To anyone who's been wondering why I haven't been updating my JM site with all the latest news......

I've been having ongoing issues trying to connect via my ftp software to my host server, but I just keep getting
an error message which it proving frustrating......

'The remote server denied login. Your username and/or password is not correct, or attempting more concurrent connections than the server allows. [67] Additional information: Access denied: 530.
 Server has replied: [530] User cannot log in, home directory inaccessible..'

I've checked and double-checked, triple-checked my usernames and passwords, but no luck so far....

*sigh*

I'm hoping to hear from my server before too much longer as to what's up........until then, any updates are
on the back burner, not only for my JM site, but all my others as well.

*heads desk*

It's that time of year where life can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in the seconds it takes to type that well used phrase.

I was prompted to write tonight because of an email sent to me out of the blue.  I hadn't heard from this person in over a year, but that wasn't the surprise, the subject of the email wasn't a surprise either.....but the content and tone were certainly a surprise.   But I get ahead of myself......

( read more ) </font>
</div> and what is up with LJ and it's stupid coding? *duh*

Happy Birthday to me...
I feel one hundred and three...
I'm forty nine now foreverrrrr
Happy Fiftieth to me.....

Yes, folk in little over an hour, New Zealand time, I will pass over the threshold of youth and fall onto the slippery slope of middle age.

I turn fifty tomorrow and according to my Mother, that happens officially at about 3am, the time I was born. Bloody inconvenient if you ask me...but apparently I didn't want to come out. I was probably asleep and quite happy where I was.

Now, fifty years later and I am officially into my middle age.

Some would say that middle age starts when you're thirty, but I don't think so. Even into my forties I still considered myself 'youngish'....now I suppose I fall into the category of "matronly" - rather like Hattie Jaques in "Carry on Nurse"...about the right size, too.

Ah, well....*waves to my youth as it fades into obscurity*

Does this make me too old to ogle JM?





....Ngah!! didn't' think so. *ogles shamelessly*

Hard to believe it was a week ago that I collapsed without warning and got taken to hospital.

Yup,  a cup of tea and a timtam and five minutes later I'm on the loo about to pass out.  Quite a surprise I can tell you!!

Without any warning, symptoms or suggestion of being unwell, I'm suddenly being checked over by the ambulance guys, having needles stuck in me and being whisked off to Whangarei Hospital - all on a Sunday afternoon.   It was surreal.

I had already cleaned out one end of me chuffing into a bucket at home, the other end shot through at the hospital - in an embarrassingly spectacularly fashion when I had to give a sample -  so that within a couple of hours of being there, I had nothing in me anywhere along my intestinal tract.  Oh joy.

You know the saying "wanting to know the in's and out's of a maggots bottom"........well, I know exactly how the maggot feels.

I am now privy to knowing more about my rear end and its working than I ever wanted to know,  and most of the nursing staff at the hospital know just as much as well.....*groan*

Within four hours of being at the hospital I was passing blood - not a happy situation - with all sorts of dire thoughts going through my head of what could be causing it, along with really intense abdominal cramps and those nasty backless gowns to paddle about in.

It was a helluva couple of days.  

By Wednesday they had the test back and pronounced that I could go home.  Huh!!

What was wrong with me?  -  I had a virus.   Gastroenteritus to be precise.  No idea how I got it, no cure - just bed rest and fluids.

Sweetmotherfuckinshitcrapinabucketbuggeration @#*%$@#*

How many times have you gone to the Doctor feeling like a hundred different ways of crap and been told you have a virus !!

*sigh*

So home I went - thanking the Nursing staff for being so wonderful - and now spent the last four days doing exactly as instructed - bedrest and liquids and a great deal of TLC from my beloved Mum.  Of course I couldn't take antibiotics because of my dicky gut, the cramps are still being a pain, but at least now I'm only poohing once a day instead of twenty times, as I was in hospital.   And no sign of blood anymore, thank goodness.   Now if only my ears would stop playing up, my throat would be less sore and my strength come back, I'd be a lot happier.

Nothing I planned for this week has been accomplished, but I shouldn't complain.   Gastroenteritus is a mild complaint compared to what other exotic diseases I could have had.

Lets hope for a better week to come.

Oh, and CHAOS had it's final episode, so now I can watch the series in the order it was intended, not in the way CBS fucked it up.  Yay.

