Pyoor's excuse for not working

Life continues to be more or less the same as it ever was. I’ve been working, at least intermittently, and I’ve even been paid. That has been rather nice, although it’s led to a bit of a flurry of spending as I’ve taken a bunch of stuff off the ‘want list’ which included several things that I’d decided I wouldn’t buy until we got to the US.

I’d been holding that restraint for a couple of years. Adding in the last 3 months of me not buying pretty much anything (I bought a few books, and a few items for our business) and then say “look, you’ve been paid”. I snapped. Much of this is ‘fun’ stuff, but the other thing that’s sucked up funds is things like ‘UK to US’ plug adaptors (10 of ’em, on the way). I’d thought I’d replace the old UK plugs with US ones, but bare US plugs are actually ridiculously pricey, so instead I’ve just bought adaptors. From China. Also, bonus, I get to keep the fuses for added safety.

And BC – Edison Screw lamp adaptors. I was unaware that such things existed – so I’d bought one of the 85-250v LED BC lamps for one of the anglepoises (as a test), but having discovered these I can just go to the store and get what, in the US, are regular LED bulbs and throw those in. Hurrah! These adaptors were way cheaper than the special bulbs and had free postage. Since I’m not in a raring hurry to get the lamps working, that’s fine.

I also started setting up my ‘home lab’, as it were. Up until now I’ve scrounged stuff from the lovely John, but 4k miles is a little far to take things for testing, and it’s a little tricky to ask John if he’d like to pop over for an evening of tinkering with electronics. I’ve finally got it together and bought a (new) soldering iron / rework gun combo. I wasn’t going to get a rework gun, I mean, me and surface mount are not close friends. But with our business plans, I may want to put together some kind of board with surface mount components, in which case a rework gun will become handy – and it was a few dollars extra to get that functionality. Second hand kit that’s also winging its way to me is a ‘scope that weighs approximately the same as the house (50Mhz Tektronix 453*).

I doubt mine will look 1/10th as nice when it arrives. Indeed, I know some of the plastic knobules from the switches are missing (the selector knobs are all there). I’m hoping (really hoping) that one day my 3D printer will arrive and I can print myself some new ones. If not, I’ve got some sugru in the toolbox.

I thought about getting something a bit fancier that would be better for digital hardware (perhaps the 150Mhz 454), but if I decide I need that later I can either sell off the Tektronix 453 and get something ‘more modern’, or just suck up the expense if I’ve got attached to the 453. I’ve also got an HP 6200B bench power supply on its way too. John has infested my mind with his HP / Tektronix lovin’, which meant that other, cheaper options got ditched on the way to this selection, but I think they should be handy. And the 453 seems to be considered to be a pretty good scope – which it’s within the realms of my knowledge to repair and keep going.

Whilst the scope is slightly frivolous at the moment, and is partly a ‘I have little to do at home’ thing some of the kit will be handy straight away. The bench supply will be handy getting the car alarm configured… since it wants to charge a bit before it works, and you need to send it various text messages to get it configured. That bench supply will also be doing duty building up the circuit for the first kit we’re planning for our business.

Most of this kit is pretty tatty, but should be enough to get me ‘up and running’. At least, once I’ve given it a really, really good clean it should be.

This splurge of spending does mean that I’m now rather over excited when I see UPS and USPS vans, which tediously never seem to actually stop here…

Still. I don’t think I can buy much else for the rest of the month (except for needs – like maintaining my poor Minor, that’s had hundreds of miles added some weeks). At any rate, I shall try to exercise restraint. I’ve put a bit into my savings this month and then I’m hoping to put some of the funds we extracted back into the house-savings too.

At any rate, the rain paused yesterday for long enough for me to go and throw silicone sealant around the minor with reckless abandon.

Water’s been dripping in through that wiper spindle’s hole for a while. In an attempt to prevent it totally destroying the glove box liner, and the radio underneath, and then the floor below that, I whipped off the nut cleaned up the seals and put them back with a thin layer of windscreen silicone on them. I note that this has been done before, with what appears to be gasket sealant. That might have been me… but it didn’t work that time. Here’s hoping this time it does work. Overnight it’s rained and there wasn’t any water that I could feel, so fingers crossed I might get some relief from that.

