Pillings Lock Marina 2009 #4
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to this, our fourth blog from Pillings Lock, called PLM from this day forward. It is still Saturday 14th November, but we are now into the pm part of it.
Prior to posting blog #3 this morning I reported the state of our wee pooch who, once again seems to be off her food. She is now lying down at the bottom of our bed and is fast asleep. Fortunately the bed is high off the floor otherwise she would probably snuggle up under the duvet.
During the night we were buffeted a bit by the wind and the boat has had a pretty good soaking. Despite my best efforts during the summer months, a couple of our windows still leak along the top edge, as a result of which the rain tends to find its way in if we close the windows. Leaving them open does reduce the effect but, with the high winds last night, the rain was simply bouncing off the glass and finding its way inside anyway. I eventually pulled the curtains back and released them from their bottom rain and closed the windows again, this time with a towel underneath to catch the drips.
Now, since we now seem to have a decent Internet connection, and just as soon as Wifey has give names to the photos she took last year, and just as soon as I have downloaded my contribution to the gallery and named those, I will try to include some in this blog. That’s a promise!
It is now 4 pm on Saturday and we have been trying to download photos from our cameras to this nice, shiny and new laptop. Would you believe it, the card from Wifey’s little Fuji will not fit into the slot in the laptop. We do have a multi-card unit that the laptop will read and I will be able to download my card, but we have had to use the Acer; into which the Fuji card will fit; to download those pictures onto our external hard drive, and then transfer them to the Tosh. What a bloody palaver, and it’s a brand new laptop!! I really am absolutely gobsmacked.
Sunday 15th November 2009 and I am beginning to think that I will have to install the 32 bit version of Win 7 because, unfortunately some programmes simply will not run in 64 bit. Yeah, I know, it’s all gobbledegook to me too, but at least this laptop came with the disc for 32 bit, so I can at least scale it down if necessary.
Monday 16th November and, once again, we have more wind and rain. According to Ridsey, who just happens too be a close neighbour – well, that’s the name of his boat and wee JRT – we are supposed to enjoy fine weather for the rest of this week. Sadly he seems to be the only one aware of this good news because, according to TV and newspaper forecasts, we are set to endure even more wind and rain this week.
I have in my possession two programmes that I use quite a lot, one of which is Pdf 4 Create and the other being eBook Starter. The first is useful for converting Word to the universally accepted .pdf files. Not all computers are able to read MS Word documents but, apparently, the same cannot be said of .pdf. The eBook Starter programme is the one I am using to write my recipe book, and it is displayed on screen very much like an open book. Having actually paid good money for both these programmes I was somewhat miffed when, on installing them on the Toshiba, they both came up as Demo versions, this despite entering the correct registration codes for both.
Naturally I emailed both companies but have yet to receive a reply from either. The Pdf site, which is called Nuance, list the programme as past its sell by date, but that should not mean I am unable to use it on a new machine, unless of course this version is incompatible with Win 7. The same goes for eBook Starter, which I bought less than a year ago.
Watch this space because, even if I have to bombard these two companies with emails, I will eventually get satisfaction.
Our HP Printer, which we have had for a number of years now and which can copy, scan, print and fax, has not been printing in the correct colours. We have some pretty good examples of winter on the canal that we tried printing yesterday, but the clear, white and virgin snow came out a sort of bluey grey colour. We had hoped that it was the Acer at fault but, as suspected, the printer is obviously due a thorough overhaul. Instead we are going to pop into Leicester tomorrow, weather permitting, where there is a Comet and a PC World store. Hopefully we will find a cheapo printer with a flatbed scanner in it. The auto-feed scanners are OK if all you want to do is copy documents into the computer. However, if you want copies of book pages, then the flatbed is the thing to have. And anyway, the one we have is far too big and so a smaller one is an absolute necessity.
Tuesday 17th November and it is still rather blowy out there, but that won’t prevent us from going to Melton Mowbray. I know, I said Leicester for a new printer, but I had forgotten earlier plans for market day.
The good news is, that I have finally received a reply from the eBook Starter people with instruction on how to download and reinstall the programme. Apparently, despite me sending several emails complaining about this problem, my latest email is the only one they have received. Kinda makes a mockery of their support service, which sent up an error message each time I entered an email address, to the effect that it wasn’t a real one. I tried three, all of which are real and none of them was accepted. So much for technology.
I now have to download the Demo version, install this Demo version, check to find my system info and send it to them, at which time they will generate another security code for me to activate the programme. I will then be able to use it as before.
