Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Well *I* think it’s cold.

    I’ll grant that it’s not -something insane, but it’s definately in the minuses, and the absence of heating is continuing to be an issue. Paul turned up, as promised, with the Viva’s engine – and we trundled round to the garage, Paul following. Having returned home it became apparent that the Viva had, in fact, coated the front of Paul’s car with oil – it’s been burning so much. But hey; the garage will be swapping head from Brick to new engine and new engine into car. They’ve also said they’ll try and flush the coolant system (particularly the heater) while they’re at it. This will give the car a much needed boost in heating performance.

    Hopefully this is the final big expense until the Viva-EV project is sorted.

    The cold, however, is having a delaterious effect on bathroom progress. I can’t paint the radiator because the 12 hours to dry only applies to ‘normal’ houses where the temperature is, say, positive. I could and might attack the shower tiles some more after lunch; because, well, then I could put silicone sealant round and that could not dry too. I’m hoping the radiator might be dry enough for it’s third (of two) coats. It does look surprisingly okay though, given the poor job I did of stripping it. I managed to get the edges pretty good, but I just couldn’t get all the paint from the centre bits between the fins. Still, we can but try.

    Looking at the space where it’s meant to go though, that’s good. Because it looks quite bathroomy now; just the act of polishing the tiles and painting the skirting’s made a lot of difference. I still have to run the radiator pipe along the wall, and clean the floor tiles, but once that’s done and the radiator’s painted and dry, it can all go together. Oooh, faint stirings of some excitement.

    I’ve also been studying the current bathroom cupboard, and, I think whole thing above the water heater – cupboard, doors, shelves. I think it’s entirely non-structural. I’d assumed that it was part of the support for the hot water tank, but no, I think the tank just sits on the shelf. this is good, because it means I can remove chunks of it and then whip away the wall from behind it, and run all the pipework for the boiler without actually having to have the original boiler taken out. ‘course there’s still the small matter of sinking all that wiring into the wall in the kitchen. Ah, there we go, the tiredness at the slow progress has come back :-/

    Ach. Well, we’ll see how I get on after lunch.

  • Christmas is here :)

    Okay, it was here yesterday too:

     

    Christmas (Solstice) Tree :)
      

    And the fire’s pretty nice…

    Our Fire

      

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  • See, can y’tell I’m on nights off?

    Today was better. Yesterday I felt like I’d spent a few weeks in a cave and then been stuck out in the outside world with only a spoon.

    But today, while not packed full of energy (and I’m bloody starving now); I felt like a real human. A tired one (yes, it’s a cliche, at least with me), but a human nonetheless.

    So, progress report for the day:
    – Kitchen is clean
    – Washing up is done
    – Tiles behind where the radiator will go are polished (now need washing to get the last remnants of groutycrap off them)
    – Woodwork by the radiator is painted (needs a second coat tomorrow)
    – Radiator is painted (needs at least a second and most likely a third coat)
    – Some of the shower is ready to be washed down with white spirit and then to have sealant put around it…

    In other words, we’re getting there. Slowly, but surely.

    I tried to work out whether I could mount the wall plate for the boiler without taking the old water heater out, and damnit, it’s less than 10cm out. But, on the plus side it means I can cut out that section of wall (oh yay), and run all the pipes to the correct spot, then just dump the wall hanging plate on the wall and run that final section of pipe. Which should be non-traumatic. Gives me something to do once the bathroom’s finished anyhow ;)

  • Where’s my Card?!

    So, in case any of you are wondering, this year I’m not doing the Christmas Card Thing.

    Not through lazyness, but instead because I was sat there thinking to myself, what a horrendous waste of money and resources it is (apart from the fact that it does force you to stay in touch with people once a year); and although I rather like our Xmas cards that are sprinkled on the mantle piece, I just think… hrm, there’s something better I can do with that money.

    And this year I really have done something with it:

    You may not get an Xmas card this year, but someone, somewhere will get a goat. Ra! :)

  • I didn’t screech

    No. Not a screech. Not a high-pitched scream. No, it was a startled yelp. Really. It was.

