Bank Aid

 Email received from Neil

Turn on your sound for this one!!

http://iball.iii.co.uk/2008/12/19/iball-presents-bank-aid-at-lunchtime/?cp_c=fbkkxf

 

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Chatting, Linked In and Web Design

Garry came over today. We chatted about this and that and went through how he can edit his web site, maybe adding a blog to it. We also discussed Linked In.

David has done a great recommendation for me on Linked In, that's really nice of him.

I did some digging into the Trade Directories for London in 1840's. I found one from 1848 that lists "James Hamer" as a machinist - someone who works a sewing machine making shoes in all probability. This doesn't quite match the death certificate from 1849 that says "hatter" though. I'll have to look elsewhere for confirmation I've got the right person.

I got the spec for the 2nd Interview today as well. I need to do a presentation, answer a technical questionaire and face a panel. 

Second Interview and Monster

I've been offered a second Interview in Milton/Fratton next week... details to follow.

Monster have managed to get themselves hacked AGAIN. Idiots!

I went onto their website and tried to change my password. I followed their instructions for complex passwords, using a mixture of letters, numbers and characters (but not "&") but I kept getting an error message saying the password was too short. This happened even with a 17 character password, but I was using one with 8 to start with. I tried not using Chrome but swapped to Internet Explorer but had the same issue. Then I tried my existing password but with an extra "2" on the end. That worked. A bit more testing established that you can use any letter or number combination, but not special characters at all. If you do, you get told your password is too short. 

I wonder what is the point of being on their site anyway. I get tons of spam since the last time they got hacked in 2007. They obviously have cruddy security and are useless at testing or writing error messages. 

I emailed everyone in the Alton group about the issue. Hopefully the press will have a real go at Monster. They are sponsoring "American Idol" season 8 at the moment too, so their CEO must be really pissed off with the IT team - unless it's held that "all publicity is good publicity".

Guildford and Haslemere

We went to Guildford yesterday to get Maria some clothes to wear next weekend.

She spent two hours looking and found nothing - except for a jacket which was the last thing she tried!

I got a new splatter guard from Lakeland - I know how to live! I also got a couple of books as I had a voucher for WH Smith to buy one get one free.

We came home via Sainsbury's in Farnham. 

On Sunday we went to "Our Lady of Lourdes" which is the church whose choir Maria has joined.

After that we had a quiet afternoon in avoiding the rain!

Attempted break-in

Heard from the police today that one of our neighbours has had an attempted break-in. Someone used a length of wood to try to open their back gate. So the Neighbourhood Watch is justifying itself!

Chalton and Waterlooville

One of the other delegates at the Alton group lives in Chalton and had asked if I could give him some advice. He was having issues with using Linked In, Hotmail and his wireless network.

The Linked In issue turned out to be because he had two profiles, using different e-mail addresses. Linked In was using cookies to remember which one he last used to log on. The simple solution was to "kill" one of the profiles as you can't merge two profiles. Luckily he only had two contacts on the one he wanted to kill off.

The Hotmail issue was caused by him sending and receiving email for a different account using Hotmail, so he was getting a "sent by... on behalf of..." header. Not Hotmail's fault.

The WLAN was easy enough: he just needed to type in the password. The house walls are 1 foot thick in places though, so reception in his office may be a bit flaky. However a booster or an upgraded router may be cheaper than a separate DSL line which is what he uses now. The office has a separate power supply so he can't use Ethernet over power lines. He doesn't want to put in a physical network either as this would be unsightly. He's going to test the WLAN later as we ran out of time - he needed to leave.

I then went to Halfords in Waterlooville to get some bulbs for the car. One tail/stop bulb and one headlamp. I'd noticed yesterday that they were not working. Traffic chaos in Waterlooville as they are re-surfacing the bypass and the roundabout, so that took longer than expected to negotiate! For once the guide at Halfords identified the correct bulbs! However while changing the headlamp was easy peasy, the tail lamp involved undoing 2 screws, removing the lamp cluster, then unplugging it, then undoing 4 more screws before you get to the bulbs. Then you swap the bulb and re-assemble it. I did the headlamp in Halfords car park, but had to come home to do the tail light. I then noticed that one of the number plate lights has failed...grrrr.

Lexmark 4650 Printer

A few months ago we bought a Lexmark 4650 printer/copier/scanner. It works wirelessly so we can keep it on the other side of the room to the computer, using a different power socket and helping to reduce clutter. I had some problems getting it to work at first but after a few hours of re-installing the software and re-booting I got it working and it has been printing, scanning to network and so on without any problem.

However.... yesterday it stopped working. The printer / scanner / copier was fine in itself but wasn't talking to the PC. The night before last we'd had some power "brown outs", when the power drops but not enough to shut down the TV and PC. So I guess that was when it lost the connection.

It was doing my head in. I sent it a print job and it ignored it. I asked it to scan to a network attached PC and it reported that it was "trying to connect to network". So, as the first IT fix of choice is always to "reboot it". I tried that, it still didn't want to play. So then I re-set the wireless router (BT Home Hub 2) and rebooted the printer again. It was STILL sulking. So then I connected it to the PC via USB 2 and started the wireless configuration utility. It scanned for networks and found my neighbour's WLAN and not mine. I re-set the wireless router again and scanned again. It still failed to find it.

