Gains and Pains

A week full of contrasts. In the early part of the week I had a face to face meeting with one of my clients who I had only previously spoken to on the phone. We had a very productive few hours together and we both found lots of things to do to improve and enhance his web site.


In contrast, the new loo has a flaw. In hot weather the heat gets trapped above the solid ceiling and below the translucent roof and rapidly builds up to over 100°. The Fire Safety Officer tells me this a fire risk and something needs to be done about it. However the council who ordered the loo and the contractors who built it are not concerned so it looks as if the sun will have to set the roof on fire before anyone does anything to make it safe.



Stage two of my network rebuild came next. I now have the data cabinet in place and the UPS installed (see photo). The new server is too big to go inside the datacase (my fault, I didn't realise just how many sizes of case there are or cabinets for that matter). However the new Switch fits a treat and I hope the FTP server will go in there too. I had to stop work at that point as both my hands swelled up like balloons as these cases are heavy and it was too painful to carry on so I have a bit of a lash up at the moment using one of my old switches to make the network cables long enough to reach the new cabinet.

To give my hands a rest I have found a new use for my old server. During the week several of the news letters I subscribe to were speculating that Linux would take the place of Windows as the operating system of choice for business. I can see why when you can download a version of Linux for free from the web and have a computer up and running complete with an Office suite of programs that is compatible with MS Office in less than half an hour. I have never had the time to explore Linux before so as I am supposed to be winding down to retirement [sic] and have more time on my hands [even more sic] so I thought I would download Linux and have a go.

To start me off I went to WHSmiths and bought a Linux magazine. It came with the Debian 5 version of Linux on the cover disk. I installed that and started to explore it but when I read more of the magazine, it suggested that Mandriva would be a better choice for the way I work so I wiped Debian, downloaded Mandriva 2009 and installed it. All in all including the 3.6 Gb download it took me just under an hour to have a working Mandriva Linux computer. I haven't had time to go any further yet so watch this space to see how I get on.

Earlier this week I was helping a friend to download some drivers and install them. She told me that she hadn't managed to do that before so in case there are others who wonder how it is done (the computer magazines all assume you know how) I have written a short tutorial giving step by step instructions how to safely download and install drivers from the web. You will find it here Safe and Secure Downloads . If you think I need to change or add anything please let me know by using my contacts page , you can also use that page to ask me to write/find articles and tutorials about the problems you may be having or just things you would like to know.