    Seriously.

    Would I let loose a high pitched scream? No, I didn’t think so.

    The rodent issue has reoccured. Perhaps it never went away, at any rate they’ve either found a new way in, or they never left. it doesn’t help that I’m tired – jet lagged is probably the closest sensation you can get to it. Swinging my body clock around, again, following nights. I’m sure this can’t be good for me. It certainly doesn’t *feel* good for me.

    Anyhow, excusing the mouse issue, which will have to be resolved using the trap, again, plan for today is paint radiator, polish tiles, and possibly paint the whatsitsface. Skirting. I have organised a new engine for the Viva, poor Brick’s old engine suddenly decided to burn oil instead of petrol. The haze of blue following the poor bloody car has been a bit horrific while I’ve been on nights. Still, new engine should solve lots of problems. Well, at least, the oil leak and the creeping fuel consumption.

    Doesn’t get me anywhere nearer an EV though :-/

    It’s cold here at the moment. Shutting the door and pumping 2kW into the lounge (plus having the gas fire on) we can just about get the temperature up. I’m assuming this is due to the lack of insulation between the floor and the, uh, floor. Certainly the floor feels very cold. So, I’m not particularly looking forward to the activities of the day. Cold bathroom related ones as they are. Still, once that’s done and the sealant’s round the shower (I may attempt to do that too, today, if I can make it to B&Q); then I can consider the bathroom finished-enough. I’ve been tempted and am considering sticking up the last few tiles too; I’m presuming that the water’s not going to start to leak (except for the possibility of it freezing in the pipes in this weather).

    In distraction; I’m very fond of these: BSG Posters, particularly the mechanic’s one. I also like their range of Firefly posters. If I had them I’d have no-where to put them though; so that’s rather a pointless desire :)

    Anyhow, I’m off to read Emergency Nurse, while I wait for the sort of time when it’s reasonable to start working on the house. Although painting’s not exactly noisy :)

  • Hard night shifts…

    It’s been a difficult set of night shifts. While in many respects a really nice set of shifts (with the exception of the first day which was unutterably unpleasant); there’s been a bit too much death in the air. And I got to do that thing where I stand somewhere out on the outer rim of the universe and look back trying to work out where, exactly, my comfort zone is in all that mass of stars and planets.

    It was, suffice to say, somewhat scary. It’s meant that I’ve learned loads though; even if the experience wasn’t terribly positive. Thankfully, no one I was looking after was included in the roll call of the grim reaper; but those that were affected us all.

    So, enough of that; I’ve come home and thanks to the unutterably awesome Viva owner’s club, Brick will be getting a new engine. It appears that the rings (?) have failed on one cylinder (at any rate it’s burning a hideous amount of oil); so I’m hoping that the garage’ll do a headswap (which means I need to order the head gasket). Thanks to my garage, the engine will be fitted too.

    The G5 has progressed. I’ve unpacked it and made it not work.

    I think I need to sort out a proper Tiger or Leopard install DVD. Or CD. I’m not sure if it’ll install off the DVD ‘cos it’s not a ‘real’ superdrive (It’s a TEAC one).

    Anyway, I think I’m gonna clear up my mess and have a brief kip on the sofa.

  • Urine Extraction

    Last night was without a doubt the worst shift I’ve worked in my life. By 3am I was physically and mentally exhausted. I know I can only do ‘so much’, but truly I felt like my nursing registration was going to be whipped away from me, I barely saw patients – they’d be lucky if they got more than one set of obs. We worked as a team, the entire department, trying to catch up with the ever changing mass of people.

    I spent the night apologising to the nicer patients, and pacifying the less nice ones as the wait times got longer and longer. I transferred patients I’d never met… our radiologists came out from X-ray and started to take blood and cannulate for us, because we were short staffed and complete overwhelmed.

    My legs still hurt.

