Kates Journal

That, my dears, is the sound of a very flat battery driving the starter motor on a GT550.

Thanks to my dear friend John, the as yet unnamed Kawasaki now sports a working ignition system. Despite the LIES of the previous owner (just laid it up and the battery’s run flat my arse) it seems, so far, to have just had the two faults:

This was the earth strap:

Having replaced that, however, there was a disappointing lack of life. Although the battery’s not in great shape, we were getting about 11.5v at the battery, but at the ignition we had only 1.3v. That is a bit weak, and it turned out to be impressive that we were getting anything because a small chunk of the once copper wiring which had been the ignition positive had corroded away to become a thin layer of copper oxide:

Having lopped it off, and replaced it with a fresh connector (not a chocolate block) and sealed it with self amalgamating tape (optimistic, I am) this was achieved:

Well, that and the aforementioned “Whirrrrr….click”. So I guess now it’s time to get some fresh petrol and a new battery.

I also, being as I was in the fixy mood, repaired the cable on the worklamp which I noticed was a bit flickery. I think I’ve noticed that before, and tightened the screws in the plug, but it didn’t work. Today I looked a bit more closely and it looks like the wireclamp on the plug was done up by someone wanting to do some kind of test of strength. It’d nearly chopped the cable in half…so I lopped the end off that, popped the plug back on and lo, working lamp. Then, just by chance – well, while I was testing that lamp I noticed the plug on the extension lead (that came free with our chopsaw and) that I’ve been using down in the garage a fair bit, was awfully hot. A quick look at that revealed something fairly horrendous:

Not only were the cables sickly – there’s no earth. Seriously, no earth on an extension lead in a workshop. Geeze (Louise). It now sports a brand new cable, sadly PVC so not quite as flexible, but it has three cores and has a whole bundle of safetyness that was previously lacking.

Productive, today, I feel.

I also modified the carrier / pannier rack off my old hybrid bike to fit my new (older) BSA. Unfortunately, I need slightly longer bolts to hold it in, so I’ll have to go source them.

Oh, and had a trip to Halfords that removed all the impressedness that I got yesterday, but never mind :)

So, I potentially have a new job. Nothing confirmed yet. Not handing in my notice until I’ve got it written in old fashioned…errr…laser toner on dead tree format.

But there it is, I’ve got a new job.

In preparation for this, on Sunday I shall be tootling down to the garage to see if I can resurrect the Kawasaki (possibly on Saturday, it depends on which day other social things are happening). I’ve also, because I am weak and fear the internals of a 1930s three speed shifter, booked the bike into the Cycle Co-Op for them to fix it. In his words ‘incredibly there are still loads of these that still work, so hopefully we can fix it’. Yes, I’m weak, but also I’m time-restricted.

Things to sort also, on the bike front, are lights (it does have a lamp of some sort fitted, but I’d like something of the ‘visible from 500 meters’ sort that I’ve started to see around, a reflector, and… yeah, we should be good to arrive at work exhausted. :)

On the plus side:
Money to be saved – at least £120/month
General improvement in fitness

My beloved told me I was working too hard (possibly the falling asleep all the time was a hint) – and having come off nights I’d singularly failed to actually take any time off*, and so today, that’s broadly what I’ve done. I eventually got off my arse and emptied boxes of clothes out, and endeavoured to sort them into ‘charity’ and ‘keep’. I’ve got rid of lots of tank tops that don’t really fit, skinny fit teeshirts which don’t look good on me at the moment – and are, frankly, a bit worn out. And various other things.

But other than that I’ve pretty much chilled out on the sofa, read more Three Men on a Bummel**, listened to podcasts… and thought about my desk.

See, I was talking to Nikki on Sunday about her desk – and we discussed that she’d not built a standing desk – which is kind of the new in thing, well, slightly new, slightly in. Y’know what I mean. Anyhow – she has done a big rearrangement of her home office and not ended up adding standing. Given my job, in which I’m often standing or walking much of the day (sometimes more or less the entire shift), I want a sitting desk…for those days. But I quite fancy a standing desk for the days off. Really, what I want (as usual) is both.

And then it came to me. I could perfectly well have both. My cake may be available in edible form.

I have a ridiculously cool concept in my head, which involves counterbalances, and scaffolding and funky things like that. Basically I want to use victorian sash window concepts to make it so that not only can the desk be either in the sitting or standing position, but also so that I don’t need to lift the entire weight of the thing each time I shift it. Essentially so I can get home and it be a case of me just dropping it or raising it to the position I’d like.

