Interesting Times

The last two weeks haven't been quite as rainy as the previous two but it has started getting colder. It was actually icy this morning!
Friday the 4th was fairly exciting, all the staff were presented with amazon vouchers in lieu of bonuses (we do work for a charity, and it is a recession!) The company (or the parent charities) also paid for our Christmas party/dinner that evening too. I left after 2 hours as I couldn't cope with the noise (talking and music).

The following weekend I did a few techie bits and bobs. On Saturday I upgraded my Wireless Access Point to use WPA2 (it was previously unencrypted) though it still uses MAC address access limitation. On Sunday I upgraded my laptop to use Mint version 8 (from version 7) I finally broke down and formatted the internal memory of my EeePC and removing Xandros. I intended to install the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but this requires more than the 2GB of disk space available. After a lot of fiddling, I decided on a Puppy Linux 4.3.1 install, which gives a lot of space to other material.

Last Tuesday was my medical day, I took the afternoon off and saw a different doctor who agreed that the cough etc was probably due to asthma, and I should try steam inhalation. I then followed up with a 6 month check-up with my dentist to discover that he will be leaving the practice in the new year, to take on further teaching (he had been doing one day a week part time). So after 25 years I will have a new dentist, I was wondering earlier what would happen when he retired but now....

I put the amazon voucher toward buying an Apple iPod Touch, an iPhone without the phone or camera, which had dropped in price and as a result was a contender to replace my old Palm PDAs. It arrived last Thursday and I've spent the last few days playing with it. It's really cool! I didn't think after buying and using 6 palm PDA over 7+ years, that I could be won over so quickly but.... It has WiFi connectivity (though the initial connection seem to require an open connection) but once working encryption worked fine. There are thousands of programs (Apps) available, with hundreds for free. It kept me up past my bedtime a couple of times, and is a better bbc iplayer than either of my laptops! I've also just managed to copy an audio book from audible.com on to it, though it's a real performance!

I'm now going to try booking a seat at the NT for Nation! (based on the book by Terry Pratchett)

Interesting Times

The last two weeks haven't been quite as rainy as the previous two but it has started getting colder. It was actually icy this morning!
Friday the 4th was fairly exciting, all the staff were presented with amazon vouchers in lieu of bonuses (we do work for a charity, and it is a recession!) The company (or the parent charities) also paid for our Christmas party/dinner that evening too. I left after 2 hours as I couldn't cope with the noise (talking and music).

The following weekend I did a few techie bits and bobs. On Saturday I upgraded my Wireless Access Point to use WPA2 (it was previously unencrypted) though it still uses MAC address access limitation. On Sunday I upgraded my laptop to use Mint version 8 (from version 7) I finally broke down and formatted the internal memory of my EeePC and removing Xandros. I intended to install the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but this requires more than the 2GB of disk space available. After a lot of fiddling, I decided on a Puppy Linux 4.3.1 install, which gives a lot of space to other material.

Last Tuesday was my medical day, I took the afternoon off and saw a different doctor who agreed that the cough etc was probably due to asthma, and I should try steam inhalation. I then followed up with a 6 month check-up with my dentist to discover that he will be leaving the practice in the new year, to take on further teaching (he had been doing one day a week part time). So after 25 years I will have a new dentist, I was wondering earlier what would happen when he retired but now....

I put the amazon voucher toward buying an Apple iPod Touch, an iPhone without the phone or camera, which had dropped in price and as a result was a contender to replace my old Palm PDAs. It arrived last Thursday and I've spent the last few days playing with it. It's really cool! I didn't think after buying and using 6 palm PDA over 7+ years, that I could be won over so quickly but.... It has WiFi connectivity (though the initial connection seem to require an open connection) but once working encryption worked fine. There are thousands of programs (Apps) available, with hundreds for free. It kept me up past my bedtime a couple of times, and is a better bbc iplayer than either of my laptops! I've also just managed to copy an audio book from audible.com on to it, though it's a real performance!

I'm now going to try booking a seat at the NT for Nation! (based on the book by Terry Pratchett)