Friday 26 March 2010

Pillings Lock Marina 2010 #6

Friday 19th March and, for the first time since arriving here in September 2009, I am on my own for a few hours. My dear Wifey has walked into Loughborough with our neighbour Marion. So, I have spent some quality time with my laptop and have been preparing my next recipe book, which is to be called, “Pasties, Pies and Sausage Rolls”.

Yesterday evening I plucked up the courage and girded my loins and posted “A Taste of England” on eBay’s US site. I’m still a bit hesitant about posting it in the UK, because I’m still unsure about copyright where recipes are concerned. I do know that Ingredients cannot be copyrighted. This is because they constitute an idea. But, where the Method by which a recipe is put together could well be and, even though I altered certain parts of the method in all of them – without detracting from the final result – I would hate to find a “Cease and Desist” notice in my mailbox.

Amongst all my documents on this laptop and on a separate disc I have over 11,000 recipes, most of which are American. And, within those files are recipe books that I can sell as is. But I would rather make my own books, all with varying themes. The opportunities are only limited by one’s imagination, hence the latest creation. I have no doubt it will take me many months to compile, but at least it will keep me amused.

Monday 22nd March and I have to say that, despite having a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, it’s really great to be home. For one thing it’s so peaceful here. All we can hear is the far distant traffic noise from the A6. Oh, and the ducks of course. And the water lapping against the side of the boat. And, before I got up, the light snoring of my better half, bless!!

Anyway, as usual, the family reunion went off very well and, apart from the enforced absence of June and Keith, a perfect little get together. What stick most in my mind, is the sight of the four remaining Kennetts all clustered around the laptop, going through old family photographs in order to determine who was who. A truly magical sight.

It was also quite a treat to find Ian and Susan there. I for one was most pleased to see Ian looking far better than has been reported in the past. And Susan? Well, we haven’t seen that delightful lady in many a year and she especially had much to catch up on.

Sheila and I would like to offer up our thanks to Bob who, once again, managed to slide off to pay the bill. Much appreciated again Bob, you are now ahead of us by 3:1. Perhaps, next year, we’ll be able to outflank you, who knows?

As you all know we probably won’t be doing much cruising this year. However, once I have a date for my knees to be replaced, we may be able to pop off for a couple of weeks.

On the subject of the “Taste of England” book, which I listed on eBay US on Thursday of last week, I have just been to check if it has received any bids, and I have discovered that the picture I uploaded has not bee displayed. In addition to that, there are a couple of other listings with the same name, something that did not show when I last looked.

It could be that, because the picture I used was a screen shot that had been reduced in size from about 1.3Mb to about 45Kb. Anyway, I am most disappointed it this affair and will probably have to re-list it using a different picture.

The other problem I have is with the Picasa 3 programme that Carole suggested I download from Google. I have found that by going to the –supposed – Google download page, there is actually no link with which to do so. Carole assured me that it is not necessary to work online with it, but what I saw certainly led me to believe that this is how it works. Over to you Wee Mac Sis!

Incidentally, unbeknown to me until earlier today, it seems I have committed something of a faux pas with regard to the recipe book, and this faux pas has resulted in my having to remove my listing from eBay. You may well ask ‘what could possibly be so bad as to require me to remove the listing?’ Well, if you have looked through the book you would know that it’s is all in English measurements. However, I listed it in the good old US of A and, in the listing I made it known that a Weights and Measures page would be included. But I hadn’t done so, silly me!!

Also, when I checked to see if there were any bids on the book, I discovered that the picture I uploaded with my listing had not been included. I have therefore spent the past couple of hours amending the book and re-compiling it. Oh, the trials and tribulations of authorship!!

By way of another incidental, I feel I ought to mention the trouble with our velocipede. Just recently, only over the past couple of days or so, I have become aware of a strange noise emanating from the underside of said vehicle. I established, only at about 10 am on Sunday that it was coming from the exhaust pipe. On closer inspection at Formula 1 in Edingburgh Way, that the darn thing is indeed blowing. They assured me however that it would not blow apart if I drove it the 120 miles to the marina.

