Missing Chats

Another week has gone by, without a chat with nyghtshayde, and I am seriously suffering withdrawal symptoms. The problem is, the hard disk went down as well as the motherboard, leaving me completely bereft of a means to get back online from my home.

I blame the pisspoor anti-virus protection provided by the ISP, myself. They are a company bereft of clue. I suspect that, in spite of firewall software and at least two anti-virus software packages on my system, Something Got Through over the broadband connection and completely burned out my computer, causing the boot disk to fail catastrophically, just when I had the motherboard problems sorted out.

I've got some backed up data, but not all of it: I was in the process of performing the backup of my most critical recent files when all of this crap happened. And since this included the latest incarnation of my novel, well ...

I guess that, when I get my system back up and running (which will involve a rebuild from scratch - since I have acquired pretty much enough spare parts now to build one afresh from the ground up - I might want to do something else with it other than keep it running over broadband and risk losing all of my data once again some time down the line.

So, when I do get the new system running, it's probably going to be best if I take that system and keep it permanently offline, use it solely to write with, and use the public library facilities to post new stuff online (I might avail myself of a memory stick to carry all of the stuff I'll need to upload).

Thing is, if there are enough spare parts left over, I can get a new hard drive, probably more memory, some other parts somewhere down the line, and get myself a second, smaller, unit - and that's the one I'll be connecting online for chats.

But this does mean, T, that it may now be some considerable time before you start seeing my cheerful little icon apoear in your Yahoo Messenger on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. I'm so sorry, hon. :(

Four Hundred Years Ago

Remember, Remember
The Fifth of November
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.

I see no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be Forgot.

History of Guy Fawkes Night

Guy Fawkes in History

Why We Celebrate Guy Fawkes Night

Hard to believe that the event Britons celebrate at this time each year is only 400 years old. It's been four centuries, and to this day, we celebrate what was, for its time, a contemporary attempted 9/11 attack.

And yet, when you see what's going on in British politics in this day and age, it's not to hard to agree with the old Anarchist saying that Guy Fawkes was the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.