Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • Floating courtesy of the magic pixies

    So, I’ve had an interesting couple of days. Last night, because our ward, indeed a large chunk of Saint Bob’s Hospital  is closed due to an outbreak of diarrhoea, our ward was strangely, well, quiet. Empty beds and because we’re good and also lucky, our ward appeared to have escaped very lightly – we had very few cases of diarrhoea; so we had what has got to be the very first properly staffed – or at least appropriate staff-patient ratio’d shift I’ve ever had.

    It was pleasant. I came home and I didn’t hurt, I wasn’t exhausted, I was sleepy and tired, but not exhausted. I got up this morning to go to work, and y’know what, I didn’t struggle to get up, I didn’t hurt as I got in the shower, and I drove to work in a cheery mood.

    Sadly, all things come to an end and our ward is now filling up. But hey, 2 days of joy – I know it’s wrong of me to have enjoyed the time while other wards struggled – but to be able to give *really good care* to patients; to check them properly, to wash them slowly and take time over it. To wash between people’s toes, to remove everyone’s anti-embolism stockings and wash their feet.

    To shave all the male patients who wanted it… To actually know what’s going on with patients, and be able to answer questions and hand over accurately to the late staff… Oh, and to just spend some time talking to the patients. To do my job properly, the way I’d like to, just for 2 days.

    Anyhow, enough dwelling, some things were less fun today. I realised, like I said that I ordered the wrong size tyre. So I rang up Berkshire Motorcycle Centre and said ‘Hi, look, I ordered a tyre on Saturday…’ [they cut me off] ‘Yes, it’s not arrived yet, it should be in tomorrow’.

    To which I said ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been astonishingly silly, and ordered the wrong tyre’ or polite words to that effect. Their response was “well, it’s yours now. You have to pay for it”.

    Uh, no, actually I don’t. Not legally, no. Not in any sense of the word. It’s not even arrived. In the end I argued my side and the guy was incredibly rude and then told me that he wasn’t interested in my custom and hung up. So, I recommend not going to Berkshire M/C Centre in Slough.

    At any rate, I’ve ordered my tyre from an online tyre place, and I’ll get someone local to fit it – my local tyre place probably.

    And in better news; my builder came! He came and built stuff. Well, technically, he demolished stuff, and then built stuff. And discovered that my house has had some half-assed-botch jobs done on it – it currently has two joists which while they are fixed (one presumes) at one end, are floating – held in place by the floorboards – he’s planning to put joist hangers in (which should have been done a when the chimney breast was originally modified).

    That and the original chimney is supported on two ‘tie in’ bricks. Uh, only one of them seems to only have maybe 1/5th it’s length in the wall it’s tied in to. It’s currently propped up with a bit of wood, a bit of brick, and a screw driver. The wall also appears to have been built from random brick; the new one’s not exactly any prize – being a mixture of block work and brick – and it’s imperial brick and metric blockwork – and they don’t tie together terribly neatly, but he is trying to keep materials costs down for me – and it’ll all be behind plaster.

    There would be pictures, but the CF card reader is on my desk by the Mac. And the mac is sat above the floaty joisted floorboards.

    Whilst they’re no more unsafe than they were yesterday, I don’t *particularly* want to tread on them. So you’ll have to be waiting for them.

  • …I blame money.

    So, last year I went through a fair struggle but this whole house / money / job game has got me stressed. Perhaps that’s why I’m dreaming – and remembering snippets – because there’s something to worry about so I’m dreaming. I feel like my body is falling apart – despite me living better (although no real exercise, I need to do something about that); and eating better, I’m sick – and I’ve been sick with this sore throat for nearly a week now. In fact, it’ll be a week tomorrow. And there’s no sign of improvement, I just feel as bad as I did the first day I got it.

    I get frustrated at my body at times like this – wanting it to be better, cursing my immune system for not kicking out the invader. Which is revoltingly unfair of me, but after experiencing a year of not getting unwell; well; this repetitive sickness is getting to me.

    Ironically, so far this year my hayfever’s remained mild – mild enough that I debate not taking the tablets – I may have mentioned I went for 4 days without; but the occasional sneezing fits on top of the headache and sore throat, that was a bit much.

