Editor's Blog - Monday, 18th August
| Author: Ken The Editor | Published: 18th August 2008 22:32 |
Do you find that some days you just know it's all going to go tits up? Having spent the best part of Saturday massaging the contents of the September Gaz to make them fit, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself when I woke up on Sunday morning after a great night's sleep. Tea in bed (courtesy of the teasmade - what a wonderful invention!) and a quick browse through the Sunday papers and I was ready to face the world. But that's when it all started to go wrong...
First up, it was the Austrian blind in the bedroom - it stuck when I tried to pull it up. So, I gave it good old yank and guess what? Three of the sodding strings broke. By the time I had finished it looked like it had been hung out on the washing line - all drooping down in the middle. She Who Must Be Fed was less than impressed and, of course, it was my fault for being so heavy-handed! I tried to explain that I had been pulling that curtain up and down for some 15 years and that I was pretty used to doing it without breaking it - and also that at 15 years old, perhaps it was a tad worn out. She was having none of it - it was all my fault and I would have to mend it.
Mid morning I printed off the final draft of the Gaz and was sitting reading through it in the study around 11.00am when I heard the familiar ‘ping' from the PC telling me that an e-mail had arrived. I thought "I hope that's not for the Gaz!", but of course it was - Colin had sent me one of his Birds articles. At three-quarters of a page, there was no way that it was going to fit and I knew it was pointless even trying. So I wrote Colin a nice e-mail saying that I would publish it in the October edition. He has not replied - I hope I have not upset him!
The cut-off hour of midday came and went with no further hiccups so I sent off the corrected draft to Paul, Lauretta and Jamie to proof-read and went to put my feet up in front of the telly. That's when the second disaster of the day struck - no picture (and no sound either!). On closer examination, I found that the Freeview box was dead as a dodo. I tried changing the fuse - made bugger all difference. Now She Who Must Be Fed likes to watch the old detective stories (Agatha Christie and the like) on ITV2 (or is it ITV3?) of an evening, so muggins was despatched to Curries to get a new Freeview box - that was £30 down the swannie! Fortunately, when I connected it up it all worked perfectly first time - phew!
By latish on Sunday evening I had not heard back from the proof-readers so I thought I would give them a nudge. Paul said he was too busy looking after his 18 month old niece - I think she wore him out! Lauretta and Jamie said they were looking at it and that they would send me their corrections soon - so I sat and waited. Just after 11.00pm the lights went out for a second - unfortunately, my PC went out completely! The main unit looked OK, but the monitor was as dead at the Freeview box had been earlier in the day. Once again, I tried changing the fuse - I just don't know why I bother, it's NEVER the fuse nowadays, it is? So, the Gaz was not going to get sent off to the printers on Sunday night as planned. I went off to bed with the right hump!
This morning, She Who Must Be Fed had to go for a brain scan down at the PRUH. The nurse didn't tell me if they managed to find one, but I guess they must have as she told me everything was OK. That took up a couple of hours of valuable PC-fixing time, so just after 11.00am I trekked off to PC World to get a replacement monitor. They had rows of the bloody things - but all wide-screen. Now that's fine if you want to watch videos or play games, but when you're working with Word documents then it's no use at all. I spoke to a lad who said there wasn't much call for ‘normal' monitors these days, but he had a quick check on the system and found one model in stock and they had three of them. He disappeared for ages and when he returned he told me he couldn't find them. "Bloody typical" I thought to myself.
"Would sir like to buy a new PC? This model is only £299 and comes with a 17" standard monitor". No, sir was definitely not going to buy a new sodding PC - the unit may only be 300 quid but it will cost a bloody fortune to upgrade all my software from XP to Vista! And during all that farting about I'm bound to lose some data or software (or probably both!) along the way.
So, I ended up buying a 19" wide-screen monitor - that's another £130 down the drain. It looks very nice and modern stuck in front of my old Dell, but it's definitely a retrograde step as far as I'm concerned - everything's all sort of elongated. I guess that's progress for you! Anyway, the good news is that when I connected it up and turned on the PC it booted up as normal - no lost data, no crashing programs, everything working just as it did before (apart from the fact that it looks longer!). And guess what was the first thing I did - I kicked off a back-up!
Now some of you are no doubt concerned that whilst I was busy titting around with the PC, the Gaz was not getting done. No worries! (As the Australians, and most of the younger element of the UK nowadays, would say). Jamie came to the rescue - he made the corrections and sent it off to the printers this morning. Thanks, mate - I owe you one.
So, all in all, it came out sort-of OK in the end. It's just that I'm £170 quid down (which includes the tenner I forked out for the string for the Austrian blind from the nice lady at The Curtain Scene), getting slanty eyes from looking at this sodding wide-screen monitor and have the re-stringing of the blind to look forward to in the morning - and I just know that's going to be a right bugger of a job. I'll let you know how I get on next time.
Toodle pip.
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