Andrew's diary

Wednesday, 31 July 2002

Bob's last day: had lunch in the clubhouse and Dave turned up, looking well. Took the digital camera to work and it works really well with large levels of natural light and, for thirty quid, you can't really complain.

Tried to get exim relaying internally and handling mail -> news but didn't succeed.

Tuesday, 30 July 2002

Digital camera, wireless cards and cheap network cards came. But I'm a little pissed off: the Netgear MA301 Wireless 802.11b PCI adapter is just a PCMICA adapter allowing you to stick a Netgear MA401 Wireless 802.11b PCMCIA card in a desktop machine - this was not mentioned on the website. Also, the Mustek GSmart Mini camera is small and cool, but doesn't take good pictures indoors :-(

A good thing, however, was that the five quid network cards are based on an RTL8139 so modprobe 8139too gave me eth1 :-). Also configured the server's firewall (using Talkie's scripts) and DHCP for the internal network.

Sunday, 28 July 2002

Tired. Hot. Sprow looked at our electrics and helped me sort them out/fit a new light fitting. Slept (recorded 24). Still need to tidy up ;-/

Saturday, 27 July 2002

What wonderful weather for a housewarming party. Slightly less good weather for standing in front of a barbeque attempting to feed the five thousand - lot of family was present in the afternoon. Got a phone call from Jo (mid-afternoon) asking if they could come, which was nice. Dead-on 7, Glen and Juggler arrived followed by a steady trickle of other friends and colleagues. Much imbibation followed - at some point the family left (and Megan arrived!), then some more people left and Jo/Mark, Juggler, Sprow, Glen, Megan, Maxine, Mel and I stayed up until 3ish - mostly sat outside.

Friday, 26 July 2002

I've given up on ALSA and reverted to OSS - and it worked first time (none of this /dev/pcmC0D0p is missing crap.

Big Brother finished too. Thank god.

Thursday, 25 July 2002

Spent most of the day at Lotus in Staines: interesting trip.

Wednesday, 24 July 2002

Got networking working on the 2.4.18 kernel - ALSA's still not working: I dunno if it's the CMI8330 card (which seems to have been detected OK) or just ALSA being difficult and crap.

Monday, 22 July 2002

Recompiled the home machine's kernel from work - always-on Internet connections are positively wonderful. I then did a brave/stupid thing and rebooted the box, but I'd left a floppy in the drive and hadn't reset the BIOS so it hung with "remove or replace with a system disk and press any key". I blame IBM... New kernel didn't fully work anyway :-(

Sunday, 21 July 2002

Pretty much finished the garden: rest of the gravel's down; the log roll has been laid and the shed finished. Unfortunately, didn't have time to put the loft boards down or put the border up in the dining room. It looks like we're going to be busy leading up to next Saturday.

Relaxed in the evening by watching a repeat of The West Wing and then 24 - it seems they keep throwing new plot elements in, as though the stuff already going on wasn't quite enough...

Saturday, 20 July 2002

Robert's birthday and so gave him a ring after we (finally) got up. They've bought a new hamster, which means Mel wants one even more. The answer is still "no".

Tried to get the old 486 Debianised over the network connection and spent most of the day fighting with it, before deciding the network card only half worked and the spare cards I had were all PCI and the machine didn't have any PCI slots after all. This means my desktop'll become the server and we'll build a nice new desktop to replace it.

Thursday, 18 July 2002

Got an email from Dave who should be relaxing in Tenerife, not spodding.

Wednesday, 17 July 2002

Lovely weather and a pub lunch. Rang the shed people (again!) about the missing parts and they'll "get them to me ASAP" - yeah, right. Also bought Mel a laptop, a wireless LAN PCMCIA card to go in it, a wireless LAN PCI card to go in the server and a cheap digital camera, just for fun.

Emotional ER in the evening followed by another interminably boring Big Brother. Thank God it'll be over soon, so I can get Mel back from 10pm onwards ;-). Whilst on the topic of ER it would've been nice to see guest appearances by George Clooney and Juliana Margulies - they were supposed to be Mark's best friends so you'd think they'd be at his funeral. Both actors could probably do with the work anyway ;-)

Tuesday, 16 July 2002

Drilled various holes throughout the house to route the Cat5e cable: we may have a network up and running by the housewarming.

