Week of 5th July, 2010

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Monday, 5th July

Fun and games with plumbing problems, again. There's an airlock in the cold water pipe to the loft shower room, the shower there, recently replaced, trips it's circuit breaker, and the toilet doesn't stop filling. Our tame Polish plumber is due to call today to fix all this.

And he has. The airlock is cleared, the shower problem was due to the fact that the new shower draws more power, so we needed an uprated circuit breaker, and the toilet problem required a new float valve. So that's all well.

Of course, all this bustle and movement prevented me from doing anything with either battery wiring in Nicole, or with the CarPC. Real Soon Now, for both of these, and for Rob's netbook. At least I managed to get Nicole parked in our shared drive, where I can work on her undisturbed. Normally our neighbours park their cars there, so the facility is denied to me - neither of us use our garages, which are at the far end of the drive.

Later: 1997 and 1998 jumbo Dilbert strips collected. 1998 cost me 298,892,852 bytes of download in 9565 files, to get 365no 1000 pixel wide strips, a total of 35,153,920 bytes, while 1997 ran to 300,364,795 bytes downloaded in 11036 files, for useful content of 34,114,068 bytes in 365 strips.

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Tuesday, 6th July

Shopping today - a new Three 12GB starter SIM, and the accompanying dongle - this one is a ZTE MF112, and it's not as good as the Huawei E156G. littleblue doesn't recognise it - he sees the built-in RO flash drive with the installer for Windows, as a CD-ROM, and if you eject that, he tries to connect, fails, and the flash drive pops up again. But after a little bit of to-ing and fro-ing, caused by my trying to insert the SIM card the wrong way round, the Huawei works with the new SIM. Signal strength in the dining room at the back of the house is next to non-existent, and Three's website is abysmally slow, but it works. I'll have to try it in an area with better signal.

I pointed out to the salesdroid that it made no sense to sell 12GB of data, and a USB dongle, for less than their contract terms for 1GB of data per month (that costs UKP7.50 per month) He said, in effect, "surely not..." and had to be reminded of the rates. Duh!  Busted!

That said, UKP80 for the prepay deal is still over-priced. It's about the best deal I know of, but still too expensive.

I also ordered some bits from CPC - a bulk buy on 3no 16GB USB thumbdrives, 5no (another bulk buy, I need 4) short (0.5 metre) USB2.0 A-B cables, and 4no Switchcraft DE9 through-panel adaptors - these in XLR-style shells, all same the USB and Cat5 Neutrik connectors I bought last year. I opted for these because the pukka chassis punch for DE-9 connectors runs out at UKP129+tax, while I already have the correct punch for Neutrik D-shell XLR-style connectors - 25mm circular. The CPC purchase qualifies me for a free copy of the 2010 catalogue - 2,500+ pages of things from TV aerials to hand tools, and lots more besides, and since the order exceeds the appropriate threshold, shipping is free.

Last up (I hoped) were the Red Priest CDs I mentioned last week. I actually ordered 3 separate discs by the ensemble, and used up an Amazon Gift voucher I got from Sarah as last year's birthday present, so there's no risk of that expiring, now - as they do, after a year.

The hope that the CDs would be the last purchase proved to be vain. Tabitha and Splodge needed a vet. visit, and that bill came to just over UKP204, including a 6 month supply of flea jollop. And there will be more going in that direction - Tabitha, who is now at least 12 years old, has some problems that need investigation. Thank $DEITY for insurance.

And now Holly has succeeded in getting into the space above the first floor ceiling, below the floor of the loft. How she got there is unclear to me - to the best of my knowledge the only two accesses to that space have not been opened since yesterday, and Holly has been seen earlier today.

Later: littleblue runs Ubuntu 9.04. There is anecdotal evidence from Ubuntu forum posts that 10.04 Lucid Lynx understands how to talk to a ZTE MF-112 3G dongle. I haven't tested this yet, and for the moment I don't intend to - the Huawei isn't broken now that I've sussed the orientation of the SIM card, so I'm not going to mend it.

I'll use one of the USB memory sticks I mentioned above as project storage for bulding openwrt - I'm going to have to do some of that to get the miniPCI serial card working. Another one will provide storage for the CarPC. I'll keep the third for general use - you can never have enough storage.

Jumbo Dilbert strips for 1996 collected today.

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Wednesday, 7th July

5th Anniversary of the London Suicide Bombing

This is the anniversary of the Tube and 'bus bombings in 2005, that killed 52 and injured many more. I'm not counting the bombers in those totals - they don't deserve it.

A courier delivered the box of bits from CPC this morning - excellent service, that. And I did not spring for expedited delivery. Their catalogue is a bit smaller than A4 size (US letter?) and 2 inches thick, for a total of 2,940 pages (on thin paper)

Contrast this service with that provided by Amazon. When I ordered the Red Priest CDs, I specified free Super Saver delivery. The order acknowledgement e-mail says dispatch will be on or about 15th July.

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Thursday, 8th July

Last 2 days of this fortnight completed, including training a new member of the group. He has transferred from the programme traffic side, in order to fill our establishment at 6 people per shift. More short-form material delivered than on previous days of this fortnight, so I was a bit busier - not too much, though. We're still in the summer hiatus - next month for sure.

I have 2 nights of overtime over the weekend, leading in to next fortnight, which is a night shift - and includes that overnight PasB from the States.

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Friday, 9th July

Another visit to the hospital for Mum. This one is for the physiotherapist, in an attempt to improve Mum's walking ability, after the hip replacements. Once that was completed, we adjourned to Mum's favourite cafe, where I tested the new SIM card in the Huawei USB dongle, all plugged into littleblue. And it all worked like a charm - 3 bars of signal (out of 5) and adequate speeds. So I'm good for another year, particularly when I get the CarPC finished.

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Saturday, 10th July

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Sunday, 11th July

The overtime went well enough - tiring, of course, and that will only get worse as the next fortnight starts.

 
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