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Home News 26th March 1998

Gosh, three weeks of missing out on Home News and the worlds financial markets go into turmoil. I really must be more careful next time. Oops, what can I say but - sorry…

So, it's 22:30 on a Wednesday evening, and I haven't just returned from Cardiff, but have just come downstairs after watching a TV movie with Maggie and the kids (who are on half term hols - hence the late night) - Hocus Pocus with Bette Mittler. It really is great being able to live a "normal" life again.

Anyhow, here is a half a Home News which I attempted to write over the last few weeks…mostly at work

Home News 14th October 1997

While my Compaq Deskpro churns away documenting a 115Mb Access 2.0 database using the Access 97 documentor feature, I am forced to resort to using my minutave HP320LX to keep myself busy. So much for a multi-tasking operating system. Multi-tasking only really works when you have sufficient mips to do more than one thing at a time.

New toys for this last week and a bit include a 4Mb upgrade to the HPC, a Millenium II (8Mb) card and a Righteous 3D (4Mb) accelerator for Tomcat, and almost a new LaserJet. After ten years faithful service from the HP-IIP, it has started playing up and refusing to fuse any toner on the bottom right hand corner of a page. Initial suspicions that it was the fault of the integrated toner and drum cartridge proved unfounded as a new cartridge displayed the same symptoms.

Maggie wanted some quiet time on the weekend to finish a project for College, so the girls and I headed for the new Southampton Leisure Centre for a but of non-quiet fun. Phase one was the Bean movie (as in Mr Bean) which was a bit disappointing, but just one of those things that you have to do really. then we had a go at the table ice hockey, I think I won but no one was keeping score and we were swapping sides with the looser giving up his/her paddle to the spectator. Next we went down to Ocean Village to gawk at the yachts while eating our Harry Ramsden chips and being accosted by seagulls. Tarryn also bought Maggie a jersey that she (Maggie) has been umming and aaring about for some tine - using my credit card. Still it was the thought that counts I suppose.

More churning of the Compaq, and so another opportunity to finish this weeks (ha theres a good joke), home News. This time the Compaq is busy recombining the PacAdmin database from the split out scheme specific databases. Then the joke is to compare the rows in the original database with the split and then recombined databases. The theory says that they should end up being the same. The practice is that their data is horribly cross linked and referentially inaccurate that what churns out, although cleaner and more correct - bears little resemblance to what is in their existing live database.

OK, so back to the present late night ramblings.

In summary, I have been very busy at the new job, lots of stress as I simultaneously try and breath a bit of life into a really moth-eaten half dead system and design some path forward for Winterthur Life. The kids and Maggie are on half term holiday. This doesn't sound very fair to me at all. The red beast is fast approaching it's 200,000km mark and decided to show a bit of it's age by refusing to start. Nothing wrong with the car per se, but a bit of dirt in the ignition lock which meant that the key didn't engage the lock and it refused to go "ping-ping-ping" and then "vroom" (Technical terms not applicable here). No real problem to fix luckily and now after a long overdue service, it is now vrooming much better.

The ignition problem started when we popped into PC World on the weekend and were forced to call on the AA and have an extra half hour browsing the shop. As it turned out, after a bit of jiggling (the lock), it "ping-ping-pinged" and started, so we were able to call off the posse and curtail or shopping. Actually we were only at PC World to claim back 5 pounds on a game (Close Combat - A Bridge Too Far) which I had bought on Friday and which I had found for 5 pounds cheaper at Electronics Boutique on Saturday (PC World has a price matching policy). In actuality PC World refunded me 10 pounds because they had reduced their price to 29.99 from 39.99 and their system couldn't cope with only refunding me the fiver. Long story - but worth the five pounds.

The game BTW is excellent, and a great improvement on the first version. I played Nicky and Tarryn in a multi-player couple of games and had great fun. Not sure they quite grasped the niceties of military strategy.

