Letter From America

Hmm well I got up today, had a showere, went downstairs to discover the post had actually arrived before I'd even got up. Where I stay this is a sort of regular occurence well it's sometimes here by 8:30, but today it surpassed itself it was up before my parents got up at 7:30...
And there was two letters for me.. One I was expecting which was a DVD of a Precussion Extravagnsa by a member of the Salvation Army called Johnathan Whitmore and my best mate stu was doing all the video work to record the event... which for what I've seen of it, it was a good night.. Stu had the unenviable task of splicing all the video footage together from the various cameras at the event and getting it to syncronize in with the Audio - a definate plus.. the finished product is polished to say the least..
The other was expected just not quite yet.. it was from Sharon and I didn't expect it that soon as well International mail can take a while... I then spent the rest of the day at work with "The Proclaimers - Letter From America" chorus and bits of the song going around in my head.. Thank you sharon for brightening my day :)

Don't you just hate....

Don't ya just hate when you talk yourself into something. Hmm I've made that mistake a few times you would think I'd have learned by now. Nope, talked myself into helping someone set up a database to consolidate several excel workbooks into one file, now I need to be able to query this database with all the data and I think I had better include a "delete" recovery option so as to be able to recover data that has been accidently changed or somehow enable "user" levels. Oh the joys of Access Databases, which I now need to learn how to set up and manage properly. The Set-up looks easy enough but it's the switchboard, the layout of the data to be displayed etc that will be the fun parts of this but I think I'll get by need to practice a little, I'm sure I'll get it... If you hear a funny noise one day it's okay it'll be my beating by brains out with a wooden spoon..

An intresting dilemma

Hmm well that was an intresting week, if not a little on the boring side, I know I just basically said an oxymoron in a kinda way but what the heck.
Now it's one of my sisters silver wedding anniversery this year, on 16th of July, this is gonna prove interesting because we'll have my cousin, her husband, their complete mental english springer spaniel and my aunt staying, now this means it's going to be intresting, it also means I get turfed out my room as it has a nice double bed in it, and by the looks of things I'm gonna be sleeping in the attic beside all my PC's which isn't that bad but my colleague at work's wife is due to give birth on the 17th of July but it could swing a few days either side and obviously he'll want time off for that.. I also worked out that the week leading up to the 16th I'm working 7am to 4pm and the week after it 10am til 7pm, now I can see me not getting much sleep as it is but I may have to work 7am til 7pm if my colleague needs time off... ARGH - it will be wake, work, home, eat, and not much sleep... Oh boy gonna be rough can see me going to work asleep, driving with my eyes shut - oh dear...

Close to the heart...

I heard in the news about the singer Kylie Minogue having been diagnoised with breast cancer and thought hmm there are many things in live that can appear and don't respect any kind of barriers of race, creed, color, sex one of these is cancer. Delta Goodram had non hogkins lymphoma - but she's cured now and back to singing.. I wish Kylie all best and pray she recovers quickly - I know she has the love of her family around her..
Now lets get to the meat of this post why is this post close to my heart, why am I waffling attempting to fill the space up with almost meaningless words, well hmm as I said Cancer has no respect for age, race, color,creed, sex.. I has visited my family, my mother had cervical cancer, now okay this was a few years now, she's fine now, got given the all clear after the course of treatments she recieved and only need to go back for check ups now and then, she is a fair age.. 70 this year. I came along late in life, but back to my mum.. I did think for a while what if!? what if I lose her, I knew deep in my heart I wouldn't, not to this as she was a fighter and had her faith in god, the doctors who cared for her and the surgeon who operated on her to remove the cancer, she said once that god's hand had guided the surgeon to remove it as she'd prayed for help.. I knew then she'd be safe, I gave her help around the house as she recovered but that dropped away. But she's better now, healed, proof that there is life after cancer. Proof there is a god, an angel watching over us, the ones who have lead selfless lifes, do selfless acts.. those who are mothers, who care..
Mind you there is another thing that is tearing her apart now, but I'm working on sorting that out head on... If you want some info on it read here and maybe read a few of the next entries as well, it might not make any sense but trust me it hurts..... but I'm gonna fix it now...
I have an idea, take the bull by the horns, the only one who is gonna lose out if it all goes wrong is me.. but i matter little, if I can get my sister the boneheaded one and my mum talking again.. if I lose what will I lose, I'll never see my nephew again ever.. but it's a price I'm willing to pay, He'll miss me I know it's not fair on him, he's 7 and I don't wanna do it but I must... Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna have to go dry my eyes..
Est Sularus oth Mithas - My Honor is My Life (Old Solmanian - Dragonlance)

Mates...

