Imagine my surprise then when I got home only to find my Internet connection was working but all the computer were unable to access the Internet unless they were on wireless. Turns out that my network switch had died at sometime between me leaving the house and the wife getting up. Worse still I did not have a spare network switch, or at least I did not think I had. It suddenly dawned on me while watching TV several hours later that I did have a 4 port network switch, which was older than the one that had died somewhere, yes it was somewhere……….

After searching several cardboard boxes box and storage containers I eventually found said switch sat on a table buried under a load of stuff, can’t remember when I last used it, let alone how it got on the table. So after 20 minutes of rummaging under the desk chasing cables and untying knots (exactly how do those knots get in those cables??) my network of PC’s were talking to the outside world again. I was unable to get a replacement network switch until today so have not been able to print or listen to my music.

I was due to call Virgin media on Friday but I was busy during the day and never got time to. Wednesday the 16th was the last date that Virgin media gave for fixing the problems and to be honest I am not sure if it has been fixed or not. I have not had the freezing web page updates that I was getting, but then it not as fast it has been so waiting till later next week to contact Virgin will give me a better idea if it is fixed or not.

Just hope that I don’t get any more problems with the Internet connection at home, I have had enough over the past few weeks.

So I went to bed knowing that at sometime on Tuesday I would have to install a new operating system on my PC. But as I slept I was unaware that our Virginmedia broadband connection crashed. I can be precise with the timing as the daughter was playing online on her xbox. So Tuesday morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, I was greeted with the words “morning, the internet don’t work” in stereo from my son and wife.

Now fumbling around with a broken Internet connection and a PC that won’t do what you want it to do over your fruit and fibre is not a good start to the day. It soon became apparent that the broadband connection would require a call to Virginmedia, that alone is enough to raise the blood pressure. I decided to phone early as my thought were a) get it sorted and still go out for a bike ride, b) it would be quieter earlier in the day rather than later in the day. So phoning Virginmedia involved one call getting lost in their phone menu system, a second call where I was told I would be on hold for 20 minute and the phone was answered within 30 seconds!! Unfortunately the fix was not as quick as their call answering.

The guy on tech support confirmed that I had no signal (well I knew that I told him) and apparently the problem was due to an on going issue in our area, oh the one I reported in May, the very same problem I have been discussions with Virginmedia’s complaint department!! Apparently the long term fix has now moved out to 16th November but my service should be restored shortly, how shortly I asked, shortly I was told, I hung up and decided to sort my PC.

Now I am fortunate as I have a Virginmedia’s cable broadband connection and a ADSL broadband connection (for work). Now this is where thing got worse, no matter what I did my PC did not want to talk to the ADSL line (needed to download updates etc.), when I did convince my PC to talk to the ADSL line (shortly after the threat to throw it out the window) it was slow.

Then I had to have three attempts to install the new operating system on my PC, I think it was because I still had this illusion that I was going out for a ride and I was rushing as I could see the time ticking away. By 3pm I had given up on the idea of going for a ride and decided to take out my frustration on Virginmedia’s tech support again as my connection was still not working, so I phoned them again.

Oh the joy, an Indian call centre, I had now lost the will to live. The happy young lady from India was not able to help at all, she could see that I had no connection and told me according to her records that I had been given a reconnection time of the 16th November, Pardon? “no sorry sir that should be 9am tomorrow morning, I’m sorry, I read the wrong bit!!”

I hung up and decided to watch afternoon TV, then the strangest thing happened, I was still flicking through the TV channels to find something to watch when I noticed that the lights on the router had come back on indicating there was an Internet connection connection. Now this is strange for just one reason, the last time I phoned Virginmedia tech support with a problem I got put through to the Indian call centre, exactly the same thing happened. They could not help me on the phone but within 5 minutes of putting the phone down the internet service was back up and running. It has been OK since, I say OK as we still have the same problem we have had since May.

The install of the operating system sped up once the PC was connected to the Virginmedia. But it does not matter how quickly you get the software installed on the PC it takes an absolute age to get all the programs and setting how you like it, for example, I have only just got my Google calendar back up and working with Thunderbird e-mail client tonight and there is still other bits to sort out.

