So not quite as posty as I thought then

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I’m surprised by my restraint, although until yesterday I’d not fixed either of the laptops and the dead G5 continued to vex me, so posting would have had to be done via Kathryn’s laptop or by the TV-Hackintosh. Yesterday I finally got around to stripping down the Dell laptop, it was broken in rather a lot of places; the screen’s casing’s disintegrating, the connectors seem to be working loose; but thankfully the power-supply connector hadn’t broken. Despite feeling crunchy and loose, it’s actually the cable that had died and pulling one of the spare powerbricks with a new cable from the attic had it working again. Still no battery though.

And the screen, while clear and sharp still, has a serious flicker issue which isn’t related to the connector on the board. So rather than being back with a laptop that I can close and open at will, I’m still with one that has to stay in a fairly fixed position. And the screen casing’s cracked around all the screws that hold it together; so moving the screen without proper care is prone to making the screen casing come apart. Still, it’s all araldite-and-wire’d back into some sembalance of a structure. It’s nice to be able to pick it up without the whole thing flexing disconcertingly.

I’ve stripped the hard-drives out of the G5 and will give the company who repaired it a ring as soon as they’re open; see if I can’t get that back up there to be looked at again. I am concerned though as to why the supplies packed up again. I’m switching things around though, it’s no longer going to be the video server; which will, frustratingly, make the machine in the lounge somewhat noiser, but should mean no more network streaming issues.

As for the house (renovation photo set number 19), well, I spent thursday generating as much dust as it’s humanly possible to create, but this time I sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house and channelled away with my wall chaser. While it is an ace tool, it’s also the most manky job in all of christendom. On the plus side I’ve got two electrical boxes to sink and then we can put the wiring where it should be. I removed all the wiring from the immersion heater – all the way back to the fuse box, in the end. The distressing thing is this house’s wiring is a mess, there’s no proper ring main to speak of, there’s just little pseudo-rings scattered around and linked by a big junction box (hidden) and spurs running here, there and everywhere. I could, were it not for the Part P regulations tidy it all up. Chopping some chunks out, drilling some new holes, etc, and I’d have a downstairs ring and an upstairs ring. But because I’d then have to call in an electrician to check over all the work I’d done; and to re-do wiring in the kitchen requires (‘cos of Part P) even more in the way of work that’s nice-but-not-required (as far as I’m concerned, and the electrician I spoke to agrees :) ) that I’m better off leaving it all alone and just putting new sockets on the front so it all *looks* nice.

Incidentally, while pulling down the wall, I came across a Daily Mirror from 1963. Sadly it’d suffered from being right near the filler pipe from the cistern and was disintegrating pretty badly. Also, whoever put it in there then decided to use cement, not plaster, which probably didn’t help it any and made it somewhat hard to separate from the wall and from the huge clump of concrete. There’re some shots of it in my newly created ‘Renovation Finds’ photo set.

Never mind.

In other news (at least not house related news), I broke my Cafetier today. I’m quite distressed by this, being a coffee lover. I have a filter maker, but that makes a minimum of 2 cups, and I’ve got a little ‘filter in a cup’ which is just dandy, but I can’t just sit on the couch and have that. I have to make it then bring it in. So a new cafetier will have to be sought.

I rather liked the one I had :-/

And in other, other news. I went up to JLH on Saturday to see, well, what remains of Rebecca. It’s pretty distressing still, the car’s visibly got lots of work to go – and seeing what Charles Ware had done; panels (structural ones) that are meant to meet other panels and fall about an inch short? The boot floor (the *new* boot floor) was rusted through because they’d not protected it with paint… It’s another 2grand just to put right the mess they’ve made on that side.

So, anyway. i’ve got an interview with the unnamed nursing agency in 2 weeks, so I need to dig out all the relevant paperwork for that today too. In addition to working a long day and a late. And hopefully heading towards reducing that debt again :-)

And one thing I’ve not discussed is the Wedding; which I really should, but which warrants a whole post by itself (without my finger hurting each time I press a key (walls, slipping claw hammers and fingers don’t mix, incidentally). But, if any of you out there know a good seamstress… I’m going to talk to a colleage at work, but more options is always better than less if you ask me. We were thinking about doing a sort of gift-wedding; because we *have* everything (well, everything we *need*). Traditionally, marriage was move-in-together-start-a-new-home; but for us, we’ve got a home, we’ve got a complete dinner service, we’ve got tables, chairs, toasters, ovens, bed-linen, furniture, glasses, a fridge, a washing machine, a blender… We considered the possibility that instead people could gift us bits of the wedding (or something towards them), but we came to the conclusion (having discussed it with people) that this was more odd than normal, possibly even ‘too odd’. So instead we’re pulling in friends who can do things (or who know people who can do things) to keep costs to something we might be able to afford this lifetime.

So; on that note, if you know anyone who’s a seamstress, that’d be handy, and if you’d like to do something for the wedding, shout – or we won’t know :)

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.