Cathles.com

I was just reading an article on the Sky News website about a new “Blue Giant” star that’s been discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

It linked to this Youtube Video to help you visualise the sheer size.   I love it, as it kind of puts life in to perspective!

We’ve discussed this previously, and never really knew how to go about it, so when we bumped in to the Retired Greyhounds Trust representatives at The Suffolk Show last week, we were only too glad to take one of their leaflets home to read and discuss.

We discussed, and phoned, and went out to visit them today, and hurrah!  We’re hoping to be able to offer a new home to a Retired Racing Greyhound called “Tinker”.

We next need a “home check” visit to make sure that our house is suitable, and we can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be, so with a little luck we’ll have a new companion in the house very soon!

He is simply gorgeous, and has such a relaxed manner about him.   One of the big benefits for me will be that I now have a reason to go out for a half hour walk a couple of times a day!  Some regular exercise will do me good!

In my belief it’s never been more important for those that are eligible to vote to actually get up off their backsides and go exercise their democratic rights!

Democracy is being able to vote for the Candidate or Party you detest the least.

This year more so than ever, I feel that the above statment is extremely true.

I’m not going to specify who I voted for this year, but I am going to share some of my thoughts about the three main parties.    You of course have the choice and the right to read or not, and of course to agree or dissagree, both in whole or in part.

So here are a few points:

• Exercise your right to vote!

If you don’t vote, then don’t complain when the party (or parties) you don’t like get elected!

I’ve spoken to several people recently, and have been quite surprised that they don’t seem to be bothered about the election.  The general feeling I get is “that they’re all as bad as one another”.   That may or may not be a fair comment, but I wonder how many of those currently ranting and raving about the conduct of our current government actually took responsibility and voted last time?   If you didn’t vote (and who you voted for is largely irrelevant), do you truly have a right to complain?

• Base your decisions on Facts and not Fiction

I’ve made the point in a number of discussions with friends and colleagues recently that the Media should bear a huge amount of responsibility for the current opinions of the general population.  I believe Newspapers & Television should on balance have an obligation to present the facts in an impartial and objective way.   Of course they could have Opinion pieces or articles, but never should an entire publication be allowed to declare it’s allegiance to one particular party.  “The Sun” Newspaper is a classic example of this, having once been a Conservative supporter, and quite sensationally flipped to Labour just before Blair was elected, and now have publically flipped back to support the Conservatives once again.   In an amazing coincidence, all of the Polls comissioned by the Conservative supporting “Sun” all seemed to favour the Cameron Conservatives according to the editorial, even when the numbers didn’t!

The Media is extremely guilty of over hyping and sensationalising events in order to “make news”.   Perhaps we’re all at fault here, with our ever growing demand for more and more information at our fingertips, and on our screens, the advent of 24 hour news channels etc means that the Media has to find things to fill the airtime with but PLEASE stop with coining stupid names like “the Credit Crunch”.   If you keep on and on telling us something, eventually we’ll believe it, regardless of how true it may be.   (this is something Politicians are very aware of!)

That’s probably enough for now.   I would expect some of this to be Controversial, if anyone ever actually read this!

Mildred Rose Cathles
16.10.1920 – 25.03.2010

A much loved Wife, Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother, reunited with Alan after 10 years apart.

The Funeral will be held at Weeley Crematorium on Weds 7th April at 11:00am

This Obituary was published in the Harwich & Manningtree Standard on Thursday 1st April 2010.

… nay, I NEED one!

What am I on about you may ask?

The answer is simple….  one of these:

It’s an LG N2B1DD2 2 Bay Blu-ray Network Attached Storage 2TB which connects to the Network and provides Network Attached Disk for me to back up and archive data to.

I’ve had a 1Tb Buffalo Terastation for about five years now, and it’s choc-full of data, with my MP3 Collection, my Library of Audiobooks, copies of most of my Applications and so forth, and that’s BEFORE I count the Multi-Gigabyte’s of Documentation I’ve accumulated from all the different PC’s I look after, and various Laptops that “visit” for me to maintain!

The Buffalo was a 1Tb, the new one is 2Tb but has the added benefit of allowing me to migrate on-line storage to near-line or off line using the built-in Blu-Ray recorder, which is REALLY interesting!

