T'eyla Minh

Well, we have it. Pentium III and 10GB HDD, of which there are about 3 remaining after installing vital software and transferring over the files I couldn't live without (mostly some pictures and my various writings). I have been rather spoiled with 60GbB over the years, clearly.

I might see if I can do the same again and stick the old 60GB HDD in here as a spare drive for stuff like that, especially as I won't be able to get very much music on here at all...

At least when you click something it reacts. And I can actually access my bloody Yahoo!Mail again, FINALLY. It's generally faster and also, I can barely hear it. No wonder I had so many headaches before, with that bloody great monster roaring away all day...

Sooo, yeah.

It's free, and it'll more than do until we can afford an actual new PC.

I made a start on uploading my Paris / EuroDisney pics to Facebook last night (which took hours because the proper uploader just plainly refused to work properly) and will post the links when I've made the remaining albums.

Over and out.

We just had a minor network outage, for all of 20 seconds. Not knowing this, I tried to save the bundle index I'd just updated, only to have it go horribly wrong, corrupt the table, and refuse to reopen the file. And obviously, it failed to save the changes. So I've had to delete it and start again from scratch using the original, plus the new dictated additions.

I think tables in Word frell up more than anything else. If your table gets corrupted, there's very little chance you can save it. I used to have similar problems at Ladywood, as all of our templates were form / table based, and subsequently a pain in the arse if they decided not to work, or you accidentally hit 'delete' when you meant 'return'... especially because they were chock-full of random macros that actually didn't work properly, and always assumed you were only writing about one child.

Luckily enough, in this case, the bundle index wasn't that long, otherwise I would have been more annoyed.

I'm hoping there'll be enough work to sustain me until 6.00 this evening, although I'm now very confused about when the heck our first Messiah concert is. I was convinced it was this Saturday, the website says Friday, in which case there's no way I'll be able to make the rehearsal before the concert, as it takes up an entire afternoon... Meh. I may consider not doing the two Messiahs, to be honest, as I still don't know it well enough and missing two rehearsals has done nothing for learning it better, let alone the carols for next Sunday. I need to practice them quite substantially before then, as well as making out which ones we're doing from the carol books. And, actually, I'm sure we haven't even rehearsed Away In A Manger yet because the librarian accidentally got the wrong version... I presume we'll be looking at that tonight...

I am starving. This 'having breakfast regularly' thing isn't working out like it used to...

Edit, after lunch: I just made a very rubbish start on my Christmas shopping - some not-too-hideous, fairly non-offensive wrapping paper (18m for £2.00) and some still coloured lights for the tree (£1.00). And I've already lost the will to live. Bloody annoying people everywhere.

This week, the Alcester Road has been full of really stupid drivers...

On Monday (I think it was Monday, it may well have been yesterday...), some idiot in a van pulled up right next to the bus in a single lane, and subsequently, quite deservedly, lost his wing mirror.

This morning, we had one idiot parked on double yellow lines (in the bus lane), and another idiot driving half inside the bus lane, causing the bus to have to maneouvre around him.

If and/or when I ever learn to drive, I will take this piece of knowledge wherever I go: buses are bigger and uglier than cars. Don't take them on.

If I were to make a scale of bad drivers, I think people who do silly things around buses would come fourth. In third place would be anyone who beeps their horn unnecessarily. Second would be male drivers who beep their horns at women thinking it's flattering. And first would be that horrible breed of bastards who think it's everso amusing to drive through puddles at full speed and drench pedestrians. (I admit, the top two are close runners... but the puddle thing is just evil, and I've been on the receiving end of it twice.)

Bus drivers, incidentally, would come fifth. ;)

( Other things )

In other news, the PC is still being weird - it took 2.5 reboots yesterday to get it to work and then it kept randomly slowing down. I say 2.5 because the first time I switched it on, it rebooted itself when I wasn't looking, after which it froze...

I did at least manage to get the tickets booked for the November concert, and, assuming there isn't going to be another postal strike, they should be delivered shortly.

