Conspiracy of technology

Another gap between postings! I'm afraid time seems to conspire against me more and more these days so as much as I'd like to post daily, the reality is its going to be more sporadic than that.


A little progress has been made with 'The Plan' in that the mind map is halfway completed. It strikes me that mind mapping software is amongst the best and most useful stuff ever invented for putting thoughts down and making sense of them. Last week saw another one of those periods where technology was going to fail or conspire to make the week a little more challenging.

Item number 1 to bring on the the cold sweat of technology failure horror happened on realising that the 'sync checked items only' option in iTunes would remove all the songs that didn't have the check box marked. I was trying to sync the damn thing with 4 new tunes I'd added to the library. Hence selecting this option gave me 4 songs on the iPod and removed the other 5419! Not a disaster you might think as the songs are on the PC hard disk, but the fact is that it took an overnight sync of around 8 hours to get it back to where it was. Could I live without the iPod? Possibly, but I can't help feeling a small wave of panic if I go anywhere without it, similar to the mobile phone, the watch and trousers! These software designers have a very long way to go to make things foolproof, especially if someone as technology savvy as me can get it so wrong.

Item number 2 on the list of things to make life a little shittier happened on Wednesday when LittleSis called me to let me know that the hot water tank had sprung a leak. At first she couldn't be sure it was the tank as the water appeared to be running through the airing cupboard ceiling. Note, not trickling, or dripping, but running! This however turned out to be condensation. Credit where its due, she didn't panic after Kid and Pie had called her to come and help. Hellsbells was at work and couldn't leave, and I was in the same boat. LittleSis covered all the right things, switching off the water, turning off the immersion and the controller for the heating and water. My tamed plumber came out and diagnosed the issue as a fucked up immersion heater element that had decided to leak through the top where the electrics are housed. Doesn't sound very safe to me that such a thing could happen, but 5 hours and £70 later the situation had been fixed by The Tame Plumber - all that work for £70 including parts, he's a fucking marvel and a pretty well kept secret for me. He did, however question why we had an immersion on, when the boiler is working perfectly. He may as well have questioned next doors cat such is the paucity of my plumbing knowledge, capability and interest. Plumbings a black art isn't it?

Item number 3 on the list of things to make you scream a little was the failure of a one week old external hard drive I bought for the main home PC. Yep, halfway through moving some data across the power supply decided that it couldn't be arsed to carry out its 'raison d'etre' and did the electro-mechanical equivalent of topping itself. Ok, so the data that is critical was only copied to it, and I did have a month old back on a networked machine I have, but there was still around 80Gb of data lost where its alluring alleged capability and reliability had tempted me to move the data instead of copy it. Fortunately it happened when I was workiong from home so after a mercy dash to the suppliers, it was returned and new one purchased. But yet more hours lost in the pursuit of repairing or rectifying something I've come to rely on.

It wouldn't be so bad if one of the damn things I want to fail decided to pack up. Like the TV for example.......then I could justify a nice big 46" flat screen system with associated Blu-Ray Home Cinema system to replace it. Hellsbells won't let me even consider this and although the idea of sabotage has crept in, I don't think I'd pull it off after the last cunning ploy* I used to buy the current TV.

*Tell Kid aged 9 that you've bought new TV and tell her its a secret from Mummy, knowing the first thing she'll do is tell her. Make sure this happens on sunny friday when Mummy is in the pub having an evening drink. Do it at a time when Mummy has had more than one or two so she's all happy and smily. Let Mummy moan a little but accept it was necessary. Go home and order the TV!

I'm working on another plan to get a new all singing all dancing fuck off HD TV, but if anyone has any sneaky ideas then all offers are gratefully appreciated.

Later, GJ