It's Friday night and that means tomorrow is another work day - unlike many other work days, this is not so bad, as it's the last one I have to do before I fly back to the UK. This evening though, is proving to be a slightly frustrating one, as the local internet feed appears to have gone completely down the toilet.

Every site I'm hitting takes what seems to be an eternity to reach, in some instances, 2 or 3 minutes per page to load completely. Now as I've got a few things to do this evening that rely on me having a usable connection that's not good. Chief amongst them is writing up a set of handover notes, which rely on me establishing a VPN link back to the office. Did I hear someone say "not gonna happen?". Yes, thought so...

Other than that, there are a few things I wanted to try with the blog with the primary aim of helping out someone across at b2evo who's having a few 'issues'.

Current issues are very reminiscent of the problems encountered (twice) this year where some muppet managed to drag their anchors through the undersea cables in the Mediterranean. This not only affected the internet feeds, but also the telephone lines into the country. By strange coincidence, call it quirk of fate, AM has had an appalling time trying to ring me this evening - no joy at all calling my mobile, and repeated attempts before finally succeeding with the land line. I do actually dream of the day when I can, on a daily basis, just click on any given link and know that the page will materialise before me almost before I've finished clicking the mouse.

Isn't it odd though that the spam has no problems reaching me though?

If I was being wholly honest, I would say that the internet is just one of a number of things that haven't behaved themselves today. If you add in an ATM that completed a 1,000 SAR transaction, but didn't give me the cash, a less than impressive round of golf and the DVD player that seems to have given up on playing audio without sounding like Norman Collier, you'll perhaps get the idea.

On the up side, at least the dishes are done. Suppose I ought to go up the ante and throw a last pile of clothes into the washing machine - domestic bliss...