I will post about today’s ride and tomorrow ride tomorrow night…………hopefully

What is it with some people think they can be clever and get people to their web site when all they have done is lost the potential of somebody using one of their WordPress themes.

Keep watching a new theme will be up before the end of the year, just got to find a site that does not take you for a ride.

On my way through Worthing yesterday near the hospital on the A27 (I think), saw a car waiting in a side road on my left to pull out and turn right, then when I am no more than 40yds from the junction he pulls out in front of me and then stops as there is traffic coming the other way, not sure how I missed him I just hit the brakes. The ABS came into operation and I stopped just short of ramming his drivers door. I got nothing from the driver apart from a horrified look as he pulled away and disappeared off down the road.

What can be more simple than mounting a cabinet on a the wall?? I marked the wall where I wanted it. I even marked the cabinet to ensure the correct orientation, so can you spot the deliberate mistake in the picture below?

If you still can't see it, look at the label on left hand side of the cabinet!!

Communication companies, why are they so bad at communicating?? Lodged a complaint for the third time on Sunday still waiting for a reply. The auto reply I got said we will be back to you within 5 days (5 days in these modern times is woeful), well today is the fifth day, anyone want to take bets on me getting a reply??

Going for a ride over the Southdowns tomorrow, hopefully I will take my riding legs with me unlike last night ride…..

I woke up early and laid there as it slowly got lighter, I eventually made it down stairs to the kitchen at 6:45 for breakfast and get ready for my ride. While looking through my list of past rides last night I found one I did about 12 months ago, it was one of those Wiggles Rides, it was called “The falling leaves” ride in the New Forest. So after loading up I head off for the New Forest, the original ride started at Brokenhurst but the ride looped round to Burley and that was where I was intending to start. I parked up at the car park near the old railway line to Holmsley.

I was expecting the weather to be a little more sunny based on the weather forecast for Sunday (I really should stop relying on the weather forecast), cloudy and grey was the reality. Thankfully it was still quite warm. The sun did stick it head out a couple of times but it was nothing like the forecast they had given for the weekend.

The ride was pretty straight forward and quiet despite the fact that there was a marathon, half marathon and a triathlon taking place. On one road section (there were several road section which I had forgotten about) I ended up riding with the triathlon guys, most of them said good morning as they shot past me which made a change compared to the roadies that normally ignore me, fortunately I missed the marathon runners. A ride of 25.5 miles in around two and a half hours and best of all no punctures

Cleaning the bike this afternoon I found one of the concaved spacer washer that sits on the bolt holding the front brake calliper on had split, this would explain why the front disc was rubbing from time to time during the ride, thankfully I had a spare.

A few weeks ago I ran out of the degreaser I used for cleaning the chain, in the past I had been buying the Finish Line Citrus degreaser at about £12 for a small bottle. Now while it was good at degreasing it was not what you would call cheap. Then a little birdy told me about Swarfega Oil and Grease Remover, 5 Ltr container for just over £8 which you mix at 50:1 (you do the maths but it is a lot of chain washes!!). Well it certainly cleans the chain and cassette nicely. I got mine from Screw Fix Direct, I will keep you posted on how it goes.

Mr Angry may be about out later this week, for the past couple of months getting online has been nigh on impossible at times. According to Virgin Media this is because (and I quote) you are affected by a local upstream utilisation issue on your chassis (local router) which will cause your speed to slow during busy periods. This basically means there are more users using the system than the system can handle. Now the fix was supposed to have been Friday 23rd but if anything it is worse. I am going to give them a couple more days and if there is no improvement I will complain about the lack service. What really get’s me is that I am being bombarded with e-mails and spam through the letter box from Virgin Media to move up to their 20mb service yet they are unable to deliver the 10mb service they are currently providing me and I am paying for, watch this space.

So having found the cable section after many minutes of searching (think 3inch high labels on the top of the racking), I could not believe what I was seeing a “HP High Performance USB Cable”………………….£54.99 you must be having a giraffe, in fact you are probably having the whole dam safari park!!! How the hell do they have any justification for charging such an insane price for a bit of cable?? It is even more sad to think that somebody will go into PCWorld not knowing any better and come out having purchased (that should read, having been ripped off purchasing) one of these cables.

