Woke up this morning around 8. It was freezing. Really really freezing. Had a shower and promptly discovered my lack of hair brush so my hair is now one hell of a mess. Tried out the Internet connection.. Two good signs: the network activity LEDs on my motherboard flashed when I plugged the cable in, and I was given an IP address happily - albeit in the 10.12.10 range :S. However no web pages would load or anything. About 10:00 it suddenly started working, though I had to register for it first. Apparently it recorded my MAC address etc, but from what I can see they printed out their SQL query to the page instead of sending it to their SQL daemon. Weird. So far (it's now 10:40) Internet access has been dodgy at best, with it cutting out entirely every few minutes. Just enough time to talk to Ben. They gave me a nice list of traffic that is allowed, though I didn't see IRC on that list... MSN Messenger is on it, though, as are FTP, SSH, SOCKS and Unreal Tournament and Half-Life. It looks like they're about 5 years out of date, though, as both UT and HL have sequels, now. It then says "All traffic not specifically listed above my be blocked." It seems that the "may" really is a "may" not a "will" as I had RDC connect, which wasn't listed. I've yet to try any games or IRC as I haven't had enough time of it actually working, yet. Let's hope they get that reliability sorted out ASAP ;)
I also don't yet know if I'll be able to get both my desktop and laptop connected to the network simultaneously. I've got my 8-port ethernet switch with me, but they may not allow multiple computers under the same name. I didn't notice any mention of using a PC as a NAT device or using switches/hubs being forbidden in the Terms & Conditions, though. I suppose I could also use the wifi card in my desktop to connect my laptop to the network wirelessly. We'll see.
I've finished unpacking all my stuff, too, and the kitchen light seems to work again. It looks like it's attached to the same sensor system as all the other communal lights, so you have to wave your hands at the sensor before it'll turn the light on. Bizarre. Also the sensor for the hallway light is on the other end of the hallway to my room, so I have to walk blindly down the hallway before it'll even think about turning on, then because it's one of those strip lamps it takes a couple of seconds to actually turn on, so I actually get to the kitchen before it turns on. Lovely.
Also I've got my 5.1 speaker system set up in here at last. I'm not sure they'll enjoy me trailing wires across the curtain rails (oh yeah, I have a skylight...) but tough. There's a crack in the wall above my bed, and the light above the bed doesn't really work. I've got to tell them about that later.
It's now almost midnight and we've all spent the evening just like yesterday - all but one of us in the kitchen while that last person is out getting pissed. After much hard work I got an ad-hoc wireless connection between my desktop & laptop so I was able to get Internet access in the kitchen. My internet access seems to be making my flat mates incredibly envious of me, even though they don't seem too interested in borrowing my spare patch cable. Their loss, to be honest. On the subject of Internet access it has stopped being dodgy as hell, and I've only discovered a couple of blocked things - including cPanel and WHM. It seems that when they said "HTTP/HTTPS traffic is allowed" they actually meant "HTTP/HTTPS traffic on standard ports is allowed". The second you try to access something on a non-standard port (such as cPanel's 2082) you get errors. Yay. I also can't FTP into my home FTP server and I'm not sure why, as FTP to other servers works fine. Odd. Let's hope I can get the cPanel issue sorted, as no cPanel access for a year will suck beyond belief. It also appears that my Internet access is limited to 64KB/s in either direction. Not sure that's necessary to be perfectly honest, but whatever.
I've got a bad feeling that I've lost a letter from the head of computing detailing some enrolement/induction meeting. Hopefully that's the same thing I've got at 10am tomorrow morning. If not... I'm screwed. I blame mum entirely for losing that, the same way that she also managed to lose my accommodation booklet. Great. And after this lovely enrolement meeting tomorrow morning I think I'll just be sitting around again until our accommodation meeting at 6pm. I also have to post Jen's birthday card tomorrow... That'll be late, damnit. I suck so much.
Oh and the others watched the Blair Witch Project in the kitchen this evening, in the dark as the kitchen light died again. I was facing the other way as I was talking to people on MSNM but it sounded bizarre at least :P
It also appears that this uni ISP blocks all ICMP traffic. Tracerts and pings just fail to do anything. Wheeeeee.
Piccies
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My desk with everything sorted out
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My bed area with everything sorted