    I’ve tried to be as gentle with myself as I could whilst still preparing for the builder; I split up the work over several days; and I’m glad I have. I do still need to do the washing up and move the washing machine, but that’s it now. I’ve taken the recycling to be recycled, I’ve dried laundry on the line (a bit at a time, ‘cos it’s a bit stretchier than perhaps you’d expect, mind it is a *long* run) with no supports, I’ve cleared the kitchen door, and uh, I’ve watched 3 episodes of Hustle (how come they’re getting Hustle in the US before we get it here; it’s *our* programme. Since when did the BBC start showing shows in the US before here?!, huh?). I also watched Dr Strangelove, which I still think is a fantastic film.

    I gargled with salt water (so much I actually made myself sick :( ), and with TCP (which tastes revolting, incidentally). And I drunk so much to try and soothe my throat that I started to feel unwell.

    I don’t really know what to do; I want rid of this but I’ve got work tomorrow and it’s going to get worse.

    Oh, and I ordered the wrong size tyre for my bike, so I get to make a very embarrassed phone call tomorrow…. Bah.

  • I’ve nearly not done anything today

    I tried, I really tried – and frankly the period of time when my body was informing me that I was freezing cold, followed by the later period where my body was telling me that I was insanely hot; yeah, they made me think I shouldn’t really do heavy lifting and working.

    So I’ve mostly sat around, slept, kinda stared faintly at stuff on the laptop; listened to more WW..Dtm. I’ve also done some useful things – e-mailed a bloke about a potential interior for the Viva (I did say I’d tidy him up); and paid for the electronic ignition – it doesn’t look like my mileage is likely to drop in the near future; and the Viva needed new points 3,000 miles ago. So, yeah, let’s get that in and in, hopefully I’ll get slightly better starting with it :-)

    I also paid off one card, the other one though is starting to scare me as it’s getting out of hand. I need to get some bank work sorted, quite urgently. All I can do this month is pay off the minimum. Last month I paid off a lot less than I put on it. I’ve kind of accepted that there’s jobs which I’m going to have to do, but it’s somewhat scary at the moment.

    On the plus side, my friend Dave reckons the ‘zed can be MOT’d sans wingmirrors; I can’t *see* anything about wing mirrors in the MOT testing manual. So anyway, that would be good. Tyre, MOT and Tax (since I’ve accidentally renewed my insurance) and I should be able to rat about on my zed. And Dave reckons he has a suggestion for making my ‘zed run better – apparently the standard ignition unit fails to give enough advance for the 251 – it can be tweaked though with a dremel…which apparently gives vastly better performance and economy…

    My one exception to my resting was while I was cooking dinner and the, uh, box of kitchen stuff magic’d itself into the lounge. Yes. And that dishwasher, I never touched it m’lord, it just shuffled itself across to that other wall. As did the bookcase. I was astonished. *looks sheepishly at Kathryn*

  • So, a bit of an update

    It’s a bit huge today, lots of photos and all, so rather than inflict them on my entire f-list, the post is under a cut. But for all of you to enjoy, here’s a picyture…

    So, Kathryn ([info]bluwyngz) came down last week, in fact, a week ago today. Having ensconced ourselves in Slough – funds for the journey to Bristol and back (and foodage while there) being somewhat lacking from my bank account (hell, funds for anything are lacking and a certain NHS related staffing are working at that special speed at which the NHS functions – thus preventing me from obtaining bank shifts which is somewhat frustrating). Anyhow. I was a little concerned by this turn of events – Slough being hardly a cultural mecca – and fearing that Kathryn might get somewhat bored with, well, Slough.

    But actually it all turned out fabulously. The weather was kind to us, and we headed out to Windsor Great Park – on the way there encountering this rather nice picture and then…

    The park itself is pretty vast, considering I live all of 20 minutes away and had no idea about it’s existence (I’m sure someone ([info]jordax, probably) has told me about it, but hey, I have a short memory) and yet is bigger than Windsor itself, well, I’m surprised. Anyhow, we wandered in and here in all their (edited) glory are some of the pics.

    It was gorgeously sunny, and the current

    [info]snapshot_hunter comp is ‘dappled’ so I spent ages trying to get ‘dappled’ shots:

    Given that it’s a big old park with lots of big old trees, there’s plenty of storm damaged trees – with their broken jagged points scoring the sun bleached sky.

    I spent ages photographing this tree, but I never did quite get the shot I was after.