Dave's changed his diary format, more logical but it just doesn't seem right. His entry about our run-in with the machete-wielding neighbour made me giggle.

Sunday, 14 July 2002

Tried to sort out the TV aerial and it's a bit better but still not as good as I'd hope for.

Family went home after Mel cooked a nice dinner in the evening.

Saturday, 13 July 2002

Mum, Dad and Robert came down to help with more jobs on the house: we've built a shed, painted the dining room, put curtains in the lounge and went out for a nice dinner ;-)

David didn't come down as the plonker had a "few" pints whilst on anti-biotics; and now he's ill.

Friday, 12 July 2002

Went to see our (old) GP again this afternoon and my ear's getting better, but apparently has a long way to go :-(

Thursday, 11 July 2002

Got a promotion and pay rise - so I'm happy. Took Mel and Maxine to Pizza Hut for dinner to celebrate.

Monday, 08 July 2002

Back to work: the room changed from Token Ring to Ethernet over the weekend so all the machines need reconfiguring; and David, the work experience lad, started today. Late home from work too, as Mel had a staff meeting, so didn't get home until after 6 having to drive through the pouring rain. But that's when the interesting stuff started...

Mel and I pretty much arrived home at the same time and parked around the back (only having the one back door key), however when Mel got out of her car a bloke who owns a big white van on the road came out effing and blinding about how we shouldn't park round the back of our house because he can't park around the back of his (there's a wood there). Admittedly, he'd asked - relatively nicely - before, but given his big white van was already there and we weren't parked in front of his house and it's a public road we thought we'd be OK. However, he's ranting and raving at Mel, so I get out of the car and say "don't talk to her like that"... he goes off on one at me: tries to punch me, swearing like there's no tomorrow and then pulls out a 12" machete and starts waving it about.

I manage to dissuade him from killing me and agreed to move the cars (he threatened to "slash 'em" and purposefully drive into them). Mel was upset (duh!) and called the police to report the incident, but didn't want them going round - which they seemed surprised at, but I agree with: there's no need to escalate it and cause more friction, but the incident's been reported in case of future trouble.

Saturday, 06 July 2002

The Imigran I took yesterday's given me a rebound migraine today which grew increasingly bad through the day until I had to go to bed :-(

Also found out that Mr. Johnson (head teacher of Whirley County Primary School) is retiring. Will have to email him later this week.

Friday, 05 July 2002

Taking yesterday off to get better for today (Shivani's last day) may have worked, if it wasn't for the bad migraine which left me in bed all day.

Got a phone call from Adrian in the evening (just after I'd got up) which was a nice touch.

Thursday, 04 July 2002

Another day off: late up, feeling horrible. Managed to be not totally bored out of my skull by the wonderful broadband connection. Then, I had a thought - someone raised the point in a Slashdot interview (with Google's Director of Technology, Craig Silverstein) that surfing was dead. I remember the sense of wonder and exploration I had back when I first started using the web (pre-Google) and realised that this pastime is, indeed, dead with the ability to go to Google and just enter a couple of keywords and get to a page on any topic.

So I knocked together a page which will take you to a random page in Google's index: you say how many words you'd like to use; they're pulled from the dictionary and passed to Google's "I'm feeling lucky" function. It's great fun, even if I do say so myself :-)

Wednesday, 03 July 2002

Went to the GP - a nice chap from New Zealand on exchange, bemoaning the state of the computer system - he suggested that it wouldn't all be better in a couple of days and prescribed anti-bacterial ear drops to assist the anti-biotics.

Went into work after, which turned out to be a big mistake: it really took it out of me.

Tuesday, 02 July 2002

Made an appointment with our old doctor in Winchester for tomorrow morning. Spent rest of the day trying to get some rest :-(

Monday, 01 July 2002

Didn't feel well enough to go to work so spent the day on the sofa again - managed to watch Dark Star and last night's 24 whilst dosing up on painkillers, anti-biotics and tea.

I did, however, try and get to see a doctor - but you wouldn't believe how hard this is in Basingstoke: all the local surgeries' "books are closed" which means I've got to write to the Health Authority and be foisted upon a surgery which, hopefully, will be relatively close. Fortunately, the Health Authority can be emailed(!) and they said I can ring a doctor's and make an emergency appointment. Unfortunately I'm either "out of their area" or they can't deal with me until I've "been allocated a surgery by the Health Authority". Petty bloody bureaucrats.