Work and Junket

Been kind of avoiding the computer this week, my quick trip to London seems to have worn me out and sitting at computers requires too much thought.
Let's see... where was I at the end of the last episode... oh yes, London.
( WebSphere Junket )

Very tired at fencing last night, sabre waving all over the place in an ineffectual way as I do when tired. Welsh open next weekend, I still need to become enthused about it.
Having read about someone elses fencing lesson earlier, I thought I'd try their footwork drill while on the piste. Worked quite well against random people running at me, possibly just because it was different and unexpected, but I'll take I what I can get. (Two steps back then a small jump, something about it was convincing them to finish their attack so I could parry it. Possibly a small pause or balance shift between the step and jump tripped them up... but when I try to do that deliberately it never works.)

At work I have a new PC. It is nice and fast, but seems reluctant to remember my desktop background settings between start-ups. I've spent most of today struggling to get my non-standard software back in place. Why does Putty have to store its saved sessions in the Windows Registry? Google toolbar is now blocked as well, eventually found a copy on the PCWorld website. PCWorld... I feel so dirty.
Happily this version of XP seems to cope with accessibility settings much more sensibly than the previous one. Setting fonts to large previously changed everything *except* the system messages and setup screens. Now it seems to have changed everything so I can actually read the display settings without having my nose to the screen.

This weekend is R&R. Going to see Curse of the WereRabbit, and the annual socks purchase will take place.

Bah!

New standard settings mean I can't customise my desktop background!

Partly this annoys me because the insipid blue background they've provided doesn't give me the contrast I need to manage oodles of windows on a small monitor - my eyes have trouble picking out window edges if I don't have either a strong contrast or plenty of space to see the pattern change.
Mostly this annoys me because I've had my robot fencing picture on my work desktop for 10 years and I like it that way!
It is impervious even to my illicit Admin priviliges!

Happily I have found that they are using a 3rd party app BGinfo to put stats on the screen, and it is customisable. After logging out it defaults back, not sure where it's reading it from, probably something over the network since it comes as a package deal with my internet access, but as long as I don't log out too often I can subvert their standard desktop.

So it is once again a nice contrasting BLACK, with my robots at the center. And my Admin rights are at least good for upping the dpi setting so I can have both reasonable screen resolution and readable text.
I think my computer is finally ready to use. Must be home time.