    Of course, since it was sunny++, I could actually use the Macro on my camera. I’ve not played with it very much, it needs a lot of light, and obviously, tiny focal distance. People who’ve seen my ladybird (ladybug) shot from the urbex set know I’ve been playing with it, but hey, here’s some tree bark which had a gorgeous texture:

    So, playing with the macro in a park leads to ‘flowers’, obviously. But not being in a great position (I was on the rather steep bank of a little dinky stream) meant that I wasn’t that great at checking the focus on some shots. This was intended to be a shot of the purple flower, but I really love the way it’s come out, actually. The focus is not where you expect, and the grass looks fantastic :-)

    I debated whether that was ‘dappled’ but really, it just doesn’t scream ‘dappled’ at me. It wasn’t the last time I played with the macro function, oh no:

    However, on the dappled front I have to say I felt this next shot achieved dappled quite well; in fact, assuming the competition’s not closed, this’ll be my entry.

    I won’t say as it’s the very definition of dappled, but it’s pretty much dappled as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, we continued our quest (which was, I suspect, to have a very nice walk in the park) and both continued to snap away with our respective cameras…

    And I continued to play a game I’d not even realised I was playing – I think it was called ‘how many macro shots can you take in a day’?

    This was another shot I took in my quest to get dapplement, but I wasn’t quite so keen on this one…

    One of my other hobbies of the day was candid shots of Kathryn. Sadly, quite a lot of these came out with her being small and far away, or alternatively ‘not hugely flattering’. In many ways the next shot went horribly wrong, but I actually really like the result:

    Shortly after this, we decided to rise above it all…by climbing a tree. I love climbing, I used to scale rocks and walls and trees as a kid, and though there was a latent fear of heights lurking in my conciousness I overpowered it by sheer force of will. Apparently, my will isn’t quite so strong these days; that and I’d forgotten about it until I got into the tree.

    And when I say ‘climbing a tree’, Kathryn climbed, with grace – or at least agility, she shot up the tree, perching high up in the branches

    I for my part kinda scrabbled in – intially and rather startlingly dropping to the ground (having first impacted the trunk of the tree as I threw myself to clear the sign which I *really* didn’t want to land on) – it was only a few feet (about 5?) to the bottom branch, but my arms really weren’t that keen on the concept of me going into it. A second attempt lead to me scrabbling and in a terribly undignified way landing up on my desired branch. Happy I was, and then I looked at the teeny tiny drop and my brain said ‘no Kate, you’re scared’. Having beat the fear into a small mushy pulp I then attempted to ascend… a bit of scrabbling later and my fear gland worked it’s magic again, and I decided to stay where I was. Comfortable on the lowest branch. There I sat, happily contemplating ways to screw my subconscious out of ever speaking to me again, and enjoying the rather pleased sensation of having at least made it *into* the tree.

    Clearly tree climbing is something I shall have to re-skill at, because it was great fun – although I don’t bounce *quite* so well as I used to, and we won’t discuss my descent which left me with scrapes and bruises that had my colleagues at work much amused.

    Kathryn went on to climb another tree, me – feeling a little sore – I rested on a bough which had formed a natural hammock shape, lovely it was. The evening light was casting funky shadows and Kathryn was being silly…

    As we headed back we encountered a bird we’d spent some time trying to get pictures of earlier; and this time we both got good shots of it

    We also encountered some terribly irritating black-what-are-they-birds. Irritating because they were quite interesting, cute and had a policy of only flapping their wings or flying about if you were pointing the camera at another bird. To be fair, it was getting a bit less light, and quite a lot of mine – zoomed to maximum zoomage – came out rather blurry.

    But there was one…

    And then of course we did some urbexing (which I ramble about here)

    So that was my days with Kathryn, in a very restrained journal-publishable not nearly as Kathryn-centred as it would be – way.

    Anyhow, so since Kathryn’s been I’ve been trying to be a little more organised in my approach to the house, and my life – mostly because she’s introduced me to Performance Poetry, some other indiefeeds, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (which is similar in concept to Radio 4’s ‘The News Quiz’ – why isn’t that podcasted? Grr); and I’ve restarted listening to Coverville. Which means that I need time to listen to these things – but also I need to get on with the house, now I’ve managed to encourage my builder that I asked to quote to maybe send me a quote.

    So, I dug up some enthusiasm and dug great chunks out of the walls in the spare room – and then went around filling them back in – hopefully post sanding (and there’s going to be a lot of sanding) it should look a hell-of-a-lot better. I still need to do more, but I’ve left it two days to try and ensure it’s really dry.