Episode Number	Episode Title	Actual  Aired Order
ep01	Pilot	#1(1st April)
ep02	Core Fortitude	#8(18th June)
ep03	Eaten by Wolves	#6 (4th June)
ep04	Song of the North	#2(8th April)
ep05	Mole	#5(28th May)
ep06	Remote Control	#7(11th June)
ep07	Love & Rockets	#3(15th April)
ep08	Defending Sofia	#9(25th June)
ep09	Two Percent	#4(28th May/orig sched 22nd April)
ep10	Glory Days	#10(25th June)
ep11	Deep Cover Band	#11(2nd July)
ep12	Mincemeat	#12(9th July)
ep13	Proof Of Life	#13(9th July)

and I am so happy !! *dances jig*

but what is up with the episode order?   So, in desperation I made my own episode order thingy, to try and keep the continuity.

*points* which explains a great deal of the ping pong changes in relationships will all the switcherooing about.

CBS are to be applauded for showing the episodes, and as a very happy fan I'm hardly  likely to object to whatever order they decide the play them, just as long as we get  the all...but I know that when they do, the first thing I'm going to do is play them  again in the correct order and get the maximum enjoyment out of them.

Roll on the DVD.

last edit:19/6

Well, it's been a fun time the past 36 hours, I don't think.



I have no idea how, but I got hit by one of the 'fakealert' viruses doing the rounds. It was piggybacked with a whole slew of other, malicious worms and trojans - VB-AFZ.worm, VB-AGB.worm, TrojanDownloaderFakeAlert.BLB.trojan, kryptik.CB.trojan, WIN32agentNGC.trojan....and on they go.

this poisonous brew appeared when my daughter started up my computer. It seeded pop ups all over my desktop supposedly warning me of a major crash of my hardrive, corrupt sectors, and all sorts of nasties, while installing a supposed microsoft virus checker with a link to purchase(of course) once it had found a host of problems.

I run WinXP SP3 using NOD32 as my antivirus(fully paid up and updated daily)plus the windows firewall, and tea timer(Spybot).

despite all that, it still got on my system. Luckily I know how to boot into safe mode, particularly as it wouldn't boot properly when restarted. From safe mode I was able to use my virus checkers to make a preliminary clean, followed up with a program called malwarebyte, recommended by several forums. With a partial clean, I then was able to boot up relatively normally, get online and update the antivirus software and scan again, rooting out further remnants of the viruses. In the end, the virus/hijacker/trojan was routed, but it left my system in a complete mess.

I could only see 2 icons on my desktop - My Computer and Recycle Bin. My startup menu was none existent, completely blank, and two of my partitions were also 'hidden', appearing blank. All my programs, including accessories, in startup were invisible and unaccessible.

several programs wouldn't work, even from 'my computer', including firefox, so I had to go via a hyperlink in one of my antivirus to get onto the net, then looked up recovery options. One was to use a teeny program called unhide, which did a terrific job of finding all my hidden folders and files, but even that couldn't find all of them. My accessories/system tools were still missing, and all my restore points were gone too, so I couldn't do a system restore.

I may still have to reformat my C:/ drive partition, but atleast none of my other stuff is gone, just messed about a bit.

guess what I'll be doing this weekend.......backup, backup, backup.....

bastard virus writers, what shits they are to create such a horrid virus.

I'm lucky, I have a basic knowledge of computers and didn't completely panic when things started to go wrong, but it was a close run thing.

last week - a leaky roof
this week - malicious code
what will next week bring?

I'm almost afraid to wonder..........

Unhide program for revealing hidden files/folders
http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/grinler/beta/unhide.exe
Bleeping Computer forum entry with above in context
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic395235.html
Malwarebyte software at Cnet - free download
http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html

and what a wet week it was!!!

after living in this house for the best part of two years, and with the variety of weather Northland can throw our way, the roof finally decided to spring a leak.

and where, you may ask did that leak spring?

right above the multi box that powers my computer!!!

EEEK!!

it was like being in an episode of the xfiles where water is trickling into a light fitting followed by tentacles.....um...well, there weren't any tentacle, not really, but the water was all too real.

