IMPORTANT: The following journal is intended for the use and viewing of approved persons only and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. Any dissemination, distribution or copying of this work is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word ‘absquatulation’ has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the creation of this journal and a minimum of Microsoft software was used. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards.

Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Monday 15 December 2003 (Day View)

Thu 11 Dec | Fri 12 Dec | Sat 13 Dec | Sun 14 Dec |   Mon 15 Dec   Tue 16 Dec | Wed 17 Dec | Thu 18 Dec | Fri 19 Dec |

15.12.2003 – Monday 15 December – I love computers

Morning

• The morning was nice and peaceful, and I slept as usual. I’m thinking of moving the morning to the evening to fit in with my new lifestyle.

Evening

• Jade and Ella came around, I can’t remember why, but they ended up staying a while and looking at the photos I took of the wedding, and then I went back to Home Rule with them to set up their satellite internet. When we got there, the replacement RAM for Ella’s new computer had arrived so I put that in as well, expecting her PC to work. It didn’t, of course, and everything took so long. In fact, almost everything went wrong. First, I tried setting up the satellite stuff on Jade’s computer, which didn’t work. Then we drove up to Shan’s to see if we could find the info we needed to authenticate the satellite stuff on Jade’s computer, which we couldn’t without the actual decoder. Then I tried reinstalling XP on Ella’s computer using various different BIOS settings, several times with varying rates of success, along with various drivers and other things, eventually getting it to run semi-stably, but not before having to fight every known component and the recovery console several times. It’s now running at a greatly reduced and asynchronous speed, with write-combining, bitmap and cursor acceleration, 8XAGP, and several other performance increasing but stability decreasing features that I can’t remember disabled. It still hangs temporarily on start-up, but then seems to run stably, although there doesn’t appear to be any sound – but I did remove two jumpers from what’s probably a vitally important sound related thing somewhere within the nether regions of the motherboard to connect the front audio stuff. I then tried to install the satellite stuff on it, after getting the installer CD out of Jade’s now unplugged computer where I’d left it, but couldn’t because it doesn’t have a modem, so decided to try installing it on Jade’s, which does have a modem, and seeing if I could find the vital information from that. Of course, after unplugging Ella’s PC and setting up Jade’s again, I had to get the installer CD out of Ella’s powerless computer. Then, after running a long phone extension lead, we managed to authenticate the satellite stuff on Jade’s, and find out the various frequencies and stuff that we needed, so back to Ella’s computer again. I left the installer CD in Jade’s computer again too, of course, which is rather difficult to get out when it’s all unplugged. It was one of those sorts of days. Then we drove back up to Shan’s to get a modem for Ella’s computer, that being the only way to authenticate the satellite stuff it seems. Needless to say, the modem we got didn’t work in Ella’s computer, simply failing to detect or function in anyway whatsoever. Fortunately, an old external modem did eventually work, and Ella finally had her beloved MSN again, at which time I could begin to network their three computers together, one of which has a two hundred metre or something ridiculous semi-buried, semi hung in trees cat5 cable going to it. Not surprisingly, things didn’t go as they’re supposed to, and I had to mess around, find dead leads, reinstall networking components multiple times, and pull small clumps of hair out before everyone could connect to each other and chat on MSN and share their viruses. Ella managed to pick up two virus-like ad sever sort of things within five minutes of being connected to the internet, which probably isn’t that surprising considering she had something like a thousand spam emails from the past three days which she downloaded into Outlook Express. Then, just to add insult to injury, when setting up a few user accounts for her, nothing would work, things couldn’t access the registry, nothing would install, the internet connection wouldn’t run as a multi-user connection, and the stupid virus-like ad things fought each other and refused to go away. It was quite late by the time I got home.