Keeping busy

Last Friday, we had a great day with the grandchildren, A and her brother,J.

J is starting to walk a little ... only short distances at present. He tends
to get about more with a fast crawl. I showed how to kick a small ball,
carrying him with his feet slightly off the carpet, and swinging him a little
to gently kick the ball. I'm pleased to say that a short while later, he
started to dribble the ball by himself. (Well, I did refer to him as "J the
dribbler" in a recent post).

We had a long day with them (9 and a half hours), keeping them occupied /
entertained, and fed & watered, etc., so we both felt quite tired after
their mum had collected them at tea-time.

Saturday: I spent a good part of the day fitting new parts to our micro-
chip cat flap. The locking mechanism had seized up, so that the cat flap
was only working one-way .... our cats could get out of the house, but
couldn't get back in.

As it was still under guarantee, we were sent replacement parts by
Petporte. I spent 4-5 hours getting the defective bits out, and putting
the new bits inside ... about twice the time it takes to put together
flat-pack furniture sold by a well known Swedish/Dutch company. Ideally
PP should have provided full illustrations of what to do (with detailed
photographs) ... fortunately, I'd taken several close-up photos of the
entire internal mechanism, before I took it apart, which were a great
help to me in putting all back together again.

I spent the rest of the day, finishing off my marathon computer back-up,
and then installing Avira's Antivir, which appears to be working well.

I spent part of today training our cats to come back into the house
again, via the cat-flap, instead of through our patio door. I spent a lot
of time this evening encouraging Slayer to come back in ... she eventually
came in at about 8pm.

Mrs C made some delicious marmalade, which we sampled this evening on some
freshly made bread (with malted grains in it) ... yummy. There's nothing
quite like the taste of home-made marmalade ... the closest taste to it
is Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade, which is my favourite one otherwise.

This afternoon, we settled down in front of the TV to watch "Sunshine
Cleaning", which is mainly about the relationship of two sisters,
brilliantly acted by Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. Here's a link to the
IMDb website, if you'd like to know more.

A few things coming up this week ....

Sort out the wi-fi internet connectivity (for a talk I'm giving soon
for the charity I work for)
Find/replace my missing car handbook (missing since the car service
and MOT)
Find the code for our car radio (radio needs resetting after the car
battery was temporarily disconnected during the service)
Phone our boiler man, to ask him to fit a new pair of thermistors
Phone our roofer (to see to one of our drains, the downpipe and the
ridge tiles
Choose some photos for online printing (with Mrs C)
Give a talk on Flickr this Thursday (slide show finished last night)
Meeting up with friends tomorrow (jamming with electric guitars)
Committee meeting on Tuesday (for my charity)
Check out gas & electricity prices on online comparison sites (and make
a change in provider if necessary)
Review our cash ISAs, some of which are earning piddling amounts of interest.
Phone our holiday company (to ask about an admin matter)

By the way, we'll have the grandchildren with us all day on Friday.

There are a few more things on my list for this week, which I won't
bore you with (I'm unlikely to find time to do them anyway)

Piles of paperwork

... well, a lot of it online really.

We got the tax forms off to the Inland Revenue in time last week,
and this week, I've been soldiering on with another lot of paperwork
for the Inland Revenue. However rather than giving money to HMRC,
we're taking it off them, in the form of Gift Aid for the charity
I work for. The majority of our U3A members have signed up for this,
and I'm pleased to say that today I've sent off a claim for just over
£1,500.

My next job is to do a huge back-up of everything on our two computers.
I've had a look at the last CD-Rom I put together, and was surprised to
find that it was early November when I did this. I have saved some
photos and docs on USB flash drives since then. I'd like to finish all
this in the next day or so, as my AVG Professional anti-virus cover on
our laptop will expire this weekend. I'm thinking of replacing this
with Avira's free version of Antivir, which has has a good write-up in
reviews I've read. I've got free Avast on my PC, with no problems.

Apart from family activities, I've also been busy creating a website
for another U3A in the area, and am having a play with creating PDF
files in Open Office, and putting them up on a website (instead of
creating extra webpages). A couple of great things about PDF files
is that most people can read them (with Acrobat Reader), and that
they're 100% virus-free. They can also be downloaded onto your
computer, and be used for reference purposes (eg simple timetables
for groups meetings, etc).

Here's a 3-4 minute video of how to do this with Open Office (free
of charge) if you're interested ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE9jdA5T9SM

I struggle to read .docx documents sent by someone with Word 2007,
but they can be read in Open Office (though I've found that I can't
edit the end-result). I've tried the Microsoft Compatibility program,
but I'm not impressed with that... I found the end-result was read-only
also. If any of you have had a different experience, I'd be pleased to
hear from you.

