Mostly lemon based

Category: Computing

Computer problems

  • Another day in the dirt

    Not all car stuff today; to skip the car stuff just scroll down to where it proclaims that car stuff endeth. :)

    So, today I shuffled the cars to get the Minor on the drive, and whipped off the ill-fitting exhaust, separated the 45 degree segment at the base of the downpipe (which I spent about 40 minutes attacking last time with ‘penetrating oil’, this time I got the Plus-Gas on it, and the thing just came apart. Simple as that). Then, with Kathryn’s help, we reattached the exhaust.

    Only took from 11am to 3pm. I’m not very good at exhaust fitting, and having done it we drove into town and… it’s rattling against something at the back. Usually this is the exhaust hitting the fuel tank; not a soothing noise at the best of times; so that’s something to attack later.

    Then I spent about half an hour adjusting the mixture. She’s been running rich and idling too high. A bit of a tweak to that and she’s now idling at a much more sensible speed and lord knows what the mixture’s doing. I suck at setting carbs up, I keep meaning to buy a colortune to aid in my attrociousness. The DAFs have a much more ‘relaxed’ carb than the HiF44 in the Minor, which is slightly worn (not terribly so, she doesn’t hunt horribly at idle) and which has proper mixture adjustment.

    Still, she’s running okay, so I’m going to presume it’s alright for the minute.

    Next week will be more car stuff, hopefully, in so far as I’m hoping that the brake bits will arrive for Jejy and Vixy and we can get them assembled.

    Then comes the difficult decision, which of the cars to take on holiday with us. We’re looking at around 1000 miles plus whatever motoring we do while we’re there. The minor’s swivel pins are worn, but I don’t know how badly. Jejy’s a big no-no, without the new clutch drum she’s not going anywhere far (so that’s easy), but Vixy? Vixy’s kind of an unknown quantity. Unknown quantities aren’t good for holiday relaxing, I find, but on the other hand she’s been recently serviced by a garage, she’ll have new brakes, she’s got a spare pair of belts in the boot…

    …and only 21k on the clock.

    We’ll see.

    Anyway, hopefully we’ll have less car-posts for y’all once this is done. Then we can return to the ‘house posts’

    car stuff endeth here

    Mind you, I ought to do a garden post because the garden is *awesome*. Kathryn spent time today breaking up soil and prepping it, then planted some of our wild-flower seeds; she’s hacked down pruned the buddleia, out the front, which officially needs to be dug up and moved into the raised bed at the front, but since the builders haven’t quoted (or contacted me) then, uh, that’s not quite happening yet. The back garden is looking really very nice; when she takes the photos off her camera and flickr’s them I’ll linky.

    It is just amazing to look at the ground and go ‘my god, they’re beans. They are our beans, that we planted and they’re growing. I could get quite into gardening, I fear. It’s really lovely though, to go out there, in the nice weather we’ve been having and see plants we planted growing, and indeed growing well. It’s not like either of us is particularly ‘green fingered’, but we’ve got good soil, and my mum’s around to help and advise us (and Kathryn’s mom is available for advice too :) ) and it’s come together to be a really restful place, potentially.

    And the lie and deception which is the gravel-over-concrete path appears to be working.

    Anyhow, now it’s time to make dinner. So I shall scoot.

  • No going back

    So, the Dell and the Apple are both now on ebay. Shinymac and Lapytopy will hopefully go to new owners, although to be honest, I doubt the Dell will sell. Added to the near 100 quid I got from the first auction I’m hoping that I’ll get enough from the Apple (starting bid 580 quid) that a MacBook (or ideally, a MacBook Pro) will be mine. I doubt the latter, but the former’s definately achievable. It’s a little weird to think that in a week I won’t actually have a ‘main’ computer. The RiscPC’s a bit past it, and the EntMac’s only connected to a TV (and not a HiDef one) so isn’t really useable in that way.

    The DAF’s been ministered to, yesterday the throttle stuck open, the kink in the cable caught on the cable inner and it also seemed to possibly be unhooked at the pedal end. I’ve checked it over, and it shouldn’t happen again – but when the new inner arrives (it’s going to the new DAF) then I should hopefully be able to replace it without too much pain.

    This time I shan’t kink it.

    I went to pick up Kathryn after work yesterday, missed her junction and got to travel all the way into London before I could turn around. The traffic was awful and I ended up being around 40 minutes late :( But, it did mean that Kathryn had the opportunity to go out for more driving practice yesterday, and we pootled around Slough. Apart from the incident with the pedals (before we moved at all) there weren’t any problems, but the traffic was lousy, and it opted to snow, which was a little cruel. Today I’m hoping to put an hour or two into clearing the garden a bit. I’m just going to suck down my Chai.

