Winter

Tuesday morning we woke up to a wonderful hoar frost and cold day. The frost was hard enough and the cold lasted such that when I went out at about 11:30 I still had to scrape ice off the car. There was also fog, which meant that the sun didn't really get through to melt the ice.

And by Wednesday morning we had even more frost. And cold. And fog. Today it's still foggy but not as cold and all the ice off the trees has melted, although there is still a skim of frost on the pond.

Both Tuesday and Wednesday everything was looking really really pretty with the heavy frost coating things.

I feel sorry for anyone trying to fly out of or into the UK right now though.

The wonders of modern technology....

So this year's excuse on sending out cards rather late is that my printer effectively died on Monday just as we were trying to print the card and letter.

So. On Tuesday afternoon I went out and bought a new printer. On Wednesday DH spent over an hour getting it installed (including having to ring their helpline).

We got most of the cards printed. DH is doing some work on the house so needed me to switch off while he checked out fuses. And when I tried to turn the computer back on it wouldn't boot up.

AARGH.

After trying several times, finding the recovery disk and trying that - no luck, we gave up and went to do something about supper. At which point we found that the cooker wouldn't turn on. DH investigated the other fuse box and couldn't get the trip switch to stay on. Eventually DH realised that the work on the first fuse box had caused an earth problem. Sorted that out. Decided that maybe we should check the computer again. Still no luck.

Start fidling round with things and I suddenly wondered what happened if we unplugged the printer.

BINGO. Unplug the printer and the computer boots up fine. Try again with the printer turned on - also fine.

So it turns out that somewhere in the boot up the system checks the USB port and if the printer is plugged in but not turned on the system hangs.

Oh Joy!