Darragh Ó Héiligh blog and accessibility guides

After a nice productive but relaxing Saturday, I Dragged Emma kicking and screaming over to the computer room to record an audio post wih me.  It's very random, relaxed, informal but friendly and informative....... I hope......

Either way, have a listen.  Let us know what you think.  What should we call the bird?

Oh, sorry, I will get around to make that stream properly. As it stands at the moment, you may be prompted to save or open the file. Just hit open. It will play almost right away depending on your connection.

So, I promised that I’d write more about the BBQ on Saturday night. 

Firstly, let me tell you about the preparations that took place for this huge event.  The kitchen got painted last weekend.  It took Emma three days to put both base coats then both top coats on. It’s a big room and there is a lot of edging to do so it was a very big undertaking. We also had to make sure the house was spotless so carpets had to be scrubbed and hoovered / vacuumed depending on where in the world you’re reading from, a job that although done to a certain degree regularly hadn’t been given enough priority until now.  Mainly because there is still work left to do so at times the house goes back into a state of kayos while internal building work takes place.   All the windows in the house also needed to be cleaned!  That’s a hard job for a blind person to do!  At the start I left a lot of streaks but as I progressed I got the hang of it. We also had to power hose the yard, the drive way and the paths around the house. Mainly again because the area has been like a building site for the past four months so it needed a good clean out. We also had to sand down the skirting boards, window boards and door saddles and then varnish them. 

Ah, there was a lot of other work done as well like reorganizing everything inside the house into places where they couldn’t get damaged etc as we’re a bit short on storage at the moment while we buy more furniture.

Oh, to tell you about the food that we had.  Thanks to Deirdre, Emma’s mother we had a huge amount of food for people.  Everything from home made Fruit salad, Muffins, cakes, apple pie’s, jam tarts, chicken, stake, sausages, freshly cut chips and more than I can possibly think of now was available.  Everything, except the meet obviously was home made.  Right down to the potato salad, coleslaw and egg mayonnaise!  It was all done to perfection!  I think it really made the night.  Everyone eat very well and absolutely everyone commented that the food was exceptional.   Only problem was that there was just too much of it!  There is still loads of meet, chicken and fruit left.  Actually, strangely enough, the fruit was the most popular thing!  A lot of people went for the fruit salad.  Possibly because for a change it was fresh instead of just from a tin.

Anyway, aside from the food, everything else went much better than we could have ever hoped as well.  As I said in an earlier post, there was well in access of seventy five people there.  Right from kids from 2 years of age to the less young of 74.   There was a good combination of friends and family too!  About five people turned up from Stream, the company that I use to work in, Two Friends of mine, one from Carlow and his Girl friend from Essex and another of their friends, oh, two other biker people that tagged along with some of the people from Stream, oh, look, there are just too many to go in to.  Basically, the people who wanted to come came and those who didn’t, stayed away.  Which is good really because there was no more room!  It actually spilled from the back garden to inside the house right out to the front of the house at around 10PM because there were just so many people there!

From around 11 on, we started a session.  There were a nice few musicians there and plenty of people who appreciated music so it didn’t take much to kick off a really good session.  The whole thing started too wined down at around 3AM.

Next morning though, when we all returned to the land of the living, we had a fantastic breakfast and all the people who stayed in the house sat in the kitchen and the craic continued. 

I think everyone really enjoyed them selves.  I know that although it was very stressful and it took a huge amount of organization and preparation both before and during the event, we certainly had a great time.  It was a great way of letting people see the house that we’re very proud of and also for us to see people who were local and not so local that we have had to neglect because of our equally hectic schedules over the last six months. I don’t think we’ll ever do a BBQ as big ever again but we’ll certainly hold a few smaller ones in the future.

Thanks to all of you who came.

Well, after catering for over seventy people, cooking and cleaning for a week, buying huge amounts of food and alcohol, having one absolutely fantastic evening, it's all over.  It's now twenty five past three and I'm finally going to bed soon. Not a particularly late one but people have been here since 6PM. So, I'm relieved to finally be done.

I'll write more tomorrow or Monday but in short, this has been one absolutely fantastic night and everyone who came had an excelent time.  If I ever think of doing this again though, shoot me.  Please!

I certainly did.  We had a hell of a lot of work in the house to do though.  The kitchen needed to be painted; the driveway, front path and well, the entire front of the house as well as the back yard had to be power hosed.  Those things are great by the way.  Not that the place looked exceptionally dirty but it looks much better now that dust, muck, weeds and other normal grime are gone.  The place had been badly kept for the past five years so there are a few little things left to do now to get it looking as good as it can.  The kitchen’s looking fantastic now as well.  It’s been painted a very bright mint green type colour.  It’s been hard as it needed two white under coats and two finishing coats so it took a very long time but it’s finally done now.

It’s not been all work though. Yesterday for an hour or two we got to sit out and enjoy that fabulous weather.  The back of the house is like a sun trap.  It lets in a small breeze but for the most part, it’s incredibly hot out there.

On Friday night I went to a twenty first party.  I was asked to play music at it.  To be brutally honest, I really didn’t want to play any music that night but it actually went very well.  I also met some people I’d not seen in ages! Oh and I forgot my cane and I’d left my dog at home.  Not a good thing to do let me tell you.

That’s about all for now.  As I said yesterday in my audio post, leave the power hosing to the sighted people.  Muck on your face, in your ears and on your clothes isn’t a good look.

It's been almost two years since I've bothered to do an audio post but here goes again.  During this short recording I speak about Cora Smyth, a very nice fiddle player that I've started listening to, A brief technical issue that I'm running into, a quick house update and some other random ramblings. Listen to it from here.

Due to a request one of the listeners to my audio walk through's sent to me, the review of Linux", installing Ubuntu and configuring Orca walk through's are now hosted on www.blindcooltech.com

As promised, Emma sent me the pictures last week.  I've just not had the time to get them uploaded until today.  Now, when your looking at this, remember that these were taken before the move in date which was the 13th.  So, a hell of a lot has changed since then.  Really, we must get more pictures taken soon! You'd not recognise the place any more.  Even since these pictures.  It's my hope to do up a slide show of the before, during and after pictures.  These are the during pictures.  I must get Emma to show me the before pictures too so I can put them up here.

I really don't know why.  It escapes me. Why would Emma take a picture of a sink resting against the wall?  Strange!  anyway, to describe the sink: It's got two basons.  One large and the other is small for rincing and all that kind of good stuff.  Other than that, it's kind of standard enough I suppose.

Emma Emma Emma! What's the facination with the sink!  Especially the tag on the sink!   Hahahaha.  sorry. I shouldn't be so mean but I'm really baffled!

We've got a press that completely pulls out so you can access everything really easily.  I think we should get a picture of it now that it's all set up!

Oh! we're back to the sink again.  Sorry about that temporary diversion away from what seems to be Emma's favorite part of the kitchen.  Sorry. I'm only messing.

This shows the cooker hood.  Actually the protective covering featuring in this shot is still on that.  We've just been too busy to paint the kitchen so until that's done, the covering isn't coming off.

Shelves. That's really all I can say here.  The next few images are the same so I'm not going to write anything under them.

