Back when XPs Service Pack 3 (SP3) came out I tried installing it through automatic updates after following all the recommendations eg. turning off antivirus software during installation, ensuring I had no viruses etc. Well of course, just like with SP2, the computer wouldn't boot normally. I managed to get into Safe Mode and do a system restore which got me going.

By July my computer was running quite sluggish though. It's old, 5 years old, and hadn't had a format for at least 3 years which is a long time if you're like me and forever trying out new programmes. So I formatted it and reinstalled XP SP2 and installed SP3 with no problems whatsoever. All was going great until microsoft dished out the August updates.

There were a lot of updates that month although I didn't need many of them because I don't have microsoft Office installed. I stupidly went and let the automatic updates just download and install all the updates applicable to my computer. Bad move. After a reboot my computer again would not load windows. Once I got into safe mode but mostly it went round and round in an endless reboot loop. Now they tell you at an XP newsgroup to turn off "reboot on error" or whatever it's called. Well that's all well and good if you can get into windows to do it. Duh!

I tried everything I knew to get it working except a repair install which I avoided in case I lost something I had forgotten to backup. It's the little things I'll forget, like backing up my newsgroup settings and accounts. In the end I decided to take the poor pc to Paul, my computer guru. At this point I was thinking that maybe my motherboard was had it or some other piece of hardware. Paul did a repair install in the end which got my computer running again with no loss of data but it was so painfully slow. I put up with it for weeks but gave up and formatted it again and reinstalled windows on the 14th of October.

It is running like a dream. So snappy fast and so far no problems which really indicates to me that it was the updates all along. So instead of giving microsoft ad lib use of my hard drive space to install every update they put out I have now installed each update one at a time and rebooted between every single update and used the computer for hours before installing the next update. This is so tedious. I have only installed the security updates, not the regular updates.

At the time of writing this I have that darn yellow shield back telling me of still more updates. Apparently there is some new, scary monster out there and this is an unscheduled emergency update. I clicked on it and downloaded it but then decided to do some reading before installing and guess what! Already there are people having problems after installing it. Now what's a person supposed to do? I'll wait a couple of days and then cross all my fingers, toes and eyes and hope I have a working computer after I install it.

Well I've just learned something that I never could understand. I always thought racing announcers needed glasses or, more likely, that I didn't understand how they call a race. At the finish they might say that a horse won by 2 links? Well I always thought they were saying 2 lengths and assumed that meant that a horse won by 2 horse body lengths.

Hubby was just sitting here telling me how he found an old glass jug down near the old cow yards that had gils on it and I was trying to remember how much a gil was. Metric came in towards the end of primary school for me so I kind of know both imperial and metric. A gil is half a pint or 300ml by the way. He then was talking about chains and links and surveyors and how horses won by 2 links.

Ahhhhhh, the penny dropped. How old am I? Older than I want to be but I've spent the last 30+ years thinking that horses were winning by 2 body lengths and that the horse racing callers were going mad and it was Links all along. A link, for those of you who don't know, is 20.12cm.

My husband did once have a really great old tape measure that had feet and inches on one side and Links on the other. Unfortunately I used it once......I had to cut some fencing wire, mesh, for the goats and I couldn't carry the roll so I measured how much I needed and went and unrolled the wire and cut it off. Problem was that by this time I had about 20 goats helping me as the roll of wire was sitting in one of their pens from the last use. I can't remember exactly how it happened but for some reason I was unable to carry the wire, the pliers and the tape measure back up the hill so I chose to leave the tape measure and pliers behind. I went straight back for them but it was too late. Someone had chewed the tape measure neatly in half.

I don't watch a lot of TV. Generally I watch the news and MASH and David Attenborough shows and not much else. Well MASH starts at 5 pm and usually around 4.45 I go and turn the telly on and start doing exercises I have for my back. So the other day I'm doing these exercises but not watching the TV when I thought I heard someone say, in an ad, Supercallifrigginawesome.

No, couldn't be, I'm thinking. No way would they allow something like that at that time of day surely? Now I'm not one to knock swearing. When I had my goat dairy I reckon every single one of those goats knew every swear word ever invented plus ones I invented. I don't, however, particularly like to hear swearing as part of a general conversation. Well I've been keeping an ear open to see if I should hear that ad again and sure enough one evening at about 8.30pm I heard it again.

So then I knew it wasn't my hearing playing up on me or my imagination running wild but I was still stunned that the ad was played in the afternoon. Now I've heard it again before 5pm! I can't even tell you what the ad is for, food I would assume and there is a guy dressed up in some weird ourfit. But really, should we be teaching our kids that it is ok to swear as part of normal conversation? What about many older people who really don't like to hear any swearing to start with?

My son would say I'm old fashioned but I really think it's going to be a little strange to one day have our Prime Minister and members of Parliament swearing away in every conversation not to mention seeing attractive celebrities with garbage pouring out their mouths. I mean think about it. If you hear someone swearing all the time (like in every sentence or so) do they go up or down on your personal ladder of intelligence?

I have started doing some volunteer work at the retirement home in our small town. When I was nursing back in the 80s and 90s I was always too busy to give the aged patients the time they deserved so now I can make up for it. I love it. These people are so past caring what others think of them that they say and do and wear whatever they want. Nothing has to match and yet they manage to dress with dignity and care, far more care than the younger folk of today.

I was talking to one lovely lady who has just turned 89. She has early dementia and is starting to forget things and she told me in all seriousness the other day that "they are putting something in the air to make us all forget things. Even the young people are forgetting". Sweet but sad. She understands that she is forgetting - I just hope she can go on believing that.

Well at least I can cheer up their day just knowing they are far ahead of someone half their age as I keep making mistakes at Bingo and they can flog me at bowls. If you ever feel you have time to spare for a little volunteer work, try an aged care facility. Even as little as an hour a week just sitting talking is enough to brighten up someone's day.

I use a free content management system to run much of this site. It's called Joomla. I chose to use it because of it's poularity and I wanted to learn how it worked so I could help out at another site.

It has one huge downfall though. I am using version 1.0.13 but I understand that this has not improved in the new 1.5 version. So you click on either my FAQs or Free Programs menus and you get a list of all the categories that I have chosen to use so far. That's fine and just how I want it. If you then click on one of those categories you get taken to an ugly list of all the program items in that category (or FAQs). There is no allowance for an intro to give you an idea of what it's about. Nope, you have to click on the program or FAQ name and hope you aren't wasting your time.

Wow, is this host good or what. Aussie Bob who owns and runs AussieHost.com has been my saviour of both my site and my sanity over the last couple of days. I was starting to think that all hosts are greedy theives. Here's a bit about what has been happening here - I'll try to keep it brief but that is not one of my good points.

Back in about 2004 I started a website with PagesGarden. All went great for years and then all of a sudden in August 2007 the email stopped working and then my site was always down. I found a new host and moved after getting no reply to a mulittude of emails to PagesGarden. I sent of yet another email cancelling my account but in September they went and took another 12 months of funds out of my bank account.