You may have recall from a while ago that we had a little problem with the water . . . like it stopped working due to the pressure switch failing. On a similar thread you may recall that we now have the washing machine which does rather us a fair bit of water and in turn means we need to water up on a very regular basis, i.e. every other day. Like many other residential boaters we do not have a permanent water connection, instead we roll out the hosepipe, connect up to the nearest tap and fill up.

Now Wych Way is 62ft long and our nearest water point is another 30ft away. Initially we purchased a 50m reel, as I've said before it is just a shame it only came with 25m of hose. To get around this problem in the short term we had been connecting two hoses together then having to disconnect them to tidy things up again. Finally I bought another 25m hose and being a believer in some things being worth paying the extra for I went for the 'professional' grade hose. Bad mistake.

All of a sudden the water started tasting what can only be described as distinctly 'rubbery'. We did think that this may wear off after a while but some weeks later we were still getting the horrible water. The shame of it is that the taste does wear off after a few days, by that time of course we need to be refilling and that brings the bad taste back.

The moral of this story is simple . . . more expensive isn't always best. . . unless of course you buy the proper food grade quality hose instead of the just as expensive 'professional' garden hose which is of course what I should have done in the first place. Now we have a single 30m length of hose that is secured along the hand rails and permanently installed to our water tank. The remaining 30ft remains tidily on the reel until we need it and the water tastes fine again. Shame then that for some reason the water from the tap has gone orange, good old Severn Trent eh ?

And on the subject of Orange . . . . When it works the Orange 3G data card is brilliant, when it doesn't Orange's customer support isn't. A few months back (like February 2005) my e-mail packed up. I could receive but not send and what was most frustrating was the fact that the messages looked like they had gone but what was happening was that my laptop was sending the e-mail to Orange's server but this was not connecting to the rest of the world. I could prove this by sending a message to myself which arrived no problem. Similarly a test message sent to Orange's data support team got to them. It was only when the message tried to leave Orange that things didn't happen.

Eventually I got Orange to recognise this problem and to be fair to them they fixed the bug within a few days.

Then on the Orange web site I found an upgrade to the data card software, quite a big download but on a 3G connection only 6 minutes. Duly downloaded and installed, all looked great until I realised that now I could send e-mail but not receive it. Another phone call to Orange and eventually we decide that doing an un-install and rollback is probably the most reliable way forward.

Last month (March 2005) down goes the e-mail sending again. I get various excuses from Orange and am told on more than one occasion that it is a known problem and will be fixed in a 'few days'. Two lots of 'a few days' go by and still no e-mail. Now I'm angry. What makes it worse is that every time you phone data support you get a different person and have to go through the whole story again. What makes it even worse is that only the 3rd line support know about the problem, no one bothered to tell the people that actually take the calls. I point out that without working e-mail and ftp (which has also packed up) I can not carry on my business as a web author www.peakbusiness.co.uk (shameless plug).

Anyway, one week to the day with no e-mail and I tell Orange that unless they get me a working e-mail system by the end of the day I am going to cancel my contract and buy a Vodaphone card instead. They are more than happy with my leaving and put me through to disconnections who tell me that as my contract is only 4 months old they will charge me the rest of the one year contract even if I leave. At this point I tell Orange that perhaps they should look up the term 'Breach of contract' as this is what I will be suing them with if they try and charge me. Now it may just be a coincidence but during this phone call e-mail starts working.

Last weekend I was trying to upload 2meg of web site for a customer and the card kept disconnecting. In the end I had to use my phone's GPRS 9k connection which took around 2 hours. After much speaking to the people at data support they suggest setting the card to GPRS only to achieve a reliable connection. I point out that as I pay for a 3G connection I want one. They suggest I download the latest software from the web site. I enquire 'how?' seeing as the &*%$ing connection isn't working. They suggest I visit an internet cafe as they don't have the update available on CD !

Anyhow, in the course of my travels I get into a good 3G zone and download all 20.5 meg of the new file, try to run it and get an error that tells me one of the files is corrupt and this is probably due to a 'download error'. Next day I download the file again, another 20.5 meg out of my allocation, run it again and get the same error message. One phone call to Orange later and they tell me that there is a 'known problem' with the download, I give them the error message (which contains two hex code values) letter for letter and am told they will pass this on to the relevant bod and to 'try again in a few days' . . . . . Now where have I heard that before ? A few days later I have what appeared to be a good idea and phoned up before trying another 20.5 meg download. 'There is no issue with the file.' I am told, the person I spoke to earlier did not write down the error message and is not in today, nor is their boss, who it seems is the only other person who could look the call up. 'What you need to do' I am told is to 'somehow get this file.' 28 minutes later I give up and insist on speaking to a supervisor who tells me straight away that yes, there is indeed a known problem with the download. 'So why have I just spent 28 minutes speaking to your staff who tell me there isn't ? I ask.

Anyhow I find a land line, download the file and write it o a CD (something Orange tell me they can not do) and install the latest software. Hurrah ! Back in paragraph seven of this page I refer to an upgrade that I tried then, you've guessed it, same error this time. Can send e-mail, can not receive.  One quick, comparatively (34 minutes) phone call later and the removing 'bytemobile' (optimizes download speed by allowing you to choose how much quality loss you are prepared to accept to speed things up) and we are back in business.

Like I said at the beginning . . . . When it works it is brilliant.