Oh. that's interesting.  Here are the horrible shelves that had to be ripped off the wall before the new kitchen went in.

Pictures of the doors for what I presume are the new presses.  Emma, your labling of these images wasn't very clear!  Hmm.  At this rate, by the time I get home tonight she'll have changed the locks because of all the slagging I'm giving her on today's posts.

Oh, I hope I never see the inside of these walls ever again!  That's a picture of some of the sockets being sunk in the kitchen.  So, in other words, the socket isn't mounted onto the wall, it's actually in the wall, as it should be so there is no external conduit.

This is the bedroom when the walls where under coated with white paint.  I heard the room looked huge!

Aside from hanging the wardrobe doors, a job that I was suppose to do a long time ago, the bedroom is done.  That shows what it's like at the moment.... I think.

Oh, this part of the room is actually finished and Freddie's bed fits into it really well! Again, we'll have to get you some more pictures!

Here is where my server and all that kind of stuff is living at the moment.  Believe me, it doesn't look as clean at the moment as it does in the picture!  I could really do with organizing it a bit better.

Last but not least, Emma's room.  This room has been painted white so it has it's under coat however we still need to get the floor down and put on the finishing touches.  It's unfortunately been the last room in the house to get the attention it deserves but we've had to take it easy for a while to consintrate on other things.  It's certainly my main priority now though.

That's it for the moment.  Believe me, we've come a long way since these pictures were taken.  We're not living in a building site.  It's much worse!x

Remember a while ago while testing Ubuntu 8.04; I spoke about the problems that it had introduced for users of the Gnome assistive technologies? Well, I was really relieved to see that the released version seems to install without any problems and Orca, the screen reader for Gnome worked great. Without this screen reader, I would have had to depend on sighted assistance during every installation of the product. That is something that I find completely unacceptable so you can imagine my excitement when it came up talking as it should.

Before explaining the problem that now exists with Ubuntu 8.0, I should explain a bit about how Linux" systems control access to system administration components.

When you break it down to its simplest form, Linux" has two levels of permissions.  Standard user and root.  Standard users are the normal every day accounts used by everyone.  Root is the account used by administrators.  Processes launched by a user can be manipulated by the root user however processes launched by root are accessible to other administrators but in general; they are not accessible by processes running at the user level.  Therefore, if you run an administrative application for doing something like adding or removing software sources and you have Orca running as normal, Orca will not be able to read the Installation sources application.  For some reason though, when Orca is run as root, it will not access applications run at a user level.  That’s something that can be explained but it takes a bit more thought so I’ll leave it for now.

The problem is that Orca is not reading these administrative windows. I should be able to unload Orca, change to the root user then relaunch the screen reader again before starting the administrative tool however that doesn’t work.  The tool launches without any issue however Orca does not read it. 

This is a particularly critical flaw in my opinion and it is one that has really turned me off using this version of the distribution.  I think I’ll stick with 7.11 for the moment.

Ok.  I’ve not blogged properly in a good while so I’ll try to do some updating in this post.

Firstly, the new job is going really well.  I’m basically one of seven system admins supporting the houses of the Oireachtas.  That means that on a daily basis, I solve problems from locked out log ins, to Lotus Notes ID problems to fixing the air conditioning in a server room because the air humidity is too high to configuring remote RAS solutions for remote offices.  It’s not all sitting at a desk either.  There’s plenty of freedom to access a machine remotely or walk to someone’s office and fix it directly.  It’s a really nice change.  In one way its help desk department but in another way there’s so much exposure to server equipment and so much flexibility to move about that it’s completely different.

I’ve had a few very difficult challenges here though.  Accessibility to some of the systems is a real problem.  For example, VNC is used for remote access but VNC will not work with my screen reader.  Even if I could get VNC to relay the sound from the remote PC to the local computer I’d be happy enough but as it stands it gives me absolutely nothing.  It’s making my job very difficult.  Another problem I’m having is because I do so much with the servers, I need to use VNC or remote desktop.  As again I need to use Jaws, all the servers in the Oireachtas first need to be restarted.  This is an obvious problem.  There is a restart schedule but waiting for it is not exactly nice when there are things that you must therefore hand over to someone else.  I hate depending on people.  Especially when it’s so crucial to very clearly illustrate my independence and ability to do everything that this job requires.  The people I’m working with are fantastic however I still need to be on my guard.  The last problem that’s worth mentioning is when accessing servers on site.  I.e, when I’m in front of the terminal in one of the server rooms.  How do I get access to it?  There’s obviously no sound output.  They don’t need it.  Plus, windows server operating systems disable sound output by default!  Plus, if one goes down, how do I read the bios and other screens that are shown before Windows starts?  I’ll not beat around the bush.  These accessibility problems are going to be very hard to get over.  If I can’t get over them I hope my new employer isn’t going to take it badly.

Still though, although this is something that is constantly at the back of my mind, it’s not hampered me much yet.  I’m really enjoying the work and I’m constantly learning.

Speaking of learning, I installed Windows Small Business Server 2003 at home during the weekend.  It’s possibly going to replace my Linux" server running OpenSuSE 10.3.  I never thought I’d actually replace that Linux" server.  It’s still running with only using 3.4GB of disk space and the processor performance never jumps above ten per cent.  That’s very impressive considering everything its doing.  But, in saying that, the Windows server integrates everything on the network so well that it’s really hard to justify using Linux" again.  I was actually thinking of connecting the Windows and Linux" servers to make some kind of cross platform type domain system but I’ve not really found any kind of need for this yet.  Even if there’s not a need but something that could be interesting I’d still do it but there’s just nothing that comes to mind at the moment.  Any ideas?

Anyway, the installation and configuration of the Windows server basically took me 5 hours in total.  That included installing the operating system, configuring DNS and the domain, setting up exchange, configuring the pop3 connector, setting up Stunnel and OpenSSL. The server is currently acting as the networks DHCP, DNS, Domain, Mail, Web, FTP and soon, Antivirus and Proxy server. That has all been done with very limited knowledge.  I know a bit about Windows Server but after yesterday I know realise just how much I need to learn.   I really want to do more with group policies and the GPO.  Exchange is another beast I want to tackle too.  I think it has a lot of power and it would be really good to try to pull more out of it.  At least now though, with it up and running at home I have the resource there to use. 

Oh, on the Linux" front, I’ve also updated to Ubuntu 8.04.  Give it a test drive.  You’ll be really impressed! You can even install it using windows without repartitioning!  I think this is a really excellent way for new users to get started.  With the installer, you can also enable accessibility so when you boot into Ubuntu, it will come up talking right away.  I’ve had a few problems with Ubuntu’s accessibility of administration tools but I’ll do some more testing before I write about that further. 

In the next two to three weeks, I need to do a few more audio reviews and tutorials for Ubuntu and Fedora.  I just need to set the equipment up at home again.

Ah, speaking of home, that brings me nicely onto my last topic for this morning.  The house is coming on well.  I’m *Still* waiting on Emma to resize those pictures she has but I’m sure she’ll get around to it eventually. We’ve been in the house two weeks now.  The floor in the living room has now been put down and the walls have been painted.  Once I get the skirting boards sprayed and lacquered I’ll get someone to put them down so we can start moving in furniture.  Who knows, all going well that will happen some time this week.  However, my Granny is kind of unwell at the moment and was in hospital yesterday so depending on how things are going, I might not be in a position to get much done at all this week. Not that she’s that bad.  She’s got an infection as a result of an operation she had about a month ago.  It’s just that I’d say my mother will be kind of busy and she’s coordinating the preparation of the man who’ll spray the skirting boards.

