So I finally hear that Marianne is at Birmingham’s lost piggerty office and can be collected. I will need to show them 2 forms of ID (one of which is photo ID) and pay a ransom of £3.

However, this is nothing compared to my NEED to be reunited with her.

The task: to install Mac OS 8·1 from an installer CD on a powerbook 2300c which has no functional OS on its hard disk.
The equipment: powerbook 520, powerbook 2300c, powerbook G3 Pismo, external SCSI 1x CD-ROM drive
The issues:

• I don’t have installer floppies for the 2300c.
• The installer floppies for the 520 (OS 7·5) are too early for the 2300c.
• The CD drive doesn’t have a mac boot ROM and so cannot be used as a startup device.
• The 2300c refuses to start up as an external SCSI disk on the Pismo.
• I don’t have the physical means to connect the 520’s and 2300c’s SCSI ports.

The workaround:

1. Attach the CD drive to the 520, then mount Norton Utilities V3·5 CD.
2. Expand the Norton Speed Disk image from this CD onto a floppy.
3. Dump the Speed Disk application from the floppy.
4. Copy the Finder from the Norton Utilities CD’s system folder.
5. Create a system folder on the floppy.
6. Put the rest of the files on the floppy into it.
7. Create an Extensions folder within the floppy’s system folder.
8. Because I don’t have both extensions for the CD drive on the 520 (so I’m not sure why the drive currently works with the 520 just now) but I do have them on my “mac stuff” folder on the Pismo, email them to myself. (OK, I could have connected the 520 and the Pismo by ethernet but my router/hub is in my lounge and the laptops were in my bedroom. I didn’t have another long ethenet cable and I couldn’t be arsed carrying either of them around and guddling with short cables. Nor could I be arsed with getting file-sharing going on the 520.)
9. Set up the 520 to receive email via ethernet and receive the CD extensions.
10. Copy the CD extensions to the Extensions on the floppy.
11. Shut down the 520 and detatch the CD drive.
12. Attach the CD drive to the 2300c.
13. Start up the 2300c from the floppy I’ve created.
14. Mount the OS 8·1 CD and start the install rigmarole…

update: the OS installation took a further 2 hours

OK, I admit befuddlement is my normal state of mind but this one has me stumped.

About 11pm tonight I noticed my powerbook was failing to connect to my ISP’s email servers and that web browsing wasn’t working. A menu bar icon told me that I’d lost wireless connectivity. The usual cause of this is my router ceasing to broadcast – restarting the router normally cures things. This time it didn’t. Several restarts didn’t help. Both OSX and OS9 told me that I had no Airport (wireless) card. When I tried an 802.11b/g wireless card in the PC card slot, normal service was resumed.

However the b/g card has two disadvantages: it takes up the PC card slot in which I use a PC SCSI card and it doesn’t work under OS9. Also the Airport card which doesn’t have these disadvantages (it fits in dedicated slot just below the keyboard) cost me money. I resent things burning out.

Time for a beer and to talk local politics with Pete & Jane………….

There were two likely causes: either the card itself had burnt out or the ariel (which passes through the hinges) had abraded and snapped. (Of course the third possible cause was that the bits connecting the Airport card to the motherboard had died. However this is too painful to think about: dying motherboard bits = time for a new powerbook. Also dying motherboard bits would manifest in other ways – like the whole damn powerbook ceasing to work!)

So I tested the Airport card in my desktop G4. Yes, just to enable me to test my Airport card, Apple built wireless card slots into desktop macs. Man, do I feel special! The Airport card worked so it looked as if my powerbook’s ariel was toast. On a whim, I put the Airport card back into the powerbook, rebooted and SHAZAM! Back to normal wireless connection.

So I’m relieved but puzzled. What caused the Airport card to stop working? Did it overheat or did it just need a holiday?

BTW, huge thanks to Pete for offering to lend me his Airport card to test the “ariel is broken” and “connection to motherboard is broken” hypotheses.

Time to go back to setting up the 520 to give away to a colleague and the 2300c to my sister.

When my colleagues and I return from leave at the end of September, I will begin easing out of my current day-to-day Production Management role. This is mostly to allow my colleague who will take on this role in January to ease into it now. However, according to my immediate boss, it also allows me to to take on some “Special Operations” during my last three months at Leckie & Leckie.

So
…………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. …………………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………………..
I will be known as an S. O. B. (Special Operations Bruce). You may prefer to expand this acronym in other ways.

