pmsumner

At least The Tech Guys got it right on the 2nd try... my PC is back with me and has a replacement battery! Huzzah. The battery was one of the key reasons I chose this particular laptop - it's got an 8-cell battery and the life is great, 3-4 hours is not unexpected, and that's with an external 2.5" HDD connected drawing power from it, watching TV/films.

I virtually have a new PC now, with new motherboard, RAM, HDD all provided on the first return for no apparent reason.

It's only taken me about 6 months wth Storecheckers, but at last I've made it.

Or at least, that's a possibility. I've been invited to do a really unusual job. I don't know the exact details, but it involves going to a pub/club and assisting with staff filling in 'questionnaires', I assume this is for a staff satisfaction type thing.

The catch? There always is one. They want it done at the time when they'llhave the most staff available, and for a city centre pub when is this? Friday/Saturday night at 9pm! For the club? 11pm! Eeek.

( Randomness beyond )

( Geekery within---diagnosing the problem )

All working again now, eh.

Don't try to install Microsoft IE 7 Beta 1 on your PC. For it is a righteous pain in the arse to remove if it doesn't wanna go. "You must be logged in as the same user that installed it", when I was. Hmm. Never mind the fact that the installation didn't go through properly in the first place and left a bastardised non-functional internet explorer, but enough of it in place to ensure I couldn't re-install an old version (you have a newer version in place)!

Argh :)

This has been a long running BBC Radio 4 comedy, and it's nowhere near as funny on telly. Unsure what's different, but the humour doesn't come across as well in my opinion.

Backing up mainpc. A long and tortuous experience. I wish there as an instant method of doing it!

Unfortunately I'm not very good at taking pics of myself. Especially with this dodgy camera held together partially with sellotape :) Maybe I'm just stalling for time and hoping that I won't post this picture? I don't come across particularly well. Especially with the hair (I'm getting it cut tomorrow!) in the state it is.

I'm not wearing a tie, 'cuz I couldn't be arsed to go back upstairs and find one :)

http://pmsumner.eu.org/~pmsumner/linkpics/philsNewSuit.jpg

Laugh. I won't even consider posting the other ones which came out appalingly bad. I'm just waiting for some MMS to be delivered which should have some other pictures to use, hopefully.

[edit: Who forgot that he turned his comp off last night? Link won't work as is now refusing to turn back on.]

[edit 2: Seems like I developed a duff memory stick. Either that, or it just didn't like it and started working when I took it out. Weird.]

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.

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.

Signed up with username pmsumner, if anyone's terminally bored. I got it because well... it seemed like a good idea *G*

Oooo, had a phone call from Orange today regarding an application I put in with them. YAY!

What is it with any given backup solution's inability to estmiate the time remaining even partially realistically?

I've been on 6 minutes remaining now for the past 10 minutes.
The good new is, that since I've been doing lots of PC World jobs lately, I have to make a (refundable) £5 purchase. I now have more CD-Rs than I know what to do with! I wasted a load doing these backups as I didn't want to use DVDs :) Yeah it takes more space but hey, what's 15 CDs? :P