So, I’ve been meaning to update for a while, and as usual apologies for the radio silence. We have made some progress and, I’m pleased to say that I’m marginally less stressed.
We’ve possibly got some progress on selling the house; but no house is sold until the contract is signed. We’re looking at 11 (yes, eleven) houses this week with the hope of finding our new home. The previous favourite is, well, beyond our reach because the owners imagine that their structurally unsound*, electrically unsafe**, house with a rotten lean-to*** and no kitchen**** is worth way more than it is. Even had we lots more money, we’d probably not be offering much more because it’s simply not worth it.
Wish us luck!
Work’s been getting better – the first weeks weren’t great, week three I’m feeling a bit more settled and comfortable… :)
* BIIIIG crack in the rear wall of the house up through the chimney stack.
** 1950s – at best – electrics with rubber/cotton insulation.
*** Some of the structural beams in the lean-to’s construction are rotten to the point where leaning on them hard would probably make it fall down.
**** The kitchen is too small to have both a cooker and an opening door…
Okay, so picture the scene: You’ve just renovated a house in a nice, pleasant area. It’s got off street parking (for two cars), is at the quiet end of the street, has a pretty garden and is, really, a nice 2 bed terraced house.
Now, imagine how insanely frustrating it is to have a succession of people tramp around the house and say ‘Oh, gosh, it’s just perfect, only… it’s got no badgers’ or ‘Oh, the decor is wonderful, it’s really beautiful inside but the sky is slightly too blue today for me to offer’.
That is, basically, the way it’s gone. We’ve had viewing after viewing with nothing but positive praise for the *house* and yet there’s always one minor niggle. It’s not near enough to London, it’s not got secure parking, it’s got a rented house next door (it’s a family rented home!).
So, a lot of our time is spent considering the fall back position for when things go wrong. Like, for example, the hideous delay selling the house – as we enter the depressing winter months and no-one buys houses I’m contemplating the possibility of a mortgage hiatus, and so on.
Today we had the interesting experience of watching a large supermarket who have, apparently, no fall back position. Just after we loaded the conveyor belt in our local Sainsburys, their EFTPOS* system fell down. Or, to the uninitiated, they could no longer take card payments. Gradually the entire line of tills consisted of cashiers with arms up holding ‘next customer’ dividers – which appears to be their method of indicating that they need help.
Slowly the supervisor made his way around the agitated queues – and they announced that they were no longer able to take card payments, and could only take cash. I made a rapid dash for the cashpoint, leaving Kathryn in the queue – and made it to be about the 5th person in what quickly became a very, very long queue. I just found it very interesting – I certainly rarely carry enough cash to buy our shopping, and I no longer carry a cheque book, as I once did.
Back when the world was new and shiny they had the kerchunky-carbon-copy credit-card machines, which would be yanked out when all else failed and the shiny new EFTPOS systems fell over. Hell, when I first had a debit card that was *all* that was around, pretty much. So it was a bit odd to see that Sainsburys appeared to have absolutely no fallback plan for when their systems fail. Pretty impressive way to annoy customers, though, I’d’ve thought. For me, it was no great shakes *this week*. But last week? When we were down to living off credit? Well – then it’d’ve been a complete pain, ‘cos we’d’ve had to go to another store – probably Tesco, and they’d’ve been left with a trolley load of stuff to put away. Ah well.
In other news, we’ve had 2 viewings this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed, because we’re pretty desparate.
We have been waiting since Saturday to hear if Bob, for that’s what I shall call him, after his 3 viewings of our fine abode was going to make an offer. Bob, after some discussion with his family, it appeared was planning an offer on Monday. For those of you who are into these things we call days, I believe it’s Wednesday and no word from Bob on the matter of the offer.
