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(Sunday 6th July)An enjoyable and successful weekend swimming in the NE masters champs in Leeds - always good to get the chance to swim long course. Unexpectedly, I picked up the gold medal for top performer in my age group (and yes, there were 5 of us!) Points are allocated for each swim, depending on how well a person performs. I think I came out top simply by doing a lot of swims over the weekend, quite a few distace events, which helped. Because my 800 was good, the 100 free reasonable, 400 free not too bad but the back and IMs were dire! The problem was that due to unexpectedly low entries, everyone had a lot of back to back swims, with not much break in between - a lot more tiring, although it made for a shorter day, which was good.
(Friday 4th July)An ADSL forum I occasionally visit doesn't seem to share the common view that Kazaalite is illegal - I got two fairly sharp comments after pointing out to someone what PCA have always stated. But then, out of all the foxhunting threads currently in forums, PCA is typically the one place where the debate has got so heated it's ended with the usual story of locked > deleted.
Most people consider themselves computer literate if they can send email, browse the web and use Office. I came up with the true definition of a nerd (in the nicest possible way) last night, as Da`grEAt`1 helpfully tried to sort out my problem with deleting redundant versions of AOL. A nerd is someone who can show you how to delete "in use" files and make dlls in DOS, but who can't open the screenshot you've just sent him, because he doesn't have Word on his computer!
(Thursday 3rd July)So looking forward to a wonderful lie in tomorrow! No alarms, just sleep and sleep and sleep .... sitting up chatting on IRC till the early hours and then getting up at 4.30 am for swimming just doesn't mix! I can do it for one night, but several in a row and it's beginning to tell. I couldn't stop dozing off during an incredibly boring talk at work, until a sharp "Are you all right?!" from the supervisor forced me to make a huge effort to try and stay alert!
(Monday 30th June)Cheers, Mastercard, for the timely (and unexpected) credit limit increase. Hey, maybe I've hit upon the ultimate way of avoiding having to get another job! Just keep on getting more and more credit. Then I can spend my time walking, golfing, swimming and using the computer - all way more interesting than work :) FINALLY got mIRC connected to the desired IRC channel - much better than using the java applet, where I kept navigating away from the page! Had a rather frustrating day where nothing I did on the computer worked, however at least now I've had some success (with a lot of help, particularly from PCWriter).
(Sunday 29th June)All the information I could ever want on PGP - fantastic! A very tiring weekend ... don't think I'll combine two rounds of golf with a swim training seminar again, not with such a tight time schedule. I started the day at 3.30 am, early even by my standards. I would like to think I could tear myself away from the computer at a reasonable hour (but doubt I will)!
(Thursday 26th June)I'm spending so much time on forums just now, I'm barely getting anything else done! It is SO enjoyable though, one place in particular .... please Pegasus, don't spoil things! Tried IRC for the first time recently .... interesting.
I have a mega stupid weekend planned - Captain's Day at Embleton, then a VERY early night as I have to be on the tee by 4 am for their Longest Day competition (postponed from last week). Champagne on the 13th (at around 6 am!) then a full English breakfast when we get in. As if that wasn't bad enough, I then have to rush down to pick Robin up, as we're attending a swimming training camp in Durham, 6½ hours of technique work, swimming and instruction on diet, race planning etc. We have to be in Durham for 10 am, so it'll be tight at best. I'm going to be SO knackered by Sunday evening!
(Monday 23rd June)You would at least think that in June, driving conditions would be as good as it gets for our journey to Oxford. No driving in the dark, no freezing fog, nice dry roads. The low sun wouldn't be too much of a problem (if it was sunny) as we weren't going west.
I couldn't believe fate had done this to us, as we drove through an overhead lightning storm shortly after joining the M1 from the Silverstone bypass. With rain stotting off the carriageway and lightning forks striking the ground all around us, the M1 slowed to a crawl, as we drove along with headlights on, trying to avoid as much of the spray from wagons as possible.
If I ever had any doubts about justifying our decision to fly down in October, when my Dad and I spend a few days visiting Louise during term time, they vanished at that point. It may be more expensive, but it is WORTH it!!!
(Saturday 21st June)Derek's birthday today ... and a swimming gala for me, a long tiring day, but satisfying with swims I was well pleased with. We do the long trip to Oxford and back tomorrow to bring Louise home from uni for the summer (along with all her possessions!)
