143.
I enjoyed another lazy, if somewhat frustrating, day today. I began the preliminary work for the forthcoming fortnight I will be spending in the Portuguese NATIONAL ARCHIVE and NATIONAL LIBRARY. I need to know what I am looking for before I begin looking, don't I? The frustration was caused by the non-appearance of the builders, and the continued absence of a fence separating my property from the developer's. I don't imagine that they will be there over the weekend, and they won't be able to erect the fence on Monday - the most I can expect is that they will have put the posts up before I go to Portugal. Another cause of frustration is this PC of mine. It is an old machine - I bought it in 1999 when I started the CPHRC. However, it has been substantially upgraded over the years - so much so that the only original thing is the processor case, 3.5" disk drive and the monitor. It has a new motherboard, processor, upgraded memory (to 1025Mb RAM), a new 80Gb hard-disk, new power unit and fan, firewire and USB2 ports and a 256Mb 3D graphics card. It has the engine of a Ferrari in the body of a RENAULT CLIO! However, as even Michael Shumacher will admit, Ferraris break down now and again. My problem is that the PC just keeps freezing - sometimes it will not even switch on, sometimes it works for 10 minutes and sometimes it will go for hours without stopping. Today I had to reboot 6 times while downloading photos from my camera. I traced the problem to my graphics card, which I have now removed. I will soldier on for a while using the motherboard's inbuilt 64 Mb graphics chip to see if the problem has been resolved, but it is looking promising. Computers, pah... it's only when it starts playing up that you realise just how much you have come to rely on it.