    I’m meant to be going to pick up the Mac today; and may go, but I feel completely wiped out. Even if I collect it I’m not sure I can get it into the house… :-/

  • The problem with nights

    I suspect I whine about this every single time, don’t I? Every time I’m on nights, I’m struck again by the fact that although I do 7 nights, I actually spend 8 nights not with my partner – why? Well, because I have to swing my body clock around and the easiest way for me to achieve that is to stay up ‘stupid late’ on the night before I start my nights. Usually to at least 3 or 4 am.

    It’s kind of rotating my body clock in smaller increments, I guess. Anyhow, it does have some advantages, slim though they are. I have had a plan for Kathryn’s present, and being awake when she’s asleep has allowed me to implement it :)

    Of course, I’ve got a whole week of awake when she’s asleep to sort stuff out, but this was a job where I needed to at least be slightly with it, which the rest of it isn’t.

    I’ve also spent a cheerful evening doing this. Yes, I finally got the Viva EV website up and sorted. Somewhat slow, but there y’go. I suspect the punctuation’s a little suspect at the moment, and sadly the words don’t flow so easily when I’m tired and fuzzy; but the concept’s there, and once it’s a little more polished I’ll work on the mail shot, and we’ll see how far this thing flies.

    Plan for tomorrow, incidentally, is to sleep as long as possible and then run the G5 to the store. I wanted to check if there were any warranty stickers that Nikki may have voided on her way to checking out it’s power supply; but frankly… Look, I thought the Risc PC’s case was a pig to get to components in, but the G5 Powermac case takes the frigging biscuit. It’s like some kind of hideous maze of impossibility, and to replace the power supply appears to be a herculean task involving the disassembly of the entire machine. As cars are built around their heaters, the G5 appears to have been assembled around it’s power supply.

    So, I’m trusting to luck (which is a bad thing to trust to in my experience), and praying that there weren’t any warranty stickers on it. Or if there were, that she removed them completely.

    At any rate, plan remains to take it to the Apple Service place tomorrow and let them do the stripping. I’m praying here that it really *is* just the power supply that went bang, and if it is, then I shall shibby all the way back home. I shan’t shibby with it up the stairs because it weighs a simply phenominal amount. But I’ll shibby once it’s up the stairs.

    I’ll shibby even more once we’ve got that bloody 19″ behemoth out of the house.

    So, in other, other news. Jonathon seems to think he’s stopped finding scary things. They stripped back some metalwork on the car and found that the floorpan’s holed in one place. Yes, Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre didn’t actually paint the floor before waxoyling it. Thanks guys.

    So the 5 year old floor is in rather less great shape than I might have hoped, but not attrociously poor shape. The section can hopefully be repaired, but I’ve asked the scary ‘how much to strip it and paint it’ (the underside)  question.

    Oh, and in other, other news; St Trinians is back and I fear I’ll have to go and see it. I’m sorry, but huge fan of the original films am I, and while the new one may not have Alistair Sims and George Cole, they’ve kept the Flash Harry character – and he *looks* quite like Flash Harry, and Miss Fritton is appropriately cast ;)

    Anyway, it’ll be intriguing what they do to the poor series. Of course, when they start reviving St Trinians it does make you wonder what…well… where’s their imagination? I love St Trinians, but… One interesting side point from this – it looks like Ronald Searle’s original St Trinians sketches are going to be rereleased as a single book with ’em all in.

    Hey, suggestion time: Make a film from the Thursday Next books; both Kathryn and I are quite up for this concept :)

    Anyway, I’m done rambling now. And so, we’ll call that an evening shall we?

     

  • Reviews, spolier free and brief…

    Saawariya: This is the first time in my life I’ve seen a bollywood film on the big screen, and probably only about the third time I’ve ever watched an entire bollywood film. This is not to be damning of the genre, but simply that growing up my mum didn’t watch them, so I didn’t get into the habit. For this reason I can’t say how unusual Saawariya is compared to other Bollywood films, but I can say it was completely not what I expected. The film is basically your fairly traditional love story; but it’s set in this incredible Moulin Rougeesqe, fantastical land; a sort of indian-venice.

