BACK IN THE SADDLE

Getting back into the swing of this thing has been so easy. Setting aside think time and write time was seldom a problem before the enforced layoff and now the brains are buzzing with unreleased neuronal activity. The combined synaptic energy around here could power a small town on the best of days although admittedly on off days it would have difficulty lighting the proverbial Toc-H lamp.

A little topical stuff to get us off to a gentle start: the death of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal may have been mourned by many but not here in Felia - a vengeful and angry man he did little to promote peace or understanding and kept a flame of retribution burning despite his advancing years, you had to question his motivation! On a similarly topical note, I'm watching, fascinated, the wriggling of the EU as they try to find a way of allowing Turkey to begin formal admission procedures when it stubbornly refuses to recognise one of the member states: shouldn't that, wouldn't that, under any normal circumstances, be a disqualifying behaviour? Isn't it amazing the hoops that "trade" can jump through and still feel itself morally sound? Not a pretty sight and given that the UK government is pushing hard for Turkey, despite its appalling human rights record is scarcely edifying.

I was pleased with the way the backbone upgrades worked but until today there was one remaining niggle - the Powerbook G3 would often lock up and refuse to reboot. Last night it occurred to me that this used to be a common symptom if USB devices were drawing too much power between them. Today I dug out an old Belkin powered USB hub and attached the 802.11G adapter and the Expert Mouse through this device. So far no lock ups! Fingers crossed that this has solved the issue. We do still have issues with Safari and Spymac - Safari crashes quite regularly but this is no ttoo bad as there is little to go there for these days and if we do visit we now use Firefox (the new beta is sound). Besides, Blogger prefers FF anyway.