Weekend Update

As promised, here's my Sunday update.

Aside from Lucas' birthday (about which I've already posted) this has been a nice, relaxing week. I haven't had classes and the paperwork I have to do is on hold because I have no idea when or where to send it. Sometime soon I'm going to get a panicked call from the Foreign Office asking me when I'll hand in my marks and after that I'm on my own until school starts again sometime in February. (The FO in this school has simply the worst communication skills I've ever encountered in my life. They're not actively evil like my previous school. They're just incredibly incompetent.)

I've been spending some time assembling what I need to make Joan's new computer something that's useful to her and which I can actually understand when the time comes for me to fix problems. The major problem I have right now is when Joan has a problem with her computer (my old Sony laptop from 2003) I can't be of much help. It's all in Chinese, and Joan doesn't know the technical terms in English. Trying to diagnose a problem when I have to wait for her to translate (badly) every piece of text on a dialogue box, guess what it really says and then try to see if I can fix it is not good for my sanity.

So what's my solution? Well, I've managed to track down a copy of Windows XP Professional in English. I've also managed to pick up the "MUI" (Multilingual User Interface) pack for it that includes Chinese. I snarfed a copy of Office 2007 and am in the process of tracking down the Chinese Language Pack for that as well. I've used a virtual machine on my laptop to test out the configuration and make sure everything works as expected. The result is, when I've finally got it all installed on Joan's machine, a computer that has everything in place for her to work in her native language, but which will allow me to work in my native language should any problems arise.

Have I mentioned at all just how much I hate Windows these days?

From Lucas

Anyway, no other particularly interesting news to report. I did have someone ask me what Lucas' favourite toy is. Before his birthday I would have responded that his favourite toy was his stuffed dog that looks almost, but not quite, completely unlike Snoopy. Every morning when he gets dumped on our bed to play, he always spots the dog and starts pointing at it making "Ah! Ah!" sounds quite adamantly, and if we don't get it for him (and by "we" of course I mean "me") he gets a little bit upset.

Things change, however, and it's looking like that house I got him for his birthday (you can see a piece of it in one of Friday's pictures) is topping the list. He's still asking for the dog and still gets upset if you don't give it to him, but now the dog mostly lies there disregarded except for an occasional pounce. The rest of the time is spent with him puzzling over the house.

Life is good.