Thanks to the Phoenix Picturehouse for managing to show LoTR tonight despite#

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 01:17:02 +0000

Thanks to the Phoenix Picturehouse for managing to show LoTR tonight despite having had a power problem that knocked out half of their supply (and judging by the neighbourhood, approximately a third of the houses on the street. Looks like one of the phases had gone). Looking forward to the next round of Very Secret Diaries.

Thanks also to the Botley Road branch of Carphone Warehouse, for deciding that my mobile phone was in fact still under warranty and sending it back (again) for warranty repair (again). This time I showed them the engineers' reports from its last two holidays: one occasion they'd "reflowed filters and p.a." and the other time they'd "reflowed p.a.s and filters" - I think I managed to make the point that I would prefer they try something different this time (replacing the transmitter coil and upgrading the firmware is apparently the correct fix), but of course, I made that point to the staff in the shop, so it remains to be seen what the engineers will actually do.

No thanks to the Cornmarket branch of the same chain, who had decided that it was out of warranty, that the Sale of Goods Act was not relevant (personally I disagree, having old-fashioned notions that "fit for purpose sold" should usually imply "lasts for more than three months" when the item in question is a mobile telephone) and that really they could not offer any help at all. Next time I buy a phone, it won't be from you guys. I regret that the last one was, really.

And, really, no thanks to Ericsson, for (a) producing a phone with this bug in it anyway, (b) failing to spot it and fix it properly on the last two repairs. Five minutes with Google will tell you all you need to know about the T39m No Network bug - if it's been fixed in models made since end 2001, they really could have rectified it on either of the occasions it's been back to them in 2002. Ho hum.

You wanted to know about SBCL threading? Since the last diary entry, fixed stupid bug which was stopping the whole thread-local symbol access from working (creating a new thread was also setting %gs in the parent thread as well as the child, oops), then owing to not wanting to think too hard on Sunday evening about writing new VOPs for locking primitives, decided to take short break by reintroducing the control stack exhaustion checking that I'd disabled when doing the initial make-multiple-stacks work.

And also took rather longer break (Friday, Saturday, and some portion of Sunday and Monday to return suits, PA equipment and generally unwind afterwards) to do Best Man stuff for my friends' wedding. No, I did not lose the rings. No, nobody had any reasons that the two persons were not allowed to be joined in matrimony. Yes, they are now successfully married, and guests at least appeared to have enjoyed it. And laughed at (with?) my speech. But I don't write here about people with no web presence of their own, so that's all you hear about that.

Thinking about locks again, now. That's in the context of multithreaded systems, not nuptials.