Jessica's birthday - the big one oh - has now come and gone. We seem to have been celebrating it forever. She's had a friend to sleepover, a visit to the cinema with her friends, a trip to her favourite restaurant (Zeera Tandoori, which is another story), and Alton Towers.

Alton Towers was fun, but wet and tiring. Jessica didn't enjoy the really big rides (although Alex thrived on them) but had a good time on the slightly smaller ones. We managed to get disabled access passes and so didn't have to queue up at all, which was fab. We're just all worn out now.

Her first request for a present was for a Llama. A real one. Once we'd persuaded her that this wasn't really practicable she decided on a fluffy toy llama. This has proved no easier to get hold of. We're currently waiting on 2 different internet based companies sending one to us. In the end we created a letter pretending to be from the llama as he embarked on the boat in Peru on his way to Britain. Parenthood just keeps throwing up unexpected challenges!

Birthday tea with Deb's parents present on the day itself. Fun but low key, as we were all knackered.

Yesterday we climbed Moel Famau, hoping for a look at another superlambanana. No such luck. Although it's listed on all the maps, I'm told today that it won't be installed on Moel Famau until August. Oh well, we'll just have to go again another time. Fabulous view from the top though. All the way from Liverpool to Snowdon. Wirral very clearly visible between the Dee and the Mersey.

Hoping this summer to pick up the pace and do a little more walking, and the Clywdian range was originally one of my goals, so I'm pleased to have done Moel Famau. Found a leaflet with some longer walks in the same area. All we have to do now is persuade the kids to start - which is actually the toughest part of any walk. They've done 6 miles before now, but motivation is always the problem. Watch this space.

Been a short break from the blog again, mostly because of things going on at home. I've now got another free 5 minutes waiting for a train at Manchester Airport where I've been for a meeting (we have staff based there).

Looking forward to Jessica's birthday now. The plan is to take some friends to see Kung Fu Panda this weekend. Looks like fun, but I'll get the job of looking after Alex at home.

Alex wasn't well yesterday, throwiing up even water. However you could almost pinpoint the moment he began feeling better. He looked up at me and said "Daddy, I feel better, what can I eat?". I took the day off work to look after him, and took the opportunity to run software updates on 4 of my 5 computers (the other one is running FreeNAS but I haven't quite got it sorted out properly yet).

Deb is still feeling somewhat fragile - mostly because of the situation at school - but that's a story for another blog post.

Time to go and find my train.

Back to work today after a week off over half term. It's a bit miserable being back, particularly since I don't have a tremendous amount to do (hence I am blogging in work on my Palm again).

Great time off, made slightly more difficult by Jessica's teenage tendencies. Highlights were the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (plus a visit to the Wagamama); seeing Antony Gormley's "Another Place" at Crosby beach; and a 5 mile walk around Hockenhull Platts in Cheshire (we managed around 10 miles walking in total over the weekend).

"Another Place" was undoubtedly the highlight. It's an incredibly thought provoking piece of art, and well worth a visit. We spent over an hour sitting on the beach watching the tide slowly come in and cover the statues. I kept wondering what they were all waiting for. Deb commented that it reminded her of a scene from Doctor Who - they've all been hypnotized and are walking into the water together. There's something haunting about the fact that they are all facing the same direction. Truly stunning.

Jessica is still being a teenager. She would really rather spend time with her friends than with us, and this led to some rows in the later part of the holiday, but we managed OK.

Techniquest at Wrexham was also worth a visit, although I wouldn't spend more than a couple of hours there. Very robust science experiments for kids, although in a slightly odd campus location.

Still, back to work, without really having enough to do. Hey ho.

Errkkk, what a disastrous weekend. Jessica's slide into teenager-dom continues. She is becoming extremely difficult to live with. To cut to the end of the story, Deb and I agreed that Alex hasn't changed (except that he's bigger and faster than he used to be), and that we are no better or worse at handling things than we were. What has changed is Jessica - and specifically her ability to cope with Alex.

I think I've blanked out most of the rows and other such. The culmination however was losing Alex in Chester Zoo. This was the most dramatic one since IKEA a short while ago. He was about 5 metres in front of me when I turned back to see where Deb and Jessica were. When I turned back he'd gone. We were on our way out of the zoo at the time, and the reason we'd gone there was because we reckoned we had a reasonable chance of guessing where he'd go if he did disappear. The theory worked, but only just. After checking the shop and toilets, we did our usual routine in these circumstances. Deb grabbed a member of staff while I continued to search, checking the car park and car. We didn't think he'd go back into the zoo. By this time, Deb had mobilised the staff who were searching around.