    I’ve been incredibly lazy today. Really, ridiculously lazy. Although, to be fair, it took me ages to get the Dell posted on e-bay. It’s taken days, actually, ‘cos the photo-upload wasn’t working last night.

    As a side point, I’ve been listening to far too much VV Brown and The Ting Tings. The bloody VV Brown song (Crying blood) keeps getting stuck in my head. Too damn catchy.

    And I keep wandering about going ‘Aaaaree yoooooooou caaaaaalling meeee darrrrrrlin(g)…’

    I had something else to ramble about, but I’ve forgotten. I blame the Ting Tings.

    Oh, no, I remember; I finally got around to entering Snapshot Hunter again. It’s not a great shot, some of the ones up there are way better (already, and we’re only on like the 6th photo), my excuse is that my camera dies after 8 photos now. Do I need new batteries? Yes I do. Not this month though, I think I’ve spent my money for this and next month.

    Oh, and yes, my minimal bid is on the shite DAB adapter. I won the amplifier, so we’re all go for taking the Radiomobile to bits. Anyway. Chai. Garden. Collect Kathryn.

  • The pre-nights posting spree; now with Grotesquely Ugly Shoes

    So, it’s that time again (already?!) when I stay up most of the night to try and swing my body around to nights. This is, of course, tedious. I actually have something I want to be doing; I want to be capturing my mum and Paramito’s wedding – I plugged in the Miglia box, went to load FCP and realised that FCP isn’t installed anymore. Then I looked around the chaos that is the desk, and considered weeping openly. I checked the OS X box in the hope that, like Photoshop I’d’ve stuck the disks somewhere ‘sensible’. But of course, I haven’t. I’ve no idea where FCP is.

    This is ‘upsetting’, to coin a phrase. It’s what I’d planned for the entire evening. Capture and then FCP my evening away editing first M+P’s, then Kathryn and my ceremonies.

    I may have a solution though, so we’ll see if it works out.

    Anyhow, since I’ve got some time to kill, here’s a little early on review of the Vibram Five Finger KSOs.

    I’d been intrigued by these since

    [info]howlsthunder

    mentioned them, the concept of bare-footing without bare-footing, and the positive statements she’d made about stress on joints and comfort made me think, hrm, worth a shot. I’m used to paying around 15 quid for my runners, the most expensive shoes I’ve got are my £55 Doc Martens that I bought for work, and which, are now 5 years old and still in service. My *best* pair of shoes, which I wore to destruction were a pair of £6 boots from Bacons, or PriceLess or Shite-CheapoShoe in Birmingham (not even a particularly salubrious bit of Birmingham) – they were in a sale, and I loved and loved them.

    So forking out around 60 quid for a pair of runners, not least runners which actually consist of, frankly, very little, was a bit difficult for me. That and the buggers wouldn’t ship to the UK…

    But having bitten the bullet, so to speak, I ordered them and they were delivered to Kathryn’s Mom’s house while we were in the States (just). We’d already left, but we were meeting up to say bye, and they kindly brought the runners with them. After a bit of wiggling I managed to get my toes in the right holes. It wasn’t difficult per-se, but I have quite long and dexterous toes (monkey like ;) ). I proceeded to wander around the hotel lobby in a very odd way.

    My first thought was that it was freeing, and also that the world seemed a more tactile place.

    I’ve not managed to get much wear time in; my job means I can’t wear them at work, but I’ve worn them to the shops, and just around about. And I think my first opinion was right. The world is just a more interesting, tactile place. I’ve always liked my experiences on the visceral side; mountains, sea, forests, fresh air, dirt. I drive a car with the minimum between me and the road because I want to *feel* the road. I ride a bike so I can feel the world going by. I take joy in the world. These shoes enhance that joy.

    Going outside barefoot tends to hurt my puny feet. Pointy rocks and bits of jagged stuff dig in and make it an uncomfortable experience. The Fivefingers, well, it’s like going barefoot. The difference between KSO’s and a pair of ordinary runners is like the difference between, say, a Ford Mondeo and an Ariel Atom. I was concerned that the KSO’s, like my ancient Lonsdale (OneStar clone) runners, would suffer from the thin sole making walking on Concrete or Tarmac (or any hard surface) uncomfortable. But the majority of my walking has been on such surfaces and it’s not been a problem so far….although the sight of grass or earth or pebbles leads me to disregard any pretence of decorum and stalk over to whichever surface it is, then walk about on it like a cat, while saying “OOoooh, textured!” (or possibly “Pebbles!”).

    I’ve found that zipping up and down stairs and perching, my balance is better. My toes are able to do their job and curl around things or adjust my posture to make me more stable (and lord knows, I need stability ;) ).

