Month: February 2004

bookmark_borderThank fuck it's…

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…Friday. OH NO, it’s Friday the 13th!! (cue scary music…)

Bit of an odd week. Up and down. Busy on all fronts but only progressing a few.

All summed up last night when my Mum phoned and asked what we’d been up to… I was stumped. Essentially we’ve ‘done’ nothing all week. No cinema, nowt. Just TV, books and PHP…

Of course this weekend will be different. ‘Tis the weekend of lurve. We will do something during the day, and retire home where I’ll turn the kitchen into a battlezone and we’ll quaff a few large glasses of vino whilst trying to figure out what I cooked. There will be cards, and maybe flowers (hand-picked if I can find any), copious amounts of candles will be burned and we’ll stay awake until the wee small hours talking about dreams.

Romance is what you make it, thankfully both of us agree that romance doesn’t cost £35 for roses, £50 for dinner nor require any gifts. We love each other every single day of the year, can’t put a price on that.

In other news, today is cake day at work and I’m actually in work on a Friday. Which is nice. I’m over my blip of yesterday (hell I was over it by about 3pm), so expect more from me today.

Right, I’m off to get my cocktail order in…

BTW wee david, I can’t ‘click’ your comments link. The rest of the links on the page work fine. V.odd!

bookmark_borderOutlook 2003 Trackback

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Remember my post a while back concerning some woes I was having with Outlook 2003? Well I may have stumbled across a possible solution. This is complete guess work though so who knows….

The error message I was getting, when Outlook would ‘disappear’ to the notification area (system tray) mentioned Exchange, and look what option is available on the Inbox Properties dialog (right-click your inbox and select Properties to view this) “Automatically generate Microsoft Exchange views”. If like me you are using Outlook to access a POP3 account then you may not need this… as I said, total guess work but has stopped the problem for me. I think that checkbox was forcing Outlook to try and connect to an Exchange server that didn’t exist, and instead of timing out and shutting down it just sat there… stubbornly refusing to quit.

If anyone can prove this works please let me know. I’ve had a few search referrers on this topic, it’d be good to present a solution.

Now, trackbacks. I ‘get’ the theory, but the practise is proving more tricky. Blogger doesn’t come with a Trackback facility so I can’t ‘use’ it easily myself, however anyone wanting to use it to link TO my site is more than welcome. I just wish at least one person would so I could see it working! Go on… please… someone…. anyone…

And finally, Hg says hello, if you are wondering he’s just very busy. No limbs have fallen off (although they might through over work). He’ll be back, but then we all knew that… we are just too good to stay away from!

Crap, forgot to mention this. Hurry hurry!

bookmark_borderRestored?

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Thank you for your kind comments to the previous post (‘for’ the previous post? Hmmm what is the correct term?)

Thankfully, this blog isn’t a chore, I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I think I’ve just been spending a little too much time receiving radiation from a computer screen over the past few weeks.

However that’ll change as tonight (fanfare please!) the third season of 24 starts on Sky One!!! Woo, and most definitely, yay!

Of course I’ve seen the first five episodes already… and as it’s no longer on the BBC I’m guessing the followup show won’t be “Pure 24” but “American’s Worst Dressed Celebrity Police Crashes” (hosted by Kirsty Gallacher – hey I’ve not mentioned her in a while… yup, just checked, she’s still in my Top Ten referrers from Google right in front of David Gallagher… not helping her am I… now what as I saying?). Ohhh yes, Pure 24, the post 24 … errr… chat show? A couple of Y-list celebrities discuss, along with a knowledgeable studio audience, the latest episode. A constant source of “ohh I didn’t think of that” type revelations that made watching the next episode all the more interesting.

Anyway, having seen the first few episodes I can thoroughly recommend that you watch/record this one. Yes it can be far-fetched, but wait until the twists start, and the ‘looks’ (sorry, you need to be a fan to know what that means). Episode 4 or 5 I think is the first “OOOHHHHHH” moment. Well worth it too.

And that’s got me thinking. I’m aware that I should’ve watched Six Feet Under, and West Wing. I don’t like Buffy or Angel. Smallville and Charmed are my wife’s reason to live (and I enjoy Smallville too… ohh ok and Charmed is babe-lific), but what else should we be watching?

Doesn’t have to be American, or even fictitious, we both enjoy Grand Designs for example (did you see it last night, mad they are, mad!!).

So, I’m an alien, just arrived on Earth, I’ve been monitoring a few TV signals and I’m wondering what the best bits are?

