Week of 20th August, 2001

Last Week

Monday, 20th August

10 o'clock shift starts today, but only for 2 days. Then I have a fortnight off for summer holiday.


It turns out that I missed something on Saturday night. I'd noticed that a movie wasn't showing up as 'present' in the schedule, so I checked, found that the item had a different barcode ID number, and changed it. This cleared the 'missing' status, so I thought nothing more of it. The difference was the tape had an 'A" suffix, which I added.

Oops! That means "Tape 1 of 2". The librarians hadn't supplied the second tape, the 'tapes and breaks' person hadn't noticed that 2 tapes were needed, and nor did I. The problem was only noticed in the commercial break before the first programme part on the second tape, as a cueing error. The desired timecode wasn't on that tape - not surprising, timecodes do not repeat within a programme - that would confuse the subtitler. By convention, we start tape 1 at 10:00:00, tape 2 at 11:00:00 (or maybe 12:00:00, whichever is needed to ensure that timecodes do not overlap), and any further tapes on whole hours above.

Net result, a 2 minutes 30 sec outage while the missing tape was located. Ouch! Luckily, mine wasn't the only mistake, so I'm not solely responsible. Could have been nasty.


Tux has finished his work unit, but he hasn't restarted the S@H client - there's still something not right about that cron job. He finished the last WU at 13:21 today, if the datestamps are to be believed.

I tried restarting the S@H client as the limited user, and hit all sorts of permission problems. Looks like I need to give it root ownership, and run it as root from cron. So I've changed the crontabs about as required. This is probably redundant until after the holiday, 'cos I'll shut him down for a rest.

While doing all that, I managed to blow away the last WU that Tux crunched - 4 days work wasted.

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Tuesday, 21st August

Quite a lot of commercials and promos to do these last two days - not helped by the fact that material deliveries are often stealthy. That is, you think you're well ahead, then BOOM! next time you look there's a shelf-ful of new material you didn't see arrive.

Add to this the rate at which amendments arrive, and I did a lot - about an inch and a half of paper (one sheet per commercial) plus about a hundred promos.


After work, I went round to bruv's house to install his new memory, which went quite well, although somehow (and I don't see how it could be memory-related) we ended up with Windows sounds not playing right - just bursts of noise, of about the right duration. Funnily, the .wav files are OK if you play them directly, but linked to Windows events, they don't work. All I can think of is reinstalling the soundcard drivers - the ones in use are dated 1997, the same age as the machine.

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Wednesday, 22nd August

Peanut gets his 6-month service and MOT test today - hopefully there won't be too much wrong. Anyway, it's got to be done - the old certificate expired yesterday, which means I can only drive him to a pre-booked test appointment.

Later: Well, that's sorted - Peanut is now legal for another 9 months, until the tax is due. Mind you, he may not survive that long - the tester advised that the 'shock absorbers' (really hydraulic dampers, but everyone calls them shocks) are corroded and will need replacement at a total, discounted, cost of over UKP500. Which is about as much as the car is worth - Peanut is now 9 years old. Trouble is, I can't afford to replace him (nor yet Hopalong) so I'll have to replace the shocks in due time - maybe when I've dug myself out of the hole that I got dropped into by a prospective freelance employer changing his mind. More on that later.

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Thursday, 23rd August

Chauffeur run to Guy's Hospital again, for Mum's post-operative check-up. This is for the shoulder problem that was fixed under health insurance, rather than the suspect spot in her breast, which will now be sorted starting September 9th (or so we are told - what am I bet that things will change again?)

Apropos this, I saw in the papers that a Libyan couple, who came to the UK so that the husband could study at a UK University, are expecting sextuplets. Hospitals are apparently falling over themselves to accommodate these people, who haven't paid a bean in the UK for such things, while another, British, couple, fully paid-up for National Insurance, are being pushed around because no hospital can guarantee facilities for their quadruplets.

<RANT>

Priorities seem to be skewed here - it's no wonder that the UK is the preferred destination for any Tom, Dick or Abdul refugee. Don't get me wrong - I'm fully in favour of supporting genuine refugees. It's the "economic migrants", the people who see a way of getting a better deal for less money paid out here, that get my goat.

I note that there's a steady stream of people coming all the way across Europe, and camping on the French Channel coast, waiting for a chance to smuggle themselves into this country. A major staging post for this seems to be the Red Cross camp at Sangatte, near the French Channel Tunnel terminal. The French don't seem to be doing much, EuroTunnel have set up razor wire fences to try to keep the people out, and HMG is making noises about fining people caught transporting (deliberately or involuntarily) migrants into the UK. This fine to beset at something colossal - UKP2,000 per captured illegal immigrant. Typical of HMG - pass the buck.

What they should do is set up an Immigration office at Sangatte - anyone wanting into this country applies there - case settled on site. Meanwhile you wait, patiently. Any attempt to circumvent the process means instant shipment back to point of origin - no appeal, just bye-bye. If that gets you into your home country's bad books, so be it. Tough. You were told the penalty. On admission, new arrivals must support themselves, and earn entitlement to benefit, just like UK citizens.

</RANT>

Later: That was written Wednesday evening. The trip was again easy, except that in excess of an hour's drive each way for a 15 minute examination is a bit stiff. Plus UKP1.50 to park for an hour (the minimum)

Afterwards, we stopped at the local shops for brunch - at this point it was nearly lunch-time. Then I drove Mum home.

