Week of 21st February, 2005

More freelance today and tomorrow.

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Snow? And hail? We don't get those - much. But we have today. Only a dusting, and it's melting, but snow we did get. In late February. What is the weather doing?

Freelance went well enough, barring problems with disk space. Never mind, there are 2 more crates of disk for the near-line storage coming (Real Soon Now) which will triple the space. But automated clip management is still conspicuous by it's absence. So someone has to laboriously move media clips about - manually. Over Gigabit Ethernet. About 10GB per each hour of programming. Can you say slow?

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Back at the main job today, and after the merger/takeover, we all have to sign new contracts. From what I've heard in briefings, the takeover is a good thing, perks-wise. But it has shown up lacunae in record-keeping. My employee record shows that I joined in November 1999. *BZZZZT*! Wrong! It was 1990 - my previous service with old employer counts, because the change was done under conditions (the so-called TUPE regulations) that meant I kept my employment seniority (for such things as redundancy) on transfer. Now I have to find records to prove it. One thing that's good is that the personnel people know that their records are defective.

I can prove 1997 (from a Certificate of Earnings for that tax year) but earlier may be a problem.

As far as work was concerned, there wasn't too much. There was no pressure, and I only left 10 commercials for tomorrow.

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All commercials, and most promos done. The rest - for the movie channels - aren't needed before the weekend, so I left them. There were a few movies, too - also done.

And the printer we use for hard-copy reports is finally broken - it's a Brother HL1250 laser, and prints are nearly illegible because of toner smearing. Intentional prints are faint, too. But with new lasers costing not very much - I've seen Samsung and Brother lasers for well under UKP100 - a replacement is definitely on the cards. We can't use main network printers for this - I'm working within the transmission area, which is firewalled off, so main network assets are inaccessible.

Talking of printers, the Linksys print server I picked up for UKP30 at the Harwell Rally is a 4 port fast Ethernet switch and 2 port print server. The fifth RJ-45 is an MDI-X uplink port, shared with the ordinary port 1 - either/or. This will be good, since I can move the Linkstation NAS to an out-of-the-way shelf, beside the HP840 printer - once I've proved the Linksys works. I'll set it up on Zaphod first, as a proof of concept, talking to the HP printer. Then, later, maybe a laser on the other port - text prints will then be cheaper, and I won't need to use a work printer for 100 page PDFs.

And I've just heard - contract exchange for the flat sale is tomorrow, with completion Monday. Now I have to get the flat keys to the estate agent for Monday.

Katy's 'phone is not faulty, seemingly. Picture messaging was disabled on the last refurbished handset. Such settings are handset-specific, it's not just the SIM card. The 'phone is now enabled, as is my Vodafone contract. Now I have to test it. And I still don't like the 'phone. It's got too many buttons, and just feels wrong in my hand. And Katy doesn't want it back, even if I can get it all sorted.

Later: Picture messaging within Vodafone works. The upgrade 'phone slave claims that picture 'phones are network locked, even on contract. If so, that's a change, and makes the 'phone "unfit for purpose" as far as I'm concerned. Or it may be a recent change - previous Nokia 7200s in this saga have worked on Katy's contract out-of-the-box. Oh, yes, and there are pressure marks on the LCD screen from the keypad - did the previous owner squash it a bit?

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As you were - contract exchange is not today. Exchange and completion will now both be on Monday. The reason? There was no-one at the solicitor's with authority to sign the contract. What a c*ck-up.

By the way, I have no standing in this, other than saying, "Yes, sell it." The executors, acting for Mum, are doing the sale, and will sign off on the contract. I just get the proceeds, as sole beneficiary. When this saga started, I said to the local representative of the bank's probate services, "So, effectively, for the purposes of all this, I should imagine my mother sitting here, instead of you." And he agreed.

In other news, I've had to restore Katy's bedroom to normal - 3 beds set up - ready for students on Sunday. And then clear all my traps out, because I've been using the room as workspace - the study is too small, and too full, to be able to sit and computeplay.

Two light fittings also needed replacement - one was only half fixed to the ceiling (and, on reflection, probably could have been reattached) the other was genuinely faulty. Whatever, they're both done now.

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Freelance today and tomorrow, in Central London.

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Two busy days, mainly marked by continuous ingesting, and media file shuffling to make space on server. By the end of today, all available material until about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning was loaded. There were some missing commercials and promos, but they hadn't been supplied. There's one crate of near-line disk arrived since the beginning of the week - but it's only 1.5TB, rather than the 3TB of the first crate, and it's already a third full. The crates aren't striped together, so you have to search both crates (as mapped Windows drives) for the media files you need - there are 3 such, a header, a video file (25Mbit/sec Mini-DV format) and an audio file (AIFF format) for each clip. The automation people are allegedly writing an automated clip management application, but it's not ready for prime time yet.

At home, the students have arrived - 3 Norwegian boys, staying until next Sunday. I haven't met them yet - they had gone to bed when I got back.

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