J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Well I think I will go with Far Queue's idea and phone the Welsh Assembly to ask about a grant for satellite broadband. Apparently they will give you up to £1000 to install a suitable system if your download speed is less than 2 MB per second, and since mine appears to be only 0.49 MB's per second perhaps they will give me an internet satellite.

And then I just have to find a company that would do it for me and not charge the earth in monthly charges. At the moment we only pay something like £18 per month with AOL for the broadband (unlimited downloads) and free telephone calls at any time to mainline numbers. All we have to pay on top of this if we don't phone a mobile etc. is the quarterly telephone line rental charge with BT (which costs a fortune - around £50).

We were stuck with dial up for years, because it's about 4 miles from where we live to the exchange via the telephone lines (it's only 2 miles direct). What we have now is a big improvement on what we did have.

Thanks Snapzzz :D
I did the test and mine said 0.22 Mbps upload and 0.49 Mbps download. What does that mean?

Thanks everyone for that very useful information on broadband :D

Snapzzz - if the technology is there but it's just too expensive at the moment, don't you think maybe one day Sky will be able to offer broadband through their dish?

How do I find out how fast my broadband is?

It's OK for shopping and reading e-mails and things, but I can't download ski videos from U-Tube etc. unless I stop them first and wait about 5 minutes - otherwise they keep freezing.

Glad you're sorted Icy :D

Snapzzz,
Why can't they put the internet through a Sky dish? It would be very handy for me if they could. We are a very long way from the exchange and the only option for us at the moment to increase our internet speed would be to pay for our own internet satellite dish, which is pretty expensive :cry:

Thanks for the update. I will make sure I avoid AA insurance in future. And I hope you eventually get some more of your money back from them.

I'm surprised at you, Andy, being lost for words! :lol:

However, before this becomes another Wibble thread, I'd like to remind everyone that Maggie100 is still looking for a female J2Skier to come on this holiday with us and share a room with her, so that she won't have to pay the single supplement.

We now have 12 people (not counting Maggie) coming on this holiday who have paid their deposits, and we have booked eight rooms in the chalet - rooms 8,7,4,3,6,15,13, and 12.

As far as I know there are still 7 rooms which haven't been booked yet for the 13th January. So if anyone else wants to come with us would they please let me know, either by posting on here or by sending me a pm. The holiday details are on the first page of this thread.

Far Queue said:

My countdown clock has hit the 200 days to go mark today! Woohoo, best start packing the stuff that's not already packed

Just had a thought. If I put £1 into a jar every day from now on, that will cover most of the lift pass for me


If it's 200 days until we go ski-ing, then I need to get rid of 0.07 pounds per day - but I don't think I will be putting it in a jar :wink:

Icy, my parents used to have an old style VW camper van, when I was a kid, and after I passed my test I had a go driving it.

It was very underpowered and you had to really rev up before you could move, and it had an awful turning circle, but sort of strange because there wasn't much in front of the windscreen (because the engine was in the back). And the handbrake wasn't on the floor - you had to turn it and pull it out from somewhere near the steering wheel (I've forgotten exactly where it was).

But as a family we all had a lot of fun camping in it.

The roof used to go up making space for 2 bunk beds, and whoever was sleeping up there had to watch out for icky drips falling on them in the middle of the night (presumably as the temperature dropped all the water everyone was breathing out condensed on the roof and dripped).

And we had a sink, a cooker and a table which all folded away to make more beds in the back. There was no shower, heating or toilet or anything. My parents used to drive us to the public toilets in the morning, and we washed in the sea!

I don't suppose many people would stick that sort of camping these days. Most people want electricity, TV, toilets, showers etc.

Best of luck with going camping old style in a VW camper van (mind you I suppose if you go in a modern van it might be entirely different).