(Wednesday 20th August)GCSE results come out tomorrow - Good luck Emily!
(Friday 15th August)In a departure from the norm - in that I tend to stick to current events rather than writing about the past - I'm convinced that we all have a guardian angel. Asked to relate the two experiences in another setting, I decided that an article here would kill two birds with one stone. Again, this isn't the usual sort of stuff I put on the site, so if you're not into religion, stay clear!
Came across an amusing quiz the other day. In fact, it was a link someone posted in a chatroom. A couple of times I lost out on the correct mark by not being quick enough to tick the right box! I'm not going to say how many I scored first time through, but I'd be interested to hear how other people did. Just about off for a few days at the bungalow - eventually! I've been trying to drag myself away from the computer since Wednesday ....
(Thursday 14th August)I see the exchange named after me has now passed the trigger point for broadband!
At least I now have dial-up organised to cover any downtime while switching ISP, after an unexpectedly successful modem installation confirmed that Michael's hardware must have been responsible for the "no dial tone" messages. Mildly cursing that I'd overlooked uninstalling his modem drivers, I continued fitting the new one as at that point I had the computer in bits. However, when I rebooted, disk at the ready, I discovered the new modem was already detected, installed and happy to connect to Freeserve without even unwrapping the software!
Channel ban is up to 6 weeks now :( and looking at the ban strings, it's pretty thorough! The nick "??i?a" from any IP with any username is banned as is anyone from "*.i?t.?o?.com". The dial up access and java applet on the website make it possible to sidestep the ban - briefly, depending on how awake people are, but what does it achieve?
(Monday 11th August) I've discovered that I have an exchange named after me here. Top of the list to trigger ADSL, apparently!
Finally taken the plunge and arranged to cancel AOL in favour of Plusnet! My only real complaint with AOL has been the impossibility of sharing the internet connection between my two PCs. Hopefully it will all progress fairly smoothly .... maybe that's asking a bit much.
I take all that back! The net is a NICE place, ppl are good .....
(Sunday 10th August)The saying that familiarilty breeds contempt is so true! It's a bit sad really - how sheep-like some people are when it comes to falling in with popular opinion, unwilling or unable to even think for themselves, so it seems!
I suppose there might be some nice people on the internet, but I've yet to find them, I sometimes think. What is it with some places - welcoming and friendly to start off with, but it doesn't last! And very few people are genuine - again, I CAN name a few, but for the most part being able to hide behind an anonymous screen name seems to give a lot of people the excuse to be arrogant and abusive, no doubt because they're never going to be held responsible for anything they say. This especially seems to apply to people who have a high opinion of themselves in the world of computers .... maybe because in the real world people would be able to see them as the prats they no doubt are!
(Friday 8th August)Congratulations Rosie on passing your driving test! And now the bit of teenage parenting I dislike the most, ie watching her go off to town to celebrate and hoping I don't have to address the issue of whatever state she comes home in.
I'm really missing the IRC channel - I'd got so used to having mIRC idling in the background while I did half a dozen other things! At least I'm getting on with Learndirect, and I'm also trying to organise a modem in this pc to cover any downtime when I switch from AOL to Plusnet. At the moment there's "no dial tone" - maybe not so surprising, as I've installed updated XP Genius drivers, only to discover from Michael that the modem he lent me is a completely different make, only put in the Genius box for convenience! The computer is running sluggishly at the moment, as Norton completes its routine scan .... two viruses this time, one of which I will have to investigate as it can only be quarantined. Both a result of downloading mIRC scripts, beware!
(Thursday 7th August)An email has just landed in my inbox "Word of the Day for Thursday August 7, 2003":
incommunicado \in-kuh-myoo-nih-KAH-doh\, adverb or adjective: Without the means or right to communicate.
How appropriate!!! Any misgivings I've had recently about keeping a personal blog have just been more than outweighed by recent events in what shall remain an anonymous forum. At least here there is no-one to delete what I write and it's the only place I can have true freedom of speech!
What a productive day .... sorted the garden, defrosted the freezer, given the kitchen a good clean, done a pile of ironing and another Learndirect assessment finished. It makes up somewhat for the frustrations of this morning. Even though I can get round them, it's a hollow victory since I hardly think flaunting my "success" is going to enhance my chances of ending this stupid deadlock earlier than expected!
(Wednesday 6th August)Eventually got round to updating this site and writing some thoughts on my recent hospital experience. Despite what you hear nowadays about the NHS, I can't praise the Freeman hospital enough as the care I received was second to none.
Maybe the reason I've found this time is thanks to what I hope is only a temporary channel ban - ST you've probably done me a favour, IRC is far too addictive! Stuck here more or less immobile instead of enjoying my planned week at Embleton in this gorgeous weather, is hard to take - and it's tempting to relieve the drudgery and boredom with painkillers I don't really need and annoying behaviour in the channel. Oh well ....
I notice the friends site has been live for a while now. Another less than brilliant episode and I'm really missing the choir. Still, no use having regrets although I would rather it hadn't become such public knowledge.
(Tuesday 29th July)I'm SO looking forward to going into hospital tomorrow. A whole day to spend in bed, sleeping and reading, sounds the ultimate luxury! And if the meals aren't the most appetising I've ever had, at least they'll arrive. I won't have to shop for the ingredients, cook or do the dishes afterwards.
