Kates Journal

I can’t believe it, but I think the rings have failed on Jejy. She’s not too bad at just-off-idle, but at the moment, you floor it to go somewhere and you get that blue-haze behind. I can’t believe it because the frigging rings failed on the Viva too…

Kathryn’s DAF (Vixy) was being a bit of a bugger to start; Kathryn got stuck at school ‘cos she wouldnae go, so I went down there and using many years of getting unhappy engines going got her running. Once she was going she was fine, so I’m going to go set the idle on her – of course, I’ve been waiting on an answer on this… basically the Autodata book is really unclear on how to set the timing (perhaps because they’re covering 2 different engines (+ a second variant) in 2 cars in 2 short paragraphs, and two diagrams, which are both different than my cars).

Unfortunately no answer is forthcoming, however I think I was right the first time, she should be set 5° ATDC (after top dead centre); which is not where I set her. I think the mixture and timing are vastly out and I’ve compensated for one – with the other – which is why she’s not really running ideally.

I’m contemplating options with DAF-the-first (Jejy), because there’s various solutions to the Rings issue – dependent on time, money, etc.

At any rate, I need to get outside, I’ve been sat watching ‘The Wire’* all morning, and they’ve possibly just killed off one of my favourite characters, which is lousy, since I now have to go out and admit that the sun isn’t coming out and I’ll have to fix the car in the cold and grey day that’s going on. Yesterday it was lovely. Why not today too? Bah.

* As a side point, the thing I like about The Wire, so far, or one of the things, is that the lesbian character is just lesbian; it’s not a big issue. She’s got a female partner, who you occasionally see, and just like the other characters you get snapshots of her life outside work; but it’s not some big thing, and it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of the character. More please.

I was good: I bought this: Minor Injuries, A clinical guide

I was bad: I bought this: Trek – but to be on the good side, I bought the used ‘acceptable’ edition which was £3.80, including shipping, as opposed to the £6 new cost. And it’s been on my wants list since it was published, so I think I’m being quite good.

And I didn’t buy the Ting Tings album yet. Because I need a preamp for the record deck. So I’ve been positively very good, really.

I’ve been working on the development program; nothing like having to show it to someone to make you feel faintly ashamed of 2 years and 7 pages. Anyhow, now I can say ‘I’m waiting for a book to arrive from Amazon’. ;-)

I’ve actually done several things off the later weeks, I just haven’t…documented them…anywhere…uh. Yeah.

Anyway. Time to eat lunch and get to work :)

Dear everyone,

In the UK, in most emergency departments, you can more or less to be seen and get treatment in about 4 hours. There may be some fudging of figures, you may be booked into a ‘treatment ward’ where you wait longer, but in general, round about the 4 hour mark.

This is pretty damn shiny. In most other countries you’d wait longer. In some cases quite a lot longer. Even when we’re snowed under, struggling to cope we’ll get 99% of people through in 4 hours…before the ‘4 hour standard’ came in, that didn’t happen. You could stay in A&E overnight on a nice hard trolley. When it was a new shiny government idea I went to A&E and spent a relaxing 12 hours waiting for my kidney infection (I’m assuming a pylonephritis) to be diagnosed and treated. I’ve friends in the US who’ve waited 8, 10, 12…and more hours for treatment.

And I know nurses who’ve worked in other countries who point out that at least once we know what’s wrong with you we do actually do something about it. We have exciting and expensive dressings, we have fun and new drugs, and we give them to you free, that is unless it’s a prescription to take home…

So. When you’ve been waiting an hour (or two, or hell, 3), and there’s 30 people who’ve just booked in, you have not been waiting ‘ages’. You might be bored, you might only need a quick bandage, but you’ll get treated in time order unless you’re haemorrhaging everywhere, and you damn well should be thankful that we treat you and get you out in 4 hours.

Don’t curse, don’t swear, don’t mutter about how useless the NHS is, shut-the-hell-up and understand how damn-lucky you are to have universal healthcare at a fraction the cost you’d pay if it weren’t NHS.

Yours, lacking in patience (but not patients) and pretending (at work) to be much nicer than she is feeling.

Me.

So, with so much going on at the moment, not in exciting stakes but just in terms of ‘lots to do’ it’s hard to keep up. Actually, it’s nigh impossible to keep up.

Projects on the go:
House
DAF1
DAF2
MZ
Garden
Work Development Programme

Projects that need doing:
Broken chandelier type kitchen/diner light
Breadmaker
Other MZ
Moggie

Projects I’m debating:
MSc in Critical Care

Uh busy much? Unfortunately, as with most things in this world, things have to give to do other things. When the car(s) need attention then the house falls behind. When the house needs attention then the cars fall behind, and both the house and the cars (being my transport to work) are kind of higher priority than my work development programme, not least because it’s quite dull.

Seriously, it’s dull.

I’ve never been so bored in all my life as I found a reference for, and wrote about how to put on a sling. I’m assessed in my sling-putting-on ability. So why are you now asking me to prove that I know how to put on a sling?

Geeze. So I’ve been good insofar as we now, hopefully have two running cars and the MZ is running (I didn’t have to do much for that, just put the key in and start her!). Bad though, in that I’ve neglected work.

Anyhow, unfortunately, I get to show off my 3 pages of development (it’s meant to account for 1/3rd of a year – and might be as much as 4). I know, I promised to do more development stuff before I went on holiday, but I’ve only been back at work a few days and have been completely knackered.

On the good-news front, Kathryn drove to work today in Vixy. I’m still unconvinced by my setting of the timing. It’s the same as the book value, but the car’s got stuff-all performance. It’s okay, since Kathryn’s happy to cruise the motorway somewhat slower than me, but I am going to take Jejy to work today, if Jejy proves to be set up better, then I might attempt to transfer that across to Vixy…

Jejy certainly seems more ‘perky’ but that might be that the clutch drum’s cut great channels into the new clutch shoes, and thus is pulling away somewhat quicker.

Howard – the nice guy in Brizzy who took my Ital bits when I lived there is trying to sort out a free way of getting the new clutch drum here. If not, we’ve been threatening to visit the Ms’s G-B, and haven’t for a long-old time (since the Viva I fear), so piling into Vixy and heading down there is a possibility and we could collect the drum at the same time (and a new, uncracked manifold, which would hopefully mean more of the petrol ends up inside the engine).

I also spent about 10 minutes digging gunge out of Jejy’s windscreen rubbers and have a faint, faint hope that she might be leaking a bit less. If she isn’t then I’m going to have to take her to the windscreen place soon, because it’s destroying the floor fairly quick-sharp :(

Anyhow, enough of this bitty rendition of the news. I need to ring the AA (see if I can add Kathryn on to the AA cover, which’d be handy*), shower, and then…look at my development programme again, assuming I can find my desk under the mountain of unsorted paperwork on there. I’m always amazed how much paper people send me, and how, at the end of the day it seems to continue to squeeze into the filing cabinet.

…and I wanted to do my poster today, that’s been bugging me, since the government seem hell bent on destroying the environment to prop-up the car industry for a few more months :-/

Incidentally, it turns out I was wrong about music piracy. It clearly will be the death of the music industry and innovation in music this newspaper article shows…