    It didn’t let down on the dances, the singing or the other traditional Bollywood aspects; and I found myself quite sucked in to it – although the man in black? I don’t like him – and despite what my mum thought, I didn’t reckon he was much of a hunk… :)

    Geek Mafia – Mile Zero: This is the follow up to the original Geek Mafia – and without giving anything much away it sets the Geek Mafia up for being quite a series. As with the original book there’s some notable proofing errors in the book; something I find hard to justify in the second book… The downloadable PDF also has some formatting quirks – but a book isn’t about how it looks, it’s about the contents. Geek Mafia – Mile Zero, I somehow found less engaging initally than the original book. I found the beginning somewhat, well, slow – and found myself kind of reading it through a perverse desire to find out what happened to the characters. Rick Dakan seems very keen to position the characters above ordinary criminals, which I find somewhat grating at times; but it does all come together as the plot develops.

    Really, it’s a sequel; it’s not quite as good as the first book, but once you get past that first chunk then it does become compelling reading as you work towards the denouement. And if Mr Dakan does ever sort out mailing his books in a manner which doesn’t involve gold coated unicorns carrying the books across the ocean stepping from diamond lilly-pad to diamond lilly-pad before placing them in your very hands dusted in fresh pixie dust (i.e. when he makes his shipping cheaper) then I’ll be sure and get the pair :)

    Blacklist: I’ve loved Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski since my dad introduced me to her in my teens. He apparently listened to the BBC’s adaptation of her earlier crime mysteries, and so any review I give of a VI Warshawski novel is likely to be rather positive. It’s another great story, puliing you in (compelling to nick a word I’ve used already) and discussing the political situation in America at the moment; it’s very interesting to feel the change in her relationship with the police, her concerns about what can happen to you in a world where the American Government can abduct people off the streets… Dystopian futures have always been something that I’ve rather enjoyed, dystopian present makes me nervous, but it also makes for an excellent read. Anyhow, Sara Paretsky continues to Rock. I’ve just realised there’s a few older novels that I don’t have – which means I shall have to go hunt them down at a store. What I really need is a book database which lists every book I own so I can be sure and not buy one I’ve already got :)

    The Golden Compass: So we headed to Sloughs illustrious cinema yet again to see something somewhat more mainstream. Unlike Kathryn I’ve never read the His Dark Materials trilogy (heh, a trilogy that’s actually a trilogy!) and so was a little concerned since one of the reviews said that it’s rather dependent on you having read the novels. I’m not sure if the little bits and pieces that Kathryn’s told me were enough to make the story fit together easily in my head, or whether it’s the case that if you came in knowing nothing at all that it’d make sense.

    Kathryn said that they didn’t develop the characters enough in the film which is something that when she said it did become apparent to me; the characters certainly don’t develop a great deal in the time of the film; which is obviously a restriction related to the relatively short running time of the film. However, as someone who’s not read the books I found it a truly engaging tale; I slipped into the world with daemons, it’s a concept which I don’t feel uncomfortable with (Kaisa, you ought to enjoy the concept, I’d’ve thought :) ). They clearly have toned down the anti-religious sentiment quite markedly; whether for the American market or for the market generally it’s difficult to say; I’m aware that Britain is a much less Secular place than I thought it was :-/. Sorry, rambling off topic there. Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

    So there you go. As promised, reviews.

    In other news, I’ve started work on the Viva project; I’ve accidentally bought myself a stupidly expensive Xmas present (a video camera, on which I bid the minimum truly expecting to get outbid, as I usually do, and uh; didn’t). And I’ve finally admitted to myself that the heating won’t be in until after Xmas… Clearly the way past this is to spend as much time as possible at work ;)

    The BeBox continues to actually work, unlike the HomeHub. We’ve got faster ADSL, can torrent files, and apart from the dubious PC in the lounge’s wireless we seem to be working. The Mac should be off to be repaired tomorrow, depending on when I wake up. I just need to check if Nikki took the supply apart, and if she did attempt to remove any evidence of warranty stickers :)

  • it’s an ambulance!