    I also returned Gardenia from the wild rebels to a state of harmonious…well, I’d say democracy, but it’s more of a dictatorship. With the aid of the heavy artillery (namely a 25 quid lawnmower from Homebase, and a similarly cheap and nasty strimmer) the grass has been reduced from ‘field like’ to merely ‘slightly untidy’. The weeds are also an even length now, too. I’m not sure you’re meant to mow beds filled entirely with weeds, but I kinda did. The mower is pretty effective – but the motor attrociously balanced leading to a feeling like riding a motorcycle flat-out down the motorway; vibey. And the strimmer is similarly equipped with the Vibratortron 3000 motor. I struggled to do too much with the strimmer because it actually made my hands hurt to keep in on too long. Still, thankfully the garden’s small enough – and once my mum’s had her way there probably won’t be much in the way of grass. Some, because I like grass, but not that much.

    And finally in my enthusiastic streak, I attacked Brick’s headlamp switch. I’m not sure what made me decide to do that, but I’m incredibly grateful that I did – for whilst my old switch looked in good shape

    That top – which appeared in such good shape hid a nasty, nasty secret.

    For the last few days I’ve had this faint idea that I could smell burning electrics – just occasionally. I’d started to put it down to paranoia – but also started to bump up the list of things to do the need to look at the state of the slightly flakey headlamp switch (it’d made a crunching noise once, and since that day hadn’t quite worked right). I’m really thankful that I did look at it today. The insulation on the connector was black and charred, a big chunk of it missing completely; the headlamp connector as you can see above and below black and charred. The paper’s even clearly started to scorch.

    There could have been an electrical fire – which would probably have been terminal; because it would have been under the dashboard – and just the sort of fire which puts and end to old cars. Anyway, the switch has gone, the connector’s been cleaned, and hopefully things are now sorted. Big thanks to PSL from the Vauxhall Viva Owners Club for the for-the-price-of-postage replacement switch.

    Anyhow, if you made it this far, congratulations. I’ll try and be a bit more regular with my updates :-)

  • Speaking too soon.

    So, I said that Brick seemed happy. Yeah? Well, Brick decided Brick wasn’t happy. Fortunately, Kathryn gave him a virtual talking to and he made it to Work and back, although I’d not describe the ride as ‘smooth’.

    The engine would run for a bit then lose power, and then suddenly kick back in. Pulling the choke out all the way more or less made this dealable with – smoothing it out – but we lacked power. Then it suddenly cured itself and I got to work just fine. I wondered if the piece of crap I suspected of blocking the fuel feed (specifically the main jet) had disintegrated and been sucked through… Especially since no amount of encouragement seemed to make the problem come back.

    But when I came out from a *long* day at work (you know, I was so keen to do my drugs assessment, now I spend my entire bloody day giving drugs) and the problem reasserted itself with vigour. And then disappeared part way down the M25. I encouraged myself to go to Halfords and got a new fuel filter for the car (“The Viva doesn’t list a fuel filter” *sigh* “Yes, I know, what I’m after is just a generic fuel filter that I can slap inline” “Well, here’s our range, but I don’t know if any of them are ‘inline’” [opens box. Oh, look, an inline filter. Buys it. Is reminded how crap Halfrauds is]) and despite every bone, muscle and tendon in my body demanding sleep I dragged myself outside and stripped the carb down. Inside the main jet was what I will call a HUGE LUMP OF CRAP. I am astounded the car got me home and didn’t up and die on the motorway. Kudos to the Brick.

    Having blown it out, I reassembled the carb – and I *think* things are better. The new fuel filter will hopefully present that reoccurring. I’ve left some tools in the boot though, in preparation for the long trip coming up tomorrow.

