02/19/2006: "Eughhhhhhhh!"

Watching four little siskin singing in the trees from my bed this morning was lovely. They didn't stay around for too long but I could still hear them singing so I got up to see if I could follow them. Imagine my horror when I looked at my neighbours bird feeder and saw a rat climbing up the pole to get to the feed at the top crazy

I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing - I'd no idea the nasty little vermin were so agile. The pole is really thin! Infact it's this one and it climbed up the full 72" of metal pole. Then it ran away and hid under the neighbours play house. Frozen to the spot I watched, a minute later it poked its head out again and made its way back to the feeder, climbed up the pole and continued to fill it's fat little belly. Then it did it again! By the third time I'd called the neighbour to alert him - not that I thought he'd be able to do anything that early on a Sunday morning but for some reason I thought he might like to know, (I was worried ratty might be nesting under his grandchildren's play house). He was actually very nice about it and said he'd call environmental health first thing Monday morning. Ratty then decided to run away back (hopefully) to the railway line. This is the only time in my life I've wished I had a rifle. I could have had the little bugger!

Given that we live right next to a line this is only the second rat I've seen in fourteen years of living here. Which probaby just means I'm not seeing them as I can't imagine they're not there all the time. Eeuuuuugghhhhhhhhhh. And now I feel more guilty because about ten minutes later my neighbour was out in his garden brandishing a shovel in the hope of finding ratty but then he decided to removed the bird feeder. So now it's cold, the birds have no food which will probably unsettle them enough for them to move on and I'm going to miss watching them. Not a good start to the morning. sad

Work is so busy I haven't had much time to catch up with writing here and I'm not happy posting from there even if it was in my own time, so a weekly summary may be the way forward.

Jewellery
I managed to get time to start on a new item - a bracelet this time. But I only have four weeks until assessment so I'm going to have to do lots at home. Still I got a bit of sawing and filing done yesterday so that should leave only soldering to do in class. I have to start working on a sketchbook though. Once I've had my assessments I'll put some pictures of the items up - a bit nervous of someone pinching my ideas or worse, being told someone else has already done what I'm doing, only better!

Wood Carving
I need to do some drilling of wood today but it's too cold to work in the garage, even with the little heater on so my workbench is sitting idle until I can bring myself to face the cold!!

Music
Listening to Hayes Carll and Buddy Millar while I type. (Which is difficult as I can't sit still to HC's "Down the Road") Going to see them both on Tuesday night (Hayes is supporting Buddy) and am really looking forward to it. Although I have the tracks saved to my pc and can listen to them on my palm, I thought it was time I had the cd's so have just put in a huge order to amazon!!! Pay day on Friday :-)

Techy Stuff
I've been very out of sorts with my calendar because I can't sync my palm at work - we have thin client and staff aren't allowed to put any software on the network. (Strange how some things can activate such a strong sense of paranoia - I'm convinced they are snooping my emails and all work I am doing!). IT department say they won't support palm pda's and I can't afford to buy a new one yet (even though there is an updated one of mine I'd quite like!). I worked out that one solution would be to try to save my work calendar and copy it to my home pc, then in theory it should be possible to sync up at home. Well, it's taken me about three weeks to figure it all out but last night I finally did it. If anyone is interested read on:
First I had to create a new .pst file and copy the work calendar to that (it won't let you copy straight from the calendar file to anything outside outlook)
Then it was possible to put the copy on my usb stick and bring it home.
On my home pc I had to set up outlook (never have used it at home as I don't use the email).
I then made a mirror .pst file (the same name as the work one) and copied the files from the stick to that calendar,
Then I dropped the copy calendar into the main calendar on the home pc
The next problem was that I hadn't been using outlook on my palm (I had just used the palm calendar) so I had to convert my palm calendar to outlook - again more problems as the palm software version I had didn't support windows xp home
So I had to download more software, but finally I did manage to sync it all and I now have my up to date calendar on my palm

(unfortunately I also copied the mail .pst so have every single work email at home too - handy for back up but the last thing I want to do at home is work!!).

It's all pretty cumbersome having to copy everything to the stick every night and do the other steps in between and it only works one way (ie I can't put things straight into the palm they have to go onto the pc) but at least I shouldn't miss any appointments now!

I will probably get very fed up doing that for a while so it's just a question of how much I lean on "those that be" at work to make palm software available.......I'm working on it but being so new, I don't want to rock any more boats than I'm sure I have already! Strikes me that they really don't want to alienate staff right now so perhaps a few words in the right ears will do the trick smile