Been pretty busy today at work, had two lots of testing to do. I’ve still not been paid for the last two weeks which is pissing me off, but I expect it’s just not cleared the bank yet (was supposed to go via BACS yesterday morning). Timesheet day again tomorrow! It looks like I’ll have to hire a car to go to Guildford as the company doesn’t seem to pay mileage, only hire car and petrol.

I bought some electronics components from BitsBox today, as I’ve been wanting to get back into doing some electronics tinkering in my spare time. I got a starter kit with a huge selection of wire, capacitors, resistors, LED’s, IC’s etc. and I got some breadboard so that I don’t have to bother with soldering (my soldering iron is in France). I got some RS232 connectors too in case I make something to interface with a computer.

Been a pretty slow day today, I had a nice lie-in until about 11:30am, although I didn’t go to bed until about 2am…. I’ve done my washing and hoovered my room, been watching a bit of Charmed series 7 and a really crappy Steven Seagal movie. I spoke to Kev, and he’s looking at buying a Joytech Control Centre 540C, which looks like a pretty nice audio/video/ethernet switch system. I was looking at the cheaper Control Centre 2, which has SCART instead of component, and only three ethernet ports, not six (I don’t need these as I have my wireless bridge with 5-ports).

I’ve just been browsing Scan and noticed that they’re now selling NorthQ products, the Dutch company that totally ripped-off Zalman. The good news is that they’re selling for about 25% less than you can buy Zalman kit for – 22ukp instead of 29ukp for a 120mm copper HSF with LED’s. Unfortunately they don’t do ones for my Socket A computers (Athlon Thunderbird and Thoroughbred) and my Socket 478 already has a Zalman.

I’ve 99% got my contract renewed, just waiting for the paperwork now, and then I’m in gainful employment until March 31st at least. I haven’t been paid for last week yet, and I just invoiced for this week! Been doing some telephone calls at work today and updating some paperwork, quite busy for a testing-free day. I’ve got a cable to send to Phil tomorrow. I might be going to Guildford at the end of the month, so can pop and see Kev.