Spring into cleaning!

Oct 122008

A couple of months ago I decided it was about time I took our house ‘in hand’. I’ve done next to no real maintenance in years and my growing collection of the bloody useless has slowly mounted up until I couldn’t see the floor for the mess! Since it’s Spring over here I figured this was an ideal time to get on with it and so we did.

As in most houses, the larger part of the clutter is caused by things we haven’t used in years. These are things that would cost a lot to replace if we ever needed them, the emphais being on the *if*. Also of course they are things you can’t give away – even to friends! Eventually tho enough was enough and as the wife had taken a week off work we decided to attack the place. Ok *I* did… the wife just wanted a holiday.

So far, just out of our *bedroom* we’ve thrown away three bin bags full of rubbish mostly old clothes and shoes… but also a wide assortment of magazines, some of which have never been read but are so old the content has been superseded!

Also out of the bedroom went a lot of the computer gear that I’ve had stored in there since last Xmas when the ‘computer room’ was turned into a bedroom for the ‘guests’ (cough spit… ).

You may think so ok big deal… but amongst the detritus of 20 years of hoarding computing equipment were 12 working desktop computers, two laptops, and 4 half built computer carcases. All in the bedroom. As you can tell the wife is a very patient lady… either that or couldn’t care whether the house is clean an clear or not. I think I’ll opt for patient or I might become one!

Some of the stuff we shipped out (back to the ‘computer room) will be used in the long promised but not yet arrived ‘Great Grand Mega-Mammoth Garage Sale’ which we’ve promised ourselves for some months… but a lot was just dumped into the garbage bins – now filled to overflowing with four days before it’s emptied! In the UK we’d be imprisoned for having so much in it!!

Anyway, out went (or into the ‘Garage Sale’ pile) my collection of ‘legacy’ 5¼” floppy drives, 3½” floppy drives, video cards, CD drives, video/sound/LAN/etc cards, motherboards, 1Mb (and lower!) RAM strips at least three dozen power cables, printer cables, loads of LAN cabling, switches, 2 x 20 port routers, a dozen or so external modems and the like. Even my last Apple computer went out along with its printer, screen. k/b and mouse. Tho I’ve not even booted it since we moved in here and that’s 10 years!

The result of all this sorting is that at last we can see the carpet again!! Whilst this is a plus in some ways, we now realise it needs replacing so it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

Naturally, with the sort of clutter we’ve accumulated, it’s not *all* gone. For example, I still have several tea chests filled with 5¼” and 3½” disks filled with programs and utilities that are now entirely useless… but I’ve had some of them 25 years and they represent a lot of history so they have been ‘hidden’ away. Also secreted is one of the laptops that runs Win 98, also an older desktop that runs Windows 3.1, and an even older ’286′… complete with green screen monitor’. Well… you never know when this stuff might come in handy do you?? Cheesy

This lot has been piled into the cupboard that holds my Drizabone… the one I wore around *London* in the ‘summer’ before we migrated… and that I can no longer fit into, and a huge pile of photos that I’ve promised myself to one day annotate and stick in albums… or at least scan into the computer… or something.

Will someone remind me in ten years that I promised myself I’d do it ‘soon’??

And so, I’m now having a 5 minute break before getting back to finish off tidying around the floors before I tackle the one remaining pile… my computer workbench. It’s also in the bedroom and is piled high with stuff I’ve not yet managed to bring myself to discard.

Next week…. the garage itself… maybe!!

Don’t mention the air-conditioning!

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Oct 092008

As you may recall I’ve been wittering on periodically about the breakdown of all our aircon machinery in both car and house.

You might also recall that I took the car to the service station to be sorted out and was told the system simply needed re-gassing to ‘fix’ it, and also had arranged for a tech to come and repair the house system.

Well two days after the car was repaired… the a/c is no longer working. Clearly they re-gassed the system, but… also clearly… nobody bothered to fix the problem that caused the gas to leak!! I can’t take it to be repaired until at least Tuesday because the wife is home on holiday and we’d actually like to be able to go places instead of spending the day sitting in a repair shop!! First Grrr….. !!!

Which brings us to the house system.

