Early shifts start today.
I had to break off from tape copying this morning to go ingest some urgent material that hadn't been done yesterday. It was there, so why not? This is a problem of rivalry and different procedures between the two shifts - I personally don't leave unless I've got everything possible sorted for the following day. Some people aren't so scrupulous, it seems. Sometimes it backfires - like when about 40 promos (all needed for the next day) are delivered just before the end of shift - this happened last Thursday, and I hope the idiot promo producer got his a.. royally chewed by his boss for pulling such a stupid trick. I doubt it, though. Even before the outsourcing, we horny-handed sons-of-the-technician were low boy on the totem - promo producers (sorry - "Creative Services") had much more prestige. Now, there's inter-company rivalry as well.
I've been looking for a text on HTML, particularly version 3.2, since that's what I'm working to here. Books about Version 4 are ten-a-penny, but I'm too late for HTML 3.2 (or so I thought). I knew O'Reilly had a book and CD combo (Webmaster In A Nutshell, First Edition) but it's out of print, having been superseded by the second edition, with HTML 4.0 coverage.
Then I found the CD (or what I thought was the CD) available on O'Reilly's Website. Must get this, thought I, and fired off a secure order on the plastic money.
When the confirmation came back, by e-mail, I realised that I hadn't bought a CD, I'd bought a one year subscription to the on-line version. It's all there, but there are a lot of files to grab, and I'm sure to miss one. Oh for WebStripper. Let's see if the "buy" link works yet.
So I looked, and sure enough you can now buy - look here for details. Buying now includes a free upgrade to Version 2 when released, and the bought version does not serve adverts, which hopefully means Aureate is out of the loop. We'll see - if it isn't, be prepared for fireworks.
I ordered the registered version of WebStripper yesterday, by e-mail from work, but quoting my home e-mail address. They quote 24 hour acknowledgement from the clearing house, and 48 hour 'here is where you find it' response from Solent.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found 2 e-mails waiting when I logged on last night. Following the instructions, I downloaded and installed the current release, registered version, which is half the size of the freeware, ad-enabled version. Shows the size of Aureate's files, which are not present as far as I can see.
I haven't done anything with it yet, since my dialup connection is only via a V34+ modem at typically 31,200 bit/sec - this weekend, via the work lease, for sure.
All the arguments with Companies House, and the Inland Revenue, relate to the 1997/8 accounting year. My accountant delivered the accounts for 1998/9 for my signature today, so I signed, scanned for archive, and posted. That should save me a fine for late submission.
Then I checked the snail-mail. There was an envelope from Companies House, the yearly "Is this information correct?" return, that has to be filled in, at a cost of UKP15, on pain of criminal prosecution. At least the new form only requires signature and cheque if there is no change. Last year, I had to refer back to the previous return, in order to remember the details, and write them in.
Our next door neighbours (not the other half of the semi, but the next building) are having a loft conversion done, so there are sundry banging and crashing noises at all times of day.
This is a problem for Jane, when she has minded children and needs to put them down to sleep - two year olds need lots of sleep, even though they may be reluctant to indulge their need. It's also a problem for me, when I finish a night shift.
Now I realise the problems our neighbours had when we had our loft conversion done soon after we moved in, ten years ago.
Well, I just tried pointing Webstripper at the O'Reilly site to try to download part of the set of online books I've just subscribed to. I only got the first page of each chapter, nothing else, and most of the links are broken. This is not a good thing. Mem - must read the text in more detail before plunking down the plastic.
I'll try an e-mail to see if they will send me a CD.
Apropos not reading the text fully before doing something, Tom Syroid had great problems with applying SR-1 to his (working but buggy) installation of Office 2000. Basically the entire suite got totally hosed - try to open any application that had been patched and it closed immediately. Add to this the fact that there was no way to download the patch and apply it later - it seemed to be a once-only, online update (40MB odd - this is supposed to be practical?). The only cure was an uninstall/reinstall, whereat everything worked again. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, totally cheesed off, incensed and steaming mad.
