Written by: paul

Setting off to work & setting out on holiday (I’ve a bigger bag with me that I usually take).

I’m ambivalent as to whether I am prepared of not. I’ve probably got everything, but I can’t be sure & do I need to be sure? We’ll get by. My biggest worry is how Louise will do with her aching back carrying large bag? She also has the difficult job of closing up the house before leaving and making sure the kids are ready & not running off to play at the last minute… this might prove harder.

Jude cut his toe – that might make things for troublesome for him… He was awake as I left this morning (I left later because I deemed it necessary) and he was in a sweet mood. He was nursing his toe when I went up to brush my teeth & I told him we had some plasters downstairs (don’t worry). He seemed reluctant to actually go downstairs though (it was just before the ‘magic’ 7 o’clock) so he started tidying up some Mr Men books. He was quiet & he was sweet.

Esme slept through the night on her bed again – stumbling up to Louise after I’d had a shower & actually staying asleep, (“Where’s daddy?” “He’ll be here in minute” “…”) She was still asleep when I left – hopefully she’ll sleep in a little – it’ll do her good today. I’m not convinced that she’ll be able to maintain wakefulness over a long train journey… mind you that could all pose problems later this evening when we’re trying to settle them all again.

Home again, Home again, Jiggety -jig

Hm

Well big hurdle hurdled today was the fact that I go Eeebuntu to recognise the SD card & the USB drives… Sheesh – what a silly thing. Not having these working really messed me up for a bit. That sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach that this was all for naught; the feeling that control will never be in my reach – it will forever be slipping me by… drowning… drowning… drowning…

Sort of.

A bit of searching on the we instructed to check over the etc/fstab file (File System Table (?) – apparently used by the Operating system to glean information about the set up drives it is to expect. This has a line in by default to look for the CD/DVD drive. Now I’d imagine because the Operating System cannot locate a CD/DVD drive on an Eepc it goes for whatever the first drive to become available is – this being a SD card not a CD/DVD it can’t get over this anomaly, assuming it is a D/DVD & there’s some weird problem accessing it as it would a CD/DVD. It advises if this in an unhelpful way (basically: can’t do that) & that’s it. So – commenting out the reference in the ‘fstab’ for the non-existent CD/DVD allows the OS to understand it’s not to be looking for the mythical CD/DVD & it should jolly well get along with opening the S drive…. & it does… & it works… & I’m no longer drowning.

OK & the external Hard drive on the MAC at home was playing silly buggers. The MAC has a penchant for playing silly buggers at the moment. I’m not best pleased with it – but it’s the family workhorse – it needs to work – I need it working…

Louise called back 5 minutes later jolly pleased that she had got it working – so this is good.

All good.

Stress levels are higher than I would normally credit myself with having. There’s the impending holiday & the fact that we do not have the funds that we thought we would have for this (one thing and another: messed about by Working Family Tax Credit & let down elsewhere, although we did scrape some funds for travel – so that has been valuable). All this means that the planned for jaunt to London is probably not going to happen – which is a shame as I was looking forward to that… never mind. Hopefully our finances will scrape through the break relatively intact, but it sure does dampen the ‘holiday spirit’ to be penny pinching. This & some rough waters at work…

click through for bigger version (it’s a bit tight, this page)

I’m a bit narked. Open Office didn’t close down cleanly after I saved a … rather large spreadsheet I’d been working on the other day (ZUM! catalogue data normalisation) & corrupted the data in the file. With (the much appreciated) help of Paul at work I’ve managed to recover A to K, but L to Z plus some sundries are gone – lost – kaput – GAH!* I’m not what you might call happy. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad but I’d nearly got to this stage of Data sifting before when I lost the memory stick I was storing it on.

At least I have a portion of information to go from thanks to Paul & I realise that I did make back up a week or so back which s going to have a bit of useful raw data on it (so I don’t have to compile the rest of the spreadsheet from). A lot of time saved, but a lot of time lost. It’s going to take me long enough to figure out what I’m supposed to do to get ZUM! running from a database & have a CMS allowing contributions…

*For the record the .ods file format that Openoffice uses is basically XML data, but it seems that the file format is a compressed container file which can be opened (change file extension to .zip & open in decompression utility) there you see the .xml files. The ‘content.xml’ (which contains the raw data from the spreadsheet cells) was corrupted in this case, It was too difficult for me to spot where – I did note corruption but as the xml file is all one long line (to safe file size) but couldn’t get a grip. Paul could get the data separated out into something readable (using Perl) & then chop out the bad data leaving recoverable data, dropping the recovered context.xml into a new blank ods file.

