Well A is having more problems with his laptop. Well, not so much
problems, as not being set up for the Internet. I couldn't find a
modem on it (although one is proably hidden away somewhere) so being
very foolish I decided to set it up to use his mobile phone with the
IR port. Having installed the software, I discovered that the IR
driver was not installed, so I set that up and found that the software
could only choose a port during setup, a simple reinstall didn't give
me the option to change, which ment an complete uninstall and then
another reinstall. It still couldn't see the port (for some reason the
drivers made it COM2 instead of a seperate device and the phone
software thought that COM2 was too slow). So once again I uninstalled
the software and reinstalled it - this time to use the serial cable. I
am really upset with Nokia, you have to reboot after EVERY install and
EVERY uninstall.
If anybody has any suggestions on getting the laptop, IR port and cell
phone to work /msg dorward them. its an HP something, nokia phone, and
the OS in Win98.
M has decided to ban all webmail accounts to reduce the risk of the
lovebug, fair enough I guess, but he put me in charge of blacklisting
the domains. It is incredible how many there are out there. Do you
know any? List them at free webmail accounts.
The IT section is leaping for joy over the disabling of our old email
system which was still letting ILOVEYOU in to the system (174 people
love K!). We all hated the system anyhow so it was no great loss. On
the subject, our ISP (star internet) has created a separate division
to sell the antivirus software they created in-house. It managed to
catch the love bug as soon as it came out (without modification). We
all think the share price will rocket.
I put out a message to leave NT workstations switched on
over the weekend. I'll be coming in to work out just what machine names
are in use (several have been renamed but our anti-virus server still
doesn't know it) and get the latest antivirus software on them.
JavaScript
I showed BluePrintVert how to pick a random item from an array (in
JavaScript) and he started kicking himself. The example array I called
`happy' and BluePrintVert proceeded to fill it up with grumpy messages
for his version of the magic 8 ball (keep reading my day log for the
URL when it is published).
Helping Hands
BluePrintVert got frustrated when it took five whole minutes for a
user to grasp the fact that rebooting might fix their Out Of Memory
error. This seems to be typical of many off the calls we get to our
helpdesk.
You may have noticed that I don't seem to be solving very much and
BluePrintVert is. This is because I am too busy creating a PHP/MySQL
database and have to learn PHP as I go along. It is working out quite
nicely but I haven't found a way to make multiple fields in a table
unique in MySQL. If anyone knows please /tell dorward. At the moment
it looks like I'll have to implement the check in PHP rather then on
the db itself.
Lunch (or so they thought)
I took some time out to post my application for student finance (it
took me long enough!), hand my cell phone in for repair (so long as
they believe I didn't drop it the repair will be free), visit the bank
(I managed to forget to pick up my money but they called me just before
I handed my phone over so I was able to run back), and once again fail
to get my hair cut (this is my new hobby).
BluePrintVert managed to solve a problem with N's inability to delete
files. In Office 2000 you can delete files from the open dialogue box,
you can also preview files in the same place. However, if a file is
previewed it is marked as `in use', and if a file is `in use' you can
not delete it. As a result N couldn't delete any of his files! This is
yet another quality feature brought to you from the makers of ClipIT
the vampire paperclip.
Somebody left a file with a long name in the root of the projects
folder, as a result when people in Word went to open a project related
file, it moved everything else off the window to the left and made it
look like there were no folders there at all. You had to scroll to
the left to see any folders, and you can't expect people to realise
that! I hate people who break naming conventions, but it does allow me
to delete their files with no guilt!
As I type this I am sitting on the bus, it is the first time I have
really used my GoType keyboard for quite a while. It was defiantly a
good investment though. As I set up jpilot the other day I'll be able
to upload this with no trouble for editing (i.e. spell checking!) in
emacs and then pasting into Netscape.
As I'm writing about my PC I'll mention that I got round to installing
licq last night. It took quite a while to compile (I should have
waited until this evening) but it looks pretty fantastic. I mucked up
my QT libraries, but it should be fairly simple to put them back the
way they were and recompile licq with a --command to use qt2 in a
non-standard location. That's the only thing I don't like about linux,
different versions of libraries. It is better than dll hell though -
it tells you what went wrong and is usually fixable without too much
trouble.
I've come to the decision to redo my homepage again. While it looks
very pretty it is over 100kb at the moment (I went through a Macromedia
Fireworks frenzy a month or so ago) so I'll be simplifying it
somewhat. I'll also take the opportunity to put this day log on it as
well as Everything2.
There are twenty five minutes to go until off peak (when Internet
costs drop 80%) so I'll fill up the time working on the website. Who
knows? I may be able to announce its upload in this day log.