I also attacked the boot (trunk) – using sealant around the holes where the “MORRIS 1000” badge is mounted. This morning the boot (trunk) was actually bone dry, which I think is a first, and made me quite happy.

I also commenced trying to understand how to fit the alarm – and realised that actually, it’d probably make more sense for it to be on our family contract for it’s SMS messaging, rather than me stick it on the Net10 sim I’ve got kicking around. Well, maybe. We need to go and see if we can beg a cellspot for the house as it is slightly ridiculous that you have to go outside to make calls a lot of the time and while we’re there I’ll see if I can add it on at a low rate. Otherwise I’ll see which provider is cheapest for a pure voice/SMS option. It doesn’t need data of any sort, so it’s a big silly getting it a voice/data contract. I also realised that the alarm wants an SD card for some of its more handy features, and it makes sense to fit that before I put the alarm in the car.

Given that it’s a cheap Chinese system the manual is somewhat challenging to understand at times. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to require too many features the Minor doesn’t have (indeed, it looks like it should actually be able to track the fuel level of the Minor, which is pretty nifty, though why I’d want to is unclear).

I thought about fitting it this morning; indeed that was my ‘plan’ for the day. But I am distrustful of the weather, and although it said “0% chance of rain” the forecast started to get a bit sketchy around lunchtime, and it looks like rain every day after now for a while, so getting part-way through is undesirable. I succumbed to my rain-fear and went for a walk instead.

Which was probably a good plan as it’s been hacking with rain for the last hour and half, and I’d’ve probably still been out there dangling upside-down. I think when I have all the relevant bits, I’ll be a bit more enthused about getting it done.

In other news, I headed out yesterday to see if I could find a stick blender. We’ve wanted one for a long time, and before I got paid I kept seeing them at goodwill and value village. Of course, now I’ve actually been paid, they’ve vaporised. Goodwill does make me miss the cleanliness of most British charity shops. I’m sure there’s awesome stuff in there, but the electronics sections always make me feel rather like I need to wash my hands thoroughly on leaving. Anyhow, what I did find was ‘Goodwill Outlet’, which is a fearsome place. Unsorted, sad old things piled into plastic waist high bins… It’s the kind of place I feel the need to have a companion, because rifling through the stuff in there by yourself, it feels kinda weird. I suspect that there probably are stick blenders lying prone at the bottom of those bins, but I didn’t quite have the guts to pull so much stuff out.

And then we come to the elephant in the absent room. The house.

We’re off looking at properties this weekend. Five of ’em. One with a building, one with a ‘building’ (it’s a house of “poor quality” built in 1901), and 3 bits of land that are just land. I continue to feel the disappointment from the permit-disaster-wetland-hideousness, but hopefully one of these will speak to our souls. One of them, funnily enough, enormously close to where Kathryn’s mom used to live, and would give us effectively the same view. Which is weird. Although the land-with-buildings-on may be better for us, in terms of both location and usefulness. Still, we’ll see what happens.

* Handily, this is old enough that the entire manual is available here

Originally published at Mostly lemon based. You can comment here or there.

So, it is traditional this time of year to look back on the past year and think ‘what did I achieve’ and discern whether it was ‘a good year’ or not. My vague notions about last year is that I didn’t really make much progress on the house, and that it was a quiet but not unpleasant year, for the most part. However, as with my friend’s recollections, thousands of miles away my general opinion wasn’t exactly the whole story.

It started well enough, with the discovery of Rise, the music store in Bristol, where I make infrequent pilgrimages and fawn hopelessly over the ranks and ranks of records. The fresh stacks of vinyl make me want to spend all the money. Every time I head in there I find my bank account substantially lighter on leaving, and frequently seem to pass from not knowing of a thing’s existence, to utter total desire without pause. It’s both terrible and wonderful simultaneously.