    So, today I decided to scare the pants off myself; or more accurately, agreed cheerfully to scare the pants off myself. My beloved asked me a while ago if I’d mind giving a little talk at the school at which she teaches; and possibly due to a bout of clinical insanity*, I agreed and thought about what I was going to say, and do. We got some information from the 2 classes teacher’s (argh, I can’t work out where that apostrophe should live), and today I headed down there in my best (quite literally my best) ironed uniform (believe me, the words Ironing and Kate rarely go together); along with a selection of bits of stuff for plastering and slinging.

    Having got there, I met up with Kathryn and proceeded to mentally pace around the staff room. I did a pretty good job of actually sitting still and looking like a startled rabbit tho’. When my time came, I was ready….well, ish. And out from it’s usual hiding place came the confident, competent, together and talk-giving persona. Apparently I pitched it about right, I certainly enjoyed it in a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-terrified-kind of way. And most importantly the kids seemed to enjoy it.

    Some of them asked really good questions; some of them were incredibly good on what bones were what; and poor old Gromit (who came with me to be my plastered assistant) got totally plastered having alledgedly broken both arms (uh, legs?). And just as I was leaving a slightly smaller? child proclaimed that I’m an ambulance… Perhaps I should lose some weight ;)

    The journey home was a little long however…

    Parcelfarce failed to leave the new modem with anyone when they couldn’t deliver it yesterday; and so I rang them up (knowing I’d be out today) and said ‘can I collect it from your hideously inconveniently located and difficult to get to depot in the land of london?’ to which I was informed that this was indeed possible, and yes I could go get it. After about an hour of hideous london pre-rush-hour traffic, we finally reached the depot where I was informed that they’d sent it out on a lorry to try and deliver it again today.

    I must admit I was unimpressed. I’ve never had a good experience with Parcelforce. Or at least, the bad ones are so common that they outnumber the good by a substantial margin. Having arranged a ‘it will be at your postoffice tomorrow’ arrangement, we headed out again. Pausing only to buy a burger king meal (yes, yes, I know. But it was there, and I was there, and it smelt so good). When we finally made it home it turned out that this time he’d decided to leave it with a neighbour. The new modem-router-of-justice was here.

    Only… it didn’t have any firmware in it. All credit to Be though; they offered to send a new one and, indeed, working together we got the one they’d sent to accept the firmware from the supplied disk (it took a few goes), and suddenly we have internet. I can’t say ‘screamingly fast broadband of joy’, but we have about a 3.5Meg connection, which is a huge step up from the home hub’s pathetic 1.5 Meg. Apparently the little magic box will also do VOIP, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

    Technology was on my side though; this I know, because the BT HomeHub Phone (the one that crashes on speaker phone and which can’t detect that there’s new firmware to update to, model 1010, I think); well, contrary to expectations it registered with the Tevion base on our new phones first time… and so there’s the faintest hope that things might be good in the land of Teknowlegie.

    On the superplus side, Kathryn’s other-half-of-her-present-which-is-unrelated-to-the-first-half is winging it’s way here. Lauren and Chrissy’s present is here…. most of the others are ordered… so, in general, Ra.

    Less Ra, however, is Rebecca. Jonathon from JLH sent me the first photos of Rebeccas rust monster. He rung me to chat about what we’re going to do…and, well, she’s… not quite as well as I’d thought.

    The driver’s side’s not quite so bad, but basically Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre left me with a car that was ‘structurally sound’; uh, yeah, except that the chassis/floorpan isn’t actually attached to the body at the back at all. I had my friends travelling in that car. If we’d’ve been shunted at any speed there would have been *nothing* left of that back passenger area. Nothing at all. *sighs*

    Annyhow, we’ll see what happens. Apart from me working scary numbers of extra shifts to pay for it all. On the plus side I’ve read Geek Mafia: Mile Zero and I’m a good way through Blacklist. Reviews may follow if I’m feeling wordy.

    * Actually I agreed because I love her, and because I need to scare the pants off myself once in a while to remind myself that I’m alive.