It’s a pity Nuance couldn’t be bothered to reply because, had they done so, I might have agreed to update Create 4 to Create 6 and paid a little bit extra for the privilege. Instead I have downloaded a free Pdf file maker, which seems to do the trick.
We are really being hammered by some serious winds this morning. Indeed, this all started yesterday evening and hasn’t stopped all night.
Today is Wednesday 18th November and Wifey has booked up to have her hair done this afternoon, which we’ll follow by a pub lunch. It was also our intention to go get a Daily mail so that I could have a read of it in the Fox whilst waiting for Wifey’s hair to be done, but that will now have to wait ‘cos I don’t really fancy braving these winds and the accompanying rain twice in one day.
Luckily for us yesterday was fine for our visit to Melton Mowbray and, quite naturally, we made a few delicious purchases. Sausages were top of the list and, once again, some of them contain garlic, which kinda tends to stink the fridge out even though Sheila has put them in a sealed container. I suppose we’ll have to eat them pretty soon. We also found meat pies and quiches that we have sampled in the past and the local street market, which is always run on Tuesdays, provided us with a couple of different cheeses.
W. H. Smith are offering the new Stephen King novel at a £5 reduction to £15, but I’m waiting to see if Alan can pick it up at Tesco any cheaper. Mind you it’s a huge volume but, since his accident several years ago, he really hasn’t made it back to his previous literary level of expertise. One of his first books after being run down and seriously injured was about a rogue Buick 8, but that really wasn’t up to par but, with luck and a tail wind, perhaps this latest offering called Under the Dome, might just be the one that tells us that he’s back to normal.
Thursday 19th November and the weather has gone mad with yet another blustery night.
I had hoped to receive my new coding for eBook Starter by now but, as usual, nobody seems to be in any hurry these days, especially once they have your money. Give it today and I’ll have to chase them up again.
Today we plan to do absolutely nothing, zilch, sod all, so I’ll probably try my hand at a bit of canal art painting.
The weather seems to have calmed down somewhat after all the high winds and rain, but we are promised even more of the same from the weather experts. The weekend is here again and it is now 07.10 on Saturday 21st November.
On Thursday, as I think I may have mentioned earlier, our toilet started making some peculiar rattling sounds, almost as if the motor bearings were breaking up. To be honest we were both a bit worried about it because, as you will appreciate, electric motors do not come cheap. Anyway we telephoned our friendly, but not so “neighbourhood” expert on the matter, that’s Ashley who lives in Banbury. He’s the young lad who replaced the gizmo that controls the flush a couple of weeks ago.
Come yesterday morning the loo stopped making that graunching noise, and so I texted Ashley to put him off coming at midday, which is when he was due to call. This, we thought, now left us free to go to Leicester as planned, to buy a new printer. However, as you would expect, and taking Sod’s Law into account, the damned thing ‘graunched’ again, so I had to phone Ashley again.
As promised and at the appointed time, he turned up an proceeded to dismantle the loo. Now, it’s not like my dear wife to make such a boo-boo, especially not such an expensive one but, when she poured the last of our Blue down the loo, she also dropped something else down. When you buy a 1 gallon plastic container of just about any liquid, the lid is secured by a serrated ring of plastic. Well, when Wifey first opened the container of Blue, she neglected to dispose of that plastic ring. And, my dear readers, dropping that ring down the loo is, what cost us £40.
Ah well, it’s only money!!
Eventually, at about 1 pm, we set off for Leicester to purchase our new printer. Because we prefer a flat-bed scanner to the current auto-feed type, and because I have found from experience when buying the new laptop, that Comet are just a bit cheaper than P C World, we called in there first. However, when I asked the floor walker what came with their printers, he said, and I quote, “Nothing, just the printer”. “What”, I replied, “No mains lead or ink cartridges?” “No”, said he, “Just the printer, the manufacturers no longer include these items, you have to purchase them separately.” My reply to that silly statement was something like “Yeah, right, bye bye”, and off we trotted two doors away to PC World.
We found a good choice there but, on enquiring about a couple of them, the floor walker explained that, due to a recent sale, the boxes with all the bits in – like mains lead and ink cartridges – were missing. We eventually settled for an Epson at about £60, which came with all the necessary peripherals except, of course, the USB connecting lead, which has been the one item missed out from almost all electronic equipment. The thinking behind this, I think, is because most people would already own these and would have been included with the item they were replacing.
