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Pretty Good Day
I remembered something I needed to post from Monday:
Just imagine my surprise when I got home from work on Monday to find a large cardboard box sitting in the kitchen with my name on it. I racked my brains trying to remember if I had ordered anything recently that would need a box that size... and coming to the conclusion that I couldn't have ordered anything that big I started to open it.
Upon lifting up the flaps I was greeted by a load of red and white... and my mouth dropped open.
I started pulling out the contents and putting them on the side wondering where the heck they had all come from. Eventually I realised that I had managed to win one of the 10,000 prizes in the recent Kit Kat draw!
Posted in Life at 22:17 |
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London... BAH!!
First things first... 4 DAYS!!!!
Today I went up to London, mainly to install the new Wireless 802.11g network up there. I had gotten all the bits last Friday and tested them all out in Sutton first. Yesterday I put the access point, and two PC cards into a bag and took them home so I could take them with me today.
I was meaning to drop my dad at the airport, then carry on to Sutton. Once there I would grab the wireless stuff and walk up to the station without going into the office. Which should've saved me some time.
Sounded like a good plan. Shame it didn't work out quite like that though. I got in the car and drove to the airport, then realised I had forgotten something. The damn bag with the wireless kit in. ARGHHHHHHHH!!!! So I had to drive all the way home again, pick it up and then drive all the way to Sutton. I wasted about an hour in all... not as bad as it could've been, but extremely annoying all the same.
Once I got to the London office, I started setting up the access point. Plugged in the power and ethernet cable and put the other end into the hub. Then I sat down at one of the spare computers, changed the IP address to match the same range as the access point was set to (the same as in Sutton, London uses a totally different IP range) and used the Linksys setup program to reassign the IP address of the AP to the right one and changed the PC back to dynamic so it could get re-assigned an IP from the DHCP server.
Once that was done, I set up Robert's laptop with the drivers and WEP key for the PC card, and got it online. Then I worked on Peter's laptop, same thing. He also wanted me to set up the printer drivers on it so he could connect to the office printer, so I did that too. Robert wanted me to move the spare LCD into the small office, so I did. Hmm... what else. I set up the same printer on my dad's laptop while I was there.
One of Robert's clients was having some computer problems, so asked if I could give some advice, he was a tough person to try to explain things to. He's one of these people who thinks he knows what he's doing, when in actual fact he doesn't really have a clue. Scary really. He was trying to connect his laptop and PDA to his mobile via bluetooth. 2 problems, his laptop doesn't have bluetooth, and needs a bt pc card, and his PDA doesn't either and needs a compact flash bt card. Nightmare! I didn't feel like I was actually that much help to him, as he didn't have everything he needed to get it working, but he seemed happy enough with my advice, so I guess that makes it all worthwhile.
I only expected to be in London for the morning, I ended up being there ALL day!
I need to write something about Monday and Kit Kats... will do that tomorrow!
Posted in Humour at 23:56 |
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Monday!
Monday... I hate Mondays. But don't we all.
I spent most of the day taking 3 old computers apart and trying to build one working PC out of them. I ended up with a P100, 32MB RAM and a 1.7GB hard drive with Windows 95 (the first release) already installed. I then tried to install pcAnywhere but it required at least IE4... so I installed IE5 which I had saved on the server. After a reboot, pcAnywhere would now install. I set up a "host" so it would start on Windows bootup and tried to connect to it from my PC. Amazingly it worked! I created a new user in NDS just for that computer, with the most basic rights - I can't use my login I'm an admin equivilent! LOL.
After I was happy it would work by itself stuck in a corner, I moved it into the computer room and stuffed it down the side of the server rack, running a network cable from the hub right into it. I then opened up the ports to the box on the router so it could be accessed from the internet. I should be setting up the computers in London to connect to it tomorrow.
I'm sure I did something else, but god knows what. If I remember I'll post it!
Posted in Life at 22:10 |
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Home Alone!
My parents left around 11am this morning, and won't return till late Sunday evening. Yay! Being home alone rocks, cos I can play my music as loud as I want, and I get to watch the TV downstairs without someone changing the channel over or bothering me at all.
