Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • Huge house / holiday / car update

    Oh lord alive, I’ve not updated for a while, and there is much to say… There follows:

    So, let’s start at the beginning (since that’s generally a good place to start). At the beginning of the week (the one before the one before this one), as we commenced our ‘week of tormenting the house’ we discovered the availability of one, free, DAF44. Now, to those who are unfamiliar with the DAF, it’s a car with a constantly variable transmission driven by big belts. It’s really awfully clever, and now, apparently, Mercedes do something similar.

    At any rate, I’d fancied one for a while and it seemed like the perfect (simple) vehicle to get Kathryn so as she had an automatic to drive to work. It does, however, need some floor.

    It’s also not a runner. Ignoring this, at the beginning of the week we headed down to see it, and decided that for the cost of transporting it, it was worth it. So, at the end of the week Joggernaught (not Juggernaught) arrived outside our house, somewhat reluctantly, and covered in a 3 year accumulation of tree-gunk. Some scrubbing by Kathryn (and a little light helpfulness from me) and she was kind of off white. Not exactly going to win Concourse, but presentable. Which probably relieved the neighbours. J-g needs a service, some fresh petrol, and I spent a lot of time persuading the passenger side door to shut. It’s in need of a little adjustment still, but it does shut, which is altogether goodness.

    Annoyingly, the idea was to get the car and decide later if it was salvagable, but it’s kinda cute and it’s burrowed into mine (and I think Kathryn’s) heart somewhat. But there’s a financial limit on what we can do, so we’ll have to see what we can sort. Kathryn’s devoid of driver’s licence at the moment anyhow, and we’ve not even got the Autodata manual to get it serviced, so it’s just sitting for the time being. Shots of the DAF are here…

    The week, however, was mostly spent gutting and redecorating the office and the bedroom. This did not entirely go to plan. Essentially, the idea was that we’d empty the bedroom and the office, sand and paint the office walls (which were already stripped), strip, fill, sand, paint the bedroom walls, paint both floors, varnish ’em and move back in. Oh, and construct a desk and a wardrobe at the same time.

    Unfortunately, although it mostly went pretty well, we had two disasterous walls in the bedroom (which now await my attention to replaster), and some lazy sod had applied wallpaper over old wallpaper. This doesn’t come off unless you attempt to apply filler over it, at which point it leaps from the wall with reckless abandon. And the wall that used to have a fireplace in is also a complete state – one which requires us to attack it either with cloth or wallpaper, as it’s also a strip-and-replaster job otherwise.

    But we achieved an astonishing amount (with some assistance from my Mum and Parmito, who popped down for the day and opted to spend the day sugar-soaping the walls in the office); the bedroom is so-much-nicer…

    Before:

    Bedroom, before decorating

    After:

    After decoration, or at least part way through

    A bit of a change, I hope you’ll agree.

    To be fair, we’ve not spent the last year sleeping on the camp bed, but it does let you see how hideous the carpet was.

    So yes, the office now looks like an office, too. This is awesome…[House reno photo sets]

    Anyhow, because of the disasters we were a day late heading from there to Brizzy to see Nikki and Kate. But we piled in the car and headed down to see them having spent some time making the house liveable. Having got down there we headed down to Weston giving Pepper and Eddie a chance to run around like maniacs, and Kathryn, Nikki and I a chance to take photos of them running around like maniacs (and a few of each other). Despite the sun-shine the wind was cold, April this year feeling a lot like, say, November.

    Anyhow, ‘cos I’m lazy, the photoset from Weston is here.

    We then spent a few hours the next day (monday) mooching around Bristol. I love Bristol, it’s a great city, and were I staying in the UK it’s one of the places I’d be happy to live (and could actually afford to live). Oxford is beautiful, but way too expensive to stay; Brighton (the last place we visited) is another I’d happily live in… Anyhow, I wanted to show Kathryn what I mostly feel is ‘my city’, so we took a bit of a wander. Mostly around the St. Nicholas market area; we were going to head up into Clifton but unfortunately, no one warned us that Fopp has reopened. Sucked in as we were by the sound of cheap music and cheap books calling us, we ended up spending far too much time and money in there… and thus Clifton and the Camera Obscura and such shall have to wait for another day.

    So the photoset from Bristol is here… (see, really blindingly lazy, but you’re getting an update, what more do you want?!).