The games bought at EB, included Panzer General II (so-so I haven't played it a lot yet) and the EXCELLENT Age Of Empires (Microsoft) which is stunning, fantastic, brilliant and every other synonym to be found in Roget's Thesaurus. A silly thing I heard the other day - What's another word for Thesaurus ? Think about it - it grows on you…

Any how, Nicky, Tarryn and I had a fab game of Age of Empires across the Datak LAN, with Nicky hogging the 8Mb Matrox Millenium II and 21" monitor of Tomcat, Tarryn on the 4Mb Diamond stealth and 17" monitor on Chatterbox and me relegated to the SVGA 1Mb 800x640 256 colour Hooligan. Still we played from about 19:20 until after midnight when both of them surrendered to the might of the Babylonians.

For those who care, it is sort of a hybrid of Civilization and Close Combat / Warcraft.

Maggie should get her new car tomorrow, another Nissan, but this time a bright shiny brand new Nissan Micra 1.3 SLX with Mag Wheels (my contribution to the buying decision). The Sunny was traded in for 575, 75 pounds more than we paid for it. The Sunny is a bit spluttery in the cold at the moment and I think will now be scrapped or sawed in half, dunked in formaldehyde and declared a work of art. Now we have the problem of which car sleeps outside - or how to rearrange the junk in the garages so that we can squeeze both in.

I have my eye on a Saxaphone which I might buy tomorrow. I was going to get another trumpet to try and compete with the cacophony emanating from the various instruments in the Chalmers household, but I think a Sax is much cooler. Also Nicky is persuading me in that direction as she wants to learn to play it too.

The LAN and three temperamental brats, Hooligan, Chatterbox and Tomcat are sort of behaving themselves with just the normal quirks and tantrums. I have not been able to see much of them as Maggie is using them almost full time for her couse and the kids for various school projects and off course games. The latest Encarta and World Atlas are also firm favourites (please forgive the spelling - Tomcat is in one of his "lets speak American" phases and is refusing to look up words in the British dictionary). Maggie restricts game playing to Hearts and Now FreeCell which I just can't understand. The Laser Jet has been repaired and is working fine again. It was suffering from a broken support for the heater roller. Which meant that sometimes the toner did not fuse properly.

The boat buying has hit a bit of a lull. At the moment we are preparing ourselves for a skiing holiday in the States (Seattle) over Christmas and New Year. We have ski lessons booked on the dry slope at Southampton for the end of November which will hopefully teach us / remind us of the basics. The kids are super keen as you can imagine. We will probably start looking at boats again after we return. The current plan for our 2004 year long cruise around the world includes sailing through the Med, down the East coast of Africa, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Then through Panama, the Pacific and eventually to Australia. Getting grander all the time.

The BT Global Challenge has been great to watch - so at the moment you could say we were armchair sailors. The ultimate in sadness, I actually considered buying a PC Game/Simulation called PC-Sailor which allows one to "Virtually-Sail". Sort of misses the point really.

This Led Zeppelin is getting a bit boring. Let me change the CD and give Meat Loaf a bit of a chance…

That's better.

So what else can I say in this belated, overdue Home News. VB home coding has steered down a graphical road after buying a really good book called Graphical Programming in Visual Basic (good name really). Other books (I seem to have bought too many lately as the shelves are overflowing) include The latest edition of the Jet programmers manual (Jet being the VB Database engine - not a plane for those who are concerned that my interests have veered skywards), "Doing Objects in VB5" (ZD Press - very good), and some Unleashed books (Access 97 and SQL Server).

The CD Burner has being doing overtime burning backups and compilations of pictures taken with the extremely heavily used digital camera and internet downloads. I have also been helping out friends of Nicky and Tarryn in setting up their new PC's. I may also get roped into giving a VB programming course at Kings school - which I am quite looking forward too.

Sorry if you lost money gambling on the JSE/LSE/NYSE or HKSE…

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