(Friday 20th February)
This page needs archiving too :(
I wonder about Security Forums at times. They get annoyed at ban evasion, yet post IRC proxy lists on the site.
(Thursday 19th February)I was gobsmacked when I became a forum admin, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect ever to be made an IRCop!! Now I can patrol the holics server, g-lining undesirables and see who is doing a whois or joining/leaving a channel. I can set my own host mask, op myself in any channel and sajoin people into random channels; in short, enjoy power! :)))
(Tuesday 17th February)A quick mention of some good news - I'VE GOT A NEW JOB! WAHAY! Although I'll be very sorry indeed to leave the place where I've enjoyed a very happy six years, it'll be nice to have one full time job instead of scratting around for two part time jobs which fit in with each other. The time is right, I think, for lots of reasons and I can look forward to a new future.
Mega problems with my AOL internet connection - I'm connected now using dial up, the broadband modem will connect to AOL but won't access any web pages, or let me run MIRC, MSN or pull in my yahoo email to aol communicator. However, the very same BB modem will connect happily to the broadband network if I move it to the networked PC. Very strange, and has me totally stumped for now.
(Saturday 14th February)What a joy the M74 is to drive! 90 miles of empty, scenic, 3 lane motorway, most of it on a very quiet road surface. As I drove to Tollcross in Glasgow for the Scottish ASA 5k championships today, I couldn't help contrast it with the A1 route up the East side of the country from Newcastle to Scotland, much of which is still dangerous single carriageway, or even the route over Carter Bar which is more or less single carriageway from Carter Bar to Edinburgh.
I love these signs you see "last petrol station in England" or today's which was "last chance to buy petrol before the M6!" The fact that the M6 is just round the corner, isn't mentioned :) Apparently a record 97 marriages took place today in Gretna Green (Valentine's Day) which is one of the towns I pass en route to Tollcross.
I must say a special thank you to Row, who has worked very hard to make sure this site is up and running without problems, on his server. I'm extremely thankful to ditch Polarhost, who were a nightmare to connect to.
(Thursday 12th February)Suddenly I have more scanners than I know what to do with! I wish Dad had told me he was buying a new scanner for himself before I ordered mine. Now, not only will each PC have its own dedicated scanner, but thanks to a cock up during the ordering process, Dad has actually ordered two scanners by mistake, so even Louise's laptop should end up with one!
Work is frustrating at times. They insist we don't deviate from the script and then complain we sound scripted!
This site is once again on the move. Thanks to Row for offering free hosting!
(Friday 6th February)What a wonderful surprise to get an email from Helen yesterday! One of the truly great things to come out of the internet is the reuniting of families on opposite sides of the globe and justifies on its own keeping the website going. Helen is one of three cousins of mine who emigrated to New Zealand and we haven't seen each other since I was about 10 years old! And what a fantastic way to exchange photos and news about our different lives.
Yuk, BT are going to be in the call centre on Monday night. We offer third party services so I don't work directly for BT, but 90% of the work is BT and so it's an important occasion when the top people come to listen in to our calls. We've even been told to dress smartly (though why the supervisors reckon BT are going to care what we look like I can't imagine). Normally it's daytime this happens and I remember their last visit - I was working that day and missed 4 screens out on a call they were listening into, which is bad news (in fact it's a sackable offence).
I feel like I'm at mile 22 of a marathon (and having run 10 marathons, I know what this is like). Logic and reason tell you that time hasn't actually stopped, that the extreme discomfort is going to come to an end quite soon .... but it's hard to convince yourself of that fact.
(Wednesday 4th February)What lousy timing! Having successfully got through two stages of a job interview, do I pretend last Tuesday didn't happen or be truthful and let the IRS know what kind of idiot they're thinking of employing?:/ And how checkable is it? Maybe these things take ages to get onto official records? Either course of action could jeopardise my chances unfortunately .... old sins cast long shadows is so true. This isn't as bad as other forms I've been presented with either, that want to dig back to when you were 18 years old ... hmmm, suddenly this doesn't seem quite so funny.
(Tuesday 3rd February)I'm just existing right now. Recent events have proved what a fragile process online ordering can be and how perilous it is to rely on something which is totally beyond your control. At the same time it makes me angry that I've allowed myself to end up in a position where I'll put up with being messed around like this! Right now I hate everything to do with Malaysia and their lousy f*king *customer service*! This is going to be a very long 10 days .....
(Sunday 1st February)Spent the major part of the weekend getting my now 3 computers + laptop sorted into 4 organised systems (and thank you Michael for the invaluable help). It's nice to have two desktop PCs again, and wonderful to have all my lost data back, even though I'd replaced the essentials and adjusted to the idea that it was gone for good. As the troublesome scanner will still only work on Rosie's PC (despite them all running exactly the same copy of windows), I have ordered another and will just give her the scanner when she moves out. Her machine is now a spare computer for the time being (and congratulations to the dozy CCU who replaced the main hard drive as a slave)! At the moment I'm playing an old winamp playlist loudly on the networked PC, as I'm so pleased to actually have some sound! this having been a major problem which wasted quite a few hours.
My original PC has now become the one the kids will mainly use, and I've swapped processors so that my own computer has the athlon, rather than the duron processor which was part of the hurried temporary replacement for the two seized computers. So that the rather older mobo would recognise the duron, it had to be flashed with a new BIOS. This particular machine had a load of problems with the onboard sound when it was built and I ended up fitting a separate sound card. However, it was now refusing to recognise this sound card and having disabled the rather crappy onboard sound, I couldn't play any music. The sound card has NT drivers which worked perfectly well when it was first installed - now it was complaining of missing files etc. I tracked down the inf files it supposedly needed but to cut a long story short, it still wouldn't work. Reseating the sound card made no difference and I decided just to enable onboard sound again, until I thought of a better solution.
