and 2006 starts

it was a busy first week.

• smoothwall released a patch 21 december 2005 and i wanted to see first what comes up in the smoothwall forums for any quirks the patch would bring. so far none of my installations would break if i installed the patch so i tried it first on my smoothie. its still up and working so i'll patch my other installations within the week.
• the water pump of the house has been screeching like a banshee in heat since last year. and it was leaking too. the noise was worse when i came back from christmas "vacation". repairing the thing would take about a week so we bought a smaller pump and i volunteered to replace it to save on the cost of a plumber. replacing the pump took about five hours but went well with a couple of small problems that are easily solved. the noise went down to a muted hum and the house is quiet again. i do have a lot of aches and pains and some scratches from the excersie and the thought that remains is "now i know why i didn't aspire to be a plumber".
• there is simply too much ham after christmas. i think i ate a couple of slices that were sitting in the refrigerator too long and expired on me so the toilet was a friend of mine for a couple of days.
• its back to school for the kid which means i also wake up before the sun rises. its a little tough because i work late on the computer and the mornings are soo frigging cold that it takes a huge amount of energy just to get up and out from under a warm blanket.

i'm already looking forward to the narnia weekend.