Older blog entries for Bryce (starting at number 892)

Wednesday

Drove into town, sorry, city (they recently upgraded the status to city probably in an effort to increase taxes) to go looking for nice periodicals like Computer Weekly which I remember used to have pages and pages of IT jobs in the back section. Damned if I could find it. (Found out later that WH Smiths in Belfast still carry it) Bought Linux Pro, Linux Magazine, Broadband and Computer Shopper to catch up on the UK status quo.

From the Broadband maazine, it looks like if I want to shift off 56K modem tech (running at 44K max connect to BT 8/) then, I'm looking at satalite comms. I'm apparently just a little too far out from the exchange to get ADSL. I suppose I could get a leased line but thats WAY too expensive and theres no cable in the local area. Thers no wireless network in the area either 8/ I have to say though that the broadband magazine was rather useful. Looking at various coverage maps, it certainly looks like BT have been dragging their heals over the last few years. I'm a bit peeved at the ADSL situation though. I don't think BT do ADSL repeaters. So, as I say, I think I'm left with satalite as my only other sensible alternative.

Read some of the reviews on RH Advanced Server. Innocent whistle. I'm saying nothing.

Tuesday

Paperwork day. Lots and lots of paperwork.

Popped onto IRC to be mugged by Timp and Sopwith from back in the office. Least no one has merrily tried to shift blame for amything bad onto my shoulders yet. Still I bet it's only a matter of time 8) Even if it is for lack of dark muttering.

Elliot brought me up to speed on the fate of the alphas. Timp went through a list of assets still in my cubicle that they weren't sure about. Something tells me Timp managed to get the better deal by asking first what was available for redistribution.

Got final word From Ben that the car had been sold off at carmax (much happiness). Seems Jeremy didn't pickup the DVD player I'd sold to him. Asked Timp to catch Jeremy and get the money off him and give it to Ben for his good deeds.

Started catching up on the diary. I'll have to post it in as one huge update.

Monday

Still a little stiff but otherwise OK. I don't want a recurance of that back trouble ever again.

Popped into the DHS to sort out getting signed up for social security. Noticed that even though they had a 'take a ticket and wait for your number to be called', an awful lot of people just barged into line. Rather pathetic really. Whats worse is that they kept doing it even when there was a staff member there shouting out the numbers. Finally got sorted out an went on home after getting a few messages for mum and having a little look around at a couple of the larger stores on the Armagh road. Bit depressing to see the range of goods is somewhat limited and downmarket from the last time I was over 8/

Not a lot else happening today. Mum was supposed to be working on taxes (due in today naturally) but seemed to get conviently distracted to go do something else.

Still working out where to put stuff in my room. I need to get rid of at least 1/2 of whats currently in there already.

Looking at the car thats been in torage for the last 2 1/2 years, I see that it has a rust spot on one of the rear wheel archs. That'll be a bugger to fix. I'll need to get gauze etc to patch it up. For the moment it's fine. I'll tackle it when I'm a litle more organised.

Sunday

Not much to say. read a little and just fiddled around in the house for a bit. A day of respite

Saturday

Ah,.. much better,.. I'm stiff, but no jarring pain when bending

Linked up with Keith at his place. Spent a little time going over what open issues he had with MicroSoft ME and various programs he had loaded up that he uses in school for teaching. Fixed up his Outlook (non) Express setup which was taking in the order of 2 minutes to come up to something a little saner (25 seconds but even thats rather slow for a 1Ghz machine)

Looks like he needs RAM... 128MB RIMM is rather icky in this day and age. I'll order him up a couple of sticks of 256Mb which should suffice for another couple of years

Dandered on out the road to look at a 2 acre plot of land that Keith had bought and was wanting to put up fencing on but the ground is too rocky for wooden posts so it looks like a concrete fencing solution for that problem. Looked at the mess that his neighbour is making of the boundry lines and hedgerows.

After that we went on out over Rathfriland and grabed an ice cream then drove off down into Castlewellen and on into Newcastle to walk around the coastline a little and catchup on the world of government control, schooling, plays, music and other assorted issues.