The fact that it’ll work as a DLNA Server, so I could stream Video straight from the storage device to my Whizzy Samsung 7-Series TV is a huge bonus, and the iTunes Server thing is quite interesting too.

So, this is squarely on my list of gadgets to acquire.  Psst;  Anyone want to buy a 2nd hand Buffalo Terastation?? 

I’m pleased to report that I have the vast majority of my Christmas Shopping completed, and even most of what I’ve bought is already wrapped up!

I say the “vast majority” guardedly, as I’ve just arrived home to discover the latest batch of parcels have arrived from www.play.com with some stocking filler type presents in.   Unfortunately in what has to be one of the worst examples of customer service I’ve seen for some time, I’ve received two items that bear absolutely no resemblance to what I ordered.

Of a total of 8 different items, two were identical, and should have been in the “Gadgets” category.  I won’t describe exactly what they should have been here, just in case the intended recipient should drop by, instead I’ll refer to them as “Item X”; but instead I received two “5m Belkin Cat6 Snagless Patch Cables” which I notice aren’t even listed on their Website as a stock item!

So I phoned the Play.com Helpdesk, and eventually spoke to someone about the issue.  I have to say the quality of the phone line was very poor indeed, but I got the distinct impression that the chap on the other end of the phone just wasn’t listening to me.   I gave him the details including the order number and product codes of the erroneous items, and eventually he said “Ok I need to verify your identity, can I please have your postal code?”   … so I tell him quite clearly…. “so that’s {completely wrong postal code}, correct?” … uh no,  tell him this time spelling it out phonetically …. “In order to verify your identity, can I please have your full name?”  … so I tell him… and he (perhaps unsurpisingly) can’t pronounce my surname;  then…. “in order to verify your identity can I please have your full address…?”   at which point I’m starting to get annoyed, and ask just how much more he needs to verify my identity given that I’ve already given him the order numbers, and sufficient information to prove that I’m who I claim to be;   “I appreciate you’re frustrated sir, but please let me verify your details so I can help you, now can I please have the item numbers?”  which I give him again, and of course suggest that if the packing and quality control departments took half as much care as he was apparently taking, I’d never have received such a ludicrous substitution!

Anyway, to cut a fairly painful conversation short, it seems that I need to pay for the postage and packing to return the items to them, and when they receive them they will process a refund of my postage costs and dispatch replacements…. or at least they would if they had them in stock.   And of course there’s no estimated delivery date for any additional stock.   I think it’s bloody awful that I as a customer have to pay out and inconvenience myself just to fix their stupid mistake. 

And to add insult to injury, given there’s no stock left, I now need to find a couple of alternative gifts!  I knew there was a reason I stopped buying products from Play.com;   Maybe they should look at my pages of previous orders, and note that I stopped being a regular customer a few years ago!

Very poor customer service Play.com!

Weekends are meant to be time OFF work, right?

I’ve not stopped this weekend, but it’s been for a good cause.

I had to rearrange the furniture in my room to accomodate some changes I’ve been contemplating for a while now.  This included dismantling all of my Computer kit, removing all the surplus cables and the old and falling apart metal desk that it used to sit on at the foot of my bed, remove a chest of drawers, and a huge three door wardrobe unit with four drawers underneath in two columns of two drawers, and a 5 drawer tallboy unit full of clothes.

This meant the spare room also needed to be rearranged including moving the bed, a beside cabinet, and various other miscellaneous moves, including unloading a large bookcase and sorting out all the books in to Bootsale candidates, Keepers, and other bookshelves in the house.  The bookcase had to be moved to a temporary home in the lounge in order to make space.

My day started at 7am yesterday when I woke up, and showered.  I was out the door and in the centre of Colchester at 8.30, and had started visiting various furniture shops looking for a new desk, after all I wasn’t going to start moving everything around if I couldn’t track down something suitable to replace it!

I’ll digress a little here.  Colchester … get  your damn act together!

• Staples along the Avenue of Remembrance, some nice desks, but “Temporarily unavailable” signs on most of them.  I asked what that actually meant, and was told the company that makes them had gone in to receivership.  Not very temporary then!  And surprise surprise … none in stock of the ones that I liked!
• The Range – only a couple of workstation style desks..
• Homebase (opposite Waitrose)… could sell me a “fitted office” solution… no thanks..
• Wickes… no desks…
• “Cheap-furniture-shop-in-what-used-to-be-Focus” (near Asda)… some nice furniture but no desks…
• Homebase at Stanway,
• Conway Pine … fantastic desks, but £1500+… a little more than I had budgeted…
• Staples at Stanway… more choice but same fundamental problem as the other one,
• Hatfields .. nothing suitable
• Focus in Harwich… had a nice desk, but when it came to choosing;  two box one of two, no box two of two… and a 8-10 week lead time on any orders.

