Month: November 2007


Oooh, it’ll cost you!

Nov 27, 2007 Author Nik

We’ve finally discovered why we’ve had so much trouble trying to get quotes for the work we want done to the house. We had a consultant from Southern Electric Contracting come over to quote on doing the electrics this afternoon, and it turned out to be a much bigger job than we hoped.

Two weeks’ work, and almost £8k. And that’s just for upstairs.

Drat. We can’t take that on right now. Double-drat.

But now we know that the small, independant trades we asked to quote on various things seem to be put off by big jobs. Moving a soil pipe, laying a concrete floor, knocking a wall down, and removing a chimney breast; just a few of the ‘little’ things we wanted done.

Maybe it’s time to rethink our plans.


Bleeding edge…

Nov 20, 2007 Author Nik

My new PC has been giving me a hard time recently. And it’s my own fault.

When I built it, I decided it should have a 64-bit processor. Of course, that’s 32 bits more than anyone actually needs at the moment, but it’s the way forward. Allegedly.

More…


The Space Time Continuum

Nov 8, 2007 Author Charlie

I have no idea what the space time continuum is, but it sounds like something that could explain why my days are currently 43.5 hours long. Well….that’s what they feel like anyway.

I’m winding down at work in time for holiday next week. Having been uber productive and finished all I was supposed to, I now find myself getting involved in discussions such as “Where IS that image for our exotic chutney on site” along with other gems “Why does the new office smell like manure” (a question that prompted a less-than-healthy debate on the finer points of paint, carpet glue and mould) and my personal favourite “If someone came into work with a bogey on their lip, would you tell them?”.

The prospect of a brand spanking new leather bed is also not very conducive to working.

Ho hum…the clock ticks…11:11….


Idiot proof?

Nov 4, 2007 Author Nik

I have a 250GB USB hard drive on which I ‘back up’ different types of media that I regularly use with my PC; MP3s, images of magazine cover disks, images of game disks, images of all the software I’ve ever bought. And, of course, all the license keys and serial numbers. That way, I can archive (throw away) the CDs and their cases, and use virtual drive software to mount the images. I don’t have to keep dozens of otherwise useless software boxes lying around, I don’t have to keep changing CDs to play games, and everything is there at my fingertips.

Last night I discovered Windows XP will happily install onto a USB hard drive.

Without warning.

Well, I claim “without warning”, but I think I really mean “the warning was there, but I knew what I was doing so I ignored it”. Yes, that’s what I mean.

After having finally transferred all my stuff to my new PC, it was time to rebuild my old one and give it to Charlie, as promised. But a series of events conspired against me–including my failure to disconnect the external drive–and the Windows XP installer didn’t recognise the RAID array; so it decided to install on said USB device instead.

The drive was nearly full, and I lost it all.

I suppose it buys me some time before I have to decide what to do when the drive runs out of space.

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