    Anyhow, we then headed up to the Lakes, this was for somewhat of a working holiday in that we had 7 hotels to visit to check out as wedding venues. In the end, what we thought might be a hard decision turned out to be astonishingly easy; in that one hotel really stood out as being just the most gorgeous views, the nicest staff, and just really the hands-down winner. After some trecking we did come up with a second, but it’s not really in the area of the lakes I love. It’s a beautiful place, and quite definately a fantastic venue. Had we not have seen the one we’ve fallen for then it’d’ve been first. But yes. So I rang the Registrar today; there’s not many times available, so when I get home from work today we’ll have to sort it, hopefully.

    Because my birthday fell while we were in the Lakes, we did take a day off from venue hunting, and wandered up to Easedale tarn. Kathryn got me a shiny shiny book (and it turns out a Suzanne Vega single, and something that’s not arrived yet…). It was wonderful to be up in the fresh air, on a mountain, in the quiet again. Just looking out over the vista was beautiful. Being as we’d not done lots of walking to build up to it, we just went up to the Tarn and back down – but that alone was a fair walk – and the weather though cold was clear and sunny most of the day. It rained for literally a couple of minutes (really lightly) just after we got back, and while we were preparing to head out for Dinner. Kathryn also took me to dinner at an italian restaurant in Grassmere which was just lovely. The food wasn’t anything to write home about (it was fine, not unpleasant or anything, but definately itallian as cooked by the english), but the company was excellent :)

    The next day was back on the road, touring more venues. Poor old Brick’s exhaust’s temporary repair started to give up; I suspect the road up to the hostel was to blame, but he soldiered on; slightly more throaty and distinctly more rattly than is ideal… and we headed, after touring venues, down to Manchester.

    The lakes photos are here.

    Kathryn’s friend Helen lives in Manchester, and she showed us the city a little (We toured Ontario basin in Salford before heading in to the city); we spent lots of time chatting to her and her housemates, and had a very good chinese takeaway. I had a thoroughly nice time – and it was really really nice to sleep in a proper bed. It was also fantastic to meet one of Kathryn’s friends. I’m not very good at being not-shy, but I tried… No photos from Manchester because, well, most of the things I wanted to photograph were inconveinently located in the kinds of areas where taking a camera out is an invitation for someone to take the camera…

    So, huge thanks to Helen for showing us some of Manchester and putting us up for the night :)

    Then onward again, this time to Brighton. 

    Brighton is one of my other favourite cities; although I’ve not spent much time there, that which I have has been good, and it has a thriving music and culture scene. Unfortunately, it’s also home to West Pier, something which I have watched disintegrate since my youth. I love West Pier, I think it’s the most damning inditement of our Listing laws that there is a Grade I listed building lying in the sea. One which could, and rightly should, have been saved.

    Anyway, ignoring the ranting, the plan was to chill out in the afternoon, get some food, head to the hostel to book in and go clubbing. All of which we did. We headed to the museum too, and encountered work of a very cool musician called Al Start; we also risked life and limb entering a variety of bookshops and other-small-thing shops, but the clubbing bit? Friday night at the Candy Bar was quite empty. Even come 11pm there was not much life there. We did have a game of pool, which was excellent, and then headed back to our Hostel. Finally we spent Saturday Morning touring the shops and going down to see Brighton and West Pier. We’ve already had the rant, so you could just have the photos…

    So, finally we get to the Car. Poor old Brick has racked up 1000 miles this week; he’s burnt virtually no oil, but he’s dumped around 3 – 5 litres of coolant. Flushing the radiator was inadequate, it seems. And while short journeys are conducted fairly reasonably, long ones are only okay as long as you are very, very gentle with the throttle. And no suddenly stopping for fuel or you’ll get that coolant explosion.

    However, we seemed to get away with just topping up the coolant regularly; but what we didn’t get away with was 1000 miles on top of the 12 or so thousand miles on the temporary exhaust repair. It snapped sometime up in the lakes, and unforunately the hostel near Brighton was actually up an unmade track, and that spelt the end of the front section which, it seems, also had a temporary repair at some point.

    Unfortunately, about 40 miles from home the exhaust gave up completely, shearing into 3 separate pieces; and the RAC bloke couldn’t bodge them back together. Thankfully, the very nice RAC bloke towed Brick home (despite me only having roadside assistance) – his argument being that it was freezing cold, and it’d take him as long as it would to wait with us. He was an absolute star, and will mean that the RAC get my recommendation and continued custom. They rock.