Still nothing .... until it dawned on me (after tweaking all the volume/sound controls I could find) that the speakers would need to be plugged into a different slot on the back of the computer to connect to the onboard sound chip. And after all that, what did I find? The onboard sound is suddenly perfect! Grrrr .....
(Saturday 31st January)I'm less than thrilled with Polarhost - if it wasn't for the ability to place php scripts on the page, I'd be back to Geocities like a shot! Connecting via LeapFTP takes an age, with frequent "incorrect login" messages (which cannot be incorrect because eventually exactly the same login does connect). Away in Oxford, I discovered another major flaw - without all the files on my laptop (and an FTP client) I can't update the site either, as there is no online editing facility.
Our few days in Oxford/London was enjoyable and generally free from problems. It's interesting to see the reaction down there when it snows! Headline news, all the papers were full of London's "slush hour" when everything ground to a halt. Phoning Emily to see how she and Philip were faring, it was "yeah, yeah we've got a bit of snow" even though there'd been far more in the north! The planned use of Oxford uni's network didn't quite work out, however when I eventually settled for using a phone plug in the room to get a dial up connection I discovered that this wasn't going to go on the bill, so I suppose I can't complain! I've replaced an older Oxford photo with this one on the photopage.
(Wednesday 28th January)Off to Oxford in the morning and it looks like history is repeating itself as far as the weather's concerned! Hopefully we won't have the problems we had last year when we tried to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
Good news, and at last I can feel a sense of relief that the uncertainty and the worry is all over. Unexpectedly I have my computers back, and everyone is envious of the cool case modding :) how many people have Northumbria Police Computer Crime Unit stickers on their machines? I have always felt the motivation behind these complaints was a personal vendetta - I guess the main players at PCA are spitting nails because John turned out not to be involved or even aware of what was going on!
(Tuesday 27th January)D-day ... well, come 6pm anyway. Finally sorted the photopage, turned out I still had the full geocities address for that particular photo (which of course was fine on the Geocities site) so I concede it wasn't entirely the fault of Polarhost! On Sunday I was on top of Cross Fell in the North Pennines, which is the highest mountain in England outside the Lake District and something like 10th highest if you include the Lakes. It is only just short of 3,000 ft, and particularly at this time of year, can be a very cold experience. I took some photos which show what a different climate we walked into. Fairly mild and sunny down at the car, it was as if someone had drawn a line at around 2,000 ft where all the higher ground was covered in ice.
(Saturday 24th January)Well, I didn't actually get to bed at all that night .... anyway, I'm not very impressed with Polarhome! So much less user friendly than Geocities, they make Geocities Advanced File Manager look like nursery school. Having to edit files on my PC and upload via ftp may ensure I have up to date backups, but is so sloooooow! Perhaps there are now no pop-ups, but to me, the site seems to take longer to load in Polarhome than Geocities, and on balance I think I preferred putting up with the one stubborn pop-up on Geocities.
LeapFTP takes forever to refresh a directory. However, the biggest gripe I have is with the photopage. I have exactly the same source code displayed on geocities as polarhost, geocities loads all my photos on the photopage without any problems, while polarhost will NOT display the xmas day one (and one or two others on occasions). Both servers have a copy of the file, I've overwritten it several times on polarhost - in fact, I can view it on polarhost, so WHY IS IS NOT DISPLAYED ON THE PHOTOPAGE??? Any suggestions/ideas would be appreciated ..... in fact, if it wasn't for the very valuable facility to place php scripts on the server to block certain IPs, I'd go back to Geocities like a shot!
I have spent a long time trying to track down any broken links and make sure they are now working. However, I'm sure there are plenty I haven't spotted, so I would be very grateful if anyone who spots a broken link or indeed any other error, could either sign the guest book or email me at moira@moiraatkinson.co.uk
I have a very obliging GP ..... trying to "bury" an early request for dihydrocodeine with requests for other meds I didn't need (who do I think I'm kidding anyway??) I managed to phone up when the surgery computers were down and the receptionists had no records. When I collected the script, there was a message from Nick to say the sulphasalazine wasn't due, so he'd left that off. And I'm like, the dhc wasn't due either Nick, but you were willing to prescribe that! I'm so glad I changed GPs, Nick is very intelligent and perceptive, and incidentally doesn't give a stuff for political correctness!
And finally some good news - I should have my computers returned by next Tuesday!
(Monday 19th January)HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY! No time to say much more, I'm busy uploading the site via Leapftp to Polarhome where at last I can use PHP scripts to block IPs who use all my data transfer with massive page views! In fact, it isn't Monday 19th, it's now well into Tuesday and I must get to bed as I'm swimming in the morning. However, it will be good to have more control over the site ..
(Sunday 18th January)Took part in the Rotherham Masters Long course Meet yesterday, held at Ponds Forge ISC.
(Saturday 17th January)To whoever signed the guestbook, yeah that's quite observant really. In fact I've now changed the link, that wasn't where I downloaded SP2 which I got from a private site. The link was just to give some basic information about the service pack.
(Friday 16th January)Browser r Enhancer up to now probably held the top spot for invasive, destructive programs which had found their way onto my computers over the years. SP2, I think it's fair to say, has now stormed into the lead - read my review.
Anxious weeks ahead, and on another matter, clinging on to a tiny hope which will probably come to nothing.
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.