Ill again, so working from home today. Managed to screw up the HD in my laptop so bit the bullet and decided to install Linux instead of XP. Given that I’m being forced to switch from FreeBSD to Linux at work, I ought to try to get used to it. Seems to work OK so far.
Microwave has died :(
My replacement charger from Lumicycle arrived intact today despite the postman delivering the box through an opening that was slightly too small. The batteries are now on charge and I might attempt a ride about 6pm tonight.
A new charger should be on it’s way to me tonight. I can hopefully then get back to riding to work instead of walking.
Lumicycle are currently refusing to replace my failed charger under warranty as the case is cracked, partly due to having to open it when it failed so I could test the fuses. Apparently 4 months is an acceptable lifespan for a £40 charger.
Pace are due to release their new RC40XCFR fork soon. It all sounds very nice, with adjustable 100-130mm travel, open oil-bath damping, oil-impregnated foam washers (a-la Fox forx), pimpy carbon lowers, launch-control, etc. But one thing still worries me and will stop me from considering buying them.
The problem is that they say Pace on them. I’ve heard too many stories of Pace forks needing to go back to the factory to be resuscitated to risk buying them. Even my original RC-35s had to go back to be repaired, and there was hardly anything that could go wrong with them. Maybe I’ll change my mind in 12 months, but Pace really need to improve their perceived reliability to make these a credible fork.
5-0
’nuff said.
I’ve been testing a mail filtering system to sit in front of our Exchange servers, this runs on FreeBSD and costs the princely sum of 0p for the software. Someone then decides that they don’t like FreeBSD because of the name and so we have to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux at a cost of approx £670, which is about 3 times more than we pay for Windows 2003 Server.
There is also the minor issue that no-one here can support Linux sufficiently well that I’d be happy running it on a production server, where as I have five years experience with FreeBSD. So the project is being delayed by 6 months while I get comfortable with Linux, and will cost far far more than something I could implement and support today.
Went for a late spin on the Stiffee tonight, got absolutely covered in mud and slid sideways down most of one descent.
Got home and went to put the battery for my Lumi’s on charge, only to find that the charger has died. That’ll put a stop to my nocturnal excursions for a week or so.
Currently our finance department seem to be doing their utmost to fuck everything up. There is a total freeze on orders, so they have been refusing to process orders for such essential items as envelopes, printer consumables, blank cd-r media, software licences etc. We have another 2.5 months of this to go yet. How do they expect people to print and send out appointment letters, back up their work, remain legal with software etc? We ordered reflective safety jackets for use in the dark afternoons over the winter, at the going rate they will arrive in time for the summer. Several of my projects have been delayed by months because of them taking anything up to 4 weeks to process an order, and that was before the current freeze when things were meant to be running normally. Expensive kit is sat idle because they haven’t renewed a support contract, or they delayed the order for the necessary software.
I have never in my life come across a more incompetent, unhelpful, and downright obstructive group of people. Although Richard Grainger seems to be running them close with his complete lack of communication over the new LSPs.
And people wonder the NHS is completely screwed up.
BPI has forced CD-WOW to stop parallel importing of CDs, therefore forcing CD-WOW to raise it’s prices by £2 per CD to £10.99
Henceforth I won’t be buying any CDs from CD-WOW due to the greed of the BPI. If they manage to convince Play.com to do the same thing I’ll probably stop buying CDs altogether and just download them from the internet.
I decided to upgrade SpamAssassin to the current version earlier, something I have done on many occasions. Although this time the developers seem to have introduced an unannounced dependency on Perl 5.8, and consequently it took a violent dislike to my current installation of Perl 5.005 and refused to run, which had the knock-on effect of killing amavisd-new and leaving all my mail floating around in limbo.
This means a quick 2 minute upgrade has taken over an hour so far and it’s still broken.
A messy game tonight. I couldn’t hit a cows arse with the proverbial shovel, and I still wasn’t bottom score as Rob and John were even worse. Somehow we overcame our ineptitude and managed to win 5-3. Not quite sure how that happened.
Anyway, Housing Admin took 8 points, and Porters took 3.
We remain undefeated this year.
A nice sunny, dry weekend for a change.
Went for a spin on the Craftworks yesterday, it feels very very heavy after riding the cross bike and the Stiffee for a few days. Nice fun offroad though. The woods down the hill were very slippery, I fell victim to wet off-camber roots a couple of times, but managed not to damage myself too much.
Today we rode from Timsbury out to Chew Valley Lake and back on the cross bikes. A round trip of 27 miles, with a stop for tea and cakes. The only thing that marred the ride was snapping a spoke on the way back.
Once home my main PC decided to die, although I think I’ve managed to resuccitate it now with some careful tweaking, and the application of percussive maintenance.
Time to repair a flat tyre on the Stiffee and use it for commuting duty for a day or two until I can pick up a new spoke and un-wonk the rear wheel on the cross bike.