After that, we dove on around into Kilkeel to see if any new changes had occured while I'd been away. Only thing I saw was a lot more fishing boats than there used to be. So much for fishing quotas.

From Kilkeel drove on into Warrenpoint stopped over to look at Keiths B&B house and discuss what could be one for enhancing it. Finally drove on back into Newry, stopping off at Friar Tuck's for a chip and a burger 8) Made the terrifyingly bad move of asking for lemonade for a drink,.. I am not in the US, I am not in the US, I am,...

Finished off the pleasentries and drove on home.

Friday

Grumble,.. back still sore but is a lot better than it was.

Mail from the social security office for me to turn up at 12:30 for to get signed up for unemploymnt benefit. Guess I shall be one of the unwashed masses that are government employed job seekers.

One of the packages I'd been waiting on turned up... though at 150lbs, (mostly books) it was intresting to see how the delivery chap thought it was a wheel and tried to roll it to the front door while the sides bulged and the tape unravelled. Noted one of the check boxes on the delivery form 'Did contents arrive undamaged' I was so tempted to not sign for it but what the hell, I'm just glad it's here. Looks like the box has been through a warzone... *sigh* <tick>

Pulled the crate up into the room and opened it to look through and se what evil damage had been inflicted. Surprizingly enough the contents were fine and it's ust the cardbord casing thats taken the brunt of the punishment. Unfortunately I really don't have room set aside yet fo to be able to unpack this crate as yet. Doesn't help that I'd already filled the bin with old junk that I threw out. I can tell this is going to take a few weeks to sort out properly.

Called up Keith to see what the craic with him was since I'd not really heard that much since I wandered off to the US. Arranged to go for a drive around the country for tomorrow.

Thursday

Ow

My back still hurts (a lot) but not as badly as it did in the US I guesstimate I should be ok again by Monday. Maybe.

Started to take stock of whats in my bedroom vs's what I know still has to arrive. I need shelving or a lot more drawers.

Cleared out a lot of stuff that I now no longer need. Basically I did a very late spring clean of my bedroom. Unfortunately filled the dustbin very quickly.

Started fixing up mum's computer (AMD-K6/450) adding in 512Mb of memory and tidying up the Filesystem and upgrading the RHAT install on the other disk to RH7.3. *sigh* things I should have done before leaving,.. make an ISO of the 7.3 updates directory and made a copy of the RH8.0 release for myself.

Unpacked the alpha and set that up. Hummm, it's getting a little cluttered in my bedroom already ad I've not even recieved the other two crates yet.

Mum has designs on moveing her machine from my bedroom to what used to be my sisters room while she works on taxes etc.

Still rather tired from travelling. Listened to BBC Radio4 for a while while I sorted out repacking the 4 drives I have in the alpha to that they'd all fit in the case (ok, so I'd to loose the floppy, and one disk is still sitting loose on the base of the case but at least the covers go back on now. Most of the USB devices are working now also. The ScanMagic 600CU seems somewhat reluctant to work though 8/ Maybe I'll give some time over to see if I can get that to work under linux. It's probably something silly that needs tweaked.

Wednesday

Finally arrived in Gatwick. Quite stiff. Had a lot of fun negotiating the steps off the aircraft (ow,.. bad back alert) Walked nearly a mile until I got to customs (got through without being acosted) and the main terminal where I got booked in for the next flight to Belfast Harbour. More security checks. Much more walking to the departure lounge where I'd to wait until they put up the gate numbers. While I waited, I had a browse around the newsagents there. Nothing intresting. Finally the gate number was flashed up and.. more walking to the gate about 3/4 of a mile away. I'm sure architects build airports as some kind of endurance exercise for passangers. Fortunately the flight was underbooked so again I got a row of seating to myself.

Finally arrived in Belfast. Plane naturally found the *furtherst* point to park and a rather stiff, tired self ended up walking 1/2 mile to the baggage reclaim area. Happily my suitcase made it all the way through but took it's sweet time being unloaded.