Not only that but I took my aged BBC Master around to my friend John’s, and he applied his L337 soldering skills and replaced the dodgy capacitors before they could expire. It functioned exactly as it should, lending hope to the possibility that I can inflict it on our child, when s/he is old enough to want a computer. Heh. Actually, I think our child will get something akin to the Pi. When I got my computer the deal was “here are some basic games, if you want more you’ll have to write ‘em” which I think is a fair way to do things :)

Anyhow, so it was an auspicious start. Flicking through blog entries made me finally take stock of what I’d achieved on the house over the year, and perhaps I’d been unduly harsh on myself. Perhaps, when you look at it, I’ve actually achieved a fair amount. In the last year I:

- Finished decorating the bathroom (which was essentially decorating the bathroom and plumbing in the new shower)
- Painted the downstairs half of the hallway
- Built and installed the understairs storage
- Insulated under the house
- Designed and made the kitchen lighting
- Built the top surface of the deck, including sinking 4 posts in to the ground
- Completely decorated Kathryn’s office

Amongst that there were a number of smaller jobs like installing the telephone, adding a radiator to the central heating, adding in bits of trim, repairing other bits and bobs that broke throughout the house.

Y’know, given that I’m working full time and had various other projects ongoing last year, I don’t think that’s a bad list.

As I say I had a number of other projects ongoing, my beloved Minor’s disintegrated differential was finally replaced after months sat at the front of the house being sad. I’m still working on the Electric Minor Project, and have a potential sponsor to contact, which has led me to fawn hopelessly over Adobe In-Design. My background with Ovation Pro (which, assuming it still works in modern versions of Windows I highly recommend to anyone needing a cheaper DTP package for Windows) came in handy because it had many of the features of In-Design and works in fundamentally the same way. Playing with layout and design is quite delightful, and one of the few things in IT that I think I could get quite into if my career in nursing ever went south.

Anyhow, so the Minor is [touch wood] back on the road.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and bunnies. Last year witnessed the death of our plan to move to Canada. Nova Scotia telling me in the politest way possible that I would need to spend thousands of Canadian Dollars if we wanted to land up there. The difference between UK and Canadian nursing registration was simply too great. However, the good news is that we plan to move to the States, which will put us closer to Kathryn’s family and some of the awesome people (Kathryn’s friends that I’ve met too) over in the USA. We’re maybe looking at San Francisco, although it’ll be a while.

We also found out that we can’t have the free solar panels installed. A fact which makes me very sad, because in all honesty, if the UK was like Germany our roof would be well within the benefit side of the cost-benefit analysis; solar panels in the UK being way more expensive than in Germany. This is because UK has decided that we’d like to pollute the planet and our local environment as rapidly and depressingly as possible, by fracking every last bit of this once green and pleasant land. Indeed, politically this has been one of the most heartrendingly awful periods I can recall. The Conservatives and their political lackeys, the Lib Dems, for whom, shamefully, I voted, have destroyed the few bits of Britain of which I was proud. The’ve pushed our xenophobic streak and also made this country hateful for it’s treatment of the poor, those with disabilities, the sick. They’ve divisively separated every minority group and demonised everyone who’s not rich.

I recently saw a quote from Aneurin Bevan, the awesome angry Welshman who rounded up the Doctors and Nurses and said ‘Fix the people’.

“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.”

Which I think is a perfect way of describing illness. Mr Bevan rocked. Incidentally, he also said of the tories, this, which seems pretty accurate at the moment:

So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. (1945)

Anyhow, enough depressing, because all in all it was actually a pretty good year.

So, other projects are the ongoing attempt to re-rip music and video. That’s sort of fallen into stasis, but I really should get that going again. There are still massively large stacks of stuff that need to be re-ripped. All the DVDs/Blu-Rays, and still stacks and stacks of music. Actually, that’s pretty depressing to think about. It was a good starter project but maybe I need one of those lego diskchangers. Unfortunately so many of our disks fail to pull down art, or fail to get listings… which completely screws up the rapid disk ripping.

Oh, actually, whilst we’re on depressing, I sold my motorbike. I, for the first time in many years, am without motorcycle for the long term. The thing is though, I’ve no excuse to ride them. And not enough money to just ‘have’ a motorbike kicking around. Nor the space. So… Yeah. But I do miss it. It’s like not having a bit of me. One day I’ll have a Zero or somesuch.