    The only bad things I’ve found are that there’s no ability to try them on before you buy; mine are very marginally smaller than I’d like, I think, but Howlsthunder suggested that the next size up is actually ‘huge’, since they don’t do half-sizes. I think the next size up would be too big, but I’d like to check. I’m sure that with wearing the KSO’s and me’ll get used to each other. It’s really a couple of millimeters I want, and just on one toe (the big / great toe).

    The other thing is people’s reactions to them; most people don’t look that closely at your shoes, but Paramito’s comment I suspect sums their opinion up when they do: “Grotesquely ugly”. I actually don’t think they’re ugly at all; interesting is the word I’d’ve applied. It perhaps doesn’t help that mine are the black/black KSOs, which essentially swarth your feet in a layer of black material and plastic. But quite honestly, these aren’t shoes for people who care about what people think. If you spend your life wondering whether you’re looking suitably fashionable and cool, these aren’t the shoes for you.

    But they are the shoes for me, ‘cos while I don’t want people to go ‘ugh’ when they see me, I’d rather be reasonably comfortable than knacker my knees any day :)

    And there endeth today’s review.

    Quick pop quiz, is Katy Perry’s song ‘I Kissed A Girl’ derogatory or not? I quite enjoy it, in that way that I do, but then I have my concerns about an artist who’s toured US churches and makes comments on her Christianity. Previous knowledge suggests that US Churches, as a rule, do not look on being gay favourably…. and that makes me ‘suspicious’. Unfortunately it’s a boppy bouncy song, and I’m known for liking boppy bouncy songs.

  • Reviews, spolier free and brief…

    Saawariya: This is the first time in my life I’ve seen a bollywood film on the big screen, and probably only about the third time I’ve ever watched an entire bollywood film. This is not to be damning of the genre, but simply that growing up my mum didn’t watch them, so I didn’t get into the habit. For this reason I can’t say how unusual Saawariya is compared to other Bollywood films, but I can say it was completely not what I expected. The film is basically your fairly traditional love story; but it’s set in this incredible Moulin Rougeesqe, fantastical land; a sort of indian-venice.

    It didn’t let down on the dances, the singing or the other traditional Bollywood aspects; and I found myself quite sucked in to it – although the man in black? I don’t like him – and despite what my mum thought, I didn’t reckon he was much of a hunk… :)

    Geek Mafia – Mile Zero: This is the follow up to the original Geek Mafia – and without giving anything much away it sets the Geek Mafia up for being quite a series. As with the original book there’s some notable proofing errors in the book; something I find hard to justify in the second book… The downloadable PDF also has some formatting quirks – but a book isn’t about how it looks, it’s about the contents. Geek Mafia – Mile Zero, I somehow found less engaging initally than the original book. I found the beginning somewhat, well, slow – and found myself kind of reading it through a perverse desire to find out what happened to the characters. Rick Dakan seems very keen to position the characters above ordinary criminals, which I find somewhat grating at times; but it does all come together as the plot develops.

    Really, it’s a sequel; it’s not quite as good as the first book, but once you get past that first chunk then it does become compelling reading as you work towards the denouement. And if Mr Dakan does ever sort out mailing his books in a manner which doesn’t involve gold coated unicorns carrying the books across the ocean stepping from diamond lilly-pad to diamond lilly-pad before placing them in your very hands dusted in fresh pixie dust (i.e. when he makes his shipping cheaper) then I’ll be sure and get the pair :)

    Blacklist: I’ve loved Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski since my dad introduced me to her in my teens. He apparently listened to the BBC’s adaptation of her earlier crime mysteries, and so any review I give of a VI Warshawski novel is likely to be rather positive. It’s another great story, puliing you in (compelling to nick a word I’ve used already) and discussing the political situation in America at the moment; it’s very interesting to feel the change in her relationship with the police, her concerns about what can happen to you in a world where the American Government can abduct people off the streets… Dystopian futures have always been something that I’ve rather enjoyed, dystopian present makes me nervous, but it also makes for an excellent read. Anyhow, Sara Paretsky continues to Rock. I’ve just realised there’s a few older novels that I don’t have – which means I shall have to go hunt them down at a store. What I really need is a book database which lists every book I own so I can be sure and not buy one I’ve already got :)

    The Golden Compass: So we headed to Sloughs illustrious cinema yet again to see something somewhat more mainstream. Unlike Kathryn I’ve never read the His Dark Materials trilogy (heh, a trilogy that’s actually a trilogy!) and so was a little concerned since one of the reviews said that it’s rather dependent on you having read the novels. I’m not sure if the little bits and pieces that Kathryn’s told me were enough to make the story fit together easily in my head, or whether it’s the case that if you came in knowing nothing at all that it’d make sense.

