Week of 18th October, 2010

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Monday, 18th October

New shift fortnight starts today - a noon-to-midnight shift.

Not too busy - but then it is Monday, and as such, is about the quietest day. The workload ramps up all week.

I hadn't heard back from Lisa about what I should do to her laptop. And in the evening, it turns out that her 'phone has broken - terminally. She needs to get a new handset, and since SIM cards don't have enough storage to hold more than 50 contacts or so, everything else is held on the 'phone. And if the 'phone is kaput, the contacts are gone... Unless the cloud backup she took is complete enough. But where is it? She's forgotten. So I SMSed the freelance who told her about it.

As far as the laptop is concerned, I'll try my spare Intel 3945ABG miniPCIe wireless card, and see what happens.

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Tuesday, 19th October

Well, that was a bust. Lenovo-supplied wireless cards must have custom firmware, and the BIOS checks... My 3945ABG card is defined as unsupported, and the machine refuses to boot.

So I 'phoned Lenovo Support (an 0870 number = non-geographic (same everywhere in UK) and hence semi-premium) And the 'phone support slave gave me some suggestions, and said that if that doesn't work, they will take it back under warranty and fix it.

By the time that call was over, I was out of time before work, so away I went. To find that the entire scheduling department was out on a team-building jolly. No commercials, and no previewers, so we have to preview all quick-turn-around line feeds ourselves. They don't pay me enough to carry the can for any errors associated with this process, so we check our work several times, and so do Transmission. Paranoid, nous?

Lisa is now updated, and I've had the reply from freelance about cloud backups of 'phone contact lists. I'll look at the laptop again tomorrow.

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Wednesday, 20th October

Best laid plans... Errand running ate the day, so no progress on the laptop front.

AVG are pushing the new version of their antivirus software. I've already installed it on stinker, so now Jane's machine is prompting.And it won't install - "insufficient disc space". WTF? There's 500+MB free, and the full download is only 111MB. But no, it refuses to install.

There's a bunch of stuff on there that was provided for Katy while she was at University, and which hasn't been used since. One of those packages - Read and Write 7.1 - eats 700+MB. It's designed for use by dyslexic people like Katy, and Jane isn't dyslexic, so it can come off. So I removed it, and AVG 2011 was then happy to install. But before I did that, I removed Java - hey, there were 2 versions of the Java runtime, which Windows Add and Remove Programmes said were 110MB each. Hah! More like 10MB, each.

And that seems to have screwed up Jane's Internet banking - not something I do, due to my paranoia. But stinker could do it, even from Firefox - which is good, some Internet banking apps insist on running in IE.

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Thursday, 21st October

Not only has the recent antivirus update, and the wholesale file deletion associated therewith, screwed up Jane's internet banking, any site that requires login now no longer works. I consulted the Bank's telephone tech support, but none of his suggestions worked. I may retire Jane's computer in favour of the Packard Bell laptop that was Katy's, and which has working Skype, which will please KT, since Skype-to-Skype calls are free. But the laptop will be less convenient in some ways, although the ability to sit while using it will be a big bonus. I'll probably do that next week, while Jane and Sarah are in the USA - Boston and New York.

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Friday, 22nd October

Another checkup for Splodge this morning, before Mum's appointment at the hospital physiotherapist. And then work, so this will be a busy day.

Later: It was, too. Lots of promos delivered - so many that we didn't get them all cleared. There'll be quite a few to do tomorrow. But missing lists are empty, except for live offers, so that's good. And no small number of those lives needed recording PasB for later repeat.

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Saturday, 23rd October

So mop up the last of the promos, and start stacking quantities of programmes onto the system for editing, although quite a few were OK to air as-is.

At work, the oversea IT troops have finally pushed out an upgrade to IE8 and Acrobat Reader 9 to all our BasePCs, which run severely locked-down XP. It's good not to get "Your browser is out-of-date. Please upgrade to a newer version for a better viewing experience." In my opinion, Firefox would be 'a better viewing experience'. And I discovered today that M$, in their semi-infinite wisdom, have removed the auto-complete option from the IE8 address bar, replacing it with their "Smart Address Bar". Thanks, M$, you've just added at least one keystroke to my visits to any site I've been to before.

Firefox does this better - if you so desire, the address bar will autocomplete with the last page you visited at a site. This I prefer. IE6 used to autocomplete the base URL, which was tolerable, but IE8 requires you to use down-arrow to get to even the base URL - or a bunch of Windows Search choices. Not a good upgrade.

But at least the "Your browser is out-of-date" has gone away.

Lenovo's Customer Support has come up trumps over Lisa's laptop. You may remember that wireless didn't work, after the new hard disk installation. The wireless card wasn't visible to Windows. It turns out that there's a BIOS option to hide items of hardware - BIOS access via F1 at boot-up. Enabling the card in the BIOS, and then installing a driver package from Lenovo (via a CAT5 connection) fixed it.

But Lisa's not at work now until Wednesday. I'll return the machine then.

Jane and Sarah flew off to the States - Boston and New York - this morning, too early for me to roll out and chauffeur them to Heathrow, so they took a taxi. Back a week tomorrow, with lots of goodies - all much cheaper oversea. And Ben the dog is in kennels for the duration - I shouldn't say this, but "Whoopee!!!"

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Sunday, 24th October

My credit card provider, or rather his upstream provider has sent me a letter, from their Fraud Department, no less, asking me to'phone them, collect, if required, to discuss irregularities on the account. Monday to Friday, 9am to 5 pm, if you please. This is Sunday. If my card had been stolen, that would be a 2 to 3 day window for a miscreant to drain the account.

I suspect it's related to a 'phone call I had earlier in the week, from the provider, asking me to confirm certain transactions. This lot resulted from my lending Jenny my card, after she had forgotten her purse. So there are a number of UKP2 and UKP3 transactions, which is against the normal usage pattern. I thought I'd resolved that.

 
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