Craigs Blog - Journal

the boy went to sleep for a while so took a timeout

2008-03-01T13:26:00Z

I haven’t linked to the photos from here yet so there you are.

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me another chance on world of warcraft for free for ten days so I logged in to see what was what. Some changes in there and I couldn’t remember how to play but a few friends were on – was good. FYI I’d have to recommend Wow Ace Updater to any players out there – darn handy especially if you’ve been away a while.

Macy passes away

2008-02-22T02:54:00Z

It was time to say bye to Macy today. Her spirit and strength of will will be something I’ll always remember. She’ll be greatly missed.

Zackery Richard Beattie born at 00:25 on 20/02/2008

2008-02-22T02:52:00Z

He weighed in at 4.32kg (9lbs 8oz). he was 53 cm long (tall?) and his head circumference was 38 cm which may explain why he didn’t want to come out the usual entrance.

Mother and baby well and should be home in the afternoon.

a time of excitement, waiting, trepidation and deep sadness

2008-01-31T00:28:00Z

I’ll start with the latter I guess. It’s getting clear to us that Macy is deteriorating quite swiftly now bless her. yesterday she was ok, not great but ok – today well, today she’s not so good. The poor love is having difficulty getting around, her back legs are starting to not quite do what she wants. She does however purr when we pick her up and snuggle in and get comfy. She’s not well though and with sammy at home most of the time now I think it’s hitting her quite hard.

Then there’s zack’s arrival – not long now. Must be hard for sammy to have new life inside kicking her and an old friend trying to get comfy on her lap in her old age. Still, we have most of the nursery ready and we’re both waiting to meet the wee man. It’s an odd time – oddly quiet really, just waiting now.

funny emotional time though – quite difficult really. still, each day will come and go and we’ll do what is best regardless.

A little time - playing, cleaning fish tanks and waiting

2008-01-27T15:29:00Z

Thought I’d take 5 minutes away from cleaning the fishies tank and write a little something. The intention was that I could use this as a journal of things – first baby, first pregnancy – all big stuff. Actually to be honest we’ve been so busy and tired it’s just not happened. Right now sammy’s asleep. We didn’t go to bed till about 3.30am as she wasn’t tired, she woke me up about 6.30am because the circuit had tripped downstairs when a bulb blew and she couldn’t see to get some milk and she told me earlier how Macy had been up about 8am calling for some company. So all in all not much sleep for sammy – i’m a pretty heavy sleeper so only recall the ‘electricity emergency’ this morning.

So now I’m taking some time to clean the fish tank out. It needs doing every three weeks or so and is about a 2 hour job. We have lots of visitors next weekend and zack may drop by any time so seems like a good idea to get it out the way.

Folks keep asking if we’re excited and I’ll be honest I’ve been a little too busy to think about it. His nursery is set up now with nice new furniture (better than mine even – how’s that fair??? :P) and really it’s a case of waiting now – sometimes seems like he’ll never come and sometimes like it’ll be tomorrow. I am really looking forward to seeing the wee man’s face.

So I got up late today to catch up on a little sleep. I’ve played a bit and kept an eye on Macy and now I’m cleaning the tank out hopefully for before sammy gets up but we’ll see.

No idea what life will be like in a month or so but it sure will be different I’m quite certain. Doubt sunday’s will be like this then and I’m looking forward to it – I am told the loss of sleep will be similar however – :P

Two driving tests failed.

2008-01-21T22:36:00Z

First was my own daft fault in not looking before one of the set off’s from the curb. This last one was particularly frustrating though. Double figures in minor faults like before with one serious mistake. I’ve learnt from it which is good but darn frustrating and an expensive lesson indeed. So now what? I’m faced with a ten day wait minimum – 31/1 but that’s awfully close to the 7/2 due date. We’re still buying odd bits for littl’un and I’m loathe to commit £50 to a test that I’m not sure I’ll be there for (physically or mentally). So now a wait till zack’s here? Try and squeeze it in anyway? it’s too late in the day for such decisions – food and a good nights rest first.

In the meantime a trip to ikea for the last bits of Zack’s furniture has been quite successful. I must say 40kg of wooden wardrobe is alot heavier than I remember 40kg of anything being in my youth but hey ho.

