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Friday 4th January 2008
Is it mad . . .
. . . to continue to do the same thing, expecting a different result? Probably, yes. I'm not sure why I mention this . . . I read it in a book recently; maybe it was in the Naomi Wolf one I've just finished (more people should read this book, but especially North Americans), but maybe it was in a newspaper. God, I don't know. Call it a resolution, if you may (I've changed the subject now, so this should really be a new paragraph . . . I'm kind of wondering why I don't therefore just create a new paragraph; perhaps because I've invested all these words in explaining the change of subject and no longer feel a new paragraph is necessary or justified), but I've decided to do something (or perhaps just more things) creative this year. So, to that end, I've decided to finish a task I began roughly one year ago to create several coasters out of the trunks of no-longer-required Christmas trees. M**** found this hilarious and now thinks I have some kind of hobbyists gathering in my garage, and that I'll soon be joined by others. But why can I not use Ronseal Diamond Hard floor varnish on wood sanded above and beyond 120 grade, hmmmm?
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Sunday 6th January 2008
I think something's wrong with my headphones (and my network)
  
Today, after lunch, M****, A******, Pop/Mark and I did go for a walk around Bolton-le-Sands. We have the A****** unit potty trained (although often he'll require reminders), but still worry slightly what happens outside of the house and whether A****** knows the score. Thus, any suspect movement/utterance on A******'s part that could be interpreted as the need for the toilet tends to send us into a bit of a panic. Ah well. It's all good.
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So yeah . . . I think these last four photographs are largely of the same thing, but I couldn't decide upon my favourite, so I've left them all in. Hmmmmm. And tonight I did watch the film Sunshine, whilst M**** was enjoying a meal at the Borough with Liz and Mark. But yeah . . . Sunshine - damn fine film. I give it five stars. Tonight I have also been playing around with a computer (cobbled together with spare parts), trying to get it to behave as a router, but also as an exercise in networking, routing and such-like. However, something very puzzling is happening . . . It has two network cards, yeah? So far so good. Both of these networks cards are acknowledged by the operating system as eth0 and eth1 and seem to be working fine. I've given them static IP addresses, 192.168.0.10 and 192.168.0.11. From any machine in my network, I can ping and connect to that machine via either of these IP addresses. So all good so far. But then I started thinking, "But which network card is eth0 and which is eth1?" So, on my main PC I open up two terminal windows and in one I ping 192.168.0.10 and, in the other, ping 192.168.0.11. Both ping back, as expected. So, then comes the weird bit. I unplug one of the network cables and both ping requests carry on being answered. Eh?! I unplug the other network cable and both ping requests stop (destination host unreachable). So one of my network cards is both eth0 and eth1 and the other network card is just sitting there doing nothing. How is this possible? What is going on?
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Sunday 13th January 2008
They may not be fruit flies; I would check the plant pots first
Today we did go to this car dealership place in Morecambe and seemed to buy a new car. We did a part exchange on our old Vauxhall Astra and are hoping it lasts long enough for all the paperwork to go through and such like. Neither M**** or I could be bothered with any haggling, either realising we got a good deal anyway or else too scared, too lazy, too meek to bother arguing a few hundred pounds here and there. Our 'new' (well, new to us) car is (or will be) a September 2003 model, previously owned by no-one else but a priest M**** knows of, with no more than 30,000 miles on the clock (I leave it as an exercise to the very bored reader to ponder about the ambiguity in this sentence). Almost like the cliché of one careful lady owner.
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Thursday 17th January 2008
Place bets now
 Later on today, we get to find out if the foetus growing in M****'s womb is male or female - yes, it's time for another ultrasound scan. Once that's done, the serious business of thinking up names becomes that much easier. Oh, and . . . what else was I going to say? I forget now . . . can't have been important. My guess: it's a girl. WARNING: THE COMMENTS CONTAIN A SPOILER!!! DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT IF MY PREDICTION WAS RIGHT OR WRONG.
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Friday 18th January 2008
Gender revealed (in a fashion)
For those wondering about the results of M****'s foetal anomaly obstetric scan yesterday . . . well, no anomalies were found, everything looks normal, estimated due date remains unchanged. M**** has informed me that some members of her family (and maybe some people in general, who knows?) may not want to know the gender of the foetus, so for everyone else, you can click here, where all will be revealed. I guess this means I still have to refer to 'it' as 'it' then. Hmmmmmm. This could get tricky.
Jack and A******
    
Whilst I was wandering around town, stocking up on Old Brown Java, M**** was entertaining guests - Rachel and her son Jack. M**** took a few pictures of the two. Jack is about 5 months younger that A******. It's kinda weird looking at these two together, but I can't work out why . . . maybe it's because these pictures drive home the fact that, yes, A****** really could do with a hair-cut. Trouble is, he's terrified of the hair clippers. Hmmmm.
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Saturday 19th January 2008
New car acquired at last
I'm writing this retrospectively. Today me and A****** went to collect the car. Of course, I had to make two trips, having first forgotten the MOT certificate (ooops) and, erm, some kind of vehicle registration document . . . V5?! Why would a V5 be important? But, yeah . . . during the second return, the old R-reg Astra, perhaps sensing something was going on, decided to leave great big plumes of grey/blue smoke in its wake, as we cruised around Lancaster's infamous one way system. I figure, "Well, we've driven the car before with an almost dry engine, so it's nothing new." Who needs oil, eh? But yeah . . . new car is fantastic, but we haven't had a chance to go on a decent drive yet . . . motorways, country roads, all that kinda stuff.
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Sunday 20th January 2008
Scrap metal merchants? Anyone?
So now I have a load of lead piping removed from our bathroom and I'm wondering what to do with it. See, yesterday Helen and Stu came over and Stu helped remove our taps from the bath. We've decided to keep the bath, seeing as how the bathroom was built around the bath (and will therefore be difficult to remove) and perhaps the taps too, seeing as how these are still in good, working condition and will be expensive to replace. Following removal of the taps, I was able to saw through the lead piping, removing it in sections. The laptop now has Gentoo Linux installed with the Cisco 350 wireless card just about working (although it seems to overheat quite often). I had to remove Kubuntu as it was doing my head in (slow, for one thing).
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Saturday 26th January 2008
somewhere in the Lake District
     
Today we wanted to give the new car a bit of a journey on the motorway, so headed for Fell Foot Park (somewhere near Newby Bridge). We would have gone further or sooner, but I had to (or chose to) return to Hargreaves Garage to get an additional key that been promised to us. I got one of the trees to take a picture of the three of us (third from left picture) and otherwise M**** and I sat around whilst A****** played in the playground.
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We tried to feed the ducks, but the few that were about weren't really that bothered, and were vastly outnumbered by seagulls. A****** kept telling the seagulls, "Go away, seagulls," but they kept hassling us nonetheless. That last picture there is part of the overflow from the bath (see last weekend), which seems to have some horse hair attached to it, and the remnants of the lead piping. Blimey - how plumbing practices change. Oh, and that's M****'s bingo card and my glass of red wine. Blah, blah, blah.
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Sunday 27th January 2008
   
Some pictures from our walk around Silverdale. Coins in a tree, coins in a tree.
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January 2008
other months
other years
navigation
friends
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Later on today, we get to find out if the foetus growing in M****'s womb is male or female - yes, it's time for another ultrasound scan. Once that's done, the serious business of thinking up names becomes that much easier. Oh, and . . . what else was I going to say? I forget now . . . can't have been important. My guess: it's a girl. WARNING: THE COMMENTS CONTAIN A SPOILER!!! DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT IF MY PREDICTION WAS RIGHT OR WRONG.
