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25^th April 2002, 11:44.

Soo, sucky day.

After yesterday – at least my yesterday going quite well I suppose
it’s only normal for me to have a crap day – but this is a bit much.

So, on my way home yesterday I had a bit of an “incident” with the
bike. Riding along, it suddenly gets much louder shortly before
the engine just stops. So I roll to the side of the road and get off –
quick check, not siezed (which I thought might be a problem with the new
exhaust/running hotter) – turns over freely but it sounds a touch noisy.
Kick it over, no, there’s no sign of life whatsoever.

Oookay, I have a little prod. No, it’s definately not happy – but I
can’t see anything wrong – same as yesterday morning only with more
noise. Anyway, after about a minute it restarted – but there was no
drive in first gear. Second, third, fourth and fifth were all fine – but
first just did nothing. No unpleasant noises, no real feeling of badness
except for the obvious fact that I wasn’t moving. So I limped home in
second/third but at the last junction before our house I found that
first had recovered.

It was fine. I sat outside the house for a bit and checked, and
whatever had been the problem had disappeared.

So, fast forward to this morning (although I did some more gardening
last night!) – and I head off to work. About 2 miles from work the same
thing happens – only it just gets much louder – sounding really ill –
and there’s a distinct drop in power. So, I pull over, it stalls, but
restarts while I’m rolling….

And I look. And look, and listen, and prod, and tap, and clout. And
then I think back to this morning. When I checked the oil the bike was
on a slope – could it be that it still hadn’t used any – and that maybe
the oil-pump wasn’t working (either wasn’t working or had air in it so
it just wasn’t pumping any oil…).

Yes, indeed it could. So I limped in, trying to keep the revs down
(which is hard on a 125cc 2-stroke, because they produce s*d all power
at low revs) to the carpark here and I’ve called the RAC.

Yes, I’ve got the ignominy of going home in an RAC van. I could
*actually* do the repair in the car-park here if I had the
roller-bearing, but I don’t carry one with me (oddly enough, I wasn’t
expecting to have to replace it for another 30k miles). It’s extremely
dissapointing – not least because I’ve really been enjoying riding it
recently. Okay, I’ve been pushing my luck on occasions….but it’s been
fun.

Oh, interesting link.

—

Kate E

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24^th April 2002, 12:25.

Okay, sheer laziness for this entry; just lots and lots of test
results….but maybe there’s some comment at the bottom? Who can
say….Anyway, I don’t feel guilty I gave you guys a huge, vast
enormodome style diary entry yesterday…and there’s another one on my
iPAQ….

I am a Light
Cycle.

I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I
tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even
confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game
Character Are You?

You are the most universal mythical beast ever. Sightings
of the unicorn have been reported from all over the world, even in these
modern times. Unicorns are pure and incurruptible. In China, unicorns
symbolised gentleness, good will, and wisdom. Christianity links the
unicorn with Christ. It is said that unicorns would only allow virgin
girls to see them, let alone touch them. They were easily lured into
fatal ambushes by a virgin with some potchers waiting for the unicorn in
nearby bushes. A unicorn’s horn was a highly prised possesion, which was
reputed to have great healing capabilities. With the touch of its horn,
a unicorn could bring back a person who had been dead for several hours.
But when disattached from the unicorn’s body, the magic was
suggnificantly reduced and could only protect against poison. The
unicorn had the body of a horse, a unique spirling horn, and a lion’s
tail. They were pure white in color. Congradulations, you are a rarity
amoung mythical beasts. There aren’t enough of people like you in the
world.
What mythical beast best represents you? Take the
quiz!

Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.
Although I
think that any of these:

are probably also reasonable answers from that…

I’m a Fire Spirit

Anyway, so, this is largely due to finding this link to someone I know
online – which meant that I needed to send back an e-mail with the
address in – mind you it’s fairly obvious knowing the name she uses
online. Anyway, so I didn’t realise she had a live journal but now I
do….err. Yes. Kinda losing the plot a bit there.

So, anyway, from the results above we can deduce that I’m a pink
haired, fire spirited outsider light-cycle-unicorn – which makes perfect
sense.

