Mike's musings

Frustration

A frustrating day. My old laptop just won't cut the mustard for the testing I need to do, I discovered around noon. So I went to PC World in Colchester to price up a new machine. Got that done by around 1330. Sent off emails asking for approval to buy it. Did some phoning, come 1420. People out of the office, on holiday, etc.. In the end, got the machine approved, bought it, installed it, etc.. Nice piece of kit. Pity that the license key I have for the software I need to install doesn't seem to work on 64bit systems. Aaaaaaaaaaargh. Trying to sort this now.

The other frustration's of a very different kind, and revolves round really not knowing how the very important vote on women bishops is going in the General Synod. There are various blogs, but I'm having problems working out exactly what amendments are good or bad, and where they're going. The main question seems to be about whether there will be legal provision to help those who aren't in agreement: in other words, enshrining discriminatory practice in law. It seems that the bishops and clergy (who make up two sets of constituents) are more progressive, on the whole, than the laity (who make up the 3rd set). We'll see. And pray, of course.

Labels: computers, women, work

And back home

Got Kate's router sorted nice and early, did some work at her house (the wonders of laptops) and headed home to complete my work day. Pretty tired, but happy to have done my bit.

We've rented Peter's Friends to watch on DVD, which I've not seen for ages, so hopefully I can do some ironing in front of the TV tonight.

Labels: computers, television

Singapore

Got around 5 hours of sleep, which isn't bad on a plane, going East. Read, watched TV shows on the media thingy. Landed around 0840 local - just under an hour late, as we'd been delayed leaving Heathrow. Picked up my bag, went to the hotel, showered, went to work. Woke up at 0400, and I'm still doing stuff at 1950 or so, but I'm about to get some food and a drink, and then go to bed, where I suspect I'll sleep pretty well.

Mentioned on Facebook that I'm in Singapore, and a friend from school who I've not seen for the best part of 20 years got in touch, as she lives here! We're hoping to meet for supper tomorrow. Where would we be without computers, then? (Answer: significantly less peeved than I am this evening, having struggled with them for much of the day).

Labels: computers, friends., travel, work

Router fixing

Left home at 0830 this morning up to Kate and Macs. Only took me 5-10 minutes to fix the router: the problem was what I'd expected, and I had notes on what I'd needed to do last time. This time I've saved the config, and written notes on how to put it all back together. So, we had a chance to see them, and Nana Stick, who Moo hadn't spent much time with at the Christening. Back home around 1910 - girls both took a long time to get back to sleep.

I've had a paper accepted at a conference in February, it seems, which is good: but I've had to send a photo of myself, which I hate.

Oh, and Liverpool lost: what _was_ Benitez thinking with that formation?

Labels: computers, family, football, work

Laptopery

Most stuff is working now. Can't get my machine to connect via 3G via my phone, but I've now got Skype working with my bluetooth headset, which is pretty nifty. /home and swap partitions encrypted, 2Gig RAM, SecondLife all there.

Jo decided to read me a story, and got a book out. "Stephanie and the bad hair day," she announced (she's into Lazytown at the moment). "Or Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water," I countered. "No, Daddy: Stephanie and the bad hair day." Fair enough.

I suggested we said a prayer after the light was turned off. I suggested praying for Mummy, Daddy, Miri and Jojo, but Jo came up with a lovely little prayer thanking God and Jesus for Father Christmas (and not just giving her presents, but everybody). She also reckons he brings Christmas trees, but hey. It was a beautiful prayer, and I was very impressed.

Labels: computers, geekery, Jo, prayer

Mummy, you're so beautiful ... but ruined

So said Jo to Moo as she scribbled all over a picture that she'd painted. Lots of things today:

• Miri can now pull herself up to standing in her cot (time to lower the base)
• Miri can now clap
• I've got a new laptop. Running Ubuntu already, of course.
• Moo's introduced multiple colours to her knitting
• we're finishing watching Anchorman - it's still very funny

Labels: computers, Jo, miri

Good meeting

Met a potential customer in Cambridge today. The meeting went well, I think, and they seemed interested not only in the main product we were talking about but also in a possible future one, too.

