(Thursday 1st July)An exiting day at work .... and I now have a much coveted gmail account. You can write to me at moira.atkinson@gmail.com!
(Saturday 25th June)For good quality, reliable delivery and expert advice, visit http://www.petvetsonline.com/. I can vouch for the integrity of this site and the pet meds offered are a lot cheaper than I would pay at our local vets. Obviously this is no substitute to consulting a vet for more serious ailments, but products like Advantage flea treatment, worming tablets/bottles are can be safely purchased and there's back up vet consults if required.
MSN I'm not impressed! Upgrading to the latest version, I deliberately ticked NOT to make MSN my homepage (recommended - why on earth?), not to take part in some harvesting of information to "improve the MSN service" and another box (the precise option I can't remember). Despite all this, and despite having the registry hacked so in theory browser hijacks are prevented, MSN did make itself my home page and worse - I discovered I had some MSN search toolbar installed and the google toolbar removed when I opened Explorer. Resetting the toolbars didn't last long either, reopening Explorer brought back this pesky toolbar and google disappeared again. This happened on both my PCs and involved resetting the homepage (not a quick task with having greyed the option to change it out so in theory it shouldn't move from Google). I manually removed the toolbar from here, but in fact Adaware detected and removed it when I ran that on Emily's PC.
If MSN want to improve their service, this sneaky behaviour should be the first thing they address IMHO.
I'm not impressed with Yahoo either! They've implemented something which will stop passwords working when you try to log onto their service in Trillian. Trillian pro have released a patch for this, but this is only available via logging into a site where access is restricted to paying customers. As my copy doesn't fall into that category (!) and they haven't made public the name of the patch, I've had to access Yahoo by installing the stand alone client. Grrrr ....
(Friday 25th June)It's been a very stressful week, in which I had two exams, a horrible tummy bug/food poisoning episode, a weekend away doing a practice walk for a fell race in a week's time, and a swimming gala tomorrow which I feel woefully underprepared for.
Work is starting to get interesting and the addition of a crash box to our station is a big improvement. No more having to restrain from checking personal webmail and other restrictions on the network machines, this is a standalone PC running XP Pro, simply connected to the broadband pipe, which we can do anything on (apart from install cracked software or visit pr0n sites). Shift patterns commence the middle of next week and I find myself actually looking forward to coming to work. So far, it appears to be the ideal job, exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks to demon from #adsl for the suggestion!
(Monday 21st June)Back from a very enjoyable weekend in Leeds, it was good to see Andrew, and Anne always makes me very welcome. We had a good walk on Saturday and a very interesting (?) night. An extremely cute, friendly, trusting young ginger cat seems determined to move in with Anne, and that night climbed in repeatedly through my first floor bedroom window! We soon gave up putting her back out and accepted her determination to spend the night curled up on Anne's bed. Click here for a photo!
Peter French has put a lot of work into creating a really useful website for our swimming club. Have a look at http://www.conasc-masters.co.uk. Only one thing wrong with it - not a single picture of me :(
Happy Birthday to Derek - what a lot of birthdays there seem to be in June in our family!
I find myself quite looking forward to work each day, it's a great environment - and a refreshing change to be at a place where an interest in computers is encouraged rather than suppressed.
(Tuesday 15th June)My line was upgraded to 1 meg yesterday - yay! Wish AOL tech support had realised that was why my connection was briefly down while the actual changeover was carried out, instead of suggesting my router needed reconfiguring during my many phone calls over those 20 minutes, but never mind, it's up and running without problems. Looking forward to the increased speed over the network .....
Thursday is my birthday! Feel free to send email greetings or add a (nice!) comment to the Guestbook.
(Wednesday 9th June)Well, after being forced to uninstall that evil virus, aka Service Pack 2, from Emily's computer, I added a postscript to Service Pack Two. Enjoying my new job immensely, working in IT is like a continuation of my leisure activities :)
(Tuesday 8th June)More SP2 quirks to overcome - just discovered the time bomb.
(Monday 7th June)Well, I've finally given in to the desire to have a 1meg broadband connection and have upgraded from 512. It's something I've wanted for a while, more so since getting a router and having at least two PCs sharing the existing connection. I'll be sorry to lose the exceptionally good deal negotiated with AOL when I threatened to cancel, however I doubt they'll supply a 1mbps internet connection for the price of dial up (including a free 0800 number). Still, they waived the set up fee ..... and within a week my line should be upgraded. Perhaps after 12 months I can threaten to cancel again and hope their retentions team will offer me a discounted service :)
Oh, and a new job started today - for various reasons, that's all I'm prepared to say!