I wonder if analysing the results from the various tests I’ve taken
would give an interesting insight into my very broken mind – or if it
would alternatively just prove that I’m a fruitcake. Or more likely
prove that online tests are a load of old b*ll*cks. (I wonder if that’ll
get through the filter here)

Anyway, the reason I’m so desperately short of anything to do is that
there’s only one of the managers who I’m secratary-for-the-week to here,
which means that in my in tray there’s b*gger all, and there wasn’t much
post….and anyway, I think they’re avoiding getting me to do too much –
I’m just doing the absolutely essential stuff. Still – explains why I’m
bored.

So, what else.

I’m considering doing an “e-mail me when you update the site” option.
I’ve mentioned it before and not had, shall we say, a staggering
response – so I suspect that you’re all not in the least bit interested.
But I might try again.

[Thinks: Help me, I’m bored witless!]

—

Kate E

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24^th April 2002, 10:21

Grrr

So, I’d not realised quite how much stuff the iPAQ had forgotten – I suppose I should have guessed what with having to go through the setup routine again – but all the shite windows software is back – and obviously the stuff I’d installed – it’s all gone….

Ah well all the more reason to put Linux on here….

So I’m still temping – and I’m still bored….however by the rather low standards I’ve got this morning has been moderately interesting. Before I get into that I thought I’d link to this (I’ll be impressed if I’ve managed to enter that correctly) – yes, anyway, I’ve been reading the BBCs news site for years and never before noticed that section!

Still it amused me.

I presume everyone’s noticed what’s happened in France. That’s scary….at least I find that scary.

It’s actually one of the few occasions I’ve really felt an urge to watch what’s happening in the news. Normally it’s something I do to fill time when I’m bored.

So, back to my morning. First thing was my bike eating it’s spark plug. Now this isn’t particulary uncommon – but it’s normally preceded by a short but noticable period of not-running-very-well; but this time, just to challenge me a bit it just stopped running as I was filtering down the middle of two lines of cars – just as prick-in-vectra decided he was going to ensure I couldn’t pull in in front of him. Luckily for me I was still moving fast enough to slot in sideways in front of him and get to the kerb. Mind you if he had hit me then it’d’ve been his car that was buggered.

Still having worked out what the problem was it didn’t take long to get going again.

Mind you, no-one stopped……

Oooh, oooh, apparently if Microsoft have the proposed measures imposed on them it might mean they couldn’t o withdraw a version of Windows if a major security flaw was found. He (Gates) also said they might have to stop selling Windows….I can imagine nothing better :-)

So this morning I was complemented on my dress sense by one of the other women here – which hasn’t ever happened before! Anyway – that put a smile on my face.

Is it sad that while having a looksie for ISS stuff I ran across this and thought “oooh, cool”? Probably…

I think I’ve run out of stuff to say now….

—

Kate E

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23^rdApril, 2002. 13:11.

So, I’m temping – I’m actually on my lunch break and for my own happiness I’ll be taking this file home on a floppy disk – and then copying it onto one of the machines back home.

So, what’s been going on? Well, I went home last weekend – which was cool – spent the weekend helping finish off the drive / steps up to the garden (yes, in one weekend I built a set of steps. Actually in one day). I also decided that it is time to attack the garden in Bristol – so yesterday Lauren and I did some Pro-Sport Gardening – with just a junior hacksaw and a pair of tinsnips…

You know about gardens? Okay there was a budliea. Now this budlia was no small plant – it occupied a good third to a half of the garden. It was probably around 10 feet tall and similarly deep. Anyway, after half-to-an hour of attack we managed to get the damn thing down to a sensable size. Well, actually, to be fair there were some small budlia underneath the vast one so we cut it back to them. Lauren also started work on making the hedge a remotely sensable size….although we really need the hedgetrimmer to do that.

