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What is it about Sundays? Something always goes wrong on a Sunday, leaving the weekend on a sour note.

Last night I was taking my daughter home. It’s a 3 hour round trip and because my wife, who decided to come along, was feeling tired she decided to sit in the back and kip whilst my daughter sat in the front with me.

All was fine until we were about 15 minutes from her house and then my car lights went off. Then back on again. Then off. This happened a few times over the next few minutes until they went off totally and refused to come back on.

Thankfully the remainder of the journey was well-lit so I continued on side-lights to the house. I checked the fuses but they were all fine so I ended up calling out the AA. As it was going to be a while until they arrived, my daughter got out Frustration (yes, with the pop-o-matic) and so started a game between my wife, my ex-wife and daughter. I’m sure, on Mothers day, my daughter was delighted but it was very surreal.

The AA man came and, at first, seemed perplexed – there wasn’t even any power to the fuses for the lights. However, after looking up my cars details on his laptop he went straight to the problem and the lights came back on. It would appear the relays had come out. They are situated under the glove box. On the passenger side. Where short, swingy feet can dislodge them. I couldn’t be angry with her, particularly as I was just glad the car was fixed but also because there was no real proof it was her.

Never-the-less, a long, weird evening and more proof that Sundays are best avoided!

Yesterday I downloaded two software releases. And was left underwhelmed.

First up was the official launch of Internet Explorer 8. Nothing much appears to have changed since the Beta versions and I continue to be left disappointed.

People are turning towards Firefox, not because it shows web pages better, but because it’s more customisable – plugins, themes, etc. Microsoft has never really got this. Yes, Windows has themes and IE has addons, but there are few available and they’re hard to develop and implement. Instead we have Web Slices and Accelerators, requiring web developers to change their code and are deeply, deeply dull.

Next up, the people behind Xandros Linux launched Presto, which is intended to be used as a fast startup alternative to Windows. I’ve tried it on both my home PC and my Netbook and, yes, it works. It installs easily and configures Windows automatically to dual boot. Unfortunately, on both PCs I had different BIOS errors during the Presto boot and, yes, it’s still in Beta but it’s only a few weeks before the final version is released. Yet it lacks the basic ability to change languages and keyboards. So I’m stuck with a US keyboard layout.

By default it books with Firefox, Pidgin and Skype and you can add (some free, some you must pay for) extra applications via their website.

The final version is going to cost about $20, but that’s as much as they’re giving away right now. Personally, I’m going to wait for the final version as, at the moment, it’s seriously lacking that “oomph” that would get me excited.

Having said that I would recommend a rebuild of your PC every year, it’s a bit galling that it’s nearly 2 years since I’ve done it myself. In fact that’s as long as I’ve had my Mesh PC, and I’ve never got around to it.

The reasons, though, are simple – I was afraid to. When I’ve self-built machines the past I knew exactly how they worked, where the software and drivers were, etc. But with someone else’s build, it’s not quite the same.

Anyway, I went for it yesterday. Mesh provide a recovery partition – but that turns out not work (it was looking for a non-existent drive). They also provide a CD (or is it a DVD?), but looking at this showed none of the installed software that the Mesh came with (Microsoft Works and a suite of media software). Obviously if I rebuilt with this I’d lose them all. Heading to the Mesh website gave me my answer – they expect you to reinstall Windows, but replacing the original build, which leaves software installations and document intact. This wasn’t my preferred choice so I “bit the bullet” and reformatted my drive and reinstalled Windows. So far, all is working well. The base drivers and software are now in place and I’ve configured it how I like it (to a certain level) – then I’ll make an image of the drive, followed by installing all the other software and drivers and making final changes.

I took the opportunity to try out the Beta version of TeraCopy – a fast file copier which works alongside the standard Windows copying facility. It really is excellent and really improved copying speeds. This is a good opportunity to check whether my day-to-day backup system is working. But, just in case it isn’t, I used Teracopy to copy all the essential files to an external HD.

Like the number 10 bus, one doesn’t come along at once. No, just days after a new release of +Extract, another version has been launched. This was to fix 2 niggly bugs in the previous release…

1. Byte remaining counter wasn’t counting down properly.
2. Small empty recordings were created (if selected to extract) if the extraction was cancelled. If ‘delete incomplete extracted files’ was checked in options then they would have been tidied up anyway. Files are no longer created now.

And two additional changes have been made…

1. A menu option to link to the authors blog.
2. Added an estimated time remaining for the extraction process. Use as a guide only.

Ah SATs. My daughter it taking hers in a couple of months – these are the Year 6 SATs that have been so bemoaned by the public in the past.

But what are they good for?

Well, when I was at the same age, there were frequent “tests” during the year and the teacher was expected to know how well each pupil was doing. That was all that was needed. Now we have the SATs, which determine school-wide results, teachers pay, etc, etc. And for this reason my daughter, along with everyone else in her year, is being put under intense pressure by the school to do well. And that stinks

And here’s the best bit… she’s currently being expected (with a book for parents to sign) to do an hour of revision each school night. And 3 hours per day at the weekend. That’s right – 11 hours of revision a week. And the exam isn’t until May.

All of this is, naturally, because the government believe in being to prove everything with statistics (which they’ll just manipulate how they want anyway) and tables. Personally, I’d be happy not knowing all this if it meant less pressure was applied to the children.