The bedroom is almost done.  There’s just one more thing for me to do and I need to get around to it soon.  I need to paint the wardrobe doors.  Yes people, you heard it right.  I’ll be painting the doors.  It’s not that shocking really.  Doors are easy enough.  Just follow the grain of the wood and your grand.  Because their smaller than a wall, obviously, it’s not really possible to loose track of where you painted last.  Unless you get distracted.  I’ve restored the wardrobe by sanding it down and painting it to match the room.  It’s a built in wardrobe that hopefully will only be needed for a few years but from what I gather, now that it’s been painted and cleaned up it looks well so who knows.  Maybe it will do for a while.

The kitchen, as I said the last time is now fully tiled.  We just need to under coat it.  Emma’s sowing room has been under coated and probably needs one more coat to get it read for the colour.  I also need to get someone to fit that floor.

There’s a bit to do yet but we’re getting there. It’s just a slow process when you’re working full time and the budget isn’t a bottomless pit. 

Now, that’s all for the moment.  I need to write up a document that describes a new system that was rolled out last week and I’ve a few emails to respond back to later as well.

It’s Monday again.  You know, I got loads of sleep this weekend.  I was very good.  I went to bed early and got up at a reasonable hour.  Well, reasonable when compared to half five in the morning.   Yesterday I did a lot of very manual work but last night I still felt better than I had all last week as I’d finally got a chance to catch up on some much needed sleep!  Last night though, as if the universe had been waiting to conspire against me, I lay awake trying to get some sleep for the entire night!  Stupid damn brain and body.  It should sleep when I want it to!  So, today, I’m grumpy and tired and just pissed off.  But, I have to be in a fabulous mood and friendly and professional and all that kind of shit.  Ba!

On another topic, we spent the weekend filling a jumbo bin.  We’d an incredible amount of wood, junk and old furniture to get rid of so it all got chopped up and thrown into the skip.  Even the big suite of furniture that was left in the house has been broken up into small pieces and crammed in.  It took us five hours to break that thing up.  Emma and Deirdre, Emma’s mother removed the fabric while I cut up the wood and used a sledge hammer to remove the arms etc.

I’ve a bit more work to do later on when I get home this evening.  I was afraid that we may have filled the skip too much but I was told this morning that it can take much more.  So, I’m going to remove the old wood in the garden as well as the pots that they used for planting.

Oh, on Saturday afternoon I helped out with the Flag Day for Irish Guide dogs for the Blind in Drogheda.  These things are usually quite boring but it was actually enjoyable this time.  I made sure to stop as many people as I could for a change.  I’m sure some people got a bit frustrated but at the end of the day, it’s a good cause so if they’ve a problem with it they’ve got more problems than we do!

I’m a tad worried about my dog today.  He’s been a bit slow and he yelped this morning.  I think his hips are at him again unfortunately.  On the up side though, I’ve finally taken his bole and stuff into work so at least he’s got water during the day. 

Thank god it’s the weekend.  I’m planning to spend as much time in bed as I possibly can.  I think I’ve been up early every day for the lat two months and now I’m just totally exhausted. What I’d really love to do is go to Dundalk tomorrow night, play some music, drink a few pints and then go home and sleep my brains out for ages.  But, the house is causing a drag on my finances so there’s no going out for me for a while yet.

No other plans for the weekend really, I’m standing around in Drogheda tomorrow afternoon helping to raise money for Irish guide dogs. Other than that, I’m hoping to install windows Small Business 2003 premium onto the server at home so I can mess around with it.

I’m doing lodes but just stuff that I can’t really write about.

The builder is now officially finished working in the house.  For the first time since we bought it, the place is actually free of outsiders.  It is our space!  It is funny.  It’s been almost six months now that we’ve been living in different people’s houses.  It’s going to take some getting use to having our own space again.  I’m really hoping to have everything moved in this weekend.  I know it’s going to take more time before it’s all organized but if the living room is organized by Saturday or Sunday I’ll be really happy.  I’ve still no idea how it’s going to happen though considering it’s not painted yet and there’s no floor down.  Oh, on Saturday, to make things a bit more interesting, I’ve been asked to meet the Drogheda branch of Guide dogs for the blind in the centre of the town for 12 o clock.  That will take a lot of the day from me.  I can only hope that I get a lot done on Friday.  Depending on what I owe the builder later today, we’ll be getting a jumbo bin to take the rubbish away.  That kind of needs to go before we start bringing more into the house for obvious reasons.

Ok, I’m not going to write much at the moment.  I’m just finishing up my lunch break.  I want to do some testing for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve not written as much as I should have in the last few days.   Over the past week and a half I‘ve done so much that it's totally impossible to keep track of it all.  You see, that’s what happens when I blog so regularly but get too busy to blog for a while.  When I’m no longer so busy, I've absolutely no idea where to even start!

Ok.  Well, as you may know, on Friday the 4th of April, I left my old job in Stream after four long years of service.  I took a week off to work on the house and also to help break my brain away from thinking about Stream.  Would you actually believe that I still checked my Novell email at the start of last week and assigned cases?  Mainly because I wanted to make sure that the team I left behind were ok.

So, you've seen the pictures from the week before last so as a few people have said; we had a hell of a lot left to do.  Every day last week right from Saturday the 5th to Sunday the 13th we spent every day in the house working to get it finished.  Most days were thirteen and fourteen hours long.  Tuesday actually, we left the house at 1AM but on the way back to my parent’s house we got stopped by the Guards.  They have a right to stop anyone at a whim with absolutely no reason to just check that their not up to anything dodgy and to also ensure they have up to date tax and insurance.  Following on from that bit of news actually, Before the Guard left us when he'd finished checking Emma’s licence, I asked him for a reason.  He seemed surprised that I wanted to know!  Do they really think they are feared by the entire population?  Don't get me wrong.  I have great respect and admiration for the Guards in Ireland.  I think they do a great job under terrible conditions.  But I think it's very important to remember that at the end of the day, they are public servants.  They are there to serve us.  We should not be afraid of them unless we're doing something wrong.  Therefore, even if it is their right to stop a driver, I strongly believe that it is our responsibility to enquire as to why we have been stopped.  You need to feel that you are just as important as the person standing over your car.  Empower yourself to question those who think they are in authority.  Authority is something to be respected but certainly not feared!

So, for the rest of the week things have gone reasonably smoothly.  We got a huge amount done with the house.  Pipes were buried below the floor, the floor in the extension was repaired, the walls have been touched up with plaster so their now all suitable for painting, the kitchen floor and wall has been tiled, the fridge and cooker are now connected and operational, the wooden floor has been put down in the bedroom, the carpet has been laid in my computer room, we've painted a lot of the rooms and Emma has independently wired the house with phone points.  As I said in an earlier post, the phone points that were there when we bought the house were not reliable so the house needed to be rewired.  It's better now though.  We've now got phone points in much more suitable locations.  Oh, we also got the sky television service installed as well.

