Week of 20th October, 2014

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Monday, 20th October

Right. The order for the APC UPS and the Draytek wifi access point is in. I ordered from Transparent, who I've dealt with before, and whose service has been good. Delivery is 3 to 5 working days, so probably by Friday.

And, before you ask - I know the Draytek AP-900 is expensive, much more so than most such kit. But remember, it's simultaneous dual-band, powerable by 802.11af PoE, and can be managed from the Draytek 2860n+. The management capability is less important, because it has its own web-based interface, but if I can do it from one screen, why not? The PoE and dual-band capability is more important. Although there's a choke point there - the stairwell switch, which will be providing data and power connections, is only a Netgear FS108P - 100Mbit. Eventually, I'll upgrade that, but another UKP77 for a Netgear GS108P GigE PoE switch is a bit much, added to the UPS and whatnot.

You will probably have gathered that I like Draytek and Netgear kit.

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Tuesday, 21st October

Our tame Polish builder is about to start on renewing the pebble-dashing on Mum's house. Or, he would be if it wasn't blowing half-a-gale from the last knockings of Hurricane Gonzalo. Climbing ladders, as he will have to do at the front, is not a good idea under such circumstances. There will be scaffolding at the back, which should be put up tomorrow or Thursday.

Using the Catch-Up TV facilities of the $ky+HD box has proved useful recently, although dropping an Ethernet cable down when required is clunky and earache-inducing. I had thought to buy a cheap wifi-ethernet bridge, from Amazon, but $ky dropped a flyer on the doormat a day or so ago - "Get a free Broadband Connector". Well, free is always tempting, so I dialled the phone.

And $ky's Customer Service (or part of it, at least) has been outsourced to India.  In the course of the call, I discovered that the offer was only available to $ky subscribers who take the Family package - which I don't - and was out-of-time anyway. So UKP24.95. But, I'll give the phone slave his due, he made research (on my dime, at 0844 phone rates) and discovered that he could get me a UKP10 discount on my sub. for 6 months, and "upgrade" me to the Family package, with the Connector - at less cost than I was already paying. So it's UKP46 a month for 6 months, and then UKP56 thereafter, rather than the UKP66 I've been paying for years. That's including the HD pack, Movies, and Multi-Room, so no change in channel availability, but less money. But why didn't $ky tell me about this?

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Wednesday, 22nd October

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Thursday, 23rd October

Diwali - The Hindu Festival of Lights

Last two days of the fortnight completed, and things were fairly quiet.

But before I left this morning, ParcelForce delivered the bits from Transparent. So that's 3 days, and free shipping. I can live with that.

Jane and Jenny are going away for the school half-term week - which is next week - and Jenny has prevailed again. Preserved steam railways are on their agenda. Jane wants to do paperwork for her childminding - which means I have to print pictures of the various minded kids. Which is a little difficult when the colour printer that's installed on Jane's computer breaks terminally - no paper feed. So I dumped it at the local recycling facility.

I shouldn't complain - this Canon iP4300 was provided for Katy, under a disability grant (she's dyslexic) while she was at University. So it's at least 6 years old.

While they're away, I'm going to rationalise printers here at Semi-Detached Bedlam. With the demise of the Canon, the D-Link DP300U print server becomes redundant, but will go to store against possible reuse. Then I'll tidy up the shelves in the study, and move the Brother MFC down from Katy's room in the loft. She can already print to it - as can I. So it will then be possible to install the MFC on Jane's machine - she will only ever print to it, the scanner and fax facilities will be so much gibberish to her, although they will be available.

And I need to put a new toner cartridge in the Brother laser, which has a hard page count limit per cartridge - once you exceed that, it just stops, and flashes a little amber light at you.

Diwali is traditionally celebrated with fireworks, so of course, we had lots of bangs and whooshes

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Friday, 24th October

So let's expend a few Round Tuits... First, the $ky Broadband Connector - which is a nice little box, about 3 to 4 inches square, and an inch thick. It comes with a half-metre Ethernet cable, and a 12 volt 1 amp power brick. This is a little awkward, since I have no mains sockets free near the TV. But all the TV bits are plugged into a 4-way power strip. I can upgrade that to a 6-way, use one of the extra sockets for the BC, and still have one spare.

So I did. The latest software for the $ky box wakes up and asks you to connect to broadband. It detects the BC, and offers to programme it. Search for access points, pick mine, "select" it, and type in the passphrase. In the process, I discovered that you can type in lower-case letters - just keep bashing the appropriate key on the remote (it's a telephone-style keypad) You get upper-case, figure, and lower case in succession.

And it worked. To prove it, I spent some time browsing the On Demand offerings - not that there's much to interest me, and what little there is, I've already got. This should keep Katy happy, when she misses/finds out about something of interest to her. Of course, it only works on the Sky+HD box downstairs - the simple $ky+ box she has in her room can't do this.

Then I need a new toner cartridge for the Brother laser printer. It's an HL5250DN, which takes a TN-3130 cartridge. But the printer drivers claim I have an HL5350, which takes the TN-3230 cartridge.

Idiot me believed the driver. And I was wrong. It didn't fit. So I went back to the shop (Staples) and grovelled to the manager. Luckily, he was amenable to taking back the TN-3230, even though it was opened, and he gave me 90% of the purchase price of the 3230 against the correct cartridge. I actually got the TN-3170, which is the high-capacity one - less than twice the price for more than double the page impressions. So I'm out about UKP10 for the error, which is not too painful. And the new cartridge works, so I'm good for a while. And I need to Freepost the old cartridge for recycling.

Having got that, I have to type up Mum's Christmas Card list, with a view to printing address labels for her (I got a pack of address labels at Staples, as well) And it's a long list - Mum sends and receives a myriad of cards at Christmas.

I was driving to work yesterday, listening, as is my wont, to BBC Radio 3. At 9:30 a.m., during the programme "Essential Classics", they run a quiz - the Daily Brainteaser. Yesterday, it was a "Classical Consequences" question. Apparently,  at Christmas, the composer Puccini was in the habit of sending a present of panettone to his friends, among whom was (normally) the conductor Toscanini. Unfortunately, the two had a falling out, but before Puccini could cancel the panettone order for Toscanini, it had been sent. The question? "What happened next?"

In real life, Puccini sent an apologetic note, "Panettone sent, by mistake", to which Toscanini replied, "Panettone eaten, by mistake", or, in the original Italian, "Panettone mandato, per errore" and the reply, "Panettone mangiato, per errore". Funny enough, but one of the listener answers ran, "Would there have been a bit of a bake-off, with all buns glazing?"

Groannnnnn.

Sometimes, I wish I could commit a crime like that, but then reality dawns...

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Saturday, 25th October

Jane and Jenny have set off for their half-term week holiday in Shropshire. They'll be back next Saturday.

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Sunday, 26th October

And Katy has left for her half-term holiday in Romania - after some fun with attempting to get local currency. Result: Nobody has any, even if they normally carry it. It's all "order as required" on a 1 week turnaround - which is as much use as a chocolate teapot when you're flying within the next 24 hours. So she ended up with a pre-paid credit card, denominated in euros. This will have more than one use - there is a Prague trip planned for just before Christmas, as well.

Be it noted:- I am not travelling. I like to allow Jane time off from me, just as she needs time off from childminding.

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