We also, on a more cheery note, sold Chester. We ran all over France, toured the place, and having pushed him really hard travelling down to the base of the Alps and back we sold him and switched to our much loved iMiEV. You gotta love an electric car, they’re just flipping awesome. Not only that, but it’s also managed to get me a little bit of fame writing as a guest writer on the Transport Evolved website. I need to have a ponder about more things to write about because I’ve enjoyed writing them. I also got featured, briefly, on the Kyocera blog. Not my writing, but a brief bit about our aged Kyocera FS-1030D which continues to provide sterling service and provides endless glee when it prints wirelessly.

And on the writing front, I also did NaNoWriMo. Didn’t finish it, but I’m still working on the book, which is interesting. I’ve never written a novel before, it may be awful, but it’ll be my bit of awful. I need to find some people to look at it, so if anyone wants to read a not very good first-half of a detective novel (be my Beta testers!) then let me know :)

I also, for the first year ever (I think) managed to push out a full year of Dead Bug Jumping. Something I’m quite proud of, because it’s actually a fair amount of work to produce new episodes.

Oh, and there were a few other minor achievements. I finished and passed my MSc. And I got a permanent Senior Staff Nurse position… so, job wise, that’s pretty good.

I think all in all I achieved a fair bit in 2013. Some things didn’t go at all the way I’d hoped. Some things went very well, and y’know, screw my sense of ‘I didn’t work hard enough’. I clearly bloody did. Stupid brain.

So here’s to 2014. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Originally published at Substantially lemon based. You can comment here or there.

So, I know I’m harping on about it but. Look, sometimes I forget how much I enjoy driving the minor. Driving the minor is a properly visceral experience. It’s so simple, there’s as little between you and the road as there realistically can be. It would be considered pared down, except that at the time, that’s just how you built cars.

Tonight I slipped into ‘that place’, with Filthy/Gorgeous playing on the radio, Rebecca’s engine humming along, and winding country backroads between here and Bath*. That place where it all comes together, the car is gripping the road like a limpet, the road is clear and the whole thing is just bucket loads of fun. The exhaust note of that 1300 A series engine is wonderfully musical, and in the moment the whole thing, that whole package, it’s delightful. The entire point of putting a fast-road 1300 A+ engine in a minor is that the car is delicious like that.

A well tuned minor, on good suspension**, with brakes up to snuff is quite simply a joy to drive.

Then I got home, and had to put the car in the garage.

And whilst our garage is pretty darn big by UK standards, the garage doors are pretty narrow. So it’s a careful shuffle to get in. And it’s not like it took a long time, I did in about one more than the customary 2 shuffles. It did take a little longer than normal because I forgot that I’d put a box off the shelf on the floor earlier today, and that stopped me getting in. So, maybe in all an extra minute.

After all that – the garage was full of fumes. It was hideous. Kathryn was coughing and I stepped out of the garage with a headache. Having dipped our toe (rather an expensive toe, I’ll grant) in the EV waters, we’ve found it warm, inviting and perhaps above all, so clean and quiet. And the idea of taking Rebecca on that journey with us fills me with delight (and a little trepidation, because we’re heading in to territory that I don’t know well). But I’m quite excited, and need to go save up lots of cash so I can make it happen :)

And we can stop burning this hideous dinosaur juice.

It is funny though, we’re so used to it that we just think that’s the way it has to be, and then you discover it doesn’t need to be that way and…well… it just doesn’t. It makes you think about things.

* I was off to Topping and Co to see Deb Perelman talk.
** My car may not be standard at the back on the suspension front, but the front end is pure Issigonis.

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

So, with us planning to be here for most likely two years (nice to be less, but in reality probably at least 2) I’ve been contemplating the EV question again. Much though I would love to do Rebecca’s EV conversion, I’m well aware that this is not a cheap, nor low-time task. Not least because it’s something that I really want to do well which involves careful planning and design, and knowledge that is outside my normal field of work. And so I/we have been vaguely contemplating whether it might be time to consider replacing Chester with an EV.

