Those days are gone

RIP Wendy Richards - "Miss Brahms"

Brothers and sisters in Christ

Since early days Christians have observed with great devotion the time of our Lord's passion and resurrection and prepared for this by a season of penitence and fasting.

By carefully keeping of these days, Christians take to heart the call to repentance and the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel, and so grow in faith and in devotion to our Lord.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy word.

(Introduction to Ash Wednesday liturgy in Common Worship)



On a £12,500 per week pension, I think I could manage that.

The next challenge

Now its a graphics card upgrade.

New card in, and on the first boot-up the pc has frozen, not helped by the fact that I didn't put the mouse plug back! Just about to try again ... at least we got a picture on the monitor, albeit a strange resolution and with my desktop icons and folders all neatly arranged alphabetically down the left side of the screen.

The ZX Spectrum was easier in many respects ....

Recovery

Well, thanks to a little help from a friend, the old hard drive is now in the new pc and working as a "slave" ... (always wanted one of those!) ... which means that I can now access all the documents and templates stored on it. I can't access or run any of the promgrams on there, but I don't really need to. I've found that the Bluetooth dongle won't work with Vista, so I shall need to get a new one of those, and I'm just about to load on my Visual Liturgy software to allow me to concoct services, and I know this works as I've already put it on my laptop. I can also access the various sound files that are lurking on the old disc, some of which I'd forgotten I even had. Snatches from "Father Ted", "Star Trek" and "The Simpsons".

All in all, 95% is back, and the other 5% is not missed, so I've been very fortunate considering there are many people who lose everything in a "crash".

Unfortunately for the congregations of my 11 churches, I've also recovered my sermon files!

Getting there

Of course, if I read things properly, I would have seen that the Home & Student box referred to the version of MS Office, not Vista, and since I didn't purchase Office (having Professional 2003 already), that's why I didn't have the product key!

So far so good

This is being posted via the new pc. No problems yet, though this version of Vista is somewhat different to that on my laptop, and things aren't where I'm used to finding them!

Somewhat amazed that I've managed to connect it to the Internet via a network cable! Thought that I'd have difficulties with the settings, but it went straight on.

Still have to set-up the printer and scanner.

Perhaps I'll get my supper before I tackle that. Medallions of neck fillet of lamb in a quince sauce. Do a bit of veg to go with it .... *slurp*

Right, cross your fingers ....

Old pc in bits on floor surrounded by packaging of new tower unit. Mouse, keyboard, speakers and monitor plugged in - I just need to turn on the power switch ....

Maybe I'll make a coffee and watch "The Simpsons" first .....

Sunday Funeral

Since a power cut some four weeks ago (also on a Sunday), the power switch on the main pc hasn't turned everything off. Even when shut down power was still routing to the mouse and a 4xUSB extension socket, plus a hand-held game controller. If I turned off at the mains, when I turned the power back on, great whirrings and thunderings came from inside the machine and the power button and hard disc drive light flashed merrily. Well today, I turned off at the mains to see if it would re-set the mouse socket. Great knockings from inside the machine again, and I couldn't get it to boot up.

Laptop now connected to the printer and sitting on the desk. Only trouble is, I keep trying to use the old keyboard and wondering why no characters are appearing on the screen!

A trip to a computer store tomorrow is now on the cards.

Aaaagh!

It's just died!

Motherboard dying

I think that ny main desktop computer is on its last legs. Three weeks ago the network socket stopped working and I've had to link the pc to the web via a small wirelss unit plugged into a USB socket. Then I was unable to write anything to a blank CD. I can read discs, but can't write anything to one. Now, today, the mouse has died. The mouse itself is okay, but the pc has stopped recognising the socket. I think the motherboard is slowly dying. Thankfully I saved last night's work for the Benefice magazine onto a thumb drive, so if I link my laptop to the printer I'll be able to print it off and get it into the post tomorrow.

Looks like a new unit is required.

All gone now ...

... but it looked lovely at the Morning Office at 9.15 a.m.

Here we go again

Later than forecast ... the lunchtime weather said it would arrive at 3.00 p.m. The evening forecast said 7.00 p.m. In fact it was about 7.30 p.m. when it started. The world is once again turning white.

Now this is frightening!

In preparation for the Benefice Coffee Morning (for which I have made another 16 jars of 3-fruit marmalade) I delved into the lower shelves of the Butler's pantry to find some ground coffee. I hauled out a pack I bought in the Auchan hypermarket in Dunkirk just before Christmas, and found myself looking at an icon of Grand-mere Mimi!

Images of the Virgin Mary continually appear in and on the most unlikely of places and objects, but to find a picture of the venerable blogger of the deep south looking up at me was a moment of revelation!

Also disturbing was the printed invitation to be familiar and generous! I think I need to go and lie down!

As Lent approaches ...

After the storm

A crisp clear day.

Candlemas Day

If Candlemas Day be sunny and bright,
winter will have another flight;
if Candlemas Day be cloudy with rain,
winter is gone, and won't come again.

or ...

If Maries purifieng daie,
Be cleare and bright with sunnie ray,
The frost and cold shalbe much more,
After the feast than was before.
(1584)

Wintry blast!

The forecast for this Sunday afternoon appears to be fairly accurate!