Having set it up and given it a test drive, I have to say that the results far exceeded those of the old HP that it replaced. For a start the colours were much sharper and clearer. No doubt the HP only needed a service to bring it up to scratch but, since we wanted a flat-bed scanner anyway…..!
Sunday 22nd November and winter is surely drawing nigh because, once again we have been subjected to some pretty high winds and rain.
I had intended to continue with my recipe book but, as with many things electronic, the programme I installed on the new laptop simply would not play with the files from the original, well, not immediately anyway. Even if I do say so myself I generally get my own way with computers, even if it does mean a little cussing and swearing. Eventually, after deleting folders and replacing with others, along with a bit more mucking about, I finally got it to work to my satisfaction. That’s not to say it won’t mess me about again tomorrow, but at least I seem to have all the recipes in the book.
All I have to do now is compile the thing. Compiling consists of the ebook programme taking all relevant files and turning them into a book that can be read directly from the computer screen. This finished article then becomes a stand alone book, but without all the system files and such that take up all the space on the computer hard drive. Once that is done I can then move the folder containing the files to another location, such as a DVD or external hard drive. If necessary I can then alter those files with additional recipes.
Naturally, it being Sunday, we popped off out for our lunchtime drink. It is now almost 5 pm and, if I ask Wifey very nicely, I’m sure she won’t mind putting dinner on. With a bit of luck and a tail wind I’ll be able to post this blog tomorrow, in doing so I will also try to include a photo or two.
Tuesday 24th November and, despite my best efforts, I am still having trouble with this recipe book. You would think wouldn’t you, that any book compiling programme worth its salt would be able to handle 300+ pages, but it seems that this one can’t. Today, having spent an hour or more placing all the chapters and pages in the sequence required, I then tried to save the new project to the home folder. I then received an error message telling me it couldn’t be done. So I closed it down in order to start again. However, since I have been advised that this programme doesn’t like too many pages, I have now decided to spread the book over four volumes. At present this seems to be working, but I have had to uninstall and re-install the programme first so as to really start from scratch.
Thursday 26th November and more about eBook Starter.
For some unfathomable reason, known only to those who built the programme, it still comes up with the message ‘not responding’, but, thank goodness, it does eventually respond and open up. Ditto for saving the project when I have finished faffing about with it.
I wouldn’t mind a little aggravation with the programme but, having emailed the company concerned, they had the nerve to suggest that, since I am compiling a book with more pages than it can handle!, I should perhaps consider writing it in Pdf format. It seems even they do not have a lot of faith in this baby of theirs.
Now, on to the matter of posting this blog, which, I’m very much afraid, is going to be delayed somewhat. The reason for this is the fact that our photos are rather large in information, usually 3Mb or more, which makes them rather difficult to upload at our slow speeds. I know I had several programmes on the Acer that could have dealt with this and reduced the sizes somewhat, but I am not sure if they will work with Windows 7, nothing else seems to have much joy with it and that’s for sure. Sometime soon perhaps?
It is now Saturday 28th November and we have just over a month until 2010. A few weeks ago a neighbour of ours asked if we would be going to the New Years Eve get together. At just £2.50 per head, which included a snack, we thought it would be a good idea and would allow us to get to know a few more boaters. Now the powers that be have decided to put on live music and have changed the price to £15 per head. So, that’s a no no then!
Sorry to say, what with the current problems with my ebook programme and with that wretched Information Bar, that is now blighting my very existence, I haven’t had time to organise the photographs that I want to include in the blog. And, now that the size of this blog has reached seven pages, I really think I should post it now and worry about photos next time.
If anybody reading this knows how to remove that Information Bar permanently I will be forever grateful.
Cheers for now and have a good weekend.
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Pillings Lock blog #3
Pillings Lock Marina 2009 #3
Today is Wednesday 28th October 2009 and we have been at these moorings for just a month. Unlike our stay at Bulbourne for the previous two years, we have actually spread our wings a little and investigated three different pubs, two of which are in Quorn and one in Barrow. So far, of the three, we still prefer The Fox in Quorn, which has a big frontage but looks no different to most other pubs inside. This is the pub I took Alan to on the day we bought the Alfa.
Now, as most of you will be well aware, I have a lousy memory and so you will have to pardon me for not remembering the names of the other two pubs. However, the second pub we visited was also in Quorn and, although very friendly, it was very small and somewhat crowded, with footballing kids. I have to say I quite enjoyed the experience, and I do like a pub that is popular, so I dare say we’ll go there again.