    Kathryn said that they didn’t develop the characters enough in the film which is something that when she said it did become apparent to me; the characters certainly don’t develop a great deal in the time of the film; which is obviously a restriction related to the relatively short running time of the film. However, as someone who’s not read the books I found it a truly engaging tale; I slipped into the world with daemons, it’s a concept which I don’t feel uncomfortable with (Kaisa, you ought to enjoy the concept, I’d’ve thought :) ). They clearly have toned down the anti-religious sentiment quite markedly; whether for the American market or for the market generally it’s difficult to say; I’m aware that Britain is a much less Secular place than I thought it was :-/. Sorry, rambling off topic there. Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

    So there you go. As promised, reviews.

    In other news, I’ve started work on the Viva project; I’ve accidentally bought myself a stupidly expensive Xmas present (a video camera, on which I bid the minimum truly expecting to get outbid, as I usually do, and uh; didn’t). And I’ve finally admitted to myself that the heating won’t be in until after Xmas… Clearly the way past this is to spend as much time as possible at work ;)

    The BeBox continues to actually work, unlike the HomeHub. We’ve got faster ADSL, can torrent files, and apart from the dubious PC in the lounge’s wireless we seem to be working. The Mac should be off to be repaired tomorrow, depending on when I wake up. I just need to check if Nikki took the supply apart, and if she did attempt to remove any evidence of warranty stickers :)

  • it’s an ambulance!

    So, today I decided to scare the pants off myself; or more accurately, agreed cheerfully to scare the pants off myself. My beloved asked me a while ago if I’d mind giving a little talk at the school at which she teaches; and possibly due to a bout of clinical insanity*, I agreed and thought about what I was going to say, and do. We got some information from the 2 classes teacher’s (argh, I can’t work out where that apostrophe should live), and today I headed down there in my best (quite literally my best) ironed uniform (believe me, the words Ironing and Kate rarely go together); along with a selection of bits of stuff for plastering and slinging.

    Having got there, I met up with Kathryn and proceeded to mentally pace around the staff room. I did a pretty good job of actually sitting still and looking like a startled rabbit tho’. When my time came, I was ready….well, ish. And out from it’s usual hiding place came the confident, competent, together and talk-giving persona. Apparently I pitched it about right, I certainly enjoyed it in a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-terrified-kind of way. And most importantly the kids seemed to enjoy it.

    Some of them asked really good questions; some of them were incredibly good on what bones were what; and poor old Gromit (who came with me to be my plastered assistant) got totally plastered having alledgedly broken both arms (uh, legs?). And just as I was leaving a slightly smaller? child proclaimed that I’m an ambulance… Perhaps I should lose some weight ;)

    The journey home was a little long however…

    Parcelfarce failed to leave the new modem with anyone when they couldn’t deliver it yesterday; and so I rang them up (knowing I’d be out today) and said ‘can I collect it from your hideously inconveniently located and difficult to get to depot in the land of london?’ to which I was informed that this was indeed possible, and yes I could go get it. After about an hour of hideous london pre-rush-hour traffic, we finally reached the depot where I was informed that they’d sent it out on a lorry to try and deliver it again today.

    I must admit I was unimpressed. I’ve never had a good experience with Parcelforce. Or at least, the bad ones are so common that they outnumber the good by a substantial margin. Having arranged a ‘it will be at your postoffice tomorrow’ arrangement, we headed out again. Pausing only to buy a burger king meal (yes, yes, I know. But it was there, and I was there, and it smelt so good). When we finally made it home it turned out that this time he’d decided to leave it with a neighbour. The new modem-router-of-justice was here.

    Only… it didn’t have any firmware in it. All credit to Be though; they offered to send a new one and, indeed, working together we got the one they’d sent to accept the firmware from the supplied disk (it took a few goes), and suddenly we have internet. I can’t say ‘screamingly fast broadband of joy’, but we have about a 3.5Meg connection, which is a huge step up from the home hub’s pathetic 1.5 Meg. Apparently the little magic box will also do VOIP, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

    Technology was on my side though; this I know, because the BT HomeHub Phone (the one that crashes on speaker phone and which can’t detect that there’s new firmware to update to, model 1010, I think); well, contrary to expectations it registered with the Tevion base on our new phones first time… and so there’s the faintest hope that things might be good in the land of Teknowlegie.

    On the superplus side, Kathryn’s other-half-of-her-present-which-is-unrelated-to-the-first-half is winging it’s way here. Lauren and Chrissy’s present is here…. most of the others are ordered… so, in general, Ra.

    Less Ra, however, is Rebecca. Jonathon from JLH sent me the first photos of Rebeccas rust monster. He rung me to chat about what we’re going to do…and, well, she’s… not quite as well as I’d thought.