    Unfortunately+, I can’t seem to get hold of a new exhaust for Brick. Well, I can get a stainless steel one, but I deem that somewhat excessive. Especially when Rebecca’s looking at being finished fairly soon…  I’ve got to head to work now, so we’ll save the rant about cars and money for later, shall we?

  • And for a change, we went to Oxford :)

    So, having examined the pros and cons, we headed off to Oxford yesterday for a few more Oxfringe events; in the end we only made it to two; mistiming it and arriving after the other exhibition had shut…

    We did: Things on the wall (both venues). In both cases there were paintings I really liked (see, I am a sucky reviewer); beautiful images and images that made you pause and think. Several that I’d’ve happily hung on the wall, were I paid rather more than I am. I did buy a book, though, from @183, which cost me all of a pound. It’s a copy of Stasiland – a book I wanted to read when it came out (but which, oddly enough escaped going on the wants list). It looks, from the beginning of it, very interesting. We also stopped off in a comic / video store, where we didn’t buy anything (possibly to the distress of the owner). It turns out the Scott Pilgrim in the window is but one of a huge shelf-load of Scott Pilgrims. What is going on? I know it’s awesome, but it’s meant to be my bit of Canadian Awesome! Ah well, I s’pose I can share with the world. I did however pick up a free Oxford music magazine, so I’ll have a nose at that for free events….

    We tried to do: Illustrators and Book Artists  – this is in the O3 gallery, which we somewhat belated located inside the Castle development. Not that it really mattered, we’d been wandering around being touristy and enjoying the freezing cold, and thus arrived some time after it shut. Peering through the door, it looked interesting. Better planning is called for next time, on our part, obviously.

    We then meandered around the city taking photos. Well, I took photos until my camera had a strop about the batteries being flat. Given that they were immensely cheap rechargables, which have been hideously abused, and it was fecking freezing out there yesterday I’m not entirely suprised. I’ve taken some shots of Kathryn while she’s asleep on the sofa today (it’s lushously sunny, if also bloody cold) and the batteries are happily displaying ‘full’ so I suspect it really was just the cold that’s upset them. Anyhow, we then made it to various bookshops, and in the end landed up in Borders, to check if there was anything else we fancied doing. Having spied various ‘stage’ type things we um’d and ah’d and were as traditionally decisive as we were, in the end picking “Do something, Martin!” (Martin White) because it was late enough that we could go and get something to eat first.

    It turned out that our choice could have been much less limited by time, because the Mexican Grill at which we got Burritos was the quickest Burrito provider I’ve encountered, and we were fed and on our way with plenty of time to sit in the bar at the theatre/college… which was nice, because it was one of the few warm places we’d been.

    Do Something, Martin! turned out to be excellent, if very very odd. It’s essentially a one-man story with accompanyment on an accordian, and some rather odd little songs in there. Kathryn mentioned a slight Tom Lehrer-esqueness, which I can agree with. 

    Do Something, Martin! also turned out to be where 

    [info]bluedevi

    was that evening (Oxfringe hoodie in evidence), and after some prodding from Kathryn (I have this vague fear of looking like some kind of stalker when I meet people off Livejournal) I said Hi. It’s always nice to put a face to a journal – although we were somewhat hurried – she had more Oxfringe things to do, and we had to go freeze our arses off getting back to the car.

    Of course, Brick having had all of the previous day being played with, declared that he wasn’t going to have any rear lights. Brake lights were fine, indicators just dandy, but no rear lights, no number plate light, and just for real top-level-Vauxhall-Viva humour, no dashboard lights either. Of course, the only thing I actually knew we didn’t have was dash-lights, until we pulled into a petrol station where a recovery truck driver mentioned it.

    Having spent about 10 minutes prodding bits, but foolishly assuming it must be the fuse (made of unobtainium) that I’d blown and bodged (because they are, in fact, made of unobtainum, or in my car 30A fuse wire soldered across the fuse body) I gave up, and we ran the last stretch home with the left indicator on permanently. Not ideal, but it was fracking freezing, and waiting for a recovery truck seemed unappealing).