Also: Trackbacks enabled. Give em a whirl.
AND: I’ve now got “Calling occupants of interplanetary craft” in my head. Could be worse I guess.

bookmark_borderTemporarily Destroyed

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Hydragenic is on hiatus, as I’m sure most of you will know. I can understand why. Take the time you need mate.

I may be heading the same way. Ohhhh arse, what am I saying. I know fine will this is another ‘off’ day where I can’t be bothered thinking about things long enough to compose something sensible for here… whaddya mean that never stopped me before!

Information overload is an old topic these days, and seems to have faded into the background, but is probably more valid now than it ever has been. Take your surfing habits. Well actually, let’s take mine as I know them better than yours.

I have a start page (hand-crafted in Notepad!) that loads every time I start my browser. I receive ten daily newsletters by email, on a variety of subjects (mainly IT related). I read the Metro on the way into work, and as I have my blogroll(s) loaded into my start page I quickly scan them to see what sites have updated over night (although this doesn’t work for all the sites…)

Over the last month I’ve been easily more active in the ‘comment boxes’ of all of your sites (give or take), and averaged over 120 unique hits a day to my little corner of the interwebnet thingy.

Then I think… ohh better post something to my site.

Since starting the miniblog (over on your right), I’ve made a conscious effot to write better (OK longer) pieces here in the main ‘content section’. I was thinking I’d get back to the roots of why I started this site, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

Evolution is the reason. This site, like it’s owner, has progressed.

Not sure where this is heading, but it’s been bugging me all week.

Pah.

Normal service will resume. Sometime.

bookmark_borderChipped Chariot

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Isn’t thinking up titles a bit of a bind sometimes? I like the Lockergnome approach where they use two random words from the newsletter. Makes it much more fun.

So, a few things to mention.

  1. French MPs back headscarf ban – This is really beginning to irk me. I spotted it last night. What they are actually banning is “overt religious symbols”. This includes “The wearing of Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses and probably Sikh turbans…”. So why are we singling out Muslim headscarves?
  2. The cleaners chipped my mug. Cost me 99p that. Some people have no respect for personal property. Grrrrr.
  3. Someone else got to break the foil seal on the coffee this morning. Damn my wandering mind.
  4. Overheard at the train station, muttered by a ‘close to retirement age’ lady: “Ohh I hate these early trains, I’d much rather have 20 minutes extra in bed”. I thought this changed as you got older? Don’t you old people enjoy getting up at the crack of dawn?
  5. Last night went as planned. No PHP. But I DID start a re-design. AND figured out how to do pull-quotes using CSS.
  6. Jeevan, the Haloscan man has asked me if I wanted to help moderate the forums over there. Being a power hungry empire builder I said yes… when do I get my winged chariot and thunderbolts?

And so my exciting life rumbles on (trundles on?).

The sad thing is that when I noticed that 2. had happened, I mentioned to 3. that I’d be writing about it.

Note to self: acquire a life.

bookmark_borderMotivation

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(Great, now I’ve got that Sum 41 track in my head… hmm quite catchy…)

Tuesday night is Louise’s ‘night out’ with our friend Susan. They go shopping, go to the cinema, or just veg out with facepacks and wine. I’m left at home (thankfully).

I usually have a few items that I want to get done, and spend a few minutes tidying up or doing the dishes before the night is really mine. I really should push on with the PHP thing, I’ve got a re-design to start (for another site: I said I’d have a BETA with them by Christmas last year.. oops), I’ve got episodes of the new Smallville season to watch, about five episodes of the new 24 season to get through, and all of Sopranos season 4 to watch.

I’ve also got a few things needing done to the home PC (finding the device driver that keeps crashing the system), the ‘collectorz’ cataloguing software glares up at me from it’s shortcut on my desktop demanding that I fill it with all my books, CDs, and DVDs. There is a stack of books waiting to be read, not to mention a few ‘kept’ bits from the Sunday papers, and several bookmarked ‘longer’ articles that I’ve been meaning to read for months.

I keep telling myself that I’ll do a little exercising as well, the free weights laugh at me as I stub my toe on them, and the Yoga and Pilates books chuckle quietly to themselves as I moan and groan whilst struggling to bend over far enough to untie my shoelaces.

And what will I do? I’ll plonk myself down in front of the telly, channel surf for a couple of hours, play a little Pro Evolution Soccer on the Playstation before heading up to the PC and surfing randomly for another hour or so.

Before I know it, Louise will be home asking me what I’ve done.

“This and that, nothing much really.”

Such is life.