Mostly lemon based

Category: Moggie

Stuff directly related to my Beloved Moggie Minor

  • Working hard or hardly working?

    So, I had mentally scheduled (indeed I’d actually scheduled) today to work on RebeccaMog. Having sucked it up and accepted that we’re not going to have her EVified before we go to Nova Scotia, she needs to be made roadworthy again and today’s plan was to strip out the diff. However, you may be aware that it’s snowed here. It’s snowed, and the temperature is indicated to be -1 (“feels like -3”). Given that the gas cylinder in the heater ran out a while back and this would involve significant lying on the floor I decided that discretion was the better part of valour*. There’s also the factor of the GT550. It is on e-bay and will hopefully be whisked off by the next time I have a couple of days off so there should be some more space in the garage to work, which will be nice. Although I’m really going to miss having a motorbike. It’s one of those things that’s become part of my identity and not having the bike is kinda weird. Dyke with a bike, only no bike**. Meh.

    Anyhow, so, that not being on the list, the vacuum was instantly filled by many other little jobs. So I spent some time (quite a lot of time, really) fixing the old Dead Bug Jumping podcast. Whilst I couldn’t find a speed changing plugin for Ardour, I could find one for Audacity. And while Audacity feels very…basic…now, after Ardour, and I spent quite a lot of time going “Argh” as things work differently in each application, Dead Bug Jumping now sports a complete set of updated podcast episodes with the first track playing at some approximation of the right speed. It is only an approximation – but given the variability of gramophone playback, I’m not too worried. The new episodes are recorded at a stroboscopically checked 78rpm, so that shouldn’t be a problem again.

    That essentially took up the morning, but I did take a moment to put our meter readings on our utility supplier’s billing page, and then saw a ‘how do you compare’ kind of thing. And if you’ll forgive me a moment’s smugness:

    Mmm, smug much?

    Mmm, smug much?

    Now, it’s not wholly accurate, because our last months reading was much higher than expected (although, to be fair, it’s been sodding freezing, and our heating is struggling to keep pace (one heater down, missing internal doors, it’s all not good for it). But I’m quite pleased about that. We’re doing quite well. Combine that with our reduced car usage (Kathryn commutes in it once a week) and my fairly committed cycling to work (although the cycling through the snow probably suggests I should be committed, rather than am committed), local food shopping, and habit of buying most things second hand and so on, and I’m feeling that for once we’re actually starting to do our bit. There’s much more that we could and should do, but until we get moved and settled, I don’t feel this is a bad place to be.

    This is obviously the appropriate moment to segue directly into my consumerism. Heh. So, I am weak. Whatever… ;)

    No, seriously. The Superpad III has continued it’s previously unsullied run of disappointment, continuing to be crap and randomly not working very well. I have to say it’s the worst piece of tech I’ve ever owned, and I really, really, really wish I could have found a solution that used the (now sold) iPaq. But the plan was (at least in my head) to pick up a slimp3:

    slimp3

    I’ve even had logitech’s Squeezebox Server running on the music server in the optimistic hope it might attract a slimp3 to the house. Now, I’d given in and started considering that maybe a Squeezebox 1 would do. It is no-where near as pretty as the slimp3, but it would work, and it would mean I could free up that end of the book shelf, and get rid of some trailing wires, and also flog off the Superpad. All a win.

    I’ve been trying to win one on e-bay to no avail, really, and then I came across this. Which is disappointing. See, logitech, you nearly had me. I may well still pick one up, because I’m not relying on it for internet radio, and obsolete technology’s pretty much par for the course in our house. But for once I was nearly sucked into a modern device. Granted, I reckoned the first iteration, long discontinued, was the one I wanted. But Logitech have handily saved me from that slippery slope.