    Today, of course, I checked and it’s Fuse 4, not Fuse 3 (the one I’d been fiddling with) which does the back lights. Taking it out and putting it back in seems to have cured it, I suspect though I need to find that emery and clean all those fuse connectors :-/

    Today is of course, Kathryn’s birthday. Kathryn’s been dozing in the sun, seems happy with her prezzies and her Pancake breakfast, and so we shall probably have a nice chilled out day before commencing the world of work we’ve planned next week. 

  • Picture post

    So, today’s been a day of doing car jobs. I had been intending, for a while now, to sort out Brick’s so called coolant. Having nearly had him overheat heading in to Oxford, and again heading into Reading I reckoned that nearly was close enough and it was time to bite the bullet and pull my finger out and get a round-tuit, as it were.

    Oh, just before we do that, we saw a hedgehog last night, it was lurking ‘twixt the front door and the window. Awesomely cute, it was :)
     

    So, I lifted the bonnet, having nipped first to Halfrauds to get some fresh coolant, and I drained out the most revolting brown gunk in all brown gunkydom.  

    gunk in a bucket

    That was *blue* when it went in. Not only that, coolant generally has similar consistency to water, this was a bit like soup. And that’s not even what came out with the radiator flush. So; a flush with plain water, and then a load of radiator flush went in. I also noticed that somewhat disconcertingly one of the bolts that hold the alternator on had wandered off somewhere. So I fished around in my toolbox and found something just-about-long-enough, and threw that in, tightening the thing back up. That was actually somewhat alarming, but never mind.

    Anyhow, while the car idled (to get it warm and allow the stuff to work) I tackled the non-functional indicator; the nearside one slowed down a while ago, and then stopped flashing completely. Having opened the cover, I thought the cause of this was instantly apparent…

    indicator lens

    I was completely wrong though; the inch of water sat in the indicator wasn’t actually the cause of the problem; the bulb had just gone. And the connectors were covered in shite, too, which I imagine can’t help. The offside one was just the same. I’m thinking of switching to LED bulbs now, actually, and having located the indicator relay am quite tempted. Especially after seeing the price of the normal bulbs in Halfrauds

    Anyhow, having at least located the fault I headed back to working on the cooling system, and in a fit of insanity whipped the radiator out. The radiator, rather distressingly seems to have been attacked by Radiator Moths, which probably also goes a long way to explaining the barely adequate cooling the car’s had since I got it.

    I need to make a decision on Brick’s future soon, because I suspect that if I want to keep him then I’m going to need to sort that radiator out. I straightened out some of the bent over fins, but really they’re disintegrating rather easily now…

     

    Finally I put together the 8-track hack. I’ve got a little bored of travelling and listening to my MP3 player; it means I can’t have music on and chat to Kathryn, I have to have uncomfortable little earbuds in all the time, and I can’t here the noises the car makes to maintain my paranoia appropriately.

    So, yesterday I started stripping down the 8 track; gone is the motor, gone is the tape head and most of the selector mechanism. Today I guestimated where I think the line-level part of the circuit starts (I think. I’ve connected it the other side of the preamp, I think) and connected that to a pair of phono connectors (because the in-car-entertainment project had to cost nothing at all, ideally).

    Having butchered a broken 8-track tape to mount the phono connectors on (the least tidy external bit of the job), I put it all back together and threw it into the car. It looks very 70’s in there, and apart from the slightly distressingly not as good as I’d like job I’ve done of the phono connectors (really I wanted to do something much more complex, but I’ll save that for when I’ve got a bit of money), it’s all in and done. Unfortunately I blew the aux fuse on the car while I was fitting it, due to a moment of sheer unadulterated stupidity (having found the ‘auxillary’ line on the connector block, connected it up, and then gone to check the voltage at the other end, I neglected to turn the ignition back off before attempting to connect the tape player.

    Even more unfortunately, it’s a 35A short glass fuse, of a type which Halfords apparently Does Not Sell. They do up to 7.5A in that size, so I grabbed some of them, as far as I know it’s the only item on the Aux circuit, so hopefully it’ll be okay. I need to pick up a new spare anyhow, because it turns out the 35A spare fuse is blown too… 

    Anyway, it being dark and cold outside I’ll test it all tomorrow… on the trip to Oxford :)

    [All the photos from today are in the Viva Set]

  • So not quite as posty as I thought then

    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 :)

  • 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.