For those who are interested here is an image depicting my insanely frustrating expensive shortcut:

How to replace the disk in your sky+ box

2007-12-22T14:07:00Z

this little enterprise began when the box started playing up. We got some intermittent issues like the recordings would stop part way through, the play back would get choppy or the box would just turn itself off. A few calls to different people on the sky helpline revealed a secret menu – oooo. To get there you press the sky services button on the remote (near the top), choose 4 for system set up, then press 0, 1, “Select” on the remote. This opens up a few interesting things. So if you’re having trouble you can do a sky+ planner rebuild.

sky+planner rebuild

this seems to reorganise things on the sky+ disk. it generally reboots the box and usually keeps all your recordings (it lost all mine once). This generally fixed our issues for a wee while when we did this.

system reset

this option seems to clean the system and delete your recordings but it is very effective at getting you back to a sensible state – i.e. one where recordings work again (woo).

replace the disk

we took this route after a chat with the support guy who said the disks tend to fail after a while and we’ve had our box for some time. He offered to replace the box for £100 + engineer fee – £150 or so to get me back to the level of service I was paying for now??? madness I tell you. Well I had heard of people upgrading the boxes to increase disk space so I thought lets repair it myself and get an improved system to boot.

this thread on sky+ upgrades offers a good overview of the work required. I identified that I had a pace v2 box from the description. this list of working hard drives directed me to by this hard drive on ebay . I went to maplins and got a security bit toolset (needed to open the box) and followed the instructions here for the V2

About 40 minutes later we’ve got 6 times the space and a working box. I didn’t do any copying of data (we watched most stuff before we switched). So far – all’s well and all for £60.

upgrading disk in sky+ box was surprisingly easy

2007-12-21T01:28:00Z

have a look at my links on the subject here

went smooth as a breeze and seems to have fixed the annoying intermittent errors we were seeing with recordings. I like it long time.

Li'l Phoebe passes away

2007-12-10T21:35:00Z

One of the four mice has passed away. She was the wee runt so not too unexpected. Her three sisters are fine and playful still tho

Teddy the rabbit passes away

2007-11-29T00:08:00Z

Not sure why but last night Teddy fell ill and died. Doesn’t seem to be the same as Misty a while back except in the speed. He’ll be missed, a cute little fella who was loved. We’ll miss him going and grabbing his bag of treats and dragging them to sammy so she could open them up.

Just another monday

2007-11-26T22:49:00Z

Today work went so-so – I could have done better. Still the visit to the midwife went well, heard young Zack again – don’t tire of that. After that Sammy and I did some shopping. By weird circumstance I got a call regarding work during which Sammy wondered off and by the end of the call she had negotiated to adopt a hamster that needed a new home – so we now own Biscuit.

Many things happening but no blogging

2007-11-19T18:03:00Z

so… been to disneyland, been working lots, saw bill bailey, saw mary poppins, failed to get to worcester on saturday but got to a christening on time.

Been a busy busy time

note to my boy

2007-10-21T12:41:00Z

seems you’re gonna really like dolly parton when you’re older – at least thats what sammy’s been listening to just of late so you have too.

BCS awards etc.

2007-10-10T22:59:00Z

From the BCS

Quote: Anna Duckworth BCS Head of Corporate Marketing said: “Year on year the standard of entries increases and this year is no exception with innovative projects which showcase excellence in IT. The next stage of judging will be very difficult as our expert panel endeavours to select the outright winners for each award.”

The BCS IT Industry awards are the leading hallmark of success amongst practitioners in the IT industry today. As standards of sophistication, business acumen and skill in the IT world are continually developing, the role of IT and its effective management is critical across the whole spectrum of business. These cross-industry awards recognise, promote and acclaim excellence, professionalism, innovation and the outstanding achievements to which individuals and groups contribute.

note to my boy

2007-10-05T20:30:00Z

hey – you’re not even born yet and already off to the theatre. You’re seeing Wicked tonight up near victoria. Oh, and you’re giving your mum a taste for Chilli’s and hot stuff which she never liked before – quite amusing.