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It was another trip out on a weekend to sort out the rest of some computing stuff for accountant. Just a few sticks of ram there, a few installs here, a good shake of a toner cartridge, clean up the soot, and all was good.
Afterwards, The Stig and I went to a Japanese restaurant shouted by mentioned accountant and we had nice sashimi and what was the best green tea I have tasted so far in my life. Then we took to Regents Park, where yours truely pulled an unorthadox move to park the car and we went to eat ice cream and leer at the monkeys at the zoo.
I look like a panda, which means I’ve not been getting much sleep. With all the rushing around and pulling 7, 8, 9 hour shifts straight with no breaks fixing and twiddling computers, it can get a bit tiring. On another note: today Kimi won the grand prix, W00T! We love Kimi!
We being me and the bears 
So here I am, with only three and a half hours sleep, in a office with my brother sorting out those same computers and the network. Sage, an accounting package needs to be installed . . . from scratch, that means version seven through to eleven, that’s around ten discs, with a reboot after each one. For version eleven to work it needs every previous version and update, and no you can’t use older versions as version eleven allows you to create files and accounts for the years 2005/2006, version ten only lets you go up to 2004/2005 and so on backwards.
Guess what? The main disc of version ten is missing. To top it all off I look online and see that paying for the upgrade and buying the latest version itself costs the same. BaH!
We finally finished 7 hours later, we left some instructions, but creating some clearer documentation wouldn’t hurt. Oh, and I’m more than poofed.
My brother and I just got back home at about half past midnight. Tiring didn’t even explain it. We’ve spent 8 hours straight just putting a couple of computers straight: tidying things, removing things, putting things in, cleaning things. Finally the system that was up was good, we left with just a few things to nit pick another day. Including yesterdays nine hour shift, I’m poofed!
I’m am so poofed*! Getting up quite early this morning, I spent the early morning cleaning up files on my Mac.
Then afterwards, rushing breakfast with my brother, we braved indigestion and headed towards London a bit.
The weather was cruel today, 29C at least, no wind, not even a fart. We plodded up a few flights of stairs to the office we were to work in for the day; the office situated on the top 5th floor. I didn’t know what to think, granted physics tells us heat rises so it was a good several degrees even higher in there, but no air conditioning?!
We did have a fan, you had to stick water in and it’ll take that and spit it back out at you.
To top it all off, there was the Packard Bell which had caused us much grief last time. This time it was tempermental, disliked the hardware we added on, cried when we changed it’s broken floppy drive, and finally when we introduced it to it’s new network card, it gave us the silent treatment; it would hang everytime it booted up. Seven hours later, having tried everything possible we could think of, we decided to take out the hard disk and put it in a small unused HP sitting in the corner.
The HP, so happy to be recognised and used, did everything quickly and efficiently, surprising since it’s ram was upgraded from 32MB to 96MB that day. Finally, the crunch test came: would it hang? Nope, it did not, it even installed all 42 upgrades for the Windows ME it holds. I can hear groans from my readers, never fear, it is only temporary, Windows XP will be installed in it’s place later. What’s that? Even more groans? Shaddap!
By the time we got home it was 9.30pm, we were tired, but more importantly we knew a few things: We no longer dislike Windows ME – we hate it; we hate Packard Bell; we will be happy to take an axe to the Packard Bell.
* Poofed – one who is really tired.
I’m stuffed! Quite literally; toasties with a cheese and tomato topping, smoked salmon and sided with roasted yellow peppers and red onions in herbs. But as they say, there’s no rest for the wicked and I am scheduled to be out later this evening to go upgrade some computers. Meanwhile, my brother has managed in his haste to break Herman the Dinosaur’s front teeth. That’s right, the top panel for smaller removable storages is out and one of the clips is broken. Right now there’s a business card in front to try and cover the gap a bit. There’s only one thing for it, replace the panel, or maybe two things for it, buy one of those 7-in-1 / 13-in-1 / 300-in-1 card readers. The choice is still undecided.
Herman has proved himself quite a noisey animal, although there is a glitch currently with one of the drivers, that’ll have to be tracked down. So far haven’t played very awe inspiring games, that is unless you’re an AOE fanatic. Still waiting for parts from eBuyer who are doing everything wrong. The second order arrived today, and they have more than exceeded their last mistake in that part of the order was missing – it’s beyond genius.
Other things that have been happening include: Coffee Bean getting a huge appetite followed by diarrhoea; Mr Fishy died a sudden death (methinks the culprit was amonia); and I harvested and ate Mr Cucumber (very nice).
I am really liking that CPU fan on Herman the Dinosaur, it keeps it at a neat temp of 38C at 100% load! Impressive! The case is black and manly looking, but I guess what else would you get from a Dinonsaur called Herman. He has Win XP 32bit and Win 64bit installed, just trying to figure whether there are some advantages of one being better than the other at the current technological climate, after all the 64bit only came out earlier this year. Being a windows machine, I was scouring for anti-virus for little Hermy and I found Avast, it is Win X64 compatible … fingers crossed.
All in all a rather uneventful day, I have been reading a lot of eBooks recently, I suddenly remembered my love of reading. Ahhh, the good old days, when the librarian allowed me to borrow up to a maximum of 25 books at a time, I am a real book worm, I eat books for tea you know – hiccup!
I have spent the last 2 days waiting for this huge eBuyer order I made. I am currently extending my services with my brother in upgrading and sorting out an accountants’ small business computers and network, as well as two home computers and network. Feeling positive, I made orders on eBuyer and waited … and waited … and waited. It seems, that eBuyer are back to their original business schedule, that’s right ladies and gentlemen:
If I was eBuyer, I would be patting myself on the back and calling myself genius, but I’m not, I’m a young sleep deprived, breakfast deprived, young woman who has been made to sit indoors for temperamental deliveries. I’ve survived the 80s, I’ve read about Emily Pankhurst, I know who the Power Rangers are and I have very little patience. Fear Me!
It’s a sunny hot day, 26C, north westerly winds blowing at a minor 4mph. It’s been a very tiring morning. Slept very little as Coffee Bean spent yesterday and last night expelling eggs, huge ones in fact, it made me hugely guilty. She has been in such good health, I couldn’t believe the numbers that were coming out. It is definately time to move her into a new home that will have to be custom-built. Yours truely, suddenly gripped with what can be described as ‘emergency maternal instinct’ spent the night in the living room finalising the plans I have been drawing up for 3 months for turtley’s new home and checking up on her and making sure she was ok. We both finally got some sleep after 2am but I awoke at 5am to check on her, turned her light off and gave her the privacy she needed.
On another subject, my ‘to-do’ list is growing and I could do with a decent secretary. My lunch today consisted of a bowl of wheatabix with goats milk (the milk is an acquired taste). Considering that this was my first bowl of cereal in over a year, it shows how tired I am.