Anyway, without too much further insanity we should actually have a garden. Although what we’ll plant in it remains a mystery – my mum’s said she’ll give us a dwarf apple – which is a start…

So, anyway, this temping lark, it’s not much fun. Actually it’s less fun than that – I think I’m mostly doing okay – only one hitch at the moment – which is that someone asked me to copy some stuff and I’ve forgotten who it was! I’ve done it, got a huge f*uck off stack of paper sat next to me, but I can’t remember who I wanted it for.

I’m also having to use a MS Natural keyboard and Windows 2000, this is not something I’m enjoying – to say the least.

Of course I’ve got my permanent paranoia sitting with me (“have I been read”, “do I look even remotely close to okay”), which is messing with my head. I also managed to screw up the timings this morning – so I was mooching around thinking “nah, I don’t need to hurry, I don’t need to be at work until 9:30”. Then a little bell rang somewhere in my brain – “No, that’s what you thought until you checked. You start at 9”.

I got into work at 2 minutes past 9, but only with some judicious bending of the highway code. Thinks: I could be a despatch rider.

It was a “bit” unnerving, what with knowing that my brake mastercylinder leaks. It’s probably dripping on their nice brick pathway right now…. ;-/

I also hope that there’s some two stroke in it, becuase I was riding it “somewhat hard”. Which might be why I grounded out the new exhaust going around a roundabout….

This job has at least got less irony factor that the previous temping job….there was I, ex-biochemist at an arts and humanities company stuffing envelopes. Still, Right now (at 13:45) I’ve finished all the stuff I’ve been told to do and I’m at a bit of a loss. There’s a memo I don’t quite know where it should be filed, but since it’s for filing it doesn’t really matter too much if it waits in the filing box until the person I’m covering for gets back.

It’s odd being a secratary – I’m not used to being referred to as “love” and being asked to make tea. Although I appear, atm, to be senior enough that other people make tea for me. Still, 7.5 ukp per hour. That might earn me enough to pay for the RAC cover, service the car and pay some rent. Still can’t buy that peter sellers DVD. Still feeling guilty about buing The Dish although it’s an excellent film – it’d have to be, I managed to watch it two days in a row (Saturday and Sunday).

Since I’m stuck not doing anything I’d like to log into my own machine and finish faffing with this database, so that I can start work on the new site. Still not decided if I’m going to do a new look. Maybe, maybe not. There is of course the issue of moving the content over to the new site….and what about all the broken links?

Well, we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, one thing I’ve had to do (is this rambly enough?!) is typing up someone’s written notes. This, you’ll note is why I’ve not said where I’m working….

So, let’s just share some pearls of wisdom:

“The manufacturer will give you a day of delivery so as which you can arrange to book the customer in.”

And remember, data isn’t input, it’s “Inputed”.

Sigh. Page after page of this stuff. On the one hand I was meant to be fixing the grammatical errors, or at least tidying it up a bit – but on the other it required so much work that once I’d finished the spelling errors (which I did as I typed it in, at one point he had me typing sodding “saftey”, insead of “safety”).

I’m apparently using Windows 2000 SP2 on a fairly fast PIII with 256Mb of Ram. This being the case why the hell does it keep stopping?! I mean, using IE leaves you sat for twenty or thirty seconds with a non-responding window whenever you type an address into the address box. If you try and do anything with that window – after a few seconds this

“This program cannot be closed. If it is being debugged…”

appeared.

*sigh*

Why do these people not use Linux? Why? Or MacOS? Or anything. God, for what they’re doing they could actually get away with RISC OS. Which reminds me, where’s my TEK teeshirt?

Hrm, maybe it’s arrived today.

So, we used to have a Java IRC client running on one of our machines, but it appears we don’t have anymore – which is sad – because I could be doingthat right now. Oh, ah, one more item has appeared for filing.

Are you bored yet? I am….

Has anyone actually read this far?! I shouldn’t think so. So. There’s stuff I want to write about but I’m not sure it’s a wise idea to let myself think about it while I’m at work. Incidentally (well, incidentally to me, not to you) the real problem with this keyboard is although I touch type – I don’t keep my fingers on the home keys, the position of my hands on the keboard is actually slighlty offset to the left – so my right hand normally covers some of the keys that are now on the left hand chunk of the keyboard – actually it’s that my typing position (as I analyse it) is slighlty turned round clockwise – so my left hand covers “y” and my right hand covers “g”. Which is causing me to occasionally hit the central wibblet in the keyboard. *mutter*.

