Feeling : Relaxed

As you can probably tell by the lack of entries here, things are quite busy.

Most of the stuff that's keeping me busy is work stuff, but I have some exciting things going off in my personla life right now. I'm not going to discuss them here though as a lot of people who read this don't know about it yet and I'd like to keep it that way :)

On a completely different note, I've reaaly been getting drawn in to the whole 24 thing. I caught a few of the episodes from season 2 a couple of weeks ago when they ran a catch up night (4 episodes back to back). Since then I've been watching religiously. I was so impressed by what I saw that I went out and borrowed a copy of the whole of season 1. 18 hours of TV, but all I can say is wow! If you're wondering why the lack of updates here, there's your answer :)

More great news! The Shield Season 2 starts on Five on July the first!

If you missed the first season, you really should watch it before season 2 starts. This is without doubt the best TV police series ever made! I have season 1 on region 1 DVD. If you want to borrow it, contact me :)

Well, seeing as its Sunday I should really make an attempt to move forward with this website and get some more work done....

Feeling : Indifferent

Ok, so I'm back up and online.

The old D-Link DSL 504 I had everything routing out through here is a little bit dead. If you want more details take a look at last nights post! Let that be a warning to all of you that allow access to your routers web interface from outside your own network. Needless to say I won't be doing that anymore.

The replacement box that is now routing everything out of this network is a Zoom X3 5560 box. I picked it up this morning for about £75 and its surprisingly easy to install and get up and running. It took me a while to find my way around the web interface (there is no serial connection), but I found most things within a couple of clicks and now everything should be back and working. For a relatively cheap ADSL modem/router/gateway it has a surprising amount of features packed into that little box. Thus far, I'm impressed with it. Check it out at http://www.zoom.com/adsl/adsl-overview.html

Got to make sure all the port forwarding is set up correctly and that everything that should be coming in is, and the stuff that shouldn't, isn't.

Gah, life without the internet.....is there one?

Feeling : Stupid

Looks like this site is going to be down for a little while, wanna know why?

I decided to make some changes to the port forwarding settings on my DSL router tonight. After trying unsucessfully to log into the web interface, I thought I'd try via the serial connection on the router. Having connected up I find that the whole flash eeprom is corrupted and can't get it to do much. Looks like some little git has been trying to get access from the internet and screwed it up.

After a brief search around the net (from my laptop using a GPRS card because I have no internet access here) I find that it needs to be sent back to Dlink for a repair. What kind of bloody eeprom design is that!

Well, you won't get to read this till I'm back online so I'm going to go to bed...

Feeling : Violated!

Well, finally got the car back from the garage after its 60K mile service and the problem I actually wanted fixed hasn't been!

I booked it in for the service because the front exhaust mounting was making annoying squeaking sound when pulling away. Might as well get that fixed and have it serviced at the same time. 60k miles means a cam belt swap is required too so I was expecting a fairly large bill, but better that than have to pay for an engine rebuild. Anyways, when I go to book it in I see the service prices advertised on a board behind the desk and about shit! £299 for the service and £279 for the cam belt change. The woman there says that those prices are wrong and are city prices, so I breath a sigh of relief. She works out a rough price and tells me that its going to be £458, give or take a few quid, better but still not bloody good!

Anyways, I go to pick up the car and find the bill is a bit less than that and end up paying £355. A bit more palatable, and only slightly more than I expected. I ask about the squeaking and she says yep, they found something loose and secured it. Well, at least it won't sound like I'm trying to smuggle mice when I'm drining any more.

I get a mile down the road to find that not only is the squeaking still there, but its actually worse! I take the car back and a mechanic comes out on a test drive with me and tells me that its a known fault with the exhaust system and Renault have done a modification for it. Just got to wait for the kit to come into stock and get it fitted now. Better be under bloody warranty too!

I need a beer after that....