Anything else I can think of? Hmmmmmm. not at the moment, but it's later than I thought so I'll possibly think of more tomorrow.  Remember I wanted to get some pictures to show you?  I'm still waiting on Emma to convert them to more reasonable sizes so I can put them up on the blog.  Hopefully we'll have them in a few days.  Emma, get the hint?  Only kidding.

Oh, I started my new job on Monday working with the Oireachtas through Fujitsu Siemens.  I would describe it, but you'd never believe me.  The amount of technology I'm now working with and the control I have is just astounding compared to that I had in Stream.  Plus,   I've signed a lot of non disclosure agreements I'm slightly nervous about saying too much.

That's all for now folks.  I'm sorry it's taken so long to update you.  But I'll try to write a bit more for the rest of the week.  Now, off to send this through the spell checker to see how many mistakes I've made tonight.  I'm tired!  I can’t help it!

You know what happens if you don’t blog in a few days?  Too much happens to keep track of. 

Well, firstly, on Saturday I went to my god Childs confirmation.  Her name is Sarah and she’s just the coolest little person I know.  There were fifty people making their confirmation along with her so as I was at the back of the church, I easily crept out a few times to grab some air and let the dog water the plants on the church lawn.  I’m a very caring guide dog owner aren’t I?  Ah, it was just too hot in there and I have to admit, I’m not the most religious person in the world and a mass that goes on longer than 5 seconds bores me.  I’m the same while in training, I tune in for the first few minutes but unless there’s some practical application I just find it incredibly boring!

The mass was the dull part though.  Later that night I went out for a meal with her family, her god mother and her boyfriend and a few other people that I didn’t really know at the start.  I had planned on not even going but I was kind of pressured into going.  If I didn’t I’d have felt guilty.  Instead of coming home at half eight / nine as I’d expected though it ended up being one of those crazy nights that you can only have every once in a while.  I drank over twice as much as I would ordinarily have and I really felt the effects of it.  Even before leaving the restaurant, I knew that I was on a downward slope.  I knew that I should go home but no, the people I was with were having none of it and I was told that I had to go out to a local pub for another while.  You know what happens after that.  One turns into three.  That was after the three I’d had in the restaurant!  After the pub I was in flying form so we adjourned to a night club in Drogheda called fusion.  This place is absolutely nuts!  It’s huge!  I’d been there a few years ago but now it’s completely different!  Absolutely amazing!  The noise in this place would send you sideways!   Even when you’re sober!  To say I was completely disorientated is an understatement!  I’ve been able to get around no problem in any nightclub with no problems only using the cane but that place had me baffled.  Once I tried to go off on my own but the music had me confused.  So much so that I walked in a circle back to the people I was with without even knowing it.  It wasn’t until someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back over that I’d any kind of clue as to where I was!  I actually thought they’d moved at first.  Believe me, it’s not nice experience and one that I’ll be in no hurry to repeat.  I still think though that although I was quite .......... intoxicated, I really wasn’t bad enough to send my senses crazy like that. It was so loud that when I went outside to get some oxygen, things I listened to sounded like they were coming through someone else’s ears!  Weird experience let me tell you.  Anyway, shortly afterword I decided that I’d had enough so made my way home.  See?  I got back here with no problems using the cane after a hell of a lot of alcohol so I really do think it was just the crazy level they had that music at that disorientated me.

Strangely enough, when I woke yesterday morning, my stomach wasn’t at me at all!  That’s even after the additional bulmers I drank in the club!  I really don’t know how I was able to function yesterday.

Anyway, that was my eventful weekend in a nutshell.  Of course, a few other thing happened blah blah blah blah but you don’t really want to hear about that stuff. 

Back over to the house though, this week as I said before I have time off while changing to the new job primarily to work on the house.   Emma’s off too as she’s working in there with me.  Today the man who built our kitchen was there to fit it.  I had a few things for him to change and at times I think he was very close to the stage of killing me with his hammer but he kept his cool and I’m really impressed with how well he’s adapting.  One thing though is that he’s not really taken the initiative to ask me when he’s not sure about something. I’ve also had a few complaints about how he’s made things easier on himself but I let him away with one major part of the construction where I really believe he could have done better so as a result I’m pushing more comprimization from him so any little thing that I want changed on his design is done as we go along.  I’m a hard person to work for as anyone who has worked with me will attest to.  However, I’m fair.  I’m a perfectionist.  I like people to set expectations and meet them and if possible even exceed them.  In return I’ll do the same.  The fella doing the kitchen has learned that quickly which is admirable.

So, the kitchen is almost in, the plasterer has been touching up the walls so that their more suitable for painting, the Plummer has been in burying the pipes in one of the rooms and for the day I’ve been doing loads of stuff.  Mainly clearing rubble from the front of the house.  There was an unbelievable amount of rubble from the fire place, creating the channels in the walls for pipes and cabling, digging channels in the floor for the gas pipes and in some places increasing the door sizes internally.   Oh, there was also some ready mix concrete mistakenly pored onto of the rubble which hardened over the last few weeks so I had to use some persuasion to loosen that up a bit.  Thanks to the “Persuasion”, I was also able to break up some of the fireplace so I could get it into the trailer.

That’s all for now.  You know, I’m glad I’m in the house this week.  Because I’m there, I’m providing a much more significant say as to how things should be done.  I think that’s critical now that we’re well and truly into the reconstruction stage and away from the destruction.

I'd love to get a few pictures actually.  I'll try to do that tomorrow.

A lot is happening with the house at the moment but even though it might not seem it from the pictures, we're almost there!

One of my main requests was to run network cable around to a few of the rooms in the house. It all gathers under the stairs where the server will run. Very cool.

To make cake, you need to crack eggs. Here is where the electrician has dug out the trenches for the wires.

Like the last picture, the wholes are created but not filled yet.

This socket nearlly killed us. The previous owners had managed to screw shelves right in through an electrical conduit so when we took the shelves down we broke the connection. It sent mad big sparks everywhere on and off for three days until Toaster, a friend of mine who is an electrician could come in and fix it.

We're burying the pipes in the sowing room. The trench has been created so I just need to get a plummer in now to get rid of the pipes.

Here are the famous pipes. Their led so no one really wants to do the job. THink I have someone now though.

 As part of the modification of the house, we've removed the fire place. It will make it a bit cleaner and give us that little bit of extra space that we're always trying to get out of the kitchen.

This is Emma's favorite light. She thinks it looks really cool. I have to admit, I agree.

Again, another light fitting that Emma likes but this one is practical too. It is great for a room that needs a log of light as it has four spot lights that can be moved to different positions to provide light in different parts of the room.

The sockets and the switches in the living room are brushed satton. I love the feel of them and I hear they look quite good too.

Our door handles are very modern aren't they? I wasn't sure what to make of them at first but their growing on me.

This is our new condencing gass boiler. I must say, I'm very impressed. It's really quiet and aside from the size of the thing is will do nicely. The plummer was very professional as well. I'd recommend him to anyone.

We've new windows in the entire house now. Brown wood effect at the front to match the look of the street and modern white in the back. Looks good from what I'm told. I'm happy with them too. They get rid of all the outside noise. Well, almost all of it. Oh, the new radiator is in that picture too.