Sometimes I wish my parents would go out a bit more at weekends, they're almost always home!
Posted in Life at 02:11 |
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Laptop/IPCop
A couple weeks ago, I rescued an old laptop from work which was destined for the rubbish bin, and managed to get it working again. Woo!! It's still in pretty good condition, considering the abuse it's probably taken over the past couple of years.
The screen is a bit dodgy though, you can see it's slowly wearing out when you tilt it towards or away from you, or if you fiddle with the brightness wheel on the side. Apart from that niggle though, everything else seems ok. At least it was free ;)
I decided that I was going to take the laptop to Canada with me, and give it to Emilee, who is in more need of a computer than I am (I already have 4 PCs plus a laptop!)
Posted in Computers at 16:57 |
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w.bloggar update pt 2
Wow! Marcelo listened to people's suggestions, and w.bloggar NOW supports the Extended Entry section of MT :) Outstanding!
I am currently writing this entry in w.bloggar 3.01, and going to see if the Extended Entry tags actually work properly or not.
Here goes:
This text should be visible if you click on the READ MORE... link on my entry. If this actually worked, I'll be soooo happy :D
Thanks Marcelo for a wonderful piece of software. Keep the updates coming!
Posted in Computers at 13:50 |
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Money Trouble?
I bought my plane tickets the other day. Was a spur of the moment thing. After talking to Em almost the entire weekend, we decided that it would be best if I come over in May instead of June so we get an entire week together instead of only a couple days. Good plan I thought, so I booked the tickets with Travelocity.
Of course I didn't reckon on my card being rejected! Well it's my own fault, ordering something costing £500 the wrong side of pay day! Luckily I got the email before they closed for the night, so I called them up immediately and gave them my other card number. So hopefully now that will go through and the tickets will be on their way to me soon :)
I also booked my time off work, which luckily I was allowed to take. God knows what I'd do if Peter had said no. Yeah my payment hadn't gone through but what if it had? The tickets are non-refundable! I would've just thrown £500 down the pisser. It was lucky he was in a good mood, although his laptop was broken. He had been waiting all day for me to get into the office (I spent the morning up in London), as he was getting some odd errors after he'd installed the drivers and software for his digital camera. He also couldn't get his monitor working with his docking station properly. So I took a look at it.
I uninstalled the drivers he'd put on, to see if that would fix the error message that kept coming up. Something about "an error sending the command to the keyboard". Didn't help. So I typed the phrase into Google. BINGO!! It was a problem with the Adobe Type Manager or something, so I uninstalled that too... problem solved. Now onto getting his cam working, I tried downloading the latest from FujiFilm - no good :( Eventually I tried installing the drivers back off the CD, and suddenly there was life! It worked!! YAY! Finally, getting his monitor working again. That took a bit more fiddling, as his laptop really didn't want to switch off the laptop screen and use the monitor instead. But somehow I solved that too. Peter was happy, I was happy... I love it when things just work.
Last night Em asked me to make some music CDs for her, and gave me a big list of tracks to put on them. I wrote them all down, worked out what I already had and what I needed. Then after work I loaded up my good friend KaZaA Lite and started to download all the songs I didn't have. I love ADSL, it only took about 45 minutes to download all 12 songs I needed. If I had done that at home I would've been waiting at least 2 hours LOL!
I spent an hour or so sorting all the MP3s out, getting the names right etc. Then I started to set up the CDs I would be putting them onto. Normally I use some really cheap CDs to burn stuff onto, but I decided to use some branded ones for once. Maybe they'll last a bit longer than my extra cheapola unlabelled ones ;)
I'd like to take this opportunity to "big up" Nero Burning ROM. What a totally fantastic piece of software! Not only can I burn an audio CD with it, but I can create the CD tray and inlay labels... and it even supported the exact paper I had on hand with my CD labeller. So I used two of the built in templates to create some pretty sweet looking labels :) I printed them both out on the proper paper, and put them into the boxes and stuck the CD label onto the CD. Very nice :) I think Em will be impressed :D
Wow, this was a long entry! Bet that won't happen again for a while :P
10 DAYS TO GO!!
Posted in Life at 11:30 |
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Best Easter Ever?
