My First Trip: Day Twenty Two

Disclaimer: This is an edited version of my diary from December 2000. Some information contained may be incorrect, and opinions I expressed then are not the opinions of Aaron Rowe in 2006. I have posted it purely for the Novelty value.

Monday 11th December 2000

This week is meant to be my busiest week according to D... but I'm still not sure exactly what he means. I've got to wait for the PC's to arrive and then all I'll be doing is setting them up unless that. I'll no doubt have plenty of help. The problem I think we're going to have is that D... wants to put PC's on every desk and some desks just won't take it, because they are already full with drawings and paperwork. It looks like they want me to install the network rather than get someone else to do it. I'll have to work out some measurements of my own before I leave so I can get the right amount of cable, for when I return in January, that is if I can get a new visa. The visa I have is valid for three months but only for one trip, so unless I stay here over Christmas I'll have to go to the Nigerian High Commission in London to explain. I have every intention of returning on Friday.

Things are so frustrating here, when I went to Hyperia last week I checked out when two of our accounts expired and they showed me the date on the system to be expiring in April 2001. Today, we get a message when dialling in that our passwords are not correct. We phone technical support at hyperia to discover that our accounts expired yesterday. I got one up on them though because I discovered I could dial in with the username and password of the account we created a few days ago for D2... and check the email accounts that were meant to have expired. Hah, email for free now.

You get such unbelievably bad service from them it's hard to imagine that they are the best available in Nigeria. It makes us want to set up our own ISP here that charges a lot less, provides a solid 24hr service with excellent connections speed and full net access on all accounts.

D2... came in complaining that the Laptop I'd set up for him wouldn't dial in so he could check his mail. I took it from him and tried it. It worked first time. I even tried it on an analogue line we have in the office just in case it was the fact that there is a digital exchange on this particular line that was making it work, but after a while the analogue line worked too. So I told him it was probably line noise at his house. It wasn't anything to do with me using his account earlier because he was trying it last night.