Life in the Bus Lane

Let’s see if it’s any good or not, if so it might replace w.bloggar as my client of choice. 

Bike Biz: Cane Creek puts stop to FSA Aheadset manufacture

Since my MOT last year I’ve driven 1363 miles, and ridden 1963 miles.

Not bad going really.

The car has gone in for it’s annual service and MOT today. Any guesses as to how broke I’m going to be by 5pm?

Apparently there was 40mm of rain at camp yesterday, which explains why I had to get towed out of the mudfest which used to be the car park at the end of the day.

Pictures from Father.

Peter Duncan, Chief Scout, at Ton of Fun camp, Woodhouse Park, May 2007.

Ethan who’s five today. Not that he’ll be able to read this unless Granddad or someone gets the computer out later.

After a shit day at work, it’s nice to be able to sit in the garden with the laptop catching up on emails whilst drinking an ice-cold can of Stella.

No riding tonight because my legs are aching a bit, partly from last nights ride, and partly from riding the fixie a bit more and using my legs as brakes. Hopefully I’ll ride up to Ethans birthday party (part one) tomorrow, unless I decide to take the camera kit.

Tonight was the first work ride of the year, although only two of us actually made it out. We did a gentle trip round the usual Uni route, mostly slowed down by my choice of gearing. After the descent back down into the valley we stopped off at the pub for a criminally expensive pint of Stella, although the "sightseeing" sort of made up for it.

Following a quick post-ride spannering session, the Unit is now back running 31:16 despite the best endeavours of the chain to stop it working. With the chain as it was I couldn’tget it taught enough,but after taking a link out I could only just squeeze the wheel back in again.

I came downstairs this morning and found that the back tyre on the Langster was completely flat. So that’s three tyre changes and three subsquent punctures this weekend.

Just to make things worse, Hobbes decided to use my bedroom carpet as a litter tray at 2am this morning. As you can imagine, I was not impressed.

The Langster is now sporting a set of Vittoria Open Pave tyres to bring a bit of colour into it. Just to follow on from yesterdays efforts I had to replace a tube just after pumping one of the tyres up after it split where the valve is fitted. I’m not really in the mood for a ride at the moment, so it’ll probably get a test ride later in the week.

A photo supplied by Alex.

The earlier sporadic rain went away leaving a nice sunny afternoon. I eventually headed out for a quick spin in the sun round the usual Uni route armed with a mp3 player loaded with Circle Jerks and Adrenalin O.D.. The trails were mostly empty but unfortunately it was very windy. I didn’t even stop to drink my mid ride beer partly due to the wind, and partly due to a few people hanging round my usual stopping off point admiring the view.

12 miles on the newly reshod Unit in the end, I might convert it back to 32:16 soon, not because the hills are getting easier, but because 32:18 is getting annoying on the flat bits.

The Unit now has a replacement rear tyre fitted after speedy service from Merlin. Strangely the tube which lasted the 4 mile ride home after ripping the sidewall managed to acquire a puncture while the bike was sat out the back, so I ended up refitting everything twice. The bike looks slightly odd now with a thin patina of mud everywhere except the back wheel.

The weather is now taunting me, warm sunshine interspersed with rain showers, probably because I’ve just hung my washing out to dry.

Hobbes has just completed the double-whammy of being sick on the landing, then doing the most revolting, disgusting, repulsive festering liquid poo imaginable under my computer desk. He’s now living on borrowed time.

At long last the 2GB of funky looking Corsair DDR2 XMS2 memory arrived and has been rapidly installed into the new PC. I’d be lying if I said I’d noticed a difference, but then I’ve not cranked Photoshop up yet.

As of the early hours of this morning, Ethan now has a baby sister. Name to follow when Alex and Jo can actually agree on it, although no doubt Father will still refer to her as Gladys Maude.

Officially she’s now know as Evie Rose Ellen Wood, although the birth certificate might say Evelyn.

I had intended to be out on the bike today by 4:30, however did to a minor virus outbreak I didn’t actually get around to leaving work until 5:30 which cocked things up a bit.