So, this morning, after a visit to Morrisons, we popped into Fast Fit in Loughborough and, surprise, surprise, we discovered it was not going to be cheap to repair. Indeed, when the nice man checked it out he discovered that it was not only blowing in the place we knew about, but that the back box had been repaired with some kind of filler, which was also blowing. The final bill for this repair will be in the order of £450! Ouch!! The blessed car only cost us £700! But, since it is very reliable, especially with the regular runs to and from Harlow, it’s still worth keeping. We certainly do not have any plans for buying another car, at least not until we’ve made our first million from the book. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Thursday 25th March and it is wet and muggy this morning. It is also pump out and diesel day.

Yesterday we spent over £450 on our exhaust system on the Alfa. For some reason that came as something of a blessing, the centre section that carries the catalytic converter was perfectly OK. Thank goodness for that because, had we been obliged to replace that as well, it would probably have cost us more than we paid for the car.

Over the past couple of months I have been humming and hawing as to whether to try turning the recipe book into a single book before I advertise. To be honest I’m none too keen on it being in two volumes because, to me at any rate, it’s a bit sloppy. After all, you wouldn’t expect to go into a shop for such a thing and have to pay twice, unless it was a follow up volume issued at a later date.

So, as of this day, I am going to try doing just that. I’m not sure that it will work mind, because the makers of the programme actually suggest keeping the page count down to about 100.

On the subject of Windows 7 and how slow it is running on this machine, I had a chat with a rather elusive neighbour of ours yesterday, and he suggests I do either of two things. He thinks that certain programmes, such as Word and PDF files, are running slow because I have 64 bit installed. If I change it to 32 bit it should run better. Alternatively he would be happy to loan me his XP disc so that I can load that instead. He is of the opinion that XP is far superior anyway. Another alternative would be to download 2010 from Microsoft, but I’m not convinced about that alternative.

Friday 26th March and we’ve had a fair amount of rain this afternoon, summer showers I think they are called. Luckily we managed to get out for bags of coal and a little bit of shopping before the heavens opened.

This evening I am being treated to something new for my dinner. This recipe was spotted by my dearly beloved in todays Daily Mail, or was it yesterdays? Anyway, it’s called Red Pepper, Ham and Cheese Tart, but it looks like a Pizza. It consists of the bits in the title, along with sun dried tomato paste, black olives and oregano, all in a flat pastry. Actually it looks rather tasty, so I’m quite looking forward to it.

On Sunday I will be driving down to Harlow again and staying overnight with Alan, because I have a hospital appointment at North Mid on Monday morning, the last one, I hope. As my second appointment after seeing the surgeon, is at 11.30 with the doctor, I don’t suppose I’ll get back to the boat much before 3 pm. Next year, assuming they’ll want me to have regular annual check ups, I shall try to arrange for them to be carried out in Leicester or Loughborough.

While I’m in Harlow on Sunday I’ll be calling in to Maplin’s for a new external hard drive. We already have one, but I want another one specifically for back ups and, as it’s my birthday on Easter Sunday, this is by way of a birthday present from Wifey.

Everywhere you go you will find a computer wizz somewhere nearby, and Pillings Lock Marina is no different than anywhere else. Our one goes by the name of Ivan and, after spending about 15 minutes with him bemoaning my problems with this laptop, he suggested that I carry out a recovery and set it up in 32 bit instead of the current 64 bit. His reason being that MS Office and virtually all other such programmes being used on Vista and Win 7, are all 32 bit, which could account for the slow running I’m experiencing.

Alternatively he suggests I set this machine up with XP, for which he has a disc I can borrow. He still has XP and I must say I found it very easy to use. Anyway, once I have the new hard drive, I’ll carry out a full back up and then a recover to 32 bit. If that doesn’t improve the situation I’ll go on to XP. So there!!

OK. Six pages of bloggy nonsense, so I think it’s about time it was posted. Happy days to all and don’t forget to put your clocks forward this weekend.

Dave, Sheila and Rusty.

Thursday 18 March 2010

Pillings Lock Marina 2010 #5

Pillings Lock Marina 2010#5

Friday 5th March and another frosty but sunny morning.

Yesterday, whilst attempting to get rid of as much superfluous material on the laptop prior to a full recovery, I inadvertently deleted the necessary Key Info for my eBook programme. I therefore had to contact the company, yet again, with yet another problem. It’s just as well that I’ve already sweetened them with a copy of my recipe book. This morning, I’m very pleased to say, that info arrived in an email and I can now use the programme again.

