I am lucky: Somebody called me on friday, asking for Monsieur Grant.

It appears that my mobile number was previously that guy's. I got Monsieur Grant number, and called him. I got his father after a few tries, and explained him the situation. His answer was quite funny (imagine a strong contryside speaking):

"Ah oui... Quand il y a un problème, je me fais appeler chez moi, mais si je ne réponds pas, c'est renvoyé vers le portable. Je vais essayer de supprimer ça, mais c'est très compliqué, alors je ne sais pas si je pourrai le faire rapidement. Peut-être fin de semaine prochaine?"

"Hum... I see... When there is a problem, there is a phone call to my home, but if I don't answer, the call is forwarded to the mobile phone. I will try to change this, but it is very complicated, it will take time. Maybe end of next week?"

Apparently he still did not do it, as I was called this week-end during the night ;-)

Come on, Monsieur Grant! Read the f... phone documentation, or call France Telecom, or ask a friend to help you, but do it!

Eventually internet is up today: The problem was linked to the freebox ethernet port (it does not work at all).

Following free support advice (and after five phone calls costing me at least 50 €!), I decided to try the USB port - on an XP machine, as they don't have other drivers :-(

I first spent more than half an hour to reactivate the only dual-boot machine I have, and to remember my password ;-)
Then I installed the driver, and tried to connect: It worked! Hummm... Only two minutes in fact: I got quickly a message telling me that Windows was rebooting, what I did with no choice at all! The same message (and result) came again soon. I understood later that I was infected by the Blaster Worm. That one took only a few minutes to infect this Exccceeelllent operating system (I really like the word operating when this is Microsoft related).

It was a chance in fact: I just tried to reboot Linux, with the same USB connection. Surprise: No problem, no driver needed (the CDCEther module loaded without help and managed the connection), and of course no more virus/worm!

I am just waiting for a new freebox, so I can use the ethernet port, and my wireless airport station (Currently, the laptop linux box acts as firewall/NAT box, and the airport, which links my dual-processor as well as my wife's iBook is just a bridge).

By the way, it is a good occasion (and reason!) to erase my last end-of-century-system partition isn't it?

My provider, free is still not able to setup my ADSL connection, after one week of trouble.

Well, one week does not change a lot, after a two months delay, but it is surprising to see these so-called broadband links (only 2 Mbps in France, and more often 512 Kbps!) being so difficult to setup: Everything here is paper based, hot-line is inexistant, and, AFAIK, it does not work (at least for me!) :-(

I would not like to joke about french customers, who are really happy with their 2 Mbps Super Broadband service, but they should have a look around, to understand that other countries offer 13 times this speed for the same price!

But, more than the speed, my concern is on the setup procedure. Have a look on the Japan one, as explained in the previous link:

Another factor worth noting concerns the set-up procedure.
There is no taking an afternoon off work and waiting around for an engineer to do something mysterious with your phone socket.
[...]
Connect the ADSL modem to your computer, run the supplied software (Windows, Mac or Linux) and that is it.

To finish, have a look on this ADSL study in the world. You will be surprised.

Hum... No comment.

I am not lucky with my phone lines. In Tokyo, my home line was subject to many FAX calls, especially in middle of the night, and it just happened a few days ago that my french mobile phone is the target of a farmer who has some kind of automatic alerts.

Here is the message I received, every five minutes for more than two hours:

Ici l'élevage de Monsieur Grant. Le bâtiment est en panne. Intervenir d'urgence. Acquitter après le bip sonore. Merci.

Here the breeding of Mr Grant. The building is out of service. Intervene urgently. Discharge after the beep. Thank you.

I tried to find who is this Monsieur Grant, without any success :-(
I hope he will notice that the number is wrong, before all his animals die!