And everything is pretty much organised for my wedding.

Jennie has lots of stuff to do during the final week (she’s off work and staying at her mums) to get the hall ready, but otherwise it’s all organised, paid for and generally sorted. The DJ has his list of songs, the caterer has a final menu, the bar has been fully paid, etc, etc. We’ve even received some of our wedding presents.

Tomorrow, I (the groom) commence my 4 days of the Stag Weekend. I have no idea where I’m going other than the fact it’s this country. My beer is ready. Expect me to turn up at the wedding with one eyebrow missing.

From Computing magazine, 18th April…

London pride

Gavin Asthills might have spotted an automatic sign warning of an event on a different road 50 miles away, but that’s nothing, says David Artiss.
‘I was travelling south on the M1 and, around junction 28, was told on repeated signs about a closed junction on the M25. Now, I know that most Londoners feel the universe revolves around them, but this is ridiculous. Is the idea that anyone travelling south must be going to London?’
By the way, junction 28 is near Alfreton, some 120 miles north of London. Can anyone beat this electronic sign for irrelevance?

http://backbytes.computing.co.uk/2007/04/london_pride.html

I’ve done something recently that would probably make a lot of peoples toes curl. For that reason I’ve kept it a dirty secret and not spoken of it openly.

I have…. (sharp intake of breath)… removed all the internet security from my PC.

Yes it’s true. No anti-virus. No firewall. No spyware checker.

You see, for some time my system has been bogged down with the bulk of all this software that was never doing anything. Only myself and my girlfriend use my PC. I use it for all-sorts but I’m pretty web-savvy. I also use Gmail totally online for my email (which means I don’t need any kind of anti-spam plus it’s good at filtering out the rubbish from my inbox - the stuff that’s most likely going to cause viruses, etc, to be installed).

And all is clear.

I’ve been like this for a few months - before that all virus and spyware scans had come up empty since.. well pretty much forever. I’ve only ever had one virus and the only “dose” of Spyware was down to my own fault.

My daughter has an old laptop (which would creak with a virus scanner on it) and that’s just the same. She’s 8, so the kind of person most likely to end up with Spyware on her computer. But, no, that’s clean as well. That, I can say, is down to education. And before anyone takes an issue at an 8 year old having her own computer… it’s restricted (websites, hours it can be used, etc) via CyberPatrol.

I should add, however, that I do have a router with a hardware firewall as part of it, so that’s performing some of the firewall duties for me.

What I do now is run a standalone spyware scan (Ad-Aware, that kind of thing) and free virus scan every couple of months. Just to be sure.

Of course, this means I’m taking a risk. The upside, however, is that my PC runs smoother and quicker as a result. And it’s cheaper ;o)