The a/c tech turned up, spent considerable time (maybe two hours) doing wonderful things like regassing the system and fixing leaks… only to *then* decide the compressor needed replacing, isolating the system and charging us $250 for the privilege. We expect to be charged anything between $2,000 and $5,000 for a compressor or entirely new cooling unit. That was two days ago and so far we’ve not heard anything more! Maybe they are just too busy to bother. Second Grrr…. !!!!

I fail to understand why nobody working on the car thought it necessary to establish there was no leak before announcing the ‘repair’ complete, and why the a/c tech couldn’t simply go and get a new compressor and install it there and then!

Basically it seems nobody feels it necessary to actually do a job *properly*! Except me of cours… if there’s one thing I *can* and do *do* properly it’s whinge! And having landed myself in do do again I’m away to get on with life.

I’ve been converted!

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Oct 082008

A short while ago I bought myself an external SATA HDD Docking station and a couple of SATA disks to allow me to put my money where my mouth has been all these years and finally back up my computers the way I nag everyone else to!

One thing that occurred to me after receiving it was that I could finally check out all those hard drives I’d removed from machines I’d outgrown or had simply died. Currently I have at least 24 and I know there are more tucked away in various cupboards!

Trouble is they take up room… along with the several dozen CD drives, floppy drives, power boxes etc that are cluttering up my cupboards and the hassle of fitting them into a machine, checking them and removing them is just too much effort to contemplate!

To use the external docking station tho I needed something that would convert a SATA connection to am IDE… and that finally arrived today after the sort of fuss you’d think remarkable was it not for my ongoing jinx’ [i](I just take the effects of the jinx as a matter of course usually – tho occasionally get frustrated by it)[/i].

Anyhoo… I have the docking station… I have the ‘converter’… I have the discs. Now all I need is the time to sit and work through them. I’ll report back with what [i](if anything)[/i] useful is found on them and bearing in mind some go back 10 years or more I doubt they’ll be much use!

Edit:
After some work I remembered that nothing related to the jinx will work as well as I might hope, and so it went with this little project. Whilst each part connects to the individual pieces… none of the individual pieces will connect to each other!!

Will have to find a work-around but as usual, that’s the way it goes.

Decided now to take one of the HDD’s, the converter *and* the dockingstation to my friendly local tech store and ask for advice… they’re pretty helpful and resourceful usually so might have a more elegant solution than mine, which is to run around screaming and banging my head against the wall!!

More later!

Go Logistics – just go!

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Oct 072008

I mentioned that on Friday small parcel we were expecting had done it’s part to uphold the credibility of “The Jinx” and arrived whilst we were away and therefore was returned to the depot by the delivery guycompany. The result was that instead of a 24 hour turnaround, we had to wait until today (4 days later) before we could expect delivery.

This morning I called the company “Go Logistics” to enquire when it would be redelivered and was told this afternoon. Sounded like a nice surprise as I was expecting to wait at least another day… but we waited.

At 4:50 p.m. there was no sign of the van arriving so I called and asked if it *would* be delivered today as the afternoon was nearly gone and there was no sign of the package. The person I spoke too assured me it was on the delivery van and would arrive between 5:30 pm. and 6:00 p.m.

At 6:30 p.m. there was of course… no sign whatever of a ‘Go Logistics’ van… or a Go Logistics driver… or of course the package that was supposed to be on board!

I might say I’m not too pleased, but you might expect that. However, I *do* understand that there are sorts of problems potentially arising between wherever the van starts its journey and it’s end point… here.

For example there’s traffic issues… delay at other drop off locations… mechanical failures… anything! But surely as a company, once you have committed to a time you need to keep the customer informed if that time can’t be kept?? Do these people have *no* monitoring equipment available to them?

Anyway, moving along. I rang the company yet again… for the 6th time… and they said the driver is having a horrendous day and he would arrive in, roughly, a half-hour.

Ok *if* it’s the part I want it isn’t critical… but I’m also expecting delivery of a new PDA (also several days late) so it could be either… and it it *is* the phone then the sooner the better for that as well!

Just so you know… it’s already over a half hour and guess what?? Correct… no parcel!! Geez Louise!!