The third pub is in Barrow right by the River Soar and, once again, seems pretty popular, especially where food is concerned. Obviously it has a very good reputation in that regard.
Today I’m going to carry on with the building of our new roof top flower boxes, which are going to be good and sturdy at around 21”long by 11” wide and nine” tall. Yesterday I completed the bases, which leaves me to connect the ends and sides, after which there’s the painting to do. Goodness knows where we’re going to store them once they are built but, wherever it is, they need to be covered until they have been painted. They certainly can’t stay inside the boat.
Tomorrow morning, which will be Thursday 29th October, we have a 7.30 appointment for blood tests, followed later in the morning with a visit to my old RAF pal from Germany, who has now bought a flat over her at Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is right next door to Stoke on Trent.
The weekend is here again and it has started out very much as the forecasters predicted, cooler and very much wetter. However, even though we won’t be going very far today, I still have plenty to keep me occupied. I have now built the two flower boxes for the roof and all I have to do now is paint them.
Today is Saturday 31st October and our visit to Alan and Chris on Thursday went very well. Unfortunately, having ignored my own map directions, we took a wrong turn and, what should have been a journey of an hour or so, took us almost two. But we had a good visit with a rather decent lunch laid on by our hosts. Hopefully, some time next year, perhaps we can meet up and we can return the favour.
Alan and Chris have only had the flat for a short time but, just recently they ordered a sofa. Now, you would think that a man of Alan’s calibre would have thought to take a few measurements before buying. But, since we did exactly the same at Westfield, with the result that my dear brother had to remove a front window to get ours in, I suppose I really shouldn’t crow. Anyway, having sent the object back for the upholsterer to play with, they finally managed to get it through the front door. But, once again, they ran into trouble. You see, their flat is one floor up with just a straight flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs there is a low wall which, unfortunately, they could not get the sofa over. They are now back to square one and, as Alan informed me by text last night, he is not amused.
No doubt, when the saga is over, he will see the funny side of it, but it might take some time.
Well, my good wife has condescended to arise from our pit, so I had best get breakfast prepared but, before I go, let me tell you about my visit to the clinic yesterday.
Sheila went in to collect my prescription yesterday and, when she emerged, she said they wanted to see me. So, in I went and the receptionist told me that, having studied my recent blood test, the good doctor wanted me to take a Glucose Tolerance Test. This entails starving myself for 12 hours, having a blood sample take, drinking a 330 ml bottle of Lucozade, waiting for another two hours without food, at which time I would have another blood sample taken.
Naturally, being diabetic, I protested, at which point the receptionist suggested that she have a word with the GP and phone me back. The result of which was to say that, not having studied my notes, the doctor had not realised I was diabetic. Future dealings with the clinic are not looking too rosy. Anyway, no need for the test, surprise, surprise!
After a very blustery and wet Sunday, Monday 2nd November dawned bright and breezy.
I have several books stored on the laptop that are in the public domain, but even though they are in Word and Pdf formats, they are not very pleasing to the eye, because the left an right margins are far too wide. Anyway, I thought that, with a little jiggery pokery, it shouldn’t be too difficult to copy and paste them to new Word documents. How wrong I was because all that happens is that they end up with the same margins.
So, I gave it some thought and, after much deliberation, I decided to copy and paste to Notepad and then copy and paste to Word. Magic! That worked well. Well, it did until I wanted to transfer pictures from the original document to the new one, which is when everything went cockeyed.
Individual pictures will copy and paste, but if they are side by side in the original, they will be above and below in the new document.
I then tried copying and pasting into WordPad, with the same effect and I’m darned if I know what to do next. Here am I, with all these books that need re-doing, and I can’t re-do them. My next step will be to contact The Pirates and see what they can suggest. Who are the Pirates? Well, they are an American couple who are deeply into selling material that is in the Public Domain and they are the people who supply me with all the books I now have on my laptop.
It is now a rather wet and windy Tuesday 3rd November 2009 and I’m looking forward to going shopping. Who’s a big sissy? I’m looking forward to it because we have finally decided to purchase a new laptop. This, of course, does depend upon us finding a suitable one to buy. There is no PC World in Loughborough, and besides, the last time I checked in their store in Harlow, I found them to be considerably dearer that Currys, so we’ll be giving their store a visit instead.
Despite having the aforementioned problems with our existing Acer, I’m rather keen on buying another one, but I want it wit much more memory. Of course, I could simply increase the memory in this one, but that will not eliminate the underlying problems.