It goes without saying that I left PCWorld without purchasing any cables from them. As the wife wanted to do some shopping in Tesco, I had a look in their Computer\Techno section and ended up purchasing 3 USB 1.5mtr cables (USB Type A – B, the sort used for connecting a PC to a printers) for £4.99 each.

So there you go, PCWorld the current No1 contender for Rip Off Shop of the year, unless you know different??

Having two mountain bikes with Avid hydraulic brakes, learning how to bleed my own brakes is not only going to be a useful skill to learn but also an investment as I won’t need to pay lbs prices (even though he his prices are very reasonable) to have my brakes bled in future (I hope!!).

The second thing to go my way was the fact that tonight I was able to bleed my rear brake on the Cannondale and get it working properly first time. Now I can insert the wheel without the disc binding on the brake pads, a quick spin up and down the road showed the brake working correctly.

Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow morning, so it will be an afternoon ride hopefully and a normal ride on Sunday (a first two ride weekend for a few weeks).

Something else that went my way this week (just remembered). I have now got Memory map running properly on my new PC. Since moving to the new PC I have not been able to get some maps working correctly. Well after seeking out a bit of help I got this working in the week. Hopefully this good luck streak will keep going (euro lottery hint hint!!)

I am currently sat on the sofa watching Pendulum at Glastonbury on BBC3 and typing on the Laptop, mind you I can’t use the PC as it is in the middle of backing up 235gb of data.

Came a cross this blog site earlier Coastrider 2011, the basics are Bobs has retired and is doing a coastal ride around the UK, 6000 miles in total. More info on the trip can be found here Follow Bob. Have already put a note in my diary for when he goes through Poole.

Only other news is the Bournemouth Cycle Track has opened. Went a long with my camera yesterday which failed to work due to memory card issues and the pictures I took with my phone look like a 3 year old had taken the picture. It was a dull damp day but it was interesting watching the bike goes round and that banking is steeper than you think.

Despite the chain problems yesterday ride was very good, plenty of new areas (to me) were ridden and when it came to the hills I was able to hold my own on most of them, towards the end I was at the back but I was not miles behind. By the time we got back to the starting point my legs were feeling it but I had pedalled 17 miles in a group which meant it was a faster pace than I would of ridden at on my own.

This mornings ride was a normal Sunday Throop loop, unfortunately I was only a mile or so into it when problems struck. The rear brake was rubbing so I stopped to adjust the calliper when I noticed not one but two broken spokes. I can only assume that I broke them on yesterdays ride at some point and failed to notice them when I got home last night. Fortunately the wheel was still running pretty much true so I opted to carry on with the ride and take each part as it came. I avoided as many of the bumps and roots as I could and managed about 75% when I caught the edge of a root with the back wheel which made a lovely twangy noise which had me thinking I had broken another spoke or two, I decided that I won’t push my luck any further and headed for home. So currently both bikes are off the road and little chance to get them sorted until the end of the month.

To continue my theme of breakages, I seemed to have broken my credit card, I had to get some fuel for the company car, I inadvertently gave the cashier my personal credit card rather my company credit card and then wondered why it would not accept the (company credit card) pin number, I only realised when the cashier said because of all the failed attempts my card was now blocked. I phoned the credit card company up and apparently there is a password on my account now since I had the fraud earlier in the year, I don’t remember setting one for being asked for a password and I certainly have not received any notification of one being set to me. Unfortunately they can’t tell me what it is (which is fair enough) or do anything to my account until I give them the password. The only way to get the password changed is to write a letter (as in snail mail) to credit card company and ask them to reset it. Not overly impressed to be honest.

