… And now my laptop is dead and will not boot.

Sigh

I’ve been demoing ZENworks Configuration Management to partners across Europe for two weeks with no problems at all. Mainly running a live demo from my set of servers at home.

It’s risky - I might have a power outage, WAN outage, local issues - but so far so good.

I’ve also got a fully virtualised demo on my laptop incase things go bad.

Today both failed.

Internet access was via an authenticated proxy - and for some reason I couldn’t connect to my servers at home. Then my virtual demo started to get sick. Firefox kept hanging, Windows went slow, DNS stopped working. It all pointed to a networking conflict of some sort.

Eventually the technical team opened up their firewall so I didn’t need a proxy - and the demo looks great.

Two things I’ve learned again:

1. if something is going to fail - it will do. Big time.
2. always have a plan C (death by powerpoint) and maybe a plan D…

One of Grania’s activities uses Tripod for hosting. Grania is now looking after the online stuff.

It’s crap.

The previous incumbent had painstakingly written about 10 pages using FrontPage; everything was static.

Editing requires patience. Mass changes are impossible.

I knocked up a replacement in WordPress in about 5 minutes.

Around and about England in the last few weeks:

Recycling bins in Stoke Newington

Decoration on a fence, Stoke Newington

Seen on a wall on Park St in Bristol