I hate computers

I'm writing this in an effort to stop me from taking my frustrations out on my bloody laptop. I mean it has really given good service over the years, and I honestly cannot complain when it starts to give grief, but man is it frustrating. For about 2 or 3 weeks now I have been having small problems with it, first with the hard drive, and since last week, the network.

To explain, we have 2 computers at home running a network that goes over the router to the internet. Since Christine has started work again, she has moved into Hanna's room for the moment to use as her office, and I have put my desktop there for her to use. However, she doesn't want cables lying all over the place, so I bought a new high speed wireless card for the desktop.

As I said, I have been having intermittent hard disk problems, mainly because I'm running out of disk space. For work I have been installing some new software, and downloading lots of files to read and go through, and it has slowly started to cause problems, so I thought I would do a major clean up before mucking about with the network. Man what a mission, and a huge mistake. This is one of the things I hate about windows - software is so easy to install, but so darned hard to get rid of it.

I had to get a special program to help me clean up the mess. So I de-installed a huge amount of programs, deleted loads of data and did a disk defrag - and what did this accomplish? Well I have about 9 GB free space, but the harddrive has been reduced in size by 10 GB and I will need to replace it soon - I have done a back up, and I hope it doesn't crash on me soon as I don't have the cash to buy a new HD just at the moment.

So got the HD more or less working, and installed the wireless card. Now before doing this, every thing in the network worked, be it over cable, but it worked. Once the card was installed on the DESKTOP computer, nothing more worked on either PC. I couldn't even get to the internet. At first I thought it was because my provider had banned me for being over the limit (and I am way over the limit this month) but then I discovered that the laptop kept dropping the wireless signal.

On the other side, I re-installed the wireless card on the desktop without problems, and it could connect to the web without problem. So the problem lay with the laptop. Back to the drawing boards. After major frustrations I got the same advice from a friend and a work colleague, de-install Norton Anti Virus. So back to de-installing. Nortons - gone! Still no work. Install new virus program. Now I was able to at least get to the internet and have a stable connection, but I couldn't get the computers to talk to each other.

So back to the drawing book. In the end I had to re-install all the IBM software, and this took forever, especially since all the software had to be downloaded first. Download a new version, install, reboot (this takes between 5 and 8 minutes each time on my laptop) and so on! And then it was finished, yesterday afternoon, every thing was working perfect, I could get internet, the computers were talking to each other, the network printer was working....ah bliss...

Until today that is! I should never have turned the darned things off! So Thursday dawns bright and early and we (eager to get to work) sit down at the PC's and start working. Screams Christine, "can I print?" Answers Richard, "of course :)" What I meant was.. of course NOT. So another morning spent trying to fix network problems. This time it was the Windows firewall and the browser function. Oh well, now it all works, and I'm almost smiling again.

What did I learn? Well, a huge amount about Networks, how they hang together and how to fix them. How much I enjoy working from home, but how difficult it can be when you have a computer problem and there is no specialist or technician to run to for help. How this can all go on your time. I have been living breathing and eating networks and PC problems since Monday morning. Additionally this has caused me to neglect work and so I guess I'll be working on the weekends again to catch up - ho hum!

I hope all are well and NOT having computer problems - sorry Mike for my mistake - sorry the rest for the boring post - keep well!

Teaching and Orienteering

Well, since a week I am back at work. Although I have been working for a while before Hanna was born, work now is something quite new for me, as I started to teach. As I have a half time position I am at school only twice a week - on Mondays and Wednesdays. I think it is great - preparation and correction work I can do at home and therefore can still spend a lot of time with Hanna. I teach accounting and business administration in form 1 and 2, which means 15 and 16 year olds. The one class has 35 pupils and teaching such a big croud of 15 year old teenagers is quite a challange but so far they have been great.

Last weekend we have been to Tirol to run the Austrian Relay Championships in Imst and an Austrian Ranking competiontion in Haiming. Both maps were great and both physically and technically very demanding. At the relay champs I ran in the 2nd womens team for Henndorf together with 2 juniors. I ran the first leg and handed over in 2nd position quite a while behind our first team. The 2 girls, Anna and Elisa, did a great job and we ended up in 3rd place. Congratulation to them on running so well in that demanding area.
On Sunday the Austrian Ranking event was run in Haiming another very technical area. I started in W21 short and rolled up the field from behind :-) as lots of the competitiors had big problems. I had a good run with only a few minor mistakes. With only 2 more ranking events to come at the beginning of October I lead the ranking with only 7 points ahead of my clubmate Julia. It will be an exciting finish - especially as one of the last events is a night event, which I really dont' like ...