    The driver’s side’s not quite so bad, but basically Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre left me with a car that was ‘structurally sound’; uh, yeah, except that the chassis/floorpan isn’t actually attached to the body at the back at all. I had my friends travelling in that car. If we’d’ve been shunted at any speed there would have been *nothing* left of that back passenger area. Nothing at all. *sighs*

    Annyhow, we’ll see what happens. Apart from me working scary numbers of extra shifts to pay for it all. On the plus side I’ve read Geek Mafia: Mile Zero and I’m a good way through Blacklist. Reviews may follow if I’m feeling wordy.

    * Actually I agreed because I love her, and because I need to scare the pants off myself once in a while to remind myself that I’m alive.

  • le sigh

    So, yesterday was a good day (apart from the transient death of a laptop. It seems the power connector’s gone now (in addition to the cable and the case, the screen’s occasionally flickering too. I think it might be time to take it apart); tiring but everything went remarkably well. Despite the 6 miles travelled in the last year, Rebecca aquitted herself beautifully; carrying me the 120 miles (with the brief stop at my mum’s to collect new wings) without any untoward experiences (apart from a petrol leak, which I was faintly aware of, but only actually checked up on once I’d got up there).

    It was a gorgeous day, and oddly, for someone who’s lived in the UK all their lives, the sunny-but-cold air reminded me very strongly of Canada. I guess, doing Rebecca is largely a step towards Canadification, and having thought about it getting Canada out of my head was hard. Poor old Rebecca though, her engine sounded so sick by the time we got there – running essentially on 3 cylinders except at higher revs…

    Anyhow, Jonathon of JLH is very friendly – and we chatted for a while and looked around at the Zetec engine’d minors, and the minors undergoing major structural rehabilitation, and chatted of rebuilds topping £50,000… And I looked at my poor tired Rebecca, her subsistence motoring existence having taken it’s toll; rusty wings, rusty doors, knackered engine and such, she won’t be getting one tenth of that; but she her reliability is something which has left me with no small measure of respect for the engineering behind her.

    Anyhow, at the end of the day we headed to Leamington Spa; unfortunately getting stuck behind a learner driver – my train ticket was for 1800, and as he suggested 2 sets of (red) traffic lights from the station, I sprinted from the car and made it to the station at 1803, fortunately, my train was delayed and came in at 1806, just as I scrabbled up the stairs to the platform. I probably had about a minute to spare – and y’know what, I felt sick as a dog as I sat on that train. I sat there reading Scott Pilgrim (vol 1, I needed to start again at the beginning); and drifted off to Canada in my head again.

    I was back, sitting on the GO heading back to Mississauga, new copies of Scott Pilgrim in hand, from a day in Toronto. As the train pulled into Oxford (where I changed) I was thoroughly in that headspace. Finally got back to home just after 8, stopping at the Kebab van for dinner…

    Today, theoretically hasn’t gone badly. I’ve paid the council tax bill (after some argument with the home hub and the hub phone). Internet Exploiter didn’t want to start today, and Firefox is still doing it’s “i think I’ll stop and rest for a bit” at random moments. The laptop is however working after some wiggling of cables and connectors, so I guess reparing that is something I can look forward to. I may well switch it for a standard power connector, since then I can ditch my mini-adaptor. I just really don’t want *more* jobs to do. The fan heater in the lounge also needs stripping down and repairing, and this time I’m peeved with I&A car services.

    They’re great, in-so-far as being a garage I actually trust. But they’re slow. Or at least, when I booked my car in before they had it for several days and didn’t do anything, none of the service was done. This time, they collected the car (although it was no longer booked in), have had it for 3 days, and now want it for another 3. 6 days is a hell of a long time to have a car.

    Colour me unimpressed.

    Come the spring it’ll be back to car servicing I fear. It’s cheaper and it’s quicker. I’m down a car for a few hours, rather than days. Le *sigh*.

    I guess I should get on with the house, but I’m just somehow feeling really fed up. Poot.

  • Sheer unadulterated lazyness

    Okay, so shoot me. I’m taking my morning more or less, no actually I’m taking a chunk of my morning off. I may go and prod at the paint in the bathroom, I may not, I may turn on the water to the cistern, I may not. We shall see.

    I actually got up hugely early, but the thing is – the thing is I’ve got to drive to my mum’s to collect the wings for my mog, and the drive to the midlands to drop off Rebecca before waiting until 1800 for my train back. I’m hoping to have a big wait between heading up there and the train on the way back, but I can’t promise that’ll be the case. I was hoping she’d run better once she’d got some fresh petrol in her, but actually despite starting and running, she’s still rough as sin.

    So, anyhow, I’ve spent my morning doing stuff all. I’ve downloaded some nipod management tools, I’ve downloaded something which claims it can remove all my dupilicate mp3 files (ha, I’ve tried this before… but hey, it’s worth a shot). I’m still converting several gigs of Kathryn’s AAC (into mp3) files for placement on the nipod, although the application I’ve got in my sweaty little paws says it can do that on the fly while copying and integrating sorta with iTunes. Which is cool beans.

