Mark Dalton

So this weekend I have been the Duty Manager and therefore tied to the house, however looking on the positive side, I have a filthy cold so it probably hasn’t done any harm staying in the warm. Work has been pretty manic over the last couple of weeks and there were a few more changes going in this weekend than in previous weeks, but thankfully the weekend has gone smoothly and without any major hitches.

Other than this I have pretty much just lay on the sofa and watch TV and I must say I feel better for it. This afternoon I am going to tidy up the house and then catch up on some paper work. Exciting!

One thing I have managed to sort out is a problem I was having using my HP 7210 All-In-One unit that stopped scanning after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. A major pain in the backside as I use this for scanning in all by bills and documents.

It would appear that the functionality is now built directly into Snow Leopard, and the previous HP drivers and tools are now redundant, full details can be found on the HP Website here.

This has meant that I have had to change my work flow slightly, but I do like the fact that I can use tools that are built into the Operating System and don’t have to keep track of driver versions.

Wow what a week! The moment I set foot in the office on Monday I knew it was going to be one of those crazy weeks, and I wasn’t let down. After my catch up last weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to fall behind again so went back to carrying my MacBook Air. I must say that its surprising how much I get done during the train journey and with things so busy at work it’s nice to get things done while I am still in the frame of mind to do so, meaning that when I get home I can relax.

It has now been a couple of weeks now since I upgraded all of my machines to Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). While Snow Leopard isn’t revolutionary I must say that I have found that all my machines are a little snappier. The MacBook Air is probably the machine I notice it on the most as this is the one that travels with me. The first thing I have found is the speed at which it comes back from sleep mode and secondly the speed of the Time Machine / Time Capsule backups, especially important as quite a bit of data can change while I am on the move. Other than that I can’t say anything has particularly impressed me, but for the £25 upgrade fee I am happy with the improvements made. On the MacBook Pro and iMac I can’t say I have really noticed any difference as both are high end machines, but the real test will probably be the next Final Cut Pro project I have. What I can say however is that to date I haven’t experienced any problems, bar a few applications that are awaiting compatibility upgrades.

With the Snow Leopard upgrade also came the upgrade to iTune 9. Now there were some much trumpeted improvements but the one that really stands out for me is iTunes Home Sharing, which allows me to finally copy my music between my machines legally.

Well today I am going to catch up with my PodCasts while catching up with some paperwork, and then tidy up the house. Tomorrow I need to sort out the weeds that are over taking the drive way and the garden which is just going wild again.

So after being Duty Manager last weekend I started the week looking forward to a short (4 day) week. Monday and Tuesday were uneventful and pretty quite but Wednesday was just crazy. Meeting after meeting, the phone didn’t stop, and email was coming in from all sides. Thursday thankfully things calmed down and gave me the chance to catch up before heading into the weekend.

Friday I woke early and hit the ground running. I have felt a lot better this week and was determined to start catching up on all those things that I had been neglecting. I had ordered a Drobo & DroboShare Thursday from Amazon and had ordered it early enough to secure next day delivery. Now I have been looking at these for a while, but up until now they have been far to expensive, but Amazon had them both as a package for a very reasonable price. Unfortunately I was then pulled into a meeting and completely forgot to order any hard drives when I returned. Doh!

So Friday morning I was resigned to the fact that I was going to be stuck in all day waiting for the delivery so set about house chores. I was relieved when just after 09:00 I heard the sound of the City Link delivery truck pull up and gratefully accepted my parcel. Within about 15 minutes I had it setup and it was then I remembered I hadn’t ordered any Hard Drives. So I hit the web and after a little searching settled on 4x 1TB 3.5″ Hard Drives from Scan at a quite reasonable price, and once again next day delivery.

After finishing the household chores I headed to Morrisions and set about restocking the cupboards and filling the car up with fuel. I was surprised while making a rather tricky biscuit decision by a text message from scan advising that my Hard Drives had been dispatched. Shopping completed and car fuelled I set about refuelling myself with a couple of nice salad rolls and considered my plans for the rest of the day. I decided that the next priority was a hair cut but instead of driving into town I elected to walk in. The idea being walking in meant I could have a couple of pints. Once in town I meet up with Laurence and Phil and then a little later Dave Birkett. Laurence and Phil had other plans so left Dave and I in Lloyds bar. Needless to say a few more beers were consumed however this time it was me that ended up a little worse for wear.

Saturday I woke up feeling a lot better than I probably deserved to feel but at 07:30 still with a zeal to get things done. I set about finishing off some of the house chores left over from Friday. About 09:30 the City Link truck was back outside and 5 minutes later I had my new Hard Drives laid out on the desk, and about 30 minutes after later I had them all installed and formatted in the Drobo. I then spent about an hour trying to figure out why the Drobo wasn’t auto mounting before finally finding a knowledge base article on the Data Robotics web site saying there was a known issue with Snow Leopard and the Drobo Share that prevented the volume mounting automatically. Thankfully they provided a work around and I was up and running in a couple of minutes. I spent the rest of the day catching up with stuff, mainly paperwork.

Today I was up and about at 08:30 and after a quick shower set about the last few jobs of the weekend before heading round to Mum & Dad’s for Sunday lunch with them, Katrina, and the children. After the last week the sunshine let us down and after an hour or so we were starting to feel cold so headed inside. It was good to see everyone again, especially as William starts school tomorrow, and I am feeling more like myself every day. It was great fun as always and the kids surprise me every time I see them. Little Eleanor is such a little beauty and so cute when she laughs. Well, its back to work tomorrow but I have had a good weekend so it will be what it will be.

So it’s been a long time since I last posted anything so I thought I better explain myself. It started off with a few nice weekends and the desire to be out and about rather than stuck in front of the computer, then I went down with the flu and was off work for three weeks. Since then I haven’t felt 100% and have been unable to shake it off. I have been backwards and forwards between the doctors and the hospital and have had more blood tests and x-rays than hot dinners but am still none the wiser as to what the underlying problem is other than some kind of infection.

Well this last week I have started to feel a little like my normal self and have started to catch up on many of the things that I have neglected. This weekend I am Duty Manager so am tied to the house for the most part. Luckily so far it has been quite and today I have managed to catch up with the growing mound of paperwork, and upgrade my Mac’s to the latest version of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard). Tomorrow I plan to sort the house out a little, especially the growing pile of e-Bay items, and may even tackle the weeds that seem to be taking over my drive way if the rain holds off.