    I then came in and watched LoM, and that last episode, fucking *fantastic*. Unexpected, twisty, tricksy little writers they are. I shan’t say anymore ‘cos I don’t want to spoil anyone elses viewing experience, but seriously, Life On Mars has got to be one of the best written modern tv series in the history of television. It’s such a clever concept implemented so well, written so well. I love it unreservedly. It’s only a shame I didn’t get any of my cars to feature in it :-)
    Unfortunately, while I settled down to watch LoM something became apparent, my amplifier which has served me since about 13 years ago (apart from a break when…this fault occurred before about 12 years ago – it’s never been quite right since) is sick. From what was replaced last time I recall that it’s the power transistors and some other smaller ones which failed. I don’t think I’ll get it repaired this time though. I love it, but it can’t come to Canada, and I’ve been wanting one with a smoother range – mine is 200 Watts per channel (alledgedly) and does not do “quiet”. My problem is I’ll have to source a pre-amp for my record deck now – and a new amp, I guess, although the ex-kitchen Denon one can do temporary service in the lounge for a while. Not sure what I’ll do about a new amp, it’s not something I can remotely afford at the moment :(

  • A beautiful plan, spoiled only by its complete failure to work

    So I had this plan for today. It being my day off, and my car having yet again hosed a battery yesterday. I carefully constructed a plan; a plan which would cope with me not being terribly enthusiastic about getting up on my day off. A plan which didn’t require me to do so much as to exhaust me.

    A simple plan.

    I would ‘go to Halfords’ (thus allowing me to not need to get up at get going before 9), and buy some oil, some moly-grease (‘cos minor’s need nothing so complex. Pfer. Modern cars ;-) ) and some spark plugs. I would heap my tools in the back of Brick and head to my mom’s, where I’d promised I would check in for her. I would service my car, clean up the connectors for the starter side of the circuit, tighten the fan belt ‘er so slightly, have a quick poke at the floor, and head home.

    The first part went well, I even remembered to check that the letter my mum wanted me to check’d arrived, had arrived (it hadn’t, so I rung and sorted that out). I set to on the car, popping it up on ramps and working my way, rather slowly through the service (‘s been a while, and I’ve never worked on a Viva). Prodded the floor, sadly there’s a bit more rust and filler than I’d noticed before. Still not scary amounts, but mildly saddening.

    I cleaned connectors, (I blew a fuse on my mum’s fan heater, doh) and then I went to start the car. And it wouldn’t start. After about an hour of fiddling I shuffled (with much pushing) my car onto the drive, and my mum’s into the garage and rang the AA. Apparently, it’s 95 quid, because I’ve exceeded my call out limit, and I only get local recovery. Uh. So. That’d not help really. So then we went for more fiddling. At 1845, I gave up, shunted my mum’s car back out onto the road, pushed the Viva back onto the drive and drove my mum’s car home. Now I have to sort out why the bloody thing won’t start, get the bits and then get back home on Thursday afternoon to coax the thing into starting so as I can drive it home for work on Friday.

    Sometimes I hate being mechanically adept, because if I weren’t I’d’ve just handed the car to a garage and been done with it. But no.

  • Distance is relative

    So, yesterday was an interesting day; I managed to haul myself out of bed early to go look at an EV. The guy had said it was probably only good for parts; but I never trust other people’s judgement in these issues – because often people can be a bit blinded by dirt and grot.

    In this case though, he was probably right. It’s rather sad, apparently there were only 110ish of these little cars made:

    Very sickly Enfield EV

    This being a rather sad example. I reckon it’s had about 20 years of hard service followed by about 10 of sitting unloved in the corner of a council yard. Although the body is glass fibre and aluminium, the chassis is a box-section affair with a big plate of steel on top of it, and that has basically completely disintegrated. If I didn’t have 3 projects on the go (the minor, my pink ‘zed, and the odds and sods on Brick) plus the house then I’d be tempted, because I really think it’s a shame that it’s going to go for parts, but it is a big project. The body’d have to come off the floor, and then it’d need a new floor, new electrics, new batteries, the door, if it is salvagable would need an awful lot of work – it’s not like you can pick these things up down at your local dealer…

    I rather like them though. They have a dinky charm.

    Anyway, so that was a longish treck in the morning – not aided by Brick having a bit of a flat battery in the morning. I have been having this suspicion that the alternator isn’t *really* keeping up – I’ve had this faint feeling for a while. Things like the lights dimming at idle, and this faint but almost certain feeling that the starter was going slower each morning…

    At any rate, it’s not charging effectively, which is another thing to look into. I was meant to be going to the parts day, but… well, I’ll get to that.

    So after the enfield trip I decided I was going to pick up Brian’s birthday present. Great plan, except that saturday in Slough is a slow-traffic affair. Brick – having come off the motorway – was very hot. Traffic was fairly much stationary. We actually sat through two cycles of one set of lights without moving, and I started to get the feeling that the engine wasn’t entirely running well. Then he stalled, in a line of traffic outside Tesco. With superhuman, she-ra like strength I lept out (having discovered he wasn’t in a hurry to restart) and managed to push the car (using a run up) half onto the pavement, thus allowing people to get past. For once, I don’t think I even got honked at.

