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Monday, September 24, 2001

Today was shopping day. We walked across to Cuba Street, then down to Manners Street, as Rebeccah needed a particular leotard for her dance. I got a couple of keys cut for Sue's front door as they had changed the lock. I left them to shop on, while I went into a second-hand book shop; I was fortunate to find another in the present series I'm reading -- George R.R. Martin's excellent medieval trio of four books. No, that's not a misprint as the third book is broken into two parts. Also another Harry Turtledove in the Great War series.

On the way back to the apartment, I called into a graphics supply place and bought a bevel matt cutter and board. I will have lots of matts to cut for my exhibition, and the bevel cutter I have needs to have steel straightedges clamped to the cutting table. This is a real pain, but the new setup will be much quicker and easier to use.

The others returned with sandwiches for lunch; we then decided to get the car out and drive 20 minutes north to Porirua, where there is a shopping mall. Rebeccah was still looking for clothes, but had had little success so we left there and headed for Lower Hutt, another city area adjacent to Wellington. They managed to find what she wanted at a reasonable price, so we returned to Wellington central and Sue's apartment. Jeremy and Sue came back from work a little later.

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Packed and away from Wellington by 10 am; not too bad. We stopped at Himatangi at a sheepskin factory to replace the sheepskin covers on the CR-V's front seats. I bought them in 1995 for my previous car, and they were starting to moult. Cost $NZ180 = $US 70 for the pair, if you're interested. Stopped for lunch at a country house cafe a bit further down the road, then carried on steadily to arrive home at 5.30 pm. A very satisfying break away, and Rebeccah certainly enjoyed herself.

Tackled a heap of mail, had tea, cleared the email, and am off to bed as soon as this is uploaded. Can't take these long drives as casually as I used to in younger days <vbg>.

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Just been updating my home page with this week's links, if you're a regular. A bit late due to being away.

A comment from Cecil Coupe:

...I like Icarus Kronikles even if I don't grok this timezone/dateline stuff. But I get comfort reading about normal people doing normal things on a normal day. Until he wrote:

"We didn't leave for Wellington until 10 am ... made our usual stops at Turangi for coffee and hamburgers, then at Bulls at 1.30 pm for a late lunch."

Hmm. My father had passing daydreams of emigrating to NZ but I never quite figured out his motivation....If you can eat a burger and a lunch between 1:00 and 1:30, it must be a magical land .. Where do I sign up?

My reply: Weeeell... it's quite simple really. We didn't have a great breakfast, and an hour & a half later I pulled into this gas stop which has a Burger King attached. Breakfast goes off the menu at 10.30 am, so a hamburger was the only viable alternative (plus the fries I managed to nick from Rebeccah). After we had been driving for another 2 hours (through country that looks like Death Valley without the heat, and back down into the farming stuff), we all felt hungry and thirsty so called into a country cafe at Bulls. I had tomato soup and bread, Joan had a pie, and Reb. had a stuffed panini. Satisfied???

Cecil: You don't owe me an explanation. I was only leading up to (or following up) the point that the shell shocked need to find of a normal life. Personally, if I was hungry and Burger King was the only choice, I'd wait in the parking lot until the menu switched from breakfast to lunch.

You'd love NZ. We call it Godzown (to distinguish it from the US variety). My American step-son-in-law Don would not be dragged back to the States by wild horses. We go overseas once a year, and the nicest part of the trip is exiting the International Terminal at Auckland after coming back, and having the clear blue sky and pure air hit you in the face - wham....

NZ sounds a lot like the US States of Idaho or Montana...

Thanks for the comments -- that's what I offer: the daily diary of an Ordinary Bloke, sometime pharmacist, closet techie, would-be photographer, and general BS artist.

You do yourself a modest injustice. You can also write about your life in a way that the reader will identify with and feel comfortable as if they are there in the passenger seat. It may be second nature to you, but it's a skill I appreciate. Maybe you could teach me how to take a decent picture with the Nikon 900, from the shadows looking out onto a sun dappled Japanese garden. Even my best pictures of the Portland Or. Japanese garden just didn't capture everything they should have.

So we both managed to parlay a throwaway comment into an interesting dialogue. That's what makes daynoting/blogging such a fascinating pastime.

Today? Well, mostly routine. I have been wrestling with the Mac PowerBook; Outlook Express's message file is corrupt so I can't get at the emails I downloaded while away -- and OE didn't seem to have the option of leaving them on the mail server. So I've downloaded the Mac version of Eudora and have been installing that -- except that the different file structure means I can't whip the address file from the PC and copy it over. I have to enter addresses manually.