    Anyhow, most of the day has been spent doing paperwork. I’ve reapplied (for the third time) for the tax relief allowed to nurses (and a reclaim for the past 6 years (working up to 7)). You’re only normally allowed to claim for 5 years, but since I applied in 2008, and in 2009, and in both cases they lost the form, I’ve stated that I still want my tax reclaim to go back to 2006. I’d put it off so long because it means actually trawling through bank statement after bank statement – although I realised after a bit that my subscription to the Emergency Nursing journal, whist it changes price, it only changes once a year, so I only needed to find the cost for each year. And then having checked my UNISON subs, and found they’re the same in the first year as they are now (bargain!), I just stuck the same amount in for each year. That, therefore, did not take near as long as I thought it would (although there was still a fair amount of trawling). Also, thankfully, it turns out the NMC registration price has apparently remained unchanged every year. Which surprised me, because I thought it had gone up. But the website I found said ‘same price every year, back to 1996, when there was a massive price hike. So that all made life simpler. Of course, then I had to have 4 stabs at writing a letter to say what I wanted which didn’t say “I got heartily sick of pissing around trying to get you to contact me on a day when I was at home, since you refused to give me a direct dial number and would only do a ‘we will ring back within a few days’ thing”.

    I managed to get it down to faintly irritated with an apology for being slightly irritated. Which I thought wasn’t too bad.

    So that’s now in an envelope awaiting the tender ministrations of the post office.

    I’ve also faxed various documents to Canada (to WES). I don’t know if you’re allowed to fax documents to them, but it seemed a bit pointless to mail them photocopies. I can do it if they want, but hey. It doesn’t say you can’t fax them.

    I also sent the NMC more money, because I love them so. Or alternatively because they wanted more money to send things to Nova Scotia. As I suspected the “we’ll send it to multiple places’ only applies if you do them all at the same time. Feh. Feh, I say.

    All in all, it’s been a wildly dull day, really. And now I’m sat ripping CDs again, before cooking dinner. I’ve managed to make myself feel that faint unwell that comes from spending the entire day inside looking at a computer with a fire going. And then I’m back at work more than normal this week (this is one of the make-up-shift weeks for the slight under-hours I do by working 12 hour shifts). Which is why I’d put off starting the hall until this week is done, because after Sunday I should have enough days off to get the hallway finished. Which would be really a very nice treat.

    * or calor, given that it’s a calor gas heater….
    ** Unless we include the 1930’s pushbike collection, which brings to mind an entirely different dykey image.

  • Slicing the cupcake.

    So, having submitted and paid for the Nova Scotia nurses board registration*, that’s given us a sort of time line for departure. Not a fixed “we’ll be leaving at point X” timeline. But a rough idea timeline. 6 months for registration, a few months for finding a job and selling the house, and lo, we should be gone.

    We’d also like to do some travelling. And saving up. But essentially. Timeline.

    Which means that however I slice the cupcake (and I’ve tried many ways), I don’t think I can really schedule doing the Minor EV conversion before we go. I’d love to. I look at the sums and say “we’ll spend probably a grand on fuel, just going to my mum’s”. I think, every time I fill up the car with petrol ‘oh god, I hate petrol cars’. I despise supporting Esso, Shell and BP in their destruction of the environment. Whenever I’m stuck in a traffic jam I just am filled with this unutterable disappointment in the modern world, and in the fact that my friend Nikki was so ahead of the curve on this, and I’m still trailing along.

    But it’s a simple case of “we aren’t rich enough for that”. The old adage about quick/quality/price kicks in, and to do the project quickly, to the standard I want to do it, would cost vastly more than I have. To do the project at all requires me saving up some cash, but to do it to the standard I’d like to do it, it’s simply not going to happen at this point. And as John pointed out yesterday – I don’t want to get half way through and then need to move, and need to move with an immobile minor. Not a good plan.

    On the plus side, most of the bits I’ve got will remain ‘good enough’ for the project. The DC-DC, the pump, the motor and the controller are all fine. I’ll just have to package them up and ship them over… Which is irritating. But the disappointment of having pulled the Minor off the road for months, only to put her back on (when I get the diff fixed) with no improvement in her environmental impact is staggeringly sucky.

    The only upside is that when we get to Canada, having a car will be handy, and Rebecca is likely to have to step into that role rather quickly.