Later, it turns out that you can download the patch for later use, there is a compliance checker available (there are apparently more versions of Office 2000 than you can shake a stick at - all supposedly identical), and there are other issues, all explained in the small print (or the Web equivalent - several levels deeper in the site)
This points up my worries about Microsoft's policies - they seem to think that they can use their cash customers as beta testers (not so seem - you can buy into their beta test programme. Not me though, I don't use beta software, by policy). Also, they seem to believe, arrogantly, that the latest bell-and-whistle is more important than stability. Witness the way something like Infernal Exploiter 5 blithely rewites large parts of your OS when you install it - I'm sticking with Netscape. At least that doesn't demand 45MB of disk to install in (remember I thought Netscape Communicator 4.7 was too big at 14-odd MB, although I uninstalled it for other reasons)
Of course, concerns of application size are moot in these days of 6GB disks being thought small, but there's still the matter of speed - all else being equal, small is likely to equal fast, and most of the things Micro$oft are doing these days are aimed at ease-of-use, which seems to equate to acres of hand-holding.
Well, I don't need my hand held, thank you - remember, I hack DOS command lines and batch scripts quite happily, and I'm planning to install a Linux server for mail and newsgroups, using a command prompt interface. I happen to believe that GUIs have no place on a server - a server is a place where things are done, in background, unattended. Who needs graphical bells-and-whistles? I still like the Novell text-mode-graphic utilities, which run blisteringly fast on ancient hardware, and control a server in a locked room.
Webstripper worked fine on another site - The Thames Valley IP User Group (a radio amateur organisation). I think part of the problem with the O'Reilly site is the way they have implemented registered user access - Webstripper grabs the login page associated with each chapter, but can't do anything with it. That said, even if I grab a page, and all it's links, via IE5's 'Save entire page' function, the links are still broken in the local copy, so that's not Webstripper's fault.
Katy handed me a list of things I 'had to record' for her, mostly from Sky's movie channels. She got very displeased when I said that I couldn't do the one she wanted tonight (a premiere, which means there will be many further showings over the next year) because it clashed with a one-off on another Sky channel. Remember, $ky sell you the right to view/record one of their bouquet of channels at a time, and they want your arm for the privilege. Even if you offer them two subscriptions, they won't do it - fear of piracy, I think.
I took today off, in order to clear out and demolish the old wardrobes (the soi-disant expensive ones that turned out to be not such good quality) so that we will have space for the new, due to be delivered on Wednesday - and again they can't tell us what time on Wednesday..... so I've taken more leave for that.
While Jane was with Jenny at a swimming gala, I dismantled the double unit. This required either an awkward stretch to reach a couple of screws, or stand on something. I chose to stand, and while reaching for a locating pin, the chair I was standing on took it into it's head to collapse. The seat of the chair went forwards, and I went backwards, landing on my back on the only clear bit of floor, between the bed and a chest-of-drawers, closely followed by the top of the wardrobe, which landed across my legs, gashing the front of my left calf. Strangely, my trouserleg wasn't torn.
I was lucky - first, I landed on the floor, not the bed; second, the wardrobe top landed flat, bruising me. If it had landed edge on I'd probably be nursing a broken leg. As it was, all I had to show was a deep, bleeding gash in my calf, and a shaken feeling.
Jane, when she got back, and found out about it, cursed me (in ladylike fashion) for a fool. I hope that was to hide her feelings, although, in hindsight, fool is about the best description I can come up with.
One of our friends had expressed a wish for the single wardrobe, the other one of the pair, so in the evening we took it apart (carefully!) and ferried it to their house for re-erection. In the process, my conviction that we had moved these units in a knocked-down condition was borne out - my markings to indicate what went where were clearly visible.
Once that was done, I spent the rest of the evening with my damaged leg up on a padded stool, until bedtime - the cure was almost worse than the disease, because my leg was stiff when I tried to get up.