Linked up with mum and drove off home but I was so tired, sore and sleepy that I didn't really pay much attention to the countryside as we drove off home.

Got home, threw the suitcase in my bedroom along with my carry on luggage, gave mum her gift from NC (gold guilted coffee mug) Unpacked a little of what was in the suitcase but I'm just not in the frame of mind to tackle it all now. Toddled off to sleep. Ugh what a long annoying journey.

Tuesday

04:00. Can't sleep, my back is killing me. Spent a lot of time painfully trying to wipe down the boards and ditch the last of the crockery/cutlry/linen. About 9 bin bags full of junk later I find to my dismay that someone else had moved out and had completely filled the apartment trash bin so I'd to drag everything a further 250 yards to the other end of the complex to the other trash bin. Now normally that would just have been an inconvience, but with a bad back it became a new world of pain. I'm ok as long as I don't bend my back. It's annoying that this had to happen in the last few days leading up to me leaving the US.

Ok, everything is packed, the car is full, the apartment is empty and I left in the apartment keys. Seems they'll be sending me back the full deposit at some point. (hurrah)

Off to the office. Lunch at the Japaneese house of steak in the Crabtree mall If it wasn't so damned expensive,.. though I have to admit it is nice watching them cook the food in front of you. Dr Mike picked up the tab for it all which was way too kind of him.

Took everyone back to the office then quickly chatted to Trond about arrangements for getting rid of the cars and if HR had sent up any new destructions.

Ran over to carmax with Trond (he's leaving two days after myself and also needs to get rid of his car so he taged along to get his car evaluated as well) to see what they'd offer to buy the car for. Well, got an excellent rating for it and they gave me a little over the bluebook for it, in this case $7000 which was a damned sight better than Ford's estimate of $5500. Unfortunately I owed $9133 on the car so I needed to make up the differance. Unfortunately this was about 3 o'clock and they wanted a certified cheque but the bank was some distance away and the city traffic wasn't exactly light. I'd also a lot of other loose ends to tidy up at the office, so I got them to give me the paperwork for to give someone power of attorney to handle the final handover/cash transfer and ran off to the office

Getting back to the office took a lot longer than I expected due to heavy traffic. Damn.

I think everyone was hoping for a last round of Unreal Tournament but I just didn't have the time. Gave Ben Levenson the dubious honour of being the power of attorney for getting rid of the car, Gave him a large cheque for the differance etc. Argh,.. paperwork,.. <Much dark muttering>

I wish I had left enough time to say goodbye properly but it wasn't possible 8/

Snagged a lift with Nalin to the airport. Got in with 15 minutes to go before boarding. Grabbed a list minute gift for mum from the gift shop.

The flight was ridiculously empty (only about 35 people got it) so there was plenty of room to stretch out over seats. I'd just started to fall off to sleep when the flight attendent woke me up to ask what meal I'd like. I couldn't get back to sleep after that 8/ Tried reading a book but there was a lot of turbulence for about 15 minutes so gave up on that and just resigned myself to being couped up for 8 hours.

Monday

I shouldn't have gotten rid of the furniture so quickly 8/ Having slept on an airbed for the last two nights which offers no back support, I can barely walk. I think I'll just sleep on the floor tonight. Knowing my luck that'll make it worse than ever. I feel miserable. I can barely bend. God knows how I'm going to finish off the apartment now.

I've managed to sell most of the home electronics now. I only raised $350 in all. Still every little bit counts.

Tried to return the cable top box to Time Warner but got hopelessly lost. Try again tomorrow. Ran off to Capital Ford to see if they could give me an evaluation of the car since they sent out a flyer telling me I should go get my car evaluated with them... $5500... I felt totally insulted. To make matters worse I realy didn't have the time to fight rush hour traffic just to get there and get a crap evaluation.

Back at RHAT, busy packing the last of the bits and pieces into boxes. Decided that although I'd a flight case for the alpha, I should probably send it via freight just so it was one less item to worry about.

After much tidying up, left the office at 23:30 and went home to start into the great final clearout. I just wish my back didn't hurt so much 8/