    Anyhow, I need to get on with cooking, grouting and painting. So, back to the grindstone with me. :)

    * So they can tell me whether I’m eligible to sit the exam, which we think/hope I am, which will mean I can sit the exam and then register as a nurse, and then get a job there**
    ** Anyone want a registered emergency nurse in Nova Scotia?

  • The list

    So, I’ve got a little list of things to do when I finish my dissertation…More for me than anyone else, really.

    (more…)

  • Oh the humidity! (or Driving Miss Minor)

    Sorry.

    So, despite hideous tropical humidity, and the world (or at least the English bit of the world) being pretty awful to be working in (in a ugh – it’s really humid way), we put Rebecca in the garage today. With thanks to my awesome friends who came, helped me jumpstart her, and guided her into the garage. It was a hitch free move, thankfully, and surprisingly. And the rebuilt engine? Started easily – given that she’s been sat, unstarted for months.

    So yay.

    This is the second step in the EV conversion :)

  • Positive / negative

    So, today is a day with occasional frustrations, and attempts to maintain optimism. I’m waiting for feedback from Cardiff U on my dissertation. The question of how to develop it into something that’ll pass hovers in my brain, especially since I realised that thanks to moving deadlines I’m now running one month short at the end, since we’ll be on holiday.

    In the mean time I set up the database on my laptop to allow me to capture data for the audit, and then spent about an hour trying to work out how to get Excel to talk to mySQL. The answer? Not easily. There are a few hacks, but basically Excel 2011 won’t work properly with the mySQL ODBC stuff on Mac OS, which is ‘a pig’. In the end I found an application that will extract the data in the form of a nicely formatted spreadsheet, which should allow me to then dink with the data. Thus, data collection should be easy, and data analysis easy. All I need is data location and abstraction. I’ll be writing my audit proposal and submitting it to work today, at least, that’s the plan.

    Having had a shuffle of my days off, meaning that I couldn’t collect the bike wheel when I’d arranged to, yesterday I rang them and asked if it was ready. They’d said it would probably be ready today, but I was meant to be at work today. When I rang, he said it was ‘already finished’. So I trundled through Bristol’s hideous traffic in the car, arrived to a very confused looking person who informed me that no, it wasn’t ready.

    The person behind the counter admitted it was his fault and that he’d got mixed up… no offer of anything to recompense me for the hour wasted in the middle of a nice (and very warm) day though. I know they’re a co-op and I know they’re lovely, but at this moment, on top of the fiasco of not mentioning that spokes would more than double the cost of doing the wheels? I am feeling rather less fond of them at the moment.

    However, I had one of those nice realisations – the Sturmey Archer hub is not merely easy to get spares for, but also, apparently you can just switch internals from a later AW hub into an early AW hub. So, a quick e-bay gandering later, and I’ve got a 5 quid bid on a working AW hub from 1987. That would give me a bike with working gears, for double plus awesome, and at some point later I can strip down the BSA hub and fix it :)

    On the slightly frustrating side, I finally got around to checking the Minor and the battery was flat. Not a weeny teeny bit flat, but properly flat. Or at least, I thought it was. Having put it on charge, I’m surprised to find my charger thinks otherwise, which is perhaps even more concerning. Still, I’ll leave it on charge for a bit, check the voltage and then maybe pop it back into the minor. She’s in need of moving though, her paint’s starting to go matt on the bonnet, which is going to be a bollocks to fix because it’s two-pack. I think. I also finally got over myself and rang the engineering firm. I feel like I should be more certain about what I want, but frankly, I want to talk to someone who’s an engineer and say ‘will this work, am I insane (in a bad way)’.

