Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • Lack of being in the mood

    So, todays been one of those days when I’ve just not really felt in the mood. I gave in and replaced the electric radiator in the lounge; the panel one I’d borrowed from my brother in law. It’s been leaking oil gradually and I got fed up of that – and suspected that it’s efficiency was somewhat lowered by the leaking oil. Unfortunately while I was exploring the oil filled radiators (why exactly is it that the come the winter all of the stores heater ranges disappear) Brick decided to leak coolant all over the car park. Having checked it looks like one of the clips was loose, but the pipe it’s connecting looks pretty past it; so I may add that in to my incredibly huge set of jobs for the garage…

    So far we’ve got:

    – Replace Servo

    – Service and tighten head bolts (if necessary)

    – Change rear brake shoes

    – Fix passenger side window winder and door locks (rear one doesn’t work, front one only locks with the key, window winder ceased to descend).

    – Try and see why the heater does absolutely nothing whatsoever.

    I need to order the bits for the service; but it’s being one of those months where I started off doing quite well, and I’m ending the month wondering where in hell the money’s going. Mostly on the house or the car, or petrol, to be brutally honest.

    Unfortunately the Viva parts place is closed today, so I can’t book the car in because I don’t know when the bits will arrive. And for some reason I’m bloody cold again. See, I’m really just not in the mood. I feel tired and cranky; and generally slightly out of sorts with the world. I’m not even sure why; I had a really *really* good evening last night – I suspect it’s just the prospect of 6 days where I’ll barely get to see Kathryn, and 6 night shifts in the cold.

     

  • late night ponderance

    See, nights. I always try and swing my body round to night shifts by staying up insanely late the night before; thus allowing me to sleep late into the day before my night shift. That’s the *idea* anyhow. Which means staying up late at night, which means pondering and thoughts and kind of wondering about things.

    So, I’ve got various things lurking in my brain; the Viva project (which I’ll unveil at some point when Zesthost have sorted out the problems with billing which may be internet explorers, my, or their fault (I don’t know how it happened….)) lurks in my mind distracting me during the day; the house – obviously – continues to be cold and I keep thinking about the bills (including the TV licence :-/ ), and trying to work out whether it’s better to fork out 80 quid on a tool that we need, or leave it and rent it (at 40+ quid a day); and funnily enough I’ve got a strong desire to make a Super 8 film again.

    A couple of days ago I finally showed my cine films to Kathryn and it’s left me with a strong urge to get the camera out again. I’ve been missing the video camera – having played with John’s camera my little Aiptek which shoots at less than half tv resolution it just feels – well – exactly what it is, a cheap point and shoot which does video. But cine film has a certain quality to it; not so much a timelessness as a feeling of being fixed in time. Having hunted e-bay I can see a variety of options; well, two really. The Ektachrome colour film (I need to check any of my cameras will take this), or a black and white film.

    Either way, I have a distinct urge to get the camera out; only I’m not quite sure what to film. Anyone got a script that can be shot in 5 minutes (or so)?

    Anyway, the plan for tonight, such as it is – having watched Long Way Down (which I was seriously beginning to struggle with watching until about 2/3rds of the way into this episode when suddenly it became much more about the journey and the people than just an endless struggle to get the miles in), is to go and sort out the Mac. The only problem with that is that it’s in a room that’s cold. Cold and upstairs. So, thought for the moment is that when I’ve done this I’ll make myself a little cup of tea, grab my nipod, my copy of Accident and Emergency Nursing and head upstairs – taking with me a fan heater (well, I’ll use the bathroom / workshop heater). It’s a shame, ‘cos the gas fire’s just made the lounge nicely habitable. But hey.