Now, I’d been very good – things have not gone well enough to count chickens, but I’d certainly been optimistically eyeing the eggs – and now I’m not feeling so good about the situation. There’s another viewing on Saturday which will maybe give us the much needed sale, but as we move slowly towards a time of year when sales are more scarce I get more worried. We need to sell the house, but at the moment we’re stuck in a miasma of no forward motion – if we don’t sell the house, the amount it doesn’t bear thinking about is quite high. The only solution I can think of is for me to do an extra two agency shifts every month (at least) just so we can pay mortgage and rent.
As a side point, the unexpected extra costs of selling include:
– Extra eating out to ensure the house is empty for viewings
– Gallons of extra cleaners ‘cos we’re essentially cleaning the kitchen surfaces every day, and mopping the floors way more frequently than normal.
– Electricity because, you guessed it, we’re running the hoover loads, and running the lights more than normal too.
– Lightbulbs! Because while we’ll put up with the odd blown halogen bulb in the kitchen, we want them all working for viewings…
– So much time. My paranoia means that I have normally cleaned at least one room before I go to work. :-/
We are *desperate* for someone to come in with a decent offer on the place. We’ve come so bloody close and it’s really, really frustrating. Once it’s sold, that will be a huge weight off my mind.
Anyhow, we’re running up to the last few days at my current place of work – which is quite interesting. People seem sad to see me go and I’ve had the depressing realisation that I will, at least for a while, have to pretend to be faintly professional in my new job. I’ve always had a very relaxed relationship with my work colleagues, and also a level of sarcasm that sometimes surprises even me; so that’s something I’ll probably need to tone down until I get to know people… It’s all strange.
I have, however, managed to spend a big chunk of the morning listening to MSc lectures. I can’t remember how I got my head to take in information so much when I was doing my BScs, ‘cos two lectures and my head is going ‘uh – no more thanks, I’m grand’. Still, it’s not looking quite as scary as it was from a distance.
Anyway, I’m going to chill out for the hour before work now :)
So, as we hauled ass down to Bristol (again) on Monday poor old Chester announced his dissatisfaction with the massive milages he’s been called on to do recently (over 1000 miles extra this month alone) with the disintegration of the exhaust. It appears, from the garage, that the engine mounts have given up the ghost. Ironically, looking for replacement ones I found a website talking about living with a volvo 340 – and one of the things on there was that the engine mounts die. Something I’d not noticed before, but it does explain the slightly bouncy engine which I vaguely noticed when the top of the carb was loose a few days ago.
Unfortunately, when Kathryn went back to collect Chester they couldn’t get him started. Kathryn rang me and reported some worrying things – I rang them and found out they’d been running and starting him in Park. The 340 came with a big hang-around-the-steering-wheel ‘DO NOT START THIS CAR UNTIL YOU’VE READ THE OWNER’S MANUAL SUPPLEMENT’ sign which said – ‘Do not start or run the vehicle in Park’*.
Anyhow, I advised them not to do that – they charged the battery because they’d managed to flatten it, and he started just fine. I collected him, and drove him home, and he ran fine. This morning he got to the petrol station and declined to start. Kathryn rang – I drove ‘becca down there** and he was definately not in a starting mood. I looked under the bonnet to check that nothing had been dislodged or moved by HiQ – pressed the coil leads firmly to check they were seated, but couldn’t see anything. Moved ‘becca so that we could at least push Chester away from the pumps. Sat in Chester to give him ‘one last go’ and there was the nearly-starting-ness of nearly-starting-dom.
A bit more effort at off he went. Running and idling fine. Odd, is what I say. He’s off to Volvo for new engine mounts tomorrow, so I’ll ask them to have a quick look.
Anyhow. So hopefully he’ll be sorted. We need to get Kathryn’s AA cover sorted though, because I can’t so easily ‘pop’ across for when I’m in Brizzle.