There is very little to do at work again and another team's WPO just took the full-tape I was looking forward to killing time with. But at least it'll keep her out of my hair for an hour or so, and I have my PDR this afternoon. They were all meant to be yesterday but the morning sessions were cancelled due to nobody remembering to fill in their forms (um, DUH), and then the afternoon ones were also cancelled because Marie had to attend a Pay & Grading meeting. I don't have any issues or anything, it'll just get me away from my desk for a bit...

I think that's everything.

Just to clarify - is anyone else having problems with Yahoo! Mail? It has consistently refused to load any of my emails since yesterday evening.

Having said that, the PC has slowed to a crawl today and everything is slow to load. We took the PCI card out this morning in the hope that it would improve matters (I swear the problems only started after we installed it and it stopped working a day later) but it took six attempts earlier to get the sodding PC to load up without one of various problems occurring:

1) Mouse & keyboard freezing on start-up (frequent);
2) PC freezing on BIOS startup thingy, before it even starts looking for the boot-up drive
3) No response at all when on-switch pressed.

It's incredibly frustrating, and the entire thing has slowed down. (Although LJ seems to be fine, for once.) I've done a virus check, and did a Spyware scan last week. Any other suggestions?

This problem was the final straw this morning, as it happens.

Yesterday I was feeling quite positive and productive (hence the to-do list) but when I got home, for some reason, I started being pissed off again. It turns out I don't have the biscuit recipe after all, as it's in a different cake book to the one I have, so I phoned my mum to ask if she still had the book. Subsequently, she emailed me a recipe.

Which, obviously, I can't bloody well open. Since she might be bringing over our new plate set and S-hooks tomorrow I might have to ring again and ask her to bring the book, too...

So, this morning, despite being in a better mood for all of ten minutes after a good night's sleep, I hit meltdown, and had a good cry about things before getting up. Which gave me a headache, unfortunately, but at least the paracetemol kicked in and killed it. Serves me right for bottling everything up on Thursday, really. Noor said I should have told her and she would have stayed; I'll remember that for next time, and I'm definitely going to have to let Marie know that I may end up having to have extra time off once a month... Stupid hormones.

We went shopping a bit later to Somerfield and ended up spending £30 (how does it all add up??) and I almost failed in my mission for frozen or fresh filo pastry (I'm making a pie tonight), as Somerfield had sold out, Iceland only had puff or shortcrust, and eventually Sainsbury's had some. Obviously, there's not a high demand for filo in Kings Heath... or, possibly, there is, as Somerfield may testify. So at least that wasn't another thing to be annoyed about.

But yeah, if anyone could put my mind at ease about Yahoo, that would be good. The PC is still under warranty if it is frelled, but apparently whenever Paul goes past the shop the bloke is either out or the shop is shut, which doesn't bode well. Bargain turned out to be not so bargainous after all. Bastard. If I thought my old motherboard would cope with it, I'd use my rudimentary knowledge of PCs and just put my hard drive, this processor and RAM into the old machine and be done with it...

Also, here's the other weird thing - according to all sources (well, a couple anyway), one can only have four IDE devices plugged into the motherboard at any one time. In this computer's case, they are: HDD, other HDD, Zip drive, DVD-RW drive. So how come my old PC had a HDD, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, Zip and floppy drive? Isn't that five IDE devices?

The bloke also said I couldn't have a DVD-ROM and DVD-RW (whicih I wanted originally, to enable better copying of things) because it was impossible to do direct copies. Er, okay, so why have I been doing just that for years with no problems?? He also refused to put my originaly HDD (the bigger one, by all accounts) into the new machine because the one that was already in there "has the OS on it". Er... my old one has an OS on it, too. That's how my PC worked. I suspect he was just too lazy to swap it.

So, yeah, much confusion, but mostly I'm just hoping my PC isn't fucked after two months. Any and all suggestions from the computer-savvy on my f-list would be much appreciated.

Edit: On the plus side, I got some knee-high boots from the charity shop for £3.50, which... sort of fit, by virtue of having buttons and elastic. They are very funky and I will take a photo later...