I eventually headed out at 6:00, 45 minutes later I’d climbed out of the valley, headed across the top, and was just finishing the second short off-road section when I noticed things felt a bit odd, the back wheel felt "lumpy". Closer inspection revealed a 3cm rip in the sidewall of the tyre, and worryingly large amounts of innertube bulging out.

Sensibly I cut the ride short at that point and crawled home slowly incase of a sudden blowout. Whats really annoying is that I did all the climbing, and didn’t even get to ride the proper off-road bits.

Time to go shopping for a new tyre.

CityLink First Clas? I assume that means "we’ve sent it via normal post, but our online tracking system is crap".

Having got the new PC up and running, then migrating the web and mailservers, I decided to start the build of the NAS box tonight. I removed the existing HDs, and popped the three larger spares in, all went reasonably smoothly. First of all I tried to install Ubuntu server only to find that the machine hangs completely after loading the kernel. I then went for FreeNAS, however that causes the machine to reboot as soon as it starts to boot from the CD. I’m now resorting to installing a copy of XP instead.

I’ve moved all the mail stuff over as well now, hopefully I’ve not forgotten anything. In the process of moving the websites I finally retired cam.dynamite.org, the camera hadn’t pointed at anything exciting for years so it didn’t seem worth the effort of reconfiguring it.

Tonights geekery was powered by Adnams Explorer, and Old Speckled Hen.

Today I decided to start the replacement of my web/mail server. The main reason was that it was running a rather old copy of FreeBSD, and upgrading to a recent release wasn’t going to be an easy task, so migrating onto new hardware seemed the obvious choice. Initially I installed FreeBSD 6.2, but then had a change of heart and went with Ubuntu server. Good though FreeBSD is, Linux is rather more ubiquitous these days.

After a few hours fettling I’ve now moved all the websites across to the new server, the mail side of things will follow in due course once I’ve worked out how to migrate the mailman powered mailing lists.

On Tuesday I got home to find two non-delivery notes from TNT, one telling me a parcel had been taken back to the depot, and another saying there was a parcel with a neighbour. As I was only expecting one parcel I naturally assumed that the second note superceded the first, and therefore dutifully ignored it.

Today I got home and found an answerphone message from TNT saying they still had a parcel for me, I assumed they’d cocked up the paperwork because of the two non-delivery notes, and rang them to say so. After speaking to several different people, they couldn’t actually work out why anyone had rung me, however they insisted they still had a parcel for me. At this point I realised that the Dell speakers I didn’t really want anyway hadn’t actually been delivered. After protracted negotiations, TNT said they’d redeliver the remaining package tomorrow, all well and good.

However I then headed out to Sainsburys, and on my way saw my neighbour who promptly handed me the parcel containing the missing speakers.

I’ve no idea what TNT think they are delivering tomorrow, and I’ve got even less idea why they sent the PC and speakers out on seperate deliveries on Tuesday.

I’ve now swapped over to the new Dell PC full time and taken the 320GB HD from the old PC across. I had a slight problem in that the only SATA cable I had spare wouldn’t let me close the case, luckily my brother had a spare one with a 90^o connector which fitted perfectly. I’m sure I’ll keep finding software that I’ve not installed, and I’ve not connected up the printer or scanner yet, but so far it’s working very nicely. I’ve also ordered another 2GB of RAM for it which should hopefully arrive early next week, a bit of a luxury rather than a necessity. This 2GB upgrade cost me less than a third of the price that I paid for a 4MB upgrade for my first PC.

The laptop cooler also seems to be working very well. With the fans on full-speed the laptop now sits at around 39-40C, a good 10C lower than before.

This weekend sees CLIC24 taking place just down the road, and Mike and Matt are both taking part. If the weather is nice I might wander down to see what’s going on and take a few pictures, however if the weather carries on like it is at the moment, I’ll be staying home in the dry.

I’ve now got my proper keyboard connected up to the new PC courtesy of a PS2->USB convertor, it’s so much nicer having a decent keyboard to use, even if most people can’t get the hang of the shape.

