Shiralee: Winter 2012/13 # 11

Tuesday 22^nd January

Now, I don’t remember what I told you about Outlook 2010 in my last blog, so I’ll go through some of what went on with it today.

 Firstly, after transferring my emails from the Toshiba to the Sony, or so I thought, when I switched the Sony on this morning and tried to download my emails, I could get no sense out of it at all. Obviously I had done something wrong during the transfer, so I have been reading up on the subject and, as a result, I have gone through the process of saving those emails in a new folder, on a memory stick.

 My next task, I think, is to copy them all over into the Outlook folder in My Documents, on the Sony. I should then, in theory, be able to Import those files into Outlook 2010. In theory! But that’s for tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I still await a reply from Dave, the man from whom I bought the Sony.

 I get the feeling I’m going to need a big modicum of luck here.

 Thursday 24^th January

 OK. I finally imported all my emails to Outlook but, when it came to running Outlook yesterday morning, I received an error message telling me certain files could not be found. Ooops! Obviously I’ve done something that I shouldn’t have. No matter, after much faffing about following stuff I found online, I finally got it to work, but not quite in the right way. However, having spent even more time looking for info regarding the resetting of Outlook to default, I now know what to do. The trouble is, I’ll lose all my settings and emails and will have to import them all over again. But, not today.

 Meanwhile, the snow is melting and we’ve been promised warmer, wet weather for the weekend. Oh goodie! That’s just what we need, more rain and floods.

 Andy finally fitted a new water pump yesterday morning, this time one that works properly. Apparently, we’re not alone in the problem we had with the other new pump. It seems Shurflow have made a faulty batch and will be receiving quite a few returns in the near future.

 Friday 25^th January

 The New Year is not panning out too well, having got Outlook 2010 to actually run on the Sony, albeit with two profiles, I decided to follow the instructions for resetting it, so that I only have one profile. Now it will not accept my settings at all, so, no email on the Sony. I really am getting so fed up with this damn thing, that I’m seriously considering just using my Yahoo account.

 Sunday 27^th January

 The snow has cleared at last and changed to heavy rain and high winds overnight.

 Our diets are going pretty well, although I only lost 1lb this past week, my fat level dropped and my water level went up, both of which are good things, apparently.

 As for Outlook 2010, well that’s now working, thanks to a stroke of luck on my part, which I couldn’t emulate if I wanted to.

This morning I dedicated to checking that all the programmes and documents on the Toshiba, are either already on the Sony, or are somewhere I can get my hands on them. The next step will be to wipe the HDD on the Toshiba and reinstall the original setup.

 Monday 28^th January

 It’s pretty chilly this morning, but at least the snow has gone.

 Yesterday, for the first Sunday in three weeks, we actually went for a drink. Unfortunately the road to The Bubble was flooded, so we turned around and paid a visit to the Green Man in Willington.

 This morning I have been checking my memory sticks and hard drives for stuff that I may need on the Sony and, as far as I can tell, I’ve now got everything I need. It’s now just a case of deciding which tool to download for wiping the hard drive clean, after which I can re-install the original system details and programmes onto the Toshiba.

 We’ll probably drive into Burton this morning, for want of anything more important.

 Wednesday 30^th January

 We are both becoming rather restless now, but we still have another two months before we hit the waterways again. This time we’ll be heading south, although our original intention was to head for Liverpool and the Ribble Link to Lancaster. However, with the summer we had last year, or didn’t have!, we’ve decided to give those a miss. Our full itinerary will be included in a later blog. We will, however, be cruising parts of the Grand Union and, with a bit of luck, will see old friends from our days at Bulbourne.

Today we’ll be taking the bus into Derby for a spot of retail therapy. Wifey is looking to spend her £10 M&S voucher and we need dog biscuits. All very boring stuff, but also necessary.

 Saturday, assuming the weather holds good, I’ll be paying a visit to Alan in Harlow.

 Thursday 31^st January

 Some time ago, just when I thought things had settled down, I once again had problems forwarding emails through Outlook. Having bought another laptop, which already had Outlook 2010 installed, I also had the problem with that one.