One thing is for sure, I won’t be installing Norton on the new one, it really is too much trouble and seems to take over the computer. Every time I am forced to shut it down with the OFF button, it goes through a disk check and, in amongst all the gobbledegook is Norton, so I no longer trust that particular programme. Instead I’ll be installing a programme called Avast, which is completely free and has very good reports. Although, having said that, if we buy a new laptop and it has the new Windows 7 system installed, we can download the new Microsoft security programme and install that instead. At least it will be compatible with the Microsoft operating system.
Friday 6th November and I have had a pretty busy week thus far, especially with the flower boxes, which both now have shiny and new coats of red paint.
Having discovered that the Halifax Bank; of which we are customers of long standing; are to introduce a £1.00p per day charge on the use of guaranteed overdraft facilities, we decided to take the advice of the money gurus at the Daily Mail and switch to the Alliance and Leicester. We received a letter this morning which refused our application. The reason for the refusal was given as ‘going on the information we had submitted’. They surely could not be discriminating against us because we are pensioners, so we believe they could only have done so because we live on a boat and, as such, do not have a permanent, land-based, address. We have been advised that we could appeal against this decision, but giving them two bites of this particular cherry, we feel, would be giving in to their misguided policy. I shall, of course, be emailing the Mail asking for their opinion, since they are the ones who suggested Alliance and Leicester in the first place.
Having had as much as I can stand with the problems with this laptop, we have now invested in a new one and it will be delivered next Tuesday at my brother’s address in Harlow. So, instead of paying him a visit the week after, I am now going there on Monday and will await delivery of same on Tuesday. Hopefully they will not make me the last delivery of the day.
As this blog is only four pages long I won’t be posting it just yet. However, with the way the internet has been behaving of late, I’m not too sure if I would be able to do so. For the first six weeks or so at this marina we have had no problems getting online but, just recently it has been very difficult. Indeed, I was having so much trouble ordering the new laptop that I finally decided to do the ordering by ‘phone. One of our immediate neighbours confirms that he too is having the same problem but, there is a glimmer of hope. It seems the marina has its own network set up especially for us boaters. All we have to do is settle ourselves in the café with a cup of coffee, plug in to the mains and get on with it. So, when I am ready to post, I will do so from the café and that will probably be some time early next week.
I’ve also been talking to another boater about this problem and he believes it has nothing to do with signal strength, but has more to do with bandwidth. The service providers, such as Three and Vodafone, have sold so many of these new-fangled dongles that the systems can’t cope with all the people trying to get online, especially at evenings and weekends. So, for the rest of our stay here, if we have something important to do online, we’ll just have to grab a cup of coffee at the café and plug in to the network. Hopefully it will be secure.
Now, all of the foregoing about Internet access has been typed on this clear and calm Sunday 8th November and I had hoped to post this blog today. However, it being a Sunday with everybody and his uncle wanting to be online, I can’t even get my dongle to connect, never mind find my homepage. So, most unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until Tuesday. Meanwhile I will now transfer this scribe to my external hard drive in readiness for setting up the new laptop.
Saturday 14th November 2009 and we’ve had a pretty stormy night. Unfortunately, we’ve also had a pretty hectic week, which has mostly been taken up by sorting out our new laptop. Have you bought a new PC or laptop lately?
We bought ours online at Comets and, true to their word, it arrived last Tuesday morning, which meant, since they would not deliver to an address other than the one at which the payment card was registered, a trip into Harlow, all 240 miles round of it.
I also ordered the new MS Office Home and Student at half price, which is just as well, since I would not have been happy paying full price for this load of rubbish. Unlike the 2003 Professional, which we had on the Acer and which has all the bells and whistles, this version comes with just four programmes, only one of which is of any use to the average Home user and that’s MS Word. The result of this discovery was to uninstall the new one and install 2003 Pro.
The next step was to install all the programmes and documents, and that takes an awful lot of time. I came up against just one serious problem with this and that was my Recipe Book Programme, which is called eBook Starter. Try as I might, despite entering the correct key codes, I could not make it come up as the Pro version, only the Demo, I now await info from the company regarding what the problem may be. I suspect that it is not set up for the new Windows 7, or it just might not recognise the new system onto which I have installed it. I do know that the programme can only be installed on one PC or Laptop, so I will probably need a different key code.
