I hate it. I hate it. Not even because of moving the actual stuff. I hate it because one has to move one’s connections, or getting new ones. And that is not so easy. Transferring the telephone and adsl of F. turns out to be a big deal. First one simply tells KPN to move the telephone + adsl to the new house. She did that on the 6th of january. There is a physical phone-line in the new house. So it should be easy enough. But according to the administration of the cables that line is taken by an old adsl-connection. (The formers tenants have canceled that months ago, but nevertheless it’s still in the administration). Because KPN does not have a monopol they are not allowed to put their signal on that line. Result: they have to physically make a new line. (Dutch: “bijlassen”). Okay, fair enough, although it shows how much extra useless work is created by this system. But, the KPN ‘lost’/forgot that an adsl signal should be put on the line too, because there was a problem and then xs4all and KPN were waiting for each other (or something along that line). I made a fair amount of calls about it today – and surprisingly I was helped quite well, although the result was mostly finding out that something had gone wrong in the process. Yesterday the extra line was made (physically). The analog thelephone signal was put on it. It works fine. But no adsl. Turns out that the whole administrative process of moving the adsl starts only from today. And that process takes 3 weeks. Sigh.

Second: there is no cable TV in this building. Well, there’s a coax cable somewhere in the cellar but that’s no use (this appartment is on the 5th floor). So I decide to go for Digitenne. I cannot live without cycling on tv. Digitenne has at least both Belgian channels. But here I make a mistake. I get the ‘single tuner’ and what I did not know (nor read about anywhere) is that it is impossible to programme one’s videorecorder to record a programme using a single tuner. Huh? It seems total nonsense to me – I mean, as far as I’m concerned one could put the videorecorder in between the tuner and the television. But that doesn’t seem to work with this system. So much for progression. Sigh.

For the rest it’s all plug’n’play. But well, I’d rather have a bit less plug’n’play and a bit more of simplicity. One doesn’t have a fight with technology – struggling to make it work – but with the (instutionalized) packaging of the technology. Grrr.