Tomorrow is weigh in night, not to sure what to expect this week, I think I have been good but don’t want to get my hopes up only for the scales to tell a different story………………

Now continuing my infrequent dip into my gallery, here another picture for you

Two kite buggies on an alien planet

There plenty more photos in my gallery (click the link)

Went for a ride last night, not sure how far I went as the gps on the phoned decided it did not want to work (what is it with me and technology lately) but it was in the area of 25 miles. From my house out to Canford Heath, then into Delph Woods and onto the CastlemanTrail, down to Upton House then back up the Castleman Trail to the Willet Arms, down to the river and along the river to Canford School then back up to Canford Heath and then home, just under 2.5 hours quite a good ride really.

Mondays weigh was what I had expected, I really need to get my head straight on my eating, it not so much my main meals but my need to snack and what I choose to snack on is what is hurting me at the moment.

A couple of blog’s ago I mentioned about my ears, well I got to the docs last Thursday and it turns out that one ear is blocked with wax and the other is half blocked. So since last week I have been putting Olive oil in my ears twice a day to soften the wax up ready for an ear syringing this coming Friday, can’t wait to be able to hear properly again.

Now for something rather silly

Thursday the motherboard turned up along with an engineer to fit it, a quick swap over of the disks and everything is working as it should be………………………..er, no. Having got one server back up one of the other servers has a strop and drop one of it three hard disks, fortunately this server only runs background jobs so it has not caused as many problems as the other server.

Friday did not improve with a printer and a laptop dying. The weekend did not bring a change in fortunes as I two of my PC’s at home died one of which was my main PC. Just hope things improve tomorrow when I am back to work.

No riding this weekend, yesterday was a rainy miserable day and today with all my PC problems at home I decided that I had better get it all sorted out. Then in the middle of setting up my e-mail this afternoon I get an e-mail telling me that one of my domain names had expired yesterday, a distraction I could of done without. Still have a fair bit of data to recover from my old PC but I have the basics up and running and I will do the remainder as and when I get time or need it.

Weigh in last week was a small gain and to be honest I am not expecting any improvement tomorrow night, time will tell.

Bad ankle, I have what the doctor called an inflamed tendon in the back of my ankle. If you have ever suffered from tendinitis in your wrist then you know what it is like except mine is in my ankle. I normally take Ibuprofen for it and it is normally gone within 3 or 4 days. Well it started last weekend and eased of during the week until yesterday when I decided I would walk from and to the garage when I took the car in for a service. By the time I got back home last night my ankle was screaming, this did not bode well as I was supposed to be taking the wife to Esher in Surrey on Saturday for a Bead Show. I hobbled around Sainsbury doing the weekly shop (which was quicker as dear son was not with us) and then it was home to rest my ankle.

Before heading off to the bead fair I had to get the Cannondale over to CycleFix to have the crank and bottom bearing removed the bottom bracket faced ready for new bearings. As I was changing to a different type of crank and bearings there was no point in me buying the tools to remove the old bits so I opted for Cycle Fix to do the job. As I was resting my ankle last night I had to remove the chain and pedals from the bike first thing this morning. Getting the bike ready was quite a quick job even under the deep red sky this morning. With the bits removed and the bike locked in the bike rack on the car it was time for breakfast. An hour later we were sat outside the bike shop waiting for them to open so I could drop the bike off and head for Surrey, about a 2hr journey.

We left the shop shortly after 9am and arrived at Sandown Race course just on 11am. Parking in the car park I was faced with a stiff uphill walk to the main entrance and every step hurt like hell. Now you may be wondering why I am going to a bead show, it is simple. I have dragged the wife around to various days out in the past where she has had little interest but has duly come along. Well now it was my turn, the wife is interested in beaded jewellery and it was my duty to ensure that she attended this show, that not quite how the wife worded it to me, unfortunately I can’t repeat what she said to me for fear of this blog being censored…….

After resting my ankle for a few minutes I was able to walk around the show reasonably comfortably, neither of us had ever been to one of these show so were were not sure what to expect, I guess there must have been around 50 stalls, many of them selling the same as each other but several with some unique beads. I did what many other husbands were doing just walking past the stalls scanning the contents and then standing back and letting the wife’s do the closer inspections. After one tour round the hall we had refreshment in the cafeteria, the wife announced that she only wanted to go back to two stalls to purchase some beads which I thought was pretty good as I was considering staying in the cafeteria while the wife went around the hall again on her own. Having purchased the beads we headed for the car and lunch before we headed off to the next part of the day.