    I need to get the Mac up and running really, because I’m fed up of using IE on the laptop – but I daren’t reinstall the laptop until I’ve got one other machine working. I’m slightly concerned about the Mac also because when I switch to the BeBox, as I intend to, I’ll have to pick up a wireless card for the Mac… and so far the ‘it works perfectly’ squad of Hackintosh people have produced for me a machine which has never worked the way they said. I’ve still no sound… and the latest Hackintosh software’s only succeeded in giving me more problems (that had no sound or networking). I don’t have the skills / interest / time /energy to care enough or to fix it; so it’s back on an earlier revision which just left me with no sound. Something I can deal with thanks to the nipod, and the existence of the laptop. But it’s not something I have any urge to live with permanently. Thankfully, my life behind the technology curve just got much better, with the addition of a G5 Mac. Only teeny little problem – it’s a dead G5 mac. So if anyone’s got a spare G5 power supply kicking round it’d sure come in handy right about… now.

    Anyway, I should get on :)

  • World of Boredom

    See, when I started doing venepuncture they gave me a book to do with ‘a few questions’. Only the few questions actually turn out to be all the questions in the world. At the time they gave it to me they said you don’t need to get them all done before you do the venepuncture training; only for when you’re ready to be assessed on venepuncture. I’ve actually done all the mandatory ones (at least, I have as far as the venepuncture side goes; I’m just faintly nosing at doing some of the optional ones.

    I’ve also been loading up the new nipod; it has a few unfortunateisms; one of which is that it doesn’t draw power from the USB and the other of which is that it has to be plugged in when transferring data. Oh, and you have to use the database software to transfer stuff, if you want it to do playlists and such. Still, despite the software being clunky like woah, it seems to be working. I’ve been taking the opportunity to home rip some CDs which I originally downloaded. Yes, it’s true, I torrented the odd album, and guess what, now I’ve bought these ones because I liked them and am re-ripping them at the quality I like (ridiculously high).

    In other news, the cut on my thumb looks vastly less impressive when not pouring blood. This isn’t an invitation for it to pour blood, but more a comment on the fact that I thought it was a bigger cut – but I guess it was mostly deep, not wide.

    I’ve done no work at all today, as is commensurate with my plan; which is to not be so tired I want to die when doing my night shifts. My only ‘workoid’ type thing was discovering that the name of the ‘channel cutter’ which I’m sure I’ve heard it called before is actually a ‘chasing machine‘ (which is a far more fun, but less helpful name). I need this because whilst I obviously wouldn’t dream of rewiring the kitchen (it’s against the electrical regs), I do intend to recess wiring into the wall, because it’d be untidy to leave it hanging everywhere. I’ll even pop it in the proper plastic tubes; then there’ll be some plastering, and lo, we shall be sorted. But with a chasing machine that’ll take a weekend, rather than several weeks.

    And in Viva related news the painfully expensive new Servo has arrived; sadly not in it’s original box (although packaged in much paper’n’stuff, and what looks like it was once the lid of the box); and also the new domain name is now mine. Due to a small technical foof (either on my part, or the part of the billing company) my hosting is not yet ready, but once it is world be prepared, for I have a plan of much evil.

    So, that’s my world of boredom.

  • Do you know everything?

    I spent several minutes this morning staring at the radiator trying to remember which ‘tool’ I used for scraping the paint off; then I remembered – old stanley blades. I’ve no idea how many of them I’ve got through; but it’s quite scary.

    One side of the radiator is now stripped back to a joyous black / cast iron layer. One other side left to strip; then sand it, then clean it, then painting. Oh, so simple ;)

    In addition to which, my productive morning has included attacking brick’s brake lights, which are hopefully now working. I can’t actually tell; but if not it’s definately an earthing issue. The brake lamp holders look like someone’s rather cruelly dipped them in rust inducer and then placed them conveniently near the sea on a particularly humid day. I spent several minutes attacking both of them with sandpaper (yes, I know, but I’ve run out of emery paper). Having produced something akin to steel (rather than the attractive iron oxide layer that was there before) I produced lamps which at least are now both on, but I can’t tell if the brake lights are working. If not then I guess I’ll have to give it a more thorough clean. It may be the brake light connector that’s gone as well, which concerns me as it’s also corroded quite badly and would be a pig to replace.