Another wee problem setting up this Toshiba Satellite was with MS Outlook and my Three USB Modem. For a start the laptop was reluctant to open the modem, which was not very helpful, because the Acer was pretty reluctant in this regard either. Anyway, once we got connected, I set up Outlook with the necessary info and, lo and behold, I was unable to send emails. What is more, when I tried to do so with the Acer, that wouldn’t do it either. After going back and forth between laptop without success I telephoned the Three Helpline and, unsurprisingly since it was based at a foreign call centre, I received no practical help whatsoever.
Going back to the drawing board I finally managed to persuade the Acer to send and receive but, as you would expect, the Toshiba would have none of it. Eventually, after much jiggery pokery and shutting down of Tosh, I finally got it to run properly. The result of all this is that we simply will not try sending or receiving emails on the Acer. Not that we need to you understand, but that option is now taboo.
Now, when I’m sitting here first thing in the morning, I usually bring the blog up to date which, as you can see from the delay since the last posting, I have not had time to do. Following on from that I would then play a few games of Mahjong until Wifey surfaces. Sadly my old favourite of MJWIN, which I have been playing since the Big Bang, is not compatible with Windows 7. I have to confess that I was pretty fast on that one, usually finishing in a little under two minutes. The game that comes with Tosh, and there are quite a few in the Games folder, is much more difficult, so lots of practice is called for.
Later on today I will attempt the impossible and post this blog. I say impossible because just lately getting online has not been easy. We are not the only ones to have suffered, so we suspect the company maintaining the servers or transmitters ahave been carrying out maintenance work.
Doggy seems to be off her food again today, but it has nothing to do with the tinned food because she didn’t have that last night. Still, she still has a wet nose and sparkling eyes, so I suppose she just doesn’t need as much food these days. She is, after all, almost 12 years old now.
OK, so, let’s post this blog and wish you all a really good weekend although, judging by the weather forecast, it’s going to be a bit blustery and wet for most of us.
Cheers for now.
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
Today is Wednesday 28th October 2009 and we have been at these moorings for just a month. Unlike our stay at Bulbourne for the previous two years, we have actually spread our wings a little and investigated three different pubs, two of which are in Quorn and one in Barrow. So far, of the three, we still prefer The Fox in Quorn, which has a big frontage but looks no different to most other pubs inside. This is the pub I took Alan to on the day we bought the Alfa.
Now, as most of you will be well aware, I have a lousy memory and so you will have to pardon me for not remembering the names of the other two pubs. However, the second pub we visited was also in Quorn and, although very friendly, it was very small and somewhat crowded, with footballing kids. I have to say I quite enjoyed the experience, and I do like a pub that is popular, so I dare say we’ll go there again.
The third pub is in Barrow right by the River Soar and, once again, seems pretty popular, especially where food is concerned. Obviously it has a very good reputation in that regard.
Today I’m going to carry on with the building of our new roof top flower boxes, which are going to be good and sturdy at around 21”long by 11” wide and nine” tall. Yesterday I completed the bases, which leaves me to connect the ends and sides, after which there’s the painting to do. Goodness knows where we’re going to store them once they are built but, wherever it is, they need to be covered until they have been painted. They certainly can’t stay inside the boat.
Tomorrow morning, which will be Thursday 29th October, we have a 7.30 appointment for blood tests, followed later in the morning with a visit to my old RAF pal from Germany, who has now bought a flat over her at Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is right next door to Stoke on Trent.
The weekend is here again and it has started out very much as the forecasters predicted, cooler and very much wetter. However, even though we won’t be going very far today, I still have plenty to keep me occupied. I have now built the two flower boxes for the roof and all I have to do now is paint them.
Today is Saturday 31st October and our visit to Alan and Chris on Thursday went very well. Unfortunately, having ignored my own map directions, we took a wrong turn and, what should have been a journey of an hour or so, took us almost two. But we had a good visit with a rather decent lunch laid on by our hosts. Hopefully, some time next year, perhaps we can meet up and we can return the favour.
Alan and Chris have only had the flat for a short time but, just recently they ordered a sofa. Now, you would think that a man of Alan’s calibre would have thought to take a few measurements before buying. But, since we did exactly the same at Westfield, with the result that my dear brother had to remove a front window to get ours in, I suppose I really shouldn’t crow. Anyway, having sent the object back for the upholsterer to play with, they finally managed to get it through the front door. But, once again, they ran into trouble. You see, their flat is one floor up with just a straight flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs there is a low wall which, unfortunately, they could not get the sofa over. They are now back to square one and, as Alan informed me by text last night, he is not amused.
