Tuesday, August 26th, 2008: Prisoner of Door
Today has most certainly not gone well. Aside from the roofers continued lack of communication, there's another joy to add to my overflowing pot - and it concerns my door.
I got up this morning bright and early, eager to trundle off to work. Shower, dress, breakfast - all is going according to plan. I don my coat and shoes and set off out the door.
Wait - rewind. I try to set off out the door, but the door has other ideas. The multi-point lock has failed in the 'lock' position, and I'm trapped. Being, as it is, a back-to-back terrace, I'm really trapped - the front door is also my only door.
First things first - a quick e-mail to work to let them know I shan't be in. I'm sure it went down well, being off for unscheduled absence in my first month of work, but these things can't be helped. Next step was to contact someone who might be able to do something. They attended a scant half-hour later, and spent the majority of the morning trying to effect entry.
More...
Posted by Gareth
@ 19:06 GMT (Permalink)
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Sunday, August 17th, 2008: Roof is leaking
Well, I just got a very rude awakening about an hour ago - a leak in my extremely expensive new roof causing water to drip down from the ceiling in my computer room, all over my not-inexpensive collection of crap. For joy.
The problem, as far as I can ascertain in the dark, is caused by a fault in the construction of the new roof - a U-shaped channel in the flashing where the dormer wall meets the roof, which isn't covered by the 'lip' of the dormer. The water will collect here and enter the roof space.
Now I'll need to get in touch with the company who fitted said roof - Roofing Group UK - and attempt to 'encourage' them to fix it ASAP under the terms of their guarantee. The difficult part will be convincing them it's a problem in their workmanship - made harder by the fact that the very nice salesman who attended when we requested the new roof no longer works for the company.
All in all, not what I need when I've had a rather tiring second week at work.
Posted by Gareth
@ 04:40 GMT (Permalink)
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Saturday, August 16th, 2008: RiscPC: It lives!
Well, I couldn't wait until Sunday - so I've pieced the RiscPC back together and fired it up...
And it works absolutely perfectly. Turns out it's actually a Zip 250, which is nice - and all the insides work splendidly. The keyboard I recovered at the same time is shot, sadly, but it's just a standard PS/2 unit and will be simple to replace.
All it needs now is a clean and tidy and it'll be as good as new. Not bad for something that was going to end up polluting some landfill site somewhere...
Posted by Gareth
@ 17:37 GMT (Permalink)
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Friday, August 15th, 2008: Dumpster diving
Walking home through the business park where my current day job is located the other day, I spied a skip with a rather interesting device sticking out of the top - an Acorn RiscPC. A nice one, too - a double slice unit.
Further inspection revealed an Iomega Zip 100 drive, a 52x CD-ROM, and a 1.44MB floppy. And it was in mint condition, aside from being in a skip and covered in four days worth of rain. Have you guessed where this story is heading yet?
That's right - I'm now the proud owner of a RiscPC with 16MB RAM, a 20GB hard drive, and all the extras mentioned above. The only snag is that I'm not sure if it actually works yet - I daren't turn the thing on until I'm absolutely sure that it's all dried out. With any luck - and judicious use of a dehumidifier - I should be able to fire the puppy up on Sunday.
It's amazing what people throw out, really.
Posted by Gareth
@ 19:45 GMT (Permalink)
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The personal blog of Gareth Halfacree, an IT tech at Frog and freelance journalist (currently writing for bit-tech).