Also, the idea of Baby + Car that intermittently sucks large quantities of money is slightly concerning.

Anyhow, as part of this, yesterday I/we did some finger in the air waving: ‘we spend…this much… on running the cars’ kind of thing. This came out at:

£ 4953.60

That’s petrol, tax, servicing, tyres… *and* Kathryn’s not-by-car commuting costs, or at least, what we thought we spent.

Having done actual sums and looked through an entire year of bank statements I’ve come up with:

£ 4790.55

As the *actual* spend, except that doesn’t actually include Kathryn’s petrol spending. This suggests I’ve woefully underestimated the amount that we actually spend on petrol, given that it might well be around £50 a month.

Of course, we don’t actually have the money to buy an EV outright. But the sums so far suggest it might be worth borrowing to do this.

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

I know, I know, she’s riiiiiiiiided a few times in her many years in my ownership, but today, following some help from my awesome friend Nikki (who kindly put aside her EV journalism for some of the day to come help) Rebecca is sporting a ‘new’ diff and actually, for the first time in months trundled up, and down, the private road outside our garage (without me having the fear that she was going to emit a ghastly ‘crunch’ noise and stop dead).

Today has, in fact, been a bit of a slog though. Indeed whilst fitting the differential went very smoothly, nay, incredibly smoothly (at least, assuming I don’t get down there tomorrow and find a huge pool of oil under the car, or that a rending metal noise does not occur when we’re enroute to the garage for the MOT).

If you’ve never worked under a car before, a way to simulate it would be to crawl under your bed with some 2kg bags of sugar. Now, whilst an assistant sprinkles you with bits of mud and grit, and ideally whilst rubbing your head in a mixture of mud and oil, hold the weights up at the most inconvenient angle you can until you’re whimpering from the pain.
( Read the rest of this entry � )

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

Well, I’m not sure. I collected Chester yesterday, and he’s clearly much better. The handbrake’s no longer sticking (fitted with new cylinders, new handbrake cable and new shoes. Thankfully the drums survived) and so pulling away doesn’t feel like the car’s dragging it’s feet.

However, tbh, despite it being almost a year since the last service he’s actually been running fairly well the last few weeks, so there wasn’t an awesome change in running which I have encountered after abusing cars in this way before. But normally our garage warn us when we’re nearing the 400 quid mark. Unfortunately, I think they’ve got used to the fact that we will keep Chester on the road, pretty much against the odds. That I’ll source parts for even expensive repairs (like a new front strut), because I’d much rather keep a solid old car on the road than buy a scabby but just as expensive to maintain modern car where parts are cheaper.

So when they wandered past 400 quid they didn’t tell us this time. And the fact that their basic service is now just shy of 200 quid….didn’t help – and that it was a 12k service, not a 6k service (last time the service bit of the job was just over 50 quid +VAT).

And then…they forgot to actually bill us for the service, so as I was quietly in pain from the £450 quid ‘service’, shortly after I pulled up to the house they rang and said ‘oh, we forgot to bill you for the actual service’. I said that my invoice said ‘service’ on it, because I thought it did and had been looking through old invoices to decide how much whimpering I should do…

…and offered to go check. And got in the car, instantly apologised, and then when he said it was 200 quid extra I believe the words out of my mouth were ‘How much?! On top of the £400?!’. I may have said ‘Are you serious!’, although I’m not sure. I paid it though, obviously. But I’ve really got to get back to servicing the car myself. Doing the brakes would have been hassley, but it’s definitely within my sphere of competence. The service itself is pretty easy stuff, and probably would have been no problem.

It’s just adjusting those vario-belts that gets me.

Anyhow. I just have to remind myself that in general he’s cheaper to run than a modern car, unless we did the evil ‘run it until it dies and replace’ model of car ownership. And that our insurance is “insanely low” because he’s old enough to be covered under a multi-car classic policy.

But I’m still holding out slightly on buying the replacement parts that he still needs, there are two tie bar bushes (currently hard rubber, will be replaced with polybushes because sports stuff is much more easily sourced) and similarly there’s a brake hose that needs replacing. P’raps once the minor’s out of the garage I’ll force myself down there and work on Chester.