    So we sat for a few minutes, I took the opportunity to reclean the rotor arm, and when the engine had cooled down a bit, it restarted. Still didn’t really idle, but with some effort I got us turned around and headed home. I suspect fuel vaporisation, which is annoying, ‘cos it’s not exactly *hot* at the moment, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that, except possibly knock up some sort of heat shield and change the layout of the fuel pipe.

    Aaaanyway, so then I walked into town (far more healthy, anyway), got Brian’s present and promptly turned round and walked back. It’s about 4 kms each way, and I’m not the fittest person on the planet (and also I do a fairly active job…), so after that I got home and was a bit tired. Having stripped the bed linen, put the laundry on I had a nap, this was also a cost cutting measure, because if I’m asleep I don’t need the heating on (alledgedly). I woke up freezing cold, and stuck the gas fire on… And then showered, dressed and headed to the strangest party.

    This, obviously, involved walking back to town. And then taking the tube. I am never, ever taking the tube again when there’s engineering work on. I’d ‘budgeted’ about half an hour to get to Brian’s house – reckoning it’d really take 20. It took about 40 minutes to get there – especially when the only option for reaching the Northern line was the Hammersmith and City line, which for some reason decided not to stop at King’s Cross. When I was going the other way on the Northern Line they implied that there was no Hammersmith and City connection too… so I had to go past King’s Cross and down to Moorgate. There was a lot of standing around and no information being given to customers. Or at least, the information being given didn’t aid you in getting anywhere, it simply told you that there was no service on the Circle and District lines…

    Anyway, I got to the party – but the tube situation meant that I had to leave early, which was a shame, because I had to leave at about the point I started to relax a bit. It has to be said that I did have a good time, but it was weird. Really weird. These are people I’ve not seen for 8 years, and I last saw them during a period in which I was not in the best state of mind.

    But the weird thing is that they really have just become older versions of themselves. Personality wise, they were pretty much the way I remember them. But they look…well, like they’re coming up on thirty. I forget that I’m nearly thirty, and most of my friends either are, or look younger than they are. So seeing this group of friends who are the same age as me, and don’t look old per-se, but definately look their age, and are all doing the same scarily responsible things as me (house ownership, pensions and jobs); many of whom are married, or getting married…. It was quite scary. And they’ve all kept in touch – which is quite weird – since they were school friends. Nice, but uncommon, I’d say. Anyway, it gave me this feeling like I’d teleported 8 years into the future. There were these grown up people, and here I am feeling completely out of my depth.

    At any rate, I had a good time, and I’ll probably see them again.

    It’s funny to think of them, writing for NME (I think), teaching and… in positions of responsibility.

    Anyway, I headed home, and had a bit of a nightmare with the tube, missing my connecting train by a good 20 minutes (despite leaving nearly an hour to get back to the station), but thankfully Kathryn was awake, so I had someone to make the journey back a bit more pleasant.

    When I got back (sorry, rambly post), I did try and persuade a cab driver to take me ‘most’ of the way back, but he declared that his meter starts running at a fiver (it normally costs 6 quid back to my street, so I’m slightly surprised by that (whatever time I’ve come back, it’s cost 6 quid)), so I walked, tempting myself with the thought of a kebab… Not that I was hungry, I’ve just not had one for so long I thought it’d be nice.

    So I wandered back, amazingly I’ve discovered the power of ‘layers’ and thus wasn’t cold. Oh, and thermal teeshirts from Alaska and Canada :-) And the stars were so pretty last night. It was a cold night – because the sky was completely clear, and even through the light pollution, I could see loads of stars. And then, as a special treat, as I approached my local kebab van (which, incidentally shut while I was looking at this), two groups of birds set forth each forming a beautiful V in the sky, the light from the earth reflecting off their light feathers producing a beautiful spectacle. The people on the other side of the road seemed to think I was a bit odd, as I just came to a stop and stared at the sky…

    …It was just supremely beautiful, and completely unexpected.