Wow.
When I was woken up this morning by my mum, she gave me some Easter presents. I got some Adidas shower gel and deoderant, and some shortbread. AND...
Ain't he a cutie... I'm talking about the one on the left ;) I already know I'm a cutie.
Posted in Life at 13:55 |
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Good Friday Pt 2
Got up around 12, after my parents had gone out somewhere.
Sat around watching TV for a bit, and someone rang the doorbell. It was just some woman collecting a brochure she'd left. I hate answering the door when I've just gotten out of bed, still in my pajamas... with terrible bed-head LOL.
When my parents got back from wherever they'd gone, I jumped in the shower - which had just been fixed (finally!!). And the bloody hot water ran out!!! :(( So annoying, I had to wash my hair in the cold BRRRRRRR.
Later I went out with my mum to get some bonemeal for planting a new tree in the garden as one of them has died unfortunately, and we got some more milk as dad and Dan have drunk most of it already! Mum got us all a magnum ice cream which was great :) Mmmm chocolate and vanilla ice cream!
Em was online part of the day, and then she wanted to get into the bath, so she got offline and I phoned her up :) We had a really good long chat too. I love her so much!! :D
Dinner was McDonalds, which dad and Dan went out to get. I had a super-size 1/2 pounder with cheese meal and a vanilla shake. When I started walking upstairs to my room with the food I managed to drop ALL of my damn fries down the stairs GRRR. I picked them all up and put them back in the box, picking all the dog hairs out. Yuck!
SOOOOOO annoying! I still ate them though :P
Guess that's it. Till next blog.
Posted in Life at 23:21 |
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Good Friday
It's a bank holiday in the UK, so I get the day off work YAY!!! Monday is also a bank holiday - You know what that means??
FOUR DAY WEEKEND BABY!!!
I love any time I can get off work, and not have to take it as holiday. ;)
Posted in Life at 12:30 |
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Fighting
I am so glad I get on with Em better than these two: Things my girlfriend and I have argued about. Some of the arguments are totally pointless and make no sense at all, how can that guy still be with her after all that? Madness.
Posted in Humour at 17:17 |
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w.bloggar Update
Well I've used this now for a couple of posts, but I've noticed one thing about it that I don't like - you can't use the "extended" option :( So I'd have to go into the web interface anyway if I wanted to use one! Let's hope the next version can use them!!
/me crosses fingers
Posted in Computers at 15:28 |
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Webmail
The company that hosts my website suddenly decided they'd set up a webmail service for all their customers - so without any warning at all, they updated their DNS servers to make any domain they were hosting use the subdomain "webmail" point to their dedicated webmail service. Now you'd think that would be helpful... but it's not. I already had a working webmail service of my own set up, and what sub-domain was I using? Yes, you've guessed it. "webmail". Just like theirs.
So now if I try to go to MY webmail, I end up on their site instead! :( I can still get to my one, but only if I edit my HOSTS file and enter the IP address of the server that hosts it plus the domain name I am trying to get to - this is great for my own computers, but what if I want to get there from somewhere else... I'll have to put up with Fasthosts' own service. I suppose I could always set up mine on another sub-domain, but what one? It made sense to use "webmail" as it was descriptive, and I can't use "mail" as it's already being used by the POP3 server.
Bloody annoying it is!
Posted in Computers at 15:14 |
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Brazil Grand Prix
I missed the excitement in the Brazilian GP... loads of crashes at turn 3 due to a mini-river crossing the race track! Even managed to catch Schumacher unawares ;) The race was eventually red flagged after a pretty horrific accident by the entrance to the pit... Alonso hit the wall pretty hard! Raikkonen was awarded the winning place, although it was actually Fisichella who had won... thankfully the FIA managed to sort that out last week and give the points to the right people in the end.