It’s finally been officially confirmed, the Pixies are reforming for a US tour. I wonder if they’ll head over here as well?
Back on home territory tonight. Well, home territory for me anyway. We managed to continue our unbeaten run for the year with another good win.
3 spares helped us to win the match 5-1, and by a clear 20 pins.
Porters took 1 point, Housing Admin took 8.
There is a new advert floating around on the TV at the moment threatening you with instant death1 if you fail to tax your car on time. At the end of the advert it pops up a message in a retro ZX Spectrum style font, part of which says “dvla.gov.uk”.
What is that meant to refer to? It’s not an email address, it’s not a web site (there is no host dvla.gov.uk), and they don’t appear to have renamed the DVLA in a fit of e-moneywasting, so why put it in the advert at all?
My guess is that it’s just a desire to look e-literate which has lead them to show themselves as clueless e-fuckwits.
1: OK it’s an 80 quid fine rather than instant death, but you get my point.
No riding this weekend. I was too busy yesterday, and the weather has been too bad today. It’s been alternating between blue skies, and then thunder, lightning, gale force winds, torrential rain, and hailstones the size of large marbles. Not really the sort of weather to be riding in. I had to settle instead for picking up a new cycle computer in the LBS yesterday as my old one didn’t fit on the cross bike, and a nice shiny new Surly hipflask.
Today was spent completing Project Gotham Racing 2 KWS, then working on improving my results and getting better medals.
It’s raining when I leave for work, and miraculously stops just as I get to the office. Now that it’s almost time to leave, it’s started raining again.
The weather is out to get me today.
The BPI are seemingly doing their best to kill off the record industry in the UK. As previously mentioned they are taking CD-Wow to court for selling CDs from abroad cheaper than you can buy them here. They are also targetting Play, and are investigating Amazon (US). The last one strikes me as even more bizzarre, as they are investigating a US company, not the UK arm which only sells UK CDs, in effect they want to stop us buying CDs from anywhere but a UK shop.
Maybe they should spend their time working out why it costs around £12 to buy a CD on the high street here, yet the same CD can be bought from abroad and shipped halfway around the world for around £8.
If they succeed in cutting off the supply of cheap CDs, they will only kill off their own market. Personally I refuse to pay the inflated prices we get charged over here, and will just stop buying CDs at all and resort to downloading them from the internet. The end result is that the record companies will then get no money whatsoever from my.
I already refuse to buy copy-protected CD’s, something which the Belgians seem to have right idea about.
The much rumoured iPod Mini has finally been announced. Rumours had been flying around that it would hold 2GB of music, and cost $99. If that had been the case I’d have bought one straight away.
In reality it will hold 4GB of music (good), but cost $249 (bad). Compare that with the announcement that the base iPod will increase from 10GB to 15GB and remain at the same $299 price, and I think Apple have killed most of the market for the iPod Mini even before it’s released.
The only people who will buy one now are the fashion conscious muppets with money to waste who want something to match their latest handbag.
I’m cold, wet, tired, and muddy. I haven’t had so much fun for ages. Night rides are great.
Popped into the LBS on the way home to pick up a new base layer, ended up leaving with a set of Salsa Bell Lap bars for the crossbike.
Time to play with my Stiffee I think.
I seems like an age had passed since we played the first match of this pair. Was Christmas really that long ago?
It was a somewhat scrappy game, which wasn’t reflected in the final result. Housing won 5 legs to 2 with a clear 45 pin advantage at the end of the night.
Housing Admin took 8 points, Treasurers made do with 2.
Getting to work and realising that your lights are still attached to another bike.
Arse.
Lazy day today, woke up late, spent a few hours in town shopping, then about 6:30 finally got enough energy together to head out on the bike. Took the Stiffee for a change and headed out round the university. Riding across the top was interesting as it was quite foggy, making it somewhat difficult to work out where the track was going, and even harder to spot the slippery muddy patches. However it was a fun ride, and nice to get back out on proper off-road tracks again.
Next ride is planned for Tuesday, weather permitting.
We finally had some snow today. Admittedly it didn’t settle on the ground, and was gone by 11am, but at least it was snow.
Most of the day was spent (or wasted depending on your point of view) playing PGR2 again. I started a quick game after lunch, and finally stopped at 7pm. Oops.
As usual the new year started with a hangover. I was meant to be going riding at 10am, but that plan was thwarted when Ian left his shoes at home. We rescheduled for 2pm which was probably a wise idea given my fragile state at the time. I spent the time hacking my XBox instead, it’s now fully sorted and working properly. Shame it’s about 5mm too big to fit in the space in my AV rack. Time for a rethink.
Ian managed to break the habit of a lifetime and turned up 30minutes early. We eventually headed out and did a nice gentle 21mile ride to Avoncliff and back along the canal. It did clear the hangover nicely though.
Same shit, different year.