Edit:
Just for completeness, the converter *did* arrive along with a very harassed and apologetic driver who clearly was looking forwards to getting home to bed. As he said, our front door is hidden from the road by the vegetation so he *could* have just left the package the first time – but I suppose without authorisation he’d have been in trouble if it *had* been stolen.

The perils of daylight saving.

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Oct 062008

Daylight saving started here yesterday… and ended in the UK (or is it the other way around?) anyway the clocks went forward by one hour. Went forwards everywhere… except that is, at our house.

Normally I’m up coughing with the sparrows resetting all the timepieces around the house to the correct time which as you will know from previous posts takes ages because the number of clocks runs well into double figures! This time, for reasons I can’t explain I didn’t do it. Obviously this led to certain interesting side effects.

For example, yesterday morning my youngest daughter was due to go to Jamboree for the day. We knew the trip was laid on but in our usual chaotic manner had neglected to sort out where the pickup point was and what time. We knew the ‘day’ was due to start in Warragamba at 10:00 a.m. and it took about an hour to get there… so we figured if we started at our own Guide Hut at 8:30 that should give us time to wait to see if anyone else turned up and allow us time to zoom over the an alternate one if not.

As it happened, we left a little earlier than planned… and arrived at our hut (by our clocks) at 8:10 a.m…. just as they were all piling into the cars to leave! That was when we discovered the clocks had gone forward and it was actually 9:10 a.m. Had we put the clocks forward it’s quite possible we’d have missed them entirely! Oops.

So off she went anyway and had a great day meeting up with her older sister and enjoying herself immensely.

Of course being a ‘day trip’, we were to be there at 5:00 p.m. to collect her and bring her home. Were we there? Well since I ask the question you can safely assume we weren’t.

We’d gone home and made yet another start on clearing up the mess ready for the ‘Great Car Boot Sale’ I’ve been meaning to have since last Xmas and again forgot entirely about correcting the time on any of the dozens of clocks littering the house.

At 4:30 p.m. I went downstairs and for some reason decided to have a look at my phone… which showed a message had arrived. Assuming it was from my eldest daughter I was in no real hurry to look, so sat down and did other things on the computer first. When I *did* look… I discovered it was from the youngest saying the people who’d brought her home from the Jamboree were wondering where we were. The message was timed at 5:20 p.m. and it took a few minutes more of dissonance before daylight dawned and we ran for the door!

Chaos ensued.

Off we raced to the Guide Hut… we arrived… and they’d left presumably to bring her down to our house. We raced home… accompanied by a flashing panel light and incessant beeping letting us know we were almost out of petrol.

We get home and discover in our absence the daughter had finally decided to call the home phone number and left two messages telling us she was at a friends house and could we collect her from there please.

In true farce style we tried to get there as quickly as possible before the petrol ran out.

I’ll pass over the lunacy of driving up a road that had been ‘cut off’ and diverted by roadworks… and (after finally collecting her with some embarrassment) the idiocy of a U-Turn on the road to get back to a petrol station a kilometre or so away when there was a suitable one a hundred metres or so away over the brow of a hill, but forgotten about until it was too late to turn back… and carry the story on a little.

We topped up the car and to round off the afternoon asked the daughter if she’d like a McDonald’s for dinner while we had a salad… of course she said yes so off she trotted to buy one.

Five minutes later the wife remembered she’d promised her a BBQ so ran in to get her before her order was processed and we drove off home for the first BBQ of the year… despite the cold and the rain we had all day!

Gosh I was **so** pleased to be out there doing the cooking. I’d suggested waiting until *today* to have the BBQ so that we could share it with the eldest daughter who will be arriving home from Jamboree sometime today but of course I was ignored as usual. Charming!! In fact they both said… no worries… you can do another one tomorrow!! Hah!!

Oh yes. I mentioned the eldest daughter was returning home from Jamboree. Guess what??

We have no idea at all either when she’ll be coming home… or where she’ll be arriving! Here we go again.

(by the way – despite updating a few of our timepieces there are *lots* still waiting their turn!!!)

I should so lucky.

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Oct 032008

The converter was despatched this morning. This afternoon we went shopping. When we got back – there was a note saying they’d tried to deliver the thing! Agghh… !!!

