Digital providence

This afternoon, we went to Newport to call on Martin, whose mother Jane died during the week. We've known them both since I was first ordained and working in Caerphilly, forty six years ago, so there was much to reflect upon together after her long life.

On the way there, we called at Maplins, and bought a hard drive USB dock to send to Kath to use to retrieve stray file data from the hard drive of her defunct laptop, which hadn't been backed up lately. It seems she has insufficient OneDrive capacity for all her files, much of which are music or graphics and photos, so just to be sure nothing's lost, the drive needs time spent on scrupulous inspection.

For the most part, however, she was operating normally once the configuration of her new Acer was complete. The only missing piece in the restoration equation however, was Corel Draw. It had worked perfectly, installed on her old machine under Windows 7, and had been working since upgrade to Windows 10 but wouldn't install from scratch on the new machine, even though installing a 32bit program on a 64bit machine should not be a problem.

Yesterday afternoon in the office, I'd spent ages going through the diagnostic process and attempting a 32bit install in the manner which Windows 10 provides. This had worked last week for installing MS Office 2000. Corel Draw, however, has built in redundancy. Anto had similar problems with a costly multiple CD replicating device. It ran on an XP machine but not Windows 7. The company refused to provide new drivers for old hardware, so he kept running his XP machine until earlier this week, when Kath configured an unused Windows 7 PC to avoid reliability issues from an even older piece of kit. The XP machine will now be used only for CD printing. It runs Corel Draw, but oh so slowly!

Then serendipity threw up a surprise for Kath. Working out in the gym, she was chatting to someone about her computer woes, and mentioning her helpful geek of a father, when she was offered a Core i3 Acer laptop for her Dad to see if he could fix, by someone who'd decided to move over to a Mac rather than pay to repair a machine whose Windows 7 operating system had failed. The hardware seems to be working and if it is merely a software matter, I may be able to restore it to full use. Kath can install Corel Draw on it, and keep it on hand for whenever she needs to do some designing.
  

A repair and replacement week

After celebrating the midweek Eucharist with ten people at St German's Wednesday morning, I took the car into Canton Quikfit depot to get something done about the exhaust, which sounds like a hole is developing. Later, I had a phone call to say it needed the catalyst replacing, and had to be ordered.  It was going to be expensive. Time to think. At 24 years old the car's scrap value is a hundred pounds, but it's mechanically in good nick and the bodywork surprisingly sound for a car of its age.

Clare's nephew and godson David had expressed an interest in the car's potential and having it when we've finished with it, during our East Anglian birthday party visit, as it would be a worthy candidate for restoration, or customizing for racing if one was so inclined, not that we'd want to take this course but we're minded to hand it on to him when we change cars. It has to be driveable when we do, as he lives in Scotland, so I decided there was no option but to go ahead, spend the money and keep the car for a while longer. 

Thursday afternoon there was another call to say that the catalyst's sensor was also irretrievable due to corrosion. More expense, and delay while the part is ordered. Today, a third call to say that a further pipe section has to be ordered. More cost, more delay until Monday, which means a car-less weekend. The only useable component of the exhaust remaining is the muffler section which Quikfit replaced several years ago. We don't use the car that much. It's only when it's not there at our beck and call that we notice.

Meanwhile, back at the office, the Acer desktop failed yet again to self-repair. It remains stuck in a loop after re-boot, with no error message to indicate the real problem. So, this afternoon I unplugged it, put it back in its packaging and returned to John Lewis'. Rather than a like for like replacement I've decided it's better to go for the HP equivalent, even if we have to wait a few days for one to arrive at the store. In the five weeks since it was purchased, I don't think we've had more than five days use out it. Most disappointing, and such a waste of time, all that machine minding while it pretended to repair itself.

A warning light that doesn't

I received disconcerting news from Ashley that his new Acer all in one desktop machine was yet again misbehaving and not starting up as intended. It's cycling in a re-boot - repair mode loop, it seems to be caused by unadjusted power settings putting the machine to sleep or switching off, depending on how long it's been left. Normally the machine is left on permanently, cond configured to stay on, with only the screen blanking on idle. I had to do this when it needed reverting to the OEM Windows 8.1 or else the 148 updates would never have been completed. As it was with those reboots that demand consent, it took several days to get the machine in to a state where the upgrade to Windows 10 could take place. This returned to power settings to default and neither of us noticed, so the same old story started again.