    ‘ve spent some time trying to find a prezzie for one of my friends; frustratingly I dreamt the perfect present for this friend last night; sadly however it doesn’t *actually* exist. I had my doubts, and searching the net has confirmed them, distressingly.

    But you have to look, don’t you?

    Yesterday I stripped an awful lot of paint from the radiator. It’s about 2/3rds done. I’m thinking I might mark out the channels to cut in the kitchen and then tomorrow I could do that, to give me a break from paint stripping. Ha, we could knock up a faux kitchen in a day, don’t’cha think? Maybe? Heh. Anyhow, I should go shower, really.

    order levitralevitraviagra cialis levitraorder viagraorder viagra soft tabsorder generic cialisgeneric cialiscialis soft tabsgeneric viagrabuy cialiscialiscialis professionalviagra soft tabsviagraviagra professionalphentermine pricephentermine onlinetramadol pricetramadoldiscount somasoma free shippingclomid pricesclomid onlineindocin onlineindocin pricesprednisone free shippingprednisone prescriptionfemara prescriptioncheap femaraeffexor free shippingeffexor onlinephentrimine prescriptionphentrimine onlinebuy female viagracheap vpxlphentermine pricephentermine onlinetramadol pricetramadolsoma prescriptionbuy somaclomid prescriptioncheap clomidindocin 50 mgorder indocincheap prednisonepurchase prednisoneorder femarafemaraeffexor pricescheap effexorphentrimine pricesphentrimine onlinecheap female viagraorder vpxlorder viagra jellyviagra jelly cheap pricescheap cialis jellycialis jelly onlinepurchase kamagra onlinekamagra free shippingviagra cialis onlinetaking viagra cialis togetherdiscount levitralevitra onlinepurchase cialis professional onlinecialis professional free shippingpurchase viagra professionalviagra professional onlinecialis soft tabs free shippingdiscount cialis soft tabsorder viagra soft tabsviagra soft tabs onlinecialis pricecialis onlineviagra discount pricesviagra free shippingsomasoma 350 mgcheap avandametpropecia free shippingpropecia prescriptionorder ultracetultracetorder zoloftzoloftorder phenterminebuy zoviraxzoviraxnizoral shampoocheap nizoralnutridrine prescriptionhoodia prescriptionhoodia 1000 mgzimulticheap zimultiventolin free shippingtramadol free shippingdiscount tramadolcarisoprodol pricesorder levitra professional onlinebuy levitra professionalorder cheap levitra onlinelevitra onlinefemale viagrafemale viagra onlineorder vpxl onlinebuy vpxlorder viagra jelly onlinebuy viagra jelly onlineorder cialis jelly onlinebuy cheap cialis jellyorder cialis tabscheap cialis soft tabscheap viagra soft tabsbuy viagra soft tabs onlinecheap viagra super activebuy viagra super activebuy cialis professionalorder cialis professional onlinebuy viagra professionalorder viagra professional onlinecheap generic cialisgeneric cialisorder generic viagrabuy generic viagradiscount viagra super activeviagra super active free shippingorder levitra professionallevitra professionallevitra priceslevitraviagra cialis onlinegeneric viagra pricekamagra onlinebuy cialis professionalorder cialis professionalviagra soft tabsviagra soft tabs onlinegeneric cialis no prescriptiongeneric cialis onlinecheap cialiscialis no prescriptionorder viagra professionalbuy viagra professionalviagra no prescriptionviagra onlinecheap viagracheap generic viagrageneric cialischeap cialisbuy viagrageneric viagra onlinegeneric cialis onlinebuy cialiscarisoprodol 350 mgdiscount detoxextreme detoxorder xanaxpurchase xanaxlamisil onlinebuy lamisilpurchase indocinindocinelavil discountcheap clomidclomid pricesbuy cheap propeciaorder propeciazyvox free shippingzyvox priceslevaquincheap vantinkeftab onlinestromectol pricesstromectol free shippingbuy prograf no prescriptionbuy prografdiscount omnicefomnicef onlinenoroxin onlinebuy maxaquinlincocin lincomycinlincocin priceserythromycinbiaxin pricesbiaxinbuy generic ceftincheap ceftinbuy zyloprimcialis online purchasebuy cialis low costcanadian pharmacy generic cialisbuy cialis money orderbuy cialis fast shippingbuy cialis drug online rxbuy 10 mg cialisbrand cialis for salebest generic cialis pills priceviagra best prices fda approved

  • Variously titled, but fundamentally the big, late update

    Welcome to the combined Kate’s Life 2007 update package. This package will update your Kate’s Life Information on the following issues:

