Busy Sleepies

Coming to the end of a very easy weekend at the moment. (Just tapping this out before slipping into the shower before a pre-bedtime gaming session)

Last weekend was pretty hectic. Being a bit busy meant the birthday weekend for me and the Big Sis got delayed until last weekend. First time I'd travelled a significant distance for a good long while (I'm not getting out enough at work) and apart from a very nervous trip past Leicester, the trip went fine. Nervousness was induced by me being the lead car taking impatient people up the A46 in medium fog in a 40mph roadworks limit where the temporary road markings weren't up to the job of giving a worthwhile idea of where the road was.

Yep - nervous.

The trip back was much better. I travel in evenings, when the roads are theoretically quieter.

Hectic started when I got ready to start off. Start the iPod for iPodFM, put the radio to the transmitter channel. What's this ? No sound. Take a peek, examine stuff. Think - there should be a metal bit on the end of my power adaptors (the plug part of the multiplug had fallen apart). No big deal, I'll just slum it with cd's with the power feed going to the satnav and then we're going out tomorrow anyway, I'll buy another multiplug for the car.

Arrive and it's a check of my dad's old laptop to see if its problem was actually terminal. Yep - a Blue Screen Of Death while trying to boot up and none of the Usual Suspects (safe mode) worked to make it better. That confirmed what we'd be doing the next day - heading into Lincoln to get him a new one. Oh - to buy a few more bits too ... I also changed/updated the wi-fi password up there so it would be easier to get my mum's new netbook connected.

We're a techie family. Everyone with an active laptop now, me and me dad with a desktop and a few spare laptops lying around too. I've adopted the sysadmin job as well as on-call tech support. It teaches you a bit, mostly to remember your tracks so you can follow them with your eyes closed. Cos that's effectively what they are if the kit is a few hundred miles away using different software. We manage :-)

Where was I ? Old laptop has its hard disc removed (oops - skipped a bit), ready to be put in a Widget for taking its data. We could have run what's called a "Factory Restore" but that has the side effect of wiping the laptop clean. Not desirable. And I've just remembered something else I need to do ...

Saturday and we raid the Pub, check out the goods, get disappointed by Halfords (no car power socket multiplugs - disappointing as usual for there) and then Buy Stuff. We're now 3:1 Acer, with my sister being the rebel with a Toshiba. My dad's old Acer did pretty well, only the catastrophic software failure in at least 3 years. Mine is "as new", the only problems are M$ software.

Saturday night, we're watching Strictly while munching dinner. What's turning out into a tradition is that we listen to the iTunes stuff after. Not a bad tradition :-) I ended up doing some early config on my dad's laptop too.

Skipped another bit. Threadlock is bad. You know those screws that just won't budge ? Well, after you've hit them with a hammer enough to make them move, there's usually a splodge of blue stuff in there. That's Threadlock and it's effectively glue to keep screws in the socket. It's also very good at making people swear when putting hard discs into Widgets that let you pull the data off.

Meh - after "persuasion", I get the data from my dad's old laptop into his new one. Except one bit (old emails) which I'll fix next time I'm up there because it's Geek Level expertise needed.

That's not it for the techie stuff - we also set up their Kodak printer. It's a wifi printer, so no cables to hook up to make it play nice. It actually worked far better than I thought. It connected to the network first time (Linksys router - doesn't need prodding, it just Works) and after a hefty download, ready for use. Can't ask for much better than that. Thumbs up for Kodak.

Off to the pub again for a birthday nosh on the Sunday before heading off back home. Faith in tech not playing restored itself due to a (Probably Kaspersky) bit of "I'm not talking any more" from my sister's laptop. Oh well. If it went 100%  right, I'd be suspicious that I'd forgotten something.


Hectic - but worthwhile. It's great to see the family up norf every once in a while, plus I get a good slurping from Muttley (aka Ben the Staffy). And sorting out all that IT goes some way to countering any feelings of not achieving much that I was expressing a few posts down.


PS I think I have a new fixation - she's called Tessa and has that intrepid attitude that probably has her bosses going "Cold, wet, snowing, freezing, chance of getting stranded there - We'll send Tessa, she'll love it". And it shows in the very high quality of her reporting.