This evening we set a new record for the fastest ever committee meeting at 8 minutes, mainly because no-one had a key to get into the clubhouse. After that the rest of the evening was spent in the local pub drinking ale, listening to Irish folk music, and ogling the local student totty. A very pleasant evening was had by all.

Now that the excitement of the last few days Dell related posts has died down, I thought I’d come up with a new category, "Courierwatch", partly prompted by this little delight courtesy of HDNL.

May 09, 2007 05:53:32 AM SUNDERLAND DEPOT UK Mis-sorted by carrier
May 09, 2007 12:05:39 AM LEAMINGTON DEPOT UK Arrival Scan
May 08, 2007 08:27:08 PM PRIME SORT UK Arrival Scan
May 08, 2007 07:38:47 PM BRISTOL DEPOT UK —
May 06, 2007 12:00:00 AM WEB CUSTOMER UK Carrier notified to pick up package

Update:

May 09, 2007 07:27:57 AM BRISTOL VAN UK Out for delivery

I’m not quite sure how it got from Sunderland, to being out for delivery in Bristol in just over 90 minutes, given that it’s nearly 300 miles between the two. Having said that, it’s acknowledged that the white van is the fastest vehicle in the world, so an average of 200mph isn’t out of the question.

The new PC appears to have a 512MB Geforce 7300 graphics card rather than the 256MB one I was expecting.

Despite what Dell may claim, the PC was waiting with the neighbours when I got home from work. A quick play with Vista home saw me reach for the XP CD so I could install a proper operating system. I had to get all retro to do it, and dig out an old floppy disk drive, then try and locate a working floppy disk in order to be able to load the SATA RAID drivers at install time. After a couple of false starts it was soon up and running.

I’m probably going to have to get a new keyboard as my MS Natural keyboard has a PS2 connector, and this PC is USB only. Having said that I think a couple of spare PS2->USB adaptors arrived with a new Dell server last week so I might borrow one of those for the moment.

I’m now in the middle of a software install and update frenzy to get everything I need loaded and patched.

Rumour has it that a it’s already been delivered and is with a neighbour, albeit with a large hole in the side of the box. I’ll find out more in two hours time.

At long last Dell have actually dispatched my new PC. Estimated delivery is still Friday though.

Current estimated delivery is now the 11^th.

Tonight I had sushi for tea, something I’d never had before. It was lovely, I shall endeavour to eat it again.

I’ve had a proper confirmation for my order, and the estimated delivery date is now the 10^th. Not quite the five working days they claim.

Still no word on a proper delivery date for my new PC. I ordered it Saturday evening, the order was finally acknowledged Tuesday afternoon promising a proper confirmation "shortly". That’s still not arrived.

I think I’ll cancel my day off tomorrow and reschedule it when Dell sort themselves out and get things moving.

Apparently there is a processing key available if you know where to look.

I’ve just picked up my Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler from next door, lets see if it acutally does any good or not.

The laptop CPU usually runs at about 49-51C, so I’ll wait for it to warm up a bit then see how much of a difference it makes.

16:30, we’re up to temperature. Time to sit it on the cooler, but leave it turned off.

16:35, leaving the cooler turned off didn’t make any difference. No surprise there then. Let’s crank the fans up to 11.

16:45, with the fans running at full speed the CPU is now sitting comfortably at around 43C. Although you can now hear fans running all the time, it’s a lot quieter overall than when the built-in fan used to cut in at 50C every minute or so.

I almost didn’t ride tonight. I’d ended up working late to rush-install a server which didn’t get delivered until nearly home time, and I was also very tired. However the lure of clear blue skies and the promise of bone dry trails was too much to resist. I took the Unit out for a change, and did the usual route round the Uni. I might have to change the gearing back to 32:16 as it’s way too spinny on the flat at the moment. On the way back along the canal I kept getting overtaken by coffin dodgers on their cheap bikes.

Dell have finally acknowledged that I’ve ordered a PC from them, however they’ve stopped short of actually confirming the order. Annoyingly the acknowledgement hints at a delivery date of next Tuesday, I was hoping it’d arrive in time for me to start sorting things out over the weekend.