I don't believe it!

Well I do, of course, because it's just happened to me. A state of the art HP box suitable for server duty with some serious RAID possibilities has just been misbehaving because of the floppy drive. Why they wanted a floppy in it in the first place is unknown but that's the way it was purchased. Suddenly it keeps flagging disc errors with almost every click on the mouse. I re-installed all the drivers and did the usual checks and, then when I was out of ideas, I remembered having seen something similar once before. I put a disc in the drive and, lo, there was an awakening. Simply switching the dam' thing off in Windows was enough to stop the problem but, after consultation with the long suffering technical officer, I also switched it off in the BIOS. Everybody happy and a feather etc.

Red nose day?

It feels like it today. I have had a running nose for two days now and my shnoz is beginning to feel the strain. The strange thing is that I don't feel particularly unwell. I think, and hope, that this is simply the end of the two bad bouts of cold that followed my flu jab. I wasn't able to clear either lungs or sinuses from them and now I am losing from both. Work progresses well, with the usual 'Two steps forward and one back' routine. Today I found a reason why a particular error message was constantly popping up on a PC. After I ran the fix, install dot net framework 2, the problem was still there. Upon checking with Microsoft, it appears that to fully effect the fix, I need to install another two or three updates as well.Lovely!

The post with no name.

An interesting week once again. Samuel was with us Friday and Saturday apart from a few hours with his dad Saturday afternoon. He was offered the chance of a special Christmas (other) family meal on Sunday and, like any six year old with a big appetite, went for it. By Sunday evening I was, once again, thick with a cold. This is getting beyond a joke now, I went for years with very few colds and this year, as soon as I had my flu jab, I seem to have had a permanent cold. Strangely, although I still felt bad, this morning I have had no thick head or throbbing headache so I have been able to come to work. Hazel has been having some nasty problems as a result of her medication so, this morning, it was decided to change her over to the injectable version of  the drug that causes the problem. This probably means the I will have to give it to her as she is a little squeamish about these things. So am I but I don't let it stop me when it comes to her health.

Oooer missus!

I finally remembered to take the HDMI cable home yesterday and, wow! Very impressive. The sound is as I had hoped, much better than on any other still camera I have used before.
I have just spent the best part of eight hours trying to do something, anything, with an Access database. No matter what I tried, there was no way it would allow the PC I was working on to access it with Office 2010 installed even with Access 2007 installed as well and using that to access it. So, eventually, I removed all of the new stuff and reverted to the old Office 2007. It not only doesn't work, still, it has now corrupted and no-one can access it. So I came back to the office with a heavy heart and asked our Access expert to take a look. His conclusions were that it should never have worked in the first place. The 2007 parts were, in their turn, accessing some old '97 files. In addition, all of the usual methods of back door entry for maintenance  had been deliberately switched off inside the code to discourage anyone but the original writer from looking at it. The man is a total wazuk! The final 30 minutes or so were much more pleasant,  recreating a poster for the uni sailing club.

I love my camera!

If you knew how long it has taken me to create this version of the post..................

The basic system cannot fit five pictures in one line even though there might be room for them so I have altered the HTML slightly.

I went mad with the camera the evening before last and took about 90 shots of the animals. I'm particularly pleased with the pictures of Fluff as it has been almost impossible to get a decent shot of a black and fluffy cat until now. Cocky has a new game, where he sticks his head in the bag and roots around cracking shells until he runs out of breath. Rodney has now trained me to give him a treat every evening when I go in to say goodnight and this is him, expecting it............

All pictures were taken in available light.

The meaning of words

The word adobe is Spanish and refers to a building material that is, to put it politely, organic mud..............

I have just spent two hours removing CS4 and installing CS5 and, believe me, I can really relate to the meaning of Adobe.

I had some fun yesterday with Cocky. I set up my new camera and attempted to take a close up of the birdie. He was so intrigued with the lens that he stuck his head inside the lens hood. It made for a fascinating picture.

English as she is spoken. 3

You know, I just find it very, you know, difficult to express myself without, you know, indulging in adding extra, you know, expressions into my speech, you know.

You may feel that I have exaggerated the problem in that sentence above but the truth is that I have counted the recurrence of those words as spoken by people being interviewed on television lately and most of them were much worse. I remember when the newsroom of the radio station I worked for began to change over from tape editing to computer based editing and my job was to convince the editor that it was quicker and better quality.  We each took an interview and began to remove all the 'ums' and 'aahs' and 'you knows' and within about three minutes, I had done the job. Malcolm had only reached his third cut. He was convinced.

A quiet weekend

For the first time in months, a nice gentle couple of days. We spent Saturday poodling about getting some bits and pieces of shopping for next week and Christmas and on Sunday, I finally managed to persuade Hazel to start driving again. She did very well and has a lot more confidence now she has driven the new car. Today, she drove us in to the office and, once again, did very well. My camera arrived this morning and, "Oh boy!" it's even better than I was expecting. It obviously has all of the features it is advertised as having but it's difficult to see just how good the 16 mega-pixel  resolution is until it's right in front of you. Also, the video is much better than expected as the camera has two proper microphones for stereo recording and can be switched between several different resolutions for different uses. The other big surprise was just how good the panorama setting is. Even sitting in a swivel chair and panning around in it produced some very acceptable results.

This is our office. The distance between the monitors on the left and the right of the picture is about 15 feet (5 metres).

On a roll?

Yesterday was great and I came in today all fired up and have finally cracked my long standing struggle with the laptop loans database. Based, in part, on my learning experience yesterday and then built on with what I have learnt over the past couple of months, I have now constructed a very usable database system with a gantt chart attached for visual checking purposes. As all of this was built via SharePoint, I didn't have to get my hands dirty with Access at all and it's all the better for that.

Hazel and I decided yesterday that I could buy the Fuji HS20 camera I so much want so I have now ordered one from Amazon. It should be here on Monday.

I've started so...........

I'll finish.

Off with a bang this morning, three logs down in one, long, visit. Another at two that might kill two more. We shall see.
An amazing day, seven logs completed and the last one was for a SharePoint web part that I managed to create and implement myself. Gosh but I'm proud.