  • le sigh

    So, yesterday was a good day (apart from the transient death of a laptop. It seems the power connector’s gone now (in addition to the cable and the case, the screen’s occasionally flickering too. I think it might be time to take it apart); tiring but everything went remarkably well. Despite the 6 miles travelled in the last year, Rebecca aquitted herself beautifully; carrying me the 120 miles (with the brief stop at my mum’s to collect new wings) without any untoward experiences (apart from a petrol leak, which I was faintly aware of, but only actually checked up on once I’d got up there).

    It was a gorgeous day, and oddly, for someone who’s lived in the UK all their lives, the sunny-but-cold air reminded me very strongly of Canada. I guess, doing Rebecca is largely a step towards Canadification, and having thought about it getting Canada out of my head was hard. Poor old Rebecca though, her engine sounded so sick by the time we got there – running essentially on 3 cylinders except at higher revs…

    Anyhow, Jonathon of JLH is very friendly – and we chatted for a while and looked around at the Zetec engine’d minors, and the minors undergoing major structural rehabilitation, and chatted of rebuilds topping £50,000… And I looked at my poor tired Rebecca, her subsistence motoring existence having taken it’s toll; rusty wings, rusty doors, knackered engine and such, she won’t be getting one tenth of that; but she her reliability is something which has left me with no small measure of respect for the engineering behind her.

    Anyhow, at the end of the day we headed to Leamington Spa; unfortunately getting stuck behind a learner driver – my train ticket was for 1800, and as he suggested 2 sets of (red) traffic lights from the station, I sprinted from the car and made it to the station at 1803, fortunately, my train was delayed and came in at 1806, just as I scrabbled up the stairs to the platform. I probably had about a minute to spare – and y’know what, I felt sick as a dog as I sat on that train. I sat there reading Scott Pilgrim (vol 1, I needed to start again at the beginning); and drifted off to Canada in my head again.

    I was back, sitting on the GO heading back to Mississauga, new copies of Scott Pilgrim in hand, from a day in Toronto. As the train pulled into Oxford (where I changed) I was thoroughly in that headspace. Finally got back to home just after 8, stopping at the Kebab van for dinner…

    Today, theoretically hasn’t gone badly. I’ve paid the council tax bill (after some argument with the home hub and the hub phone). Internet Exploiter didn’t want to start today, and Firefox is still doing it’s “i think I’ll stop and rest for a bit” at random moments. The laptop is however working after some wiggling of cables and connectors, so I guess reparing that is something I can look forward to. I may well switch it for a standard power connector, since then I can ditch my mini-adaptor. I just really don’t want *more* jobs to do. The fan heater in the lounge also needs stripping down and repairing, and this time I’m peeved with I&A car services.

    They’re great, in-so-far as being a garage I actually trust. But they’re slow. Or at least, when I booked my car in before they had it for several days and didn’t do anything, none of the service was done. This time, they collected the car (although it was no longer booked in), have had it for 3 days, and now want it for another 3. 6 days is a hell of a long time to have a car.

    Colour me unimpressed.

    Come the spring it’ll be back to car servicing I fear. It’s cheaper and it’s quicker. I’m down a car for a few hours, rather than days. Le *sigh*.

    I guess I should get on with the house, but I’m just somehow feeling really fed up. Poot.

  • Sheer unadulterated lazyness

    Okay, so shoot me. I’m taking my morning more or less, no actually I’m taking a chunk of my morning off. I may go and prod at the paint in the bathroom, I may not, I may turn on the water to the cistern, I may not. We shall see.

    I actually got up hugely early, but the thing is – the thing is I’ve got to drive to my mum’s to collect the wings for my mog, and the drive to the midlands to drop off Rebecca before waiting until 1800 for my train back. I’m hoping to have a big wait between heading up there and the train on the way back, but I can’t promise that’ll be the case. I was hoping she’d run better once she’d got some fresh petrol in her, but actually despite starting and running, she’s still rough as sin.

    So, anyhow, I’ve spent my morning doing stuff all. I’ve downloaded some nipod management tools, I’ve downloaded something which claims it can remove all my dupilicate mp3 files (ha, I’ve tried this before… but hey, it’s worth a shot). I’m still converting several gigs of Kathryn’s AAC (into mp3) files for placement on the nipod, although the application I’ve got in my sweaty little paws says it can do that on the fly while copying and integrating sorta with iTunes. Which is cool beans.