I ended up having to resort to something from Argos… not exactly what I wanted, but as you’ll see in a moment it’s done the job.   I finally got home about 2:30 and started unloading the furniture to be moved out of my room.   Eight bags of rubbish later (I was ruthless, feeling quite proud of myself!) and I had an empty space.    The spare room having been rearranged to take most the furniture I moved out of my room.

I finally crashed for a rest at about 7pm on Saturday.

Sunday I started again at 7am, clearing up the debris from the day before, and dismantling the PC kit and the old desk that had a broken keyboard shelf.

I then assembled the new desk and the filing cabinet alongside it, moved the tall bookcase back in from the lounge, and started to reassemble the PC.  Next problem, the PC wouldn’t fit under the desk, so had to put it on top.

More putting stuff away… two trips to the tip to dump rubbish, and another trip back to Colchester to buy the Office Chair I wanted that I’d seen in Staples on Saturday… then swap out a bedside cabinet for another one, and I’m just about finished.

Here’s the finished result….

I’m absolutely pooped now, so heading for a soak in the bath and an early night!

Quite an interesting clip of Clifford Stoll in action.

I can thoroughly recommend his book “The Cuckoo’s Egg” for any Computer Security types out there.

A somewhat predictable post given today’s date.  Like many millions of others around the world, September 11th 2001 will be a date forever burned in to my memory.

And here I am, some 8 years later, and I still find the whole thing indelibly etched on my mind, it brings a shiver to my spine just thinking about it.

I was at work, and I remember my first clue that anything out of the ordinary was going on was when I started to get complaints from people thruought the company that the Internet access and e-mail was all going slow.

I investigated and was very surprised to find all of our internet links being maxed out.   I then went on a hunt and started looking at where people were going to see what was causing the abnormal use, only to find that without exception everyone was trying to get to BBC News and Sky News websites.

I accessed the sites, and was quite horrified about what I saw.  I wandered around to the restroom and found a group of people gathered around the television in a horrified silence.  At that time the plane had hit the first tower.   I made a couple of quick phone calls to my family and a friend and suggested they go turn on their TV and then stood there feeling sick to the stomach as we watched the second plane hit in more or less real time, and I told a few colleagues what had been happening before rushing back to grab a space in front of the Television.

It’s difficult to describe in hindsight how I felt at the time;  I know I was trying hard to hold on to the contents of my stomach, and found it more or less impossible to pull myself back to work later that day.  I think I must have lost about 4 hours that day just gazing in mute disbelief at the TV or reading online news articles.  In the call centres, the phones went strangely quiet, which was just as well considering how everyone else must have been feeling.

Rather peversely, I do remember feeling a newfound sense of companionship with the others watching alongside me.  An event of such magnitude did seem to bring us closer together as a community of people, I even remember smiling wryly at one couple who I noticed holding hands tightly as they watched.

I’m sure anyone reading this will join me in hoping, nay wishing, no – preying that we never ever see anything as horrific as the events of that day again, and I for one will never forget that day!  I’m sure I am not alone.

This weekend I went and collected my nice shiny new Television set.

I opted for the UE32B7020 from Samsung, which is a 32″ model in the 7-Series range of LED TV’s.

I saw a 6-Series LED in a shop a few weeks ago and was captivated by two things.  First off the Picture quality was astounding, more like a Plasma than an LCD TV, and the Black was very very Black, if you know what I mean.

The second thing that was incredible was the sheer depth of the set.  My older LCD TV wasn’t exactly large at about 5cm deep in total, but the UE32B7020 was literally less than 2cm deep!  It was slimmer than a picture.

And for the eco-friendly, it uses LESS electricity than the equivalent 32″ LCD set!

I updated the Gadgets post with the new set, but for some reason Samsung don’t seem to have the 32″ version of the 7-Series LED posted on their website, so I had to link to the
UE40B7020WW instead.