Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Some things are a little insane

    I just have to share the Rototron Cornbobber with you all.

  • Keeping up appearances

    So, the Viva continues to be a nightmare to start. Well, to be entirely honest we didn’t reach ‘starting’ today. Today we got as far as flattening the battery (which to be fair wasn’t very well charged) and starting to flatten the battery on Rebecca. After a full half hour of starting attempts I took Rebecca to the recycling place instead.

    I’m managing to maintain the pretence that Brick is running by cunningly moving him (by a process of pushing) – so he’s now on that central island at the end of my street. And the battery is back in the house being charged… again. The most frustrating thing is it’s almost certainly something very simple. I suspect that I need to clean a few earth points, change the distributor cap, points, rotorarm and all that. Basically do a service – and I suspect he’ll be sorted. But it’s annoying. I wanted to get the tyre changed, so that when I *do* get ‘im started I can treck straight down to my mum’s and do the service in the garage there. Only, I can’t. But now I’m so unsure of the starting situation that I fear going anywhere except straight down there.

    So, yeah. Homehub, not arrived. BT again promise that it will be here. Each department blames the previous one. I’m really fed up though, of having non-working wireless. I can’t watch stuff on my TV because it all goes through the PC. The PC has just been reinstalled, and needs to connect to the internet to download the graphics card drivers – otherwise I get to endure black and white on the TV output. Which obviously makes watching things less fun – even were I able to watch them.

    The damn thing also randomly loses the Mac now, which is wired to it. It’s incredibly annoying. It’s not getting better after resets either, before the wireless problems’d go away if you rebooted it, but now no.

    In other news, hooking up my CD player has reminded me that my amplifier doesn’t really do ‘quiet’ – on it’s minimum setting it’s ‘a bit loud’ for the evenings… I can’t really afford another one, so I guess I just better get the PC working soon, because that you can adjust the level of the output on it, so it ends up being quiet enough. Mmm. I think that’s the news. Life on Mars tonight, so let’s pray it’s a nice day at work so I get out on time. Yeah. So. Anyway, the house should be okay for Kathryn’s visit, if I get off my arse and sort various things out. I think actually, I’ve worked out how to make the stone on the fireplace sit better. Unfortunately it means I’ll have to remove all the sealant that I did do. But hey. It’ll be a better finished product :-)

    Lordy lordy, this is a boring entry. I’ll stop now :-)

  • And another request arrives…

    So, having performed a surgical mould extraction on Brick, well, some of a surgical mould extraction I came in and was confronted by Nikki, who complained that there was only one photo of the new car online.

    Anyway, so I found the rust that I suspected was lurking. It’ll need fixing before the MOT, and is slightly annoying because it is just a few inches further along than I got as far as checking when I bought ‘im.

    It’s probably about a 6″ square area that *needs* replacement, and maybe 6″x8″ that it’s desireable to do. The non-surface rust seems fairly localised – and it’s clearly been damaged by some twonk allowing water to get in through the failed windscreen rubbers – and to sit in the soundproofing – keeping that metalwork wet. I’ve yanked a load of sodden soundproofing and slung it. I suspect I should really get the seat out and have a look there for wetness, but I’ve checked the rear footwells, and they’re dry (thankfully).

    So, yeah. It’ll have to be in the not too distant future, and it’s kinda something I expected to find. I’m not even deeply peeved, just slightly tired, and frustrated at losing more money that should be going on Rebecca.

    I also discovered that the other wing mirror which I presumed was complete isn’t. So I’ve got a very low bid on a pair of replacement ones from e-bay, because having only one wing mirror does drive me nuts. Anyway, here’s the (many and unexciting) shots of Brick.

    In other news, my mum headed off to Switzerland today – I ran her down to the airport this morning; I’m really nervous about her going – she’s not been abroad on her own for, well, a long time. We got to the airport and it was all automated check-ins, which I think unnerved her a little. She’s not good with IT. Anyway, that navigated I took her suitcases and she checked her baggage – I’m also worried about her having to move those heavy cases.

    :-/

    But she is insanely independent – I guess I know something about that! Anyway, she’s over there for ages; she wanted me to sign her Life Insurance before going (!), but kind of thankfully we couldn’t really get it witnessed, what with it being 10pm. Somehow, it makes me feel less worried about her which is silly I know, but it freaks me out when she does stuff like that. I worry that she might do something silly, or uncaring. I dunno.

    So yes, that trip to the airport though, after driving so much yesterday in vibrato-mog left me feeling somewhat drained. So I slept. And then got very confused about what day it was and which day I’d been up to see Kathryn and when I was next in work, and what I was meant to do today.