    ‘ve spent some time trying to find a prezzie for one of my friends; frustratingly I dreamt the perfect present for this friend last night; sadly however it doesn’t *actually* exist. I had my doubts, and searching the net has confirmed them, distressingly.

    But you have to look, don’t you?

    Yesterday I stripped an awful lot of paint from the radiator. It’s about 2/3rds done. I’m thinking I might mark out the channels to cut in the kitchen and then tomorrow I could do that, to give me a break from paint stripping. Ha, we could knock up a faux kitchen in a day, don’t’cha think? Maybe? Heh. Anyhow, I should go shower, really.

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  • Variously titled, but fundamentally the big, late update

    Welcome to the combined Kate’s Life 2007 update package. This package will update your Kate’s Life Information on the following issues:

    – Thanksgiving
    – XKCD is in my head again
    - Stuff of a housey nature
    – Random photographics
    – Other sundry informatorial updates may be included.     Click here to install this update

    So, yes, I’m behind again, aren’t I? So, we’ll do things in kinda an order. First up, XKCD is in my head; I’m now at a state where I have no properly working computers. The laptop’s power cable is fubar, so I need to find the spare supply for it (which is probably in the attic, fortunately, and not in the ‘spare room’ which is currently full. The G5 still needs a new power supply; I’m hoping to sort that out this week, if at some point before friday I have a working car. The PC downstairs still falls off the wifi, it is to be fair working in all other respects. And the hackintosh remains without network. There was no small degree of frustration after spending hours on it, I realise now that I need a USB WiFi dongle *anyway* (my brain kept saying, no you don’t; you won’t need one when you get the G5 working because you’ll just stick the homehub up there as a wired / wireless router – but it’d just be easier if everything can be wirelessed). So, yes. We’ll see what happens.

    Anyway, so, Thanksgiving. We celebrated thanksgiving with friends (thank you for coming Jordax!), producing a not-quite traditional (but real) chicken (there were only 3 of us though, and we still had *loads of food*), stuffed with home made stuffing consisting of (veggie) sausage, raisins, celery, onion, and herbs; sweet potato and pecan casserole (that was delicious, if mostly sugar :) ), US style biscuits (very yummy), green beans, carrots, brussel sprouts, mashed potato and cranberry sauce, all washed down with some rather nice red wine. This was followed by an excellent Lemon Icebox Pie made with real proper Graham Crackers imported from the States… (and this is the best description I can imagine of a Graham Cracker: “…if a Digestive were ever to get a Ryvita into trouble, possibly at a wild party behind the cheese board, then the resulting progeny may well end growing up to look a lot like Graham Crackers“). Anyhow, proper thanksgiving tradition being followed we attempted to watch clips of the Macy’s day parade, but they were a bit short and required more attention than we wanted to give them (next year, can someone please post the whole damn thing to YouTube or GoogleVideo? That’d help. Ta), so we switched and watched the Peanuts / Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special (1973) :)

    And then we settled down to play Squabble for a bit (Kathryn won :) ), chatted, drank and whiled the hours away before heading to bed. Sunday was spend doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever (apart from some laundry and all the washing up in the entire universe).

    Anyway, I know it’s rather bleached from the flashgun, but here’s the thanksgiving dinner…

    And here’s a bit of old news; I drew a person…

    Raaaa!

    So, stuff of a housey nature (Which I should, really, be doing now) – the bathroom has water. Water! The taps work and everything. Well, the cold ones. Jobs left for us to do are (in order, ish):

    – Cut and prime wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – The rest of the grouting, most importantly finishing the shower and polishing the area behind the radiator.
    – Painting the woodwork behind the radiator.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Seal sink drainer (because it’s leaking….le sigh).

    Day 2
    – Paint wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – Silicone sealing around the shower.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Sand radiator and paint… hopefully.
    – Silicone seal around toilet

    Day 3
    – Switch over to chrome flush lever / chain / etc.
    – Mount toilet cistern, connect up, pray it flushes okay.
    – Connect radiator.

    Other non-urgent jobs are to finish the rest of the grouting elsewhere, put a second coat of paint on some areas that missed out on the walls then mount shelves on those walls, and to – once the plumbing’s all connected up (hot water, specifically), fill in the last segment of tiles (over the currently removable panel work) and to grout everywhere that’s left.

