Monthly Archives: June 2006

Shard Rider

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Saw mention of this – sort of – on Nee Naw yesterday and it surfaced on the BBC a while ago – Hasselhoff in chandelier accident. Is this guy supremely tall? You’d think a chandelier would be high enough to not present a collision threat unless they were really tall. Like 12 feet or something. But for now, he gets the benefit of the doubt. (Not for long….) . It says that “His right arm was cut by shards of glass, severing a tendon.“. So he is sauntering out of the men’s room when his head hits the chandelier. That causes some glass to shatter so greatly that a large chunk – for it must have taken more than a mere sliver – to sever a tendon. Tendons are quite tough…..

Hasselhoff, while in the men’s room, hit’s his head on a chandelier. He raises his right arm to protect and falling glass severs a tendon.

That just does not seem right. Even if it fell to the floor what’s he doing to cause a tendon to be severed? You’ve got to assume the whole chandelier doesn’t come crashing to the floor because it doesn’t say that.

Somebody isn’t telling the truth methinks……

Hasselhoff, while swinging from …….

16 digits

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BT fixed the link. BT cut the line speed to a third of what it can be. Okay so it’s still fast but that’s not the bloody point. They’ll call out that they have upgraded and unbundled but they don’t mention the fact that they also happily screw with paid for services. Bloody idiots.

Bon Echo and Firefox do not play nice. Multiple startup errors from FF despite BA not being there anymore so a full reinstall of FF was done. I thought I had saved all the passwords. Oops. So my trusty Keepass gets called to action and I start plugging in the random characters. Be interesting to see what I’ve missed this time.

Friday. I like Friday. Less work on Friday and the weekend so I can catch up on everything else. And go look for a new monitor..

Packet loss. BT

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25% packet loss consistently today. Massively frustrating. New router, new modem and problem persists. It is making work much much harder to do. Disable wireless. Go hunt in the garage for the cat5 cable – return with it. All 14 miles of it. (It’s very very long). Machine is now hardwired. STILL I have the problem. Phone Zen. This time get told to download Winmtr. Run. …. and it’s ALL the fault of BT. 100% loss on the second hop. It ALL goes away. Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards Bastards. (That was the super-abridged version). Money spent on hardware when it was their problem all along. Loss of a point to Zen for not suggesting Winmtr before – but Zen have zillions of + so loss of one is trivial. So now I’m running multiple tests on this program so Zen can go throw it all at BT for me. And I can get a tiny bit less frustrated.

Packets and loops

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I was going to blog about the 20% packet loss I’m sometimes getting and how helpful the guy at Zen was. (I need to play with other electrics I think).

I was also going to blog that Steve has just mailed me to say I’ll have a new machine soon.

I might even have mentioned Trillian (I bought it).

I had some thoughts on the Automattic Support Network too.

But then someone just said something – something nice and totally unexpected – and it has blown me away. A complication of that is making my mind do loops. Right now infinite ones.
That’s cryptic. It’s been 40 minutes and I hoped that by starting to write I’d be able to make sense of it. I can’t yet work it through as I want. If indeed that is possible….

Ping no pong

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Modem. Router. Not fun at all trying to get them to talk to each other. Anyway, that’s something different. Lots of pinging going on to test connections without opening Firefox and it’s many tabs. ping bbc.co.uk – no problem. wordpress.com – no problem. cnn.com – get nothing. Damn connection must have gone, check settings. No change, still cannot ping. Look harder – still nothing. Ater much poking around I realise that the problem is with cnn – they are unpingable by me. Or at the very least I don’t get the pong. cnn.com / www.cnn.com I get time outs. Odd – and very frustrating when I’m trying to get two bits of kit talking to each other.

A sharp poke from reality

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J has been pretty good recently. It’s been nice. I gave her the Interferon-b injection last night as is normal for a weekly event. About 6am I surfaced from a very deep sleep just enough to move and appear awake. J asked me if I was awake, so I was. She needed to get out of bed but she couldn’t move. Her left leg was really weak and her right leg had gone into spasm and was unbendable. So she was stuck. I managed to bend the leg several times but it wanted to be straight and stay straight. Thigh muscles are surprisingly strong – even wasting away ones. With a lot of effort though the whole task was managed…. I couldn’t but help think while doing this that it’ll happen again. Not the brightest start to the day.

In draft

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I just spent over 30 minutes writing a post about the new Automattic Support Network. The draft goes down to where the Google image is so it’s not short. If I still like it in the morning I’ll click Publish. Don’t hold your breath though – it’s not happened yet. Write > Publish. That’s the way I blog. It’s all good stuff, maybe too much ‘me’ in it though. That’s why you won’t see it :)

In better news, J has finally convinced me that a new computer is in order. For me that is :) (which is no mean feat on her part. I’ll want shiny new gadgets but actually buying them is a very rare event). So rather than wander in to the local PC World and say “Hey, you look smart in that blue shirt, you really must know your athlons from your celerons, so which machine should I purchase from you this fine morning?” I’ve scribbled a bit of an email and sent it toward Sheffield for some advice from Steve. So long as I can have full size, hi-res Baldur’s Gate 2 running on one monitor and web apps open on the other I’ll be happy. Can’t be too hard eh? :)

IM

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I don’t use all of them all of the time but I do use all of them sometimes which is why I started with Gaim, played with Trillian and then moved to Miranda. When it works, I like Miranda. It’s a b*stard to get working and looking how I want – and I’m not being all special about it – and it’s a b*stard to find the files, navigate the forums etc. Open source maybe.
I’m trying to block someone on AIM. Using AIM I have blocked them. Using AIM Express I have blocked them. Something somewhere is screwing up because they still get through. Fine, okay I’ll try another way. Get Miranda to stay on top of everything and as soon as I see this contact block them from there. I ain’t stupid and I can see the “Stay on Top” checkbox and I can also see it doesn’t damn well work. I tried and tried and tried. WHY will it no do something so simple? I’d go to their forums to try and find out but I’d lose the will to live. Here’s an idea – an IM client that has NO smilies AT ALL and they can’t be hacked in either! And it filters for all that ^_^ nonsense too.
Trillian. It’s $25. If it works, I’ll buy the thing and be rid of the ‘nice it if did what it said’ Miranda. YMMV :)

-modem

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The router arrived this afternoon. Unfortunately the modem took exception to it – and died. Got one on eBay so by the end of the week I should have a newer – and better – connection. Left netstumbler running for ages this morning as I was hoping for a comparison. Checking back showed another connection had appeared and disappeared twice. Solid signal too. Encode the router? Too much work :) I’d love to know what it was. (If you could see where I live you’d agree about the open wifi.)

As I’m planning on a new machine, I went over to Alienware to have a drool. (I actually only went there because I’d gone to Metacritic to check some game reviews then went to Game to check dates then seen the link to Alienware and then thought “New Shiny Computer!”. Like you do.) So, great laptops that make mine look like a breeze block and I tricked out one of their desktops. £4.495.55 (that included my £150 instant rebate! Bargain! I bet it would still take ages to open Open Office :) Needless to say – and pretty much like everyone on the planet – that’s way too expensive …. but what would you do with it? Are there even apps which would make it break into a sweat? If so, why buy code that you have to factor in a £4.5K machine for? Ah well, it’ll make another Dell look like a bargain :) (Just realised – I bet that price doesn’t include the dual 21″ screens…)