Hmm well had a really good fecking day yesterday... My good friend & his girlfriend were meant to come over and visit me... I even got a bottle of Tia Lusso in (It's like Bailey's Irish Cream but with Tia Maria instead of Brandy - quite nice on the rocks)
But they didn't turn up, no phone call, no message, not even a simple text message to say sorry mate can't make it over and I still don't got a reply to the text message I sent him wondering where he was from last night...
To say I'm a tad fecking bloody annoyed would be a minor UNDERSTATEMENT...
But never mind I had something to fill my time in with, chating away to a good friend about how her and her boyfriend are doing.. Hmm can I say happy yeah I can say that word.. Now here I am sitting typing this and printing of Silver Wedding Invites 10 at a time (no more my printer gets kinda warm and the inkjets start to clog up and it stops printing in one of the colors which isn't good at all..
Oh I might just mess around with the template some more... darken the colors slightly..

Template Changes

Well I played around some more with the template and I got it looking just like I want hmm mind you I think I may increase the width of the whole thing as it looks small on my 1024 x 768 screen *grins* I'll play around some more with it, I'll find a background to suit me soon... Hmm might use the one from my website - hmm but which 1 I have a few which you can set to your own liking (well works in IE / NS / Other browsers flaky support )
NB: It's not actually changed size in any way shape or form all though it does look like it...

A Review

Okay Dax ya got me - true indeed, don't worry that's just me being "Random", see my title does make sense...
Well actually i don't know why I wrote that, I blame Moogie, it's all her fault to start off with, well actually it's a friend of hers who doesn't have a blog but is in the same team that is Free-dc.org (note to self add link to sidebar for that..) well actually friend and an old tutor of mine who kinda persuded me to do the whole Distrubted Computer approach when SETI was new so blame the nameless one (you know who you are).. Then Moogie pointed me to her blog, then one day she said read this blog it's very touching and thus sharon got added as a friend and they both worked on me and persuded me to move (hmm mind you an old friend made a note that she did suggest blogger to begin with lol)...
Hmm Well I was at dear diary for a while since someone persuded me thus...
Dax your added to the sidebar for your comment :P - feel free to link back to me if you wish...
Onward and upward

A Western Blog

Hmm Wow is all I have to say for the Chapters 1 to 4 (See Side bar for links to them), I found myself today writing out the opening for chapter 5 in my head, not something I normally do but darn it somehow my brain is working on stuff that it normally don't do.. I normally work on problems I have for work / home / blog / elsewhere. I'm not that a creative writer well I can write and write if i find a topic that interests me. Quite the puzzle am I as Yoda would say.
I'm not going to utter another word about what I have in my head for chapter 5.
Good Luck to Eric - you gotta hard act to follow
Dax :) - Great Start;
Moogie - it's all your fault I got a blog in the 1st place (Well actually you and sharon but you've wrote a chapter:P);
NitWit - Superb follow on
Kelley - Wow is all I can say didn't know where it was going to go after NitWit finished almost everyone off..
I really should like erm read more peoples blog that just Sharon and Moggie's (thus only a limited Amount of Other Blogs listed on my sidebar)
but erm I don't wanna pry into anyones space that I don't know that well...

An interesting day.

