Private Thoughts Made Public

I’m still here, haven’t forgotten about the blog (or my readers!) but boy, does the time go fast when you’re busy. There are lots of things going on and I’ve been meaning to write something about them all, but there hasn’t been the time. So this post is going to be an update about everything. No single topic, it’s another mish-mash of words and ideas. Sorry. I’ll try to be more organised next week.
Work
It’s been another manic week at work, I don’t seem to have a minute to think at the moment. I think I’m “in the zone” though, getting everything done, not forgetting about anything and most importantly, not making any mistakes! We’ve hired the a recruitment agency to find a replacement IT Manager, the chap came in last week with a shortlist of resumes for the bosses to look at. They want to interview three out of the four on the shortlist on the 16th and 17th May, only problem being that I’d booked that week off! Not really wanting to miss out on the chance to meet the guy I’ll hopefully be working with, I’ve moved my week off to the following week. Fortunately the Monday after that is a public holiday, so I get 10 straight days off work. Can’t wait!
Family
I had a meeting with my ex today to discuss our son’s behaviour, methods of punishment and money. The meeting was very civil, everyone got on great even though we didn’t come to any solid conclusions about anything really. But at least we’re talking. My ex and son are currently living with her parents (have been for months – long story) but she’s in the process of buying a flat of her own so maybe his behaviour will calm down a bit once they’re in a more settled environment. Her flat is within walking distance of her boyfriend’s flat and our son’s school, so it’ll be very convenient for her. I still want to know what she spends all the child support money on, though, I think when she’s moved in and got settled I’ll ask her to keep a food diary of what my son eats. Not only will this give me and my family valuable information about what he likes to eat, we can also work out what it costs to feed him each week. I saw him today and he was his usual self, happily watching dvd’s while his mum and I chatted, and then playing on the computer with me in the afternoon. By the way, the new Bob the Builder game on the cbeebies site is a Pac-man rip-off!
In other family news, my 89-year-old grandmother had a fall in her flat last week and has had to go into hospital since her recovery at home was a lot slower than expected. She’s in a lot of pain and wants to lie in bed all day as that doesn’t hurt. But she needs to move around a bit and put some weight on her legs otherwise she won’t get any better. Apparently today she was sitting up and had something to eat so that’s a step in the right direction (if you pardon the pun)
Home
I’ve been lifting some weights, got the dumbells out of the cupboard and have been working out with them a few times. The day after I first worked out with them I couldn’t straighten my arms at all but after the second workout they weren’t as bad. So that’s something else I need to keep in the habit of doing! It’s been cold and wet here all week so I’ve not been out walking or cycling at all. Slap my wrists – naughty boy!
On to more technological issues, I recently downloaded a program called DUMeter. It monitors your internet connection and tells you how much bandwidth you’re using. If I were to increase my connection speed there would be a monthly bandwidth limit on my connection, so I need to know if I’d exceed it or not. Apparently I won’t. Anyway I showed this program to my cousin and she liked it so much she bought it a few days later. However her meter was showing 0.5 to 1.5K of data being downloaded all the time. If that carried on she’d exceed her monthly limit within a week, so we had to find out what it was. Well, to cut a very long story short, it turns out to be Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests which happen in the background of all networks (well, all ethernet networks anyway). I wasn’t seeing them because my hardware firewall was blocking them out. When I unplugged my firewall and started using the Windows XP firewall instead, there were all the ARP requests. Now, I don’t think the ISP will incliude these in their bandwidth metering, but it does mean that the figures returned by DUMeter are going to be inaccurate, so we’re not going to be able to use it to warn us if we’re getting close to the limit or not. Frustrating.
I’ve also been playing around with the new version of EditStudio. On the support forums they’ve made a request for people to post a small movie using the supplied sample footage which shows off the capabilities of the product. The samples posted so far are hugely impressive and would probably put my little efforts to shame, but I have an idea in mind so I’ll submit it anyway when it’s finished. Watch this space
I think that’s it for now. I’m off to Michele‘s to see what everyone else has been up to!