I suppose it's expecting too much that I install something and it works for more than a day...

( Computer-related moaning under here )

Aside from that annoyance, Sunday was generally annoying anyway. I woke up with a headache which permeated at least until I went to bed again, although it did gradually subside during the day. I suspect the under-the-cut stress didn't help. I'm getting a bit sick of suffering headaches at the weekend, because they effectively debilitate me from being even slightly motivated. Also, the laundry is piling up because the weather's been too crap to even consider putting it outside to dry. In an effort to solve this problem, obviously, I merely bought a bigger laundry basket. :P

Also, we made a flying visit to Paul's mum' s to pick up his All Saints voucher, as the old All Saints (City Plaza) was having a three-day sale to get rid of old stock. As City Plaza is being refurbed and House of Fraser now sell All Saints clothing, it's hardly surprising it's closed down, not to mention the much bigger store in the Bull Ring. Anyway, we picked up the voucher and trekked into town on Sunday service public transport, only to to be told that the voucher "wasn't valid" and could only be used in a "real store". Um? You have 'All Saints' above your window and you sell All Saints clothing - why are you not a 'real store'?

So, having failed in that mission we headed towards the Pavillions because Paul had apparently read that HMV (or Virgin) were having a 5-DVDs-for-£20 sale. As it turned out, Virgin were doing five for £30, and HMV were doing five for £20. HMV won, although the choice was a bit rubbish. We left with Pan's Labyrinth, Sin City and A Scanner Darkly.

And then, by the time we had dinner, my stomach was feeling unwell so I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have done. Which was rubbish.

We ended the evening by watching the new reality series on C4, Dumped (even though all the posters claim it starts on Tuesday...), and that was about it.

Oh, and also on Saturday we watched Broken Flowers, which was a very strange film indeed...

I have a functional scanner! About bloody time; I only bought it about three years ago...

Also, new monitor! Which is HUGE! And big! And now I actually have space to work in Photoshop. :D

However, my keyboard still thinks its American. Stupid thing.

A disturbing concept: people at work with Facebook accounts. Discovered via accidentally seeing it over someone's shoulder, going to find them and looking at their friends.

That's all I really have to say. Fingers crossed new PC on Tuesday. *crosses everything* Assuming the universe doesn't conspire against me in some fashion...

Oh, and because I forgot on Monday, the translation of the Yammish roadsign follows. As a reminder, it read:

If yowm saft enuff ter cum down 'ere agooin wum, yowr tay ull be spile't!!

( Cut in case anyone else wants a go. )

Over and out.

I should be getting a new PC, hopefully at the end of August.  There's a place by Paul's work that does reconditioned machines (previously from Wolverhampton City Council) for as little as £50, with decent spec.  The estimate for what I want was about £100, and they'll swap my fully working other drives for free. So, yay.

Of course, by 'decent spec', I mean, 'able to run XP without slowing to a crawl'.  I'm surprised it's even lasted this long without the processor committing suicide...

Must phone mum in a bit and find out what's happening today / tomorrow, and wrap her present/s.

Having more than six hours sleep makes all those little annoying things from this week considerably less annoying.  For example, even though I had to stay late on Friday because the entire working day comprised urgent work and amendments, so the actual new work kept piling up, at least I get some flex out of it...

And that's about it.  Should be a nice quiet weekend, and in terms of laundry, as the Klingons might say: "Today is a good day to dry..."

Got up early this morning to go and get it from the post depot (wasn't too big, just needed a signature) and it's very pretty and suchlike, and as it's used the previous owner appears to have left a lot of free music on there, which was nice of them.

Unfortunately, it requires a high-speed USB to put more stuff on it, so I'm going to investigate that now...

Buggeration.

I suppose I'll leave it to charge in the meantime.  I am cooking food for herringprincess tonight so should really attempt to tidy up a bit before she arrives...

Dear LJ,

I would like to post my entry now, please?

kthxbye,

teylaminh