Back in Durham

It's all a little strange. I'm living right opposite the bar, which is kind of noisy at the moment what with all the freshers being excitable 18 year olds... I do feel kind of like a granny, being a fourth year and therefore having to work while they play.

Lectures start on Monday. I can't believe that with a centralised timetabling system I didn't get any clashes... that's too good to be true so I'm fully expecting it all to go wrong :) I have so much faith in our department!

I should keep this blog updated more now I have internet, I really didn't like doing it on dialup because it's so slow and didn't really want to work for me.

Not much to say about uni yet, it's good to see people though. I hadn't seen Sophie and Helen for two years, so it's quite interesting to catch up with them. And the most exciting news of the day is that I have finally written one of my essays, woot! Just another 2000 words in Russian to go ... it's my own fault and I expect no sympathy (although if you want to give me some anyway I won't say no :) ).

Oh, and another, rather random thing is that I now have a problem with Thunderbird. Here are the details...

The history:
I had Gmail working on Thunderbird a couple of years ago, but got rid of Thunderbird (and therefore the Gmail POP access) for a variety of reasons. Now I'm using Thunderbird again (version 1.5.0.7) and have set it up to download Gmail messages using POP. I've followed the
instructions on the help centre site .

The problem:
I can't download or send email, as the server times out. The other account I use through TBird (a uni account) works fine.

I have:

• changed my servers to googlemail rather than gmail
• checked all the settings (including making sure that gmail is using its own servers rather than my university's)
• since I'm on a network, changed the "direct access to internet" to the automatic proxy configuration URL given by the university
• checked that TBird is authorised by ZoneAlarm to access the web and act as a server
• unlocked my account using the CAPTCHA form
• made sure that the settings in gmail are correct (I hadn't changed them from when I had TBird two years ago

Any ideas? I'm stuck, and the forums weren't helping this time .

That's all for now, I'll write more as interesting things happen.