I just had to post this

To All of you who believe Hanna doesn't do her own posting :)

Here you go, caught in the act!

Dad.

Aren't I cute ?

hugs and kisses to all,
Hanna.

Where does the time go...

Things have been moving along very quickly over the last 2 weeks. My "unofficial" job has been largely about reading and trying software out, which I am beginning to get to grips with. The job itself is quite interesting and I was in Germany last week to meet up with one or two colleagues and to get to grips with the new project we will be doing. It seems very ambious and I'm looking forward to it.

At the same time I was in Germany, Christine was finding out that she has got a new job. It all happened very quickly and I'll leave her to tell you about it :) Now the hard part starts - handling Hanna while Mom is working, although she only has 7 lessons a week, and on 3 days only - so all in all a great deal.

Hanna has been her normal self. Although Christine thinks she does a normal amount of screaming, I'm not so sure. She screams an awful lot, she starts immediately once left alone, or getting tired, so she really needs 24/7 looking after, which can get VERY stressful. Other than that she's a joy, seems to be growing every day, not only in size, but also in intelligence and cuteness.

So what else have we been up to? Well we decided that we would skip the OL this weekend as it was just too far to travel. I mean 4 to 5 hours driving on Sat and Sun for two races, without family OK, but with Hanna - FORGET it! However as it turned out we still ended up driving half way across Austria.

Our good friend Eva, who has just finished her 2nd degree, was celebrating her 30th birthday and we had decided to go to Wien (Vienna) earlier in the week. Added to this, during the last week, and thru LinkedIn, I have re-established contact with Björn Weindorfer, who now lives with his wife Sally and kids Ingrid and Eric in Mödling (close to Wien). Björn is an old school friend and Uni buddy who I haven't seen probably since those times. We were able to arrange a time for us to meet up again and we were really looking forward to it.

So I arrived back in Salzburg at lunch on Friday from Germany, however we were not able to leave immediately as Christine had to go to the teachers conference at 16h00. We ended up leaving at 18h00 and although I tried to push the pace, my navigational skills left me completely in Wien and we droaroundund for almost 60 minutes before we found the party location. It was great to see Alex and Eva and all our Wien friends again, and the party was great. We managed to get into bed at around 1 o'clock.

We were awake quite late on Saturday and after saying good bye to Alex and Eva, found out that my OL skills were still in Salzburg as we drove around trying to get out of Wien. AND THEN we got lost on the way to Björn as well, so we ended up being really late :( It was great to meet up with him again and meet his family. We had a fantastic brunch up in the hills around Mödling and spent quite a few hours just catching up - we look forward to their visit, hopefully later this year.

We then headed back to Henndorf and had a quite evening at home. Today I was out at the Wallerseelauf to support the boys and Veronika (see report sportblog) and afterwards we had a great braai with Gitte and Arthur. The weather was fantastic!!

And so that my family and friends, is my news,
Richard.

How to keep daddy dancing

Hi all you babies out there who read our blog,

I have a great tip for keeping dad on his toes. He has this drink that he likes to drink called "Red Bull" which apparently puts hairs on his chest - I haven't found any yet - but it tastes quite good and once you have a sip, it's like, well, not sure really, but definitely like something good and afterwards you have energy and don't need sleep.




Oh, and another thing, I was in the swimming pool the other - it was great - but the water wasn't really deep, so I couldn't do any lenghts, maybe next time. Check out my swimming partner, quite the beer stomach don't you think? He could even give dad competition.

So as you can see on this picture, I have quite the competive spirit. I have even been trying out my new SI stick. It's never too early to start training dad says (although he never trains anymore), so I got Oma to help me with my punching technique - quite the look don't you think!










Now, I also wanted to show off my new gear from Aunty Claire. Thanks, it's great and nice and cool on hot summer days. Well I'm off, have a nice evening, I have to finish before Mom and Dad come back from taking the dog for a walk :)

Hanna.