I'm living in interesting times again!

I have just spent, over the past two days, a couple of hours carefully destroying and then re-building two web sites. I still have no idea what caused the damage to both my Joomla sites but they both disintegrated at much the same time which prompts me to suspect an update may have caused the problem. They were both upgraded within 24 hours of each other and both failed shortly afterwards. BUT!!! I have re-installed from scratch in both cases, pushed the update to them and they are still both functioning well...................

An expanding universe?

Or just my small, but perfectly formed, world.

The evemed.co.uk domain developed a serious glitch and wouldn't run the holding pages I had there. I suspect it was just a licencing issue but, whatever, It kicked me into putting a proper site there. So now, it's my robot site and I shall, over the coming months, be uploading photos of my own robots and designs for part assemblies as well as my collection of links.

Was she worth it?

I have no idea, never played bingo.

The fix, see below, worked a treat. Driver installed and all raring to go then I discovered that one of the gear units wasn't turning even though the motor was running.......... Missing pin inside gearbox. Twenty minute job to disassemble arm, put in spare pin and rebuild arm. Worth it though, it works really well and to watch it in programmed mode is a joy. Now all I have to do is assemble the second arm and set it up on a real test bed system.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

As it was a Monday yesterday, I decided to have a quiet evening and just fiddle with the workstation. I have Titch to keep me company and we settled down to a pleasant couple of hours doing some non critical fiddling on the workstation. A good time was had by all until I decided to install a new driver for some robotics work. Wouldn't install, couldn't install, refused point blank to install. But it didn't tell me why. I eventually went in through the back door and installed it with full reporting. It refused to install. This time, however, it told my why. Up until my "Brute force and ignorance" install, I had not one error message other than, "I don't think that worked, want to try again?" or words to that effect. This time it told me the truth, "You are trying to install an unsigned driver on a 64 bit OS". Thanks a bunch Microsoft, if you had told me up front, I would have been in bed ninety minutes earlier and not felt like death warmed up now.

Somewhat later;
I have managed to find a fix for my unsigned driver problem and all should now be well with my install this evening.

One does get carried away at times, doesn't one?

I did manage to clean the whole of the door frame, inside and out, ready for gloss painting. I also bought the new middle door and frame so that we can, at last, have a proper door that shuts when you want it to. Sally and Hazel have bought the paint for the woodwork and Hazel has bought a lot of picture frames for her collection of art cards and posters from France. Other than that, not much else was done from my check list.
But we did have one major achievement. On Saturday, we bought a Dulux powered paint roller kit and used it to considerable effect on the downstairs hallway. It was fairly expensive but, with a house as big as ours, we think it's a pretty good investment.

Come back Victor Meldrew, all is forgiven!

I was on the way home yesterday and realised I needed to put some fuel in the camper. I pulled into the service station and, eventually, I was able to pull up to a set of pumps. I climbed out of the vehicle into heavy rain, walked around to the filler, got it ready and was just about to begin filling when a public spirited taxi driver shouted to me to move forward as I was stopping the driver behind him from pulling up to the third pump. His request would have been fine if only he had used more appropriate means of asking. saying, "Come on, they do stretch you know" and "He's been waiting in the road for ages" are not calculated to encourage a middle aged man with rain running down the back of his neck and in a certain amount of pain from an arthritic old body. Even when I got back in the cab and moved forward for him he couldn't leave it alone. "There now, don't you feel better for doing that?" is not going to help at all. He even continued his inane ramblings up until I left the forecourt and then honked at me as he swanned away in the bus lane whilst I sat in a long queue of traffic. And, no doubt, he will be calling me all sorts of names because I was snappy with him...........Wazuck!!

When we eventually got home, I cleaned off the woodwork at the very top of the top landing and found that the wood itself is in good condition and very solidly fitted. It doesn't need to be removed or replaced thank goodness. I will paint over it with plaster paint and that will be a much quicker job than undercoat and gloss topcoat for an area that no one ever sees up close anyway. Also, as I now have the wood, I will fit the last three pieces of new skirting board and smooth down the already filled wood ready for painting.