Being close to Guildford we decided to pop into Evans Cycle store just to be nosey, I have to admit I was little disappointed. The store was nice and clean, but the staff outnumbered the customers and while it was big store it seemed empty, there were plenty of bikes but the accessories side of things was very scant. We only spent a few minutes in the store and then left without buying anything (not that I had intended to).

We now took a leisurely drive home via CycleFix to collect the Cannondale and boy was he busy in the shop, I have never seen so many bikes in the shop (all repairs, he does not sale bikes), apparently the good weather has got everybody thinking about riding their bikes.

Back home I had time for a cup of tea before we were back out again to visit one of my nieces poorly computer. Said computers is currently on its second virus scan having already removed a handful of nasties.

So no ride today hopefully going out tomorrow, ankle permitting

I went to bed last night unsure if I was going to go for a ride today, forecast was rainy showers. When I got up this morning it was raining so I had breakfast. As the rest of the house started to rise at 9am I noticed sunshine, a quick check outside revealed no rain, sunshine but a bit cooler than yesterday.

Quickly changing into my cycle gear I was soon off down the road, decided to ride the Throop loop but in reverse today as this would give me the option to explore Parley Common and find a new route (which I did). The overnight rain had made the trails all slippery again after they had dried out from the sunshine and wind of the past week. I must have enjoyed myself as I soon found myself heading for home.

Suitably covered in mud (I had forgotten how dirty naked legs get when riding through mud), a bath was the first task when I got in. The wife kindly offered to run the bath for me so while the bath filled with water I took the opportunity to check my e-mails. I had an e-mail from my credit card company thanking me for changing my password, er I had not changed anything. A quick phone call revealed that somebody had tried to scam my credit card for £699 about 20 minutes after I left for my ride this morning, fortunately it was blocked. In short my card has now been blocked and I have to wait 7 to 10 days for a new one. Tomorrow I have to phone several parties to inform they should not try and charge anything to credit card until I get the new card and can give them the new card details. I then need to speak to the credit card company to find out how there added level of security that they insist I use was so easily breached and why I was not informed (other than an auto generated e-mail).

I will be posting more about this in the coming days including where I think they may have got hold of my credit details from, I need to ask some question first.

After sitting down to watch England struggle to a win over Scotland in the rugby this afternoon, I then had to continue working on sorting out why the wife could not login into her blog, started this Friday night and eventually resolved it about 20 minutes ago. Now I have a computer to rebuild (unrelated to the above) just another job on my to do list!!

It is very easy for us to sit back and say it happens but after mother nature wreaked her havoc in Japan on Friday it can be difficult for us to comprehend the damage done. Have a look at the link from the BBC News site, it show aerial pictures of before and now of areas of devastation, I think the first couple show the devastation the most, you can see the before where all the house are, then look at the after and there is nothing.

Prior to going to the dentist the network at work went awol so not only could nobody at work do anything (11 sites across the UK) I was unable to do anything from home either. Support company did not help when they turned round and said they could login OK. Eventually the network turned up for work, even now we are still scratching our heads wondering where it went. The afternoon bubbled along with the usual IT related problems.

Tuesday, more IT problems one followed the other and more lack of support from a support company (different company than the one mentioned earlier). I had to phone them after waiting 4 hours after the problem was reported and the problem was resolved in 2 minutes.

Wednesday and my early morning departure for head office in Worcestershire, traffic was horrible so I was 15 minutes later arriving than normal. A simple 10 minute job took over an hours to do. Some parts I ordered arrived looking like bits for a jigsaw puzzle. About 30 minutes before I leave, all hell let rip, the payroll PC spat it dummy out and I had to sent a file off to support but it refused to be copied so the 2 minute copy and e-mail turned into a 30 minutes battle of wills. Then two printers decided they did not like printing and somebody asked why his e-mail with 25mb attachment was not arriving despite sending it 5 times, oh the joys of IT.