    After an exceptionally slow morning, a large chunk of which I slept through I got out and did Brick, the washing up, and sorted out a bit of recycling – and I finally got around to connecting up the CD player (waves thanks for CD at Kathryn). It appears that I’m down one socket – or more accurately I need another extension lead (!). It’s the lights that did it, they’ve taken up two sockets…
    In other news, my homehub still isn’t working properly. I’ve not heard from BT. They have ’til the end of the day to reply to the official complaint I sent them (that’ll be 2 working days) and then I start hunting for a different supplier.

  • There have been complaints

    Apparently, I’ve been keeping quiet about some news in my life, which I have, because I wasn’t sure where it was going. Or whether it was going anywhere. It seemed good, but my anti-chicken-counting was making me careful.

    That and the faint insanity which surrounds it. See, I talked to this girl, a few weeks ago in an event that was phenominally random; the sheer amount of random sticks in my head, as do the infiniately small probability of me and my random clicking ending up with us in conversation.

    Anyway, it seems that she liked me, and I liked her, and thus a few weeks ago I headed to London, as did she, and we spent a really rather nice evening discovering that we were quite good at talking in person, and apparently very bad at reading the other person’s body language.

    And eventually we came to Saturday, where it finally became apparent that this interesting, beautiful, intelligent, fun, articulate girl likes me. Something which makes me smile.

    So, yes; in summary, I met a girl and she rocks my little world…

  • It’s not a fleet, it’s more a small collection.

    So, today I ended up getting the Viva. It’s tatty, but looks sound and mechanically seems to be okay. The journey back was nearly trouble free – we had a little electrical issue – the rotor arm looks sorely in need of replacement but a good clean seems to have temporarily solved the issue.

    Sadly that wasn’t the *only* issue. No, I got to tesco after a 120 mile jaunt and nipped round doing my shopping. Probably took me less than 20 minutes. Came back out and Brick (as I’ve decided he (I think) is called) wouldn’t start. Fiddling with the rotor arm didn’t help. There just seemed to be no desire at all to even try.

    Lots of turning – enough that the oil pressure light’d go out. But no, not a hope. And just as I was about to declare failure and ring the AA – it started. Smooth as butter and no churning of the starter – it just *started*. Thinking that it was maybe a technique issue, I headed off to Halfords (It needs two new wiperblades; sadly I didn’t realise the cheeky bastards sell them as singles in *big* boxes; so I only bought one. Still, being able to see out of half the windscreen is still a big improvement). And lo, she’d not start. Starts fine when cold. Not too bad when hot, but warm? Warm is a complete dog.

    Still, hopefully we’ll get it all sussed.

    Anyway, here’s Brick, after a long journey home:

    1971 Viva

    Incidentally, if anyone has a spare car radio kicking around, and some speakers, that’d be quite handy.

  • Money and transport stressing me

    So, today’s journey in Rebecca was ‘somewhat vibey’. The engine clearly isn’t long for this earth. I dunno *why* it’s not long for this earth, not having the ability to see through metal, but it isn’t. It is definately worse now than it was a month ago, so much so that at times holding the steering wheel is uncomfortable, and resting my left foot on the floor near the clutch is uncomfortable too – just from the not-violent-but-persistent vibration of the various parts of my car.

    So, a new car is in order, at least for the short term. The distressing thing about this is it steals money from the repair of Rebecca. Even more distressing is that it steals money I don’t actually have. I considered, for a few minutes the potential of selling Cherry, but then remembered I’ve just applied for 2 jobs in London, and Cherry may infact be a much more useful vehicle than the one I’m considering.

    I’ve debated this long and hard, and long enough that Rebecca’s got noticably worse, and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

    • The vehicle must have a long MOT
    • It’s either got to be reasonable mileage-wise or simple enough that I can fix it.
    • Ideally, it should be rear wheel drive if it’s something I’m going to have to fix.
    • If it’s pay-for-tax, then it needs to be cheap tax band or taxed for most of a year.
    • Reasonably reliable (or likely to be)
    • Cheap to insure

    So, I’ve looked at a Lada, and found that it’s not MOTd, and I’ve stared at lots of ads which have invariably been very high mileage, at that age where expensive repairs start to be common. I had a bid in on a Vauxhall Viva too, but didn’t meet it’s reserve price.

    Assuming bloke rings me, then I may go and look at said Viva tomorrow, and accept that I’m paying a bit more than it’s worth for the sake of having a car *now* which I can fix, which is disgustingly simple and which has had quite a few new bits, oh and which is cheap to insure. I’m trying to resign myself to this. It’s not going well.

    On the plus side, it should be fine. And having looked at the crap that’s available in my pricerange, most of them come with very-short tax and MOT, or most commonly no tax at all. So I think the ‘classic’ is the way to go.

