September 11, 2007

Today has been an exciting day so far. First of all, I am actually typing this blog from home, right into Blogger, instead of my usual method of typing the blog and posting them all once a week. We actually have internet now! Yay!!!!!! Nothing is without it's glitch here though- Virgin sent us a DSL modem thing which does not have an ethernet jack. It's designed to plug in to a desktop computer via USB. So although we have an excellent new router which will give signal for a long way (we wanted to be able to use the connection all over the house and in the back garden) we can't plug it in to the modem. :) George is working on this little problem. But until we get that sorted out I'm not complaining about having to sit in our living room with the modem right next to me. I'm just happy to be connected to the rest of the world again!

Alas, this issue with the modem also prevents us from plugging in our vonage box, which is also ethernet. So it'll be some time longer before we can call out on Vonage. But we can call on skype at least now that we have a connection.

After much deliberation I decided to go with T-mobile for my cell phone provider. We don't have sprint or Nextel here, which I've always used back home. T-mobile will give you a free phone if you have a 1 year contract. So since the phone was free (and after playing with G's phone) I decided to go with a phone that has some more features. The phone I picked has a really good camera and it has video (I'm in the process of uploading video here if it will let me) but I thought it had a stylus pen to navigate with (and more importantly to enter information with) and it doesn't- it just has a little joystick and you have to push the buttons a million times to enter anything in. I've only had it a few hours so we'll see if the camera and video are better enough quality to be worth keeping the phone or if I end up selling it on ebay and getting a different one. (It's now 8pm here, and after having looked at other phones, there aren't any with a camera and the sort of PDA options that G has- so I think I'm sticking with this one. Besides it's growing on me, especially the good pictures it takes and the easy internet access from it. :)

I can't figure out how to get the video onto my computer from the phone, but I'll keep working on that and then you can all watch a video from my view driving through Swavesey and swerving around the parked cars and such on the wrong side of the road. :) Ok, now it's 8pm and I have the video on my computer, but it's a strange format....I think it'll have to wait for tomorrow.

Even though we're in England September 11th is still September 11th. We heard a lot about it on the news, along with General Patraeus' stuff with Congress. Honestly I think we don't realize just how much America is like one of those snow globes- the entire world is watching us. They really are. We hear lots of US news here on the radio, and I don't know if I heard UK news once a month in the US. I got a good dose of the "the world's watching" in Cambodia and elsewhere, but it's always a reminder when new friends here ask us about US news.