The farmhouse in which Matt, Susan, and Cam live is fairly old. Rather than circuit breakers, the house circuits have fuses. The fuses themselves are an ancient style. You don't replace them. You replace the wire in them. [sub-digression] On a visit the year before, I had jerry-rigged a continuity tester because you can't always see whether the wire is broken, and the fuses aren't labeled. My brother wasn't sure which of two fuses controlled a room that had gone dead, and both fuses looked intact. With some batteries and a flashlight bulb, I was able to determine which fuse needed its wire replaced. So, I spent about twenty minutes saving an inch of fuse wire. [end sub-digression] Anyway, this year, I remembered that Matt and Susan had fuse wire, so I broke the glass out of a spare one amp fuse and put the metal end caps on a tiny roll of paper with five amp fuse wire running down the middle. I plugged that into the transformer and set up the computer. (I will refrain from digressing again into the "Search For A Phone Jack.")

My original plan was to set up the computer with RedHat Linux, get a trial copy of a personal Oracle license, and work through the Open ACS problem sets offered by Ars Digita. However, this turned out to be a bit more difficult to do on the spare computer in England than I originally thought. RedHat from Amazon.co.uk is about US$65 more than off the shelf at CompUSA in the States. Oracle was also a bit pricier in the UK.

I could have had these things shipped from the States, but I also had disk space problems. Susan's old computer did not have near the disk space recommended by Ars Digita for installing Open ACS (3.5GB). I didn't have a recent enough version of Windows in England to try Open ACS for Windows, and even if I did, I suspect the limited drive space would have prevented that as well.

Having tired of reading SQL for Dummies without access to a database tool and now unable to get an SQL type database tool at my fingertips easily, I changed course. I figured I could still learn some useful stuff while in England. Besides, my ticket home was for the day before.

I decided to build myself a website making use of JavaScript, HTML, and any other technology I could lay my hands on quickly and, preferably, for free. I logged into my Prodigy account and asked if I was allotted space to put up my own web pages.

Weight Watchers compliant meal I made this night was lentil soup and toast. Yes, toast. Light white bread counts for only half a point per slice in Weight Watchers. It seems that to reduce calories, the bakers bulk it up with indigestible fiber (sawdust?). Weight Watchers reduces point totals for foods high in dietary fiber. We realized there would be a ridiculous amount of white toast in our diet in the upcoming weeks.

Susan only gets 23 Weight Watchers points per day. She eats like a POW. Matt gets 27 points per day. I, due to my ponderous "200 pounds plus" bulk, get 29 points per day. I eat like a king! (A king of POWs.)