Woke with that 'wrong side of the bed feeling'. Letter from the Corporate Services Dept. to say they would deduct money for the strike next month. Hopefully, this will coincide with the new pay deal arriving, so it won't be so completely painful. Spent a long time enjoying the speed of DSL and listening to the radio, before heading out for wanderings. Looks like DVD player will be delayed, which is annoying because it would be nice to watch a movie on a no-good TV day like today. Met visiting friends in town, wandered around the shops, despite increasing anger and peevishness with others who seem to thing 'holiday' means a time when looking in front of oneself is not necessary! Pleasant and amusing time however. Also had a rare Orledge sighting! Got drunk. Built Abiword to use GTK+2.0 - wonderful! Feel like I should maybe visit Burnham again soon, but why? Decided a spell of hermitting might help.
Reinstalled <<lionel II>> and got modems, printers etc. working. Pleased to see it go to a good home, and happy to get things working again. Also means I have only one working machine in my house now, which is a relief (both spatially and emotionally). Very heavy rain sees me running up and down a garden with buckets to empty a water butt. Silly, and funny really. Ticket booked to see Tony Benn speak. That'll make me happy. Later, met a passing friend and wandered in the relative calm of the evening. Made decisions. Slept badly.
Strangest day for a long time. Did little of use all day. Couldn't settle to read, had seen enough of computers. Felt disturbed and rather anxious all day. Later, went to a "Proms in the Park" event, which had some highlights, but the jingoism seemed to raise my levels of beligerence. Later, was practically forcibly ejected from someone's home after drinking too much and launching a somewhat radical rant. When will I ever learn?
Early start, making some sense out of the mess and chaos here due to possibility of impending visitors. Set about finishing up some PC repairs I agreed to do as a favour. Having to work with Windows to diagnose hardware problems (which are hardly my strong suit) was a nightmare. The old cliche about the 'car with the hood welded shut' sprang to mind readily on several occasions. Wandered out to buy a cheap replacement sound card. Got a bog standard no-brand card, but was amazed and pleased to see that the driver disk contained Linux drivers too! Having finallly got things working I set about finishing work on the replacement for <<lionel>>. Salvaged all the important data from /home, and shut the case. Ready to go on Monday when a modem is available. Couldn't stop there - set up a webmail thing so that a friend can check her IMAP account, and an web/IRC gateway so I can maybe chat whilst at work. First glance at the Apache docs for a couple of years. Sort of crashed here - no more jobs to do, nothing much going on. Became miserable. Weird day.
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