A big thank you to Simon! I interrupted you on Messenger and asked for help with Proxy+, and you generously gave up your time to help me for an hour or more in my quest to share this AOL connection. Pity we didn't have any success, but there is a web page Simon found with more instructions, which I intend to follow up ASAP.
(Friday 20th June)For anyone wanting to make comments about John, he has a forum here. And to whoever complained I was "stealing" their work, if they could be a bit more explicit, it would help! I would have thought plagiarism was a type of compliment, and let's be realistic. If you choose to publish something openly on a website, you accept that other people are going to be able to get their hands on it.
How can AOL say they "don't support" home networking, and then advertise a router in their own online shop, which is endorsed by them as "AOL compatible"? Keyword Home Network produces information which suggests that sharing a BB connection is not only possible, but is a piece of cake!
(Thursday 19th June)I've managed to get caught up in a locked thread on an ADSL forum - first time I've ever seen one on that particular forum. Someone (would you believe!) had posted complaining that SP1 wouldn't install on his pirate copy of XP. All I did was to point him in the direction of XP key changer .... and the topic was immediately locked by a moderator with a warning to all involved that discussion about illegal software would NOT be tolerated! Oh dear .... so much for trying to help!
In fact, the more forums I get involved with, the more I realise what a tolerant, laid back place PCA actually was. One forum I've joined is particularly heavily moderated and you really have to mind your p's and q's. There is a lengthy article entitled "How to Ask Questions" which I have to concede, makes a lot of sense, and I can see myself in several of the "mistakes" people make. How you formulate your question is everything, it seems, in determining whether you get what you want (as opposed to what you asked for). For example, be meticulous about grammar and spelling. You'll be given some slack for English not being your first language, but none at all for laziness, so make sure you know the difference between "its" and "it's". Posting a basic question in a highly technical forum (or vice versa) is a no-no, and using 1337 sp34k would be the absolute kiss of death (although you do still come across it sometimes).
In fact, I thought my reputation must have preceded me here. Unable to complete the registration form successfully, I wrote to the owner of the board, who told me I'd need to register through IE, not AOL's browser, which prevented the letters in the box showing up correctly (I wonder why?). Having achieved that, I posted in the "Introduce Yourselves" thread, only to suddenly find I was getting "critical php error" and couldn't access the d/b at all. Eventually a message appeared to the effect that the forum was down for maintenance and eventually, it reappeared. I then discovered I couldn't log in so had to re-register, only to find my post had been deleted! (Sound familiar?) Anyway, it turned out that the forum's ISP hadn't been taking proper back-ups, so they'd had to resort to one which was a month old, so any new logins and posts had been lost.
There's a section to post a picture of yourself (once you've made sufficient posts for people to know who you are) and I always find it amazing that people don't look at all like their names! Someone called Hellraiser, or Devilchild more often than not turns out to be the meekest looking, insipid character, nothing resembling their name!
Antionline seems to ban members by the dozen, and publish a list with the names of most recently banned members, along with those who have received recent warnings!
(Wednesday 18th June)Have a go at this hacking challenge! This is roughly on a par with level 1 on some of the legal hacking challenges I've found links to, from one particularly fascinating forum .... email me if you can input the correct password. (And at this point, I would like to credit Audiodood for the programming of the redirection page.)
(Tuesday 17th June)And I managed to waste so much time reinstalling the network, the printers (one stopped working and the other started churning out garbage) and AOL .... having to download AOL 8 after first installing AOL 7, all thanks to the latest proxy, Browsegate.
Started the day with two hours of swimming in a crashing, overhead thunderstorm .... typical! All this sunny weather and look what happens when Derek and I plan a day out walking on my birthday!
I don't normally edit blog entries, but deemed some of what I wrote last night a bit risky ..... so removed it! Downloaded mail first thing this morning before going walking and was really touched to receive a "Happy Birthday to You" verse from Dogbomb - what a great idea! I immediately felt guilty as this is a forum I've rather neglected, but a subsequent post produced a whole string of greetings, and then a personal email from MisterX of Ebuyerdotcon offering help via IM to get - wait for it - ANOTHER proxy server working to share my AOL BB! So I have now downloaded Proxyplus. That's two more to wreck my computer with tomorrow ....
