Michael's Meanderings

So I got up at my normal time for Friday intending to go shopping but had to pack and tidy up so didn't.

Left just after 11 and caught the train to St Pancras, crossed the road to Kings Cross, used 2 refund vouchers (from delay on season ticket) to get a super saver ticket (leave London before 15:00) for less money than expected.

I caught the 13:33 to Hull via Grantham and arrived about an hour later and shared a cab (with snowdrop?), getting to the Ramada and checked in by 15:00, unpacked, and made myself a cup of tea, then I had a 2 hour doze.

Had an early dinner of a steak sandwich and a massive pile of chips, with a half of cider.

Discovered that the hotel had freed the WiFi, so you no longer have to take out a mortgage for internet access. Unfortunately Puppy Linux didn't want to talk to the router, so I had to boot my eeepc from an SD card ubuntu instead.

I've been using my iPod a lot more than I should, using my eeepc as a charger. I need to stop playing! While I was playing Toobz Laurence came over to give me a hug and we chatted about the merits of Avatar - the movie.
A second hug then arrived from Miki and we learned her left arm now works properly!

The opening was at 19:30 and four concerts followed see the Read Me for program details. The Programme book should also appear online after the con.,

Heather B (Canadian filker) first up
Snowdrop Explodes
Nat T
Wike W (pulled out some oldies but goldies)

I decided to pumpkin early and so to bed.

Posted via Journaler.

I got delivered home on Sunday afternoon after brunch, watched some TV (including Polar Express).Back to work on Tuesday, since the trains are running a Saturday service the Thameslink through London is closed, so I had to travel to Victoria and tube to Farringdon.

I had 3 jobs I wanted to complete this week and I have managed to finish all of them.

I've just bought my new season ticket, as far as I can remember this is the first time in over 20 years the price has dropped, in the new year. It still cost £3728! While I have put in claims for delayed travel, I need to see what the situation is for canceled trains.

Looking forward to next week when I'm off to Atlanta, and Gafilk!

I've really fallen in love with the iPod Touch, I've been downloading free apps, then deleting them with abandon! I guess I'll have a core few that I actually use regularly.

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)