I spent the week at home, which started with me watching
Nothing much else happened, apart from me doing revision and registering with various employment agencies to hopefully get a job over summer. Oh, I did end up doing a couple of bits of computer fixing for friends: Case 1 was no sound from a 4.1 speaker set. Drivers didn't solve it, tests with a pair of earphones and the associated MP3 player proved that the speakers or amp was at fault, so
"Wait a minute, that socket looks a bit mangled... where's the volume control widget?"
"Ah, that's your problem - see, the pin's bent. Got a small screwdriver or something?"
*bend*
"Right, plug a couple of speakers back in and let's test it."
*loud random music*
Case 2, from the same house: a pair of El Cheapo speakers from a Time machine (running Windows 95) had lost the amplifiing part. All you got was the quiet non-amplified sound, and the red power light didn't light up. Swapping the wall wart for a variable one produced a red light, but now no sound. Somewhat expected, considering that the wall wart was rated for 1.25A @ 12V and the replacement delivered a mere 300mA. Solution: chuck them and buy a new pair, considering that they can be had from the likes of eBuyer for under a fiver. It's not worth trying to find a PSU that'll deliver over an amp at 12 volts, with the right connector and right polarity, just to power a pair of El Cheapo speakers (yes, I know I'm running mine from a variable transformer, but I've got one that'll deliver at least 800mA).
Hmm, 58% and half an hour remaining. If you're trying to work out what's being downloaded, it's this, a random Star Wars fanfilm that I randomly came across. Make that 59%.
*Semagic bings at me. I go check my friends list. Semagic bings again, but no change to friends list (it's been doing this a lot recently - sounds like someone's checkfriends implementation is b0rked. Just as I bring the post window back up, Outlook Express bings at me. /me consideres deleting 'bing' sound*
Yes, I do still use Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. I have my reasons for both: OE is a pretty decent IMAP client (apart from a couple of quirks), and is actually rather secure once you lock it down a bit. IE makes for a decent web browser, b0rked CSS aside, and has the nice bonus of not screwing up the TrackPoint's scroll wheel replacement. To those of you who say "IE is insecure!" I shall inform you that FireFox is also insecure. To those of you who say "IE doesn't support $STANDARD", I shall inform you that I really do not give a frozen turkey.
Well, while typing that randomness another 10% came down, at about 20K/s. And this is supposedly a 155mb/s line, with me having a 2mb/s link to the campus wireless (actually, 6mb/s now). Ctrl+C, up-arrow, enter. 60K/s, much nicer. Okay then, 25K/s. 70. 20. Hmm. Sod that, I'll download it another time.
Ctrl+C.