Daynote ,Svenson

MM-l     Saturday

2000-02-19

It's raining, no snow, and the temperature is up (5C). Most of the day it's dry but lots of clouds and a few showers keep the day gloomy.

I went shopping but the new Zip drive hadn't arrived yet so I didn't bring anything new home (well, I don't count the bottles of wine and olive oil, nor the new t-shirt etc. ).

While discussing a date for painting the front room (we did one wall a few months ago, now we are doing the rest, but with my father suffering from asthma we cannot paint while he is home) he mentioned that he will need an e-mail address. He is pilot and while the government I rolling out its computer infrastructure (subcontracted to Siemens and it should be ready in a few months, that few months is stretching for more than 20 and no end in sight) there are some problems in obtaining the latest official papers. It happens often that he calls the office in Brussels and they have the necessary documents but can't distribute them. The clerk sometimes proposes to e-mail the stuff. Normally you get at least one e-mail account when you sign up with an ISP but he hasn't got a connection yet (pulling wire in an old house is not that obvious).
What is the best way to set up an account?

I was thinking of registering a new domain and putting up a site. Mainly in support of the books my father writes as it seems that the publisher is not interested in doing so. Most hosting services that I checked allow for up to five e-mail addresses and between 5 and 20 Meg in their basic offering. So that will be easy enough to set up (if I find a way to get two or more accounts in Netscape). Then I checked out the registration service for a .BE domain. What first strikes me is that they ask 2500BEF ($71+) for setup and 2000BEF ($57+) per year. Autch. And a few paragraphs later I notice that they don't allow individuals to register, you have to be an organization or a firm. No tax registration means no domain registration.
I guess I will pick up some .COM or .NET domain, the NSI rate of $35 looks positively cheap.

Of course I got my day numbers wrong, I use roman numbers but the Romans didn't use XXXXX for fifty. They used the L (from Lazy maybe, after all they had to chisel it out in marble and there is a huge difference in l or xxxxx when doing that).

I didn't work on the changes to my site (to get the links and backgrounds working properly) as I intended (but tomorrow ...). The only change I made was the new link to Wendy Ward-Johnson's page on the Daynotes mirror (both on the main page and on the widows page).

An inspector of the IRS to one of his "clients":
we fully understand your problems,
but our computer is not programmed that way.

Adios