Thursday, September 27, 2001

I'm doing this on the Mac PowerBook; as Milly, my main work box, decided to spit the dummy this afternoon and play dead. I was in Dreamweaver, and had a lockup. On the reboot, I get an ominous message: "No boot disk, insert system disk". I try again -- same message. I wondered whether the BIOS had karked it; Milly has a motherboard with a dual bios, so I pressed F1 on boot to go into the BIOS utility. This updated the working BIOS from the spare; reboot -- no joy. I found my floppy with the Seagate diagnostics on it -- it couldn 't find the hard drives either.

So my conclusion is that the m/b IDE disk controller is stuffed. As luck would have it: Millennium Computers (my friendly computer pushers) have a kit of components for a new box waiting for me to collect tomorrow. I did a quick consultation last week and put in an order before the weakening NZ dollar kicks the prices up. I selected (on cost/benefit criteria) a Pentium III 866 MHz processor and either a DFI m/b with Intel 815e or 850 chipset, whichever was available. I'll update later when I check what I ended up with. A new case, 512 MB 133 SDRam, and enough bits'n'pieces to put together a new work box and my stand-by play box. Of course I'll have to order a second m/b now as well.

Apart from which, my other main activity of the day was to mow the lawns, which are now into spring growth.

Friday, September 28, 2001

Update per the Mac PowerBook again tonight, as the new Milly has not yet emerged from the ashes.

I was out early this morning, as I had to attend the blood test clinic to have my six-monthly tests done. Then back home for breakfast and a spot of email and Daynoting. Back into town by 11.30 to collect my computer bits'n'pieces, visit the bank to deposit some cheques, post some mail, and collect Joan after her shopping.

After a late lunch, I started on assembling the new Milly. She will have a DFI motherboard with Intel 815E chipset and PIII 866 as mentioned yesterday. I stripped the Asus DVDRom drive and the Yamaha CDRW burner out of the old case and got them mounted. For some reason I thought Milly had a 20 GB drive, but it turned out to be an older Seagate Medalist 10.2 GB 5400 RPM; not the fastest, but it's been reliable.

Unfortunately, the first power-on drew a blank. Zilch. Not even a POST beep. I did all the usual things like checking the floppy cable, but no dice. As I was getting a little tired at this stage, I've decided to whip the box into Millennium tomorrow morning and let the experts kick the tyres. I might even pick up a 20 GB Seagate Barracuda or similar, if they have one.

Saturday, September 29, 2001

At last -- after a day of tribulation, I am preparing this update on Milly -- having just loaded and configured Dreamweaver 4. Well, last night's hiccup was easily fixed in the cold light of day: I was peering into the box, checking likely things, and noticed a little gold gleam underneath the Pentium. Yes, in my struggle to get the Intel fan/heat sink clip engaged, I must have tilted the processor enough to pull the pins out at one end. Did the reseat and got a reassuring POST beep; but the boot floppy I'd slipped into the drive wouldn't play. The drive rattled a bit -- as floppy drives are wont to do -- then things just sat there. Visions of a duff floppy controller flash through the mind at times like these. I put the box in the car, and drove into town and Millennium Computers. Again, there was a speedy resolution -- one of the lads on the service desk slipped in a different boot disk and voila -- off it went. Making me a candidate for Dork of the Week -- why didn't I think of trying another boot disk???

The trip was not entirely wasted though, as I grabbed a 20 GB Seagate Barracuda to use as a main drive, instead of the Medalist -- which is now in residence as the slave. Much faster, as I found when loading software. I spent the rest of the day getting Win98 SE up and running, doing the updates, and loading all the drivers. I still haven't done the SCSI card for the two scanners yet. The box has it's sides on, and so far it's looking good.

Sunday, September 30, 2001

Another hard day at the keyboard, installing apps and generally making sure things are going OK. There's still a periodic instability bobbing up every now and then, but I guess that's a consequence of installing a heap of software in quick sequence.

A visit this afternoon from an old friend, Neville, his brother Craig who lives in Western Australia, and their mother who has just turned 90. I last saw Craig about 45 years ago, when I sold him an old motor scooter. It was an English James with a 100 cc motor, and had only one gear; you pedaled madly (with the compression lever pulled) to get up speed, let in the lever and it hopefully started. I graduated to an NSU Quickly, which had two gears operated by a twist-grip and was started by the pedals while stationary. After that, I bought a Suzuki real motor bike of 120 cc which used to get me back and forth to my shop -- we had a car but my wife needed that for the two young children. I passed some old computer stuff over to Neville - a 1 GB hard drive, a Pentium 133 MHz, and an old Cirrus video card. He's got a heap of old parts and is trying to make a working box out of them.

Don, Jo, and the grandchildren came over for Sunday dinner at 5.30 pm and we caught up on doings at the office. I have received some good wine from the Wine Society that sells me such things -- what they decided was the best red of the year, and a carton of excellent chardonnay. These went down well with the pickled pork we had.