Monthly Archives: September 2006

Workrave

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I installed Workrave earlier. I’ve been having lots of minor pain in my right hand because of my typing technique. It’s a different pain than before though so my hand must have over compensated by changing things around. It looks a neat program though even though at lunchtime it decided that I had 4 more hours to my working day. Ha ha ha. In my dreams :) It should help though – good exercies in it, micro-breaks, longer breaks and all customisable and it looks nice too.
And it has a sheep for a logo. That alone should be reason enough to use it :)

My eyes hurt

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So P is well. The investigation confirmed their suspicions so the course of action continues. She was great at the hospital. No problems before or after the GA.

I said a couple of days ago that Linksys said to uninstall their software to make their product work? Well even Windows can’t get it to work consistently. Checking out reviews from various buyer sites shows the dropping of a connection to be not that unknown. So I rang and jumped through their “on the computer in front of me and I must useflow chart” hoops guy. He wasn’t tooo bad and in the end he said to scan the receipt and send some other details when they email me. Small problem – I’ll lost the receipt. That’s really annoying because it has the whole system on it – I am still looking. I will have put it in a Very Important Place. Just what was important on that day in July is beyond me. Anyway… they have a 3yr hardware warranty and the card was introduced in 2003 – v1 that is. I have v4, and a serial number and a MAC number. So I can prove – or they can if they look – that the card is less than 3yrs old. I know they want to know it’s mine originally but I’ll hopefully talk them round. Or buy a Netgear one if I can’t.

And all week because the builder was here I’ve had to get up early. You know when you are so tired you feel sick and your eyes hurt? That’s me that is. All day my eyes have stung. Even coffee had no effect. I was that tired that when I did the shopping I didn’t care that people got in my way because it gave me a chance to stop and close my eyes. I need a lie-in. The builder left his workmate-type bench here. I have no use for it but I’m waiting to see how long he takes to remember where it is. He’d charged us for ‘x’ amount of boards for the roofspace. Big 8ft by 3ft tongue/groove that are green (might mean something) and after he’d gone I happened to go past the skip. Propped up against it were 2 boards. I have no idea what I’ll use them for but they are now in the garage. Can’t be doing with any “Pop round that house you’ll find two” nonsense if it were to happen. He also quoted us £2300 to do the next ‘stage’ so the beams get covered, wall gets plastered etc. That’s a bit steep seeing as he started at £1500. So a quote hunt is on. He was a nice guy but cash is cash.

Breaking copyright

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According to the information at http://www.football.co.uk I am not allowed to publish this news about 3 teams from cities I have lived in:

30 September 2006 15:00
Everton vs Manchester City Goodison Park
Manchester United vs Newcastle United (P) Old Trafford

because:

No part of the Fixtures Lists may be reproduced stored or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of Football DataCo Limited.

So lads, no talking down the pub then.

What a STUPID copyright notice.

Dear Football DataCo Limited – Sue me.

Jammed in Tesco

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Thank you to everyone for the good words yesterday :) I’d say that we had gone out and done something new and exciting but .. well.. after 20 years there’s little left :)

P is in hospital tomorrow so I’m up at 6am to head in with her. It’s fairly non-invasive but it’s still a GA so we’ll be there a while. She has to be nil-by-mouth from midnight and we don’t expect her to be in surgery until around 11am so I’ll be nbm too. She’s under for about 45 minutes though so I reckon I can squeeze food and coffee into that gap :) My laptop won’t work from there so it’s time off work too.

An oddness. Went to a local shopping centre. I told J to call/text if needed. Walk down toward Tesco and she texts. I open and read. I walk into Tesco. I need to call – no signal. Step out of Tesco, signal. Step into Tesco, dead. And this is a big mall type Tesco, no doors. And a solid no signal. It really was quite a clear boundary. Stop staff texting? Security to stop a Great Broccolli Burglary? Odd.

Connectivity

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So I have repeated problems with my connection. To the point where I’m cursing BT like never before (though there is nothing inherently wrong with cursing that monolith) and I’m spending money on hardware. Last night I’d had enough. Annoyed? Just a smidge, yes. I could tell when things were going which sounds wierd maybe but anyway I opened the system Event Viewer and the command prompt. Things slowed, I hit the ping and I watched the Event Viewer. Ping died and according to the computer the Wireless card disconnected itself and went for a walk:

The system detected that network adapter Linksys…PCI Adapter – Packet Scheduler Miniport was disconnected from the network

Err…. no. It’s still there. Untouched. At this point I wondered what I could have done with the spent money.
And this morning I rang Linksys. They must share the same Support people as Belkin. Maybe it’s just a different coloured phone. LONG call later – including “Can you see the drivers on the website sir” “Yes I can” “If you could unplug your wireless card to get the right download…” what? Idiot. Solution: Uninstall the Linksys software. Use the CD and install only the drivers and nothing else. Then let Windows manage the connection. If this fails they get another call and they deliver a new card. And you saw the solution? Take OUR software out for OUR product and it will work…….

Another reason to hate phpBB

Your account has been created. However, this forum requires account activation. An activation key has been sent to the e-mail address you provided. Please check your e-mail for further information

And it’s not arrived. What a surprise. This NEVER happens on Invision boards, it NEVER happens on miniBB or bbPress or any other flavour. Only on phpBB. This includes shiny happy forums run by big companies to the slightly grimy parts of the net. Every damn phpBB board waits and waits and waits and waits… “has been sent” – crap. “will be sent at some random time in the future. This is to lower the load of newbie questions so give up and get lost”. That must be it. Maybe that’s why people keep hacking it – because they get fed up of waiting for that registration email. Stupid.

[Comments closed due to the gob-smackingly high amount of spam this gets - all because it has phpbb in the title it seems - 13 Oct 2007]

What I did today

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Meant to use these things to diary stuff….sometimes.
So… attic conversion for ‘storage’ continues. Not our house but we need the space. And as ‘storage’ it’s cheap. And it saves bothering the council. And I really shouldn’t blog that. Bah.
The butterfly picture alone with a load more taken on a really long walk while the carpets were cleaned. That was after the TV guy came round and quote £366 for a new aerial and amp/booster to power 6 TV’s (not that we will use 6, but we have 5 that need a good signal). 2 more quotes will be got.
Really busy online so I got nothing done that I wanted to do today but I’ll hopefully make up for lost time tomorrow.
Did I mention I’ve restarted my blogger blog?
I found a use for podz.eu but I actually don’t know what to do with it. A google for ‘podz’ finds me at #1 but some commercial companies underneath. Not that I bought it to sell it but I’m stuck for what to do… here is here, planetpodz will be a ‘work’ site, freshlypressed is where it is, .net sits and does what it does, shimmer looks quiet and is far from it so what to do I have not the slightest clue. I actually wanted a big picture of an eye with a reflection but didn’t have the time to open PSPro and get frustrated.

Didn’t get to bed until ~2am last night after intending to finish early and watch Sleepers yet again. Can’t watch that on a monitor. It needs a slightly darkened room, perfect peace, no disturbances. Great film. But it’s tonight. It’s 11pm and it’s 2 hours long. I can still go bed early if I watch it. Which I’m going to do right now.