Probably totally unrelated but I had a similar occurrence about a year ago and it turned out to be OneDrive. It had got itself into some sort of updating loop and started eating data voraciously. It chewed a month's limit in a day. It was also a little hard to track down as Windows seemed to hide the data use. None of this explains your router figures but, if you are using OneDrive, try turning sync off and see if things improve.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I just had a bizarre on-line chat with Microsoft. I was looking at the Australian web page for the Surface Pro 3 and noticed an interesting set of dimensions. Clickety[^] In case they fix them up before you get there, the dimensions were listed as: 7.93 x 11.5 x 9.14mm Someone forget to convert all three measurements to millimetres, which is fine I suppose. I tried to do the right thing and tell them so they could get it fixed. It took me about 15 minutes to convince the on-line chat guy that something was wrong. A short excerpt... Me: The dimensions listed for the Surface are truly tiny. I think someone has messed up inches and mm. John: Dimensions: 7.93 x 11.5 x 9.14mm Weight: 079kg Me: They're the ones. John: Those are the accurate dimensions. Me: Wow! That makes the Surface about the size of a pea. Don't you think that the 7.93 and 11.5 are supposed to be inches? John: That is just the exterior of the device. Me: Are you sure? John: Yes, I have the figures here. Me: Can I suggest that you get a ruler and draw a 7.93 mm line, an 11.5 mm line and a 9.14 mm line. Imagine the box that they would make. It's going to be pretty small. John: I don't have a ruler. Me: Look. You just need to forward this on to the web developers. These figures are obviously wrong. We kept going for a while yet. Eventually I think that he got the message but who knows. I just couldn't believe it took so long. Serves me right for trying to help.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I hope it doesn't go on that long! Lots of our customers want to use PayPal and the loss of PayPal as a payment option would be difficult to manage - far worse than the $1000. One good factor is that they are "attacking" me under Australian Law. Australia also has a Financial Ombudsman who would be very interested in this sort of thing. All of this for a business that has been running for 25 years with basically no complaints from anyone. We sell to schools and teachers. I cannot imagine a less threatening scenario!

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Basically they are trying to determine if we really are who we say we are. The root cause is an Australian Government law to prevent criminals using things like PayPal for money laundering. I actually don't disagree with the concept, just the execution by PayPal. 1. If the law is so important, why was I able to do business for so long without providing this identification to PayPal? Why has asking to look at PayPal Here suddenly prompted this review? I would have MUCH preferred having to provide all this information up front, before PayPal was backed into our processes. This has come out of nowhere and is causing havoc with established processes. 2. Most importantly, be reasonable about things and only lock up money if they have a suspicion that something wrong is happening. In our case, they asked for identifying information (copies of Certificates of Incorporation etc) and locked our account so we couldn't close it. After three request rounds (including things like a "Mission Statement" for the company) where we had provided everything they had asked for, they suddenly increased our limitation to prevent us moving money out of the account and started the farce discussed earlier. Worst of all, it is like fighting the Hydra. I have never had two communications from the same person. Grrrrr.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I am caught up in PayPal hell and want to warn others. Our website has been merrily accepting PayPal payments for about a year - no problem. Recently PayPal sent me an email about PayPal Here and I thought I would take a quick look at it even though it probably did not suit our business. BIG mistake. This has triggered an "Information Request" for our business and the last two weeks have been a spiral into hell. What started out as a small request has led to a series of about 10 requests and a progressive limiting of our account (I now cannot withdraw or spend money) even though every request has been responded to quickly and correctly. We currently have about $1000 stuck in the account that we cannot access. I have had to remove PayPal as a payment option (which isn't popular with our customers) as we can't get the money. Luckily I got to this fairly early otherwise it could have been a lot more money locked up. It has now descended into farce with the latest request for information being for information already requested and is clearly sitting on THEIR server with a big green "Accepted" next to it. More frighteningly, they have also insisted that a certificate have a registration number on it that DIDN'T EXIST when the certificate was created (here the company is being penalized for being 25 years old!) They want the number to be on the certificate... I tell them that that numbering system didn't exist then... they want the number to be on the certificate... I tell them that I can provide other documentation showing the number issued after the number was actually created (2 years after the certificate)... they want the number to be on the certificate... I rant and ask for escalation... they want the number to be on the certificate. You have been warned. Be VERY careful with PayPal.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

:laugh: Actually most of our users are quite nice (seriously!) Unfortunately the "blank screen" user is a perenial PITA - a couple of weeks ago he was complaining to us because his mouse wasn't working ... at all ... on any program. Obviously OUR product was at fault because he used the mouse to interact with it.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Only in the office and only if it does not involve spending money.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Great advice. Especially the bit about posting here... Oh, hang on... that's what I did. The ACTUAL replies to the users were very tame, without the dripping sarcasm. I could not have stayed in business for 25 years if I abused customers. BTW, I am the boss.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

One of those days I suppose. User 1. "When I open the diagram, I get a blank screen. I have attached a screen shot for you. Can you help?" Me. "Yep, that screen sure is blank. Probably the blankest screen I have seen all day. Is there any more information you could provide?" User 2. "I tried to download and install but I got an error message. Do you have any suggestions?" Me. "Yes. How about telling me what the error message said. I will probably need more information later but let's at least start with that." Please note that while the user's comments are verbatim and complete, mine are a kid-safe amalgam of what I actually wrote back to the customer and what I was saying under my breath.

