Naturally, after yesterday’s network installation of new virus scanning software to my work PC nothing works now that I’ve rebooted. I’ve spent most of this morning either waiting for File Explorer to wake up or trying to view an Excel sheet. I’m seeing a lot of those joyless “(Not Responding)” tags on the end of explorer windows. Fun.
Hosting Limits
For the first time I had an automated warning email this morning, telling me that my hosting space is about to reach it’s transfer limit. I have a 10GB transfer limit on the server space that I rent for a bunch of websites (including this one) and this is normally plenty. The culprit is cardifftri.net, which has sucked up almost 5GB of data transfer alone. That site has become pretty popular for a small, local sporting club’s website. Typically it’s also using up almost half of the available storage space too (lots and lots of photos). I think their hosting costs are going to be going up soon.
Scan scan scan
I’m not PC bashing, really I’m not, and I do understand some of the problems of running the same operating system as 90% of the rest of the world. You see my office PC has just had a network-delivered install of Symantec anti-virus software. This is on top of the Windows Defender beta, Zone Alarm’s software firewall, Ad-aware, Hijack This, SpamBayes’ anti-spam software and who knows what else. My PC always seems to be scanning itself for spyware, viruses, trojans, malware, spam, iffy cookies, adware and the rest of it. Scan, scan, scan. Really there’s no wonder I gave up on the PC as a platform for getting any work done on.
More bricks
The Paranormalists
Currently listening to podcast:
The Legend of Brown Willy-Part 1 from the album “The Paranormalists” by Crocanapple Productions.
Working from home
I’m working from home today for a couple of reasons (one of them being time-related). I’m writing web stuff for the medicine students as fast as I can, and I can do that easily from my study. Unfortunately the room is still looking really bland. We’ve had problems with the finish on the walls of this new house, with no-one able to solve them. There are arguments as to whether the problem is paint or plaster related, but until they’re solved we can’t paint the colours we want or put the carpets down. Usually my study walls are covered by 9″ x 6″ prints of some of my favourite photos that I have taken, but because they have to keep coming down when the house gets repainted (I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve done that) I’m reticent about putting more than a handful up. I’ve got 4 computers in the room, 2 being used today. When the room is complete I should have a longer desk with more space for a larger monitor for photo and video work, and the speakers for my gaming rig will be properly placed.
Other than that it’s a nice room, with lots of cupboard space for all my crap and on the same floor as the living room. My music collection gets streamed over my wifi network to the PC when I’m working, and I’m about as connected as I can be to the rest of the world and to my family all in one place.
Anatomy Finished
Today was the last anatomy session for the current first years (I think they were quite happy with that). That’s it, the teaching is over for another year. I’ve still got some web-based revision exercises to add to for them before they sit the exam, but they have been taught all the anatomy that they need to know to practice medicine. Quite a milestone.
All they have to do now is prove to me that they’ve learnt it all by passing their last anatomy exam in 2 weeks time. Good luck!