January 31, 2004
Picture this
If you have an interest in photography or just like great shots of landscapes, nature, buildings and animals, check out the gallery of my colleague Roderick. In particular, the wide range pictures of Malta and Gozo take me back to great holidays there and remind me of the unique mix of Southern European and North African heritage to be found on the islands.
January 25, 2004
It's nice to be back 2
Two reasons for the long gap between this post and the last. Firstly, I have been working extremely long days at work with little time for anything else other than food and sleep. The start of each year brings new management structures and resource models and it is the mission of jobbing managers such as me to turn these paper exercises into reality. Secondly, the new HP PC threw up a few problems and, after two weeks of hassle, I returned it to the store for an exchange. Whilst the knackered subwoofer was a simple 'faulty from new' hardware issue, I found the wireless keyboard to be a PITA. Even when set up as prescribed in the manual, it seems as though it is unable to cope with anything other than very slow and deliberate typing, frequently skipping letters and making writing anything lengthy a very frustrating task. Other than that, the setup is great and, for as long as I am on a Windoze box, XP appears to be a step forward in terms of usability and stability.
January 13, 2004
January 12, 2004
What does FAQ stand for again?
I only ask as it seemed to be the only question I could think of that was less intelligent than this one in the COMPAQ Support Library.
The syringe pleas, Nurse Ratchett.
January 11, 2004
Have you eaten recently?
I have just watched the most uncomfortable 90 minutes of television that I have seen for a very long time. Ethiopia: A Journey with Michael Buerk focused not only on the famine of twenty years ago and the report that prompted Sir Bob Geldof to prick the world's conscience but also the dark future that Ethiopia now faces through overpopulation. As the film pointed out, it is the cruelest irony that the country has the biggest natural reserves of water in the African continent still faces drought & famine almost every year.
If, like me, you live a comfortable life, have a meal in your stomach and have little that truly troubles you, maybe you might choose to mae a donation to one of the charities working in Ethiopia.
It's nice to be back
I'm back...but the box isn't. The PC built by, and bought from, emmathesysad and her chap, Ross, three years ago is dead. The new PSU that dabs.com sent (very swiftly overnight - good service) was to no avail as the CPU and mobo were toast as well. Yesterday saw us heading the not-so-nearest super-mall to investigate replacement options. Although I as very tempted to move to a Mac and OSX, for a new learning experience as much as anything, the cost of replicating my PC setup was just too strong for my pocket. After speaking to a 'learnt it parrot-fashion' saleswoman and her 'slag off anything other than our products' manager in The Computer Store, lusting after squillion-dollar Vaios in the Sony Centre and contemplating taking my own life for even looking in the window of Dixons, I was pretty much minded to grab a Dell from the January sale on their website. After a restorative coffee, we headed into John Lewis for a few homeware purchases on the way back to the car. It was only when I was sulking whilst the family browsed around the tableware department that I remembered that John Lewis (who, for those not familiar with the store, advertise that they are 'never knowingly undersold') have a computing department. To cut a long story short, 35 minutes browsing and stock-checking with the helpful and far-from-pushy staff saw us heading to customer collections to pick up our new PC, a top-of-the-range HP Pavillion, which pretty much offered everything I had on my wishlist.
The key elements of the standard spec are:
2.80CGHz IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4
512MB RAM
120GB 7200rpm hard disk
DVD ROM drive
DVD/CD Writer
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 in front)
2 Firewire Interface-IEEE-1394 (1 in front)
V92-ready modem
10/100BT network interface
IntelŪ i865PE chipset
1 parallel port
1 serial port
3 audio ports in front
Wireless keyboard and mouse
Multi-channel speakers and subwoofer
17" flat LCD screen on cantilever stand
To this, I have cracked the case and added the following:
Hard disk from dead box including:
- all my ripped MP3s and .rmj tracks
- all my digital photographs
- all document folders
- my downloaded app archive for PC and Palm
In due course, I intend to make this drive a dedicated media store for all playable and viewable media. In addition to this, I plan to add crack the case again (because I forgot earlier) and add another 512MB RAM harvested from the old box. All this hardware activity nearly gave me a bloody heart attack because, after installing the hard disk and reassembling, I was unable to get beyond the boot/setup scripts. As I headed towards a cross between a panic attack and a vein-busting rage, the last logical corner of my mind fought to keep some semblance of control. Applying the step-by-step rules that I coach my team to use, I worked through the installation and found no reason for the failure to boot. Second time through, and with the red mist cleaing from my eyes, I found the cause. Despite unflinching care in seating the master and slave IDE cable connectors and having remembered to move the old hard disk jumper the 'Cable Select' positon, I had forgotten to attach the power leads to either of the hard disks. With a cold sweat, I reassembled the box once again and hit the power. The momentary pause between boot screen and the Windows XP 'Please wait...' dialogue seemed to take forever but it appeared and I realised I had been holding my breath for a little too long.
It's nice to be back.
January 05, 2004
Dear Reader...
...apologies for the lack of content but there are technical difficulties to be overcome at Chateau BNUG. I arrived home after a marathon 36 hours of on call activities to the smell of fired PSU and a dead PC. A new power unit is ordered and will hopefully wing its way here a.s.a.p. but until then minimal posts, I'm afraid.
January 03, 2004
I am a Breakout Bat
 I am a Breakout Bat. I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along. Why not sneak over and find out what video game character you are? |
January 01, 2004
Happy New Year
And so begins another year. 2004. When I was a kid, 2001 sounded so impossibly far in the future that I never even considered that 2002, 2003 or 2004 would inevitably follow. Just thought I'd share that with you.
As I'm in a too-lazy-too-post mood, you'd be far better off having a laugh at these which I came across earlier.