Anyhow, yesterday we took Rebecca and headed up to Milton Keynes to see Girlyman – a group Kathryn introduced me to – who are just utterly fantastic. They do incredible things with harmonies (and, apparently suspended fourths and minor seconds – this is where you get to discovered despite Dead Bug Jumping my musical knowledge is as thin as ice) – and are incredibly talented. It’s the first time in years I’ve made it to a gig (seriously, quite a few years. The last gig attempt was Metric – and that was nearly 4 years ago – and I was sick the night of the gig).
It felt really, really good to get back to live music – and this was an exceptionally good gig to start back at – with an intimate venue, sitting one row back we listened as Girlyman talked about the inspirations for their songs – completely rewriting the way that I’ll listen to some of the tracks. Particularly the reasons behind Reva Thereafter – a song I’ve really, really enjoyed (Kathryn has that CD in the car :) ) – and suddenly that song is tinged with much more melancholy. Ah. Discovery – now it makes me want to cry (which Kathryn mentioned on the way home last night – and I agree)… didn’t particularly expect it to keep affecting me the same way today.
Anyhow, as usual I suck at reviewing gigs – but they’re touring the UK at the moment and I heartily recommend people go and see them – it’s also interesting to see them with their (newish) drummer JJ.
They’ve also inspired me to tweak the DBJ format a bit. I’m not sure if it’ll work – depends on cheekyness being answered :) But we’ll give it a go.
Anyhow, I need to go shower because the Volvo’s issues meant I leapt into clothes without showering. Also I should look and see if I can print out my Uni stuff so I can take it to work.
* Because it’s a faux automatic, Park is provided for the Auto drivers so they feel more at home – but is actually achieved by locking the transmission. All fine, except if you rev the engine you’re running it against the auto-engaging clutch with a locked transmission behind it. And depending on your luck either the clutch or the transmission gives :-/ IIRC.
** I have quite a lot of experience starting recalcitrant cars.
So. Arse. That’s the word that comes to mind at the moment. Arse.
We’re currently looking at options for ‘where to stay’ when we get to Bristol. Being as we need to be in Bristol for a bit and the house hasn’t sold yet, in 3 weeks time I need to move into somewhere, and Kathryn also needs to move into somewhere the week after.
So we looked. Caravan sites – there appear to be two that are reasonably conveniently placed for both of us – one of which is fully booked. The other of which doesn’t have any prices online. Not that we have a caravan mind, oh no. But we could sort one. We’re also considering some newish-friends who were selling an RV if they’ve not sold it yet, and therefore might like to rent it to us for a few weeks.
We also looked at shared houses.
Basically, the financial commitment of either of these options is… well, not something sustainable, which I find a bit scary. Still – I’m going to ring my new work and ask about nurses accommodation. Experience tells me that it’ll be expensive and awful – but hey – it’s worth checking. I’m also going to ring the other camp site and see if they have anything available.
But we need something sorted… which is a bit stressy.
So, stuff and things continue apace. We’ve had more viewings (‘the lounge is too small’ – we’re wondering if we made a mistake taking the second chair out of the lounge, and whether we should bring it back – but we’ll leave it until we get the feedback from yesterday’s viewing and then ask our estate agent).
I finally made the journey to collect Rebecca yesterday. She’s been being worked on, continuously, since August 2009 when the gearbox expired – and after a year of multiple disasters and discoveries of horrific faults (which I still can’t go into because of an ongoing court case) she was finally ‘ready’ for collection yesterday. She fought and fought to stay there – destroying a brand new heated windscreen that was being refitted (because of a faulty new windscreen seal) on Tuesday. And when I hit the motorway to come home she thought she’d toy with fuel starvation, but once she was out playing on the roads – she decided she quite liked it.
So, last night was one of those rare nights where I actually did my job. By which I mean, I looked after truly sick people who needed to be in hospital, and who I gave to the best of my abilities adequate care. I looked after someone who would have died in the immediate future* without our intervention. I did my job and y’know what, it felt damn good.
