Washing... but not as you know it

Well, I'm in my new house, which doesn't come with a microwave, but does come with a combination washer-dryer (I'm not implying that they're interchangeable in any way, although I guess you could try microwaving your clothes dry or reheating your leftovers in the dryer). However, it seems that the American obsession with safety has reached Britain. Unlike normal dryers, which are kind, and clever, and fun to be around... no wait, that's a quotation which isn't relevant. Unlike normal dryers, where you can just open the door, check on progress and pull out things that are dry and close the door on the rest, this one protects you from (gasp!) warm clothing. The door will lock while you're drying your clothes and for two minutes afterwards. This is even after having the last 10 minutes be a no-heat spin, so the clothes are already cool by the time you get them out. And it can't get very hot in the first place, because I had some clothes in there for about 2 hours and they still weren't 100% dry.

Other than that, there are about 8 wireless networks here, all encrypted. My laptop automatically picked up an unencrypted network for a few minutes and was able to tell me I had new mail, after which I lost the connection again.

Virgin Mobile are a bit useless. When I called the first time to arrange to get a bundle on my phone, they insisted they had to send me a new SIM card. It arrived today... and has a totally different phone number. So I call up to complain, and this time they tell me they can add it to my existing account, and within minutes its active. Now I just have to decide whether it's worth the effort to harangue them to get back my £10 on the new and unopened one. On the plus side, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I haven't had to
wait in a long queue to get service.

UPDATE: I'm now posting this from home on my shiny new 2Mbps broadband connection. Here are some pictures of my house: