Author: jane

Since coming back from

Since coming back from Canada we’ve bought a few

snowboarding magazines and books to tide us over and help us find a great resort for next

year. We bought the World Snowboard

guide 2004 which has a useful looking accompanying site and seems pretty detailed

but the spelling mistakes let it down somewhat, also a copy of Snowboard UK and a copy of Onboard. We’ve also ordered a year’s subscription to

the Snowboard Journal on Luke’s

recommendation but the shipping to the UK is sloooow (6 – 8 weeks) and so we haven’t

received our first issue yet.

received letter month or

I received a letter a month or so ago from a distant cousin who was interested in sharing some of her family tree research. This made me realise how long it has been since I did any work on the tree whatsoever. So this evening I decided to try out the 1901 census online. £5 later I’ve found out addresses for where 2 of my Grandparents were, along with more general information about the third’s parents. The fourth’s family, however, remains elusive. It’s a pretty good service, and seems to be pretty responsive when you consider the amount of people who are in the list.

If anyone happens to be looking for a George S Duffield (aged 6 months) or a John E Duffield (aged 26 years, lodging with the Catley family) in Hull in around 1901 then drop me a line as I have information on these people.

And if anyone happens to know anything about my Duffields then please get in touch.

For the last work

For the last 2 work days I’ve been battling with DTS and Foxpro files. I’m importing data from some DBF files into SQL Server, and noticed that if the DTS package failed, the DBF files were remaining locked and so could not be deleted from the working area – but only when executed through VB, through SQL Server directly it was fine.

The inability to delete the files contaminated my next import (assuming it happened within a minute or two of the failed import). Finally, after a lot of searching around and a serious amount of head scratching, Gary found a useful tip which said that the problem happened less if you specified a sql query (i.e. select * from tablename) rather than just specifying the table in the Table/View field of the “Transform Data Task properties” within the DTS Package. And it works. Kind of. It hasn’t eliminated the problem entirely, but VB can now delete the files. If I try and delete them manually I still get the “Cannot delete FILENAME: It is being used by another person or program.” error.

Useful resources were microsoft.public.sqlserver.dts, SQLDTS and SQL Server Central.

Big White

March 2004

We headed off for a weeks snowboarding to Big White in Canada, and tagged a day in Vancouver on the front to take advantage of a good exchange rate to buy some cheaper snowboarding gear. Managed to eat in a great restaurant, before heading off to Big White. We’d hired a Dodge Dorango so fitting 5 of us plus gear in wasn’t a problem – although picking up our groceries in Kelowna on the way through did mean that people were resting their feet on crates of beer.

Big White was a great resort with enough terrain to keep us (beginners) and Jeremy and Kirsty (experts) happy, our accommodation was excellent and although there aren’t a huge amount of restaurants there was enough to keep us occupied for a week.

From the snowboarding perspective, we had a couple of 2 hour semi-private lessons which were really good. Very high quality and certainly helped us to get the most out of our second snowboarding holiday.

ve been meaning to

I’ve been meaning to set up a stocks and shares ISA for 2003/4 since about, er, last April but last week I finally got around to it. I had a conversation with a “finance aware” friend of mine who recommended I take a look at Elson Associates. I did, and I was quite impressed by the amount of discount they offer off initial charges – it makes quite a difference and I’ll probably take a look at the 2004/5 offers after April.

We ve recently got

We’ve recently got into the bad habit of eating biscuits at work. This week I brought in a packet of chocolate biscuits Richard and I were given for Christmas, and they really are fabulous. Worth every calorie and worth remembering for next time we want a chocolatey treat!