January 31st

After the last day of the tech summit, we had a sales meeting, then we all had beer and tacos.

January 30th

My new laptop showed up, and it's damn quick, with 16Gb of memory.  I think I might end up having to replace some of my home systems now :o)

After a day of meetings, we had a team building exercise - we had to come up with a dinner menu from a pile of ingredients.  Our team cooked fish, followed by pear crumble.  We came 3rd out of 5.

January 29th

We had our support mini summit at the office, then decamped to the hotel for the sales awards dinner.

January 28th

We spent the day in the office like normal wage slaves, then went to the sales dinner at the hotel.

January 27th

After breakfast, I packed the van up and drove to San Francisco for the work tech summit.  The car park I usually dump the van in was shut, so I ended up abandoning it in a different car park and hiked it to the hotel.  Yay.

January 26th

After tinkering with the van a little, I went over to the airfield and took the plane up for a couple of circuits.  The weather wasn't that great, so it was pretty bumpy.

We met Vince for an early dinner, and I paid him the rest of what I owed him.

In the evening, I discovered that the weather station's complaining about the SD card... rebooting didn't work, so I'll have to rebuild it, but I don't really have the time right now.

January 25th

The SSD in my work laptop took a dump, so after a little time panicking, I started using my desktop to connect to work.

We met Vince for dinner, so I could pay him for the engine rebuild.  And then I discovered that my ATM card's limit is a lot lower than I thought it was.  Oh well... he knows where I live.

January 23rd

I took the Van in to get a slow puncture fixed, and asked them to rotate the wheels while I was there.  They rotated the wheels, but forgot the puncture - I asked what the problem was, and the guy looked at me blankly.  We tracked down which wheel it was on, and there was a rusty nail in it.  That got fixed, and everything's good.

The new steering column covers squeak against the steering wheel, so I'm going to trim them slightly to stop that, as it's really annoying.

January 22nd

I ordered new steering column covers for the Van on the weekend, and they showed up today.  So I went and struggled to get them to fit, but finally fit they did.  That seems like a lot of work.

January 21st

We ran (and passed) all the tests for the cruise control, so then tightened up the slack in the cable.  It didn't help.  I played with the settings, and went for a few test drives but haven't changed anything, so I've decided to leave it for the moment.

I spoke to Vince in the evening, and the Flightstar's all back together - I just need to go and add gas and go flying.  I was confused at first, as I was sure there was about half a tank in the plane, but he's used that all up running it in.  It seems the problem was the crank seals, and the mark I was looking at on the barrel wasn't a seizure, rather the piston ring gap marking the wall.  Joy.

January 20th

While Vic toiled in the garden, I sat down and did the wiring for the cruise control in the van.  GoWesty do a kit where they have a microswitch on the front brake, rather than using the brake light power, and I thought that sounded like a good idea, so I've made a microswitch hangar.  The trouble is that they use holes that already exist that don't exist on my van.  I tried a couple of times to drill a hole where I need it (right by the steering column) and gave up.  I've just wired the thing up to the brake light wire - I was going to set that up with a diode as a failsafe anyway (for if my switch jams for whatever reason), so I might revisit that when it's warmer.

I took the van out for a test drive, and while I can hear the motor doing something, it doesn't seem to work.  I _think_ there's too much slack in the cable, but there's a whole section on troubleshooting the wiring that I want to run through before I get all excited.

In the evening we watched "Dredd", and I thought it was excellent - much better than the Stallone version.  There's even a Vanagon - in a car chase, of all things.

January 19th

We'd decided to get some stuff out of the way this weekend, so while Vic was running some errands, I got the van out and started looking at fitting the new electric cruise control.  I've decided to fit it in the front, like the GoWesty kit.  They sell a VSS add-on for the speedo, but I already have the magnet kit added to rear wheels.  They also don't use the coil connection for overrev protection, but I figured I'd repurpose the 4 wires that run to the back of the van from the controller to cover this functionality.  It was bloody cold out, so we were out there for a few hours, getting the mechanical parts installed, until we called it a day and went in to catch up on some of the TV from the week.

January 18th

We went and had dinner at a barbecue place for a change.  Vince had already eaten, so screw that guy.  The restaurant was full, so we sat at the bar, and discovered that they have the pear cider we like :o)

January 17th

The new battery for Vic's bike showed up, but when I put the acid in it, it's showing 0.3v - looks like an internal short to me, so it's no use at all :o(

Vic picked up a screw in one of the tyres of the Jeep.   It was still sticking out of the tread, so I took it out and it leaked a little air.  We rotated the wheels so that's now the spare.  The van's got a slow puncture in one of its new tyres too, so I guess I'll have to look at getting both of these fixed sooner rather than later.

January 16th

I went to the EAA Chapter meeting, where it was bloody cold in the hangar.  The meeting was interesting enough, but Ken didn't get much time to show the web site I've been working on for the last few days.  Oh well.  On the plus side, I won a mug in the raffle.