    It’s close, but this made me ridiculously happy:

    And finally, for various reasons I’ve been trying to get some artsy shots of the Viva (well, one specific reason) – so, here’s one or two:

    Uh, so there you go, closing with pictures. I’m going to end the update there, hopefully that’ll sort people’s complaints about lack of pictures ;)

  • She Rocks!

    So, for once I’m not talking about my girlfriend; although she does also verily rock.

    Today’s been a bit of a struggle; having seen my mum yesterday we got to bed not late, but later than normal (we went to see a bollywood film in Sloughs amazing deserted cinema, more on that later), I got up this morning and had – how shall we put this – well, let’s say I felt a bit unwell. Several visits to the bathroom later and I was feeling better, but less than perfect. My stomach still isn’t sure about the whole food concept and I keep running alternately hot and cold, but hey. Being ill never stopped me before. So I ordered the new ADSL, I spent some time freaking about trying to work out costs from electricity suppliers (Argh!), and I rang up about getting my beloved mog up to the restoration place.

    JLH Minors are well known in Moggie circles, and after a friendly chat with John a day was agreed. Then I explained that Rebecca’s not been started for a year. He wished me luck and said he’d see me on the day – and if I could ring before I head up that’d be great. So, plan is book tickets for my return journey and then start making my way up early in the AM.

    However, I knew Rebecca needed a new battery, I’ve borrowed hers a few times to start brick, and it won’t really hold a good charge. It’ll do enough for a few goes (about 3, shortish attempts) before the starting attempts start to sound tired. With that in mind I checked the spec of the old battery, decided what bits I needed for the globe taps (I hope) and tromped over to B&Q, and then wandered over there. I can’t say as I feel great, but having got there I sorted out the bits I needed, spent some time evaluating shed-locking-options and then headed down to Halfords.

    At halfords I made a sound somewhat like a suckling pig. My last battery was about 30 quid… they’re now, well, start at just shy of 60 quid. Having stared at them a bit, I made my way somewhat further to Jagdev. I can’t say as Jagdev autos brings a smile to my face, nor is their customer service anything to rival millards (nor do they have the fun 1960’s asthetic of millards), but all the same they are cheaper. And 50 quid (for what I think’d’ve cost me nearly 70 at Halfords) later I wandered (slowly, car batteries are not light) back to the house.

    Now, you have to respect this: I turned over Rebecca by hand a few times, just to make sure nothing had siezed and to try and slide some oil over all the surfaces; and then with some trepidation stuck the battery in. I can’t say that after her year off she started first time (and to be fair she’s got a mechanical, not an electric fuel pump, so had to pump fuel though the lines to fill the carb while turning over); I can say however that she gave it a go and coughed a few times sufficiently to disengage the starter. I can however say that second try, after a year of sitting, she fired up and ran. Not particularly well; but the engine *is* due to go for a rebuild. The idle was somewhat uneven, one of the cylinders was clearly somewhat less enthusiastic than the others. But she kept running, and I am more than impressed; I am stunned. I was expecting to be getting new plugs, cleaning distributor caps and rotor arms, and getting the easy start out. But no need, for Rebecca is a car of many virtues.

    So, wish her luck next week, for it is a long journey.

  • There are advantages…

    Being able to do work on your own car, because it’s a classic and thus nice and simple does come with certain advantages. While I struggle unevenly against the reliabilty of modern ‘equivalent’ parts, when I can obtain them (which isn’t always) at a pinch I can fit them myself. So the dead alternator whilst annoying (very) is at least not as much of an issue as it might be; for whilst the last couple of days have been a little fraught – not enough sleep and somewhat stressy driving to work (because I was running there and back on one charge of the battery) having got the replacement alternator it’s been fitted in an hour.

    I’m quite pleased – one hour to strip off the old alternator, walk to Halfords (wait five minutes for a manager who could do refunds and exchanges), exchange it, walk back and put the new one on. I did this all in weather cold enough to give me an ice-cream headache as I was walking back as fast as I could. I also got a stitch from walking as quickly as I could, which was entertaining.

    I’ve just stuck the battery back in, but I’ve not tested it, so let’s all cross our fingers shall we – ‘cos I’d like to sleep in tomorrow. While last night wasn’t horribly busy; it was gently constant until 5am meaning that I (we) didn’t *really* get a break until then. So….