With thanks to Royal Mail

Oct 31st, 2007 Posted in General | no comment »

So, in the past few months the Royal Mail appear to have consumed around 30 quid of my stuff. A CD I’ve been waiting months for, and a tee-shirt I’ve been waiting rather less long for remain MIA. This high quality service is something I’ve come to expect, but it does make me start to worry about sending anything by mail. This whine came to you courtesy of me deciding to listen to the MP3s for the CD that I’ve not got. It sounds awesome, even on my crappy laptop speakers (one of which sometimes gets bored).

I thought I might post something about work; basically as time filler because it’s so fracking cold here this morning (I feel very sorry for my poor beloved who was up at 5 freezing her arse off); and I’m waiting hopefully for the bathroom to heat up. ‘cos I’m going to work ‘early’ I’m thinking I can’t be bothered to tile; but I may change my mind when I’ve had my shower… Yesterday I made it as far as the faux wall which makes up one end of the shower cubicle. I’ve got another few tiles to go on the real wall (I only did about half height); and then I should be able to, well, tile the shower. I also did a ‘test’ tile on the painted wood, so we’ll see how that’s stuck. If that’s okay I can tile that; which can then be grouted, and the bath can go up against the wall and be finally locked into position. I can see the bathroom being finished in a few days. It’s going to be tedious and seriously hard work, but it’s possible.

So, work. I said before I’m settling in; which is definately true. Most people are fairly used to the fact that I talk to myself a not insignificant amount. It’s more that I think aloud almost continuously if I’m not “thinking” about being quiet. I would ascribe this to working from home, and my childhood spent mostly on my own. I got used to my voice being the main one that I’d hear; and without hearing it I’d not hear anything. I’m unlikely to stop talking to myself, even though one of the returning-to-work people I’ve met finds it a little, well, odd. Some people seem to be getting my sense of humour more, and I’m more and more comfortable joking with people.

But with nearly 100 people working with, there are still days I’m with people who have barely worked with me before, and those days can be a little more tiring.

Despite that number of people working there; there are few days where we’re not short staffed, and those days are just way more tiring. Even yesterday when we were theoretically fully staffed in Majors, because of confusion when we started we never got on top of the influx. That and there were almost always one or two people queueing. I did have two good moments though; there was getting a new doctor I’d not met to see a patient who I was concerned about; there’s an art to getting doctors to see people and I think it’s the fact that I’m now much less fazed by sick people that does it. I just say things like ‘well, she’s a little blue around the edges’… and they get the impression that I know what I’m talking about :)

Which is quite nice, previously it’s been a bit of a struggle. That and I got blood (not, sadly, enough, because she yanked her hand away) from a woman with the worlds tiniest wobblyest veins. I more and more have a go at the hard people, because if I don’t do the hard ones, then I’ll never be any good at them. And I succeeded, at least more or less. I didn’t get the Biochem (which she really did need) – but it took a Dr 4 attempts to get the biochem.

Basically, that’s my update. Incredibly I’m not that tired today; but I don’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for the whole sitting in the cold bath and showering with the feeblespray.

I’m also suffering temptation to replace my stolen MP3 player. I’ve got a little bored of my CD collection in the car, and I miss having the nice smallness that was my nipod. Meh.

What to say?

Oct 29th, 2007 Posted in General | no comment »

Well, I felt like I should do an update; in fact, I’ve been positively intending to do an update for several days now. The only problem is I don’t really know what to say…

I’ve been working, for the most part. Work continues to produce a strange bounty consisting of a mixture of really sick people who desperately need to be there, and after a day of work you come home and though you may be exhausted beyond words and tired beyond anything you can imagine, you know (vaguely and somewhere in your heart) that you helped people. And some days you just get endless dross; “I’ve stubbed my toe and it hurts”, and “i’ve had this niggley ache for 5 months and I saw the A&E sign and I thought, you know what, I should get that checked”.

I’ve actually been tempted to film a snarky ‘Do you really need to visit’ advert, in the vein of the old war time ‘do you need to travel’ posters. Of course, for every tale there is something which you need to watch out for. We had someone in who’d had moderate (not severe) chest pain for some time – and it appears they really were ill (to be fair, I assumed she actually was, she seemed sensible).

Today was not really a latter or a former day, but it wasn’t a very impressively doing things day. I kinda limped through my day at work, not achieving a great deal, indeed, disturbingly when I left the situation was much as it was when I arrived. Still, I tried my best.

Things in the house continue to be continuing. The bathroom now looks like a bathroom. White tiles adorn most of the walls, I can’t remember where I was at when I last posted; nor can I be bothered to check, but now there’s basically about a metre, and the entire of the shower stall to do. And that’s it. I’ll be done with tiling, until we do the kitchen. Of course; we’ll be tiling a lot less of the kitchen!