January 15th

I tinkered with the EAA Chapter web site some more (everyone's a critic, and Ken sent me some more stuff to work on).

January 14th

We did a little soldering in the van, so it's now drive-able again, then went in from the cold so I could work on the Lincoln EAA Chapter web site.  It's the next membership meeting on Wednesday, so of course Ken sent me everything this morning :o)

January 13th

It was another bitterly cold day, so we pretty much just stayed in all day.

In the evening, we watched "ParaNorman", a decent enough animated kid's horror movie.

January 12th

I started the day by breaking the little doohickey that holds the pantry door shut - basically it's been wearing for years, and finally gave up the ghost.  I then wasted some time playing Warcraft, at least until it warmed up a little.  A little.  It was still bloody cold when I went out in the garage and removed the wiring loom for the old cruise control, and discovered a small oil leak from a split valve cover breather.  Oh, and pulled a brake light wire (for the high level light) out of its bullet connector.  I couldn't immediately see how to install the cruise control, so I gave up, as I was shivering by then.

We made plans to meet Vince for a late lunch,, and were heading out to get some supplies when the postie showed up with the crank for the plane's engine.  I signed for that, then we went and got the breather hose and a new doohickey for the pantry door, then met Vince.  He had some running around to do, so we went to the Apple store and finished off my gift card with a pair of earbuds and a Lightning to MicroUSB adapter (well, there's 38c left), then went home and gave Vince the crank, along with the pistons that had arrived earlier in the week.

We spent the rest of the day playing with computers - I got my warlock up to level 87, and made Vic a mechanical dragonling, and then when she was playing we got together all the parts we needed for jewelled onyx panther.

January 11th

I couldn't get the Wireless 5000 mouse to work on my work laptop in the morning, so I ignored it and used my old second Arc mouse.  After work, I tinkered for a bit, and deleted all the mouse drivers and got it to work.  We'll see if it'll work after a reboot.

I sat and moved all my calendar items and tasks into Google Calendar, then installed Thunderbird on my desktop (I run it everywhere else).  Along with Lightning and the add-ons for the Google Address Book and the Google Calendar.  The plan is to use this rather than Outlook, so I can access everything, from everywhere.  We'll see how that blows up in my face and kills everybody in the room.

January 10th

The replacement for my replacement for my broken Microsoft Arc mouse showed up.  They're not sending the Arcs out any more (no, I don't know why either, they're still on the Microsoft web page), so they've sent me a Wireless 5000.  All well and good, but it didn't want to work on my work laptop.  I managed to get it to work on the desktop (and configured it in Warcraft - I actually had to download the Intellipoint software to be able to configure the middle mouse button to work as the middle mouse button).  We'll see if I can get it working on my work machine tomorrow.

January 8th

I've had the headlights on the van just go out a few times, and I suspect the switch (as poking it made them come on again).  I could never repeat this on demand, but I've replaced the light switch anyway.

We also watched "Ted", which had some really funny parts.  I could have done without the happy ending, to be honest.

January 7th

The 2012 tax software arrived, along with my W-2 from work, so I sat down for a while and made a valiant start on my taxes.  There's still a bunch of paperwork to show up, and, of course, it won't do that until the last minute, so I'm thinking I'll be stuck doing bits and pieces until the end of February.

January 6th

In between playing Warcraft (I got my warlock to level 86), I went into the garage and made up a little stand for the Eee (running Android), and moved it out there.  It take a little while to start up, which is a pain - I'm going to look at ways of getting it to sleep, rather than having to shut it down. I also mounted the speakers (it's replaced the boom box out there that eats tapes, doesn't play CDs and often needs the power cord wiggled to stay on) to the stand.  They're cheap, crappy speakers, and I had a nail gun in my hand at the time, so I attached them with the nail gun :o)

January 5th

It was a pretty uneventful day, so after paying a little Warcraft, I went out and hacked the green waste bin's amount off the trees in front of the house.  Yay me.

January 2nd

Roseville Electric were a little late with the bill this month:

Power paid for

Power generated

After work, I installed a new graphics card in my desktop - a Radeon 7750.  It's taken my Windows Experience scores from 6.6 to 7.4, and I can now run Warcraft on "Ultra" graphics - with a few tweaks, I can now run at >60fps, rather than the ~35fps I was getting on "Fine" with the distance turned all the way up.

I then put all the old cards in their correct boxes - I have a tendency to put the old card in the new box, so the 5750 went into the 4650 box, and the 7750 box is left empty.  I might end up putting one of the faster cards into the HTPC, but the card in there right now is pretty quiet.

January 1st

As usual on a day off, we played computer games for a bit, then Tilly and I went to Freedom Field, so I could chat with Vince while flinging the ball.  Tilly, as usual, now has blisters on all 4 feet, and looks to have worn at least one nail down to the quick.  Silly dog.

December 31st

Another fine day wasted playing on the computers, but Tilly and I went for a long walk around the neighbourhood.

In the evening, we met Jen to see "The Hobbit".  We caught the last showing of the day, so it was dead in there, meaning a good time was had by all.