The trouble is that, if the Key Info is not present, the programme will only run in Demo mode, which limits what can be done with it in terms of chapters and pages. All is now well and I must now save this blog to my external HDD for future use, because later today, hopefully, I will be able to carry out the System Recovery and reinstall all the other programmes I need.

4.25 pm and I have spent the last 3 hours faffing about with the laptop, again! The plan was to recover the HDD back to when we bought the wretched thing. This was not a very good idea because, despite having made a Recovery Disc on the day of purchase, this infernal machine does not recognise it as such. After going through all the proper moves to achieve a complete recovery and, having inserted the correct DVD, the screen just stays blank. I swear I can see a slight lifting of the corners in a sneer. I am not amused.

Anyway, whilst deciding what to do next, with the additional brainpower of my better half, it suddenly occurred to said better half, that perhaps the machine refuses to allow me to carry out a recovery, because there’s nothing wrong with the system!!. Well, would you Adam and Eve it?

So, after about 3 hours we then decided to simply uninstall Outlook 2007 and reinstall the 2003 Office suite. This too was not a very good idea, because Outlook 2003 would not work. It seems there is still a .dll file missing or corrupt.

Not to be put off by such trivia, we then went back to the help screen of the 2003 DVD and clicked on the button that asks if you would like to alter the settings and, lo and behold I discover, much to my amazement, that individual programmes can be eliminated from the set up. Out went Outlook.

We are now cooking with gas and do not seem to have any obvious conflicts between programmes. Even this darling little cursor is actually keeping pace with my typing. Whooppee!!!!

Saturday 6th March and it is a much milder morning, but I’m sure that the silly weather people told us to expect sharp frost. Ah well, they got the ‘bar-b-q-summer’ wrong and they certainly got the winter forecast wrong too.

Yesterday evening, at about 6.30, we joined a few other boaters for a fish supper at the restaurant. Well, that’s what they like to call it! It’s more like a lounge come staff canteen, but you know what I mean. I’m told that the manager and part-owner of the place wants it to resemble a Brighton gay bar, but that’s only hearsay.

Anyway, I have to say that the meal was very good and, coming with a bottle of Mexican lager called Corona, at £4.95 was very good value for money. It even included a good portion of Mushy Peas.

Unfortunately, after returning to the boat and watching a bit of telly, I forgot my pre-bedtime jab. I’m on a new Insulin regime now, which includes 3 jabs during the day of 1 type and another at night of another. The pre-bedtime one is, of course, the most important one, because it is designed to bring down my first reading of the day, and it can’t do that if I don’t take it. Goodness knows what this mornings reading will be; probably off the scale!

Monday 8th March and we’ve had a really cold night. This morning though has dawned bright and sunny. Indeed, the weather man tells us to expect a few dry days, and so with that info to hand, we plan on turning the boat around so as to plug the leaks in our windows.

We have a tube of Capt. Tolley’s Creeping Crack Cure, which has to be applied at 30 minute intervals, and this is easiest carried out with the recalcitrant side of the boat against the decking. The leaks have been there for some time now, so it’s best we fill them asap and before the next downpour. Without the leaks we can leave the windows closed during heavy rain and high winds. If we leave them as they are, we have to leave the windows open and allow the rain to drip down the outside, instead of on the carpet.

Shopping day today, at Morrison’s in Loughborough first though, must get some of their lovely meat pies.

Tuesday 9th March and, if I’m not mistaken, the 70th birthday of an old friend called Brian Willis. How strange to remember him when I don’t think I’ve set eyes on him for at least 10 years, and probably more. He it was who befriended me on our very first day in Harlow, far away from the stink and mess of East London. I shudder to even think of those dreadful days. But that’s a story for another time.

This morning we trotted off to Melton Mowbray, as is our wont every couple of weeks or so. This time though, after may attempts we finally found the socks I’ve been looking for. Such a mundane subject, as I’m sure you’ll agree, but these are lovely, warm socks without elasticated tops. Being diabetic my circulation is not as good as it was, so loose fitting socks are best if I’m to avoid further problems of that nature. Much to my dismay I fear I am growing old, and I’m not doing so with very much grace.

