pmsumner

Doesn't take much, does it?

Tonight I have been mostly playing with Bind. I have been fed up of not having two seperate zones, one for internal hosts and one for external hosts (I only have one public IP address and several internal ones set up - I needed some seperation for "testing" purposes). So I now have two instances of Bind running. One is on port 54, the other on 53. The neat thing is that connections come in on port 53 by default from the outside world. These are NATed in from outside the network to port 54, whilst my internal config is unaffected.

I have too much spare time, you say? I agree.

Been looking at stuff for the car at work throughout most of the day. Steve at work seems to know more mechanics and garages than I knew existed and he rang a couple asking for brake pad/disc prices. Best price was about £35 for the set, which I think is pretty good when fitting should essentially be free!

Also been investigating my "knocking", and it's been suggested that it may be the CV joint, not the drive shaft. This would make more sense to me, as I would expect a driveshaft problem would give continuous noise, whereas this only gives noise on sharp cornering - and CV joints come under stress on cornering. At least - that's my understanding! I was a little surprised to find on ebay a driveshaft for sale going quite cheap, but it's a passenger side one.

I've cancelled the garage appointment, unfortunately. I've got a number of jobs that I _need_ to do on Monday (some really quite high-value ones!) and you know what garages are like - you leave your car at 8am and they then leave it all day without touching it. Or that's how it feels. I'll get a lift in with Kev one morning next week, and leave it with them then.

Hmm, next door's dog has started barking. Shuddap! Normally it's really quiet. Maybe the git's being robbed? *peeks out window* Oh well, can't see anything!

It's too late to be writing in LiveJournal. My mind's mushy.
Oh, I gave in on my overtime protest. Decided that Sunday, with nothing else to do other than sleep, was a perfect money making opportunity (I need to pay for the car bits!). So have 2hrs in the morning and possibly 3-4 in the afternoon, depending how I feel. At double time, can't complain too much. It's all to do with how I'm feeling about work - I guess. Now I'm feeling a lot happier about it. Not exactly overjoyed, I should say - but happier.

I postulated some while back about random crashes (with old drivers) versus losing connection every 45 seconds or so (with new drivers). Intel have released 9.0.2 in the last 2 weeks, so I'll give that a go, see what happens... I'm not hopeful.

At a 45Meg download, it'll be some time. I think I'm going to go to the gym and install it when I get back, seeing as I haven't been for a few days.

It's very funny. Taking a Transit van around Nuerburgring in order to make good on the promise from Jeremy's previous trip round the track in an diesel S-type Jag. 10mins 8secs, to go round a really impressive racetrack in a van, overtaking cars and bikes on the way round, when Jeremy Clarkson could only manage 9:59 in a Jag! *rofl* I found that very funny.

I heard the author of the St Trinnian novels on this week's Desert Island Discs - Ronald Searle. His first chosen piece of music reminded me, when played, that I'd been trying to track down this piece of music since I first heard it.

It was Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme". Absolutely lovely piece of music. Now I know what it is, I've downloaded it. The only sources I can find quote "Master and Commander Soundtrack" as their source, which is slightly disappointing to me. I don't want to think that I didn't know this piece until so recently - but I can't remember when I heard it and when it first infiltrated my head.

Why, when my wireless card claims to be working at 24.0Mb/s am I getting broken output when playing over ESD? It's not the sound card - when I FTPed the file to mainpc and mpg123ed it, the sound plays perfectly. I've streamed music through mainpc like this before with an 802.11b network with no issues, which should in theory be slower - so what's happening to make this not?

To make it even worse, having tested it on wired network (100Mb/s), it works fine but shows less than 2% utilisation!

Gotta love computers.
Maybe i'll try a lower bitrate file. This one is rather heavily sampled (about twice what I would normally rip at). Shouldn't make a difference though, since I believe ESD works at 16bit, 128k sampling and any output should be converted to that.

Nope, no difference.
Grrr.

Not today, tomorrow. Today's been quiet. 2hrs of o/t in the morning, lots of time at the gym, a quick Storecheckers job, a walk around Ulley Reservoir in the evening (that was nice... hard work, and a fairly long drive from here but worth it). And that's my day in a nutshell.

I don't know if I should write anything about the attacks on Thursday here? It doesn't affect me, it doesn't come anywhere near me. The closest affected are my parents, my dad would have been at work way before all of it started (and tends to walk) and my mum walks just about everywhere, so no worries there. The best thing was for me, that it was quiet at work. When you consider how high the proportion of businesses who use Blackberries and Data Cards that are based in London is - things were REALLY quiet for those of us who support them!

I need to organise a trip to London sometime soon. Wonder what weekdays are available... maybe worthwhile blockbooking a week and driving to the parents' place, then on to Shropshire...

Gonna take the Floyd to bed with me. Love the Division Bell album. Some people hate it, I can't understand why myself. It's the right era for me, and whilst I really enjoy the Floyd's older stuff, this is music of my time.