I ♥ my job 85% of the time, but at times like this, when I'm just sitting down to do work on a project which was due in days ago, with no end in sight, with my fiancée lying in our bed on her own, I plain hate it.

The lateness of my copy has very little to do with me; I'm reliant on a project like this on so many other people getting stuff to me in time, and it pisses me right off that other people's lackadaisical attitude is costing me my own time.

I'm feeling more then a little pooped at the moment (archaic English expression meaning 'tired', just to anticipate any furrowed brows on the faces of American readers) and am in dire need of a decently long break. This weekend is going to be another marathon sesh trying to get this bastard project finished, and what with one thing and another, I can't remember the last time I had a weekend clear which I could waste as my fancy took me.

Ah well. Fine words butter no parsnips, as Captain Mainwaring says, and blogging does not a labs write. See you the other side of midnight, peeps.

Just wrote a long post for y'all, then lost it. The perfect end...

I have a piece to write for the magazine by tomorrow morning, and it's so hot that my eyelids are sweating. I have put this piece off in so many imaginative ways but realised that I hadn't used the old 'Let's blog about it' fall-back. I now have, and there really isn't anything to stop me writing the fucking thing now. Hell. See you in the morning, assuming that by the time the sun comes up I'm not some sweated-out, dried up husk which toppled over onto my keyboard.

Have just been out for a rather nlce drink and meal with some industry pals. Am now sitting enjoying the purposeful stillness of the warm Summer evening at Trafalger Square before getting the bus home. I may never be able to leave London.

Good night, everybody.

It was the hard disk. Proved conclusively as when I swapped in a 'proper' Apple one everything worked to plan. All set up nicely now, with a dual-boot Mac and Linux system. I've done a couple of rounds of updating and setting up on each, but there's more to be done; specifically, while the BT Voyager 1040 PCI 802.11g card worked flawlessly on the Mac, I have to wade through these instructions to figure out how to use it on Linux. Print server works and music server works under Mac OS X. I'm off to bed now, leaving this backing up overnight.

The really annoying thing is that I thought the problem was to do with the order and/or formatting of the previous hard disk, so the previous week or so has been spent on and off reformatting it in various ways, only to discover that the Mac was picky about what drives it liked. Ah well, done now.

I think the problem with this bloody Mac might be the hard disk. It's not that I bought one second-hand (I'm fairly certain it's structurally fine), but that my research suggests that the particular model I have is very picky indeed about what IDE drives it works with. (This suggested by the fact that OS X boots fine from CDs, but just not from the HD.)

I now face a bit of a dilemma. I really don't want to spend much on this machine - I've already bought a wireless card for it - but even if I was happy to splash out some cash on a brand new drive, there's no guarantee it would work. The linked-to thread above suggests buying a new PCI controller but that's just even more cash. Maybe I'll just keep an eye out for a whole 'nother machine on eBay rather than trying to get this astard to work. Must go to work now. Feeling very fucked off.

Nope, I lied (see below). It's not working perfectly. Anyone care to suggest reasons why a brand new OS install would kernel panic on startup in OS X but operate perfectly well in OS 9? Anybody? I'm tired and frustrated, and have a crushing sense of impotency...

Am now running comprehensive hardware tests overnight. Let's see how it goes, shall we? It has to be a hardware fault.

It's entirely wrong that I feel this level of elation at getting a computer to work; they should be absolutely foolproof. Regardless, I'm ridiculously happy with myself for finally beating this old blue and white G3 into submission.

I finally tracked down the problem that was causing it to crash on startup occasionally during installation. It should have been much more obvious - it's real Mac 101 stuff - but yes, it seems to have been down to a duff RAM chip. Seems to be all working now, touch wood; I spent the best part of the last weekend on and off trying different installation techniques, so that was a tad wasted...

I'm also delighted that the PCI WiFi card I installed did indeed just work. A thousand thanks to Mr Brennan who knew that, despite being listed as Windows only, BT's range of PCI adapters use the same chipset as Apple's own, so that not even a driver was needed. The Mac is now downloading and installing all the latest updates.

Once all set up, it will act as a central server, giving us the ability to print wirelessly to our inkjet printer and access our backup and other drives. Huzzah!

Once that's done, I'll be taking my IT life in my hands and installing Linux onto the other partition. Should be child's play...

The young lady and are just back from a rather spiffing evening at the opera. We decided that it was silly living in such a cultured city as London if we didn't do anything about it, so a few nights ago I phoned up and bought a couple of tickets for Cosi Fan Tutte. It was a cracking show, despite the cheap tickets I bought being little more than padded benches in the balcony.

Jenny looked stunning; I was flattered to have such a ravishing creature on my arm.

In other news, to maintain the illusionary lifestyle to which we aspire, I suggest we purchase this car; not only is it the car I've dreamed of all my life, but it was once owned by a retired headmaster from Normandy by the name of Monsieur Dupoisson. I mean, who wouldn't want it?

Am really quite tired. Up to Scotland on the train on Monday to sort out wedding things. Jenny's grandad died on Tuesday morning, and so sorted out with work to take the rest of the week off. She was awful upset and I really wanted to be with her. Besides, he's been very good to us as a couple and I was very fond of him. Was asked to take a chord at his funeral on Friday which was very humbling. Lovely service; the McRobbie family plot is in New Aberdour, 40 miles or so north of Aberdeen. Day was beautiful; graveyard overlooked a field of bright yellow oilseed rape to the sea. I drove up to Aberdeen from Selkirk, stopping to pick up her brother from Edinburgh – Jenny's dad had left his car – which was much more tiring than I expected. We obviously missed our train back to London which was to have been on Wednesday, so Jenny bought us plane tickets from Aberdeen to Heathrow. Cost a fortune, but journey of an hour and a half as opposed to eight hours. We've both been at Dennis all weekend doing the work that I missed during the week. Am just home. Mostly finished. Had intended to do some more tonight but am too tired and have to continually correct what I write. Besides, hands sore. Go and have a look at the adorable pictures of Jenny's mum's cat Bonnie in my Flickr photostream.