Ordered a new laptop today. Should arrive Monday. Oh, yes.

Labels: computers, work

Essay done!

Yes, you saw aright. It's finished, and I'm even quite pleased with some of it: we'll see how it goes down with the markers. Got some work done reacting to the HMRC news from yesterday and how it affects us, threw out some old computer cases and bits and pieces to Black Barn Computers, who may be able to do something with some of the newer pieces. Yesterday, they have me a quite serviceable CRT (monitor) to give to Jo's pre-school, which was very kind, so I thought I'd try to send some decent stuff their way along with the, um, rubbish.

Speaking of rubbish, England are 2-0 down to Croatia. We're going out, and deserve to do so on current form.

Labels: computers, ERMC, football

-ve, +ve

-ve: Jo's been sick this evening. Asleep now.

+ve: I've got Alien Arena 2007 working on my box at 1600x1200. Nice. And free, of course.

Labels: computers, illness, Jo

Watching the footie

For those of you who don't know, I married into a Scouse family, and it was made clear well before we even became engaged that if I was serious about Catherine, then I'd be supporting Liverpool from then on. Given that my only (slight) allegiance was to the (oft-relegated, ever hopeful) Wolves, this wasn't a big ask, but these days I really enjoy following them. They're playing Oporto away from home tonight, and so I settled down with a beer. I'll have some wine in a moment, but it's best to start off with a beer, isn't it?

Moo had some problems with her Palm recently and it's not been syncing. She needs it to work for her job, and we were dreading having to buy a new one, but in the end, we got away with buying her a bluetooh dongle (her laptop's _supposed_ to have bluetooth on it, but it's Windoze XP, and therefore has never worked).

I'm coming to the end of my placement at Long Melford, and need to arrange an end supervision. I've really enjoyed the time, and look forward to going there in the future. Next challenge is that I've agreed to take over the service for the second Sunday of the month at Great Yeldham. I really want to do something really rather different, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with Keith (the incumbent and my supervisor) discussing my ideas.

Labels: church, computers, football

New machine

Very nice. Had some initial problems, now sorted. Am about to stay up late to write more essay. Very busy working day, too.

Labels: computers, work

Wii - and hot tub

We went into Cambridge, and I bought a Wii today. Jo can already play the tennis games as my doubles partner - serving fairly well and hitting the odd lob here and there (to be honest, I don't know exactly what a lob is, but she's hitting some balls back). It's great, and quite a work-out. Unluckily, I did the "find your Wii exercise age" thing on the Sports game, which is the only one we have atm, and it appears that I'm 64. I'd had the odd glass or two beforehand, though, so...

What's this about a hot tub, then? Well, Si and D have recently moved house, and we went round for a barbecue, and to see the lovely little Charlotte Phoebe Plant. She's tiny - only just 6 pounds (though she's only a little over 2 weeks old) - and Miriam looks more like 6 months old next to her. It turns out that their new house has a lovely shower, but no bath. Not inside, at any rate. Instead, it comes with a hot tub outside. Designed for four, and Si and I fitted very well into it with a glass of wine each and a child to look after, while D and Moo looked after the littles. Si lent me a pair of swimming trunks, but I'm planning to leave a pair over there for next time.

He's planning to come over to work from home at my house on Monday, as he doesn't yet have broadband and needs to look after Morgan. Oh, and he doesn't have a Wii yet, either.

Labels: computers, friends

Voice recognition

Honestly, this is really difficult stuff, but this video had me crying with laughter.

Not recommended for:

• pregnant people
• people with a bad cough
• people with any sort of abdominal injury
• people who have stitches in any part of their bodies
• people who believe that computers (particularly those running Windows) are of any use whatsover.

Labels: computers, laughter