| Domestic Bliss |
[May. 7th, 2008|08:26 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  pissed off | ] |
So, last week out washer-dryer packed in. I'm not too upset with this - it was a pretty cheap unit that was pre-installed in the flat, and has seen fairly heavy use over it's 7-year lifetime.
At the weekend we ordered a replacement, and as it is to be delivered tomorrow I've just disconnected the dead one.
While doing this I discovered a small problem - the little isolating tap that the cold water hose connects to doesn't quite live up to it's name, and when 'closed' still allows a trickle of water through. Not a problem when it's plumbed in, but a slight pain when all it's connected to is fresh air.
Naturally this problem became apparent about a minute before the local B&Q would have closed for the day, so replacing the valve is going to have to wait until morning
It's currently dripping into a bucket, but I think I'll need to shut off the water supply overnight just to be safe. |
|
|
| Promotional Candy |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|11:00 am] |
I received some bike bits in the post today, and in the bottom of the box was this little packet of branded Haribo sweets (nom nom nom).
|
|
|
| Revolutions |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|07:52 pm] |
So on Saturday I retrieved my Allez from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ljquin's parent's place, reset the saddle, fitted a new pair of pedals, pumped up the tyres and wheeled it out onto the street.
A little hard to belive that it's been almost five months since I last cycled, but quite a refreshing experience to be out again. I just went for a short run, dropping in on my parents for some tea before riding back. The new pedals (SPD-SLs) are taking a bit of getting used to, which left me wobbling like a novice trying to get clipped in at a couple of points.
I was pretty worn out afterwards: my fitness has unsurprisingly declined, but that should improve as I ride more. |
|
|
| Further joys of automobile ownership, part 3 |
[Apr. 1st, 2008|02:19 pm] |
Despite previous efforts to fix the problem my car has still been exhibiting a bad habit of dumping its coolant onto the pavement, so on Friday I dropped it off at the mechanics before heading off to the airport, giving them some more time to look at the problem.
Their investigation has narrowed the leak down to the thermostat housing (which somewhat reassuringly matches the diagnosis of a similar fault I found described on the owner's club forum), which has duly been replaced, so hopefully this will be the end of the problem and it won't need to see the inside of the garage before it's MOT is due. |
|
|
| Paris |
[Apr. 1st, 2008|01:18 pm] |
Back home having spent the weekend in Paris. The weather was pretty uninspiring but much more pleasant than the 40° heatwave the last time we were there.
As the leaden skies and poor light did not make for the best of sightseeing conditions we spent the majority of our time enjoying the shops and cafes of the city. A very relaxing weekend.
There are a handful of photographs on flickr |
|
|
| Further joys of automobile ownership, part 2 |
[Mar. 10th, 2008|02:49 pm] |
|
Duff thermostat, the man says. |
|
|
| Further joys of automobile ownership |
[Mar. 10th, 2008|11:12 am] |
|
Dropped the car off at the mechanics this morning for some more investigation into it's inability to retain coolant - the previously mentioned problem having apparently not been fixed by changing the water pump and reared it's head again on the drive back from Southampton (a red-lined temperature gauge is not the most comforting of sights when you're 200 miles from home). |
|
|
| "Why do i feel like death just for having a good time?" |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|02:44 pm] |
While I've never felt that I experience 'post con depression' as some describe it, I am more than familiar with the easier to explain phenomena of 'convention throat' (put yourself and several hundred people from all corners of the country in the same space for four days and you can almost guarantee you'll be exposed to something that presents your immune system with a challenge), and it's biting me hard today.
Despite having the foresight to take an extra day of work to sleep and relax before returning to work I'm really feeling lousy today, having a hard time concentrating and on the verge of falling asleep in my chair. |
|
|
| Far from home |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|09:57 pm] |
During the runs to and from southampton I had Tripmaster running on my TomTom One to give me a GPS speedometer and to record the trip time. This is the display after we arrived at the hotel showing the times and average speeds.
Click through to the flickr page for an explanation of the whole display.
|
|
|
| Minamicon Cosplay Photography |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|08:55 pm] |
I've just uploaded some of the handful of photographs I took of the many great cosplayers at the convention.
|
|
|
| |
[Mar. 3rd, 2008|10:17 pm] |
Minamicon was fun.
Driving 929 miles over two days (Thursday and Monday) was interesting.
More later, perhaps even with pictures. |
|
|
| Joy in shiny things |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|10:04 pm] |
For a while my long velvet coat has been missing a couple of buttons, and I've been utterly failing at doing anything about it, so today I paid our local haberdashery a visit and found these lovely pewter buttons for the closure and epaulets, and some smaller matching ones for the cuffs.