The recipe book is finished and safely tucked away inside the laptop. The question I now have to find an answer to, is how best to sell it. I’ve already sent a copy to Kim who’s the nice lady that’s been advising me with regards to compiling it. Her remarks about the book, including the fact that it’s the best eBook she’s seen using their programme, gave me some encouragement. As did the remarks fro my good friend Glo, who was most impressed with the ease with which the recipes can be followed.

My first thought was to sell it on eBay, especially on eBay.com, because there are many folks in the States who are simply crying out for information about the ‘old country’. But I’m wondering if I shouldn’t go the whole hog and set up a small website, which I could promote through Yahoo Groups and other such places. Equally, I could send the files to a print-on- demand company, who would turn the files into a physical book and sell it for me. Whilst I think about it some more, why don’t you lot also give it some thought?

Wednesday 10th March and except for a trip out for a few bags of coal, we really don’t have much to do today.

Yesterday our trip to Melton Mowbray produced a copy of Terry Wogan’s biography for the princely sum of £3, along with another cheapo paperback for £1.50. These charity shops can be really useful at times.

Also, whilst checking my recipe book yesterday, I discovered a few recipes that did not appear in the Table of Contents. This is probably because I assumed, quite wrongly as it turned out, that any additions to a chapter would automatically find themselves included. And so dear Glo and Sandra, both of whom already have a copy, you may find more recipes in certain chapters than are actually listed in the TOC. Won’t that be a nice surprise?

You may remember that in the past I have mentioned the Pirates of the Public Domain, a very nice couple who spend their time scouring Public Domain content that they can use to re-package and sell. On the subject of selling A Taste of England it occurred to me that, just maybe, instead of setting up a full website, I might be able to set up a mini-site, which is simply a Sales Page and a Download Page. I will be checking with the Pirates and what they have to say about such things. I know they have a book about it, so it must be on my external hard drive.

Thursday 11th March and, after a very frosty start, the sun is out and it looks set to be a bright day. We have nothing better to do than pop into Quorn to pick up prescriptions, and Loughborough to Tesco so that Wifey can spend a £5 voucher.

Having decided to start out slowly with the selling of the recipe book, I am now in the process of making a .pdf version. This is because the programme I’ve used to make the original does not support Mac computers, whereas .pdf documents can be read on any platform. Even those people with Macs must eat, so I’ve gotta get ‘em, ne c’est pas?, as Poirot would say.

I’ve actually been looking at the possibility of putting up a mini web site, but it seems to me that this will take an awful lot of effort, not to mention money. However, if anybody out there is able and, more to the point willing, to help me achieve this objective, don’t be shy now, please let me know.

Friday 11th March and it’s been a pretty miserable one weather wise, with mostly cloud and some rain. We haven’t done much to write home about, not unless you consider going out to buy some coal and topping up with water to be worthy of consideration.

We have been listening to Radio 2 though because, since we always catch The One Show at 7 pm, we have been following Christine Bleakley’s preparations for crossing the Channel on a pair of water skis. She must be absolutely nuts but, since it was for Sport Relief and, as of yesterday evening she had already raised over £¼ Million, I suppose she can be forgiven her nutty nature. Anyway, if you are not a follower, she fell about eight times during the 22 mile crossing, but she completed the trip in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Bloody good show I say! I have to wonder though, just how soon will it be before somebody else has a go, just to get into the Guinness Book of Records?

Sunday 14th March and it’s Mother’s Day, NOT as our American cousins would have it, Mothering Sunday. That’s an Americanism which, for some unfathomable reason, everybody and his dog has taken on board. I hate such things! I also hate those people who insist on using metric measurements, especially in food menus, when there is no legal requirement to do so.

Now, The Hairy Bikers have turned out an excellent recipe book called “Mums Know Best”, but all of the recipes are in metric quantities. Why? Don’t these boys like being British? When you receive your copy of my very own recipe book which, as you already know, is called “A Taste of England”, you will not find a single mention of metric quantities. Why? Because it’s an English language book and as such deserves to be completely and utterly English. I have, however, included a conversion page, just for those of you who have been brainwashed into accepting dictats from the Euro Monsters!! Nuff said!

Incidentally, I have also converted it to a .pdf file, which is available for users of Mac machines.

We were supposed to be going to an indoor boot sale yesterday. But, since my lady wife seems to have lost the ability to read, we seem to have missed it by a week. Not to worry though, I will cry in my beer today to pacify myself at the loss.

