Tony Sutton’s Blog!

After getting home from work, I tried to get the camera to work. But before I can do that, I had to get the TV tuner card, which I borrowed from Craigo, to work first. The card didn’t come with any manual or drivers, so I had to hunt around and trying to find out who made it, etc. Turned out that it’s an Pinnacle PCTV, which used to be known as ‘miroMedia PCTV’ in the old days.

Anyway, I went to the Pinnacle website, found the correct driver, but they didn’t offer it as stand alone driver, just the whole application which is a 56MB download. So I downloaded it and set it up. Plugged the camera in and it worked! Perfect.

Now, need to get the Pan, Tilt and Zoom to work. I spoke to someone and he will make the cable for me for just £8 each inc P&P. The cable is different and is not available to any shops, just the PictureTel company themselves and they do not offer that cable anymore. Hence having it manually made. As I do not have the required tools to make it, the guy is going to do it for me. So, it’ll be few days before I get that cable and I will have the full use of the camera’s control.

Still nothing from Westen Digital about the forgotten faulty hard drive. I’ll give them till Thurs to reply and get it out of my hands.

I need to get the replacement HDD in my system and install Win2k again. Hopefully it’ll be better this time!

… the replacement hard drive has arrived. But the UPS forgot to pick up the faulty HDD. Hum ho.

Time to e-mail Western Digital and ask them to rearrange another time for UPS to pick it up.

My PTZ camera has arrived. Big box! I need to set it up when I gets home tonight… I can’t wait!

… all done! I’m very happy with the clean up as I now have more space on the floor and both of my desks!

Photos updated at http://www.hypergallery.co.uk/cleanup

Big change!

Halfway done now. 3 new photos uploaded.

http://www.hypergallery.co.uk/cleanup

Side by side them. You can see the difference so far.

Once the paperwork and rubbish has been cleared up, Im going to dust and then hoover the floor.

It’s Sunday today, the day where you just relax and be lazy in bed. But no, I woke up at 7:30am! Oh well, so I had my brekkie, caught up with most of the e-mails, deleted over 200 spams in my inbox, drank some drinks, chatted to some of my friends and now I am going to clean up my study room. It’s a tip!

See http://www.hypertony.co.uk/gallery/cleanup for the current mess. I’m going to take some photos when I’m done with the clean up.

This morning, we went to the city for some shopping and to the post office to post a parcel. Saw Craigo and Lisa, said hello.

Brought two badminton racket and 6 shuttlecocks - all for just £11! It was on sale, so a good deal.

Then went to Chicago’s for lunch before heading home in late afternoon. A nice, long walk around the city and our legs were worn out!

Soon as we got home, we went to Sainsburys for some food shopping and after it, we walked back home, with me carrying two heavy bags while she carried three very light bags. Bah, taking advantage of men doping the heavy stuff!

Currently, I’m at home, on my laptop, typing this journal while waiting for a reply from my mum with a time she wants me to pop round…

Last night, we rented out a DVD from the shop, “28 Days Later” and I want to say that this film is a bit crap, but with a good ending.

DVD to buy? Nope. If you like watching all of the “zombies” chasing you, this is for you.

A big let down because when I saw the preview advert for this film, it looks good. But to watch the whole thing, blah.

Today, the PTZ (Pan, Tilt and Zoom) camera has been posted today so I should get it on Monday, hopefully. Then I will have ton of fun playing with it.

Drinking a Bud and cooking dinner now.

I was searching something on ebay today and saw the new look auction page - ugh. I don’t like it.

Today at work is a very slow day. Most of us are preparing for the upgrades.

I had a long lunch today, went to see Craig at work, swapped video cards and went for a quick drive before coming back to work. Nice weather too.

Still waiting for UPS to pick up the faulty hard drive and give me the replacement HDD. Perhaps tomorrow…

Anyway, my break is over, so I’ll post this and get back to work.

Work today was ok.

As soon as I arrived to work this morning, the delivery company turned up with 150+ boxes of computer and monitors. There was only 5 of us to take everything to 3rd floor by carrying, trolley and lift!

