Dayv’s Neighborhood

I arrived in England a year ago today. A lot has changed since then, luckily for the better. I moved from a seedy house with an odd landlady to a lovely quiet house that I practically had to myself. It was brilliant until bailiffs started knocking on the door and notices of repossession came through the letterbox a few months later. By the time the water and gas had been turned off it was time for me to move on anyway. My tenure at the school I was teaching came unexpectedly to a close 3 weeks early and I was suddenly relieved of the worst job I have ever had.

In the weeks that followed I scoured the Internet looking for another teaching post mainly to see me through financially. Meanwhile, Nancy was packing up her life in Taiwan to join me as planned in July.

The day she arrived we were burgled. Only one bag was stolen, but in it was our marriage certificate – a crucial document Nancy would need to apply for a resident card. To our dismay this meant having to apply for a new marriage certificate from the notoriously inept department of home affairs in South Africa where we were married. Miraculously with my mother’s help we managed to get an unabridged copy delivered express to us just days shy of Nancy’s visa deadline 3 months later.

It was stressful time not knowing whether Nancy would be able to stay in the UK for much longer or what we would do if she had to go back. This was compounded by the added stress of moving from one part of England to quite another and having to find a new place to live when we got there. Then there was the stress of me starting a new job and Nancy trying to get a job of her own and in between all this were niggles like applying for National Insurance numbers, a driver’s license, a bank account and so on.

Amid the frenzy Nancy and I decided on a trip to Paris. It seemed rushed and badly timed, but we had always wanted to go, we were both out of work, Nancy’s visa was still valid and we really, really needed a rest. It was perfect - We spent our days strolling about the city, lazing in parks, eating, drinking and getting bronzed in the sun. We returned to England with renewed resolve. 

Fast forward to the end of the year. Nancy and I are far more settled and relaxed. We share a clean and comfortable flat with a Chinese couple who simply leave us be. I am getting on well in my new school and Nancy has a part time job that she quite likes. So things have gotten better. 

Hopefully by this time next year I will be fully qualified to teach in the UK. Ideally I would like to be either the Head of Department at the school I am in at the moment or to be working in a better school. Nancy should have a ‘regular’ job by then doing something that is suitably challenging, and if things go according to plan we will finally have bought a place of our own to call home. It is going to be an interesting year.

This was done by an artist named Pogo from Australia: "Video for my track 'Upular', composed using chords, bass notes and vocal samples from the Disney Pixar film 'Up'. Enjoy!"

I love how this composition turned out and yes, now, I want to watch a Disney movie.
More of these songs are here.

Santa got it so right in 1984. I had a Commodore Vic 20 before this, but the Spectrum 48 with the rubber keyboard was where it was at. Hours of joy and hours of frustration and trying to get games to load off a tape player. And there were hacks, oh yes. Randomize User strings.

Load "" would make a great t-shirt logo as well. Heh heh.

Dear Freya and Hamish,
thank you very much for so kindly leaving those lovely biscuits. They were melted moments, unless I'm mistaken? They were beautifully decorated and I must confess that they were so tasty that I ate them both! Rudolph took the carrot for later as we got to your house quite early and he wasn't hungry. Hope you have a lovely Christmas and enjoy your presents. You're both really good most of the time and deserve a great Christmas.
Till next year,
SANTA

I love my quad core i7. It converts FLAC to VBR mp3 with LAME very fast!

You know it's bad when you can remember a Microsoft hotfix number by heart. I've been working on this for two days now. Plenty of Google searches and lots of fixes, none of which worked. I shan't list the pages I visited; Google can do that. But I did manage to fix it and have not found my fix anywhere so I'm posting it here in the hope that it helps.

I have an XP Home SP2 installation disk. I did a fresh install, then installed SP3 and then went to Windows Update. It found 3 that were required, Windows Installer, WGA validation and KB898461. 898461 would not install via update or when downloaded to the local machine.

I did a system restore back to factory fresh SP2 straight off the disk, but still no joy.

The fix was to uninstall Windows Uninstaller 3.1, then install KB898461 from the local machine. You'll find the uninstaller here:

C:\WINDOWS\$MSI31Uninstall_KB893803v2$\spuninst\spuninst.exe

Hope this helps someone some day. If it does, drop me a line. You'll find an email link in the footer of my website.

 

This is completely embarrassing, but here goes:

I've almost never had an oven that wasn't self-cleaning. If I did, it was in one of my early apartments and I didn't stay long enough in the place to bother cleaning it.

So--what's the best (and greenest) way to go about it? I would like to avoid using the super-nasty chemical stuff as much as possible. Any tips?

Thanks!