 So, once again I emailed ‘Three’ to see if could be sorted out. After their initial reply, which suggested I give them a call, I did so but, having experienced the usual run around of ‘press 1 for and press 3 for, etc., I finally gave up.

 This morning I received another email suggesting I call them, only this time they suggested that, in order to avoid said run around, I should stipulate a day and time. So, next Tuesday at 2 pm I will be giving them a call.

 Now, I have no doubt that you find all this totally boring but, since I have nothing more important to write about in this blog, what you see is what you get.

 Yesterday we took the bus to Derby, just for a small amount of shopping and to exchange a few books. Unfortunately, we could only find one book that we wanted on our usual stall, so we gave the rest to a charity shop. For some reason best known to them, this stall seems to have multiple books of the same title. I could understand a couple of copies, but some titles have 4 or 5 available. So, it’s back to shopping at charity shops for our books.

 Friday 1^st February

 Well, that’s another month out of the way, only two to go and we’ll be on our way again.

 We have a rather wet start to the day and it’s been chucking it down for a good part of the night. Hopefully it will stop before we go shopping.

 I was going to download a free program with which to wipe my hard drive on the Toshiba but, when I read the reports about it and discovered that it can take up to 12 hours to do the job, I decided against it. Instead I’m going for a programme called Wipe Drive, which costs just $19 and can be used as often as necessary. The freebie, something called Dariks Nuke or some such, can only be used once, after which you have to buy a licence.

 However, I am, once again, on the horns of a dilemma, since the web site for Wipe Drive doesn’t give the size of the programme, and I still have to rely on slow download speeds with the new WiFi unit. I’ve emailed the company for advice but, if I don’t hear from them by tomorrow, when I’m going down to Harlow, I’ll download it from Alan’s computer.

 Saturday 2^nd February

 I’m pleased to say that the weather today is dry and looks as though we’re in for a sunny day. This is good for me because, at motorway speeds my windscreen washers do not do their job. Instead of the water jets hitting the middle of the windscreen, they actually curve outwards and almost bypass the windscreen altogether. Andy has promised he’ll try to fix this, but he hasn’t got around to doing so yet.

 Harlow, here I come! My next entry and probably posting, will be on Monday morning.

 Monday 4^th February

 What do I have to do to get some sense out of ‘Three’, my so called Service Provider? I now have a new laptop, using Outlook 2010 and I also have brand new WiFi unit from ‘Three’ but, can I send emails? No!! So, here I go again.

 Just recently I experienced the usual problem of forwarding a message to multiple email addresses, where at least one address came back as not known. This morning, much to my distress and chagrin, I find I am unable to send messages at all.

 I really am becoming so frustrated with this ongoing problem, that I’m seriously considering cancelling this new contract with ‘Three’. But, since I have already arranged to talk to them tomorrow; they WILL pay for the call; I’ll leave it until then. Meanwhile, as usual, I’ll be using my Yahoo account for emails temporarily.

 Tuesday 5^th February

 I had intended to post this yesterday morning, but Wifey decided to get up, so that was that.

 In the meantime, having exhausted all possible configurations for my WiFi, I am still unable to send. I can log on and receive, but me no sendee. This situation is becoming a total bore.

 Anyway, I decided to check out what was happening on the old, Toshiba laptop. Unbelievable as it may seem, the Internet is not accessible to me on that machine and, whilst going through the diagnostics, a message came up that suggested that the WiFi unit may be at fault, or a driver was not working.

 Now, the last time I used the Toshiba, just a couple of days ago, everything was working perfectly. So, even though I am able to go online with the Sony, could I still have a problem with the WiFi unit? That is the $64,000,000 question, is it not? Therefore, in order to re-test my settings, on both computers, my next step will be to insert the SIM card into the Dongle and try the existing settings through that. Then, if all goes well, I will know I have a dodgy WiFi unit.

 Now, I think I’ll post this, while I can, at least, access the Internet.

 Regards

 

Dave, Sheila and Rusty