Lunch Break Papers

It's the little things in life that, whentheysuddenlystop working, are sorely missed.

Like myspace bar. It doesn't work thewayit's supposedto. And I already took it apart and tried tofix it,with less than goodresults. There's a stickysubstance within that I don'tknow ifitneeds to be there or not.

IhopeI still have anold keyboard inthe cellar.

Which is what my friend Red said the other day about getting DSL, and which is absolutely true. There's so much to grab and try and taste, and I have to be very careful not to get sick of this. So, I take small steps, pick and choose from all the colourful sweets out there.
BBC Radio is one - Comedy, Drama, Music; you British don't know what you've got with your BBC radio, but maybe that's only my Anglophile's point of view.
Flickr is the other. I've been exploring that site, and my goodness, I love what people do there. I need to load up the battery of my camera and start looking for photo opportunities, and I mean really looking, do more than point and click.

And I will have a good opportunity to do that in the next week, because my parent's nomadic genes have struck again; this time, they and two friends are going on a trip re-creating one that happened fourty years ago, when two men from Germany went on a trip to Czechoslovakia one summer, and picked up two women hitch-hiking. They travelled together for a bit, and a few years later, the couples married.
Yes, I owe my life to the chance meeting of people on the road. Talk about perspective.

OK. I now have ICQ back (new number), I have MSN (finally), Yahoo (since I already had an ID there) and even AIM (shivers).
Want to talk? ;)

Ooooh, speaking of Yahoo - I can now use Flickr without worry!

Can you tell I'm excited by all this?

Boy, am I glad I have internet access at work!

We were incommunicado yesterday. No DSL, no phones, and for the first time my father was glad to have a mobile phone.
The phone issue was sorted by the end of the day. Seems the German Telekom (dumdumdum DEE dum) had messed up our phone connection way back when, and someone from our local telecommunication firm (Osnatel) had to come over and replug the plugs, or something. By the end of the day, we had telephone again. Hooray!

Now, DSL. Since we didn't want to have to pull wires all through the house again, we (=dad) decided on a wireless LAN router. And every computer can find it, which is good. My dad can also access the Internet through it, after some fiddling with settings, which is also good. My computer can find the router, and get a very handsome connection with it - but nevertheless, I am not online. Mum's computer can't even connect to the WLan network, even though it can see that there is a network it should be able to connect to.

Dad's calling the provider. I hope it's sorted by the time I get home.

I could not access half the sites I usually have no problem with. I try everything I can think of - clear the cache, the cookies, the history, ping the server - no problem - use a different browser (IE - yuck!), nothing works. Maybe it's the connection, so I try my mum's computer - no problem at all. So it must be my computer.
It's turned the bloody Windows firewall back on. I turn it off - don't worry, I have a firewall of my own - and suddenly, everything works again. Miracle upon miracle!
I do hate it when my computer does things I don't tell it to. Sometimes I wish I was a luddite. Only then I wouldn't have this.

Oh, yes, and we're one game on. With flags a-waving and car horns a-hooting and people a-celebrating until the break of dawn. Hooray! Schland! Schland! ;)

The DVD player / burner in my computer has given up it's ghost. Three days ago, it was working normally, two days ago, it refused to read any media. It's not that old, and I have changed nothing that I am aware of, but still, it threw a tantrum.
So, after discussing this with a friend, I decided it could be a driver issue, downloaded a newer driver, and installed it. I believe the correct term might be "I flashed the firmware", though that sounds more than slightly naughty.
Now the bloody thing won't even open. When I push the "open" button, it makes a funny little noise and then just sits there, green light blinking fitfully, but doing nothing.
This sucks like a big old sucky thing with extra suck. There has to be something I can do to solve this problem, because I do not want and franky cannot afford to take the computer in to be repaired.

So dad's organizing another railway festival here, the third one. It will be in September, and there will be steam engines, and diesel engines, and historical trains, oh my.
What that means for the family is that dad sits in his room for most of the time, working away at the planning and organizing and using the phone a lot, and that we're fighting over internet access times again. Though I should not whine, since I once again get paid for doing the festival's website - which since the boss is sitting downstairs means that I work regardless of day or hour. But that's OK, unless I get cryptic emails asking me to update the page with something, and no further information - he's so close to the matter that he knows what he means, however, I am not a mind-reader.
I just hope this festival will again be a success, and I fervently hope he won't be asked to organize another one. It is very stressful for him. And for mum and me.

I have used a free wall in my room under the roof to hang up a huge strip of packaging paper, to write notes and thoughts on, so I can see them and maybe get them organized. The to-do list will follow later today.

There is still a lot of spam-mail reaching my account, even though I got the spamwasher from my provider. Today, a spam mail reaches me from a sender which made me chuckle: it was from Jensen Alexandria. Though I should probably explain here that a guy called Jensen is a friend's RP character in the Doctor Who RPG I lead, and that he was abducted by aliens in Alexandria. Sadly, the mail was the usual "We have this brilliant offer for you your-email-here!" - one. Such is real life.