July 18, 2008: A week of crashes..
Why is it that software crashes at a time when one is busiest? Late last week QuarkXpress decided to have a hissy fit and corrupted the file containing the World Trial Souvenir Program. With 71 of 72 pages almost completed, our hearts skipped a few beats, we can tell you!One of the most annoying things about software is that there are known glitches, but one does not find out what the glitches are until you experience them first hand. A whole day was wasted uninstalling and reinstalling software to no avail, and finally a service 'call' to Quark for help. Quark has one of the better technical service offerings - thankfully. It is completely virtual (and instant), which we like, and on both occasions we have used them, the outcomes have been successful. World Trial programme recovered; stress alleviated. We'll get this baby 'in the can' before it crashes again! Software woes behind us...or so we thought.

This week started with a crash of all of our website design, illustration and photo software (amongst others). Another 'known' software glitch. We lost the whole day first to finding the documentation on a fix, downloading the patch (that's like a band-aid in computer lingo) and when that didn't work, trying the six other steps that would hopefully fix the problem. No such luck. Monday was not a good day! The problem was finally resolved on Tuesday after a 60 second call to Abode. Wish we had thought of that on Monday instead of trying to do the 'self-serve' option.

The week has ended as it started...this time, Microsoft Office decided to pack a sad and go out in sympathy with Quark and Adobe. This is taking "me-too" too far! We've spent more time in the last week trying to fix software than more people spend at their jobs in any given week...and we don't get paid for downtime. Leaving the corporate world has its disdvantages and one of these is not having an IT team to fix these annoying problems and do the time-wasting for you.

While we live in a high-tech world, where email, blogs etc are our major forms of communication, we sometimes get small reminders of simpler times. Running along a lonely country road, we found this...no houses in sight, outstanding in its field. You can even see the IAU/THU - to let you know the next pick up will be Thursday (yes, we snapped this first thing on Thursday morning - Dydd Iau being Welsh for Thursday). It is a rather long run to get to this particular post box!

Remember these?

Not much else happening in this neck of the woods. We didn't go trialling last weekend because Kelvin was sick. Hopefully we'll get out with the dogs and camera this week. Happy trialling to those lucky enough to get to one (or two).