Took us 1 hour 30 mins to finish it. Phew, hard work! Everyone was sweating as it’s a very warm day. Ugh.

Lunchtime: I headed back home, changed my T-Shirt and washed my face to freshen up. Got back to work and did some other jobs. The job tasks are getting smaller and smaller, hopefully it’llbe all done before we start the major upgrades.

Car Garage finally faxed me today, but still no good news - “Sorry for not contacting you for a long time. The parts will be here next week” - ARGH!!! He already said that 3 weeks ago. He already said that 2 weeks ago. He already said that last week. AND! He already said that this week!!! GRRRR. I don’t understand why there is a very long delay of getting that parts. Did they run out of parts or what? But then I don’t think so because Peugeot 106 is a popular car so they should have lots in stock. *mumbles* Anyway, hope it will happen next week!

I seriously need to clean up my study room - it’s a tip… but hey, it’s summer, so I’ll leave it till later.
I’m hungry.

Today was fine. Normal woring day as usual apart from bad communications about what’s wrong with the network problem at work. But nothing to worry about it too much.

Bidded for this item and won it Well, really, I used the Buy It Now so I would have won it anyway.

Paid for it and they’ll deliver it… so it should be on the way real soon. Then I need to set it up so I will have the full control of the camera - pan, tilt and zoom. w00t!

I need to find a cheapo video card with video in port - anyone know of one?

Oh and Western Digital finally agreed to take back the faulty hard drive they sent me and will replace it again - all at their costs via UPS Special Delivery - yay! Hopefully I will have better luck this time!

Good afternoon, peeps. Work today was okay. Spent most of my time helping someone with moving PCs for Norfolk Showround and also in the afternoon, I finished two assignments, which was good as these assignments is due in this evening. I’m very grateful that I have a laptop, so I could carry on with the assignments from last night and early this morning (6:30am - 8:15am), otherwise I’d be fooked.
Still no reply from the car garage and the hard drive company (Western Digital) so I think I will bug them tomorrow.

I think tonight will be the last day of my course, so all I have to do is to hand in the assignment and… um, that it, I think. I’m not sure what to do afterward, so hopefully I will be home early.

Then this Wed, I will be doing the Cisco Final Exam and then it’s all done. No more classes! Yay! But! Since I failed two modules, I think I will be finishing off two papers over the Summer holidays as my lecturer said he thinks it’s not worth for me to go back to the class next year.

So, we’ll wait and see what happens tonight.

Hope your Monday was good.

Oh yeah and if you’re cooking/eating/preparing your dinner, I forgot to mention that I ate somehting dodgy last night and I threw up this morning (around 4am) - it was a nice, brown gooey stuff.

Thank you for reading.

*sigh* I’m not having a very good week. First the problems with the car garage not replying with what’s happening with the spare parts and the repairs.

Now, my replacement hard drive, which I received fro Western Digital recently has decided to give up and die. I ran the test and the error message says 0007, which means Self Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) Error returned during SMART Status/Self Test Command. The drive is defective. according to this page

I’m very annoyed that they sent me a faulty hard drive that doesn’t last long. I’ve e-mailed them, but as this is weekend, they won’t reply until tomorrow or Tuesday. Hopefully they will send me aother hard drive soon.

Plus, my assignment work, which is due in tomorrow, is on that drive and I managed to recover most of them before the hard drive died. Phew, so I’m doing the assignment stuff on my laptop.

Good thing I still have my Linux box, so I used it to access the ‘net, contacted Western Digital and complain about the HDD. I think I will go back to Maxtor as they never gave me any problems. I still have my 3 years old Maxtor HDD running fine here, whiole this 6 months WD hard drive given up so soon. (actually, it was 4 months when it started to misbehave)

Live and learn, eh…

I’m now cooking dinner, watching a bit of Big Brother (lucky sod, he’s going to South Africia’s Big Brother!!) and doing my assignment. I hope I will finish it on time. :/

Called the garage again to find out what’s going on and they said the part has not arrived yet. They said it should come on Tuesday! And thye never bothered to tell me when I was waiting for them to contact me as they said they would.

Grrr… so that means I have been without car for 2 weeks coming up next week!!