    *sighs*

    If the bike was 100% I’d probably torment myself with just riding to and from work, but as long as that base-gasket is leaking and I don’t know why then I’m just not ready to do that. Oh, and risking my life daily on the M25 isn’t wildly good fun.

    Anyway, enough whining. On the plus side I’ve put in 2 job applications for 2 A&E departments. So let’s hope we get some interviews and something *good* out of that.

  • Sometimes I think I should just give my first-born to Microsoft

    I hate Microsoft, many people know that, and as part of that I decline to take part in their product activation. I’ll hunt and seek and find ways around activating anything. Same with all my products, actually. I don’t see why I should be hastled.

    And I don’t see why they should get any information about my PC. It’s *my* PC and it’s not like their products are cheap. So. Yeah. Unfortunately the last patch I applied to my XP entertainment box… well… yeah. It confused matters. The machine is now schizophrenic, thinking on the one hand that it’s activated, and on the other that it’s not.
    The upshot of all of this is that it’s dead. I need to reinstall Windows. Bah. And I’ve no-one to blame but myself. What’s that you say? “But Kate you must love reinstalling windows, you do it so often…”. Uh. No.

    So, let’s skip on that and go onto other news. It appears the company I asked to quote for rebuilding my engine were ‘confused’. They wanted to return it to me in bits for me to reassemble. *sighs*. I noticed that they didn’t seem to actually *read* the e-mail I’d sent them – the whole bit about ‘normally I’d do this myself, but I don’t have the time at the moment’ seems to have passed them by. *sighs*. I fear the returned quote with assembly cost. But let’s find out.

    The installing thing is kinda getting to me, but the rest of the universe can go hang, because frankly nothing’s going to erase my general good mood. Not tiredness, not the fact my lemon tree looks exceedingly unwell, not the fact that my builder’s not rung, and not the fact that I can’t now watch what I wanted to watch on telly, because the Ent.PC is dead.

    I shall simply relax, listen to CIUT and consider reading about antibiotics some more.

  • Ahh. All becomes clear

    Whilst I’m sure you’re not interested it didn’t actually take that long to figure out where things went ‘wrong’ this month. I paid the Building Regs fees out of ‘current’ not ‘savings’. Which is fine, and actually I’ve only transferred enough to cover me for next week out of ‘savings’. However, it’s explained the unexplained lack of 300 quid from my account.

    Mrr.

    What isn’t ‘quite’ so good is the realisation that I’m now down to less than I thought in my savings account (presuamably why I decided to try and squeeze through the month on current, not savings, even when having to spend lots on car’s MOT, insurance, etc, etc, etc). I am looking forward to the point when the house is more sorted, because then I might get some sort of realistic feel for how much money I’ve got coming in and out. It’s really hard to keep a track of it when I pay for some building stuff out of ‘current’ and some from ‘savings’ and sometimes I don’t transfer all the money – because if I can do stuff out of my income I’d prefer to do that than taking it out of my savings (obviously).

    Anyway. So yes, it doesn’t *help*, but at least I now know where the money went, and I don’t feel guilty. I was worrying that I’d done something dumb, like bought a herd of elephants, or a small island somewhere, something like that, in my sleep. But no, it appears that my outgoings are all justifyable.

    In other news, my Homehub has still not arrived. I would be suprised but frankly, BT’s shonky customer service is now becoming a legend in my own home. They cut me off after making me wait on hold for ages today. So now I’m using their complaints line. I remain awfully close to cancelling my account and getting a phone from someone…anyone else. It is, however, the irritation of having to change my number(s), etc, which is the bigger stopping point. That and the hastle. Although the hastle of my broken hub is starting to reach the level where it’s more hastle to *stay* with BT than to change. Which is bad for BT.

  • Oops

    Somehow, this month I have fubar’d my finanaces. All the bills have been paid, fortunately, but I shan’t be buying any more food (well, I might get myself a bag-salad) until after I get paid next week.

    I’m not even entirely sure where the money’s gone, so I shall be spending a tedious few hours later staring at the Mac and my online account. I suspect though, that I have been a dumbass. I only realised this yesterday when I went out with my freinds to get takeaway and had to use the credit card. The Debit card still – uh – well, it’s got overdraft on it, but that’s it.

    I do wish I’d realised this *before* I spent money on batteries, but I didn’t and already had, so that’s kinda too late. On the plus side I should have some new batteries coming.

  • Message begins:

    I had a really, truly, fantastic day yesterday. I’ve got a silly grin plastered all over my face and am terribly excited and nervous. I hope you all have a good day :-)

    : Message ends