Ok, maybe things are getting better (by alaric)

We're still a bit borderline on the financial side, but it looks like we'll last the week.

On the downside, my main server was down for two days last week 🙁 This was due to our ISP not paying his ISP, and being disconnected.

However, my driving lessons are going well. I seem to have mastered the reverse park quite neatly, so I'm starting to feel quite confident about the next test, on the 24th.

Work has been tricky; everything seems to be going wrong with the infrastructures I'm trying to build on top of.

On the project with the broken hardware, I now have new hardware, and the special PCI card is recognised by the Linux kernel according to dmesg and the set of loaded modules, but it won't seem to talk to userland at all. I'm currently trying to trace the problem down the kernel->hotplug->udev pipeline. I hate Linux.

On my ongoing support/development contract with Frontwire, I'm trying to fix a few old but annoying bugs in the Workspace software, but something's gone wrong with Swing or my X server - because all Swing windows come up as blank grey rectangles. Which is making testing a pain. I've been spending all the time on it trying to migrate the build process to run on the Mac so I can do it with the native Swing rather than X-over-ssh from the Linux box. I hate Linux.

Bleargh. Why must I spend my time dealing with rubbish like that, rather than actually doing useful stuff?

When I have more money, I'll hire UNDERLINGS to do this kind of thing for me. I'll make them wear boiler suits, and then I'll sit in a motorised chair wearing a white suit and stroking a cat.

A rather cute picture (by alaric)

Now I have a mobile phone that works at home, I'm carrying it around with me, which means I have a digital camera to hand when Jean's being particularly cute.

Despite the grainy quality due to it being a tiny camera, this is perhaps the cutest photo to date!

It gets worse! (by alaric)

Well, my rough week has now reached seven days - it started last Wednesday - and is still going strong.

The late hardware arrived, but it doesn't work - with just the CPU on the motherboard (which came preinstalled in the case), and either of the two DIMMs in either of the two sockets, it doesn't start executing the BIOS. So either the CPU or the mobo is probably dead. I'll try running it with no DIMMs in; if the DIMMs are both bad (or, more likely, wrong for the motherboard) then the thing should at least complain about the memory error - assuming the BIOS is written to run the POST purely from registers, until it's tested the RAM.

Tomorrow I will order new parts, and play the combinations game until I get it working.

And on top of that, I had a horrible cough Monday and Tuesday, which I'm just getting over.

Oh, and did I mention that the dishwasher is broken, and Jean is unhappily teething, so poor Sarah is struggling with the domestic workload? There's now heaps and bags of washed and unwashed clothes all around the place, I'm out of clean underwear, the kitchen is starting to smell, and there's very few clear flat surfaces (floors, tables, worktops, chairs, ...) in the entire house.

Bleargh!

When we've been paid for the current project, I'm going to start by tidying the whole house. Then looking after Jean so Sarah can have a break. Then buying some nice books, reading them, and sleeping lots.