So there’s two things (rewarding my loyal and/or bored readers here, with more rambling thoughts stuff) – one is children.

Okay, I’ve talked about this before. It sucks. Okay? Not being able to have kids sucks. It sucks when you go and see your sister and you’re looking after her 1 year old son to give her a break – and you want people to think the poor kid is yours. You push along the pushchair/pram and think “I wonder if I look like his mum”. And you *want* to, just so that you can get a bit of something you know you can’t have.

It hurts when you’re temping and the person you’re replacing who’s giving you a days orientation shows you pictures of their kids. And I don’t know if it ever stops hurting. I know that much of the time I don’t even want kids. But when I do, knowing that I can’t have them, it hurts. It hurts a lot.

*sigh*.

Well, that’s useful, I’ve just found a mistake in the previous diary entry – guess I’ll have to fix that when I get home – I’ll also have to tweak the Regolith site. I’m planning to redo the business plan tonight – with new sales figures – so we can send it off to the Princes Trust – and say “please give us money”.

I need to excercise more.

I did, and do, want to talk a bit about cancer, again, but I don’t think I dare let my feelings out here. I’m much more hopeful than I have been for a long time, but I”m scared of being too hopeful – mostly because my dad’s immune system hasn’t started to fight the cancer yet – and it needs to.

Current tally – 6 teas, 1 coffee.

Yesterday, it must be said, I was driving like an arsehole. Partly because I was tired, but mostly because I don’t think it should take an hour to get from yate to bristol – that said I only managed to do it in cough less time by bending the highway code. So, hrm, lets see what the AA say…

From: Bristol,Bristl

To: Yate,Gloucs

Total Distance: 15.9 Miles

Total Time: 0 hr 25 min

Now that’s scary. They’re even coming out the south of Bristol and going around the ring road, and then they’re using the same road I came in on. Perhaps they’ve not updated it to include the new speedlimits, or something. I dunno. I mean, I’m sure you could do it in 25 minutes – I’m not going to say how long I took – but I can’t actually see how you could do it without breaking the law.

I think that’ll do, you’re probably all bored witless, I know I am! I really need something else to do. I’d like to go out and check the state of my exhaust but I, err, don’t really feel it’s reasonable – and I don’t have a keyfob thing to get into the building…

Of course, this is helping me overcome my discomfort with phones. And meeting people. Mind you, it’d be nice if I wasn’t wearing all the same clothes I was wearing yesterday – and if I’d’ve managed to shoe-horn a bath into my day yesterday….never mind….

Only 2 hours and 48 minutes ’til I can go home….

—

Kate E

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19^th April 2002, 18:11.

[Re-edited at 1853 to try and make it readable]

So. Hrm. Feeling a bit down. A couple of things set me off – being broke and
having to go shopping and birthday related stuff, oh and some “discomfort”. What
shall I start with?

So, I had to go shopping today to get Johns birthday present –
he’s 1 soon… So, off I trundled up to ‘The Mall’ (bleuch) to find an Early
Learning Centre (free ad for them then) – who I knew had the kind of thing I was
after.

Of course, knowing that I had sod-all to do today I thought I’d have a wander
round before I went to get John’s present. And of course HMV had a huge sale on.
Okay I thought, they almost never have anything I actually want in their sale so
I’m probably fairly safe having a look. But no – because I’m broke and can’t
afford anything there was *loads* of stuff
I wanted. All of it substantially reduced.

Which of course pissed me off no end. In the end having wandered in and out
of the shop 4 times I decided to get one – and only because the present I got
for John cost much less than I thought it would. Mind you, buying a card/paper
for the present cost almost as much as the sodding present. 2 quid for a
birthday card?!

Gah.

