Sorry for the recent lack of updates; as I mentioned on Friday we’ve been rearranging the office, and just to make things even more fun I took the opportunity to reinstall Windows at the same time. Coupled with setting up the wireless router, drilling holes in walls, building new desks, rerouting cables and trying to find a good vantage point for Sully, all while the kitchen’s being rebuilt, it was a manic weekend.

The WRT54G is now set up and running ok, thankfully. Yep, that’s a WRT54G. I ordered the 54GS and they sent me a 54G with a 54GS label and barcode on the outer packaging. I sent this back, and they replaced it with exactly the same thing. I gave up - there wasn’t a fat lot of difference anyway. My sister’s new computer was originally going to be in a different room, hence the wirelessnessness, but as it turned out is now only two metres away from the router. Still, the signal strength is ‘excellent’ It does seem to drop every so often, though, for reasons I haven’t yet figured out. It’s hopefully tight security-wise, as I’ve got some pretty strict filtering and encryption set up. Disappointingly, I could detect no other wireless networks within range to attempt to hack into. Ah well.

As I mentioned above, I reinstalled Windows over the weekend as my system was grinding to a halt. Things are much more smooth now: windows starts up in a reasonable amount of time; shutdown doesn’t take 2.5mins; I have >150mb of ram free during general usage as compared to 40mb before; everything just runs that much faster. It’s been 16 months since I last installed Windows, and given how much I mess around with the internal workings it’s impressive it survived this long, really!

And it’s Kate’s last day in York! Woohoo!

I have to move my desk around the office shortly. Unfortunately, my desk is just about at the stage where I start to think about tidying it, but don’t get round to actually doing it for another fortnight. So it’s going to be a mess.

As a matter of interest, has anyone had a problem with PCI cards only being recognised as “early pci non-VGA” devices? I put a wireless network card into a reasonably old win98 computer earlier today and it just wouldn’t recognise the thing, despite the drivers definitely being correct. I tried changing the pci slot, older drivers and even upgrading to win98se, but no joy. I had to leave at this point, and can’t go back until late next week. I tried a cursory google search that turned up little, but haven’t had a good go at diagnosing the problem yet. Just wondering if it’s something anyone’s come across…

Claire didn’t win Dorridge was, as ever, a conservative walkover. She had a good ’score’, though.

(EDIT: paragraph separated - reading over it just now, it looked like the preceding sentence was related to the following)

Also, no wankers were elected in Solihull, I’m glad to say That’s possibly due to the pretty good turnout - Dorridge had nearly 50%!

I just headed down to the polling station and there was a large queue!

Wasn’t expecting that. This being Dorridge, chances are I just spent half an hour surrounded by Conservatives! Ack, I haven’t been inoculated!

[a quick shower later]

Apparently people aren’t mean to talk about who they vote for. Don’t see why; screw that, I say

I was at a client’s until 8 and didn’t know whether I’d be back in time to vote. Thankfully I did: there were BNP candidates! Also listed were various numerous UK Independence Party…how shall I put this, ah yes: wankers. I’ve heard people say that none of the parties represent them, so they don’t vote. Maybe so, but when there are people you definitely don’t want in power then it’s still worth doing. There were two slips, one for the local councillor elections and one for the European elections. On the former you were allowed to vote for up to three candidates (apparently there’s more than one seat per area) so I voted for Claire and the Labour candidate. The European elections were party based, so I voted Labour.

No! You move!

Kate took her final final today…which means she’s finished university. She’s finished university. This calls for a word I try to reserve for special occasions:

w0000t!!!!

Focussing through my binoculars, I’ve managed to spot Venus! My sister had the unenviable task of holding the binoculars steady while I tried to take a photograph. This one came out best, I think:

We’ve been dismantling the kitchen this evening in preparation for the plasterers tomorrow. Once that’s done the actual work starts on installing the units, which will take a few days. It’s one hell of a mess!

I’m going to try to get a picture of tomorrow’s transit of venus; we’ll see how well it turns out

I have returned! Amazingly, that was my last visit to see Kate in York. This time next week she’ll be back home for goodish! We went to see Harry Potter as well as The Day After Tomorrow, both of which I enjoyed very much. Hermione kicks ass, incidentally We also did a bit of shopping - I bought a large pile of books that will take me forever to get through, but should be most entertaining.

I came home to find a pleasantly sized City Link parcel waiting for me. Inside should have been a Linksys WRT54GS, and that is indeed what the Insight label says, but the product is actually a WRT54G. There’s not a lot of difference between the two, but given the tiny price difference I went for the faster version when ordering. I’d keep the WRT54G, but I don’t want to have it fail in a couple of months then have to convince them I had the wrong thing in the first place. Unfortunately it was, and still is, a special order, so I shouldn’t think there’ll be a terribly fast turnaround. Never mind.

Did anyone listen to the Jonathan Ross show a week last Saturday? I think I’m going to sue. He’s stealing my personality. Firstly, last month he bought himself a bubble car. Despite the very best efforts of Ben to dissuade me, this has been an ambition of mine for many years. As more evidence, I present to you the following exchange, during an interview with psychological illusionist Derren Brown:

Jonathan: We’ve had you here for ages and you haven’t done any magic. Sooo, tell me what I’m thinking right now.
Derren: Monkeys
Jonathan: Spot on! That was too quick, though! You’re meant to at least take the news to figure it out. Andy, you try. What am I thinking about?
Andy: Fish
Jonathan: Correct! Astonishing!

Now, if that isn’t grounds for a lawsuit I don’t know what is.

You know what are fun? 2 day weeks. Of course most of you, being students, probably know this already

Before you arrange a hit squad, be aware that I’m off to York until Saturday, so you’ll have to lie in wait until I get home. Kak, I’d better…shudder…go do some ironing.