    I’ve also cleaned up (a little) the space behind the washing machine and dumped some fresh concrete into the (two!) holes where mice could potentially have gained entry. I knew there was one, but having cleaned up a little a second became apparent. it’s not there now though… I felt guilty buying ready-to-mix concrete because it was so much more than getting sand/gravel/cement, but it’s so handy to have around (really!) because I can just wander out scoop some into a bucket, add water and lo, I have concrete. Hopefully that should fix those pesky mice (although we finally caught one on Friday night, and had to stop and let it go free elsewhere).

    Hrm, oh yes, and I’ve grouted the wall where the radiator goes. That can be ‘polished’ later, leaving just the painting of the skirting board on that wall; I’ve sprayed the last bath foot with it’s first coat of primer, and done the second coat of primer on the two shelf brackets. Distressingly I’ve run out of propellant in the primer can; it’s quite annoying ‘cos it’s blatantly got a fair amount of primer in it still. Anyhow, few coats of gloss should see that last foot sorted which’ll mean that for the first time in goodness knows how long that bath will actually have a complete set of feet.

    And finally in my busy morning of catching up I’ve put silicone sealant round the sink. It was terribly frustrating. I’ve never been great at silicone sealant, but I’d got some quite neat looking ones around; but this one just went a bit pear shaped. For some reason when I smoothed it, it went lumpy. I’ll have to see what I can do to fix that, but that’s a job for later I feel. It’s not perfect, but it’s servicable.

  • Bother ++

    The brake servo on the viva is officially deceased. This is inconvenient; not least because, well, they’re not easily available. It’s not like walking into a shop and saying ‘hey, I need a new brake servo for a viva’. Or it is, only first they look at you like you’re a talking goat, and then once they’ve got over their ‘what the hell’s that’ the answer is ‘no’.

    Classic places just say, sorry we don’t have ’em. Although one place has ‘Price on Enquiry’ which scares me.

    And to round it off, my garage didn’t do the rest of the service, because they spent their time trying to get a brake servo. I must admit I foolsihly thought ‘oh, I’ll just ring up the spares place that the club recommends and I’ll be sorted….’; yeahright.

    In other news, our phone number will be changing – so if you want the new one you’ll have to ask when we get it. The current ones should be valid to the end of the month; then well be down to the one that ends in a 7 until we get a new broadband phone doojit.

    k?

  • Another day another visitor…

    It appears that we have visitors in our house. Well, at least one visitor who I have to say is not welcome. We’ve gained a small brown furry thing of the mouse variety who (unfortunately for him or her) crossed the kitchen last night while I could still see (him or her). Small and brown and moving swiftly. So this evening we shall be off out to purchase some humane traps, and our unwelcome’d guest will be taken on a free tour out to the local countryside.

    I spent some of last night sticking flour/sugar/etc into boxes, and have some concerns about the rice (which is open, and I didn’t think to seal). I have an idea where they’re coming from though – it came from the larder and sprinted all fuzzy like towards the fridge (bloody food orientated creatures), but on thinking about it I recalled a hole, a hole located behind the washing machine. When they took out the wall the floor there was a bit lower than the floor in the rest of the room, and there’s a small gap where what was once the hearth has crumbled. I’m not afraid of mice, but I don’t like them in the house for a variety of reasons, one of which is their tendancy to get in all your food (and make you have to throw it away), another is their tendancy to urinate and defacate everywhere. So, catching the buggers is high up on the priorities list; and sealing that hole (and checking the larder, which is more of a dog than you might believe, since the new boiler’s being stored in there and it’s not light) is also very high up.

    The problem is, with the building work there’s boxes and things stacked everywhere, which makes life a little more difficult.

    Anyhow, progress: yesterday I finished painting the ceiling above the shower, not a huge thing I realise, but it meant that the missing light could go into it’s snuggly little hole, which means that the room is now much warmer again. The tiles are done bar 8, which I’ll have to cut and do today, and maybe a nasty little shimmy-tile because of a wall that’s not straight.

    So then it’s on with the grouting and the painting. I may clear the area in front of the radiator-space so I can paint that today. Then it’ll be top-coat-able by tomorrow. Yes. So. That’s basically the plan for the day.

    In other news, this talk by Larry Lessig is very good / interesting… And Brick still lurketh at the garage.