    – Thanksgiving
    – XKCD is in my head again
    - Stuff of a housey nature
    – Random photographics
    – Other sundry informatorial updates may be included.     Click here to install this update

    So, yes, I’m behind again, aren’t I? So, we’ll do things in kinda an order. First up, XKCD is in my head; I’m now at a state where I have no properly working computers. The laptop’s power cable is fubar, so I need to find the spare supply for it (which is probably in the attic, fortunately, and not in the ‘spare room’ which is currently full. The G5 still needs a new power supply; I’m hoping to sort that out this week, if at some point before friday I have a working car. The PC downstairs still falls off the wifi, it is to be fair working in all other respects. And the hackintosh remains without network. There was no small degree of frustration after spending hours on it, I realise now that I need a USB WiFi dongle *anyway* (my brain kept saying, no you don’t; you won’t need one when you get the G5 working because you’ll just stick the homehub up there as a wired / wireless router – but it’d just be easier if everything can be wirelessed). So, yes. We’ll see what happens.

    Anyway, so, Thanksgiving. We celebrated thanksgiving with friends (thank you for coming Jordax!), producing a not-quite traditional (but real) chicken (there were only 3 of us though, and we still had *loads of food*), stuffed with home made stuffing consisting of (veggie) sausage, raisins, celery, onion, and herbs; sweet potato and pecan casserole (that was delicious, if mostly sugar :) ), US style biscuits (very yummy), green beans, carrots, brussel sprouts, mashed potato and cranberry sauce, all washed down with some rather nice red wine. This was followed by an excellent Lemon Icebox Pie made with real proper Graham Crackers imported from the States… (and this is the best description I can imagine of a Graham Cracker: “…if a Digestive were ever to get a Ryvita into trouble, possibly at a wild party behind the cheese board, then the resulting progeny may well end growing up to look a lot like Graham Crackers“). Anyhow, proper thanksgiving tradition being followed we attempted to watch clips of the Macy’s day parade, but they were a bit short and required more attention than we wanted to give them (next year, can someone please post the whole damn thing to YouTube or GoogleVideo? That’d help. Ta), so we switched and watched the Peanuts / Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special (1973) :)

    And then we settled down to play Squabble for a bit (Kathryn won :) ), chatted, drank and whiled the hours away before heading to bed. Sunday was spend doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever (apart from some laundry and all the washing up in the entire universe).

    Anyway, I know it’s rather bleached from the flashgun, but here’s the thanksgiving dinner…

    And here’s a bit of old news; I drew a person…

    Raaaa!

    So, stuff of a housey nature (Which I should, really, be doing now) – the bathroom has water. Water! The taps work and everything. Well, the cold ones. Jobs left for us to do are (in order, ish):

    – Cut and prime wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – The rest of the grouting, most importantly finishing the shower and polishing the area behind the radiator.
    – Painting the woodwork behind the radiator.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Seal sink drainer (because it’s leaking….le sigh).

    Day 2
    – Paint wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – Silicone sealing around the shower.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Sand radiator and paint… hopefully.
    – Silicone seal around toilet

    Day 3
    – Switch over to chrome flush lever / chain / etc.
    – Mount toilet cistern, connect up, pray it flushes okay.
    – Connect radiator.

    Other non-urgent jobs are to finish the rest of the grouting elsewhere, put a second coat of paint on some areas that missed out on the walls then mount shelves on those walls, and to – once the plumbing’s all connected up (hot water, specifically), fill in the last segment of tiles (over the currently removable panel work) and to grout everywhere that’s left.

    It’s close, but this made me ridiculously happy:

    And finally, for various reasons I’ve been trying to get some artsy shots of the Viva (well, one specific reason) – so, here’s one or two:

    Uh, so there you go, closing with pictures. I’m going to end the update there, hopefully that’ll sort people’s complaints about lack of pictures ;)

  • late night ponderance

    See, nights. I always try and swing my body round to night shifts by staying up insanely late the night before; thus allowing me to sleep late into the day before my night shift. That’s the *idea* anyhow. Which means staying up late at night, which means pondering and thoughts and kind of wondering about things.

    So, I’ve got various things lurking in my brain; the Viva project (which I’ll unveil at some point when Zesthost have sorted out the problems with billing which may be internet explorers, my, or their fault (I don’t know how it happened….)) lurks in my mind distracting me during the day; the house – obviously – continues to be cold and I keep thinking about the bills (including the TV licence :-/ ), and trying to work out whether it’s better to fork out 80 quid on a tool that we need, or leave it and rent it (at 40+ quid a day); and funnily enough I’ve got a strong desire to make a Super 8 film again.