My brief (very brief) experiment with this says that the standing height I want is about 10″ higher than the standard(ish) sitting desk height. Unfortunately, me being me, each itteration of the desk’s design is more complex than the last and I now have a suspicion that what I want to create involves running metal cables though the inside of the scaffold poles to a central counterbalance weight***. I don’t know if I’ll actually create said object, because frankly any desk would be nice at this point, but it’s awfully tempting.

* I got home, chopped wood for my mum (with the table saw), did university work, then the day after drove all over the country with Nikki to collect my piano**** and a new wardrobe; then yesterday more uni work and moving the piano and wardrobe in (and this, unlike the last wardobe we bought, is a large and high quality bit of Edwardian furniture).

** My dad used to read me Three Men in a Boat when we went on holiday, when I read it I can still hear my dad’s voice… Kathryn spotted a double edition of Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on a Bummel – and got it for me for Xmas, which is awesome, because my dad’s copy of Three Men in a Boat was disintegrating even when I was a kid – so having one I can read that’s not damaged each time I open it, and that I’m deeply attached to, that’s very nice. Also, I’d not read Three Men on a Bummel – and it’s so far as hilarious as Three Men in a Boat.

*** I was originally thinking of counterbalance weights at each end of the desk, but the massive weight of the wooden desktop and the record deck (and potentially amp, monitor, and any other things I may be putting on there) meant that I’d need a massive weight. I will still, probably, need a massive weight, but I can hide it inside a box – or somesuch – which means it doesn’t have to be something pretty.

****

I’ve been very unmotivated to do my uni work, or indeed the house, of late. I keep planning it all, then the moment arrives, passes and I’m sat doing something else. I mention this purely because I think that they’re linked.

See, I’ve been jogging. Jogging, properly, for 3 weeks now. And I’ve cheerfully done 2-3km every couple of days. Not a lot, but enough. I’ve cleaned the bathroom, and the lounge, and the kitchen… I’ve got the stuff in from the garage to sand-and-paint. I’ve washed the work clothes (hell, I’ve done 7 loads of laundry in 2 days*).

The problem is I’m prevaricating (like I am at this moment). I think when I was thinking about my course before I started I imagined I was going to be better at managing my time than say, 22 year old me. Or than 18 year old me. It turns out I’m not. I’m just the same as I was. I put it off, wait, do other things (like this), and then finally get around to it as we near the end of the available time.

Which is broadly okay, so long as I get it done, except that… well… I’m not really managing on this bit of the course (not least ‘cos I’m a bit bored of it) and also, because the catalogue of jobs which I should be doing is getting bigger, and I’m not doing them because ‘I should be doing my coursework’. But I’m not doing my coursework because I’ll do anything else. And that’s beginning to annoy me about me. So now I’m going to sod off and do some coursework. Feh.

* Yes, it did get out of hand, but that does include several loads of work clothes and dust sheets.

So, our DSL is sickly. We don’t know where the sickness is coming from, but much testing has revealed that the main fault is either the box, or something obscure with the line. We should be getting 10Mbps, we top out at 4Mbps. However, further testing (albeit with a potentially sickly box) has revealed that our house phone ‘network’ is hurting our broadband speed. Quite a bit.

Like, from averaging 4ish Mbps on the master socket to Averaging 3Mbps on the socket on which it’s normally used.

And given the crappyness of our incoming ADSL* this is quite a concern. Unfortunately, the wires are now plastered into the wall, and I am not, come hell or high water, changing them. They also are held in place with clips under the floor in a region that’s inaccessible. And the phone wire was of reasonable quality, at least, as far as I’m aware.

So there’s a couple of things we can do. Disconnecting the ring wire, that’s something I shall probably try soon. The other plan is a bit more cumbersome, but essentially revolves around moving the router out to the utility. Whilst this actually puts it further from the incoming phone point, my thought is that I can slap the ADSL filter in-line at the master socket such that the run to the ‘phone in the lounge is filtered, and the run to the utility is ADSL only. However, this does then put a whacking great extension lead, in essence, in the way of the router.

The other option, as I see it, is to hide the router under the stairs, whence it could reach both the alarm’s power supply and the master socket. However, that means locating the never connected network cable which runs to, currently, under the floor by the master socket.

Of course, the best plan would be to go back in time, and when I was specing the house mains wiring to remember to put the mains socket next to the phone point under the fuse box. Which was my original plan. That would eliminate this problem, because I could do the filter-at-master socket trick, and not be stuck with either no power cable, or no network cable, which is where I’m at at the moment. Bother.

* All this is because I don’t like Virgin’s position on things like privacy. And I don’t want to give (B)Sky(B) any money, ever.
** Sort of