I didn’t go in the office again today. Jan is still bad with her back. She’s managed to keep off the cigarettes too. She is doing really well.

School
I took Jamie in to school this morning and had to stay for a special assembly. Year 5/6 had put together a special play to support the schools efforts to raise money for CAFOD. They also has some other stuff going on like a cake stall, toy stall, raffle, etc. I suspect that it was either a statement by the church or maybe just an unfortunate coincidence that this has been organised on the same day as Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day.

Work
After investigation, I suspect that my hypothesis from yesterday is less likely to be correct. 🙁 However, I have yet to prove it either way. That coupled with not being able to connect to the office network reliably and several jobs on my to do list being delayed because of this made for a stressful, unproductive day today.

Still we go to see Cats tomorrow! I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed that Jan will be well enough to make it.

It’s been a strange day today. First of all, Jan’s back is still bad, and so I didn’t go in the office this morning and took Jamie into school. I phoned work and told them I would work from home. I managed to get some work done, but they were having problems with their firewall, and in trying to fix it kept cutting off my VPN access.

Old Friend
At lunch time I received an IM from an old colleague, Mark D, to whom I haven’t spoken for far too long (I’m too lazy to keep in touch) which was a pleasant surprise. I was just telling him that a mutual ex colleague, Steve P, was now working again with me, when who should IM me, but Steve P. spooky 🙂
Anyway, Mark happened to be sat in his office using ICQ remotely on his Linux machine at home, using, I think, VNC over SSH to talk to his firewall, and then running ICQ as a remote X-app from a machine on his internal network. I was impressed! LOL

Problem!
After I had fetched Jamie back from school this afternoon, I got a phone call from the office to say they were having a major problem on one of the sites and could I investigate. As the VPN was down I couldn’t. But they got IT to stop what they were doing and restore the old configuration so I could re-connect. Hmmm, that serious then! So I looked into it and Duncan R and I have come up with an hypothesis which may explain what happened. It’s one of those true multitasking issues which you don’t often come across is my line of work. Caused by the fact that the site runs on a box with three or four processors, and things really do happen at the same time.
I’ve still got to investigate whether our hypothesis holds water, but my gut feeling is that it will. There’s certainly nothing else to explain it.

Toilets
Back to this evening, and I fixed the downstairs loo. That’s the second loo I’ve had to fix in a week! Both broken by me. I don’t know what’s going on. Last week I managed to break the SEAT of the upstairs loo. I mean the actual seat, the ring shaped bit you sit on, not the hinge (which is what usually breaks on these things) but a split in the seat. And I wasn’t even standing on it ( which is how I’ve broken hinges in the past). I was sat on it. I know I need to lose a bit of weight, but I’m not that heavy!
I replaced that last weekend. Then yesterday I broke the handle on the downstairs loo. Just snapped it right off. So now it’s got a new one which doesn’t match, but hey it’ll do for now.

Today was No Smoking Day. It was on my mind because Jan is on her third day without the dreaded weed. She is doing well, although it is hard. I think the nicotine patches are helping. Also Jackie has now stopped for over a month now and still going strong. Well done Jackie!
I did think that Jan and I would stop together, but she insists that I wait a month. She says she couldn’t cope with both of us giving up together!
On top of giving up smoking, Jan has hurt her back today and has been in a lot of pain 🙁

Other resources:
Stop Smoking in 2003, Quit Smoking UK

Oh no! Barbie blogs! And Chelsea and Madison. Complete with animated ‘webcam’ stories. It’s almost enough to make me want to stop!

Link from kadyellebee, via tima thinking outloud

From the BBC Tech News this morning; Net speed record smashed.

Scientists have set a new internet speed record by transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data across 10,978 kilometres (6,800 miles), from Sunnyvale in the US to Amsterdam in Holland, in less than one minute.

Cool! 😎 I could use me some of that bandwidth 🙂

The motivation for the record was the need to transfer and analyse the vast amounts of data produced by particle physicists studying the fundamental building blocks of matter…
During its research, Slac has accumulated the largest known database in the world, which grows at one terabyte per day.

First time I’ve mentioned it, but this is funny: These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed 🙂

Link from nessahead.

Remember that great site My 50 Things To Do In My Lifetime that I mentioned a while back? Well they’ve implemented one of my sugestions! You can now view my list of Things To Do In My Lifetime. I’ve not added 50 things to my list, but I’m working on it. I’ve also added a permanent link down at the bottom of the left sidebar, below my wishlists).
If you’ve not been to the site, check it out. It just may serve to motivate you to ‘get around to’ some of those things you always promised yourself you would do.

Here’s an interesting story on the BBC News.

Jatoba, or hymenaea, a rainforest tree, has been found to grow much faster in atmospheres with high levels of carbon dioxide.
This could be important in fighting climate change, as carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that is making the planet warmer….
Simply planting large numbers of Jatoba trees may not be the answer, as they can take a very long time to reach maturity and specimens 500 years old are not unknown.

The article goes on to mention isolating the gene which causes the desired effect and applying it to other plants.

But that idea is controversial, because it would in effect create a large number of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
“It will take years for us to understand how these things work,” Professor Buckeridge conceded.
“I’m not saying we should have GMOs everywhere. But we have to be prepared.