Archives: boring

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…

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.

Yeay! Managed to get a haircut! That’s better.

Hazel – Louise’s pal from London sent the kids an enormous bunch of pens & paper & stickers yesterday. Cor! It kept them jolly busy until tea time – allowing me to prat about getting little jobs done. Made for quite a productive little time.

Still no OS9.2.2, (pedant in my version descriptions, eh?) when I got home. Unfortunately I looked at the apple site again with details as to delivery times & all that & noted with some dismay, that although they claim to have a 2/3 day turn around, they also state that it can take 7 to 14 working (not normal) days for the goods to arrive – which means that I have only really touched the 7 working days limit. Bah! More being ‘adult’ & patient.

Blurg boogle bliuh nurgah.
brabinb no want work.

No typing yesterday. Train strike – so bumpety trains with no tables & half the journey home by bus.
Tired this morning – up late mad rush but leaving me with plenty of time to leave the house to get to the station.

Traveling home from work. Grotty brained. Hmmm – I was thinking I might write, but I can’t really muster the enthusiasm. An unproductive day at work (between calls). Just pratted about instead of applying myself. I’m not saying that it was hateful or anything, but I’ve come away with a feeling of nothing achieved, when I could have… but that’s the way it goes. I’m not a super motivated focus person. Ambition is not my goal. I do frustrate myself sometimes though. Shall I harangue myself into renewed vigor?
I think not.
It would be nice if I had the ability to focus better; & I sometimes think that’s what can push a person to be really good at something, but it’s the everyday I need to focus on, & attentions pull & push in all directions. Too much to do creates catharsis. Stubborn sod that I am.
Mark this down as another self-centred naval gazing entry to the journal.
:P

Hurumph – failed to get an old LJIIIp working with my mac last night … In fact failed so badly that I had to mess about disabling extensions & resorting to Norton System Tools to check things over…. bah! What a pain that was! What a waste of time! A little jaded because of this foolishness. Hey ho -these things are sent to try us.

Would still like to try to get the durn thing running, if for novelty factor alone!

Played out on the backstreet with the kids yesterday afternoon/evening. It was fun & I’m aware that such times may be more limited as the year closes in now. Got all hot & bothered pushing them up on their trucks & trikes only to have them race down again as the weather abnormally warm for the time of year Eve got a hold of a proper skateboard at one point & was surfing down the incline (eep!). She surfed down on her tummy & had a reasonable amount or control, when it came to it, but that does not stop you fretting. She also had a go at standing on it as she saw that I did & Niall (another neighbour’s lad practising with his own board) did. Fortunately she was not facing downhill when she tried that, & was this safe… Not sure if she moved, but she could balance without any problems. Whether she would have enough weight to actually turn it is another matter. You sometimes forget she is not even 2 yet… Soon though – soon.

I painting some of the recent wallpapering with a matt varnish the other night. Stunk a bit during the night, but not so bad. The result on the wall is not so bad either. Not darkened the paper that much. I have realised that this is not the solution for the walls with the polystyrene backing/insulation as it’s likely to mess this up considerably… So, Louise found a very nice shade of green in a paint catalogue (pistachio something) I will see if I have enough brains left from a day at work to pop & get a tin before coming home. Would be useful to get it so that I at least have the option of painting on Sunday. Saturday – tomorrow, is the dreaded 1st Sat shift that I have to now do: 1 Saturday in 3, but then I do have to make up at least some of the hours that I lose on this new system where I get home earlier.

My toes hurt in my new shoes.

My brain is cabbage after a day at work.

Stormy night. The wind was raging & the rain thrashing. The river in town was the highest I’ve seen it… it’s normally at 3, but it’s now 15… but I’ve no idea what the measurement is. It certainly looks dangerously fast.

Bit tired, as for one reason or another I did not get the best night’s sleep. However, I do not feel fatigue tired as I have been of recent.

America (& its British lap dog) started ‘the offensive’ on Afghanistan last night… sigh. Well, I guess it was inevitable, but it does not make it less palatable. Ended up watching a Panorama documentary last night, that seemed to end up vilifying the Taliban leadership & nearer claiming that Bin Laden bank roles their government & engineers the leadership. A bogeyman, it seems, with a pathological hatred of the Western world… If that is the case how has he come to be that way? What, in his upbringing & philosophy has brought this into such a focus? All that the documentary felt like it ended up being a justification for wiping the Taliban off the face of the Earth. They are a foolishly repressive regime, & in some way’s, like the Khmer Rouge, want to rewrite history in a nation for their own ends. The way it was all presented made me sceptical for a more balanced argument though. A balanced argument at the moment seems out of the question. The part of the documentary I wholeheartedly agreed with was that, if Afghanistan is left without assistance, after whatever means are met by this blasting then it will only create more trouble later. It needs help to establish the stability & order that the Taliban claimed they would bring when they came to power. The people there have suffered war & deprivation beyond many western minds imagination.

sigh…

I wonder what it’s like to be American & have such wholesome righteous indignation to cover any doubts & worries.

Still not finished the wallpapering in the bedroom! Well, I have but all except a little patch above the door. It’s delightful to have got thus far. Now I need to put the clear varnish on to finish it all off. I have been distracted by fatigue & silly things; like my printer running out of ink & how to get my mac to record analogue input so that it can be converted to Mp3. I’ve sorted the latter – a little app called “Coaster” helps, but I need to use something better than a dodgy old Walkman with a bad connection on the right hand channel before I can record with any quality. That will have to wait until the attic is sorted & the mac & stereo are closer together.

What have the kids been doing? I feel I should talk about them, but I have trouble thinking of details & anecdotes. They play well together, they are loving & sweet.

Moved my work PC over to Windoze 2000
today. Still a few things to do to get it functioning as I might
like, but on the whole it was painless. For someone who is not
wholly confident with putting PC’s together in general – with a bit
of help it was all done in a day. The secondary HD (my old one) was
not being detected at 1st, but that was to do with the bios, so
thankfully that was sorted too.

Got all my old files & all that
malarkey, so, hmmm – not so bad.

Still -I liked NT4 even tho I was derided.
I’m derided for being a Mac user tho – so what would I
care?

Not really getting that much done at home
this week. Not really sure why, but – what the hell… I’m too
tired in general to be bothered by it, but can’t switch off enough
to dismiss it.

The kids are going to be tired this evening
– they were both awake before I left for work. Be nice if we could
get them to bed early, but that would be too much to ask. I’ve
designated tonight a ‘don’t prat about on the computer – get some
polyfilering done’ night. Needs must.