And in other news…

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So, I am planning to mail my (expensive) CRNBC application off today, a scary act because I then need to sit an exam at some point which enables me to work in Canada. This is all very well and shiny, and I’ve even got the link to get the transcript required from my university (more painful expense)… but just as I feel like I’m getting things together to get out of here, I suddenly find the world being terribly unhelpful.

Kathryn had pointed out that house prices weren’t quite so shiny as when I last looked. I’d resigned myself to having made nothing much of a profit but having got my money back… only now very similar houses on the street are fetching a whopping 185k. Down somewhat from the heady 220k that they were when I bought it (ours wasn’t that much, obviously, being as it was a dump), and down from the 200k where I was happy to sell, and down from the 195k where I could reasonably cope with selling.

What happened to up? I heard up had been mentioned. I didn’t need sustained up; in fact, frankly I had an absense of figs to give* on the matter of a sustained up. I don’t really deeply care about the survival of capitalism, so long as the individual people survive.

Anyhow, it’s going to be another 6 months until we sell, at the earliest, so if you could all attempt to destroy the earth with rampant consumerism for 6 months, that’d be dandy**.

Anyhow, so that’s something I have to look forward to – checking over the paperwork – and I need to ask someone at work to be a reference for me too, I forgot about that.

So yes, that’s in the plan for the week – as was (and is) fitting the ‘new’ radio to Chester. Chester’s original Volvo radio/cassette (actually a Philips one) had several problems; first and foremost was a persistent failure to actually come on. Picky as I am, this is one of my favourite features in a radio, coming on. I’m almost as keen on it as ‘switching off’ and ‘being able to control the volume’. To be fair, I also like ‘being able to tune it’ too, but the first thing that I like to do is switch it on.

And that, the original radio was not…entirely…willing to do. Indeed, despite my protestations, my pleading and my generally poking at it, it frequently declined to come on at all. At least in any meaningful way. Certainly it’d glow a pleasing green colour, but as to actually displaying anything on it’s little digital display or, indeed, doing such things as might be considered playing music or making speech related noises it seemed unwilling.

It also likes to swallow tapes. I don’t know if someone neglected to feed it for the first 20 years of it’s life, but I put the tape-adaptor in (just wondered if that ‘bit’ of the radio worked) and, well, it was unkeen to give it back. Indeed at various points I thought it was not going to give it back. A somewhat uneven struggle ensued involving me, an eject button, my fingers, and some cursing. The tape-adaptor did, thankfully manage to escape the clutches of the radio-cassette, but at that point my mind was made up****, and a new radio was sought.

And thus I sourced the rather shinier Blaupunkt Florida 168. A CD Player in a car I own? Shocking.

Anyhow, so having forked out the exhorbitant amount of money that Halfrauds wanted for the radio-removing tools (£4.99! They’re £2 ish online) I discovered that the Volvo does not sport an ISO connector. No it does not. It sports a big ‘ol chunky block connector. Halfrauds did, however, inform me that I could get an ISO connector adaptor, from them, for a bargainous £12.00. I declined and wandered off holding the ISO connector and the Volvo connector and sat on the lounge floor with my soldering iron, solder, wire cutters and wire strippers and debated cutting and chopping and generally abusing the cables to produce one joyous cable.

Well, I did. Then I thought I’d look on e-bay. And for £2.98 plus £1.99p&p I could obtain a proper cable, which saves hacking up the somewhat special original Volvo one. So if someone, one day, wants to reinstate the original Volvo interior radio, for the sake of originality, they can.

And since the car is off to be serviced tomorrow, and I therefore am not in the hugest hurry to have the radio fitted, I decided I’d wait for the e-bay one. 5 quid being somewhat less than 13.

Which leaves a big hole in the dashboard for the minute. But never mind… I’m sure I’ll cope.

And in other good news, Dollhouse and Big Bang Theory are back on. Awesome.

* As in, ‘I don’t give a fig’, for those who are confused***.
** I don’t mean that, obviously. I want everyone living fulfilling, happy productive lives which protect the pretty little blue green planet on which we live (in the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy).
*** Like me, given that I’ve been up 20 hours.
**** Well, more at the moment I realised that if anyone ever disconnected the battery I’d never be able to revive the radio, because it’s a security code one – and while you can pay to get them unsecuritycoded, on a grotty old radio-cassette which doesn’t like turning on it’s not really worth the hassle.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.