Hard work never hurt anyone........................

Oh, it can! Believe me it can.
My brain is hurting every evening when I return home after a hard day at the office. Today is the lowest staff level ever I suspect. Just my line manager, Dave, and me. Everyone else is either sick, on leave or on secondment. Life is just wonderful! There are, of course ups as well as downs. I am probably learning a lot and, I hope, gaining credibility within my new job. Yesterday, I had a short meeting with a student who is doing a survey for the uni about ITIL, just don't ask, OK? She was very nervous and was obviously having problems with her speech and her poor grammar. So after the interview, I drew her out and discovered what the problem was. I then went into overdrive to try and build up her confidence and point her at ways of helping herself to improve her life. I hope it helps.

Weekends, I've had better.

I bought the final pack of skirting for the ground floor and attic as well as some odds and ends to complete work on both house and camper. It was a Samuel weekend and he and I had a good time together on Saturday. The rest of the weekend was pants. Hazel and I are very unhappy at present and we are clinging to each other for comfort.

Slow progress

Well, I have an excuse, of sorts. Sally had a friend in yesterday and as she, Peri, is also a girl that Hazel and I have known for quite some time, I didn't want to make too much noise and mess with their conversation or TV watching. I told you it was only a sort of! Well, I did go out to the lean to and I fitted two of the angle restrainers to the roof but, at that point, I just gave up and watched TV until it was time for bed. I was very tired.

I have just discovered Tiny Basic, a very simple programming language from Microsoft. It bears more resemblance to linear Basic and Logo than any other I have seen in a long time and I find it very easy to use. It does have some minor drawbacks but, in general, is a very useful tool. 

With a little help from my..................wife.

It will never be a hit though.

I have managed to get the lean to roof panels back into position and I have also cut and drilled the brackets to hold them there. Next job will be to fit them, to fill under the top line and then to seal the joint with waterproof sealant. It's not the correct way of doing the job but it should outlive me so...

Life at the office is getting more hectic. Trevor is off with dry rot and asbestos so I am holding the fort. I am coping by the skin of my teeth.

Sally has now moved home again and is doing her usual tidy up. She spent ten minutes yesterday telling off her mother for being a poor housekeeper.She doesn't tell me off as she is fully aware I really don't care.

Some you win..............

The conference call test was a total washout. I am not doing this correctly and I have no idea how to correct it. I must go back to school.

The rest of the plans all went swimmingly, however and much fun was had by all. I spent two hours chatting to Mo on Friday and another two hours chatting to Russ this evening. I also went out onto the terrace again this evening. I think a permanent set up is called for.

A busy week.

With Trevor out with dry rot, I am having a fairly intense time of it this week. Chris and I are managing to find odd moments when I attempt to bring him up to speed on subjects I am barely up to speed on myself. We seem to muddle through OK but I suspect this is more to do with Chris' capabilities than mine. I at last have enough USB ports for my varying activities, both at home and at work, as my two, seven socket, powered expansion units have arrived. I am impressed, they work very well and, more to the point, they are very small.
I had a brief video chat with Mo this morning. Not very productive due to all the work and sitting in the middle of a large open plan office. We will try again tonight and I have also scheduled a conference call on the uni server and I will test that out over the weekend as well with Russ and possibly Mo. 

And then there are good days.

The internet, the world wide web, what is it good for?

Well I like it and yesterday my faith was rewarded. An old friend popped up, out of the ether and, after over 30 years, we are back in touch. As I get older, I begin to forget things that happened yesterday. I can still, however remember with some clarity things from forty years ago. It's a well documented phenomenon and it comes to us all. My friend Mo was more of a pen friend than anything else but when she wasn't there, I missed her. Now, she is there again and we may well resume our written friendship by using - You guessed it - the internet, the world wide web, that's what it's good for.