This morning as I was working from home I decided to have a bit of a lie in, as I dozed in bed I was rudely awoken by my works mobile phones being thrust in my face, our Northampton branch could not login. Further phone calls revealed that it total 5 branches could not login after our network supplier had a major outage.

This was followed by more fun and games with the non-printing printers, a request from a manager to set-up there department now on a new system who was too busy to give me the required information 6 months ago when we installed the system.

Not to sure I want to get out of bed tomorrow…………….

Monday was weigh-in night and my 3 week losing streak came to an end, 1lb on. I was not surprised as there had been some major troughing over the weekend. This week to date has been pretty good, but the weekdays normally are, it is the weekends that it all falls apart.

I does not look like I will be going on the ride with Rafe and the MBS crew this Saturday, rain and high winds on the top of a hill is not my idea of fun. In fact the weather is looking better at home so I think it will be a early morning local ride and then back home ready to watch the second match in the six nations rugby.

Finally, the new post notification that should appear on facebook when I post a new blog is not working at the moment, it should work but it does not, ho knows why………………

Working from home this morning my mobile phone did not stop ringing, in between phone calls my daughter came down stairs complaining her laptop would not start and said it was in repair mode, I carried on working not really taking a lot of notice until she came back an hour later complaining that her laptop was still stuck in repair mode. I told her to go and get the laptop, when she brought it downstairs she was right, it was stuck in repair mode (it said so on the screen) and seemed to be doing nothing. Rebooting the laptop (via the on off button) did not seem to do anything accept return the laptop to repair mode, leaving it running it sat there forlornly claiming it was in repair mode until suddenly the screen changed and offered me several diagnostic choices. By now I was suspecting the hard disk to be at fault so I ran the check file system option. 4 hours later and still at only 7% of the disk checked and now the hard disk was making noise more akin to an angle grinder. I decided that the laptop was going back to the shop, it was after all only two weeks old (father-in-law bought for the daughter after her previous laptop died). A quick call to consumer direct confirmed we were within our rights to return the laptop and ask for a replacement. I phoned up the store which went through to their head office to see what their take on it was and lady on the phone said there was no problem just take it back and they will exchange.

So we headed to PCWorld (not my choice where to buy it) which was a change from Friday night it must be Sainsburys. Now the local PCWorld is one of these super mega stores it used to be a separate Currys and PCWorld but now it one extra large super mega store merged into one store. The girl on the door saw us walk carrying the laptop box and said customer service is over there sir, were we that obvious?

At the desk the young girl listened as I told her the problem, turned the laptop on, tapped away on the keyboard in the hope of something happening and it did, the hard disk started to make a horrible grating noise. The girl expression was enough for a two year old to read, it should not make that noise. Then she said those magic word, ok sir I will get you another one. She then wandered onto the shop floor and returned a minute later with a new laptop and that was it, far less painful than I had expected.

So instead of doing all those things I had planned to do tonight, I am sat here installing the software onto the laptop for my daughter. I want to get in finished, I want to plan tomorrows ride.

My Mini ITX PC (mine has a black DVD writer fitted)

After a disturb night sleep I eventually got up at 7.30am as I had to take the daughter to work (no buses), I decided to turn my pc on and see what would happen, to my surprise it started up perfectly without any sign of the problems it had been displaying last night. It has now been running for 12 hours without a problem so I am leaving well alone for the time being, which is just as well as I found nothing in the local sales that I would want to purchase.

So I will have to be a bit more careful what I say about the old year in future, at least that more likely than the wife’s explanation of the events of last night, “the PC is like its owner, can’t handle alcohol”!!

Having got my bike sorted out yesterday I went for another ride this morning, I decided to do the other half of the ride I did not do yesterday which meant going over the local heath again and then I added a little urban\nature reserve route on to the ride to push the mileage count up. It was not a bad ride, plenty of mud. Will probably do my normal Throop loop tomorrow morning.

