Early Risers.

[Erichill16]

4 hours ago, Andrew P said:

No food or drink since 10pm last night, I have a fasting Blood draining session at 10am. I hope I don't become part of the flooring, as is often the case. I used to be really bad in the build up and would get the shakes and nervous bouts a day before but this time I haven't even worried about it, so I'm feeling more confident. I think all the recent Hospital trips and needles may have helped me get a little used to it. I still don't want to see the needle. 

 

3 hours ago, Andrew P said:

Well that went a WHOLE LOT BETTER than expected. The Nurse was nothing short of brilliant, but apparently I should have been drinking a lot of water, despite being on Blood thinners. She got into the vein in the left arm but it would not give her any red stuff, so she asked if she could try the other arm, and as she hadn't really hurt me so far I said yes. That was successful and it didn't even make me feel bad. After she had finished I said, those 4 tubes aren't all mine are they, to which she replied YES, I was amazed, but disappointed it wasn't blue.

Back home indoors for a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake before the allotted 10am, RESULT.

I don’t like needles at all. A couple of years ago I had four vials of blood taken at a hospital in Halifax and the next week I was in the Hallamshire in Sheffield. Whilst waiting in the chair waiting for the phlebotomist to do her thing I said to her I’d had FOUR vials taken last week, she said that’s nothing I’m taking SEVEN. My heart sank as did my blood pressure.

Shortly after I was an the Northern General in Sheffield, having more blood taken. Phlebotomist tried left arm, then right arm and then finally back to the left arm. Just get on with it I thought. In the end she said ‘you’re not Jewish are you?’ Which in this day in age I thought was a bit odd and unwise.

Still waiting for my COVID jab but not going to pester anyone for it, women and children first and all that.

Robert

[The Lurker]

3 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I had to Google that. However I then felt silly as I had taught such things but I really didn’t recall the term “dichotomous”. The use of such things occurred in science and computing., both of which I taught at various times. 

I don't remember the "dichotomous" part of keys but I do remember their painful use in Biology at about the same stage that he is - year 7 in new money, 1st year secondary in LSD. This one was about leaves and his main problem was that he couldn't imagine the leaves the pictures purported to depict. Apart from the holly....

[Barry O]

Today time has transformed into "slow time"  but I still haven't managed to finish some muddling things today.. yet..

 

Baz

[laurenceb]

Friend of mine has to have blood drawn with a sringe, the vacume tubes dont work

[Tony_S]

Quite exciting today. Food was delivered.  I made myself useful putting stuff in the freezer. Not due to a great sense of spatial awareness, just that I don’t need a step stool for the upper shelves. We then went for a walk. We went a bit further today as my back wasn’t hurting. Of course it did on the way back. It didn’t affect the inspection and filling up of the salt container on our water softener. I try to do it in the middle and at the end of the month rather than wait until it is empty. 

[BoD]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

2013 Dec 23

 

We had to put our Christmas tree out for recycling too.

 

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, Chris116 said:

I always watch what they are doing when having an injection or when they take blood. On one occasion about 30 years ago it was a good thing I was as the nurse fainted as she put the needle in for an injection and I was left holding the syringe until I could get another nurse to come and sort out both the injection and the nurse lying on the floor! 

I'm left wondering if that was because she couldn't stand the sight of blood- in which case why or how had she become a nurse or she was overcome by just how handsome, alternative words are available, you were.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Winslow Boy
Missing words

[Tony_S]

16 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

I don't remember the "dichotomous" part of keys but I do remember their painful use in Biology at about the same stage that he is - year 7 in new money, 1st year secondary in LSD. This one was about leaves and his main problem was that he couldn't imagine the leaves the pictures purported to depict. Apart from the holly....

Some of the plant identifier ones seem to require a considerable pre existing knowledge of leaf structure. Getting students to try to make simple ones is quite a good exercise. I went on a course once that was about developing expert systems in computer studies using a language called Prolog. They were IT versions of the keys.  All the examples ended with the program declaring “Seek expert assistance”.

 

[Tony_S]

7 minutes ago, BoD said:

 

We had to put our Christmas tree out for recycling too.

 

The person whose garden it originated in said it  was very inconvenient for her as it happened at Christmas. It took her 6 months to replace the fence. The remaining trees needed pruning. After one phone call where she actually accused me of making her trees fall I got slightly cross and suggested I was thinking of applying for a tree ASBO . She started whining about how unfair I was . We are very lucky with our neighbours either side, it was just a pain having an awkward one at the bottom of the garden. There are only two of the original six trees left now so it isn’t too bad really. 