Rain awoke me this morning – a tremendous downpour at 05:20 or so. Peeped out the velux before closing it & the world was a pale orange – the sunrise through the dense rain. By the time I was out of bed 15 minutes later the glow had gone (the rain slightly less intense)

As we’re stuck prior to summit tunnel this morning it seems likely that there’s a certain amount of flooding in there, but as a train has just come through from Manchester I’d say it’s just causing signaling problems (train proceeding with a toot of horn).

Forgot to mention yesterday that Esme slept through the night in her bed (well, the futon). She woke up as I came back upstairs to rouse Louise for the day. I tried taking Esme upstairs to see she might settle to sleep again (it being a bit early, really) but she was too happy to be awake & therefore gave up & took her downstairs to let her play. Louise likes to have a little peace in the mornings before the kids wake up but Esme couldn’t allow that yesterday.

More den building for me yesterday – more Jack pestering from Jack, rather than Jude. I hung out for quite a while before popping over when I got home, because Louise wanted some adult company & I needed a rest. This frustrated Jack a little as I was ‘professionally fence sitting’, “I refer the [honorable] gentleman to the reply I made earlier”. Still – Jack had me over there before & after tea – bashing big 6″ nails into wood & working up a sweat (sweaty sweaty work). I’ve given him hints on how best to progress today – using some twine rather than just nails. That should help with strength in some areas (I have no building skills, but it seems i have reasonable bodging instincts).

done with these:

Typing on the train home as i didn’t catch the usual train to work (missed it) & so was indulging in a little reading this morning.

Hot again today (or in tabloid speak, “Phor! What a scorcher!” – with accompanying photo opportunity).

I got The Spiderwick Chronicles for the weekend from the library for the kids to watch (& I rather hoped to watch a bit myself) but the kids were too busy to pay attention to the film & were off doing other things. Granted one of those things on Saturday was ‘watching a film’ – but nonetheless it’s a good thing, I guess.

Saturday we met Caroline on the train to Halifax/Bradford; Louise & myself, with Esme got off the train at Halifax in order to do a little shopping (mainly for Jack’s new uniform). Caroline stayed on with Jack, Eve & Jude & they all went on to the cinema in Bradford to watch Wall-E (something I wouldn’t have minded doing myself).  They all enjoyed the film & are reported as all being very good..

Jack has a blazer (made from recycled plastic bottles, (it says on the label) which fits him OK. Louise is worried that it’s not quite right, but we’ve plenty of time to change it (that’s one of the reasons for buying it from Marks & Spencers)

Annnd then there’s the den. On Friday night, before setting off on Friday, after getting home on Saturday, on Saturday night, on Sunday morning & various parts during the day on Sunday I was asked if I could go to the den; to help at the den & asked if permission was allowed for going over to the den. The den is back. he irony here is that as Jude is allowed to go now, he pesters Jack like Jack pesters me. Jude pesters me as well, but for the sake of a tiny bit of schedenfruede, I’ll say it again: Jack gets pestered.

Having been a little disparaging there I have to say that they are making reasonable progress this time. It’s in the same place as a couple of years ago (down the street, up the street over the wall behind.. there (why should I be specific). This is the same plot of unused ground that that other kids roam through from time to time (kids ‘adventure’ – so it’s hardly surprising). Thus far it has not been discovered by the elements that found it last year & demolished it & then caused further trouble accusing Jo of doing things that he didn’t (therefore getting him into trouble & allowing the chavvy parent to be sanctimonious). So – so far no vandalism & as a result they have concentrated on building & as i say, made good progress. They have a floor & some uprights. The ground is quite sloped, but the floor (even if ‘stepped’) is …reasonably level. How it will all pan out I dunno. I called Louise before leaving work (checking on groceries0 & Jack was in a grump & had left his tools over there (!) because he & Jude had a falling out getting back over the wall (I think Jack had climbed over & Jude was supposed expected (by Jack) to lift the bag up to him. As far as I know it’s stil there if it’s not been ‘found’)

Page one done – 2 more to do & a rejigging of the cover. might need to see if I can get a better copy of Steve’s centre spread
Comic page for LCC Sept 92 Originally uploaded by jinty