    Sadly, the bloke who I need to talk to is not there at the moment. And I’m at work tomorrow, so I’ll have to leave it ’til Monday. Having measured the engine, the motor is about 3cm longer than the distance from the backplate to the mount, which means that it may have to be a sort of U-shaped mount. Ideally I’d like to sketch it for them, and say “if that makes sense, please make a nice engineering diagram of it, and then if I’m happy please make it”. However, and slightly upsettingly, I’ve realised I don’t have any vector drawing packages installed on the Mac. The RiscPC, which has the most delightful of all vector drawing packages (well, when combined with the !DrawPlus enhancements) needs its battery checking before I dare plug it in. I may have to resort to the draw-photograph-send, which is pretty…cumbersome. But perhaps better than trying to explain what I’m after on the phone. I shall see what he says when I ring…

  • What they don’t tell you

    It’s the subtle creep of things I don’t have time to do that annoys me. While I don’t have time to renovate the house or start converting the car, they’re big projects that will take time. I can intellectually get my head around that. But the fact that the bottom bracket on Molly is a bit ‘clunky’ and clearly needs replacing, and that because it isn’t a ‘pop out the bearing and pop the new one in’ job (because I don’t know what bearing without taking it apart, so it’s a take it apart – work out what I need, put it back together so I can use it for work, order the part, take it apart, replace it – job). And because me and bikes are not yet entirely comfortable with one another, she’s going to have to go to the shop for it.

    Gaaah.

    I hate having other people do stuff for me that I can do myself.

    Gaaaaah.

    Also, it’s more expensive. And weak as I am, stuck in writing dissertation as I am, I’m finding my strength not to spend money on frivolities much reduced.

    Feh.

    This education m’larky is just quietly expensive, in addition to the viciously painfully expensive experience that it visibly is.

  • Minor EV

    So, at some point I’ll probably set up a site devoted to the EV Minor project, egged on to success in this field by Jonny’s Flux Capacitor which is awesome, but also faintly sad, because I really wanted to use that EV myself. Money, as always, being a pig that gets in the way of things.

    Anyhow, so I have some questions to put to my engineering shop, and I’m putting them down here, where I can find them again. (more…)

  • Bad, good, overtired. With photos.

    So, it’s traditional for me to post something after my nights. I was vaguely thinking about looking at my essay* but I am seriously exhausted**. I am quite pleased though, despite the two days of awfulness having failed an essay (where Kathryn spent much time putting me back together and making me feel like a human again), and the exhausting shifts I managed for the first time since I started the job to get on my bicycle at the house and get off my bicycle at the bike rack at work. I didn’t push her up the final hill, I rode up that hill all smooth like. Well, okay, smooth might be overstating it.
    (more…)

  • Bonus prevarication (getting the stress out)

    So. I’ve got 1500 words to write through this next week (in which I’m on nights). Those 1500 words? They are on a subject that I know about in loose, nursey, I know how to treat it and roughly what the guidelines say* way, but not in a deep ‘I know what the papers say and where they are strong / weak’, so…uh, yeah, I need to read them. Now. Fast. Also, I need to know about audit. I know approximately >< that much about audit processes. I mean, I know what it is and roughly how to carry one out, but I don’t know how to pick one audit method over another. And the book I need? In the post. Maybe. *WAIL*

    On top of which, I start a new job in 11 days time****, to get to which I need to ride my bike (to get it out of the garage, I need to go through a gate that currently has no handle). So it would be useful if (a) My bike had a reflector on it (being as it’s legally required ‘n all) and (b) the gate had a handle on it, so as I can open the gate in the morning to get to work.

    Also, I need to proof read and improve (it definitely needs some improvement) the 3000 word literature review that I’ve written (on a different topic to the 1500 word one, obviously).

    And…our illustrious Volvo has, having destroyed its radiator and been fitted with a new one, decided that at 100,000 miles he’d rather like a new water pump. So the expensive nice coolant I bought to fill the brand new radiator is now slowly gracing the road surface outside our house as it drip-drip-drips its way out of the car. The new pump was only 12 quid (including delivery) – and wasn’t difficult to source – but is, I suspect, going to be an arse to fit and will, I suspect, require a chunk of time that I don’t currently feel I really have available to install.

    On top of all that…my beloved minor’s rebuilt differential, which has always been a little whiney, has decided (I suspect) to shred at least one of its bearings. She’s very, very whiney now and I changed the oil a few days ago wondering if I’d cooked it or it’d leaked out or somesuch. Normally diff oil is pretty much the same colour as it went in, but more runny**. It’s normally yellow (and smells pretty foul, EP90 does). It came out opaque grey. Opaque grey is not a suitable colour for oil coming out of a diff. Nor is the noise it’s making. All that grey used to be ball bearings.