[The Stationmaster]

Regular readers will recall the story of the mouse that Charlie brought in - we have seen nothing of it for some time.  The cooker servicing engineer has been, and gone away to order parts prior to his return with the parts to effect repairs to various things such as gas rings which don't ignite off the igniter button.   The cat  (Charlie - not his mum) is not very comprehensively in the doghouse.  

 

All of of this might sound like disconnected ramblings but some of you will no doubt have tumbled to the fact that the s*dding mouse has managed to take up residence in part of the cooker.  This might or might not have something to do with the smell which emanates from the grill when it is used but the engineer has assured the domestic management that in his experience of the odd sounding migration of mice into cookers would be producing far more noticeable smells irrespective of when certain parts of said cooker are at working temperature.  The fact the heknows exactly which parts to order would seem to indicated that this is not the first time the engineer has come across this problem

 

At least the peculiar movement of internal insulation; along with what almost looked like bits of animal hair where various control buttons are on shafts which come through the outer panels is now possibly explained"

[newbryford]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Next doors leylandii ended up stretched out in our garden one Christmas. It took down the fence and hit the patio doors.  

 

When I first read that, I thought you were talking about a Leyland car. (or truck/bus).......

[Tony_S]

19 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

g migration of mice into cookers

I wonder how they would cope with the pyrolytic clean process on our oven.

[Tony_S]

2 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

When I first read that, I thought you were talking about a Leyland car. (or truck/bus).......

I do know someone whose elderly father had just got an automatic car. I think it was one of the BL products. Anyway the chaps wife gets out to open the garage door. His foot slips and instead of pressing  the brake accelerates, running over his wife breaking her collar bone , continues through the garage, destroys the chest freezer, rear wall of the garage and ends up in the back garden. 

[Mark Saunders]

1 minute ago, Tony_S said:

I do know someone whose elderly father had just got an automatic car. I think it was one of the BL products. Anyway the chaps wife gets out to open the garage door. His foot slips and instead of pressing  the brake accelerates, running over his wife breaking her collar bone , continues through the garage, destroys the chest freezer, rear wall of the garage and ends up in the back garden. 

Apparently not uncommon with older drivers and automatics but only makes the headlines when someone died!

[Tony_S]

6 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

Apparently not uncommon with older drivers and automatics but only makes the headlines when someone died!

My mother in law wanted an automatic when she was about 70 but her husband refused saying they were too old to learn to drive again and he knew various people who had accidents in automatics they were not used to. After father in law passed away she bought an automatic. I don’t think any of the minor bumps she had were due to the transmission! 

Edited January 28, 2021 by Tony_S

[jamie92208]

16 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I do know someone whose elderly father had just got an automatic car. I think it was one of the BL products. Anyway the chaps wife gets out to open the garage door. His foot slips and instead of pressing  the brake accelerates, running over his wife breaking her collar bone , continues through the garage, destroys the chest freezer, rear wall of the garage and ends up in the back garden. 

And thst was his story and he was sticking to it .

 

Jamie

[The Stationmaster]

11 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I do know someone whose elderly father had just got an automatic car. I think it was one of the BL products. Anyway the chaps wife gets out to open the garage door. His foot slips and instead of pressing  the brake accelerates, running over his wife breaking her collar bone , continues through the garage, destroys the chest freezer, rear wall of the garage and ends up in the back garden. 

A woman managed something similar in Tesco's car park here about 18 months back.  It might well have been an automatic judging by what happened but whatever it was she'd not driven it much before that day.  She got going by starting off in the wrong direction then headed back towards where she had started from but went somewhere else because she didn't pay much attention to her steering on the way. She hit one parked car so hard that it moved about 3 car lengths with the handbrake on and was only slowed by the car it hit.  Three members of staff had their cars written off due to the amount of damage that had been inflicted on them and I think the cuplptrit's va car was also probably a write off, then of course there were teh others cars she damaged which were insurance repair jobs (or possibly write offs.

[Ian Abel]

BIN day, put them out last night and that's probably the most activity around here all day!

 

I did spend much of last night compiling the contents of our next detective game.

We obtained a new game this week and I needed to copy all the contents to send to our partners investigators in crime!  Done, and we will start Saturday to unravel the mystery.

 

That's it! 

-15 here at dawn, -5 the expected high.

 

Carry on.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Mark Saunders said:

Apparently not uncommon with older drivers and automatics but only makes the headlines when someone died!

Even more fun if it's a DAF 66, with a fairly poky Renault engine and a gearbox that enables the car to go as fast backwards as it can forwards.....

 

I remember seeing the aftermath of a real doozy involving one. Fortunately nobody got seriously hurt, but the car was never the same after it was dragged back up the slipway.