No doubt, when the saga is over, he will see the funny side of it, but it might take some time.
Well, my good wife has condescended to arise from our pit, so I had best get breakfast prepared but, before I go, let me tell you about my visit to the clinic yesterday.
Sheila went in to collect my prescription yesterday and, when she emerged, she said they wanted to see me. So, in I went and the receptionist told me that, having studied my recent blood test, the good doctor wanted me to take a Glucose Tolerance Test. This entails starving myself for 12 hours, having a blood sample take, drinking a 330 ml bottle of Lucozade, waiting for another two hours without food, at which time I would have another blood sample taken.
Naturally, being diabetic, I protested, at which point the receptionist suggested that she have a word with the GP and phone me back. The result of which was to say that, not having studied my notes, the doctor had not realised I was diabetic. Future dealings with the clinic are not looking too rosy. Anyway, no need for the test, surprise, surprise!
After a very blustery and wet Sunday, Monday 2nd November dawned bright and breezy.
I have several books stored on the laptop that are in the public domain, but even though they are in Word and Pdf formats, they are not very pleasing to the eye, because the left an right margins are far too wide. Anyway, I thought that, with a little jiggery pokery, it shouldn’t be too difficult to copy and paste them to new Word documents. How wrong I was because all that happens is that they end up with the same margins.
So, I gave it some thought and, after much deliberation, I decided to copy and paste to Notepad and then copy and paste to Word. Magic! That worked well. Well, it did until I wanted to transfer pictures from the original document to the new one, which is when everything went cockeyed.
Individual pictures will copy and paste, but if they are side by side in the original, they will be above and below in the new document.
I then tried copying and pasting into WordPad, with the same effect and I’m darned if I know what to do next. Here am I, with all these books that need re-doing, and I can’t re-do them. My next step will be to contact The Pirates and see what they can suggest. Who are the Pirates? Well, they are an American couple who are deeply into selling material that is in the Public Domain and they are the people who supply me with all the books I now have on my laptop.
It is now a rather wet and windy Tuesday 3rd November 2009 and I’m looking forward to going shopping. Who’s a big sissy? I’m looking forward to it because we have finally decided to purchase a new laptop. This, of course, does depend upon us finding a suitable one to buy. There is no PC World in Loughborough, and besides, the last time I checked in their store in Harlow, I found them to be considerably dearer that Currys, so we’ll be giving their store a visit instead.
Despite having the aforementioned problems with our existing Acer, I’m rather keen on buying another one, but I want it wit much more memory. Of course, I could simply increase the memory in this one, but that will not eliminate the underlying problems.
One thing is for sure, I won’t be installing Norton on the new one, it really is too much trouble and seems to take over the computer. Every time I am forced to shut it down with the OFF button, it goes through a disk check and, in amongst all the gobbledegook is Norton, so I no longer trust that particular programme. Instead I’ll be installing a programme called Avast, which is completely free and has very good reports. Although, having said that, if we buy a new laptop and it has the new Windows 7 system installed, we can download the new Microsoft security programme and install that instead. At least it will be compatible with the Microsoft operating system.
Friday 6th November and I have had a pretty busy week thus far, especially with the flower boxes, which both now have shiny and new coats of red paint.
Having discovered that the Halifax Bank; of which we are customers of long standing; are to introduce a £1.00p per day charge on the use of guaranteed overdraft facilities, we decided to take the advice of the money gurus at the Daily Mail and switch to the Alliance and Leicester. We received a letter this morning which refused our application. The reason for the refusal was given as ‘going on the information we had submitted’. They surely could not be discriminating against us because we are pensioners, so we believe they could only have done so because we live on a boat and, as such, do not have a permanent, land-based, address. We have been advised that we could appeal against this decision, but giving them two bites of this particular cherry, we feel, would be giving in to their misguided policy. I shall, of course, be emailing the Mail asking for their opinion, since they are the ones who suggested Alliance and Leicester in the first place.
Having had as much as I can stand with the problems with this laptop, we have now invested in a new one and it will be delivered next Tuesday at my brother’s address in Harlow. So, instead of paying him a visit the week after, I am now going there on Monday and will await delivery of same on Tuesday. Hopefully they will not make me the last delivery of the day.