    I’m waiting to find out if it’s still under warranty or if I’m going to have the fun and excitement of getting it re-rebuilt locally (we won’t think about that).

    Oh, and I *was* planning to have my GT550 up and running so that I could use that to get to work in a pinch. Have I done that…? No.

    As the final little set of stressors, I still have no desk, my laptop’s screen is getting flakier and flakier (once I’ve done these two essays I’m going to bite the bullet and take it down to Apple), and the house is no further along than it was a month ago. I am, as it were, ready for the world to chill out a bit.

    Right at this moment I’m feeling a teeeeensy tiny bit stressed.

    * Although, having just read the most recent Cochrane review I’ve just discovered, as with so many things in medicine, we’ve been doing it wrong. See, we (as in the medical profession) largely seem to have assumed that when people are sick sick (Looky here) we should throw all the antibiotics in the universe at them to make them not be sick. New research says, uh, don’t. It says yay to antibiotics but boo to the kitchen sink approach. I need to read it more thoroughly, but my glance at it says giving people multi-antibiotic therapy (which is what, I think, all the protocols I’ve ever seen say) is worse than just giving them one specific kind of broad-spectrum antibug. Basically, you roger their kidneys***. Like with oxygen, and so many other things that seem sensible, when you actually test it turns out you’re wrong, wrong, wrong. Arse. Also, the Number Needed to Harm is 4-5 patients. So of the many, many people I’ve given that to over the years….oh lord. This is the problem with doing research, it’s depressing.

    ** This is because the long-long-long chains that make up the thick goopy stuff that goes into a 1960s differential slowly gets chopped into teeny, tiny, shorter chains. But there’s no soot (which is what turns the oil black in an engine).

    *** As in screw them, permanently. This is bad.

    **** While it’s the same job, at the same pay, in the same kind of department I now get ‘Senior’ in my job title. Wahey!

  • Repenting, only quite badly.

    So, today I got the call, the good call, from Jonathon at JLH. After our little teething problems (the alternator bracket broke on the way to Bristol and the alloys weren’t quite fitting right – presumably the minor they came off was ‘different’ to my minor) he’d very kindly taken the car straight back up on the trailer – and fixed her. And he rang today to say they’d found the cause of the problems, and thus I could have her back.

    After the usual house-cleaning hiatus I made a sprint to the station which, after one slightly annoying change* got me to Leamington Spa. Leamington Spa is a very pretty 1930s, I would guess, station still sporting many of its awesomely deco features. It also sports a sign which lays out the Railway Byelaws which relate to parking, one of which is deeply unnerving**. But enough about that – Jonathon picked me up, fed me coffee, and I hoped into Rebecca to head home.

    This time the journey went without a hitch… well, ish. There’s a couple of ‘creaks’ I’m putting down to everything being new (at the moment) and if I really *really* give her some unsuitably inappropriate quantities of ‘wellie’ then she suffers from what feels like fuel starvation after a prolonged run. Not that I’d do such a thing, obviously. I suspect there’s some crud in the carb, which will need looking at, but not today.

    Other than that, she’s performed flawlessly, and while no-where near as quiet as our ‘modern’ beastie, she’s way quieter even without large chunks of trim (and with no underlay). She’s also unrepentantly a petrol consumer. She’s way more efficient than she was thanks to much more sensible gearing – the motorway is now something you can cruise down as opposed to screaming down (although she seems to *want* to go faster ;) ). But there is something delightful about the *WHSSSHHHHH* as you put your foot down and the carb desperately sucks air in trying to meet a demand far in advance of it’s abilities. And the *RAWR* from the engine as she goes ‘YES! FASTER!’ – the 1275cc engine is a way more industrial beast than the 1098cc engine (which is in turn, more industrial than the sweet and innocent 948cc). At tickover she sounds much less smooth, but out on the road she just… wants to go.

    Which is bad.

    But good.
    (more…)