  • Morning update (‘cos you need more than one in a day)

    So, plan for the morning was:

    Ring BeThere and order the new ADSL
    Collect car, collect packages, buy more adhesive, paint stripper, stanley blades.
    Drop off car

    And y’know what, it’s all been done (well, sorta. I rang BT to get my MAC Code, which they can’t actually produce at the moment; I await a call back with the same expectation as I have that the world will freeze over tomorrow). I tested the adhesive I’d got on the wood, and no, it still won’t bloody stick; so I’ve got a different brand of adhesive which, according to the man in the tile shop will adhere tiles to wood. I collected Kathryn’s prezzie and my MP3 player (but the batteries are flat and it’s not quite clever enough to charge from the USB cable, which is slightly distressing). I then dropped off the car, and walked back pausing only to pick up more Nitromors (mmm, volatile organic compounds) and stanley blades (I’ll actually use up the old ones stripping paint now I’ve got some replacements!). I’ve found who I think will be our VoIP provider – mostly because they offer in their basic price plan free and unlimited UK and International calls (to certain countries). Given that we’ve a penchant for calling Kathryn’s family in the US then that’s quite handy.I just have to get everyone I know to keep national geographic numbers. Or join the same company for VoIP ;)

    And in other news… I’m intrigued by this. If only I could find a trailer for it… It’s still fracking cold here, incidentally. My feet are wondering how it’s got to be so cold…

    Annnyhow. Off I go, it’s tiling time now I’m fed and watered.

     

     

     

  • Brrr.

    It’s chilly and foggy here today, much with the chilly and much with the foggy. Theoretically I get to collect Brick from the motor engineer today; sadly the oil leak persists; it’s not a failed seal of any sort. The sump (which for those not in the know is the reservoir for oil) has a crack in it, apparently. How it gained this crack I don’t know, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it had a crack before I bought it that had been sealed using glue, or pixie dust, because it started leaking pretty badly as soon as it was home. Unfortunately despite people fairly frequently chucking entire engines, without getting a whole and entire engine (which seems ‘excessive’ to me) I can’t easily lay my hands on a sump. People’ve suggested waiting ’til I go to sort out the welding and then have the engine out / sump off / clean / weld / replace. But there’s a fair amount of welding, and it’s leaking oil at a frantic rate of knots, which makes me unhappy.

    Another thing which makes me a little unhappy is this. See, I want to run all my vehicles on E85. I can’t afford an (adequate) EV conversion, I can’t do biodiesel, and I can’t not commute to work. Even working in the hospital in the town where I live is far enough that I’d have to commute by car; so I’d be stuffed anyhow. So Morrisons starting to sell E85 is great, except that the nearest station is so far from me that I’d use half a tank getting there and back, and given that I’d have to adjust the timing and possibly the mixture once I’d filled up with E-85 I’d be a bit stuffed. Come on guys (specifically, Esso, Jet, Tesco and Murco ‘cos they’re the ones I actually go near every week), let’s have E85 at all the stations, then I can have a selection of much cleaner vehicles. Infact, they’d be heading for carbon neutral, which would rock. Well, theoretically at least. When E85 production methods improve there’s a good chance for carbon neutrality.

    Anyhow, so I had a really fantastic weekend. Which is odd, because I spent the second half of it (i.e. most of Sunday) tiling. I’m 3/4ths done in the shower cubicle though, I’d be tiling now before heading off to collect brick were it not, well, too early for diamond-saw noises. I misjudged the remaining number of tiles though. I thought I was down to about 200, but I’d neglected the ones that went in the spare room to use as a table when we had lauril staying (ah, the magic of a throw). At any rate, I don’t know if the tiles are adhereing to the wood yet (or if they need *another* coat of paint) – if they are then I can commence that final section of tiling and the plan that we should be done and dusted by the end of the week could actually be true. I am not looking forward to grouting though. Kathryn’s done a wall and a half, and between us we should get the rest done without too much pain. But it’s still the most tedious thing in the world.