Thursday 18th March and the week seems to have flown, so much so that I’ve had no time to update the blog until now.

So, what has happened this week? Well, to be honest, not much really. On Tuesday I attended my 11.30 appointment at Glenfield Hospital, where I was told that I might only have one of my knees replaced. I think I showed my sincere displeasure at this, especially when the same surgeon had already explained that, so long as the anaesthetist was happy with my state of health, he would be happy to replace both at the same time. Anyway, having waited for over an hour past our appointment time to be told this, I was then sent for a pinprick; to see if my iron count was O.K.; followed by an X-Ray, so that the surgeon could determine by how much my knees had deteriorated since I last had X-Rays carried out over a year ago. He only had to ask, I could have told him that easily enough.

This afternoon Wifey should have been walking into Loughborough with Marion. She it is who lives in the next boat to us, with her Hubby Brian. Unfortunately, she works on the site and had a little more to do than she expected. If she’s not too busy tomorrow then the trip will be on again.

A couple of days ago I sent a copy of my recipe book to my Pirate friends in the States and received a most encouraging reply from them, to the effect that I should get it out for sale as soon as I can, because they think it will sell well over there. The Pirates are a fellow named Logan and his business partner Debra, who run their business selling material that is in the Public Domain. Hence they call themselves “Pirates of the Public Domain”. I’ve been a member of their site for over a year now, which is why I’ve spent so much time with the book.

Today I had planned to list it on eBay.com but, since I still have to sort out a decent front cover photograph to list with the other details, I now intend to leave it until next week. I have tried editing the material I already have, but have been unable to save it properly. I also tried saving the actual picture of the front of the book as it comes up on the screen. But, for some odd reason, it comes out as a negative.

What I have now done is to download a free Screen capture programme, which seems to work OK, but the file is far too big for eBay to use. So, since another week is not going to make much difference, I’m now going to do the job next Wednesday. Why Wednesday? Well, I want the auction to end on Saturday in the US, and I want it to run for 10 days, so I need to post it on Wednesday afternoon in order to ensure that my American bidders are all out of bed during the final minutes of the auction.

I am now going ne and post this blog because we are coming into Harlow on Saturday and there’s always the chance I shall forget to do it tomorrow.

See you all at the family do on Sunday.

Dave, Sheila and Rusty, who will spending two night in our local kennels.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Pillings Lock Marina 2010#4

Tuesday 23rd February and, yet again, it’s snowing. Admittedly we have been shopping and it’s now 4.15 pm, but it’s still snowing.

Now, you will be pleased to discover that I have now, successfully compiled my recipe book. Not only that, the darned thing actually runs, well, it does on my laptop. Hopefully it will also run on yours. I shall be bringing copies of same to the family soiree in March, for anyone who wants a copy.

The problem with MS Word has finally gone away, well, almost. This is because, by taking Sandra’s advice, I completely uninstalled MS Office 2003 and installed MS Office 2007 Home and Student. This came at half price when I purchased the laptop from Comet and it only has four programmes on it but, since we rarely use the others anyway, we’ll plod along with these.

I say, ‘well, almost’ because, whilst I’m sitting here typing in Word 7 the cursor is unable to keep up with me, and I’m not the fastest picker and pecker on the planet. I have also, at Sandra’s behest, carried out a defrag and uninstalled a couple of other programmes, so the machine should now run a little faster, I hope!!

On Thursday, although I hadn’t intended doing so this time around, I’m going down to Harlow to enjoy the jamming session at the Purple Emperor. To hell with the expense I say!

Friday 26th February and a good time was had by all last night at the Emperor. Although it is only a jamming session, they do get some really good musicians and singers there. Of course, lucky old me, I don’t need to put my hands in my pockets, because the art of barter is not yet dead in the good old UK. My dear brother and his friend Steve do a certain amount of work for Martin, the licensee of said watering hole and, in exchange they receive a card with a list of how many drinks they have earned. Steve is genuinely very pleased with this arrangement because, instead of receiving £20 for a small job, he’ll have 10 pints added to the list, which amounts to about £30. So, many quids in!

Now, about my ongoing problems with Word and such. On the very good advice from Sandra I decided to uninstall MS Office Professional 2003 and install MS Office Home and Student 2007. I then left the laptop alone until the following morning, when I decided I needed to send an email to a contact in the USA, which was when I spotted my deliberate mistake of the day before. Of course, Sandra wasn’t to know this, but H&S does not include Outlook! Ooops!

