Another computer saga

And it hits the fan again...

Doing a rebuild of the home network. Trying to upgrade to a wireless network. I'm not a big fan of them, but it would let several people onto the web at the same time.

Anyway, the main computer is being a little biatch and refusing to co-operate. It keeps coming back with "limited or no connectivity" errors, or simply locks up and refuses to respond. Done several re-installs, new hdd, tried different hardware configurations - nada.

Had a bright spot earlier today with it all running perfectly but after restarting, it refused to work. Not sure what changed, but I don't want to leave it on all day, nor do I want to have to re-install everything every time I want to use it...

Might be looking at a new computer and be done with it.

It has been a slow month

Well, I have about four sites that I should be updating of which none have been updated since I got back from Sydney.

Yes, I suck and I know it.

On the plus side, I finally worked out how to turn on the anti hotlinking protection on my main site so half my bandwidth should drop off now. There were so many people leeching bandwidth off my site it's not funny. For some reason, my cars and the essay on body armour seemed to have attracted the bulk of the attention. The reviews page picked up a few from spam sites as well which was kind of odd.

If anyone who had hotlinked one of my images reads this and is upset by the replacement image then I apologise. But really, how hard is it to download the desired image, upload it to your own site (or one of the dozens of image hosts) and use that? I do it, it's the polite thing to do and only takes you a few extra seconds.

Well, enough mindless ranting, it's late and I gotta work tomorrow...

Pics of lan party from a few months ago

Found a couple of pics from a lan party I went to before winter - don't remember exactly when. It was a fairly small affair:



Just my brother and a few of his mates. Nothing really lavish. Up all night playing games and leaching off each other. I think it was over a long weekend. At least we had plenty of food to eat:



Lots of protein and vitamins in pizza! Num, num, num.

We played a variety of games, but nothing really major happened - or at least nothing which I have a record of. The only incident of note was that one computer was busy copying stuff in the background and slowing the network down:



John frowns in disapproval.

New look ... sort of

I'm always chopping and changing how I look. No idea why. Here's the latest look:



I'm trying to decide if I look like a bored English Literature professor or a lawyer from the eighties. Not sure which is preferable....

Bottled lightning

Whee - new product!

First time I saw these were on the Star Trek movie with the Borg (I forget the title). You'll recognize what I'm talking about if you've seen the movie one you look at this pic:



I'm surprised how good this photo came out. I really like it.

Bored at work

It's not that there's nothing to do - it's that there's a lot of little things that can be ignored. It's not that there aren't any customers, it's that the customers either all want the same thing or want stuff we don't have. Either way, I have too much spare thinking time.

One of the products that we carry has these little cardboard slips that are added to the packaging. They come in a variety of languages and obviously we only use one and discard the rest. Or rather, we normally discard the rest.



I made a home-made deck of cards. Yay me.

I'm sure that there are better things that I could have done to employ my time, but that's what I ended up doing. Plus it helps pass the time to play a little poker.

Also, after doing 140, 100 seems slow.

Stray kitten

Well, it's no longer really a kitten:



This is the cat that I wrote about earlier. It's been hanging around the house since before I got back from Sydney. Since Mum's been feeding it, it's been hanging around the house. It's growing up and is starting to get friendly enough to let people get close enough to touch it.

It's kinda cute. But freaks if you close the door while it's inside - not that it comes inside very often...

Nearly sideswiped by a truck!

Yay for near misses! \o/

Driving down the highway on the way to work, about to pass a big rig (dual carriageway) and the truck decides to change lanes at the last second! Slam on the brakes as he enters my lane - if there'd been a fly on my bumper it would have been scraped off. That had the old heart going - but no contact so no foul. I'm not sure exactly why the truck changed lanes suddenly - there must have been another vehicle in his lane or something. I didn't see anything because I was too busy trying not to ram into the back of him.

Other than that, not an eventful day today...

I've been quiet lately...

Wow, this is the first time that I have been sick for so long.

I think it was around the start of July that I first got sick. I had basic cold and flu-like symptoms. The first week wasn't too bad. Felt miserable, but was able to soldier on. Second week took me down hard and I spent the entire week in bed. That was bad. Second week had to go back to work, still miserable but not as bad as the second week.

Lots and lots of coughing so not really getting any sleep at night which led to a few interesting "slightly out of it" moments. Now it's the start of August and I'm finally starting to feel a little better. Not a whole lot, had some not-fun moments last night when I was supposed to be going to meet up with some people that I do freelance IT for.

Anyway, enough griping.

A few weeks ago it was cold - really cold. Check out the window in the morning:



That's freakin' in ICE on the windshield - in PERTH of all places! I think that was the morning I might have first gotten sick. That photo was taken a while back, not sure exactly when since I didn't write it down.

At least it's starting to warm up a little now - I hate the cold.