 

John

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. A new covid test has just been announced. Its been shown to be 99% accurate under test and only requires a saliva swab. I just don't like automatic gearboxes although I have driven automatic vehicles. The first was when I went to the USA on a fly drive, they simply didn't offer manual gearboxes. I soon got used to it as soon as I learnt to put it in neutral before trying to start. The second was a Transit minibus, the selection lever was floor mounted where the usual manual lever would be, I kept looking for a clutch pedal with my left foot.

[TheQ]

Back in the what cars have you had, the many different hire cars would occasionally throw in an auto. Never hit anything except the brake when trying for clutch...

 

Also back when being a Tesco maintenance man, it was about once a month someone would take out a row of cars. With a high percentage of the accidents cause by autos..

 

[Tony_S]

18 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

the selection lever was floor mounted where the usual manual lever would be,

Not having a gear selector lever that looks like a gear stick makes it far less likely to use it. When we had the automatic Freelanders Aditi found herself reaching for the gear selector to “change gear” just like her Fiesta. She didn’t do that with the Evoque as it has a rotary knob instead of a gear stick lookalike. The Evoque transmission is so smooth there are no “needing to change gear” noises as in a manual. 

[Tony_S]

After a patient destroyed a number of cars in the staff car park at my BiLs GP practice I suspect he may have  received advice about  continuing to drive. 

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Andrew P said:

Well that went a WHOLE LOT BETTER than expected. The Nurse was nothing short of brilliant, but apparently I should have been drinking a lot of water, despite being on Blood thinners. She got into the vein in the left arm but it would not give her any red stuff, so she asked if she could try the other arm, and as she hadn't really hurt me so far I said yes. That was successful and it didn't even make me feel bad. After she had finished I said, those 4 tubes aren't all mine are they, to which she replied YES, I was amazed, but disappointed it wasn't blue.

Back home indoors for a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake before the allotted 10am, RESULT.

 

Bear awards you today's LDC for bravery over and beyond the call of duty.  Now you've done it once it''ll be a breeze...

 

6 hours ago, TheQ said:

Found a lever arm calculator on line.. 

 length of trailer 3.7M

Weight of boat 400Kg

Max loading for Landrover tow bar 150Kg..

means I could have the boat 4 foot forward of the axle..

Change the 150Kg tow bar loading to 75 Kg for most cars and it's still 2ft forward of the axle..

Keel is 3 ft long, centre therefore is 18inches in... So placing the back edge of the keel on the axel will be about right if you include the weight of the trailer to it's maximum all up weight 750kg it's still got a balance point 1 foot forward of the axle..

 

Happy I am with that result..

 

When Boss & son took up pre-74 Formula Ford 1600 Racing, he loaded the car onto the trailer pointing forwards.  The result?  Negative nose weight on the towbar - so it was lifting the back of the towing car.  A spin whilst driving up the M1 very early one morning showed the error of his ways.  The whole rig ended up pointing the wrong way down the carriageway - fortunately nothing hit and no damage to car or trailer.  The race car was loaded pointing backwards from that point onwards.....

 

3 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

Still waiting for my COVID jab but not going to pester anyone for it, women and children first and all that.

Robert

 

Where do Bears fit into the pecking order?

 

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

The person whose garden it originated in said it  was very inconvenient for her as it happened at Christmas. It took her 6 months to replace the fence. The remaining trees needed pruning. After one phone call where she actually accused me of making her trees fall I got slightly cross and suggested I was thinking of applying for a tree ASBO . She started whining about how unfair I was . We are very lucky with our neighbours either side, it was just a pain having an awkward one at the bottom of the garden. There are only two of the original six trees left now so it isn’t too bad really. 

 

Owner of house at bottom of Bear's garden planted 50+ conifers around the perimeter as revenge for neighbours blocking his attempt to build a bloody great house in the back garden.  Though the blokes that did it put them too close to the fence, so his fence is gradually being busted up.  The only trees adjacent to fence panels not owned by him but by Bear have mysteriously died, sadly....

He's storing up a whole heap of trouble because as soon as they start blocking light into our back gardens the tree man from the Council has said he'll be having words.  That's a lot of trees to get pruned and disposed of

 

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I wonder how they would cope with the pyrolytic clean process on our oven.

 

The mouse that decided to live in the toaster in the staff canteen at Bentalls Worthing didn't fare very well - his cremated remains were discovered some time later...

[Andrew P]

When working at one Garage, we heard an almighty BANG and CRASH, I went into the Workshop to investigate, and there was a Mitsubishi Shogun sitting on top of a rather large pile of Concrete blocks. The Girl cleaner had been doing the dashboard with the Engine running to dry the seats, when she slipped the Automatic leaver into gear and it went forward strait through the Breeze Block wall and came to rest on the pile of rubble. She forgot the Engine was running.