to be ashamed of my familiy's addiction to the iternet?

[fizzbuzz]

Have just been on holiday in very rural area, with dp ds dd and me.

Day 1 consisted or wandering around old city whilst dp and ds looked for somewhere with Wifi (no success)

Day 2 ds and dp drive round trying to find random internet connections to hook onto (totally illegal) and bickering at each other about where the best signal was. I gave up and stayed in house reading Georgette Heyer novel looking after dd

Day 3 dp begs local pub landlord to let them use their wireless connection. Ds spends frantic hour on MSN, and begs to return

ETC ETC ETC. Are we unusual? Ds is nagging about some new car which has just come out with Wifi installed.........

Oh dear...
You are probably not that unusual, but it's nice that ds and dp were able to bond through their shared addiction.

How did you get by without mn?

my two dss's were here yesterday and we were all sitting in the living room after the young kids had gone to bed
with me and each dss on a laptop and dh on the puter
how sad is that???

my two dss's were here yesterday and we were all sitting in the living room after the young kids had gone to bed
with me and each dss on a laptop and dh on the puter
how sad is that???

I had no choice but to survive, with those two hogging the computer all the time.

I actually felt quite liberated without MN, I read loads of books instead. MN is deinitely a time stealer..have made up for it since I got back though

It wasn't just MN though, it was stuff like checking the weather, or emails or banks, just everday stuff really. I found that quite hard.

Bar staff were very sympathetic to DS and MSN, they can't live without it either apparently!

2 words
mobile broadband

(but yes, that is a shameful level of addiction!)

(as in the little dongle you plug into the laptop. Tis v good)

and personally, as you asked, I do think that's unusual tbh.

(I take it ds is a teenager, in which case I guess you'd expect him to be addicted to his mates!)

Yes it is a bit sad, it's the same here...

Ds often talks to dss on MSN when they are in the same house but in different rooms! It is an isolating addiction methinks.

I read somewhere (I think it was New Scientist), that the biggest internet addicts were women....

Yes ds is a teenager...I have heard of mobile broadband.. plase explain. (Or I could ask ds who probably knows all about it,but this will start another nag I feel)

yes I find it fascinating in a way.

Because it's something you generally do on your own but at the same time you're chatting to other people so feel sociable.

Have just looked up Mobile Broadband...Ds would love that. He would never have to communicate with me directly at all then.

I am keeping my mouth firmly shut!

I get it for work. Basically it's a little piece of plastic with a sim card in it (like for a phone) and it plugs into your USB port and you connect to the internet via it. It uses 2G or 3G technology. You can take out a contract (only really worth it for work purposes I would have thought, if you move around a lot or do a lot of travelling round the UK) where you pay monthly (normally a fixed amount).

Or, in your case, you can buy it prepaid (like a pay as you go mobile) and pay for a certain amount (I haven't looked at it prepaid but can link for you). I'm guessing there must be some sort of download limit but if you aren't doing it to shift loads of data, you shouldn't max it out anyway.

But aren't you hijacking other networks then, or is it like a mobile signal you can pick up anywhere? (not that we could even pick up a phone signal)

I must admit, dh loves it. I had to go to a v boring hospital appointment where I wasn't sure if I'd be ok to drive back the other day and he sat outside on it for ages (and did work)!

mobile broadband from 3

just click on the link on the right hand side for pay as you go

That looks really really interesting......dp will go all geeky over it now

yes it's like a mobile signal. You have to check if you are covered by the signal (not necessarily the same as the phone signal) but most places are (though mine is with vodafone so I'm not sure what other network's coverage is like).

Yes Dp got very geeky about it..has gone to look at it on another computer

lol

I've fuelled the addiction. Exactly what you weren't hoping for I expect!

Didn't need much fuelling tbh

3 computers in this house + 2 work ones..everyone gets twitchy when the connection goes down. Dp gets jumped on as soon as he gets in from work when it happens

I think I realised I was using t'internet too much when I referred to DH as "DH" in conversation with a friend rather than using his name

I had to try and pretend it was a sort of affectionate nickname. Think she may have assumed it was "Dick Head" - poor DH!

OMG Mog....you stole my post! Am always wanting to refer to DH as DH in RL conversation

Fizz - I don't think you are unusual with regard to DS's addiction to t'internet but I have to say, we just spent two weeks in Italy and I didn't miss t'internet once. Which is a huge surprise to everyone as am never off the blardy thing usually!

holiday = no internet.

believe me when i say that there is aheavy use of omputers in this house. ihave three teenagers.

holiday - no internet - its a fucking holiday ffs - doesnt that mean family time?

at saying 'lol' to someone in RL.