So, there I was with no way of sending emails. Not only that, but all my contacts had been eliminated with the programme. Of course, I tried to reinstall 2003 but, for some unfathomable reason, my lovely new laptop would not recognise the Product Key.

After much faffing about I decided to try a Restore and, to my surprise, Windows 7 actually lists all the things that have been changed over a period of time. Unlike XP it gives date and operation, in my case the uninstalling of 2003. Whoopee! I thought, and set to with a restore to that point.

After quite some time, or so it appeared, everything went back to that point, even to the Outlook icon appearing at the bottom of the screen.

My joy was short-lived however, because the machine then had to go through the full installation of 2003, which was when a particular file seemed to become unavailable, stopping the installation process.

By this time I was almost tearing my hair out and sat back to ponder my options. Naturally I carried out a search for the missing file but, as you will have no doubt guessed, the wretched thing was nowhere to be found. So, all I could do was to stop the install.

By this time of course, the CD for 2003 was now in the drive whilst I was hunting for the lost file, which was just as well because, all of a sudden up came a screen asking if I now wanted to install 2003 or repair it. Oh yes! Bring it on! Let’s do a repair, please!

Luckily for me this process actually worked. The only downside came when I wanted to compose an email. My email text editor is Word, and Outlook is well aware of that fact. Sadly this dumb programme couldn’t find it, and so it reverted to the inbuilt editor. This is OK, but it does mean I get the same nag screen up advising me that Word is not installed on this computer.

The final upshot of all this messing around, was for me to purchase Outlook 2007 whilst I was in Harlow, followed by the final removal of 2003 and the installation of Home and Student along with Outlook 2007. I have followed all this with a good clean out of superfluous programmes and the Registry, all of which seems to have done the trick. The only bug that still seems evident is the inability of Word to keep up with my picking and pecking. It is also a wee bit hesitant about complying with my request for a line break. I tap the return and the cursor simply disappears for a couple of seconds.
Not to worry though, tomorrow is another day and the weekend is upon us again.

Saturday 27th February and, at 5.20pm, it is now raining.

We did a spot of shopping this morning, followed by a visit to the Chandlery at Shardlow for some leak stopper for the windows.

I am still not happy about the way this Office 7 and Outlook 7 are behaving. With Word the cursor still seems to be having a hard time keeping up with my typing. A string of 3 or 4 words will suddenly appear on the document, when I’m expecting all the letters to flow together.

As for Outlook, well, needless to say, having installed it over the previous version, I think I am entitled to expect it to at least send and receive my messages. Nope! Just like in previous situations of a similar nature, I now find it impossible to send and receive through this programme, despite finding that the settings are correct.

I am all but convinced that I have a serious bug in the system. Fortunately I have a complete backup on my external hard drive and so, sometime tomorrow or Monday, I shall attempt a return to an earlier time when all was running smoothly.

Sunday 28th February and I am still suffering from Outlook 7 which will not send my messages. I had intended to restore an earlier backup, which would have sent me back to Office 2003 but, although Word is not perfect in that it is still not fast enough to keep up with my typing, I think I will email Three, who are my service providers, and see what they have to say. Meanwhile I can go online to Absolute Email, which is where my email address is hosted, and send/receive from there.
You see, good people, I have had similar problems with Three/Outlook in the past, one of which was being unable to send/receive because the stupid morons had changed the send/receive parameters without informing their customers of the fact. Lovely people aren’t they?

Same day at 10.15 am. I have been onto the Three site in an attempt to set this Outlook up properly so that it will send. Naturally, no serious help was forthcoming. In desperation I sent them a message asking them to get back to me asap. I received an acknowledgement message and was told that they would contact me within the next 5 to 10 days. How wonderful is that for Customer Service.

All is not lost though, because Windows 2007 has a wonderful email programme called Windows Live. It took no time at all to set it up to send and receive emails at my Shiralee address. For some reason though, it does not like doing the same for Yahoo accounts. But that is of little consequence because I rarely use it anyway.

So, that’s sorted then, at least until I hear from Three, which could be never, knowing how totally unreliable they can be.

