Mostly lemon based

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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.

  • Poot

    So, my calculations on the bath; wrong…

    I’m not deeply upset, it’s more of a ‘how do I get around this’ issue. The cold water and hot water pipes are approximately 7mm out of line with the taps. However, with some wiggling I’d got the cold one close enough to do up – and made a discovery. I’ve not fitted the globe tap correctly – i.e. it leaks. So, I’m going to go and have a chat with the plumbing people – because quite honestly I’m not entirely sure how to make it seal. I suspect what I do is simply remove the doojit that’s there and put much more ptfe tape in the thread.

    I’d prefer to get a nice rubber washer for the bath though, all that B&Q had were the thin pvc ones which didn’t seem right anyhow. I’m also wondering if, with a bit of care, I can squeeze a flexi-plumbing thing in there to get rid of that 7mm difference. It’s such an annoyingly small miscalculation, presumably because the bath (at the time I measured it) was propped on a bit of wood instead of it’s proper feet, and also I was trying to take account of the bathroom tiles, before they were laid. I should’ve checked it before putting all the woodwork around, really. Either that or made it a flexi pipe in the first place. But I don’t *like* flexi pipes, they’re not that neat.

    Unfortunately there’s one other thing that was wrong, that I didn’t calculate, I just assumed would be fine. The bath drainer’s “shallow” drainer, it’s actually not shallow enough for our 1890s bath, and the bath is currently sat on it. Whoops. I’m going to have to look carefully at whether I remove a bit of tile or try and trim the bath plughole doojit. It’s again about 5mm of difficulty. Fooey.

    So, I briefly turned the water on today, the sink doesn’t leak, the shower *now* doesn’t leak. I’m hoping the tiles in the shower have survived the veretable torrent which got sprayed on them when I turned it on…

    Of course, it’s all by-the-by at the moment, because my mum’s decided to come and visit today instead of at the weekend. Which is fine and lovely, but less good in that she’s not getting as much time away from the house as she’d like – and I now need to spend the next hour cleaning. Ah well.

  • Short Update the Third

    Viva is now back at the house. Not running well, but it’s here. If I can get it running properly before Saturday I’ll be very happy :)

    Stars Fall Home arrived. It’s awesome.

    Scott Pilgrim Volume 4 has arrived. Ra!

    Today is filled with awesome things at chez Kathryn and Kate

  • Chrimble Shoppinje

    So, whilst not yet the time of year to contemplate chrimble, it’s now the time of year to contemplate the shopping in preparation for that winter based festival of family and friendship.

    So, to save me buying you all things you’ll never use and which will cause an ‘oooh, interesting’ followed by location on a shelf / in a box / etc, please give me suggestions for things you’d like as prezzies… otherwise you never know what my fertile imagination may select to be your gift :)

  • An Error of Judgement

    So, due to a slight error of judgement; or more accurately, an error of tiredness, after my night shifts I lay down on the bed with every intention of getting up at 1030. Sadly, my intentions failed to come to any kind of fruition due to a slight slip up in the whole ‘switching the alarm clock on’ part of the plan. So, whilst I had set the alarm clock my sleep continued uninterupted unti 1630 when I awoke and cursed the deitys for letting me sleep so long.

    Not only did that mean that yesterday was pantsed; but also that today is screwed because (as I feared) I woke up (first at 1:30 and got back to sleep around 2ish, then) at 3am with no hope of getting back to sleep. After half an hour of lying there trying different things I eventually snunk out of bed (so as not to wake Kathryn who’s up at 5 anyway) and decided to make use of e-bay to sort out the bits needed for home hub replacement. Since we’re not going for an equivalent replacement we’re not going to be using a piece of twine connected to a tin can, the other end of which is located near a computer. Instead I’ve laid my hands on what I’m sure will be an adequate piece of technology, one of the Linksys ethernet VOIP adaptors, a set of DECT phones (assuming I win the auction), and I shall be ordering the broadband from the other supplier shortly. I was worrying about futzing with the internal house phone network to make it so that that upstairs could have a phone, but cunningly (and I think this is awfully cunning myself) by getting a bunch of DECT phones it means that we don’t have to do that. Ra for Teknowledgie.

    At any rate, I now have to come up with plans for the day which, instead of yesterday being my ‘super tired don’t try and do anything complex’ day today’s that day. I’ve got a pile of ‘stuff’ to sort out (ah, the joys of being an adult with a mortgage and bills and also sorting out my mum’s car insurance claim); and I’ve also got a Viva to see if I can retrieve-ah. (See, you can tell that I’m tired, I’m making rhyming jokes).

    No one’s yet come up for an explanation for it’s bizzaroid behaviour – I certainly haven’t managed to come up with one. Absolutely nothing I can think of would give the precise set of problems it seems to be having. Depressingly I suspect ‘erattic behaviour due to nadgered connectors’ is the most likely cause of problems. With Rebecca I had to do a day of sitting in the engine bay, hunched over, cleaning connectors. All the connectors. 30 years does for a lot of corrosion make. 30 years plus sporadic significant coolant leaks does, I’m sure, do something similar. So I may go on a longish wander (B&Q (emery paper), plumber’s merchant (high level cistern flush mechanism (ideally a ‘flapper’ rather than a siphon), halfords (radiator cap)) and collect various bits. Thing is, I really want to get the bathroom done this week, and it’s already wednesday. (By done, I’m referring to having all the water pipes connected up, the heater in place and such like). My ‘two weeks off’ now feels substantially shorter.

    So yes. I actually had a positively pleasant set of nights. While some were busy, none were utterly hideous and whilst I often didn’t get a break (beyond swigging a cup of water) until 2am I’d always get time to wash the beds down and have a proper break by the end of the shift. Which is something I haven’t always got in the past.

    I did get some positively stupid people. The ‘I have no allergies’ woman who announced (after I’d put the wound dressing on) that she was allergic to them. Not ‘very’ allergic, but she’d get a reaction, apparently.

    Why she didn’t tell me this when I said ‘are you allergic to anything’ I am not entirely sure.

    I’m certain there were other things I intended to comment on about nights, but they’ve gone now; gone and headed off to wherever it is in my brain that the miriad of days that pass in a blur lurk. I can’t believe it’s only 0517. It’s painful.

    I was going to comment on this (courtesy of yueni) – but I don’t really know what to say. It’s cool to see that women are throwing off their gender roles, and being themselves for themselves in Japan, but I find the complete switch to the men taking what was previously the female role rather disconcerting. Fine, for the being looked after and such, if that’s what they like – but the fashion concious to the stage of damaging their health, and the whole aquiescing for the sake of a quiet life thing, that’s not right. Relationships should be equal…at least, imho.

    Anyway, I’m gonna go read my book now… :)

  • Strong urge to make a small metal cube

    The viva has broken down *again*. With it’s new alternator. Fucking heap of shit ran for less than 10 minutes before dying completely.

    Later today I shall have to go and push it off the private land on which it is stuck; broken down, and dump it unceremoniously on some pavement. I know I’m overtired because the fact that it stayed dead this morning made me cry. I’ve no idea what’s up with it, it’s been running really well despite being over due for a service and suddenly it’s dead and won’t run?

    *sighs*

    Now I need to sleep. The garage can’t collect it ’til Saturday so I’m really not sure what I can do.

  • 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….

  • 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 :)