These doors aren't sprayed or yet so their a natural color but I'll get to that next week. It won't take long.

That's it for now. What do you think! There's a lot happening isn't there?

I’m not particularly in the mood to blog today however to get my mind off things, I decided to write a reasonably short one for a few minutes.

Did you know yesterday was the first day of summer?  Judging by last year’s summer in Ireland that seemed to rain on us for the entire season, I’m not very optimistic about this years.  However, the past two days have been kind of sunny so hay, you never know!  We might be in luck yet!

Hay, did you know that internal doors should have “Feathered edges” to limit the gap required between the door and the door frame? A feathered edge means that the edge of the door at the latch and the hinge is not dead straight.  There’s a slight slope on the inside corner that meats the frame.  Sounds kind of logical when you think of it really. As you close the door, the corner comes very close to the frame.  If there’s no curve on that side of the door, it will rub off!  The alternative of course is to decrease the overall size of the door so although the side is completely straight it won’t rub off the frame as its closing.  There’s another reason as well that I can describe but I can’t remember the technical name for it.  Oh.  It’s called hinge skew.  It’s hard to describe it however, if you go to push a door closed with your finger and as it’s getting close to the frame it starts to resist just very slightly, it’s because the hinge isn’t recessed properly and again, there’s no feathered edge on the hinge side. 

As I’ve said before, it’s amazing what you learn as you go along.

I was told that I should not mention anything related to x or that could be considered in any way derogatory toward x on my blog.  I hate censorship of free speech or ideas.  Don’t you?  Really sums up my feelings toward x.  Censorship of ideas or openness resulting in lack of ability to expand or grow.  Sounds like Windows!  Only joking.  Or am I?

We reached another milestone this morning.  After over two months of talking to BT almost every day, the confusion surrounding our telephone line has now been cleared and the technical difficulties resolved.

The Incompetence of some of the BT staff would really make you seriously question the intelligent of their managers.  Maybe it’s because Stream are a specialist services outsource provider and therefore need to specialize more in the provision of top class customer service but if someone in Stream promises a call back, they do so knowing that they are expected to fulfill that promise.  In the past, we’ve taken on contracts that didn’t allow for the customer service ethic that Stream want to instill in people but ordinarily, Setting expectations and living up to those is the main rule in communicating effectively with a customer.

Originally, BT disconnected the line at the old address.  When we received the keys to the new house, we asked them to relocate the connection.  This should have been a very standard request.  A few hours later and we were told that our request had been carried out.  No connection was established though at the new address.  The number that we carried over to the new address still rang though and according to BT, the broadband had also been connected within a few days.  After a month of calling every day, they finally admitted that the line was connected at the old address and broadband had been rerouted there as well.  This after specifically telling me that it was impossible to get the addresses mixed up in their very reliable computer system.  In fact, someone even had the stupidity to tell me that computers never lie!  Oh, I laughed at that one for ages.  Unsurprisingly, he didn’t really like my response that computers don’t lie, it’s the stupid people who enter the information incorrectly that causes the problem.

Well, soon after that, they finally said they had things sorted out.  At this stage, I was still calling them every day to get an update.  From experience, I know what BT are like so I was taking no chances.  You might think that calling them every day was a bit over the top but you need to understand that the people answering the phone are trained to deal with very straight forward customer service issues.  If something gets too complicated, they either escalate it to someone who’s over worked and under paid, or they just leave it there hoping the problem will go away.  I am saying this with experience.  I’ve managed a team of people like that before.

Anyway, the next mess up was that they some how connected the broadband to the line before they actually established the connection!  Now, obviously this is a physical impossibility from my understanding of a phone exchange but anyway, that’s what they said.  It was probably a software configuration thing.  With this broadband connection live on the line without a line actually existing, a line couldn’t be connected.  It was a real catch twenty two!  Before we could get the line connected, the broadband had to be disconnected.  That took around ten working days.

A really nice woman from the relocations department called me the week before St. Patrick’s day to assure me that she was working on the issue.  She sounded very nice and genuine but although she gave me her direct dial, she was very rarely available to take calls.  She seemed to get the ball moving a bit faster though.  She contacted Eircom, the provider of the physical telephone line and got the line connection established. 

It didn’t end there though.  The connection was up and running but still, there was no dial tone in the house and the number wasn’t ringing! 

Next, they got an engineer to call to the house.  He arrived last Friday afternoon but only called me when he was outside the house.  Obviously then, he couldn’t get in so he couldn’t check the line!

I got back onto BT yet again and made sure they reiterated to Eircom that if their going to send someone around, they need to give me notice before hand to give me time to be there.   Yesterday, I was called at half eight in the morning by an engineer standing outside the door again.  Fortunately, this time, he understood that Eircom didn’t let me know that he was calling around so he rescheduled for this morning. 

As luck would have it, he came this morning after a bit of a delay.  The first thing he told me was that the previous owner, Nicky Hanlon, was actually one of the original phone line installers in the town and therefore did all the related work in the house him self.  It was obvious from the way he said it that he knew that corners would have been cut. 

Sure enough, he traced the line from the outside and found where it enters the house.  After some messing around with cables, he got a dial tone. 

So, it looks like there’s an internal break in one of the wires in the house.  It’s not as bad as it sounds.  It just means that I’ll need to get some phone wire routed around.  It’s just another job that is going to take time and cost money.  As you can imagine, it’s therefore a job that I could have done without!

Oh, did I mention that that the entry point into the house is in the master bedroom tucked in at the side of a big built in press?  Nicky Nicky Nicky!  What were you thinking of when you did that!  It’s not the worst thing that could happen but it’s just a pain in the ass.

Oh, to explain in some more detail for anyone outside Ireland.  BT is a service provider.  They can offer this service by renting the Eircom Lines that are basically flooded across the entire country.  Or anywhere that has a house.  So, if you have a service issue, you need to talk to BT.  If BT consider it to be a physical line issue, they escalate it to the line provider namely, Eircom.

We’ve the house two months today.  That’s two long, tiring, frustrating and busy months.  I really hope we get in there by the fourteenth of April.  The list of things that need to be done still is very clear so as long as no one else lets us down and we don’t have any more bad luck we’ll be fine. 

My hands are cut, scratched, brewzed, tired and sore from everything this weekend.  From sanding the stain and lacquer off the windowsills yesterday the tips of my fingers are practically raw.  As a result, it feels really weird when typing.

Still though, it’s all worth it.  I’m enjoying the challenge.

I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow for a break!  My hands arms and legs are wrecked! From all the lifting, hammering, unscrewing, sawing and chiselling!  We’ve done a huge amount of work this weekend.  Today, a friend came over to help me remove the last of the door frames and the skirting from two of the rooms.  He also had an electric saw similar to a jigsaw so we cut up the scrap wood in a matter of an hour!  Emma’s going to have a hard job removing the nails from them on Friday when I’m at work so we can bring them to the recycle centre but it’s all worth it.

Aside from a bit more demolition today, we didn’t get much more done.  The last of the demolition is done though I think.  Now we just need to get the repair work done before fitting the new door frames and skirting boards.  By repair work I mean smooth off the walls and patch up wholes that had been created in the past for hanging pictures and shelves.  After all that’s done, we can start putting base coats onto the walls.