Deb finally thought that the next most likely place for him to go was a land rover set up for the kids to play on by the Rhinos. A security guard was dispatched, and there he was playing as happy as anything.

It hit us both pretty hard, particularly coming so soon after the incident in IKEA. He's just to big and fast now. He was literally gone in the blink of an eye, and found a quarter of mile away on the other side of the zoo.

School finishes soon for half term, so I've taken some time off and we're hoping to recuperate a little. Let's see how we go.

The season's first cricket test between England and New Zealand is now underway. This leads me to reflect again on the decision couple of years ago by the ECB to sell the exclusive rights for live coverage to Sky. This effectively excludes me from being able to watch live cricket, and years on I'm still livid about it.

It just seems like such a short sighted decision by ECB. Lots of people who would otherwise watch cricket are now unable to. I won't pay for Sky (over my dead body), not even for cricket. What's more, on Sky it will only ever be a niche sport - whereas Channel 5 were actually doing quite a good job of providing modern coverage. And because it was pretty much the only sport they covered, it received pretty good treatment.

I read something a while ago which suggested that viewing figures since Sky took over the contract had plummeted. I can't help thinking it will be a disaster for cricket - as well as meaning I may never watch test cricket again :-(

Feeling rather chuffed today, having upgraded my laptop. It's a bottom of the range Dell Inspiron 1300. That said, it's an OK piece of kit - although perhaps a little bulky for really portable use.

Anyway, it came with 256MB of RAM. I turned down the salesman's insistence that I include more for about 30 quid because I knew I'd be running FreeBSD rather than Windows. Still, more memory always comes in handy.

After umming and ahhing about the memory on Ebuyer (would it be the right speed, would there be strange compatibility problems) I though of checking the Crucial website. I input my system details and it presented a number of compatible memory options. I chose the cheapest 512MB option, and got it with free delivery for half the price of the memory on Ebuyer. Installed and working without difficulty.

Encouraged, I then went looking for wireless cards. Again, I didn't include this when I ordered the machine from Dell because it was expensive, and probably Broadcom and therefore not supported by FreeBSD. Looking around, I found an Intel 2200bg chipset mini-pci card on Ebay for £15 which was stated as working on the Inspiron 1300. Installed that last night and was up and running in literally 5 minutes.

As an aside, it just goes to show that Unix isn't always as difficult for this stuff as it's cracked up to be. I had previously used a USB wireless device under the ural driver. My new mini-pci card is covered by the iwi driver. All I had to do to get it working was read the iwi man page and copy 6 lines into /boot/loader.conf (see the man page for details) and change the line in /etc/rc.conf which read "ifconfig_ural0" to read "ifconfig_iwi0". Everything just worked. I'm dreading having to install the drivers on the Windows XP partition, it'll be much harder. The moral of the story is, when looking for hardware to run on FreeBSD, make sure you buy something that's supported.

So all in all, an easy upgrade. In fact working inside the laptop was easier than working in many desktops (and particularly the small form factor ones I'm trying to turn into FreeNAS boxes - but that's another story)

Do I need to blog any more about my situation with Virgin Media? I switched ISP to them around November last, and I've had nothing but trouble since. They are dreadful.

My line speeds are dog slow - at peak times much slower than the 1MB line I used to have with Tiscali, although it's supposed to be an 8MB line. I've complained until I'm blue in the face. One of their engineers confirmed to me that the line is fine, the slow speed is caused by the contention ratios at Virgin. In short, they are cheapskates, meaning that all their customers are contending for too little bandwidth and the whole thing slows down.

I normally get less than 384K on a line tested as capable of functioning at 7660K.

The final straw now, they've throttled my access to dialup speed because they say I'm a heavy user.

I'm livid, as hopefully the letter I posted conveys. This is a modern broadband ISP folks, and to complain I have to write to them. Not call, email, or fax, but write. I'll post again when I hear back from them.

Had a hoot on Sunday at the Philharmonic seeing a live show called "Fanfare Ciocarlia, Gypsy Kings and Queens". Can't refer you to anywhere on the web about them as I haven't found a web address. But if you search Youtube there are a number of brief clips of their live shows.

