Blackberry's journal

I didn't go to my writing course yesterday because I woke with awfully painful knees and I just knew that if I did go it would ruin the rest of Easter for me, particularly as we were going to go to the gallery and I would have had to do a lot more walking and standing than usual.

John had a very long day yesterday. He had no sooner got back from a trip to Leeds when he got another job from Cramlington to Walsall and didn't get home till 11.00 pm. Even so he was awake before me this morning.

Today I feel rather a lot better, but I still haven't been shopping because John went to Morrison's at about 10.00 am and the place was swarming already. He thought I would find it intolerable, and I expect I would have done, too. So we'll have to get up early and go shopping tomorrow morning. I hate shopping !! I HATE SHOPPING !!

At least I've already got John's and Charles' Easter Eggs!

I've done absolutely nothing today. I really meant to make Penny's Impossible Orange cake, but I shall have to do it tomorrow afternoon now. I still can't decide whether to buy Hot Cross Buns or make some. I didn't even cook dinner, because Friday night's kebab night, isn't it?

When I say I've done nothing today, I have in fact spent several hours trying to make MyClassicFM Player work. I also spent hours trying to find a freeware program to find out IE's Content Supervisor password, because I wondered if the Content Supervisor was the problem.

I hadn't personally put any password in, so Micro$oft must have done it for me. When I tried to log in without a password, it gave me the coy little hint "What's the password, dummy?", which had me trying things like "Sooty" and "puppet" and variations thereof. In the end Charles guessed it. The password was "password". Now if I were to have taken that seriously and looked at it logically, the password should have been "What", shouldn't it?

Anyway setting Content Advisor or Supervisor or whatever it's called at a non-existent level, where I can view all kinds of evil and perversion made no difference whatsoever.

So far I have spent hours updating Windows XP, downloading and applying all the patches and SP2. I have downloaded and installed the latest version of Internet Explorer. I have downloaded and installed the latest version of Windows Media Player. I have downloaded and installed Firefox 3.beta summatorother because it was the only version which would work with the IE emulator (recommended by Classic FM Help desk), except that it didn't and screwed up the display. I uninstalled Firefox 3 betasummatorother, and finally today, I spent the afternoon seeking password assistance and altering IE Content Advisor/Supervisor.

Nothing Bloody Well Works !! Sob!! Wail !! Gnash !!

What I have found is that Windows Media Player gives me access to lots of world-wide radio stations including several jazz stations, so I shall be listening to those instead when theJazz finally goes off air if I can't get this hootering MyClassicFM Player to work.

It's been snowing for a little while and the ground has a light powdering, but it's stopped again now. I do hope it's not too bad tomorrow when I have to go shopping. All I need is to slip and hooter up my knee/hip/back again.

Charles went to his ECDL course again on Wednesday and when he came back he was complaining about how boring it was, but I found out that he had been doing Excel spreadsheets, and had never done them before! I find that extraordinary since one of the things he did for GCSE was allegedly some sort of IT course. He knows quite a lot about computers and how to install hardware and so forth and also about Windows, but apparently hasn't used Excel, Word or Access or anything similar.

Well, actually, I know that he used to use a word processor at the office to write letters and send out bills, but I can't remember what it was. I shall have to ask him about that tomorrow. It may have been Lotus WordPro.

Even if he doesn't keep going to this course, I shall personally make sure he knows how to use Word, Excel and Access at least a little, because if he wants any kind of job, he needs to be able to use these things. Anyway, he should enjoy it. He's the only person I know who keeps an enormous collection of CDs in alphabetical order. I think I might try to persuade him to categorise the enormous quantity of electronic music he's made.

I must go to bed.  I really must get up early and go shopping.  UGH !!