Kathryn’s drawn up some neat sketches for the back bedroom come office, which is cool. I must admit though, the two weeks off (approaching) are going to be much appreciated by me. I’m needing a break from work; my sympathy levels need restocking, and my patience is all but exhausted. But they’ll also be much appreciated for another reason. Hopefully (and I know I’ve said this many times), but really; hopefully we can get the central heating in. And the bathroom finished to the extent of actually having a proper shower. I ache so much and so often, and the idea of being able to come home and have a hot bath or a hot shower without having to wait hours, and without having to crouch. Lord it seems like such a luxury. I guess it *is* such a luxury.

Also, to have a reduced cost of heating would be really rather nice. Anyhow, there are pictures of the current state of play in the bathroom. They are, in fact, here. Complete with snarky comments and tags, as usual.

So, anyway, I promised a picture of us, and that is here:

I note that flickr have been Yahoo!’d , I’m not entirely happy about that; indeed, I’m debating whether to renew my pro account. For I love Flickr, but Yahoo just drive me fracking nuts. Every experience I’ve ever had with their techincal support has lead me to want to rip the cables out from all Yahoo’s connections to the internet and ban them from ever touching a computer of ever sort ever again. Yahoo messenger is awful, Yahoo groups ruined a great e-groups system and Yahoo’s search has remained awful since the very first day that they set it up. Oh, and they associated themselves with BT; and BT to me is the kiss of the dead. Inviting BT into your home is like having a Zombie come to stay. Sure, it’s a talking point, but the shambolic mess is going to piss you off eventually.

Anyhow, enough ranting. (Hah)

So I’m relaxing and spending my evening attempting to increase the ratio of working to not working computers. Currently it stands at 0:4 (None fully functional, 4 working to some extent). The Mac is going back to 10.4.6, which worked. 10.4.10 and 10.4.9 are determined that the network card doesn’t work. A frustrating problem. Of course, all this will likely be immaterial when the real-mac arrives, and this machine is relegated to being a video editor.

Technically it’s only firefox that doesn’t work on the laptop; but I daren’t fiddle, ‘cos the laptop’s the only machine that’s ‘working’ to any extent. Although the crack in the case continues to widen. And I can’t say I’ve got any great ideas for fixing it. But so long it works, fiddling with it is kinda out of the window.

At least the Mac is now network capable… :) Ra.

Anyone used Be?

Oct 20th, 2007 Posted in General | 2 comments »

Was considering Be Broadband - anyone got any experiences?

Progress (at least in some areas)

Oct 20th, 2007 Posted in Bike, Brick, Enfield, General, House, Moggie | no comment »

So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ‘em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

…the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

Yes, so.

(And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

Retraction

Oct 13th, 2007 Posted in Brick, General | no comment »

So, I thought that it was the cable at fault; I now retract my pseudo modern car parts are rubbish rant (although it stands as a general comment) because it turns out that the idiot who owned my car before me (s/idiot/cunning git) failed to put part of the clutch cable mechanism back; when I replaced the clutch I didn’t realise it was missing and so put it back the way it was. It now appears that all of the strain from the clutch has been going onto the pedal box and has snapped part of it off. With some difficulty I managed to sort-of-fix it. It works now, and hopefully should stay working.

I couldn’t see why the brakes were having issues though, so he’ll have to go to the garage for definate.

I did however put the cover back in the engine bay so that fumes are less inclined to come join me in the passenger cabin, which was a positive.

And then I had this great idea; you know those great ideas you get? Well, I thought I’d fix the broken window winder. A while back the window in the passenger side decided it was not going to shut properly; or indeed open properly, or do anything very much. So I whipped the cover off and had a bit of a looksie. Of course, it became apparent part way through this process that neither could I see well enough, nor could I find anything that felt wrong and then I had my second great idea of the morning. I’ll put the new door card in while I’m here. So I got it, and while fitting it managed to unhook part of the door lock. Having spent about 10 minutes cursing I worked out how to put it back together, and discovered the new door panels are *exactly the same* apart from one teensy tiny difference. The door handles are subtly smaller and don’t actually operate the door lock on brick. Having cursed a little to myself I then removed the door panel again and refitted the original one. During which time I again dislodged that fracking bit of door lock mechanism.

Finally I got it all back together and although I can now say the clutch works, and the fan sucks in air rather than engine fumes, the door lock on the passenger side now only locks with a key, or from the inside. You can’t do the button-down-hold-door-handle-and-slam thing. And the window winder still doesn’t work. Gaaaah.

Just to round it all off, while I was posting this the laptop’s battery demonstrated that it is, indeed, a bit fubar. ISTR reading that this laptop does have problems with killing batteries fairly quickly, and it was a cheap battery. But still. Disconcertingly, having stopped and died stone dead, the battery now states it’s fully charged. *sigh*

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