Later, while Sarah was driving to Harrow, to her holiday job (qualified lifeguard), BLC started steaming. This was worrying, at the least, but Sarah went a bit OTT - inexperience, of course. After dropping her at the Leisure Centre, I checked the problem - pinhole leak in the top radiator hose, hence loss of coolant, spraying onto hot engine. Bingo, steam. A quick fill from the water dispenser got me safely home, where I booked BLC in to my tame garage to fix it - tomorrow, in between other jobs.

This is the last quiet night before the girls return, so Jane and I will have another take-away, alone.

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Friday, 24th August

Katy and Jenny return from their Guide trip to Kandersteg in Switzerland today, at lunch-time.


After I posted yesterday, and while returning home with the take-away - Indian, again - I got the mobile 'phone call. Short notice freelance work tomorrow (that is, today, Friday), for a company I did a lot of work for, before they moved from Hammersmith, West London, to London EC4, right in the middle, near St. Paul's Cathedral. Nice to get back to old haunts and kit - different people, though. The move was occasioned by a merger/takeover, and the two companies consolidated their operations at the other site.


Later: I hate commuting into Central London - you're at the mercy of the Tube. It took me a hour and a half, including waiting time, to get home, a trip that took me less than an hour to get in.

The site was easy enough to find, and I ran into several people I knew from the Hammersmith days, but the kit is totally different, not user-friendly, and the work is much higher-pressure, with lots of short remote items to be routed in, and passed to the studio, or recorded for later use. The amount of arcane local knowledge is immense - I'll need several more shifts to get up to speed on it.

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Saturday, 25th August

While shopping for Sarah's birthday present, two weeks ago, I collected a parking ticket - parking in a pay and display car park without displaying the proper ticket. The circumstances were sufficiently ambiguous (I thought) that an appeal would be worthwhile, so I duly appealed.

Today I got a nastygram in reply - pay over or else, no excuses allowed. If you wish to appeal further, feel free, but failure will attract the full UKP60 penalty, not the discounted penalty of UKP30 if you pay within 14 days.

They've got you coming and going if you drive. Taxes (Vehicle Excise Duty) for permission to keep and use a vehicle on the public highway, charges for this, charges for that, colossal duty on petrol (I've ranted about that before), and charges to park your vehicle on the public highway (wait a minute - didn't I pay that a couple of minutes ago?)

And if you find somewhere to park - remember, it can be argued that a pedestrian is a motorist who has found somewhere to park his car - you have to keep at least one eye open for penalties for staying too long. And too long is a variable feast - I have been charged as much as UKP0.30 for 6 minutes at a parking meter. Central London, admittedly, but I had to drive - I was bringing Dad home after his hernia operation, and you don't fight the Underground within a day of a surgical procedure.

Mind you, you can hit problems even outside your own home. There was a case recently, published in the newspapers as an example of bureaucracy gone mad, of a woman who parked in a resident's bay outside her own home, displaying the proper windscreen sticker, and was ticketed by a Parking Attendant, who claimed that she had "parked outside the marked bay". There were leaves (the wrong kind, evidently) on the road, obscuring the painted lines. The attendant refused to scuff the leaves away, although any reasonable person would have moved them, since "It's not part of my job", the classic jobsworth excuse. The woman forgot about the affair, until she was advised that the fine, and collection penalties would be passed to a debt collection agency. They duly turned up, and threatened to tow away the car, auction it and send her the change (this was a UKP35,000 Mercedes!). They were dissuaded by comments about court action.

At the subsequent hearing, the local magistrates laughed the case out of court. The local council are now "reviewing their guidelines", apparently. I have to ask - what jobsworth let it get that far? Mind you, it does no good to disregard officialdom, even the jumped-up kind in evidence here.


Tux has finished his work unit, but I didn't want to let him get another, so I invoked the S@H client with a stop_after_send.txt file in the home directory. And of course. he couldn't connect to the server - 'waiting 1 hour to retry'. The retry worked, though.


We're having a few days holiday before the start of the new school term, so there'll be no updates for a while. I'll try to keep notes off-line.

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Sunday, 26th August

It was the usual shambles of getting ready for the trip - no one seemed to have any urgency - me included! Eventually, Jane drove off in Hopalong with the girls at about 1 o'clock, leaving me to mop up a couple of things and follow with BLC. I'd have preferred Peanut, since I'd have radios for the trip, but Sarah prevailed - driving practice.

On arrival, we got everything unpacked into the static caravan we've rented, and settled down for a rest, punctuated by a meal of traditional English fish and chips. And so to bed.

Today, Sunday, Jane decided she wanted to walk into Weymouth to revisit old haunts (she was at college here in the late 70s). I passed on the excursion, preferring a quiet morning (and afternoon as it turned out)

Of course, as they were returning, the heavens opened! and four very bedraggled people got back to the caravan. Clothes and shoes are still drying out as I type this.


When I shut him down before I left London yesterday, Tux had 17 days, 18 hours uptime with no glitches. When I get home, I'll run him up again, and just leave him to serve files and crunch work units. Everything works at the moment, so I'll leave well enough alone. At least until I find something else I need.

Of course, I shouldn't have moved Fujisan. His screen problem is getting worse - the whole top right corner of the screen is a mass of coloured vertical stripes as I type this. Flexing the lid brings back proper display, but it doesn't stay when you let go.

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