Dammed Spammers

August 29th, 2006

Well I’m glad to see the spammers are making good use of this blog even if noone else looks at it, I’ve now had to remove and block five spammer trackbacks in the course of a week!

Here’s a little heads-up guys! Moderation is on and your spam will never be shown!

Anyone else get fed up with the sheer amount of time we have to spend dealing with this rubbish? A quick check of my email reveals 22 (real) messages and 13 junk ones!

KB905474 - The Windows Update from Hell! - Part deux!

June 13th, 2006

” I have the horrible feeling I’m going to end up reformatting the hard disk and starting agin!”

Prophetic words indeed - Microsoft’s final solution was to rebuild the PC from scratch - Cheers guys, you’re a great help!

At least it does seem to have fixed the problem!

KB905474 - The Windows Update from Hell!

June 2nd, 2006

Gaaaah!

Anyone heard of Microsoft Update KB905474? It’s the Windows Genuine Advantage update. Basically it puts a nag message on your login screen if it decides your copy of Windows is not genuine.

No problem, I thought, all three of my copies of Windows have come direct from Microsoft so there can be no problem!……………….. However, (You knew there’d be a ‘however’ didn’t you!). KB905474 has decided that the copy of Windows on one of my PC’s is not genuine! I checked the validation page on the Microsoft site and it says that it is. I downloaded and ran the ‘Genuine Advantage Diagnostic’ - that says it’s genuine, but I still get the nag screen on login.

So far I have had an open call log with Microsoft for four days, they’ve given me an alternative licence key, it don’t like that one either, they’ve given me instructions how to remove the update - great, that fixed the problem, only windows update put it straight back on again!

It’s doing my head in, there are a lot of posts on the Microsoft newsgroups, the software is clearly flawed. I have the horrible feeling I’m going to end up reformatting the hard disk and starting agin!

Back to School

May 22nd, 2006

Spent this morning at Jake’s school this morning. They were having a “Bring a Grown-up to School” day.

Bit of a change from my day, I left school in 1979, and we had blackboards and chalk, and the ‘computer’ was a teletype machine in a room under the stairs connected to a mainframe in the local college. The Deputy Head flounced around the school in the traditional black gown and you had to stand up when a member of staff entered the room.

Now they have ‘interactive whiteboards”, basically a laptop attached to a projector which displays the image onto a whiteboard. There is also a scanner with which the teacher can scan pupils work and display it on the screen for the rest of the class to see.

I now feel very, very old!

Beardy Wierdy

May 19th, 2006

As a part of the ‘life changes’ (some would call it a mid-life crisis!) I’m going through at the moment, I have grown a beard. My sister saw it for the first time yesterday and said that it suited me.

When I told Debby she said that it hid my double chin…………………………. thanks dear!

Big Brother Asylum

May 19th, 2006

Well the Big Brother people have really excelled themselves this time. I’ve never seen such a collection of nutters!

Good job they’ve fitted the diary room out as a padded cell!

Poor Business Practice

May 15th, 2006

I recently ordered online a £400 piece of computer equipment. Having checked my online credit card statement I confirmed that the payment had been made 10 days ago.

Having only had the original order confirmation, I contacted the supplier to see where my order was. To their credit they responded quickly, but with a rather curt message saying that they had already sent me an email to say that they were waiting for more stock to come in from Canada and it would be another week.

I checked my emails, I even checked the junk email folder…… nothing, so I don’t know who they emailed, but it wasn’t me!

Anyway, my point is, if someone orders goods from you, and you can’t supply immediately, wouldn’t it be good practice to wait until you can fulfil the order before charging the customer’s credit card? Perhaps as a new businessman I need to look to getting rid of my morals!

IE7 Beta 2 - Part 2

May 15th, 2006

Hmm………. on further examination, I’ve changed my mind. It keeps crashing - still it is Beta I guess, maybe I should wait until SP1!

IE7 Beta 2

May 12th, 2006

I’ve been taking a look at the Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 7.

It looks pretty good, it’s fast, the interface is clean, and supports the nice little touches like tabbed browsing.

Sad thing is, Firefox had all that ages ago!

It remains to be seen how it fares on a security basis……..

The Joys of Self-Employment

May 12th, 2006

It’s reportedly going to be the hottest day of the year today.

Thanks to my new-found self-employed status, I’m sat here in a t-shirt, shorts and sandals. I think I’m going to enjoy working for myself……….if only I could find some customers!