That’s the weekend over finally.  Back to work tomorrow.  One thing about all the work we did this weekend, it took my mind off problems at work for a change. 

Happy Easter to you all.  I hope you’ve had a good one. 

It’s been a long day here.  We’ve been working on the house all day again today.  This morning, we painted two of the ceilings and a few of the corners where the roller won’t be able to get in to.  Emma also got the knack of pulling out those stupid raw plugs that seem to be encased in the walls.  She got about fourteen out of one wall!  I’m not the best at painting with a roller for obvious reasons but while Emma was using the roller on the ceilings, I did the parts at the sides and corners that are generally impossible to reach.  It was a good combination.  We had both done reasonably quickly.

After that, I set about removing the architrave from the door frames while Emma removed the nails from the wood that I pried off the walls.  That took a good few hours.  We were in the house until after half seven tonight.  We’ve got it all done though.  All that needs to be done now is we need to remove a few of the door frames so it’s just a matter of coming with the new doors and frames so the people fitting them don’t need to spend time pulling anything down.  Any time we’re saving them is money we’re saving and that’s always a good thing.

We’re both shattered now so I’m just writing this before falling into bed to sleep for at least a year.  Or until around 9AM tomorrow morning before getting up and starting the whole thing all over again.  Tomorrow, we’ve some more work to do.  A friend is coming over to help with the door frames as it helps if you have someone around who’s handy with wood work etc. 

It’s funny.  My father’s a carpenter.  Since an early age I’ve been around wood and I’ve spent a few years on and off during holidays etc working in his factory.  It’s surprising the small things you pick up.  Something simple like removing screws with dodgy heads or even things like the best or most logical way of lifting doors.   I’m learning a lot while working on the house but there are things that come back to me that are a bit surprising.

You know, now that we're really finding ways of saving time and money etc, it really feels like things in the house are going much better.  I really want to have more control over what the plasteror and other workers are doing.  The more control, the better the result in this type of situation I think.

It's unlikely that any of you read blogs over a weekend but anyway.  Here goes.

I’m tired!  We spent from 10AM until 6 right through working on the house today.  It doesn’t really sound like a long time but it’s all manual labour type stuff so it has a tendency to be very tiring.  We removed a lot of rubbish.  Mainly wood that had been stripped out of the house over the last two months.  The kitchen, the skirting boards and other architrave, bits of door frames, an old cabinet that was probably older than the house it’s self and other scraps of wood that were used for the work that is being carried out at the moment.  It took two car loads to bring it all to the recycling centre.  The first lode was heavy, but the second had all the press doors from the kitchen as well as some work tops as well so it was incredibly heavy!  I was actually worried that the car suspension may have found it a bit more difficult than it could handle but we got there and back in one piece.  #Aside from removing all the wood from the house, we removed the upstairs doors.  Actually, come to think of it, why oh why would anyone paint the hinge of a door frame.  It’s just absolutely crazy.  When you paint a hinge, you paint the screws holding it to the door frame.  That makes it almost impossible to get the damn things off!  You first need to use the screw driver with a hammer to remove the paint and make the screw driver actually fit into the screw then you need to hope that the damn thing actually turns!  One door was unsalvageable.  I just could not get the paint off the screws.  It was just caked on.  So, instead, I used a chisel to break the wood away from around the hinge then I used a really long screw driver to pry the hinge away from the frame.  Another door was just as stubborn.  We removed the screws out of the frame but the door didn’t fall.  Usually, when you take the screws out, as you’d expect, there’s nothing holding the door onto the frame any more so it just pulls away.  There was so much paint on one of the doors it actually took a good while to get the hinge off the wall!  Really, when I say it was caked on, I’m not exaggerating.  I think they were trying to fill up the decline in the door caused by the hinge!  At least their off now.  It’s one more thing done. 

Oh, I got to take my frustration out on some really old wall mounted shelves.  These things were screwed in, nailed in and by the look of things; they were actually glued to the frame as well!  The only thing that could be done was get a hammer to it.  They were in so well that when I actually started to take them down, the shelves came off really easily but because of the size of the nails into the solid walls I had to chip away at the wood around them to let the nail bar get a grip. 

After all that and taking down the supports for the old heavy curtain brackets, I halved everything using a very old and crappy hand saw so it’s all sorted for bringing to the recycling centre again next week. 

What we’re finding is, yes, a jumbo bin can be organized to bring all this rubbish away but for that to happen, the rubbish will mount up in the front of the house, access will be very restricted because people need to walk over all the rubbish to get in to work and at the end of it all, it will be at least a day’s work getting everything into the bin and organized for collection.  As it is at the moment, we are managing all the waste and bringing it away our selves.  Its costing two euro each time we go to the recycling centre.  Including the cost of disposing of the old carpets and the old suite of furniture, we’ll probably reach a figure of about a hundred and fifty euro for waste disposal.  That’s much better than three hundred for a skip and more money for work men who can’t get the job done quick enough because their stepping over rubble. 

You really do learn a lot when you undertake a project like this.  This is only modernizing and renovating the interior of an existing house.  Just think of the mayhem that you’d be hearing about if this was a new build!  @God, I hope I never do that! 

Just one more thought.  Tomorrow, we're getting up early again Welll, early for a weekend anyway.  We'll be putting on a first coat of white paint on some of the walls.  It will show up a lot of the repair work that we'll need to do to the plaster.  That way, when the plasteror comes in, he'll know exactly what he'll have to do.  After that, it'll require a second base coat before actually putting the color on.  Aside from painting, there's not a hell of a lot more that can be done tomorrow.  I'll probably try to do a bit of cleaning before we start painting.  I'd like to have the place clear again when the plummer comes in later in the week.

I booked this morning off today.  I was supposed to meet a man from the Image Business centre at the house.  We had agreed that he’d connect up all the network points.   Unfortunately, it’s something I know how to do but not something I can do confidently as the cable colors are a bit of a show stopper.

I got the 8AM train from Connolly to Drogheda earlier.  When in Drogheda, I called to say that I was going to be ten minutes late only to hear that even though they were scheduled to come over at 9AM, in their diary, it was 2PM!  Conveniently, the woman I spoke to, Mary wasn’t in today so they had no way of clearing things up.

I decided to jump on the next train from Drogheda to Dublin and leave my keys with someone.  I’m just hoping that the taxi I’ve organized to pick them up and drop them over turns up and is able to get them.  I know the taxi driver well so I trust him but god knows what happens in Train stations.  I’ve asked the fella at the door to do me a favor by keeping them with him so I’m hopeful it will go smoothly.

