Week of 20th December

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Monday, 20th December

It has been decided that the old network storage bucket we use for programme editing will be retired. First we knew about the imminent change (Oh, we knew it would happen, just not when) was when the software writers pitched up to amend the scripting to point one of the upload paths from the old storage to new. And I was in the middle of an edit at the time... On the old storage, yet.

So I saved that off, and spent several hours cleaning the old storage bucket by copying everything that hadn't been edited onto the new storage. I could do this without the media management software getting a look in. Good thing too - they actioned the change without telling us...

And that broke everything for an hour or so. This software has reached critical mass... fix one thing, and break one-plus-epsilon things (for epsilon small and positive) It needs a complete rewrite ab initio. But that will bring a whole new raft of bugs that we don't know about.

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Tuesday, 21st December

The ingest system broke again yesterday evening - probably as a result of the changes made yesterday. As a result, the edit shelves were nearly empty - nothing got through to the Final Cut network store. The material could be resent after fixing the problem, which our guru diagnosed sight unseen, and fixed in short order this morning. Meanwhile, I filled time by taking in feeds of own productions that are due to air next week, and may well have got stuck in the bad weather snafu.

I commented last Wednesday about this, and it's already cost Sarah and Jenny their skiing holiday - their outward flight was cancelled for snow-related reasons, and they weren't aggressive enough about rebooking. Apparently, everyone dropped the ball on snow clearing - BAA at Heathrow could only get one runway cleared, and most councils don't seem to have done much in the way of road gritting. Despite that, main roads are clear - no visible grit, but drivable. Small, residential roads, like mine, are of course a different matter. But with due care, all can be accommodated.

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Wednesday, 22nd December

I mentioned the air conditioner problem with Hopalong last week. Comes now time to investigate it. So off to my tame aircon specialist I drove. Investigation there suggests two problems - the valve that controls hot engine coolant flow into the heater matrix seems to be kaput, and there's a wiring fault which prevents control voltages from getting to that valve.

Hopefully, the dud valve hasn't broken the heater control system - which on a car of Hopalong's age is not computerised.

The absence of hot water into the heater matrix acounts for the "no heat" symptom, and the extreme cold is accounted for by the fact that car aircons (and probably every aircon on the planet) dehumidify the air by chilling it to a sufficiently low temperature, before heating the dehumidified air to the desired temperature. Luckily, you can turn off the chiller - which makes driving tolerable, rather than freezingly cold.

Katy flies back today, and for a wonder, she had no problems, flight-wise. Sarah collected her, rather than I. But I immediately got hit with demands to fix things - her HP netbook is slow and flaky, so she wants all her files put back onto the Packard Bell laptop, which I can do.

But, of course, that machine hasn't been switched on for months, so Windows Update wanted to install 34 (count 'em, Thirty-Four!!) updates - this before copying Katy's data back from the HP. All 57-odd GB of it.. Her external disc drive, a Western Digital Essentials 2.5 inch, comes with a WD backup application, which also has an update available, and I made the mistake of installing that, as well.

All that took a couple of hours, and Jane and Katy are off to Canterbury this evening, for the Christmas Fair there. Katy wanted the Packard Bell, with all her data, but all the updates took waaay too long, so she's got the HP - and my 3G dongle, which has lots of data allowance on it. No way is she going to use best part of 12GB of data in a couple of days. They'll be back Friday - Christmas Eve - and I'll be working. Nights - but the Christmas holiday is short shifts, so not too painful. The overnight feed from the US is on hiatus from Friday, until the New Year, so I don't even need to work the whole night next week - a late, late shift will suffice.

Later: Sarah and Jenny are back from a shopping trip to the Westfield centre, and Jane and Katy have arrived in Canterbury. Sarah and Jenny used Nicole, and Jane and Katy took Sarah's Seat Ibiza, leaving Hopalong sitting forlornly outside the house.

In the matter of car sharing, I prefer Sarah's attitude - "if you're not working..." rather than Katy's "but I need it...". Albeit, I need to derig the tribander before lending Nicole out to anyone - no-one understands that 5 foot long aerials on car roofs are contra-indicated in covered car parks. Unless you want a broken loading coil on the aerial, of course... the which I don't, thank you very much.

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Thursday, 23rd December

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Friday, 24th December

Christmas Eve

Everyone's back home, but I'm off to work - nights, albeit short shifts, so I'll finish early.

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Saturday, 25th December

Christmas Day

We managed to get Christmas lunch in before I had to adjourn to work again. Because of that, no wine or other alcohol with the meal, but a pleasant time none-the-less. Only the 5 of us, this year - Jane's Mum has gone to Simon's for Christmas. She'll be with us for New Year.

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Sunday, 26th December

Boxing Day or Feast of St. Stephen

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