As your local Eternally Online Elder Millennial, I volunteer to be Social Media Envoy to the Albanese Government

I started a new Sims save today – after reinstalling windows last month I needed to get all the updates and update OBS and all the other things to make streaming possible again. And I got there. It’s cleaner because so much got purged, I’m sure I’ll add to the clutter on the screen, in my life – both Sims and IRL.

I first got online in 2000, aged 17/18. So an older teen, but still a teen. I got onto playing Neopets, chatting through ICQ and Yahoo Groups, and we started online journals and blogging. I made friends around the world. I don’t see banning teens and tweens even from social media as viable, let alone a good thing. Kids already just get their parents and older siblings to make accounts for them or watch hours of appropriate and less-appropriate content. A ban would see kids less able to speak up when things are a bit shady online, less able to know who to turn to if there’s a problem if they’re having to hide that part of their lives and learning to navigate it with less guidance than how many are now – locked down Instagram accounts with a select audience, Minecraft servers with strangers and friends, Youtube channels and Twitter bringing us the headlines more reliably than the national broadcaster.

The country doesn’t know when to actually let kids be kids, and when to criminalise them to to imposed outdated views on what kids should be doing. Access to information when growing up is important, and these days that information and social experimentation happens a lot online. People are worried that kids are being sexualised too young if they’re learning about queerness when really they’re just learning the terminology for what they’re feeling inside themselves that kids in the 90s and earlier couldn’t find out unless they were avid readers borrowing every book in the local library, or were in a very progressive pocket of town. Kids know they’re “not straight” but doesn’t have the words for it, just as trans kids exist and need families who just let them explore themselves – through playing with gender roles, names, types of clothing and more. Kids get to see that Straight, Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual and other categories of people are able to grow up into happy and healthy adults and can see that positive possibility for themselves.

I’m loving that future for the kids. Let’s not take it from them.

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Hitting Spring Running

Well, I mourned winter, but feel like I’m emerging into Spring with a new lease on life (cough be damned). It’s still with me when I transition between scenes, like moving to the kitchen, or getting up in the morning. But it passes, and it’s not infectious at least, so it just sucks for ME and that’s fine, hey?

I do feel a sense of mental clarity though, which is great timing, having just become the first employee of the unemployed workers union and having to be able to switch on in a professional sense for at least three hours a week. Nothing too out of my comfort zone, not that anyway, it’s all social media and PR, things I’ve been doing since I started online journaling on diaryland in 2000, or livejournal and blogs from 2001.

I’m putting together my intro on what my work is, personally, and with the Antipoverty Centre ahead of the panel Monday, which I’m not freaking out about but I haven’t done one before in any capacity. But she’ll be right, so long as my cough holds off and doesn’t want to kick in because I’ve talked too much as it did this morning in group.

Thankyou all for coming along for this ride, and happy wear it purple day!

My NBN now won’t be installed til Feb 29? But I was supposed to propose that day!

Yes, the internet connection saga continues.

A brief recap.

Found out we were moving here early December and called TPG to arrange the move on November 22. Initially I was a little disappointed that I’d only get NBN 25 here, but when I was on the phone the guy said, s’all good, aftr the move you’ll be contacted by NBN to upgrade to fibre to the premises within a couple of months. Cool, I can deal with that.

We do the major move on December 5, and I get a text saying install will be on Friday. Well, at least I read it as the 8th of December, because that was the same week, and not the date actually in the text, 08/01/2024.

So I realise that my internet won’t be connected for another month and I give TPG a call on the Friday, assuming that it was a mistake and I could get it that year.

No, apparently I couldn’t and the 8th was the first available appointment from NBNco. Lack of technicians and high demand, apparently. I cried, yeah. Classy, hey? The woman on the phone consoles me and says best she can do is the 5th, would I take that. I do of course.

And then I wait. And Christmas comes and goes. The kids have moved out, New Years is done, ad I’m home on January 5, awaiting the technician. After watching videos about the install and getting half a dozen texts confirming that install on the 5th and that someone would be home.

Oh and they debit the usual $75 that morning for the slow plan.

I get to 10, and I get the text that they’ll be calling me about the install. then a few minutes later one rescheduling the install til the 17th. Yeah, no happy.

 

Talked to them and cried. And they agree to credit my account and see about a cash refund but couldn’t guarantee that.

Then I get the text telling me it’ll be between 8 and 12 the Saturday.

11ish Saturday the tech calls me to tell me he’s on a job that’s taking forever 45 minutes away on the other side of the lake, and he’ll text to let me know when he’s on his way.