    So, what else did I get up to this weekend; well, mostly I just spent time with Kathryn – which is a pleasure unsurpassed in my book. We went for a little wander down to what we thought was an abandoned abbey, but turned out to be an active abbey, and met a nun in purple. Apparently they’re an Augustinian community; at any rate, the nun in question seemed nice :)

    On the way back we stopped to disassemble a skip full of parts of an alarm. A shop’d been stripped out and there was a large amount of depressingly useful wood there, all of it being dumped, and also a significant quantity of electronics. It’s always rather sad, I feel, when people strip out shops throwing away stuff that’s potentially useful. We came away with two small plastic FixSystem bins (of which there are some more at my mum’s house, somewhere (little plastic bins you put on the wall to store things in)), and some small piece of the alarm system. Then we headed home stopping at the local supermarket for provisions, ‘cos Brick not being here, and us living where we do means that shopping on foot would be an activity unsupassed in it’s tediousness.

    Sunday was tiling day, although come the evening I took Kathryn’s advice and actually had a break. I’d been tiling pretty much solidly from 1130 to 1700, which to be fair got 100 tiles on the wall, but did take it’s toll on me. So, today I collect Kathryn’s Xmas Prezzie which handily has arrived same time as my new nipod. This time I actually got a branded one though, the nipod’s awful interface, and the fact that they don’t show any shots of the interfaces on the adverts put me off getting another – although it was very small and cute.

    And it did play video.

    This one however is just a music player, and possibly not quite so robust being hard disk based (like the ipod) but hey, we’ll see. Anyhow, shower, phone BeThere and then head off to collect the car, if it’s ready (it bloody ought to be since they opted not to take the engine out and just to switch it to unleaded; I can do a head swap on an A+ in a few hours…. and I’m paying them for a few hours work). Anyhow, enough whining.

    Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to tile I go…

     

     

  • Progress (at least in some areas)

    So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

    Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

    I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

    For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

    Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

    I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ’em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

    I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

    I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

    …the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

    Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

    Yes, so.

    (And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

    So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

    We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

  • Retraction

    So, I thought that it was the cable at fault; I now retract my pseudo modern car parts are rubbish rant (although it stands as a general comment) because it turns out that the idiot who owned my car before me (s/idiot/cunning git) failed to put part of the clutch cable mechanism back; when I replaced the clutch I didn’t realise it was missing and so put it back the way it was. It now appears that all of the strain from the clutch has been going onto the pedal box and has snapped part of it off. With some difficulty I managed to sort-of-fix it. It works now, and hopefully should stay working.

    I couldn’t see why the brakes were having issues though, so he’ll have to go to the garage for definate.

    I did however put the cover back in the engine bay so that fumes are less inclined to come join me in the passenger cabin, which was a positive.

    And then I had this great idea; you know those great ideas you get? Well, I thought I’d fix the broken window winder. A while back the window in the passenger side decided it was not going to shut properly; or indeed open properly, or do anything very much. So I whipped the cover off and had a bit of a looksie. Of course, it became apparent part way through this process that neither could I see well enough, nor could I find anything that felt wrong and then I had my second great idea of the morning. I’ll put the new door card in while I’m here. So I got it, and while fitting it managed to unhook part of the door lock. Having spent about 10 minutes cursing I worked out how to put it back together, and discovered the new door panels are *exactly the same* apart from one teensy tiny difference. The door handles are subtly smaller and don’t actually operate the door lock on brick. Having cursed a little to myself I then removed the door panel again and refitted the original one. During which time I again dislodged that fracking bit of door lock mechanism.

    Finally I got it all back together and although I can now say the clutch works, and the fan sucks in air rather than engine fumes, the door lock on the passenger side now only locks with a key, or from the inside. You can’t do the button-down-hold-door-handle-and-slam thing. And the window winder still doesn’t work. Gaaaah.

    Just to round it all off, while I was posting this the laptop’s battery demonstrated that it is, indeed, a bit fubar. ISTR reading that this laptop does have problems with killing batteries fairly quickly, and it was a cheap battery. But still. Disconcertingly, having stopped and died stone dead, the battery now states it’s fully charged. *sigh*