By then it was 5:30 p.m. and they are closed over the weekend… and of course on Monday which is a public holiday… and there would be two days (possibly) to deliver, means I won’t get it until the middle of next week!

Damn.

More on the weather.

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Oct 032008

I mentioned a few days ago that both the air conditioning in the house, and in the car had failed. I took the car in to be repaired this morning and left the house at 7:30 a.m. I looked at the temperature gauge and it told me it was already 27ºC. By the time I started the trek home. at 12:30 it was 37ºC… which is quite warm!!

No doubt we’ll have a storm soon to take the edge off the heat but I’m hoping this isn’t a sign of things to came. A summer with temperatures consistently in excess of 40ºC can be hard to deal with. I might end up spending a *lot* of time in the local library where the cooling systems can cope, because even at its best ours finds it hard to keep the house at a reasonable temperature under those extremes!!

But at least the car is fixed.

The house system should be fixed on Tuesday, and the pool heater might be done next week as well. Summer is icumen in.

One step forwards…

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Oct 032008

Wrote this up on the ‘Family Forum’ but figured it deserved to be out here as well. Nothing important really, just an update on the development of our technological setup here at home.

It’s all down to me having discovered a few weeks ago a small utility that allows me to backup all my data online. Ok it cost $100 a year but bearing in mind I lost 40 Gb of priceless photos a couple of years ago I think it’s worth it. What’s more, tho I repeatedly exhort everyone I talk to about computers to back up consistently and regularly… I’ve *never* done it myself! Until I signed up for the online backup service I don’t remember *ever* backing up any of my data. And remember I’ve been using computers since 1983!!

Actually I suppose I’m arguingagainst myself to a certain extent if in all that time I’ve not really lost that much essential data? But that’s besides the point. In the ‘old days’ we stored stuff on 1.5 Mb floppies (and of course much smaller!!) so losing one or two made little difference to the overall picture. However, modern hard drives are getting seriously *huge* and the amount of data one can potentially lose in the event of a catastrophic breakdown is immense so I’m still reccomending regular backups… but at least now I can say it without having my tongue in my cheek as I do so!!

Strangely it was paying for the online storage that made me realise the need for a more ‘physical’ storage system at home, so, after a little thought I went out and bought a ‘docking station’ for SATA HDD’s.

The SATA drives allow ‘hot-swapping’ which means I can (if I want) remove one drive and instert another without too much hassle, and being in a docking station means I can literally lift them out without the need to dismantle a ‘holding case’.

The dock I bought was more useful than most because it also does duty as a USB Hub and has an integrated card reader. The only fly in the ointment was that all my ‘spare’ HDD’s are IDE which obviously is a pain because SATA and IDE have diffferent connectors.

To help sort out the problem I went out and bought two new drives. One, a 500Gb Seagate, the other a 1Tb Western Digital. The 500Gb set me back $105.00, the 1Tb $195. I think I got a pretty good deal there!

Of course this didn’t solve the problem of how I was going to access the old IDE drives… so I searched around and sourced a IDE –> SATA or SATA –> IDE converter made by Skymaster. Lord knows if it’ll work but it was only $45 including delivery so I have my fingers crossed! I had an email telling me the order had been despatched so I’ll find out soon just how well it *does* work… and I’m keeping the fingers crossed!

One of the reasons for wanting the converter desperately is that a couple of years ago I was in the process of cleaning off my desktop computer ready to reformat and reinstall. I’d copied all the photos I’d collected over the past five years, and deleted them off the hard drive… when my daughter accidentally knocked the external HDD off the desk… effectively destroying the only photos we have of her first 5 years!! I’m hoping against hope that it was just the connection that was damaged… so when the converter arrives the first step will be to stick the old 44Gb drive into the docking station and see if perhaps it *might* work.

If not… well the last quote I had from a forensic data recovery firm was between $1000 – $3000 which ain’t cheap in anyone’s book!

Either way, after all these years I *finally* have a decent backup system in place for my data, photos etc, etc, etc. So far I’ve uploaded 35Gb to the online service and copied another 50 Gb to the new backup disc.

If I ever need the online service to *download* those files might cost a fortune… so I may even have to resort to having it all sent to me on DVD’s (whichever is cheapest)… but at least it’s safe… where ever it is!! Cheesy

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