Well it was a lovely sunny day to day, cold but nice and sunny, but most of all quiet, got a few things done at work... One day soon I'll actually have a proper complete list of all the stock we actually own and whats needing fixed and whats needing thrown away...
Hmm Time to chill out to some random cd, correction mp3'd cd :D gotta love being able to make a legal backup of a cd onto hdd / another cd ;)

A quiet Tuesday

Hmm today at work...................
That's right nothing happened, day went kinda slow but thankfully gave me time to think and plan, well since no-one else was in office but me and my friend we were able to just chinwag at times, hope there is something on at cinema this friday so I can finally go to cinema with friend (darn it Nth time lucky) said I'd pay for everything since it's her birthday etc... She don't know about the flowers and hopefully she never will, might just have to erm arrange to have them with me on friday - hmm a possibility *one that saves me fuel - only a little but well maybe I might just surprise her*

Hmm Well that's me caught up with the past Week (that's right from 1st March till now all written today) It's now 11pm and I'm gonna get some sleep (since I have to be up in 6 1/2 hrs)

My Nephew and Me...

Well I had fun last night, sister and her boyfriend went out last night for his and another friends birthday so I was looking after my nephew all last night, picked him up from football practice which is on the site of my old high school - well the high school is still there I've not been into the new building they put up yet, I still remember the old one... so got him home, had fun building models with megablock bricks (similar to lego but erm not lego) and watch jetix on Sky - well he likes watching Power Rangers and Robot Wars (which I like watching too) he is 7 (although him reaching next birthday might be a challange - Im sure a lot out there know what I'm on about).
Well let him watch Robot Wars, ran a bath for him, then hmm the darling some how managed to con me into let him stay up till 9:30 by which time it was getting dark so the blinds and everything were shut and he turned off the sky / TV / dvd with surrond sound - which I had to turn back on later... and then I had to read him a story with a voice that was starting to sound like kermit the frog was in there - it was a little croaky.. that took us to 10pm when I told him to sleep! which he did was a fun night, sat up waiting for them to come home which they did around 1am hmm randomly surfing sky channels - 800+ channels and All I could find was a James Bond Film that was on a channel I can get at home (I don't got sky at home - kinda expensive).. then I watched some Family Guy, some really far out South Park episode and then randomly surfed around... got home around 2 and went to bed hmm woke up about erm 11am, got up then though hmm no and went back to sleep for 5 minutes (2 hrs more like) lol... Lazy Saturday

The Service....

Well this took a little longer to post as well erm I kinda took the night off doing much but printing A4 Invites for one of my sisters "Silver Wedding Anniversary"
Hmm don't ya just love it when you set your computer to do a repeat copy run of something and it decides to stop using black to print out even when it's not out of black, it did that on me got 10 out of 20 done and it stopped using black I was watching a dvd at the same time in another room - Multitasking or what lol and generally not really doing much as I was to put it mildly "In SHOOK"..
It's a Annual Car Service, car was in good condtion I hear you ask, YEah it was in good condition a little bit of rust starting to appear (but that's not done at a service)
NO I get a call at work after they had picked it up and started the service..
Service Company > SV
SV: This is ......, .... speaking, Sir the lower armature bushes on the front of the car need to be replaced as they are badly split, and the wheels realigned that will be £167.
ME: I go how badly are they split..
SV: Well they engineer has marked it in red sir, its needing done urgently.
ME: Okay go ahead
SV: Also sir they engineer recommends that you change the brake fluid out as well.. that will be another £22..
ME: I go Okay do that as well...
End of Conversation...
Brain starts adding up... 167 + 22 + 100 (what I though I'd be paying for service)
£ 289 - EEP!!!!
They phone back saying that's your car ready sir we just to have some form of payment before we can get the car back to you... that will be £330
ME:Will ..... do
SV: yeah
ME: (procededs to give card details over phone) and Baulk at the price
They then phone me back saying they need me to come in and swipe my card as it's one of the new ones that requires fraud prevention authetication (It's one of them new [to the UK] Chip & PIN cards) and until payment is recieved the car ain't going nowhere..
I attempt to phone parents to get dad to collece me - They don't answer (and later claim to have been in at the time - but outside - Expletive)
So to say My bank account is a light is an understatment that's practically all my spending for this month GONE already and my mum only just put my wages check in the bank on tuesday and it's spent - £860 for a month and most of that spent on the car, well I still got another 200 to shell out between insuring in and paying back the loan I got out to pay for it...

