h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sunday 9th November

The rain has stopped. Daughter El conducts the Chapel Choir in Dublin's oldest university, Trinity College. I'm going to drive her in there now. I'll post later on to say the other stuff I'm doing.

Deb

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my wife from wandering..."

Thanks, rec, I had just got the darned thing out of my head.....here we go again.

Well, the hole is fixed now. So you can stop singing.

So, after coming back from dropping El into town, I drank some coffee, then tackled the leak in Mrs G's car. After dismantling the overhead light, I found that the water was getting in around the radio aerial. I applied mastic all around it, dried everything off and put it all back together. Next I got our leaf hoover and hooved up all the leaves on the back lawn and in the side passage. After lunch I took the back off the coffee maker because it seems to be producing a lot of steam, but I couldn't see anything wrong.

Finally I disposed of an old axe by chopping it up with a new axe. The head goes into the metal recycling while the handle will be used as firewood.

A good day - not too busy.

[Amy P]

Monday 10th November

Reading Malabarista's complaints on her 'flouncing' thread have reminded me of all the problems this site suffers from which have apparently been ignored. We're told there's a new version coming soon, but nothing has been done to fix the existing problems. As a result, the system has been left in an unusable state for a year and we now have no writers, sub-editors or scouts, other than a few dedicated individuals who are running the site between them.

This has re-awakened in me the depression, frustration and disgust which caused me to resign from my volunteer positions nearly a year ago.

I won't be able to post anything now for a week or so, so this thread will just have to lie dormant.

I must admit I find Pliny makes me fume sometimes but, because I'm not the slightest bit technical myself, I just expect someone else to sort it out.

[Amy P]

To be honest I am just grateful for a site that allows me to talk with pleasant people. If it loads wrongly, crashes, isn't the right colour, and sometimes results in lots of conversations turning up all at once, that is something I have no problem with. Does that make me a bad person? Do you think I care??

I agree with pebblederook, I just like the chat.

At the moment I can read in Goo and as long as that continues, I'm happy. If I have to veer into the new skin occasionally I can live with it, as long as I can come back to Goo.

Deb

I stick with Brunel and haven't had a crash for ages now.

Why chop up an axe? You can give the head a new handle, and whatever shape the head is in you can surely sharpen it? I sharpen mine with a file and nothing stands before its mighty swoosh.

Wednesday 12 Nov

Feeling better today. Returning to h2g2, I see that my High Cross entry has hit the Front Page. A87835107

I put a lot of work into that. It involved driving to each of the crosses and checking it out, photographing, and deciding was it good enough to be included. One of them was too hard to organise so I trusted the descriptions in book but all the others got a personal visit. Mrs G and I even had a lovely weekend away in a castle so that I could visit the cross in Sligo.

Welcome back.

The axe was too small, dear Lisa. It wasn't heavy enough to split the big logs for our kitchen stove. (Americans, this is for heating the kitchen, not for cooking). The new axe is bigger.

I could have given away the old axe but I didn't know anyone who wanted a 30-year-old axe.

The pliny/old skin problem is that new users are directed to Pliny which discourages them from writing entries, and that is the purpose of this site. Sure they can learn to use one of the old skins, but for every tiny change to an entry, they have to decipher a Captcha. I sometimes have to do this 3 or 4 times before the change is accepted. Sonetimes the captcha is accepted but the change is lost.

What new user would want to do all that?

So we have a place for chatting but not one that encourages writing.

[Amy P]

In researching my bouzouki entry, I just came across a post from Terri / ZenDevil in 2009 which I never saw. She invited me up to Sligo to give her mandola lessons. I would have gone. Terri died the following year.