here in Galera I’ve seen in summertime… yesterday morning I  got up to find that one of my ADVENT over-the-mains Internet units had blown itself to pieces (less than 2 years old). Fortunately I started with a pack of 3 so I had a spare… which promptly refused to connect reliably. 

So armed with a less than ideal signal and Skype BETA (handles multiple video locations), GotoMeeting and my various documents ready to go for a meeting that started at 10am UK time, we started on time – to echos… no matter what we did, we got feedback and echoing.. we scrapped Skype and used Gotomeeting on it’s own with mics on mute until requested.. and so it was we managed several hours of meeting in 3 countries. I’ve a suspicion the problems were down to one site not set up properly but hey… still something new we’d not done before!

The weather picked up and so I decided the answer to the WIFI issue was to re-site the one router so it is line of site for upstairs AND downstairs – a mere matter of 8 metres of network cable and a small cupboard to mount the lot at the bottom of the stairs. 5pm, off we went to Huescar – and returned empty-handed. The electrical shop was closed and not one of the furniture shops we looked at had such a thing as a small cabinet. If we’d had a B&Q I’d have wrapped things up in one store.

So, as is often the case, it’s a trip to Granada (namely Carrefour and Brico-Depot) to sort out the bits we need. I’m hoping the weather is going to be nice for the drive and perhaps we’ll take in a bus tour.

If you’ve an iPhone incidentally you can now read these blogs in a special theme for the iPhone – just punch in the normal web address and you’ll get a special version of the blog.

A pleasant surprise this evening – we were sitting watching David Attenborough “Life on Earth” – probably one of the best TV programs ever… and we had a knock on the door from our Spanish neighbours from over the hill.

Completely unexpected, they brought us a case of wine from GALERA! As you can see from the photo, there’s white, rose and red wine. What a pleasant surprise and a really nice thing to do! Quite made my day!

So all in all not a bad day, sorted the broadband out (cable replacement), discovered where to get cement for fixing pavements – really cheap (under £2 a sizeable bag) and soon we’re to the village for some tapas… there have been a few clouds today but other than that it’s been generally sunny, maybe 34 degrees… just the job. I’m all ready for my meeting tomorrow, the most complex videoconference I’ve done to date….  fingers crossed…

The little fellow you see on the right was at our doorstep yesterday, if I’d included his tail the photo would be well over twice as long – absolutely massive!   I’m hoping no-one is going to tell me they’re poisonous as they really are cute! The nasty on the LEFT however, I’m quite sure if I was smaller and he was bigger… he’d EAT me.

Well, that was an interesting overnight experience. I got up in the middle of the night with an urge to do some forum testing (amazing the things you think of on holiday – I’ve been putting together a vBulletin forum for the FSB and it’s been giving me installation issues) and…. no broadband.

Regular readers will know I had a problem last week and it turned out it was the connector to the Iberbanda dish… well I checked the connector – seemed fine.. and this morning I went up the road to a neighbour who also has the same setup – he’s had no problems… so back to the cave. As the alternative was to ring up Iberbanda who are not the best English speaking company in the world, I poked a hole in the insect mesh and shoved my last decent network cable through in a last-ditch effort – on the hope that a replacement cable might do the job.

I didn’t really expect much but SURE ENOUGH, not only do they use crappy cement over here, they use crappy cables as well! The broadband is working better than ever, I’ve scrapped the original cable and put in a bright new orange one!

Some kind of holiday celebration today so the shops are all closed tonight.  Sun is back out and I’ve no need to contact the office until teatime here so a little sun, I think!

What a weekend… with the weather back in full glorious sunshine, we took off for BAZA.  Down to one Spanish credit card, as mine is out of date, we headed off to the bank to get some cash. Well, the bank machine ate Maureen’s card, so that put the kybosh on some things for the weekend… however we managed and then went off to get some paint etc. The paint was a write-off – the shop didn’t like Maureen’s UK cards (they’re not a very trusting lot) and so despite the bargain price of 17 euros for 13 litres of Pinctura Plastica, we came away empty handed. 

I got my monitor wall bracket and my new Spanish SIM for the mobile phone… 12 euros gives you the SIM and 6 euros of credit. You have to use the phone and update the credit once every 6 months which isn’t bad….certainly cheaper than paying 10 euros a month for a Spanish VOIP line we don’t use! I put the TV bracket on the wall after several unsuccessful attempts and lots of plastering! Anyway, we ended up at a new (for us) bar just outside of Huescar – nothing to write home about – and then a cave restaurant which WOULD have been great had it not been full of noisy kids… but we had a nice night anyway.

Maureen’s been staining fences today and I’ve been trying to figure out how the comms dish works (finally got talking to it’s built in web server) as well as repairing the bathroom (a slight crack in the paint was hiding a 12” square hole in the wall, now full of cement) and generally having a nice wasted day.

Yesterday after upgrading the Fed’s new vBulletin site I realised that part of it wasn’t working so I’ve been sending messaged back and forth to their designers today to sort it out…. nice that they work on weekends.

And now – I think a beer…

This is where we find out whether the oft-repeated phrase bears any weight… it’s time for bed, Maureen is already fast asleep in the living room – and there’s a huge salamander wandering around on the living room wall, 10ft up… no IDEA how he/she managed to get in here….  will we be able to ignore it and give up for the night?

Update: Morning – no sign of him…

Well, not quite that sunny, we had the odd cloud today, but as it was still 36 degrees, we went off to the open air pool at Fuencaliente for a swim. Not the best pool base, being mud, but a great pool and full of pretty large fish – by which I mean anything from a few inches to approaching 2ft long and hundreds of them. Still, we hadn’t heard of anyone getting toes bitten and so a couple of hours later we emerged feeling slightly tanned but nice an cool, to spend an hour or so driving around the area to check out the adjoined restaurant and further up the road, the cave bar El Alcadema… more on that when we pay them both a proper visit.

I actually spent part of the day sitting in front of the computer battling with tech support… I’m beginning to wonder if there is such a thing in the modern world as tech SUPPORT as against people who make life harder…  meanwhile the hot tub here is giving us problems, one of the pumps won’t turn off and the pool support people thought it was a relay… but if you turn the pool off then on – it takes minutes before the pump kicks in – so much for that theory… either way its running constantly which can’t be a good thing. Leaving it off overnight… tomorrow is another day… at least the broadband’s been fine since I sorted the connector out.

Got my new Spanish dictionary – £17.99 for the iPad and iPhone (different versions for each but all in the one price) – Collins – and it’s excellent – 300,000+ words and the audio version of every one – including a complete cross-index and it works offline – huge.. I suspect this might make life easier over here.