Hmm Time for a Service

Hmm well it's that time of the year... The Annual Car Service is due, well this is 1st service of my car since I bought it back in October (See Previous Entries Once I get around to porting them over from the XML file I have of them it's slow job copy and pasting)...
Well My car has sticker on the drivers door which has a date / milage that the service is due on it, well It was due on the 23rd but that day was fully booked, so I said okay the saturady after would do but got a call on thursday from the nice dealership place I bought from saying that one of the people that did the services had a funeral to attend on the Saturday and with it being a holiday weekend cover was not possible so I said yeah so they are picking up my car from my place of work tommorrow and bring it back all nice and serviced (with no bits needing replaced - I hope) before I finish up - how nice of them... Oh the joys of motoring.. I could technically do this myself but erm I have neither the time or the inclination nor tools to do all the required service checks and as it's a new enough car I'll let them do it for me...

What Browser do you Use?

Hmm I was thinking it is really important now as to what browser you use as some websites still "favour" one particular browser or another browser...
I personally use Firefox, IE 6 (Upgraded from 5), Netscape 7.x, Opera 6..
Why all these different browsers well I want to know what my home site looks like in the various browsers, seeing how it looks in each after i've done small changes to the html/javascript/css code.. Sometimes it work sometimes it don't..
FYI - Opera is the most pain in the ass to get "non simple" stuff to work in..
Personally since Firefox came out I've used it pretty much exclusivly to browse sites, however I've come across one or 2 that differ from how they look in IE / NS and one that didn't work until I installed one or 2 Extensions to FireFox ;) (IMHO Firefox Rocks)..

How easy is it to get firefox: Get it here: http://www.getfirefox.com/
The extensions (checkable via Tools > extension) I have "installed" are:

• Adblock - Does what it says blocks page ads, you need to play around with this as it doesn't come with any rule book, you create the rules as you surf, you can choose to block or not.


• Chatzilla - A nice IRC chat client has it's uses


• Download Manager Tweak - Tweak to the download manager that lets you show what's been downloaded in a sepertate tab / windows - most useful


• Foxy Tunes - Lets you have Firefox and your favourite music player open, with the player minimized out of sight, this gives you control over it (supports a large varity of players


• PDF Download - Only just found this one, useful if you want to save a pdf document rather than view it in your browser..


• BlogThis - Also just got this and not tried it, but it apperent it link stuff back to your blog..


• MediaPlayerConnectivity - autodectects (or you can manually set what it does) where quicktime / real player / media player / you favourite mp3 player is installed and then (once you've select its behaviour) automatically plays / smart play (which I use) /gives you a choice of what link to play / etc..


• Play Launch - Gets past a "bug" of Launch.com which requires you to use IE or Netscape 7 and you neeed to have the latest media player installed as well - not with this plugin ya don't - just need to set it up for your connection speed and how you want it to launch itself and away you go on launch.com

Firefox is nice, can be skinned (unlike IE) - i.e. you can change the look of it just like you can with Netscape and Opera (what is it with MS and not being able to change the look of stuff)
It supports the standard plugins - if you don't got them it tells you and offers you links to get 'em which is sweet - integrated updates which is useful:) - also stable it's been used in Linux for ages - well the Mozilla Browser it's based on has anyway :) - instead of having 10 windows you can have 10 tabs - a definate Plus

Okay I think that about says it all for firefox... I can't recommend it enough, someone one day recommended it to me and I eventually got it to see what all the fuss was about and haven't looked back since - only on a few sites do I still use IE but only because they are in my IE favourites (which you can import into firefox if you wish)

Addendum: Erm I didn't include Safari as I don't have a mac and it appears to be a mac OS only browser...

An Invitation...

Now since this blog is still "relativly" new (even if it does have stuff that goes back to 2003 - from old DD) I've decided to allow my readers (how ever many there maybe to leave a question in comments...
Looks at Moogie and Sharon, I'm blaming you 2 for me doing this as I can't think of anything to write and though what the hey.. if this all goes wrong you 2 are to blame...