As this blog is only four pages long I won’t be posting it just yet. However, with the way the internet has been behaving of late, I’m not too sure if I would be able to do so. For the first six weeks or so at this marina we have had no problems getting online but, just recently it has been very difficult. Indeed, I was having so much trouble ordering the new laptop that I finally decided to do the ordering by ‘phone. One of our immediate neighbours confirms that he too is having the same problem but, there is a glimmer of hope. It seems the marina has its own network set up especially for us boaters. All we have to do is settle ourselves in the café with a cup of coffee, plug in to the mains and get on with it. So, when I am ready to post, I will do so from the café and that will probably be some time early next week.
I’ve also been talking to another boater about this problem and he believes it has nothing to do with signal strength, but has more to do with bandwidth. The service providers, such as Three and Vodafone, have sold so many of these new-fangled dongles that the systems can’t cope with all the people trying to get online, especially at evenings and weekends. So, for the rest of our stay here, if we have something important to do online, we’ll just have to grab a cup of coffee at the café and plug in to the network. Hopefully it will be secure.
Now, all of the foregoing about Internet access has been typed on this clear and calm Sunday 8th November and I had hoped to post this blog today. However, it being a Sunday with everybody and his uncle wanting to be online, I can’t even get my dongle to connect, never mind find my homepage. So, most unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until Tuesday. Meanwhile I will now transfer this scribe to my external hard drive in readiness for setting up the new laptop.
Saturday 14th November 2009 and we’ve had a pretty stormy night. Unfortunately, we’ve also had a pretty hectic week, which has mostly been taken up by sorting out our new laptop. Have you bought a new PC or laptop lately?
We bought ours online at Comets and, true to their word, it arrived last Tuesday morning, which meant, since they would not deliver to an address other than the one at which the payment card was registered, a trip into Harlow, all 240 miles round of it.
I also ordered the new MS Office Home and Student at half price, which is just as well, since I would not have been happy paying full price for this load of rubbish. Unlike the 2003 Professional, which we had on the Acer and which has all the bells and whistles, this version comes with just four programmes, only one of which is of any use to the average Home user and that’s MS Word. The result of this discovery was to uninstall the new one and install 2003 Pro.
The next step was to install all the programmes and documents, and that takes an awful lot of time. I came up against just one serious problem with this and that was my Recipe Book Programme, which is called eBook Starter. Try as I might, despite entering the correct key codes, I could not make it come up as the Pro version, only the Demo, I now await info from the company regarding what the problem may be. I suspect that it is not set up for the new Windows 7, or it just might not recognise the new system onto which I have installed it. I do know that the programme can only be installed on one PC or Laptop, so I will probably need a different key code.
Another wee problem setting up this Toshiba Satellite was with MS Outlook and my Three USB Modem. For a start the laptop was reluctant to open the modem, which was not very helpful, because the Acer was pretty reluctant in this regard either. Anyway, once we got connected, I set up Outlook with the necessary info and, lo and behold, I was unable to send emails. What is more, when I tried to do so with the Acer, that wouldn’t do it either. After going back and forth between laptop without success I telephoned the Three Helpline and, unsurprisingly since it was based at a foreign call centre, I received no practical help whatsoever.
Going back to the drawing board I finally managed to persuade the Acer to send and receive but, as you would expect, the Toshiba would have none of it. Eventually, after much jiggery pokery and shutting down of Tosh, I finally got it to run properly. The result of all this is that we simply will not try sending or receiving emails on the Acer. Not that we need to you understand, but that option is now taboo.
Now, when I’m sitting here first thing in the morning, I usually bring the blog up to date which, as you can see from the delay since the last posting, I have not had time to do. Following on from that I would then play a few games of Mahjong until Wifey surfaces. Sadly my old favourite of MJWIN, which I have been playing since the Big Bang, is not compatible with Windows 7. I have to confess that I was pretty fast on that one, usually finishing in a little under two minutes. The game that comes with Tosh, and there are quite a few in the Games folder, is much more difficult, so lots of practice is called for.
Later on today I will attempt the impossible and post this blog. I say impossible because just lately getting online has not been easy. We are not the only ones to have suffered, so we suspect the company maintaining the servers or transmitters ahave been carrying out maintenance work.
Doggy seems to be off her food again today, but it has nothing to do with the tinned food because she didn’t have that last night. Still, she still has a wet nose and sparkling eyes, so I suppose she just doesn’t need as much food these days. She is, after all, almost 12 years old now.
OK, so, let’s post this blog and wish you all a really good weekend although, judging by the weather forecast, it’s going to be a bit blustery and wet for most of us.
Cheers for now.
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
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