Tuesday 2nd March and we awoke to a really heavy, freezing fog but, at 08.45, the fog is clearing and it looks like it could be a bright and sunny day.

As you are aware by now, I am still having problems with Outlook 2007 and so, instead I am using Windows Live Mail, which has no problems whatsoever in sending and receiving my emails.

I contacted my hosting company, who are Absolute Email and they came back with a bunch of things I could try to get Outlook sending mail, none of which work. They suggested in their latest message that 99 % of problems are usually cured by following these instructions, so I must be that other 1%, because I am still no nearer to getting any sense out of this thing.

Still, Live Mail is doing the job and I can still refer back to Outlook should I need any info from the emails stored there.

I am still not happy with Office 2007 though; word is still really slow; and one thing I have noticed, simply because I do quite a lot of it, is that it isn’t possible to copy and paste over an existing document, because, when I do I am then unable to save what I have done. This means that, every time I want to carry out this operation, I have to open a separate document, which takes an age. It is really frustrating.

I am now seriously considering loading a previous backup, which would take the laptop back to a time when I was successfully running Office 2003. In that way I would have the old Word, which is so much faster, along with Outlook 2003, which was happy sending and receiving with the proper settings. Knowing my luck though, the whole thing will be a complete disaster.

Honestly, I am at a loss as to what to do here. I suppose I could back up what I have at the moment, then load the earlier back up and, if that doesn’t do the trick, re-load the new backup.

12.30 the same day.
I have just checked the previous backup and, as far as I can tell, although it certainly looks to be big enough, I am not sure that it will completely return my laptop to the previous time. It’s a question of ‘will it actually recover the programmes I had on it before I ran into all this trouble’.

You see, Windows 7 also includes a utility that provides a mirror image of the computer called a ‘system image’, and this is not what I did the last time I backed up, so I don’t know what restoring the previous backup will do. Oh boy!

It seems that I have spent £100 on Outlook 7 and can’t use it and, because my original 2003 disk now appears to be corrupted, I can’t get the Outlook 2003 back. Again, Oh boy!

I am, as our cousins across the pond would say, between a rock and a hard place.

Wednesday 3rd February at 06.50 and I have a Doctor’s appointment at 07.55, so I don’t have a lot of time to mention this.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon, much to my surprise, I received a telephone from Three. Unfortunately, in a pique of anger because I thought this was a certain Asian gentleman who had incorrectly called me last week about another matter, I closed the phone until, when Wifey asked who it was and reminded me I was expecting them to call! Duh!

I immediately picked the phone up again and, as luck would have it, he was still there. And, lo and behold, a miracle was worked in this day in the year of Our Lord 2010. Having explained the situation he then took me through the whole procedure of setting up my email in Outlook 2007. Whoopee! I can now send and receive.

Now, as you all know, I am not one to complain but, I now find that, although Word 2003 can follow my cursor, it still doesn’t always do as I say. For example, just a few seconds ago, when I tried to embolden today’s date, the cursor highlighted the first letter and stopped. The result of this was, when I tried again it deleted that first letter. Also, if I try to open a document with a simple double click, Word is unable to do so, and so I have to first open Word, and then open the document I want. I do think though, that this is due to the fact that I have both versions of Word installed.

It really would be good if I could uninstall Word 2007, but that is not possible as it would be necessary to uninstall the whole Office 2007 to achieve this and I really do need to keep Outlook 2007. Yaveh! That rock and hard place are still there I’m afraid.

So, as a final (W)word on the subject, any constructive suggestions from you, my good friends, would be much appreciated.

We paid a visit to our local kennels yesterday and were both most surprised at the size of the place. It is huge and has enough space to accommodate dogs from local Police Forces and other Government outfits. Also, where the cost per night at the kennels at Tring was £20, it is only £10.50.

All for this morning, gotta get herself out of bed to take me to the car and to Quorn for my appointment. Looks like a late brekky for both of us today. In case you are wondering, it is rather frosty out there and I do not have full use of my legs at present. It is therefore necessary for Wifey to accompany on these dodgy mornings. Mind you, if I were to fall over, I would certainly have my knees attended to tout de suit.

OK. As I’m sure you’ve now had just about enough of my woes with this laptop, I’m now going to try posting this blog.

Until next time, luv and stuff from Dave, Sheila and our much maligned pooch.