(Saturday 5th June)So, I've disabled the firewall, disabled the popup stopper - I have to wonder exactly what SP2 doing for me, other than creating a load of hassle. True, SP2 includes a non-executable stack which means an exploit can't just jump to some random address in memory, but although this is a combined software/hardware solution, it only works on A64s, although Intel plan to follow suit.
As I patiently wait for it to install on my own PC, I'm still not convinced, although this is an almost-ready beta version. My initial experience of installing an early beta release was not positive, as described here. Persuaded to give this release another go, I first of all made the - err - interesting discovery that M$ have managed to disable most of the pirated keys circulating, from installing SP2. Having got round that (by using a legit XP copy of course), the next problem was putting it on the laptop. My laptop has a dual boot with the main partition running linux. The hard drive is not very big and the XP partition just didn't have enough space for the uninstall files, so apart from ensuring it had a working activation key, I abandoned that install.
After installing it on this computer, I very quickly decided to ditch the built in firewall, cause of major problems last time. It didn't want to let me open any web pages and any internet access at all had to be laboriously added to the list of exceptions. I get built in protection from the router firewall anyway, and to prevent a possible trojan sending information out, I frankly find the free version of Zone Alarm more than adequate (and a damn sight more user friendly). Finally, I'm well equipped with pop up blockers, using both google and aol's for their respective browsers. So ... the jury is still out on Service Pack 2.
(Thursday 3rd June)BNS you are about to be blocked from viewing this site! I was slightly alarmed to see the IP address in the visitor details (courtesy of the RIPE whois info). Even more strange was an earlier entry which showed the referring URL as bnstele.com ..... I don't think I want certain people delving into the sometimes murky archives. Thank goodness I now host the site somewhere I can use php scripts. The same RIPE info also explains why Demon was recommended - BNS use it!
(Tuesday 1st June)Oh well, an excuse to buy a new 80gb hard drive. I came back from early swimming to hear my computer making the most horrendous noise, with an error message informing me Windows hadn't managed to save any data from drive D, which had disappeared from Explorer. No great loss, it was an old 10gb hdd which just held an image of the C drive in perfect working order (compressed). As it's still in perfect working order, this should be easy enough to replace. Even the networking isn't a problem as it wasn't shared - in fact, I'd hidden it from logins other than mine. Continual expense though - I always seem to be replacing something.
(Friday 28th May)Hooray! Fixed the Windows installer .... last thing I want right now is Office errors with only a few weeks to go to two exams that I'm really not looking forward to. However, that was about the only good thing that happened today. The BT default login has a lot to answer for, although I still don't really see why it was *that* big a deal.
(Monday 24th May)The LGU handicapping system is a joke! How can someone come in with a net 77 and reduce their handicap? Why does the computer decide to reduce two of their high scores by one shot, while it decides my high scores have to stand? People will need to check the computer printouts every single time, especially if they need to know their playing handicap for another competition in a few days time. Otherwise Susan Temple could quite innocently have played off 9, won the next competition and been disqualified for playing off too high a handicap! Likewise, a club with a small number of mainly elderly ladies whose handicaps are going up rather than down, are much more likely to produce a situation where the computer decides the course is playing "hard" and raises the SSS by 3, makeing the competition reduction only. A club with a higher proportion of younger members steadily improving would rarely return that condition, and everyone's handicap would go up 0.1 if they didn't play in their buffer zone.
I object to my handicap being determined by how other people play. That this happens is undisputable. The idea of a flexible SSS is meant to take into account the differing playing conditions. But take last year's club championship. To play in the championship, people had to complete two rounds of 18 holes. Those that didn't want to, played once in the morning (a separate competition). The course and weather conditions were exactly the same all day, yet two different standard scratch scores came out for each round. Obviously the championship players had returned better scores, so the computer decided the course was "easier" in the afternoon and duly returned a lower SSS. The fact that the LGU have changed the rules every year since bringing in the system shows that even they accept it is far from perfect. However, for the moment, we're stuck with it.
(Friday 21st May)Back from a wonderful (if expensive) 3 days in Oxford. Happy 21st Birthday Louise! The weather was fantastic and the only part of the trip which didn't go to plan was me falling in the river when we went punting on the last day. Now it looks like I have a digital camera that's ruined, my phone is dead and I've lost a rechargeable battery and a pair of sunglasses.
And how did I manage to lose a boarding pass between the self service check-in and the bag drop off point?? A distance of 15 yards if that ....
I'm very impressed with SilenX! Not only have their fans made my computer even more quiet than the first machine we did, but their delivery time was amazing, considering this was an order from the US. I ordered online last Friday and the parcel arrived the following Wednesday - and I didn't pay for Express shipping, just the normal 3 - 10 days service. That's what I call customer service! Many thanks to Michael for fitting them, I am lucky to live right next to someone so expert with all types of hardware.