EEK!!

after the quickest shift of furniture and disconnection of a computer in history, I was able to get a bucket under the lampshade before it overflowed. I've always hated this particular style of lampshade because, being a large inverted soup plate, it caught all the bugs and became almost opaque until I vacuumed the buggers out. For once I was glad of the bowlish design because it was able to hold almost half a litre of water before I got it down, and all without spilling a drop *phew*....

after extensive investigation - poking my poor sister up into the roof cavity to find the leak - and clearing all the autumn leaves that had collected on the roof over the past month creating dams, hence forcing water up under the edge of the long run roofing, through the ventilation gaps/folds, the rain water then flowing across the ceiling gib board towards the lowest part of the ceiling - my center light - then trickling down the power cord to collect in the glass bowl of the light.

what fun.

so after much ladder climbing, leaf clearing and being offline for several days waiting for the weather to dry up and test the effectiveness of our efforts, it was deemed safe enough to return all the furniture back to it's place and plug my computer back in again - *yay*

then when I thought the worst was over, when the news had finished this evening, the blasted light fitting parted company with it's anchors and dropped down a foot, now only held up by it's power cord through a hole in the ceiling gib board - whoever had put the light up had only screwed it into the gib, which when wet the screws pulled out of!!!

drama, drama, drama.....so, guess it's time to change the light fitting.

didn't like it anyway.

thankfully the weather is forecast to be dry over the weekend, and I'm going shopping tomorrow for a new one.

of course we realise now that the former owners of the place decided to tart it up before selling with a rushed paint job, bulk lot of curtaining, carpet and light fittings, said fittings installed by idiots. Even I know you don't screw straight into gib/dry wall without anchors or at least battens on the other side to screw into. *duh*

another week gone, another drama survived.

and I'm back online *WIN* with the multibox carefully placed where it can't possibly be affected even if I get a deluge from the ceiling!!! *HAH*....but I hope that doesn't happen, because wet carpet smells gross *LOL*

How I spent my Good Friday, this Easter weekend.

http://follyfoot-tv.co.uk/JLP/gallery.htm

or I should say, how my youngest has spent her first week of the school holidays.

She, together with 59 combined cadet's from army, airforce and navy, spent a week as Junior Leaders at the Recruit Training Centre at Devonport, culminating in a final parade on friday, 22nd April.

The above link takes you to a page with photos and footage of the parade. Despite the appalling weather the kids were smart and focused, ending with a rousing haka before we had to make a dash for the mess hall and a hot cup of tea when the skies opened and drenched everyone.

I hope everyone has had a great Easter weekend. We've had a day of good company and excellent munchies, thanks to Mum, and finished up with a round of silly card games.

Tomorrow is Anzac day - Lest we forget.

Given the bums rush from CBS, it's hardly a shock that CHAOS has been shunted off schedule after only three episodes. They didn't exactly go overboard with promotions, interviews or chat show appearances, messed about with the episode order so that it became confused with missing scenes and context, and buried the series on a Friday night - supposedly the graveyard for emerging series.

As if that was enough, they made all media unavailable to anyone outside the states, ignoring the large fanbase of the actors involved from around the world, and across the border in the place it was filmed in.

not a brilliant marketing strategy.

Now the series is cancelled.

If CBS has any sense at all they will rush all 13 episodes on to DVD to capitalise on its notoriety and allow the sales to make up for their previous lack of marketing judgement.

I know I'll be putting in my order as soon as it's available.

Despite being half way around the world, I manage to keep my finger on the pulse of the new series - CHAOS.

It takes time, patience and some sleuthing, but I manage, despite all that, to keep up to date. If I didn't, I'd probably have to wait the best part of a year before the series managed to find it's way down to me, here. Either that, or I'd have to wait for the DVD of the series to come out.

I'm way too impatient to wait THAT long.

Anyway, I watched the second episode with some anticipation, as the Pilot had been a bit ruined with all the clips (out of context, for the most part), but this episode - Song of the North - was largely unknown.

In the pilot, they had set the scene of a fun, fast paced and quirky series. In this episode you got to see the four amigos acting more on their inate goodness - being bad for the sake of being good - than just larking about like overgrown boy scouts.

Again, Freddy Rodriguez was a standout as the newbie with a heart, his fellow operatives also showing that they are far from being completely jaded, and in fact almost wear their hearts on their collective sleeves when it comes to protecting and saving innocents caught up in political machinations.

This episode proved without a doubt, to me atleast, that together these guys are capable of doing almost anything once they set their heart on it.

And that's not a bad thing. I don't suggest that what they do is realistic or even believable in the world we live in, but it's a nice fantasy to think there are these guys being bad for the sake of doing good, whatever the odds.

I enjoyed it, and there were some lovely by-plays between the characters, more of their foibles and quirks on display if you cared to look, and also some interesting history dragged out, as well.

Roll on next friday.