It feels like things are finally starting to fall into place for us in the house.  On Tuesday, the electrician finished up.  He’s done a very good job I think.  Wiring seems to be first class and he’s even fitted a separate smaller fuse box to facilitate the editional requirements that we’re placing on the supply.  HE also fitted the CAT5 cable for me.  I’ve someone coming over tomorrow to take care of connecting all the boxes and the bridge between the patch panel and the router.  Oh, it’s going to be a hell of a set up again I’m finished.  In a nutshell, I’ve designated under the stairs as the coms closet.  There are ten network points throughout the house and their all converging in this small space.  These are going to be connected to a patch panel which will in turn feed them into a switch.  The switch will have two connections to the internet.   One to the server and one straight to the router.  The server has another network card and that will be connected into the router as well.  So, I’ll have the server set up more or less as it is at the moment.  Acting as a firewall, proxy, secondary router, DNS, antivirus, mail and web server, and possibly a network storage device. This will ensure that all home traffic is routed on a secure network and stuff that I’m testing like port tunneling and forwarding can go over the DMZ network while still having access to the Internet.  There are networks in all major rooms as well.  My computer room, Emma’s …… multi function room, and the living room.

Yesterday, I had an old friend of mine around who has his own building company.  He’s going to do a lot of touch up jobs that are needed to the place.  He’s also going to take care of insulating the attics and the outside walls as well as a lode of other little jobs that we need to do.

Today, two days earlier than I anticipated, Lenster windows came in and within four hours, they had replaced all the windows in the house!  Amazing stuff!  Three of them came in and got it done.  I’ve not been there yet but Emma got two hours off today to go home early to make sure she was there when she left and she seems impressed.

Next big thing is the heating.  Role on the 14th of March!  There’s light at the end of the tunnel!

We have the house one month today.  The progress has been slow.  In fact, much less paced than I had anticipated however, the benefits should be very obvious when it's all finished.  Much more thought is going into each room than originally planned which inevitably means more money is required but that's just the joys of it I suppose.

The living room will possibly need to be dry walled on one side.  Both to make it easier for electrical wiring to be hidden and to make the room more insulated.  The electrician has already been there though so this is going to be another job that needs to be touched up when the dry wall has been installed. 

The fireplace in the kitchen will be removed.  That shouldn't be a huge job.  It's going to take some hard work but it's not going to cost a huge amount to do.  I'm also getting all the kitchen cabinets replaced.  Actually, the entire room will have gone through a complete redesign when it's all done.  The design won't be perfect but functionally and visibly it should be great.  That's under way at the moment.  Yesterday, I took the doors off the presses and removed the top presses.  I need to wait for a Plummer to come in before getting rid of the bottom presses as I need to disconnect the sink first.  I know that's as easy as squeezing both pipes together but believe me, if you saw the size of those pipes in there you'd wait for a Plummer too.  I have a feeling he'll have a better tool for doing it than I do.

In Emma's sowing room, which is the front room just off the kitchen, I'm going to get someone in with a cango hammer to bury some of the pipes that for some reason were left surface mounted after the first major job that was done in the house in the 70's.  Obviously, a Plummer is needed there too.

Up stairs, the computer room i.e, the box room is going to need some repair work done to the walls.  We've had a lot of rewiring done in the house.  Not really because it was needed but to modernize the whole place, install CAT5 network cable in most rooms and put in more television points etc one of the walls in that room was used as a main channel.  It shouldn't take much for that to be fixed up.  Plus, I already have a very cool desk custom made for exactly what I need in that room that will fit each wall like a glove.  Don't worry, for you sighted people, pictures will very likely be available when it's finished.

Nothing will be done to the spare room at the moment.  It will do as it is for a while.

In the master bedroom, nothing really needs to be done with the walls..... At the moment, the electrician may change that between today and tomorrow...... I'm putting down a laminit floor but that's really all that needs to be done in that room for the moment.

Then of course, I'm replacing seven doors internally so their all decent solid doors. 

There's a lot yet to do.  But we've also done a lot.  Although it doesn't feel it at all, we've set the wheels in motion to make the next month go a lot smoother than this one has. 

We've got the gas ready to be installed.  The installation date for that is the 14th of March.  The Electrician has been and should be finished by tomorrow afternoon, the Windows will be installed late this week and I've to write up a list of jobs that I want a builder to do this week such as insulate the attic in the extension.  Block up access points that have had to be made, repair small whole in the extension sealing that was made by the electrician, remove the fire place and a few other things that I can’t think of at the moment. He'll be kept busy.  Put it that way.  Oh, of course, we've also done a few cosmetic jobs like remove wall paper, take up carpets to allow access for the  electrician, purchase lights and light fittings, repair the garage door, and take the place a part by removing things like the kitchen, sowing room, and living room doors.

Oh, finally, never try to move an American style Fridge on your own.  It's not worth it.  I moved our fridge from the kitchen to the living room yesterday on my own through the hall and two door ways.  Of course, to ensure the bottom didn't get damaged while going over the door saddles it had to be lifted across.  Have you ever seen those American style fridges with the water dispenser on the front?  Their huge!  And a ton weight!  I'm telling ya, when you start to work on a house you realize what you’re capable of.  But even so, not something I'm going to do again.  When it's been moved back, I'm getting someone to help!

That's about all for the moment; I played at a session in Dundalk on Saturday night.  Emma used a coolpix to video parts of it as I was hoping to put it up on youtube but the quality given by that camera is not great at all so I'm going to have to try something else.

Nothing is happening at the moment on the technology front in my free time.  I'm just slightly too busy to start anything new.  In work, I finally figured out that LibATA problem on the Novell test PC and got the multi-boot working with OpenSuSE, Fedora, Mandriva and of course my favorite, Ubuntu 7.10.  Before I went home on Friday, I tested a very cool new firefox extension that's just been modified to work on Firefox 3 that displays HTML elements in a dialogue box just like Jaws and Window eyes does.  For example, users can now look at a list of links on the page so if on the website for www.linux.ie, I can easily skip to the home link by going to the list and arrowing to home.  Of course, everything is numbered so if I know the number associated with the home link on that page I can press that as well.  Same goes with form fields, frames, image map links, tables, lists, headings and other elements that I'm not listing here.  Only difference compared to this functionality in Windows is this is actually a Firefox extension and not something that the Orca screen reader bothers with at all.  So, the screen reader as it is supposed to be.  A layer that converts the interface to speech.  The application is then responsible for making its self accessibility.  This is as I've said before, the underlying principle behind Gnome and Orca.  It is also what makes it so powerful.

So, to finish, welcome to another week.  The last week in February 2008.  It's been an eventful, stressful and tiring month but there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel.

Now, I've to go spell check this...

I’ve been very busy today. 
From writing a new technical test for Novell, doing two phone interviews, having a meeting with a few of the managers on this site to doing a second interview and then hiring the successful person that has been the extent of my morning!  This afternoon I had to go over the floor plan for the new site then do a lot of little things for the house.  Most of which mint sitting on the phone for ages.  I had to call the gas company, Chorus, Oxygen, Eircom and then the company for the windows.

Slowly but surely I’m getting things done.  It would be so much easier if I didn’t have to work at the same time!  Oh, but the gas company will have the service installed by the 14th of March.  That’s another milestone.  Then the fitter will come in and install the radiators, boiler and pipe work.