I try and look at it a bit like I did when I was a student, and make finding
the cheapest/minimum of what I want a kind of game, but it doesn’t really work.
I hated being broke then and I hate it now. At least back then it was my own
fault to a large degree – always buying upgrades/software for my RiscPC I was,
but now – now I’m just buying the bare essentials (basically, petrol for my bike
and the car, as needed) and treating
myself is something that I now do *very* rarely.

Anyway, so I got The Dish –
the only copy they had in the sale, for 9 quid. Which is my treat for, err, the
next few months.

I really wanted to buy this
but – I can’t afford it or justify it. Still, I want it.

*sigh*

Anyway, that wasn’t the only thing getting at me – the other thing is the
fact that I didn’t in the end actually do anything to celebrate my
birthday. Being broke (oh look, money again) doesn’t help – I’d like to take my
friends out for dinner (and invite a few people down)…. But no, that’s not going
to happen. Actually it’ll probably not happen not only because I don’t have
money but also because it’ll just be forgotten about….*sigh*

Lack of money is also stopping me from taking my bike test. *sigh*. 100 quid,
that’s what I need to do that (then I could do motorcycle dispatch – which I’d
far prefer over office jobs) but I can’t afford it. The Mog’s going to need a
pair of tyres soon (one to replace the damaged one, one because it’s on it’s
1.6mm wear limit marker) and I can see all the money I earn next week vaporising
even before it hits my bank account. And I’ve not managed to pay any rent, which
is badness. Obviously there’s the credit card bill, but I don’t even want to
think about that right now.

Of course, in the excuses for feeling bad about myself I’ve got a great reason. Ryoko
came up to Bristol this week, unfortunately on the same day that I was
disappearing down to London (and my birthday). We’d promised that we’d meet up
for a drink – but by the time I got back I was just too knackered to go out –
and unfortunately – what with discovering that my “skin” is completely hopeless
and has failed to heal properly (this might be related to the amount of
standing and the discomfort I felt in the Cav – I hate the middle seat…)(maybe it’s worked this time – who can say?) –
made me fairly depressive and not-wanting-to-go-anywhere on Wednesday (which was
the second day that Ryoko was here – and she rang – and I just put her off so I
could lie down and be miserable. The headache didn’t help) – but I’m still
feeling crap about that. I should have gone.

She’s a nice lass and I didn’t make time to see her. *sigh*.

Oooh, just got an e-mail back from RISC OS limited….[pause to read it].

Well, that’s not the most polite e-mail response to a question I’ve ever had.
I mean, it’s not downright rude, but did he have to capitalise the word “no” in
the middle of a sentance? Hrm. No explanation of why “no”, just basically no,
and we can’t be bothered to give you even the briefest of reasons why not.

Well, RISC OS ltd just lost a big chunk of my sympathy. Given the tiny
number of sales they get then a brief explanation of why they don’t do what I was
querying which might have
persuaded me that it was worth the extra money would possibly have been worth
while[see note] – and frankly, if their attitude is like that then fuck ’em. They want 100
quid off me for a product that at best is worth 50.

For some reason I ended up in a moderate amount of discomfort while I was
wandering around the mall, I’ve had a bit of a prod and I don’t think anything
is wrong, but I’m getting more and more worried. Should I really be having
strange problems like this now? I mean, I know my body’s crap at healing
and slow at the best of times, but this is silly.

Mind you, the way that my body’s been going ‘crack’ recently has been scaring
me – every time I get up most of my limbs do it.

Interestingly – small world syndrome – I’ve found one of the people I used to
link to has a LiveJournal – since she’s trying to leave her past behind I won’t
say who it is – but anyway, was interesting to see how she’s presenting herself
now.

Anyway, I’ve adopted a blob,

It’s not as good as Fred the Stone – on my RiscPC, but there y’go.

Anyway, so, I updated my Links page today – to reflect the fact that I’ve
gone off loads of cartoons – actually I read about 3 of them in total. I’ve also
chopped out the many, many broken links (still I wasn’t doing too badly – there
were still more working links than broken ones by a good margin) – anyone want
me to link to their site? Now’s a good time to mention it…

Damnit. Why am I not feeling so good? Grr…I’ve got to cheer up….