I went through the settings on the router for the Wireless LAN. While doing this I noticed that the router was using channel 11 with an option to re-set to use a different channel. I remembered that last time I looked it was on channel 6. I clicked on "reset" for the channel number and it moved on to channel 1. I then told the Lexmark Wireless Configuration Utility to re-scan for networks. It found my LAN in seconds, I entered the password and as if by magic it started working!

The nightmares I had when I first got the printer were a similar issue that seemed to fix itself. With hindsight, it probably fixed itself when I re-started the router and hence reset the channel. It seems that pressing the reset button doesn't change the channel number used and it looks like the printer cannot "see" the higher channel numbers. I can set the BT Home Hub to use a particular channel if I want, but part of me is thinking I want to find out what the issue REALLY is. Does it limit to single digits perhaps, so does the channel number have to be below 10 perhaps? Maybe it's worse than that - it may have to be 8 or below. I may do some more tests :-)

Alton again

Went off to Alton to meet up with fellow members of the Executive team.

Meeting was more focussed than last time I think.

Missed the bus home by 10 minutes, so had to wait for the next one - which was over an hour.

Wandered round the shops a bit, bought a birthday card. Deep exceitement!

Tonight I have finally finished the third Christmas jigsaw too! Picture above! Only took a month!

Fratton and Milton

I went down to Fratton today for an interview. I accidentally bought a train ticket to Havant though! Luckilly I realised before the ticket inspector arrived, so I was able to "upgrade" to go a bit further.

The picture is of the gateway to the platform bridge (the back entrance to the station).

I walked from Fratton into Milton which took about 30 minutes. For those of you who know the area, this took me past the end of the road where Portsmouth's home ground "Fratton Park" is located.

Milton park was full of Border Terriers. I saw 3 of them. Mind you there are loads of dogs around in Milton. I walked past one house that had a small yard between the sitting room patio doors and the road; total area about 3 sq feet. In this yard was a metal spoon, a brush, a couple of plastic bags and about 3 ton of dog mess. I guess they let their dog out into the yard to do what it has to do and then sweep it up or use the spoon to put it in bags. Either that or their neighbours hate them. You'd think they'd get rid of the bagged mess, or at least bag it more frequently, or walk the dog in the park nearby and use the bins provided there to get rid of the poop.

I also saw a wierd old man in Milton - admittedly in the grounds of St James' mental hospital. He was in the middle of a field of grass (a bit like a football pitch) with a shopping bag on wheels. He was kneeling on what looked like a newspaper clipping the grass with a pair of shears. He then scooped the cut grass into a plastic bag, put the bag, shears and newspaper into the shopping bag and wheeled it about 10 feet and then got the items out of the bag and repeated the exercise.

Bought a new outside light at the B&Q in Fratton on the way back - so I'll fit that over the weekend or next week.

DVDs, Pictures and hotels

I've spent the rest of last week scanning pictures and booking hotels.

We now have half the family booked to stay in B&B at Fluxton Farm and the rest in a hotel - The Tumbling Weir.

I've scanned all Ann's pictures, and a load that arrived from Peter and Janice too. Jane is promising another 50 - 60 on CD too.

I've also been trying to burn TV shows to DVD. I have a Pinnacle Dazzle DVD recorder that I was given for my birthday a couple of years ago. I connected it to the Sky+ box and am able to copy the TV programmes to my Hard Drive. However it fails to burn the discs. I think this is down to the DVD Media. I have then been trying to burn the files from the hard disc to the DVD -R disc. This KEEPS failing. I've used about 10 DVDs so far and have only 2 working copies. I'm using Tesco "Best" and Sony. The Tesco ones seem slightly more reliable!

The show I'm burning is "So you think you're Royal" which featured Grace Kelly - possibly linked to Maria's family.

January

I haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks now....just been too busy. 

Let me see.

30 Dec we went down to Lyme Regis to meet up with my Mother, brother and his family and my sister. My sister left in the evening and my brother and his family left after dinner but we stayed the night with my mother. 

31 Dec we came home via Sainsbury's in Farlington and a quick visit to the Indian restaurant for a takeaway meal. We then spent a couple of hours getting the food ready for tomorrow. Our neighbours Mark and Sharon came round for drinks at about 10 pm. The lads up the street set off fireworks at midnight, so we all went outside to watch both their display and the ones around us.

1 Jan we had Maria's parents, sister, niece and sister's boyfriend to visit for lunch and tea. We served them Chili con Carne.

2 Jan we spent at home

3 Jan Caroline and Tom went to football again

4 Jan we took the kids to the airport using two cars. The queues were terrible to get into the car parks, we got separated of course and Maria and Caroline went in via "Arrivals" rather than "Departures". The kids made the flight though. Then we dropped off the hire car and drove home. On the way we hit a spot of black ice on the roundabout where the A331 meets the M3. The car span round 180 degrees but didn't hit anything! I rang the council to report it, they said they already knew about it but it was too cold for them to grit the road!

5 Jan Maria went back to work and I had to "sign on". I spoke to my other sister about Mum's birthday present. We decided on a photo frame. I have also been organising the accommodation for the guests.

6 Jan Some pictures arrived for scanning from Ann. The frame should arrive by the end of the week. Found a B&B but Maria is worried about the fact that it is home to 10 cats!