That’s all for now I’m afraid; I’ve a few other things to do in the next hour so I better go. X

Ah it's just fabulous.  Remember that tune I was talking about yesterday? I listened to it about three or four times in work.  Thanks to my wonderful brain, it is now learned.  I was walking back from the house this morning over to my parents house and it suddenly came to my fingers.  It's funny.  I regularly get tunes just popping into my head and my fingers start to play as if they were on the chanter of the pipes.  They don't need to move much.  they just hmmmm. I don't know how to describe it.  I suppose it's like someone who can sing humming a song to them selves after they hear it.  Anyway, I got to my parents house, grabbed an old whistle and started playing it.  Fortunately, it's exactly as it sounded on the recording I have so that's another one added to the list.  I'm looking forward to going somewhere to play it now in public.  With some guitar backing it will be cool.  Or, at least I hope it will.  Sometimes, these things just sound better on a CD than they do in person.

Anyway, that's all for the moment.  I'm in Drogheda this morning as I had to go over to the house to let the electrician in.  I've also given him a few more things to do.  Hopefully it won't cost much more extra on top of the quote he's already given me.

Oh, the kitchen plans have been drawn up.  We're moving along.  Slowly but surely.

Warning, this post is not for people who get offended by bad language. 

Picking lights is not something you can do easily!  Oh no! It’s something that takes great care and consideration.

• Will the lights be bright enough?
• Will the light fittings fit in with the feeling of the rest of the room?
• Are they suitable for the installation of a dimmer switch?<
• >If spot lights, do they take energy saving bulbs?  If not, what is the implication of this? <
• >How long from the sealing do they hang?

To all these questions I say, I don’t give a fuck! I’m blind!  Give me a room of darkness!  It’s a hell of a lot bloody cheaper! I don’t care if they look like suspended drops of water.  We’ve enough water outside; we live in a country that seems to have rain every second of the year.  For anyone crazy enough to be interested, that’s 31536000 seconds of rain each year.  That’s a lot isn’t it?  So, why the hell would you want more water in side! Or, what about those lights with little glass things that make noise when anyone walks into the room!  Their kind of different and nice the first five or six times but after that, they just get fucken annoying!

Know how much lights are going to cost just for the living room, hall, kitchen and bathroom?  Over Three! Hundred! Euro!  Well, in fairness, that’s also including a sensor light for outside to point toward the driveway.  There are no lights on our side of the street which is great but it’s probably a good idea at least for the sighted people out there to stick in a sensor light that activates when people come close to the house.  I was also thinking of getting a cool wireless camera kit that I saw yesterday for €170 but I kind of talked my self out of it for the moment.  I’m kind of kicking my self that I didn’t get it though as I could get the electrician to wire it in for me and that would be that job done and taken care of.

Good morning all,

Sorry I’ve been quiet lately.  Blogging just doesn’t seem to be part of my daily routine any more! It’s terrible.  I’m trying to get back into the habit of it but it’s not going well.  All that said though, here are a few things that I’ve been doing, thinking about, working on etc.

Firstly, my knee was causing a lot of pain last week so on Thursday and Friday I worked from home.  It was a necessary evil and I’m very lucky my employer was able to be that flexible.  Although I was at home, I was just as busy as if I was in the office and actually with a lot less distractions, I got a lot more done!  I wish they’d bring a work from home option in this place.  It would make this type of work a lot more tolerable at times.

While I was at home, I worked on a script to automate many of the troubleshooting steps the engineers working on the Novell team need to walk customers through on a day to day basis.  It will hopefully cut out a lot of time for each case they need to deal with.  It will also cut out any user error on both sides which is always a good thing.   I’m writing the script with the dialogue package as the user interface.  The back end is simple, it’s just giving the installed system standard commands but making the menu system in dialogue is just a pain!  I’ve something wrong in my syntax and I’m at a bit of a dead end.  But, with some work I’ll get there eventually.  Unfortunately, my test PC is undergoing a lot of ……. Testing at the moment, I’m trying a few distributions out so the scripting will just have to wait.

Speaking of distributions I’m trying out, the first one is Mandriva 2008.  Of course, the installer is completely inaccessible so I got someone in work to take care of that part for me.   After the installation though, I tried to get Orca running but although it launched, I got no speech output.  With a bit of digging around, I noticed that the default synthesizer was set to espeak.  Out of curiosity, I installed Festival and changed the default synthesizer from Espeak and all works.  I’ve not really had time to find out why ESpeak isn’t working but I’ll look into it shortly.    For now, Gnome looks clean, fast and there are no hardware issues as a result of installing Mandriva.  I think I’ll use it for the remainder of today and move onto another distribution tomorrow.  In the mean time though, I’m hoping to test firefox, Open Office and Pidgin as they are the tools that should work easily enough with Orca no matter what distribution it’s on.  The person who read the screen during the installation also wants to try Compiz for 3D graphics so I’ll probably do some messing around with that as well.

One interesting finding was that Mandriva is still using the old lib-ata module so it still differentiates between IDE and Sata controllers.  Ide is still seen as had and Sata is still seen as SDA for example.  That meant that installing Mandriva side by side with OpenSuSE caused problems with Grub.  Nothing that couldn’t be fixed of course but it’s starting to be a common problem.  Ubuntu had the same issue.

Aside from the technical stuff, I did some more work on the house recently.  I stripped all the walls in the living room and pulled up the carpets in two of the up stairs rooms.  Pulling up the carpets is in preparation of the electrician and Plummer coming around to work in a week or two.  So, I’m getting to the end of the work I can do to the house before the major jobs are done so at least things will start to slow down for a while.  I’d say after I get some of the remaining paper off the kitchen this weekend and pull up the carpet in the living room, I’ll have about two weeks of nothing to do.  Hopefully though, after the windows have been replaced, the wiring enhanced to meet our needs and the gas installed, we can start decorating.  That is going to be an arduous task all on its own though.  There’s going to be a lot of difficult work to do!

Oh, last week I was also contacted by a friend I haven’t heard from in ages!  I’m sure she’ll see this in her feed reader when I post it so "Hello there stranger! Hope all is well in the land of the crazed".

Finally, last night, would you believe it, I composed a tune!  I don’t know how or why, but it came to me just out of the blue.  It’s a jig and I’ve called it “Scraping walls”.  I’ll have to record it and post it at some stage.

That’s all folks…

Sorry about the title.  It was more interesting than something boring like: summary or the week just past.  I hate that kind of thing.

I didn’t blog on Friday!  I don’t know why either.  It wasn’t like I was exceptionally busy or anything like that, I just didn’t really get around to it.  Laziness I suppose.  That’s the only reason. Remember I blogged about falling last Tuesday?  Well, the result was that I badly hurt my knee.  So, I worked from Home on Thursday and Friday.   I got quite a lot done actually.  It was very nice to work from the comfort of home.  I’d love the opportunity to do it more often.  I might try to talk to my manager about it at some stage this week. 

You know it’s very hard to use a guide dog and a crutch at the same time?  The poor dog is use to me practically running everywhere.  He’s really taking some time to get use to the fact that I’m limping along, slowly, with a crutch in the other hand keeping the weight off my left knee!  He’s doing very well though considering everything. 

I didn’t really blog about it last week because I had hoped to save it until having the video footage but I did about six gigs the week before last as I think I listed in one of my earlier posts.  The big one though, on the Saturday night was captured by Emma on Video using my sister’s video recorder.  Problem is, we can’t find the cable to connect it so I have nothing to show you yet.

I know this post is a bit random but my heads all over the place today.  I’m tired and I really just want to go to sleep!  This weekend, like ever