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I am currently using the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate and have ordered a full version ... but ... my order seems to be stuck "On Order". The expected dispatch date is today but I am not holding my breath. I have eight days left on the RC and I am beginning to get a little nervous. Does anyone know if I can upgrade from the RC to the trial version to cover the gap? Any experiences or pointers worth sharing?

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I spent a VERY productive day today refactoring some code which I originally wrote in 1988 (22 years between code reviews!). The code reduced in size by about 90% once all the superfluous code was removed - superfluous now, vital when the code was originally written to get around 16 bit memory addressing and CPU speed issues. I can't believe the hoops I used to have to jump through to get things working. You youngsters don't know how easy you have it! Luckily, I had the forethought to surround large sections of code with //HACK tags explaining why some of these strange things were being done. This turned out to be one of the most time-saving coding guidelines I ever implemented! Spelling

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I went one better. I submitted the same paper 10 times in one year - changing only the cover page and the last page (where the teacher wrote the mark). I got the same mark 10 times for ten totally different topics. Just call it "code reuse".

Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Ok, here's the situation. One ADSL link into my home. Four computers. Three of them run my home office and are as secure as I can make them. The last one is used by my kids to play games and surf the web - and the kids are just beginning to get more adventurous. They have great security habits for young kids but I would be foolish to rely on that. We have already done everything I can think of on a software level to insulate the office computers from kid's computer but I want to COMPLETELY quarantine the kids computer from the office network - to the point that I am considering bringing in a second ADSL link on the second line into my house. I figure that others must have experienced this need previously and maybe there is a way of sharing the existing ADSL link while keeping the kids computer and the office network separate on a HARDWARE level. Maybe an ADSL router that supports two separate networks. Anyone heard of such a thing? Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

We have actually made some real life sales to Nigeria. No real problems with the customer but trying to convince our bank to accept a credit card payment from Nigeria was nearly impossible. The customer (a teacher at an international school) treated the whole transaction with a well earned resignation and was very pleasantly surprised that we were actually willing to sell to him. I agree - probably spam - but you never know. It might be an incredibly frustrated customer! Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I agree. Outlook 2003 is by FAR the most stable version yet. I cannot remember the last restart whereas previous versions seemed to require some sort of restart once or twice a day. Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I just resolved a similar issue that turned out to be a hardware problem - a dodgy network cable. The cable had been handmade on site and the connectors were not wired correctly - instead of pin 3 and 6 going into the green twisted pair, pin 3 went into green and pin 6 into blue - the same at both ends. This meant that one of the two circuits was not on a twisted pair but instead split over two. It still made a circuit but the noise was massive - net result was about a speed reduction from 100 to about 5 in ONE DIRECTION ONLY. It certainly caught me out initially. Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Thanks Ant. My rational side knows all this. Of course I have saved some lives (now that's a rush, believe me) and helped lots of others but this one hurts bad. One of the most positive things about ambulance work is how it has changed my life. It didn't take me long to realise just how quick a life can change. I have done a whole heap of things that I had put off until "one day" because I have seen people whose lives have changed in an instant. Carpe Diem Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I lost my first patient today and I am really down. I am a volunteer ambulance officer in a little Western Australian country town. I have been involved for a while now and I have had about 10 dead patients but they have all either died before we got to the scene or after I have handed over to the local hospital. Today, despite our best efforts, the patient died - literally in my arms. My rational side knows that we did nothing wrong - it was just their time and in all liklihood no one could have saved them. My emotional side just feels sick - especially as I later found out that the patient leaves a wife and 6 week old baby. Thank goodness I went off call tonight. Now I am dreading Monday morning when I pick up the emergency radio again. :((:((:((:((:(( Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

I was reading the "Arghh - Why is my computer so slow?" thread, saw the comments on the Indexing Service and was reminded that I had not turned this off on my latest computer. Opps. And I had a thought... I always seem to be rebuilding systems - or commissioning new ones. Perhaps we should construct a "ToDoList"[^] that lists the changes you should make to a new Windows installation to make it usable and secure - things like turning off the indexing service, IE security settings. So what changes do YOU routinely make to a new Windows install? Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had forgotten to do this on my latest computer. Thanks for reminding me! What I would like is a ToDoList file listing all the changes necessary to a new Windows install to make it usable and secure. Hmm... There might be an article in that. Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.