Ahh, this made me smile…

—

Kate E

Note: The question was – are they likely to produce a
softloadable version of RISC OS 4 (since the new RISC OS Select stuff is
soft-loadable why not make the whole OS softloadable, and thus drop the price
because they wouldn’t have to supply ROMs, just ROM images).

Comments:

 
Ryoko at Sun Apr 21 03:30:45 2002 said:

I don’t much mind not going out.. but.. I was all alone in the big city.. I wish you’d at least let me come say get well soon in person

An dheck, this way now I know you were really to ill

happens to the best of us.. just get well soon…

wanna try again for uh…july?

I thought you didn’t want to see me

 

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19^th April 2002, 0031.

Well, it’s only just the 19th.

So. I had some really, incredibly good news. Something which has let out some
of the tension I’ve been feeling over the last few days – see, as I briefly
mentioned before, my dad had a scan yesterday, well, Wednesday. And we got the
results back today (Thursday). And, in the world of cancer it doesn’t get much
better than this (apart from “it’s gone” which would have been fantastic news,
but wasn’t what they said). The chemotherapy is working though.

I couldn’t really have hoped for a better birthday present.

Even if it was 2 days late ;-)

I just hope that we can kill the cancer now.

You know it’s scary. I didn’t used to think about cancer, but now I can’t
stop. *sigh*

So, yes. I’ve got some work next week, which is something for which I’m
incredibly grateful because I’m basically completely out of money – and worrying
about what I’m going to do.

I really want to take my bike test – get it over and done with, but that’s
not going to happen until I’ve got some money for training. And no, I’ve not
forgiven that git of an examiner.

Of course – I didn’t mention (by the cunning plan of not writing a diary
entry) – I unhealed a on, hrm, yes, my birthday.

Just a small patch – which has healed up again, but has me very scared. I
don’t know why it didn’t heal properly – I mean, there was skin there, and it
looked okay, and then suddenly this scab reappeared. I thought I was past
that…. :-(

There was something else, but I’ve forgotten it now….ahh well. Oh, no,
there’s been at least a hint of a sniff of progress on the new, improved site.
Okay, it’s a tiny movement, but it’s better than nothing. I’m still not sure if
I want to restyle the site at the same time – I mean, this site’s looked the
same for 2 years now….but on the other hand I love the look, still….and it
took me sodding ages to get it to reliably work….Ah well…

—

Kate E

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16^th April 2002, 0753.

[Bentley Rhythm Ace – Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out]

So, I’ve opened my prezzies and my cards (Ben Elton book, Picture book and
Multitool. Cards from my parents and James :-)

And now I’m off to London to add force to the “this guy’s proposals suck”
team….

—

Kate E

Comments:

 
Jordax at Wed Apr 17 01:00:10 2002 said:

Ironically, the Rats of Wisdom never could remember anyone’s birthdays…

 

Kate E at Fri Apr 19 19:09:20 2002 said:

Isn’t that why you’ve got the Revo?

 

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16^th April 2002, 00:26.

Eeep. I’m 24.

—

Kate E

Comments:

 
Meeper at Tue Apr 16 08:23:49 2002 said:

Been there, done that… Sounds like you have more fun than me though…

 

Nikki Wood at Tue Apr 16 23:14:00 2002 said:

Happy birthday dear.. Don’t worry, I’m only a few months behind you. Drop me a line sometime. And poke Amy. She knows where the current incarnation of my diary is :)

 

Nikki Wood at Tue Apr 16 23:14:31 2002 said:

Happy birthday dear.. Don’t worry, I’m only a few months behind you. Drop me a line sometime. And poke Amy. She knows where the current incarnation of my diary is :)

 

amy at Wed Apr 17 07:51:33 2002 said:

happy birthday! No. I’m not a few days late. nah ah. not me no.

 

at Wed Apr 17 13:39:37 2002 said:

happi burthdai.

 

Kate E at Fri Apr 19 19:11:29 2002 said:

Thanks folks :-)

 

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