    Of course, when I got home I had to make the bed (*doh*) and I finally fell into bed and slept ’til 7 (thanks body), with some encouragement I managed to make it through to 1045 though, so now I’m pondering the rest of my day. I need to do some cleaning, and if I can get some reorganisation done in bedroom two I should be able to prep the bathroom for builders…. Not that I’ve got any yet. Lucky’s not brought back the spare copy of the plans, so I may have to photocopy mine, or somesuch, to give to the next lot of builders. Bloody sod people.

    I hate builders. Did I mention that?

  • Lazy Sunday…Mornings

    I have stuff that needs doing.

    Instead, I’ve watched The L Word, I’m up-to-date now, without saying anything spoilery, the telephone-tag episode is awesome; and the next two episodes are also really damn good.

    Since lots of people reading this (not that there *are* lots of people, but a high percentage of the few that do) haven’t seen up to S4E8 then I shall shut up now. But my promise to myself to watch just the one episode didn’t really work out.

    I’m meant to be tidying. The house needs tidying. And cleaning. And all that domestic stuff which I like the result of but have to find the enthusiasm to do. I also think I probably *should* go to my mum’s and collect the ramps, so I can service Brick. But again, y’see enthusiasm anywhere round here? No? No.

    The other thing which has been bugging me in a major way in the house is that paperwork is entirely out of hand. I’ve got important documents I can’t find. The problem is, I used to have a filing cabinet. Or more accurately, I had a filing cabinet that wasn’t full of oil. See, when I moved into the rented place in Gatcombe Drive it came with a big ‘ol filing cabinet. So I stuck mine in the garage and it became a handy storage place for those lubricants that are required for looking after cars from the 60s. LM grease, EP90, and copperslip have all managed to thoroughly coat the interior of said object.

    Hence I can’t really pull it back into the house. So I need a new cabinet – but the problem is, I want a nice one. The spare room is to be a bedroom-come-office, and I don’t want it to *look* like a bedroom with random office furniture. Which makes the ‘filing cabinet’ a bit of a problem. But at the same time, it’s easiest and simplest way to store the vast amount of paperwork I seem to need. Lots of it is obsolete but I have to keep it for tax purposes. So I’m on the lookout for a nice wooden filing cabinet. Without woodworm. Also for really cheap.

    I don’t really like the modern laminated chipboard crap ones, I’m after one of those ex-army, solid wood and thin-panel things. One that’d match the doors :-)

    Oh, I nearly made the lounge door fit. It needs to come off again. The bottom is a mil or so too low, and the frame is well-off-square and needs me to shave loads off the bottom edge. although, looking at it I’m wondering if I should take the plane to the other side of the door and make it narrower that way. Otherwise it’s going to be much-thin’d on one side. Hrm.

    The hub continues to work ‘better’ than the previous one. Although for limited values of better. It doesn’t appear to crash-and-need to reset, but the PC downstairs still seems to limp at anything from a 5.5Mbps – 54Mbps connection. On the plus side it seems to reliably get an IP address. Or at least moderately reliably. However, actually getting videos downstairs is not an activity which will currently occur ‘on the fly over the network’. And seems to take several attempts, for the most part. And a lot of time. I’m not sure why this is. I don’t now know if it’s the homehub, the hubphone (which I’ve reconfigured again this morning – things *seem* to be hanging together still (I’ve yet to test if I’m still regularly disconnected)). I’m just a bit bored of it now.

    In other news, my mother asked me to do something ‘dangerous’ before she left on holiday. She asked me to go to Richer Sounds. The amplifier my dad bought, uh, 20ish years ago has started to get like my own one – flakey. Mine exhibits this as crackles on powering on and as the two channels not being the same volume at “low” levels (not that it actually goes quiet, or anything (presumably the pot is dirty)). My mum’s entirely loses the right channel, and seems to need a lot of fiddling with to get it back.

    But to be entirely honest, she really doesn’t need all the stuff she’s got. She needs a little dinky thing like the…thing…I’ve got. Oh ah. And some little speakers. Loud, but not nearly so big as she’s got. Hrm. I could just get her some bookshelf speakers, and give her my Denon thing. Mhm. Sorry, I’ll stop thinking aloud.

    So yeah, that’s my Sunday.

  • I should be asleep but…

    Couple of quick eclipse shots, before I kip:

    Plain old eclipse shot, unprocessed and raw.

    Mog and Moon

    Hope you all enjoyed the eclipse… Sleep now.

  • Keeping up appearances

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

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

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

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

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

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