Mobile Internet

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.

The Love Bug

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).

Office Woes

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.

Naming Conventions

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!

Home Computers

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.