To cut a long story short, it was a fascinating mix of eastern and southern European folk-ish style music, mostly claiming to have some sort of Gypsy background. It really managed to maintain a kind of carnival atmosphere, with different performers joining and leaving stage for different numbers throughout. This included spanish guitar; almost jazz style trumpet; gypsy-peasant brass; saxophone; and various singers from Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Macedonia. Oh, and belly-dancing style dancers.

It all made for a very lively and entertaining show. Bit odd though. If you'd told me beforehand that I was about to see a dozen pudgy balding middle-aged men mucking around on stage, well...

It was still great fun though.

Text of a letter I sent today to Virgin Media, my ISP:

This letter is a complaint about the recent decision to throttle my internet access.

I understand that I have been placed on an automatic list of the top 5% of users, and that with effect from Monday 28/4/2008 and for the ensuing week, my access will be throttled. This is completely unacceptable.

Why was I not told of the decision to throttle my access? An email notification would have avoided 3 expensive and unnecessary calls to technical support trying to diagnose a non-existent fault.

I made 3 premium rate calls to Technical Support today to query the slow speed I was experiencing. On the first 2 calls, the call handler simply fobbed me off from their script. Only on the third was it explained to me that my access was being throttled. I would like you to refund the costs of these calls which I estimate at 20 minutes x 25p = £5.00.

It was explained that I have been throttled as I fall within the top 5% of users. I simply do not believe that I fall within the top 5%. I am a light user of the internet, I do not for example download music or DVD's. Please tell me how much was downloaded and over what period of time to 'justify' this action.

It is not satisfactory that I am left waiting until Sunday for my broadband to be switched back on. I am a light user, and can only assume this is a mistake. Please restore unthrottled access immediately.

My experience with Virgin broadband has been one of consistently slow speeds and poor customer service - your "8 MB" service has turned out to be slower in use than the 1MB I used to receive from Tiscali. This incident is just the latest in a line of complaints and technical issues that I have had. I can no longer tolerate such a poor service. I wish to be released from my contract with Virgin WITHOUT PENALTY PAYMENT so that I can take a contract which actually supplies what is advertised. Please will you speak to whichever senior manager has the authority to waive the cancellation charge and release me.

I am thoroughly disgusted with the "service" received from Virgin Media. I expect a response well within the 10 days quoted by the call handler on your customer service line. My only alternative is to escalate this complaint to Ofcom as an unwarranted abuse by Virgin Media of the terms on which the service is supplied.

I look forward to your reply.

Strike day across the Civil Service today. I'm in work, but Deb is off. Always a source of tension.

The office is empty, but I am using my own form of subversion by not actually doing any work.

It's not that I don't agree with the point of the strike. In fact, as the pay deals have got worse and worse over the years, and the conditions have deteriorated - along with the attempt to remove some of our pension rights (let's face it, a lot of civil servants have always accepted poorer pay on the basis that the pension makes up for it to some extent - I've worked in areas where senior management have made this an explicit selling point for below inflation pay rises) I've become more in favour of industrial action. I'm increasingly of the opinion that what the government is doing effectively amounts to the destruction of the civil service. Large parts are now run privately, with the movement of further civil service roles into private hands (particularly most of JobcentrePlus) in the pipeline. Pay continues to deteriorate - and despite popular opinion, most civil servants are poorly paid. I'm a middle manager with 15 years experience, but I earn less than £25,000.

No, the main reason I'm in work now rather than on strike is that I can't abide the union, on a number of different levels. I have never believed that Mark Serwotka has the strategy or ability to do the best job of representing members interests. He has been militantly in favour of industrial action, even when it blatantly wasn't effective, ever since he was elected. In the dispute over the removal of screens for JobcentrePlus, PCS shamelessly abandoned staff who had gone without pay for 6 months during the strike and caved in to a deal they could have had months earlier. And lastly, I've never yet met a local PCS rep that I felt I could believe in. Most seem too full of their own importance and their ability to get one over local managers, and don't really have local members' best interests at heart.

So the long and short is that I find it hard to support PCS, even though I disagree strongly with the direction the civil service is being taken. So I'm in work, saving myself a day's pay, but being subversive by writing a blog entry rather than working.