Sewing on 12 buttons took a while.
|
|
|
| 1106:0305 (rev 03) |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|08:43 pm] |
Whew, busy evening.
Started out installing a larger hard disk into Laura's optiplex, but while hunting around for a spare ATA cable (being a Dell the fitted cables don't have connectors for additional drives) I noticed that the machine languishing in the hall was about the same spec as the one currently serving as a linux-box-of-all-trades, but with one subtle difference - one less fan.
This may not seem important but the current machine's northbridge cooler has been getting progressively noisier and more annoying over the last few weeks, so getting rid of it would be a good thing, even if it did mean an hour or so swapping parts around.
The disk swap on Laura's machine serves as a good practice run for the weekend, as I'm planning on doing a similar job to one of my Dad's machines. |
|
|
| The heat is on |
[Feb. 1st, 2008|12:26 pm] |
While driving over to my sister's to drop off a computer for her on Sunday the temprature gauge in my car climbed past it's normal middle of the dial position and continued on into the red zone. Not wanting to risk damaging the engine I pulled over at this point and switched it off. We phoned Laura's dad who arrived about 15 minutes later with some water, by this time the engine had cooled quite a bit and after topping the coolant up with water I was able to drive home without any further excitement.
The car was duly dropped off at the mechanic's for diagnosis, which turned out to be a leaking water pump allowing coolant to escape from the system and, once the coolant level had dropped sufficiently causing the whole system to air-lock. A new water pump and associated drive belt (and a ligher wallet) later and I have a working car again. |
|
|
| Metallurgy |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|10:40 pm] |
On leaving the house yesterday I got a bit of a nasty surprise as I was locking the door: The key's tab came away in my hand, leaving the blade in the lock - textbook fatigue failure.
Fortunately I was able to extract the blade (following a visit to B&Q to get a pair of pliers) without much difficulty.
Examination of Laura's key revealed the beginnings of a crack in the same place that my key had failed, so I got a few replacements cut today. |
|
|
| "So here it comes, the sound of drums" |
[Jan. 5th, 2008|11:22 pm] |
Just back from a very nice dinner at the River House to celebrate another year on the rock. Although it's only a short trip from here we couldn't resist the urge to have a play with the present ljquin bought me - a TomTom ONE GPS navigation system.
It's an entry level unit from TomTom, which is in some ways no bad thing, as it avoids the houseboat problem of trying to do many things and achieving none of them well and instead does precisely what it says on the tin - navigation - and no more. The only significant shortcoming that I can see at this early stage is that the amount of (non-expandable) memory precludes the use of some of the larger map sets.
Having said that, TomToms are, by nature, more than a little hackable and I was quick to install a nice little addon called 'tripmaster' which allows the TomTom to behave more like a general purpose GPS receiver and - most usefully - record journey trails which can (amongst other things) be plotted with Google Earth. |
|
|
| Grindstone |
[Jan. 3rd, 2008|06:13 pm] |
Went back to work today.
Pretty quiet - seems a lot of staff have taken the two days that comprise this week off, so there wasn't much needing done beyond leafing through (and deleting, mostly) a load of email.
A few of my colleagues seemed surprised to see me back, but the way I see it is that if I'm mobile enough to get to work (which I am), I'm as well being there as being stuck at home. |
|
|
| ampere-hour |
[Dec. 31st, 2007|07:06 pm] |
I've just been out for a run in the car for the first time since before the accident.
This took a bit of effort to achieve as being parked up for the best part of two months had flattened the battery to the point that it wasn't able to power the basic electrics never mind crank the engine.
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| |
[Dec. 27th, 2007|03:46 pm] |
Well, that was Christmas.
A pretty relaxed affair this year, with two christmas dinners - one at my parents and one at Laura's.
My follow-up appointment with Ortho on Christmas eve was a surprisingly brief affair - they want to see me again in six weeks to take xrays. The fact that I'm not experiencing any discomfort is taken as a good indication that the break is healing OK, but due to the risk of long-term complication from the particular break it will need to be monitored for the next couple of years. I've also been told that I can start working on weaning myself away from reliance on the crutches.
It seems that six weeks of minimal activity has weakened my leg more than I expected, and I've managed to pull a muscle by doing very little (so much for 'not experiencing any discomfort'). |
|
|
| Fear is the mindkiller |
[Dec. 20th, 2007|10:27 pm] |
Just finished reading Dune.
Damn, that's a great book!
I watched the movie years ago and I can now see how futile a task squeezing the depth of the story into a two-hour film was. |
|
|