The one thing I can’t get on with on a laptop is the mouse or should I say synaptic touchpad or a nipple (who came up with that name, a frustrated geek??). My work laptop (Lenovo) only has a nipple so I have a wireless mini mouse I use with it, but this laptop has a touchpad which I can just about put up with I have to, it normally sits on my desk next to my PC (my work laptop and a scanner also live on the desk as well) there is not enough room on my desk for another mouse. I have tried using a roller ball but I found a lack of feeling from them and soon gave up. When it come to a mouse I believe it is worth spending the money to buy a decent named mouse (shop around the price vary greatly). I have tried many different manufacturers of mice at work but with the exception of a couple of manufacturer I always end up going back to either Logitech or Microsoft, simply the quality of the cheaper mice is not there (hence the reason they are cheap). Desktop keyboards are pretty much the same, cheap keyboard will last as little as a couple of weeks in an office environment before either the keys fail of the letters rub off the keys. My desktop PC is sporting an old heavy duty Dell keyboard which I believe is around 7 or 8 years old.

Of course the other option for a computer at home is to use a tablet PC with a touch screen, now everybody idea of a tablet PC will be the iPad. While it is a nice piece of kit, it also way over priced as much of Apple’s kit is. I can’y justify £450 to £650 just to be able to sit of the sofa and surf the net. There are plenty of other manufacturer offering iPad like devices but judging by some of the reviews the quality is a little suspect. Like the Smartphone, this market will mature in the next 24 months with prices falling and a large range of devices available.

OK I have waffled enough for the sake of waffling, I’m out of here

Right I am all for free stuff but lets be honest a lot of the free stuff now a day is just naff. Well take a look at Sintel and download the video. There is a huge choice from 120mb right up to 500+mb for the HD version. It is only a short film but it has been made using completely free software that many hundreds of people have contributed to designing and then programming. Then using this free software they produce a quality piece of animation. This is why I like Linux and all that it stand for (anyone geeky enough to be reading this please don’t starting preaching to me about Linux, gpl and fos, I am talking to the unconverted here and I don’t intend to confuse or scare them off).

Tomorrow the car is in for a service, lets hope they do better than the four day it took for the last service. Then it is of to Southampton in the roller skate (as my kids call them, small hatchback type car) I get as a courtesy car for the day, bet it will have no fuel in like every other car I have had from them. I have to collect one of those basic all in one printer, scanner copier things that refuse to work from the local branch. Then all I have to do is get it to work oh the joy, at least it is Friday.

Finally well done to the Chile for the rescue of the trapped miners, 2 months ago very few people gave the miner a chance of being alive let alone a chance of getting all 33 out alive after so long.

So I shall spend the weekend changing password here there and every where and checking log files for any trace of forced entry, oh the joy!!

On a happier note, I think my back is well enough to get back in the saddle this weekend although the weather tomorrow is not particularly inviting, I think I will wait and see what tomorrow morning is like weather wise before committing myself. Sunday is the better day so if I don’t ride tomorrow then I certainly will Sunday. If I ride tomorrow, Sundays ride will depend on how my back feels after Saturday ride.

Finally thanks to all those that have subscribed, nice to know I make interesting reading!! If you want to subscribe the subscribe button is under the calendar

No cycling this weekend, my back is still painful and I have a couple of rides I want to do at the beginning and end of October so I am staying out of the saddle this weekend in an attempt to let it heal and not aggravate it any further. If it no better in a couple of weeks I will see the doctors, I have a doctors appointment already for blood test results so I will bring it up then.

Not a lot more to say at the moment apart from the fact I hate Windows XP and Wireless networking but that is another story for another day

Part2 21:35 update

Well since Thursday I have been trying to sort out a PC for the daughter, I guess it is about 5 year old, a Dell running Windows XP. We had to install Windows XP 3 times as the first two attempts went awry with a problem with Internet Explorer, I narrowed this down to a problem with the IE8 update, so on the third install we did not install IE8, (daughter will be using either Firefox or Goggle Chrome anyway). Once we had it up and running then we could not get the wireless to work, we had a choice of three working devices, two USB adaptors or a PCI card based wireless card. The two USB would find the network but refused to aquire an IP address. With the PCI card, Windows XP refused to even see the card, after much hair pulling I have just got it working. Not sure what I did to get it to work but at this late stage thankful it is working.