Monday, Monday....

Well hmm now lets see what can I say about today but ARGH!!!! Hmm I need to persude the boss that we need shelves for a load of stuff mainly alarm boxes as they are sitting literally all over the place there is like about 200 of them all on the floor of the lab area which is now my workarea / storage + I'm trying to clear a space to put stuff 2 19" rack mount cabinets in.. It's big enough but there is one corner that is full of stuff that I can't move... It just looks a mess... I just not long had it tidy but because I've got cables everywhere (see early entries in my DD) which i am in the process of transfering from the beginning (it seems the sensible way) - copy and pasting it from an exported xml file. Unless of course someone can think of a way I can erm do it quicker, I'll be doing it that way (so expect some randomly added entries over the next few days / weeks)

The Dawn of a new Era...?

Okay.. It's time to expand outwith my Dear Diary, Slowly over the next few days / weeks I'll be "importing" most if not all from my DD site (gotta love cut & paste). I will probably loose the comments unless I can get them across as well (wish me luck)...
I know this is one of default templates and I'll be looking for some help from people to help me play around with the set up of my blog..

Title: TBA

I can't actually think of a title that remotely makes any sense but then again often when I do put one in, it doesnt' always make sense..
What a interesting few days I've had at work, I actually did some work that is, not that I didn't do work before you realise just this is different..
Finally getting around to moving the Call Centre or as I like to refer to it the Central Monitoring Station around, now you can imaging how much cabling is required to monitor 20+ sites on their own monitor, each site has reciever and recording units it goes like Rx > Recorder > Monitor..
So Coax needed from Rx to recorder > monitor and erm we have some in 1 proper 19" Rack, some recorders in another smaller Rack + Recievers and other DVR's stacked up - not very nice... + it's a NIGHTMARE cabling wise...
Well Enter Solution 1 of 1: Move Monitors to other side of room where more sockets have been provided, move all the Rx / Recorders out of the room and rearrange them in the existing cabinet + 1 other 19" rack cabinet (both of which are full - or will be once addition units come on line..
Sound simple enough, okay just need to cut 28 lengths of coax - why 28 well each keypad we use supports 14 Recivers don't ask why they just do... so 2 keypads = 28 , now you can't just leave that laying around nope it's all in trunking on and through the wall.. Also we are adding a spot monitor so we can see what site the keypad is looking at rather than having to turn and find the correct one...
It's all in hand well almost the "spot monitor" requires a bit of hardware that erm although simple in principle, I can't find it anywhere (or maybe I'm being silly and not typing the correct magic words into google)
I just want the bloody thing to go from Site A to Site B by pressing buttons on the existing keypad no fancy stuff no need to record it, or do this that or the next thing to it (all of which adds to overall £££ :|)
Onwards to tomorrow where I can finish off the cabling, only started it on monday but I am getting a hand (just about)...

It's a Funny Old World ain't it...

Knoppix

Well finally got it working after a while, swapped the dvd drive for the cd-rw that burned the cd - i have a feeling that somehow either the CD wasn't closed properly or it was burned too fast (weird burned @ x20- most odd) never mind it works. Now all i need to do is learn where everything is in knoppix and how to start / stop / show processes. Need to update / install java so I can run d2ol and also somehow patch it into the windows drives current d2ol cache so that it picks up where the windows one left off and such like...

What an Interesting Week

Well things is moving along at work...
Actually got some contructive stuff done this week...
My Work Area is almost sorted, just got a few things to resolve like where to find a Dual Monitor PCI Video Card... as the PC don't got no AGP slot it's old but I have to use it lol...
I'm not going to attempt to install linux on a machine for a while I've had erm a "interesting" time of it, Simple install failed - 1st Downloaded CD fails - error in the ISO, redownload a newer version checked the ISO - passed md5 check, and then I hit problems with my Video card... darn it need to find away of getting the drivers in...
I think Im gonna dig out my Rad 7000 and install that and replace the drive that annoyed me because it won't play nice when I attempted to boot Knoppix (which is Debian Linux based but has smart autodetect)