I would never have managed to actually see the highlights of the race if it wasn't for a great guy from the bit-tech Forums called GreatOldOne who sent me it on video - it arrived today, so I popped it in the VCR straight away and lay down on my bed to watch the events of the race.
Very exciting, wish I hadn't missed the actual race now... but at least I have seen what went on :) Now I can post the vid back to GOO, and try to remember to watch the next race!
Posted in Life at 23:59 |
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IESpell
Fed up with manually checking your spelling when filling in forms?
Following a link I saw on the bit-tech Forums, I came across a small program called IESpell.
It installs itself into Internet Explorer, adding a new button to your taskbar, a menu item under Tools and also adds itself to your right-click context menu. IESpell allows you to check your spelling within all form text boxes, just like MS Word! Very clever!
I'm not sure if it's going to get much use as I'm usually a very good speller anyway, but it's a nice thing to have there "just in case". I don't know how to spell every single word in the dictionary you know! ;P
Posted in Computers at 15:09 |
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w.bloggar
I just found out about a cool program called w.bloggar. It allows you to post to many different types of blog software from your computer, without having to be online or having to load up your blog in your browser. It also allows you to play with the layout of the actual entry a lot more than you can through the web interface. I am actually trying it out now, and am writing this very entry through it.
I'm actually very impressed! I think I will probably post almost all of my blogs from here from now on :) It's like writing your blog inside Word or Dreamweaver or something. Very clever! :)
Posted in Computers at 14:07 |
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Family Lunch
Bleh, haven't updated in a while, have I? I'm slacking! Anyway, here's what happened on Sunday... the only exciting thing to happen since my last blog.
As Dan should've been away at Uni when my mum had her birthday (he did come back unexpectedly!), my parents decided to wait till his Easter holidays so we could all go to have a nice family lunch... with both of my grandmothers (and Roy).
Posted in Life at 10:44 |
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An Appropriate Joke?
One of Saddam's aides is talking to his lookalikes.
He says: "The good news is that Saddam is still alive, so you've still got a job."
"The bad news is he's lost an arm."
Posted in Humour at 18:31 |
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Budget
Just finished setting up all the new budget pages on the company website. Took me a little longer than I expected as I was having problems with Acrobat and my local webserver.
To make the PDF I use the "open web page" feature of Acrobat, with a modified template and stylesheet of the budget pages so I can quickly touchup the finished PDF and put it online... but my server was having none of it.
I'm not sure why but it kept blocking the connection from Acrobat, when using IE6 works fine :/ Very strange. So I put the pages online and tried it from there. Sorted! It all worked fine, so I touched up the pages (removing the headers and footers that get added) and edited the thumbnails and bookmarks... and it was finished.
Another job jobbed.
Posted in Work at 12:10 |
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Eh? WTF?
I thought it was spring... why the hell was it snowing this morning? In April?
This country has gone totally mad!!
Posted in Humour at 10:09 |
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Letter Writing
I wrote a letter to Em today, 3 full pages of A4 :) I haven't written a letter in so long, my hand was really hurting by the time I finished. I had to stop a couple times in the middle to rest my hand a bit before starting again as it was getting so painful.
I put it in the post immediately, with an air mail sticker on it, so hopefully it won't take too long to arrive at Em's house. I'd say it'll take about 5 days or so to get there.
It was the Budget announcement today (very boring financial stuff), so tomorrow I will probably get the report which has to go onto our company website, where everyone can go and read it at leisure. I'll have to try to remember how to set all the pages up again, as it's been a year since the last one and I've forgotten what I did since then. LOL.
Posted in Life at 18:08 |
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Bad Back, Win2k3 and Letter Writing
Last night I decided to turn my mattress, so I turned it over and around, so I would be sleeping on a different part. I was hoping it would help my back out a bit, as I felt like I was laying in a dip. I did wake up feeling better, so it must've worked a bit, I'm still not 100% though :( I need to sit up more when I'm at a computer, instead of doing my usual slouching. *sigh* After so many years of it, it's hard to get used to sitting up straight. I have to keep reminding myself to sit up all the time LOL.