    A couple of days ago I finally showed my cine films to Kathryn and it’s left me with a strong urge to get the camera out again. I’ve been missing the video camera – having played with John’s camera my little Aiptek which shoots at less than half tv resolution it just feels – well – exactly what it is, a cheap point and shoot which does video. But cine film has a certain quality to it; not so much a timelessness as a feeling of being fixed in time. Having hunted e-bay I can see a variety of options; well, two really. The Ektachrome colour film (I need to check any of my cameras will take this), or a black and white film.

    Either way, I have a distinct urge to get the camera out; only I’m not quite sure what to film. Anyone got a script that can be shot in 5 minutes (or so)?

    Anyway, the plan for tonight, such as it is – having watched Long Way Down (which I was seriously beginning to struggle with watching until about 2/3rds of the way into this episode when suddenly it became much more about the journey and the people than just an endless struggle to get the miles in), is to go and sort out the Mac. The only problem with that is that it’s in a room that’s cold. Cold and upstairs. So, thought for the moment is that when I’ve done this I’ll make myself a little cup of tea, grab my nipod, my copy of Accident and Emergency Nursing and head upstairs – taking with me a fan heater (well, I’ll use the bathroom / workshop heater). It’s a shame, ‘cos the gas fire’s just made the lounge nicely habitable. But hey.

    I need to get the Mac up and running really, because I’m fed up of using IE on the laptop – but I daren’t reinstall the laptop until I’ve got one other machine working. I’m slightly concerned about the Mac also because when I switch to the BeBox, as I intend to, I’ll have to pick up a wireless card for the Mac… and so far the ‘it works perfectly’ squad of Hackintosh people have produced for me a machine which has never worked the way they said. I’ve still no sound… and the latest Hackintosh software’s only succeeded in giving me more problems (that had no sound or networking). I don’t have the skills / interest / time /energy to care enough or to fix it; so it’s back on an earlier revision which just left me with no sound. Something I can deal with thanks to the nipod, and the existence of the laptop. But it’s not something I have any urge to live with permanently. Thankfully, my life behind the technology curve just got much better, with the addition of a G5 Mac. Only teeny little problem – it’s a dead G5 mac. So if anyone’s got a spare G5 power supply kicking round it’d sure come in handy right about… now.

    Anyway, I should get on :)

  • Again with the cold, aren’t we done now?

    So, yes. Another day of tiling ahead, and then some grouting – and stripping the old radiator down. There’s four more days in this week and in those four days I’m hoping to achieve:

    – Tiling and grouting complete around sink, bath, shower, toilet and radiator’s locale.
    – Woodwork (behind radiator) painted.
    – Radiator stripped and repainted.
    – Radiator pipework completed and radiator connected.
    – Temporary kitchen surfaces up in the…kitchen.
    – Pipework run under the floor in the kitchen to connect up lounge radiator, with take off fitted but switched off for kitchen radiator.

    With that little lot completed we can call in the gas engineer and get the new boiler fitted; which would mean actually having heating. A blessing of unimaginable proportions. I’m lucky in so far as I don’t have to get up *every* morning at 5ish, which Kathryn does. At least some days I can wait until the weak sunlight has started to filter down; and also I can just sit and wait for the heater to warm up the bathroom (speaking of which…) and for hot water that is truly hot.

    So having heating that can take the house up to a reasonable temperature would be really rather nice.

    At the moment, the fire in the lounge isn’t really able to make the lounge warm by itself, probably ‘cos that back door doesn’t shut, which is another job that should be (and is) on my list.

    So that’s my day planned out, when the shower’s warm I’ll be heading in there. But there’s a trifling issue which is occupying my mind – that of my laptop. A while back firefox became such a pain to use (pausing every page load or scroll or on change of focus for up to 10 seconds) that I switched (albeit temporarily in my head) to IE. IE is awful, it’s stayed awful, and I still think it sucks. However, it does to a greater or lesser extent, work on here. However, now in the list of oddities has arrisen another; the laptop’s started to crash. With fair but not incredible frequency it’ll just lock up completely. Not ctrl-alt-del-able, not power-button-hold-for-offable but solid dead crash. Out with the battery and power cable crashes.

    Following this last one we had failed services on startup and Control Panel wouldn’t open… It seems to have ‘settled down again’, but I suspect it’s coming time for a mighty reinstall. I want to try Linux again on here, since I can’t have OS X; which means getting the linux install disk onto a machine with a burner. Since the PC in the lounge is *also* waiting for a reinstall (house has priority!), then that’ll be the Mac (which is currently somewhat of a blank slate, since I got the install to work but it’s not yet got any actual software on there, really. I’ve got Toast, just not installed). So I’m thinking I best get sorting things, and get all the data off here pretty soon otherwise things are likely to suck, in all reality.

    Still, that’s where we’re at. Cold, mostly….