A really nice day yesterday. Did some work on the PIC project which worked nicely and then decided to attack a really irritating Winblows problem.
GEEKBLOCK
After my last Athlon motherboard blew-up I bought a replacement, the chip was fine so I just used that. The hard-disk was dual boot Linux/Windows. The Linux partition booted fine – no problem, everything working fine….but the bastard windows 98 partition (needed for a couple of things unfortunately) would not find the network cards. Believe me I tried everything, moving the cards about, removing the entire ENUM key in the registry (which sorted everything else OK), 3 different NICs. Using the ‘Add New Hardware’ wizard to add the cards explicitly caused me to shout the words “FUCKER” and “CUNT” on several occasions as it told me that the card was plug-and-play and so didn’t need installing…..just plug the card in and reboot! Arrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!
So yesterday I switched hardware – ‘teapot’ the Linux workhorse/music-player/firewall/router switched into the athlon box, and ‘parrot/blackbird’ the winblows/linux disk into the K6-2/500…and it worked!
Had to zap the ENUM key and get it to redetect everything, but after about 50 reboots all the hardware was detected! Woooooohooo! So Everything’s working and my dear teapot is now on an Althlon. happy happy.
EOGB
In the evening we went to see some friends, Jackie and Mike, for dinner. Jackie did a curry and it was fantastic. All vegetarian, but superb. A spinach and prawn dish, and a butternut squash Rogan Josh. It’s totally inspired me to try and cook curry – I’d love to be able to knock up something like that.
Mike has an enormous record collection and we even got to listen to a bit of Gong before it got turned off due to public (female) pressure.

When oh when will Brian Aldridge get his comeuppance ?

Just heard on the radio that the new re-vamped Tory conference is going to
have….oh god…..
a chill-out zone
….cringe..

They’ll be advertising it on pirate radio next.

DJ Duncan Smith spinning intelligent garage
The Blue-rinse ravers room with right-wing drum’n’bass
Ann “Wheels of steel” Widdecombe
Ladies and Pensioners free before 11
Guest Appearance by “Mad Mags Death-Camp-Techno Sound System”
etc etc

The end is in sight for the excessive workload – nice feeling…however I’ve already ruled it out as the reason for my poor sleep; every night I wake up at 4am and can’t
sleep. When I finally get to sleep (several hours later) it’s total dreamsleep – and the dreams are more bizarre than ever before in my life.

Monday is the start of the registration season at work. The mellow peace of the college is shattered to make way for thousands and thousands of students. Freshers filled with nervous excitement and the rest filled with yawn-a-minute stories of how they spent their extrodinarly long summer holiday going travelling around some exotic country or other.

Admittedly the last blog entry was a tad on the negative side. However tonight’s mood is leagues away from the mood that night. Despite having to deal with a disk failure in an important firewall until about 7:30 tonight.

ADSL is back in action, one of my jobs coughed up a grand taking me back to within the overdraft limit, Michele is working, done a fair amount of work, listening to some nice tunes, good telly, a pizza-express “american hot one” and a plentiful supply of wine.

Also, our Thai-Chi started up again today which is definately making me feel better with the world. Amazing what a bit of gung-jing(sp?) can do.

Despite spending the last month of my life working so hard for nearly
20 hours a day, to the point where I stopped believing in anything but
ASCII, we’re still not making any money.

Today we reached our 2000 pounds overdraft limit.

It is two weeks after I got paid, and thus two weeks before I get paid again.
OK I’m owed money for several jobs…but the jobs aren’t technically finished
yet so I can’t get paid for them.

The infection on the inside of my cheek wasn’t frightened by last weeks course
of antibiotics and is flourishing to the extent that Dr Livingstone (
it really is his name poor fucker) has not only prescribed another course,
but has referred me to a specialist at the hospital.
Of course, I can’t fill the prescription because the bank won’t give me any moremoney.
On leaving the surgery it started to rain in a spectacular fashion. Were I not
a devout atheist it could possibly convince me to start work on building a
large wooden boat.

As I was feeling ill, tired and depressed (and also because I had washed my
hair today for the first time in two months) walking in the rain seemed like an
unbearable prospect. The 10 quid in my pocket would have covered a cab
home but would mean a night without lovely alcohol. The only period of joy in
my days at the moment.

So I walked. I got soaked. I got blown about by the tempestuous wind and I
got a couple of bottles of wine.

Dripping, I came home and relished the thought of letting out a huge, bitter
blog. Of course the ADSL is down. Of course. Of course it’s down. Look at this shit:

traceroute to denzil, 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  rewter (192.168.254.254)  0.768 ms  5.206 ms  0.688 ms
 2  freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  14.516 ms  14.221 ms *
 3  freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  36.61 ms  13.801 ms *
 4  freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  15.112 ms  15.778 ms *
 5  freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  16.172 ms *  22.477 ms
 6  * freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  15.442 ms  17.673 ms
 7  * freeserve4-hg2.kingston.broadband.bt.net (217.41.134.73)  15.911 ms  13.907 ms

But it won’t win while I have vi…
Fuck British telecom.
Fuck Connex (another story).
Fuck Everything.
But hey – don’t look on the down side. Think happy! Remember all of the things
we’ve got to look forward to:

• The death of your parents
• The death of close friends
• Chronic and serious debt
• chronic and painful illness
• A slow deterioration in health towards death
• Incontinance
• senility

The last few weeks have been mental. What happens is that people offer you (me) work, and it never comes off so you have to accept every offer…and then a job will actually come into fruition. This time four came together at once. Oh my god, I haven’t been this busy for…ever.
Absolutely no time to myself. Every waking hour I’ve been working. It was beginning to kill me but each is moving nicely now so the pressure isn’t affecting me as much. The jobs are also totally different:

• a caption competition for a large travel agent’s website
• a microelectronics project that I’m not supposed to talk about
• a VoIP telephone system for a prison
• a wine-tasting website
• ..and of course my full time job…

But it’s feeling good at the moment. Mainly because today I’ve had a couple of good breakthroughs. Managed to upgrade a Linux server to 2.4.19/ext3 without breaking domino. Then I came home and stamped on a few bugs in the PIC microcotroller job which have been keeping me awake. 16F873s are cool 🙂

Now Michele is dancing around the room listening to musique de Limewire and I’m blogging for the first time in weeks.

Thursday and Friday nights were good too – spent the evenings in the HG with people I like. Michele was there both nights and it was fun.

This time last week we were at a party in Brighton for a friend of Ben. Nice weekend. Roland was nice enough to drive – made the whole experience more pleasant. Bloody nice chap. Really good to see Ben and tree too.

Sometimes I wonder what my brain is playing at. It’s tired, so I go to bed. Then it won’t sleep, and insists on me flipping from lying in one direction to the other all night. When I do get to sleep, it’s unsatisfying dream-sleep with slightly unsettling and even nasty dreams.
Every so often something wakes me up. Last night it was:

• A Fox screaming unnecessarily loudly
• Violently painful leg cramps
• An unnatural thirst
• Nothing at all

Being woken up for nothing at all is the worst. This is when my brain produces a list of things to worry about. For some reason, lying on ones back in the dark stimulates the brain’s worry-centres. Here is a list of “Top of the cack late-night-bed-worries”:

1. Money, and the lack of it
2. Tax assessment
3. Work
4. The things I told people I would do and then forgot about
5. I drink too much and will soon be dead
6. I’ve only eaten pizza all day and will soon be dead due to vegetable deficiency
7. Bills
8. The thought of having to move house ever again
9. Did I piss [insert name here] off in the pub tonight – I was a bit pissed

Why ? Why doesn’t it just let me sleep. Now I’m up at 8am typing this shit – tonight I’ll be even more knackered and will probably end up with even more late-night anxst..

Its hot, muggy, I’m sunburnt and all 5 channels are showing sport. There’s nothing else anymore, just Big Brother and Sport. And now BB is finished too so it’ll probably be replaced by more sport.
What do you mean turn off the telly ? Don’t be ridiculous.You’ll be suggesting I read a book next.

This is brilliant:http://www.zeppotron.com/romance/xmas_special.html
Charlie Brooker is surely an amusing chap.

Apple Computer: What drugs are you on ?

Sadly I suspect the answer is ‘coffee’. That can be the only explanation for the massive mood-swings from which you seem to be suffering. Perhaps a course of psychotropics would sort out your heads. Or perhaps some Lithium ?

One minute you’re a bunch of friendly, creative techies who just want to make their loyal users lives better. Then suddenly you’re a corporate monster that makes Microsoft look like Christain Aid.

Here are some examples:
Apple: Hey man, we’ve put an Open Source Unix variant in our new OS and anyone can download it work on it and play with it. We just want to make you happy.
Users: Nice one! This looks great! Powerful and Stable. I can’t wait to upgrade my OS9 machine.
Apple: Upgrade ? Fuck you there’s no upgrade – buy it you cheap fucks.
Users: Oh ok. Sorry. Well after all at least I’m not giving my money to Bill Gates – at least Apple is on our side.
Apple: Yeah man – Don’t follow the breadhead fascists at Redmond – they’re like the man. Come with us! Look, see how all of the buttons look like jellybeans ?
Users: Yeah they look cool. Oh hold on, this doesn’t work properly. Oh neither does this. Hmm, or this.
Apple: Tough shit! You think writing this sort of OS is easy ? You ungrateful bastards. Keep using 9 if that’s the way you feel. Oh by the way, we’re dropping support for that soon. HAH!
Users: but…but…but…
Apple: Hey, don’t panic! 10.1 has fixed most of those bugs and we’ve got all sorts of cool extras like LDAP support and SMB is working nicely! Loads of people have been carbonising their apps so that all your favourites will work natively!
Users: Yay! where do I sign up for the upgrade ?
Apple: Fuck you! You want it, you pay the full price. Oh and it’s gone up too. You people make us sick!

etc ad nauseam

Apple – your biggest asset is a massive, blikeredly loyal, customer base who would continue buying your products even if they didn’t work at all. Even they will get pissed off and go elsewhere if you carry on like this.

Tim evicted! Sadly he appears to be too stupid to realise why everyone hates him…and it’s not because he’s “older than his years”…COMPRAAAAWNDEZ ?