Posted in Life at 23:05 |
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Stuff
Yesterday... I got up. Had breakfast. Got dressed. Then Dan and I took some junk from our garage to the dump, which included a bag of tarmac that's been sitting in there for years, and never used... Dan's old bike, a rusty barbeque, Dan's old desk, a broken chair and some bits of his old bed. Our old analog satellite dish went too. Watched The Thirteeth Floor with Dan, it's a pretty good movie really. :)
Later on, I vinyl dyed my CueCat black... I haven't done anything with the cable yet, but the actual Cat looks damn cool now :)
Today... got up. Dad made breakfast (egg, sausage, baked beans). Yum! Dan and dad went to Saracens to watch the rugby match, while I stayed home with mum and watched the University Boatrace (yearly event, taking place between Cambridge and Oxford Universities). I was hoping Cambridge would win, but Oxford won... it was a very close finish, only 1 foot in it!
Our shower is broken right now, we need a plumber I think, so I had to take a bath today... for the first time in God knows how many years! It felt good to have my back under the hot water, rested it well for a few minutes.
Played a bit of Half Life, and completed the mod I was using - Heart Of Evil.
My back's been bad all weekend again :( *sigh* I wish it wouldn't keep acting up on me. I really need a good massage.
Posted in Life at 21:03 |
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Changing World
You know the world has changed when you realise...
- the best rapper is a white guy,
- the best golfer is a black guy,
- the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese
- the Swiss hold the America's Cup,
- France accuses the US of arrogance ,
- Germany doesn't want to go to war,
- and the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon.'
(Edited, again, to add the rest. Everytime someone tells me it, it gets longer!)
Posted in Humour at 10:02 |
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Axis Of Evil
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil", Libya, China, and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be more evil than that Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "Right, they are Just as Evil...in their dreams!” declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. "Everybody knows we're the best evils....best at being evil...we're the best". Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. "They told us it was full," said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "An Axis can't have more than three countries," explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy and Japan in the evil axis. So you can only have three, and a secret handshake. Ours is wickedly cool".
International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as, within minutes, France surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what became a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia said they had formed the "Axis of Somewhat Evil", forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the "Axis of Occasionally Evil", while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable".
With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up...Sierra Leone, El Salvador and Rwanda applied to be called the "Axis of Countries that aren't the Worst but Certainly Won't be Asked to Host the Olympics". Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the "Axis of Nations that are Actually Quite Nice but Secretly have some Nasty Thoughts about America", while Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the "Axis of Countries that be Allowed to Ask Sheep to Wear Lipstick". "That's not a threat, really, just something we like to do," said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axis, although he rejected the establishment of the "Axis of Countries Whose Names End in "Guay", accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay and Chadguay denied the charges.
Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn't want to join any Axis, but privately, leaders said that it's only because no one asked them?
Posted in Humour at 11:16 |
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Stuff
Hooray, it's Friday tomorrow! Start of another weekend.
My computer is fully moved over into the new case now, I realised today that I'd connected the power and HDD LEDs backwards, so I quickly fixed that. The power one is bright blue and the hard drive one is red. They look really cool against the black case.
I need to vinyl dye my DVD drive and floppy black sometime, maybe this weekend if stays sunny. I'm still not sure if I want to dye my Audigy drive, as it would block out all the writing saying what connector is what.
I'm slowly getting all my software installed, again. I had only just reinstalled Windows on my other PC, and that hadn't gotten bloated again, so I didn't have that much to catch up on. Which is good.
Tonight I finally got round to doing the March stats for the Singles website, which can be found here. I'm top of the list, yet again ;) I like being up there. Like it's my rightful place or something hehe. I need to beat Jenn in Trivia again, and try to get a nice lead over her so she can't catch me up again. It's very annoying when people just sit there playing all by themselves, and increase their score by ridiculous amounts just because no one else is there to steal the points away. It's very unfair... and she wonders why I kept resetting her record streak. There is NO way anyone can get over 15 questions right in a row when there is more than one person playing. Someone else HAS to get a question right in that time and break the streak, unless they're a complete moron I suppose.
Posted in Computers at 00:09 |
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