The machine's power tell tale light is so dim, it's impossible to tell if it's switched on. Neither does it  blink when in suspense, so one is fooled into thinking it's switched off. Pressing the power button is supposed to switch on or wake up the machine, not sure which. But prolonged pressing of the power button brings up the 'Advanced Startup' menu, which you may or may not need, depending on whether the machine thinks its been properly switched off or not. Without any useful tell-tales, this produces a vicious cycle, for no apparent reason. Only after reading up on 'Advanced Startup' on the Microsoft website was I able to find a way to understand the issue. But as today is bank holiday, I had better things to do than go into the office.

After a lazy morning, we went for a walk along the Taff Trail as far as Llandaff North and had a drink in the Railway Inn before walking back. I cooked a seafood paella for supper, and made an effort not to think about work and time consuming operating systems of any kind.

 

Windows 10 comes to CBS

Today has been spent in the CBS office again, working on a job description to drive recruitment for the appointment of a Business Crime Reduction Manager for the city centre. The job will take on many of the Partnership functions we've been carrying and developing over the past six years. It's been quite a revelation to review all the minor activities generated by our work, making up the total picture, like camera pixels

First thing, my office PC, being the newest, fastest and most capable of taking advantage of the faster office broadband link, announced it was ready for the Windows 10 upgrade. True to the Microsoft promise, the upgrade took an hour, and left every program I installed working properly. Just as well, as I needed to be able to put it to use immediately. It'll take a few days to read the reviews and try out all the new features, however.

Ashley and I had a first meeting this morning with the new Brains area manager, who has been invited to be a BCRP Board member. Another element of much needed progress in developing the public face of the organisation is now in place. On the the way back to the office, we bought a new Acer 23" desktop PC for Ashley in John Lewis', to replace his six year old Vista laptop. In the business realm, the value of equipment like this decreases to virtually nothing, even though it works adequately. Everything else works well enough with new cloud based services, but older kit can struggle a bit for lack of processing power, or a not fast enough network hardware on board

I say 'works well enough', as Windows 10 re-synchronises the whole of our OneDrive file system as if it had never happened before, and it proved annoyingly slow. Working files saved, so others could access them, took an hour or so to show up and be accessible from another machine's file menu. Curiously however, OneDrive accessed from a browser found the files immediately. With millions of computers re-syncing with their Cloud drives on any given day after upgrading, it seems to me we can expect a period when file access from the desktop filesystem is less than efficient.

Still, that's number one machine updated. I wonder how long I will have to wait before Windows 10 is ready to install on any of my home machines?

Virtuous re-cycle

I had another of my restless nights and early risings today. Tucked away on my One Drive, I found a folder entitled 'New Book' that was newer and different from another I'd found on the computer I was working on yesterday. I still haven't mastered version control or system consistency. This time I was amazed to discover half a dozen chapters dating from my first stay in Vinaros, two and a half years ago. I enjoyed re-reading them and then editing and adding to them. Apart from sermons and blog postings I've not stretched my mind with fresh efforts at creative writing since then, shame on me, though come to think of it, on returning to St Mikes in the autumn of 2012, I did re-visit my first book writing effort, and did a further revision encouraged feedback from by Peter Sedgwick who had read and commented on it. Whether either book will ever get published isn't as important as making an effort to keep thinking and reflecting creatively in as many ways as possible.

In the afternoon I visited the office, where Julie, under Jane's tutelage, was getting to grips with the use of Sage accounts for invoice production. Getting the information display design right is indeed tricky. incorporating the CBS letterhead into the production template was trivial in comparison. The challenge was to find the right sized most up to date version on the office data system, one thing I was able to contribute to the process. Having Sage properly set up as well as the file of invoices that I generated last week, will make it possible for Julie to issue invoices in a rolling programme while she gets to grips with a new procedure. We need changes of this kind to be as painless as possible to ensure the workflow continues as it needs to at this time of year.

My old Dell laptop has languished under the office desk the during the year I've mostly been away, and is surplus to current needs. There's nothing that cannot be done using it that can't be also done on a newer more portable piece of kit. Given that it's six years old it's still quite quick and has a superb HD screen. It must have cost a fortune when it was new before I arrived on the scene with less costly hardware requirements to fulfil our working needs. As it's not found a use, and is superior in speed and quality to my home desktop workstation, which serves personal and work needs, I decided to take it home and re-instate it as a space saving workstation substitute. The result is satisfying. The old Acer desktop Vista PC can now deliver its file content ad lib over my home network to the laptop, thanks to the improved network efficiency of Windows 7, and my study work space looks that much freer as a result. Less clutter around the office and at home, a real win-win situation.