Continued thanks to Krusty also, for hosting my site. It would be hard to find anywhere more efficient, and the connection speed is excellent.
(Friday 14th May)I have just one thing to say to the Inland Revenue - HAHAHAHAHAhahahaha !! You are kidding surely? What an unfortunate mistake on your part ...... :)))
I'm delighted with the replacement PSU and case fans for my networked PC! Have ordered similar ones for this computer - the difference is well worth the cost, as my once noisy PC is now almost totally silent, the only sound being the airflow once the second hdd switches off after 3 minutes. Many thanks to Michael for undertaking the job of dismantling the PSU (not a job I fancied) and to a lesser degree, Rosie for contributing her knowledge of electricals. It always amazes me how little attention a lot of people pay to this area of PC usage. You can have a super fast processor, but if economies are made when purchasing a monitor and case/PSU fans, then your overall experience is likely to be severely compromised. I'd far rather have my 17" TFT monitor and a good couple of SilenX 11dBA fans than a few extra mhz processor power, which a lot of the time would not even be noticeable.
Reading PCA, you would think everybody had high spec machines, as even their "budget" PCs are far more high tech than my system. Yet the majority of the computers at work are still running Windows 98, even though M$ stopped supporting this OS early in the year. The rest of the specs are not particularly great either and make my fairly modest network look powerful by comparison. The reality is that if something works, for most people there is no great urgency to replace it.
Fancy bidding for a bargain pair of trainers on Ebay? Philip will be delighted to receive bids for these.
(Monday 10th May)First day at a new job went reasonably well. Be nice when there's a bit more I can do.
The Musical was excellent! Both Jennie and I really enjoyed our night at The Newcastle Arts Centre. It was a refreshing change from anything I normally do on a Saturday night (which generally doesn't vary much from sitting in front of a computer) and well worth the ticket price. The only part of the night that didn't go according to plan was arriving like a drowned rat, after parking what turned out to be miles away and getting caught in a heavy shower while we tried to find the elusive theatre.
When the show appears at the Edinburgh Festival it'll face a tougher audience, but is well worth a visit for anyone going to be up there. It works. It's funny, different, very watchable, and brings out the real musical and acting talent that Ashley and Chris undoubtedly have.
Don't you just hate people that sling insults at you on MSN and then immediately block any replies? Perhaps gus doesn't like being reminded how much he resembles Frank Thorogood in character ......
(Saturday 8th May)Service Force need to get real! I pay good money to insure my washer/dryer and they're supposed to come out and fix it when something goes wrong. As it happens, the fault is not serious enough to stop me washing clothes for the next 3 weeks, but if it had been I'd have needed to go out and buy a replacement before they could get here. Do they assume everyone is either a housewife or unemployed? Only being prepared to come out between the totally inflexible hours of 8.30 to 5pm Monday to Friday, means one of us taking a day off work to sit in the house all day waiting for an engineer (who couldn't possibly say if he's going to arrive morning or afternoon). Surely in this day and age they could work weekends? Other service industries do.
I know exactly what's going to happen when the engineer arrives, too (although I haven't mentioned this to Derek who's drawn the short straw and will be the one dealing with him). Service Force are going to discover the washer is in the bathroom and will refuse to touch it on safety grounds. We'll then have to go through the whole process of phone calls to headquarters and us signing disclaimers before the engineer will go near it. The fact that I've had a washer in the bathroom for over 20 years without any problems and have at least as much water sloshing around in the kitchen doesn't seem to register - and it doesn't stop them accepting the money for the service agreement either, as they know full well where the washer is from past call outs.
(Thursday 6th May)Since it gives me the chance to mention something nice for a change, here's a plug for a musical I'm going to see on Saturday night, written by Ashley Frieze and Chris Parr, which tonight had this write up in the Evening Chronicle.
Just about the last email I expected to receive ....
(Wednesday 5th May) Well done Emily, successfully through the theory and hazard perception tests.
Gus seems to be having a problem registering his account on the forum .... third time lucky is it gus? :)
Not only is holics the network from hell, it's incredibly difficult to stay connected to. If you're lucky, you might get to spend half an hour there every two or three days, in between disconnections followed by operserv session exceeded messages, and trigger happy admins setting frequent, meaningless glines.
A recent problem with email meant that for a short period all my domain name mail went to Krusty's server instead of to me, which means I didn't get notified of guestbook entries. I'm sorry Paul, I was loathe to remove it because I'd rather the guestbook was spontaneous and real not contrived and artificial, but I decided I couldn't let your comment remain, too many of the wrong people might have seen it, with disastrous consequences. And regarding domain names, the fact that they're leased in any case, wasn't really the issue.
(Thursday 22nd April)If you want to see everything that's evil about IRC gathered together in one channel, why not visit the the network from HELL.
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.