However, after a solid night of sickies, I am now shattered. My head’s faintly swimmy, and my mind is floating around in that absent way in which my mind floats about. I had faint plans for today, but it’s taken me nearly 2 hours to work up to eating breakfast (“the kitchen is far away”, “the house is cold”, “if I get up I should get a jumper”). Eventually breakfast was actually spurred by the plasma TV capacitor decision. The Plasma TV has, as was mentioned yesterday, some dubious looking capacitors. Two of them, in fact, on the Y-Sus board. However, when I was taking it to bits I recalled that the X-Sus board had, I thought, 3 very similar looking and similarly bulgy capacitors. I did not, however, extract the X-Sus board because; well; frankly because I didn’t worry too much about replacing them. I know the need replacing, but… well.
Only when I was poking the internizzle with my internizzle-poking-stick, attempting to locate a 330µF, 250V, 105°C capacitor (as opposed to the many 85°C ones which I did find, and which were much cheaper) did I reach this realisation. I could get a pack of 5 of the 330µF, 250V, 105°C ones from ebay for 8 of your Earth quid. Now while these are probably of a similarly explodey nature to the ones already in our high quality plasma screen, they cost much less than the RS Components £18 plus £5 shipping plus VAT option. Especially when it’s quite likely that the FMSD102A module (whatever it does) is dead too. I don’t really want to spend too much fixing it, especially as my electronics skill level is kind of down here (waves hand near floor) and this sort of tech is somewhere up there (indicates non-planet-Pluto).
Anyhow; so I was contemplating this dilemma, and considering the fact that I really should have written down what the sickly caps on the X-Sus board were, when I realised that I really (a) should have some breakfast and (b) if I looked inside the TV I might be able to see the relevant board and by extension, the relevant components.
In the end I had to fetch a torch (but that’s still easier than lifting the ginormovision off it’s hooks, laying it on the carprpet and removing the 875 screws that hold the back panel on, and then taking the board out. After some peering at it I came to the conclusion that it is, in fact, sporting 3 of the ‘explododome’ capacitors, which will be excilled to the recycling when the new ones arrive… from Hong Kong.
That, however, has filled the happy time between me logging on to my course and finding that it said ‘Not Yet Available’ to now, when it’s cheerfully lists the course info. Which I’m sure is better when the words aren’t all dancing with each other (mostly rhumbas) and interchanging letters in a disconcertingly swinging-party way…
* By which I mean without our intervention in another 10-15 minutes this person’s heart would no longer have been able to beat. As it is, this person was chatting away when we left. That’s *PRETTY DAMN SPIFFY*.
So, I’ve pulled the Y-Sus board from the Vision PTS-4241 Plasma TV – this is the presumed faulty board (the symptoms are apparently quite common: Sudden loss of vision with functional sound).
Apart from the FMSD102A module (which may, or may not, be dead – and for which I’ve found a variety of companies in China who’ll ship me 10, 20, 80 or more, and for whom a minimum order of $250 seems not uncommon. I’m hoping to find a source for *one*) there are some capacitors on the board that look highly suspicious (at least to me – for whom a vision of bulging capacitors is a vision of death) – and there’s a few of the same brand on other boards that look similarly unhealthy. So I’m thinking they need to be switched out.
It certainly looks like the FMSD102A has got quite warm at some point, although how to test it I’ve no idea. Also, the report I’ve read suggested that four of the surface mount resistors tend to go ‘phut’ at the same time – and they *look* okay. I’ve not attempted any kind of measurement of resistance because they’re teeny tiny surface mount gidgets and my voltmeter is, well, vague at the best of times.
I’m thinking I might been needing the expertise of John for them, but it all hinges on getting this FMSD102A module. So here’s hoping, otherwise I guess I’ll try and get a replacement board, but then things get pricey, and I’ve no idea if the thing works…
So, I’ve been aware that my LJ Crossposter has been double spacing all the paragraphs for no apparent reason. I’ve tried to find a reason for this and can’t, so this is a test of the new cross poster.