I see him about 3.45pm.

He does his thing, installs the necessary hardware in the house. But he can’t complete the job, since there’s no a connection to the house he can use, and the pit has asbestos, and he doesn’t have the tickets for that but someone should be out within the week.

I get the refund credited back to my bank. That’s nice.

Time passes and late last week, early this week techies work in the pit and connect fibre from two houses down to ours and then presumably to our house when they’re digging right outside my wall.

And then I wait.

Two more texts. Identical.

Noone calls in the first 24 hours period, nor the second. I’m at group lamenting my lack on connectivity because all I really wanna do is go rabbit and deer hunting in Red Dead Online, but I take a breath and say I’ll call this afternoon if I don’t hear anything.

And then I get the text at the start of the post, saying my install date in Feb 29. First of all I look at Bruce and ask if there’s a Feb 29th this year. Yeah, there is. So, I finish sorting my pills and call TPG.

Maybe my mistake is I didn’t cry, but they couldn’t offer me anything better, citing message from NBN saying that’s the best that they can do due to staffing and demand.

I don’t really know what happened to just getting NBN 25 in the mean time either, I asked and was told no this is what we’re doing with the fibre since the fibre’s ready to go.

So, I’m relived I stuck with my big Aldi mobile plan that’s I’ve accumulated data on. That recharged overnight for $95 (I was going to go down to the $55 plan with just me and Bruce with the kids doing their own thing). So at least I didn’t chance going to the smaller plan this week. So, We’ve got plenty of data to use tethering our phones to our PCs, but I can’t get back to doing a bunch of the online stuff that require more reliable service – for example I can watch streams but they cut out or slow regularly, no chance I could upstream or play online games.

I can still talk shit on Twitter, and NBN co has just contacted me there to follow up on this saga, so let’s see how that goes?

Ahh nothing hopeful

In the meantime, any ladies out there planning to propose to their men on February 29, since that’s apparently the only day we should do it?

 

 

It’s the 8th. Things are supposed to be getting back to normal.

I still don’t have internet. More of the saga happened – I’d had the install booked for the 5th, Friday, for a month now since the original offer of it being installed today caused me to melt down because why should we have to wait a month? So, come Friday morning I’m waiting around as confirmed by several text messages when I’m contacted to say it’s being rescheduled for the 17th.

Yeah not happy. The extra two weeks was one thing, but also having already been waiting that morning, with all the texts from TPG and NBN making sure someone would be there in the previous days. Oh and they’d direct debited $75 for the month that morning too!

So, I don’t think I actually cried this time, but I spent an hour on the phone to them, and then it was booked in for 8-12 Saturday.

Come 11:30 Saturday morning, the NBN the calls me himself to say he’s definitely coming today and he’s text me himself to say when he was on his way and to ignore the text that was just about to come through sayng he was on his way then.

So, 3.45pm he arrives. Pleasant fellow, I made sure he’d had his lunch break before he got to work.

Installed the NBN box inside the house, but no, I still don’t have connection because the fibre to the house has to be laid. Sometime this week or next I’m told. He couldn’t do it because there was asbestos in the pit and he didn’t have the certification.

They’ve credited back the money hey took Friday – only as account credit I really could have used the cash – but yeah no offer of regular broadband FTTC or anything. So I wait some more.

Bruce has given me his second monitor so I can do dual monitor internetting – mostly having a stream in the second window, currently BlizzardGurrl. Go say hey, she’s moving house this month and it’s her birthday!

My UA got registered so we need to put that up for sale. Spent some time decorating the Corolla more, Bruce is spending time trying to sort out HIS car. he stove got replaced on the weekend too so I can now cook up a storm lol, still need new pots.

Slowly slowly trying to get back  into routine. Have Everyplate coming today, so I’ll have that planned out for me again. Bruce son is staying a couple of nights, so I’ll expand tonight’s dish with extra taters, and I’m off to Sydney tomorrow to meet Mel from twitter so the boys can sort out their food tomorrow night, there’s still chicken burger patties from last night.

I have a psychologist appointment Thursday – we had one in Dec then the move was on and so we arranged for after new year. This one is free for me, so that’s the main reason I’m going. Back to Antabuse group Friday, I hope everyone made it through sober and safe, Xmas is always a risky time. I need to work on not overreacting to criticism again.

I’ve been tired and may have a scratchy throat but since that happens to me anyway when I’m anxious about something I’ve been doing RATs which are negative and will mask up and play it as it comes tomorrow, I don’t wanna get my friends sick!