…

On the Minor front, one of the two packages of ‘stuff’ I ordered for her have arrived. I might consider going down there once I’ve done my day’s cleaning duties to p’raps get one of the seats into usable condition. I was having temptation to fit a heated seat, but having considered it I think if I were to do that I should have got new flame-retardant seat foam (which I have not) and thus it should probably wait.

When the other package of ‘stuff’ arrives, the ‘new’ diff can go in, and the car should be mobile. Although she may need a new battery, I think I’ve somewhat hurt that one. She does need a wash, and she needs a polish too…

Then I can get back to cutting up wood for the house.

…

My main plan for today was to work on the garden, but it’s raining, which is upsetting. If it stops I may go and force chunks of wood thorough our chipper.

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

Just in case anyone has one kicking around, and for future reference. The axles that I’m interested in are on volvo 240s of the following flavours:

1976-79 240 with B21 and any transmission: 3.91:1 type 1030
1980 240′s with B21A/F and M45/6: 3.91:1 type 1030
1980 240′s with B21F and A/BW55: 3.73:1 type 1030
1981 240′s with B21F non-MPG: 3.73:1 type 1030
1981-82 240′s with B21F-MPG and AW55/70: 3.91:1 type 1030

(Courtesy of: here)

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

So, I know, in my heart of hearts that my car is not a person. I know she is no more a person than the piano stool, and the personality I imbue her with is merely a reflection of myself and the miriad mechanical parts of which she is made, and some distillation of the many and various people who’ve worked on her over her many years on this Earth (and their standards of quality, and what is ‘good enough’).

I know this.

I know this because I am not insane, and am only a moderately foolish person.

I know that when I feel that broken down vehicles are sad, or lonely, that again is a reflection of my own emotions rather than something that is inherent in them.

But still, after the vast amount of money sunk into Rebecca, the fact she’s fairly thoroughly broken again, and that having had discussions with various (more experienced) sorts than me have led me to the conclusion that it’s not worth replacing the differential that was in the car, because the engine has sufficient umph that it will probably eat it for breakfast. Which’d be 450 quid drainwards. And even if it didn’t, the 150lb/ft / 82Hp Warp 9″ motor sat in the garage and awaiting fitting will not merely eat the riley differential for breakfast, it will devour it, its kin (including distant and far-flung relations) and then set fire to the family home before going on a merry diff destroying rampage.

So instead, I’m contemplating other rear-axle options.

Which is sad, I liked the fact that apart from the engine and front brakes, my minor would remain essentially minor. But I don’t think that spending a fortune on a new diff to have it turned into freshly ground steel is a terribly wise plan.

Thoughts at the moment are:

- Ford Escort / Capri diff – this has the advantage of there being bolt-on kits available, and also of only needing the half-shafts modifying to fit the Morris Minor’s wheel’s PCD. Also – I’ve been offered one for £100 plus shipping, which has only covered 65k miles… I’m taking this as ‘not bad’. I’d need new (custom) handbrake cables, flexible brake pipes, and a new prop shaft made up, and a mounting kit, but that should be about it. The mounting kit is off-the-shelf, and spares are plentiful because people use the Escort diff for rallying…

- Volvo 240 Diff – this was suggested by Jonny Smith who’s doing the awesome flux capacitor – which was once my Enfield*. The 240 axle would need shortening, but would be insanely tough. It also would mean the minor would be disk braked all round… which is excessive! The cost saving of buying a 240 diff and axle would probably be lost in shortening it and making up mounts, because there’s no 240 axle fitting kit.

I’m currently talking to someone about a Capri diff, for which they want 100 quid for it – it’s from a car that only covered 65k miles, but it’s an English, not an Atlas differential. Apparently the Atlas diff is the stronger variant… And I need to perhaps ring a few places to work out how much the 240 diff might be to convert.

And then, well, we’ll see.

But still, sometimes I think that she hates me!

* I wish to point out that it was the owner prior to my mum that put the Rover grille on the Enfield, not us!

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

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

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.