AOL are going to be difficult to cancel, I can tell. Last night's phone call only ended when I eventually had to go to work. I can't "migrate" to PlusNet until I find out the BT product type and CBUK number, which AOL refuse to supply me with until I actually cancel. To do that now would mean their service would cease before PlusNet could get their act together and I don't want several weeks with no broadband line. As it happens I have TWO broadband lines, thanks to AOL's earlier inefficiency (and for which I assume they're being charged by BT), but the whole of this year has been spent trying to cancel our second phone line with BT and I don't want to put further obstacles in the way.
(Saturday 26th July)The sudden news that I'm going into hospital next Wednesday is causing a bit of chaos, but I'm pleased to be avoiding the original September date which might have jeopardised October's trip down to Oxford. The thought of several weeks on the sick unable to do anything except sit at the computer is quite heady, although I'm not too sure what, if any, sick pay I'll get so I don't suppose I'll take any longer off work than necessary.
On the whole, I'm finding life is quite good at the moment, even if in most people's eyes mine would be a sad existence with every spare moment spent on the computer, living in a virtual world of IRC and computer forums! It's strange to think that while I don't know the names of either of my neighbours, in fact have never even spoken to the people on one side of us, I regularly talk to folk on the other side of the world and can see pictures of someone's living room in Portugal. I must make an effort to spend more time in the real world - the house is a tip, although I did get as far as carrying the hoover upstairs on Thursday!
(Thursday 24th July)I hardly dare update this site now! Seems whatever I write is destined to upset somebody. I'm normally loathe to remove or edit previously made comments because it would then sound contrived and pointless. Like, you write in a diary what actually happened not what would have taken place in an ideal world. I can always go back and think of a better way of phrasing a sentence or another paragraph that should have been included in a report, but I want a snapshot of the experience as it came across at the time, not a whole lot of artificially edited and therefore worthless comments. That said, I considered it wise to remove Monday's edits and have in the past taken out guestbook posts if someone has either used unacceptable language or published names and addresses.
There's a new picture of Emily on the photopage - thank you MisterX. Not that you had anything to do with taking the photograph, but it was kind of you to "crunch" it for me.
(Sunday 20th July)Added a couple of banners, thanks everyone for helping to finally get the SFDC one positioned as I wanted it! Particular thanks to UnionPivo and PCWriter. I've joined another webring - with some misgivings remembering how much trouble the last one generated - this is a collection of women's sites.
Back from holiday and I really must get to bed as it's now 2.55 am! One final comment - I'm not sure we'll be any better off when this right to roam bill becomes law. At least where there are public rights of way, they have to be kept open. I've been walking in the Scottish side of the cheviots where in theory there is right to roam, but in practice electric fences and a bull in each field tends to discourage all but the most determined walkers ...
I can't understand how changing any settings within Sonicstage is going to make the slightest difference to the disc which is already write protected .... unless connecting it back to the pc by the usb lead is somehow going to help communication. Better perhaps to abandon that disc, make a playlist of songs I actually want transferring and start again with a new one.
(Saturday 12th July)Last update for a while as we're about to go on holiday. Still haven't made much sense out of the minidisc - in fact the only recording I've done has been on Rosie's old one, which is so much simpler to use. All Sonicstage managed to do was fill up the entire disc in a matter of seconds with Go West, plus a lot of songs Emily has downloaded which were in the same folder. It then write protected them, and now I'm stuck with the whole lot. Apparently I need to "check the songs in" again for Sonicstage to let me delete them! What is the world coming to when MP3s have to check in and out, before they can go through the recording process???
(Friday 11th July)It seems with the call centre that I can either annoy the customers or the supervisors - take your pick. Whilst it's a great job for a 16 - 20 year old as the pay is the same as for over 21s and it's a well paid job in general, it does frustrate me that there is no scope for using any initiative and we are in a straightjacket as far as asking the many dumb questions goes.
I fail to see why BT think that these surveys will enhance customers' perception of their service. The very fact that we are forced to tell respondents that a survey will take "approximately 8 minutes depending on your answers" whilst knowing there isn't a hope in hell of completing the questions inside 15 minutes, can only annoy people. Why don't they ask a few relevant questions and allow scope for recording the many valid points that a customer will often have to offer? Instead of which we are forced to inflict patronising, irrelevant and repetitive questions on them, while we could be gathering information which might show people that BT actually listened to what their customers wanted?
(Thursday 10th July)A year to the day since we got broadband! Another page archived to tidy the site up a bit. I must try and do something more inspirational than just blog entries - I have unfinished pages which have been waiting to be completed for a long time now, but I never seem to get round to doing anything about them.
Looking forward to a week's holiday from Saturday. It'll not just be a break from work, but a complete change from the world of computers and IRC, as we don't even have electricity at Embleton.
I've long since given up trying to make any sense out of XP's sharing and permissions. Trying to add a song (Go West) onto my playlist on this PC, I thought it would be a minor problem that it was stored on the networked machine. But no .... this network has a mind of its own. Easier just to download the wretched song again. Then I found the kids had queued a stack of files which I had to pause in order to give my download some chance of starting today! Next problem is working out how my new minidisc actually records from the PC - sod the new usb connection, maybe I can just figure it out using the lead from the speakers, the way I used to record.
(Wednesday 9th July)Grrr! There's nothing more annoying than getting a topic notification only to find the post has been edited "to try and prevent arguments between members"! No chance PCWriter is going to tell me what Pegasus actually said, as presumably he deleted it so I wouldn't see it : (
I think I'm going to start a thread entitled "Is it possible to survive on 3 hours sleep?" and add a poll to find out whether other people have this problem, or am I the only person who can't tear themselves away from IRC?
Hey! I'm onto level 4 on try2hack!
To read more archive weblogs, click here which will take you to the previous archive, which in turn contains a link to the one before that.