My reports, especially when things don’t work, will be known as “SOB-stories”.

Of course, if I’m caught out of uniform behind enemy lines, I can be shot without trial. I think this is a cunning plan by Granada Learning to avoid paying my redundancy payment. Please keep your eyes peeled for 5th Columnists operating within ITV or Granada Learning who might give me away.

Now I know why I bear such a striking physical resemblance to Tom Cruise.

It’s got me bad – anyone know of a cure?

Today a lawyer signed a document recording that I am sane.* He didn’t even need to have studied psychiatry to do this.

*OK, not specifically sane but at least able to understand what I was doing when I gave another lawyer power of attorney over my affairs in the event that I can’t be contacted.

I feel vaguely similar to how I imagine Dorfl felt when he was given a piece of paper saying that he owned himself and was responsible for his own actions.

I begin to understand what losing a loved one is really like. Here’s the

Not long after my final train departed Birmingham for Worcester, I realised I’d left Marianne the Cuddly Pig on the train that took me from Edinburgh to Birmingham. It had been over an hour since that train had terminated at Birmingham – surely by now the train would have been cleaned and Birmingham’s lost property office would have her. Well, no way to find out because they’d closed for the weekend.

I ended up phoning the British Transport Police office at Birmingham. The officer I spoke to took my loss seriously, gave it an incident number and gave Virgin Trains’ numbers to try. However, none of the possibilities could be contacted until Monday morning. I cried on the way from Worcester’s station and could hardly bring keep the bitterness from my voice all this week.

Monday morning brought no joy. Birmingham’s lost property office didn’t have her and couldn’t advise anywhere else to try. I was disconsolate for the rest of the week and getting to sleep was unusually hard. I normally sleep holding Marianne. Without my comforter, with this loss and many other changes churning around my head, in a strange bed … thank goodness for Larry Niven.

Why all the fuss over a cuddly toy? Well, Marianne is more than a toy. She’s a comforter, a conversation piece, a drinking companion and an almost constant companion over 14 years. She is a relic of times when I respected who I was, when I was even occasionally optimistic, from before several failed relationships and a breakdown. There are many, many other good things in my life but all of them require maintenance. Not so with Marianne: she was just there. She asked for nothing and gave me no grief at all.

What’s worse is that the only person I could blame was me. I chose to take her with me, I chose to put her on the overhead luggage-rack, I forgot to check that I had all my luggage when I got off the Birmingham train, I chose, albeit unwittingly, to become dependent upon her. No doubt I can adjust but I don’t want to.

And on the 14th day she rose again
I got back to Edinburgh around noon on Friday, less than happy with the world. Not even seeing an old friend for the first time in ages or a successful shopping session could shake off my foul mood. I found the Virgin office and demanded they look up the train that had taken me to Birmingham would have gone afterwards. After an amount of persuasion and pleading, they found it would have next gone to the Central Rivers depot. Central Rivers staff had found her and will send her to Birmingham’s lost property office by Wednesday. My parents will collect her from there and by Friday Marianne and I should be reunited.

but England just have – they’ve won a cricket test match against Australia. If they win the next (and final) match, they’ll win the series. A black day.

I envy the Blues Brothers their half-pack of cigarettes. As I type, I’m on a Virgin train – and they are entirely smoke-free. Apparently it’s in the interests of my comfort and convenience. Well I don’t feel comforted and convenienced. I’m badly in need of calmness after a disasterous start to a week away from work* and even more in need of inspiration about deal with the poor quality of the photos I’m to use in a Fairtrade booklet**

Fair enough, I understand that smokers are a minority. Even more, I understand that non-believers may not want to partake of communion with Nicotiana. So it may well be right to put us in a ghetto. Also, why should we smokers share our costly manna with you? But to effectively forbid us to exist? Nope, that’s wrong. It seems the nanny state rides high – but the nanny is a martinet in a starched pinafore.

Three slight mitigating factors: Virgin provide powerpoints for laptops and cellphones. Their stops at stations are long enough to smoke half a cigarette on the platform. Their trains are very clean.

*mislaid keys caused me to miss the train I intended to take – so I’m running 4 hours late.

**I took them, so it’s not surprising the composition is poor. However the blurriness is worthy of a Damian Hurst award for utter crapness. I think my camera has finally gone to meet its digital maker. However, for a cheap-and-cheerful point-and-press, it did very well.