(Monday 16th June)What a day! Discovered my minidisc player is suddenly not able to read any discs - no idea why. I'm spending a LOT of time on various forums .... how did I ever manage before? This AOL ICS is doing my head in. I'm getting real quality advice, but even knowledgeable people are divided as to whether I'll succeed in sharing my home connection. It's SO frustrating to read on the one hand that various people have managed it, then get an opinion from a well respected name on a highly technical forum that in his opinion it's not worth the effort trying. At least I've found out why I could briefly get a connection ....
And I'm well sick of proxies - you name it, I've downloaded it. I wish the help files would tell me what I want to know, ie how can I make it work, rather than proclaiming what a wonderfully adaptable, useful program it is and listing all the amazing stuff it's capable of doing, but which doesn't work for me! And I'm glad I didn't buy a router, the consensus of opinion is that it WON'T work for AOL!
And in the middle of this, out of the blue, I get an email from CISV's programmer .... just a routine response to a ticket I sent prior to leaving. It was the standard service reply I was used to receiving on a regular basis, obviously sent in an absent minded moment, and I thought ..... thanks Stephen, I really appreciate being reminded of that horrible sequence of events!
Tomorrow is MY BIRTHDAY!
(Thursday 12th June)How can my second PC be installing automatic updates? These tantalizing glimpses of what might be possible are very frustrating! Again, I got Google, but as soon as I click on a link it disappears, to be replaced by "page cannot be displayed". I can only go back to Google if I choose work offline .... but it must have been cached somehow.
(Wednesday 11th June)I can't believe I've ended up archiving another page so soon .... I have never paid so much attention to the site!
I don't know whether to be horrified or amused by the way SM has landed in the middle of this! Just when I thought nothing could get any worse, either with CISV or PCA .... that was perhaps the most appalling choice I could have made! At any rate, I'm achieving something - nobody dares to openly criticize AOL!!!
I find it rather sad that people can be so interested in somebody else's life ... I don't really watch television these days, but from what I do see, I don't think I'm missing much. Emily was engrossed in a programme the other day, which as far as I could tell, was centred entirely around a family who had been deprived of their mobile phones for 10 days. What a load of rubbish! I mean, who cares? I could quite easily discover little details about people when I'm at work, for instance, but I'm just not that interested in what Kate's Barclaycard limit is, or how many Solpadol Ian took last night. I certainly don't have the insatiable appetite for devouring personal details of somebody else's life that is becoming such a big problem at the moment!
For about 2 seconds I got Google on the networked PC! That glitch seems destined never to be repeated however ...
(Tuesday 10th June)Something nice happened to me today ..... makes a pleasant change. I won a runner up prize in Captain's day at Gosforth, and pulled my handicap to 20, which puts me back in silver division and back in category 3. Amazing when you think how little golf I've been playing since I started working full time hours!
(Monday 9th June)The site is now back on Geocities, for better or worse! Having spent a considerable amount of time last night finding, scanning, reducing and uploading some photos to prove to a couple of old school friends that Cheviot does NOT have a war memorial to a crashed plane on its summit, I discovered it was impossible to put these on a page on Brinkster that people could access directly. It seems every "sub" page has to be visited via a link from the main index, and I'm not sure that I want everyone from the school reunion reading about all the recent hassle! If I'm wrong about this, I don't mind being corrected, but I couldn't find a URL which worked for anything other than the index page. However, as Geocities seems to be saving edits again, it'll do. In fact it's quite useful to have a back up mirrored on another server.
I can now empathize with how Louise felt a few months ago, after she told the Easyjet check-in staff that she was carrying a bomb, in response to the routine question about tampering with luggage. Thinking she would show the woman what a stupid question she'd been asked, she discovered her remark was taken a lot more seriously than she'd anticipated! She was lucky on that occasion (although I wouldn't fancy her chances if she does it with that airline again) and although she could have found herself at worst in jail and at best, not allowed to board the plane, she was allowed to continue her journey, after a lot of fuss.
The password continues to puzzle me .... the only explanation I can come up with (and I can't even take any personal credit for that) is that after 7 characters, it was irrelevant what, if anything, was subsequently entered. ????
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