We're looking forward to having our grandchildren for the day,
tomorrow. Wow, this past week has really flown by. I must get to bed
early for them (well, 11.35pm is early for me).

Domain renewals

Today I received a letter from what looked like a genuine domain name reseller/registrar … the Domain Renewal Group.

The letter is full of detail listing my name, address and one of my
website addresses, along with attractive prices for 1 year, 2 year
and 5 year renewals. There’s also a list of prices for optional domain
names, ending as .com and .net.

The letter is headed as “Domain Name Expiration Notice” and one
of the paragraphs reads as follows …

“You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on
the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your
current registrar to the Domain Renewal Group. Failure to renew your
domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online
identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you
on the Web.”

The rest of the letter is written in rather technical but very well
presented text, and on the reverse is masses of contractual stuff in
tiny print, which looks very genuine.

I spent several hours thinking about all this, and then looked very
closely at all the wording. And then a thought occurred to me … well,
how did these people get hold of my name, address and other details?**

Should I contact my existing web-hosting company (based in the US ),
and ask if DRG is genuine?

A quick search on Google for the DRG led me to several articles
entitled “Domain Renewal Scam” … here is a link to one of them …

http://www.domainscams.co.uk/domain-name-scammer_42_Domain-Renewal-Group.php

I thought some of you might own other website names, and so should
be aware of the controversy about DRG.

** it's the Whois register .... http://www.nominet.org.uk/other/whois/

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I've got to leave the house early tomorrow, to travel over to the other
side of Nottingham to do some child-minding - looking after Little A and
her brother J, while their mum goes to the doctor's surgery for some
physio.

Little A said to her mum: "I want to go with you tomorrow to the doctor's."
Mum replied: "Well, I'll show Granddad where the Jammy Dodgers are in the
cupboard, and you can have one while I'm at the doctor's." She was
very happy with that idea.

I think I'd rather have a Jammy Dodger than go to the doctor's.

What a treat

.... a blood orange. Mmmm.

Its colour is bizarre, don't you think?

Yet more photos of our family

Here is Little A who came to see us today …



with her bro … Little J, the Dribbler …



and here’s a photo I took about a month ago, of Mrs C with A



Aren’t they lovely?

Mum knows best?

Mini’s mum sent Mrs C a text last night. She’d asked Mini to come over
and lie down on her changing mat (to have her night nappy put on). Mini
is just 3 years old, by the way. After asking her 3 times, Mini stopped
what she was doing and came over.

Mum: “Do you know that I asked you three times to come and have your
nappy put on?”
Mini:”Yes, I know.”
Mum: “Well why didn’t you come when I asked you the first time?”
Mini: “Because I wasn’t impressed.”

A senior moment

Yesterday I had a bad senior moment. In a lapse of concentration (and
while in a hurry), I sent an email to a friend who lives nearby, with
the wrong dates for next weekend in it. I recall that I’d flipped open
my diary and had jotted down the dates Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 May!!

Last night my pal called round to see me to see if I was OK. He said
that he was feeling confused after reading my email. Well, who was more
confused … him or myself?!

I’ve got too much on my mind at the moment, which I think was the cause
of my loss of concentration … loads of jobs to do round the house,
family matters requiring attention straightaway (things which I
prioritise), lots of admin to do in respect of sorting out our finances,
lots of things I’d like to get on with (such as getting on with some
family history work and improving my photography skills), and too much
admin and teaching to do with the U3A. I mentioned a bit about this in
my last post.

Anyway, this senior moment has been a wake-up call for me … I can’t
carry on doing so much …. I’ve got to let go of some of the work I’ve
taken on. So I’m planning to ditch about half the work I do for the U3A
… website work and several committees & groups.

On a lighter note, Mrs C and I went to see George Clooney’s latest film,
“Up In The Air”, which was showing this afternoon at the Broadway Cinema.
You can read more about it on the IMDb site, which has film clips on it
too. I can recommend it to you … a good mixture of funny and sad moments,
and thought-provoking also.

Another treat for us was seeing Little J, taking his first few steps,
while he was with us last Friday. He’s now 14 months’ old, and has been
standing up tentatively and very briefly in the past few weeks. He is
babbling more, and can almost say the word: “Granddad”, when he sees me.

Talking about babbling … he often says something like “bugger, bugger” a lot.
I blame the parents for this. :)