Early Risers.

[simontaylor484]

Just come across this on YT

 

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Coombe Barton said:

... and not casting clouts ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/04/11/false-claims/

The May blossom is most definitely not out here yet.  The blackthorn blossom looked like a snowstorm at one point last week as the wind whistled through the hedgerows. We had a short flurry of snow this afternoon. Just enough to leave a few bits on the washing that was allegedly drying outside. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Tony_S

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Fortunately not - I have porcelain tiles; I think it's natural stone tiles that may need to be sealed.

So will you be spending the next few days on your hands and knees applying masking tape so that none of the grout protector/sealant goes on the tiles or are you intending to do it free style?

[The Stationmaster]

Evening all,

 

Up has been caught although i appeared this afternoon to have broken RMweb in the process.  Unable to get on on Thursday evening as the cat was reading her email and she doesn't like to be disturbed when sitting at the 'puter.  Friday was self-inflicted injury wall building day and by the time i finished, having achieved more that I'd hoped, I'd had enough.  saturday was injury recovery day - well it started around 05.00 with severe leg cramps, got round later to various other consequences of Friday's labour so I ended up wearing a wrist brace on one wrist in order to stop my thumb freezing in one position if I sat down on the wrong thing - the chiropractor will be earning his money tomorrow.

 

the body shop maf de a good job of the new nearside driving mirror which is just as well in view of how much it cost and they fitted it while I went for a trainspotting stroll on thursday afternoon.  i've kept the old mirror to see what it might be able to donate in the way of electric motors as there must be at least a couple and/or some sort of gearbox inside it.

 

Now for a bit of time with 'Empreror of The North' - great film for viewing some past style US railroading but very violent which might explain why it's on so late.  no doubt it will be on again a couple of times in the next fortnight.

[trisonic]

I've been laying a wood floor in our den - which is why I've been on RMWeb so much today.... Emperor of the North great movie, Ernest Borgnine as conductor/Bad guy?

Shame really as he was a delightful man  - when he saw tourists gazing at his house in Beverly Hills he would invariably go outside and invite them all in for tea. and crumpets or whatever.... and a chat. Watch it if you can. Best, Pete.

[monkeysarefun]

19 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

The first is to lock down the country completely for a month. Everyone confined to their living quarters, no one allowed out (and transgressors severely and immediately punished with up to and including summary execution) and the borders shut to all traffic: commercial, public and private. It wouldn’t be pretty, there would be casualties and it would cost the economy a lot (Fatally?). But with the elimination of person to person contagion, once the infected had either died or recovered during this month of lockdown the country would be free of the virus (well, as far as these things can be eradicated). The problem is borders would have to be shut for considerably longer to prevent the importation of the disease from outside the country.  One plane load of infected and asymptomatic CoVID carriers and you are back to square one.

 

Countries needed to treat it like it was a zombie attack on your house. You lock all the doors, shoot the zombies that got inside  then keep the doors shut. People coming to your door begging to be let in get put somewhere (quarantine)  where they can be watched to make sure they aren't going to turn into zombies.

 

Instead halfway through last year  too many countries went "Well we've got the zombies inside down to a reasonable number, theres  just gran and the family from next door, so everyone  can go outside and go on holidays!"

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Erichill16]

Evening All, 
Funny old day, at one point I was gardening in  my tee shirt while it was snowing.

A few jobs jobbed and a couple of films watched and even a bit of shed time.

Goodnight,

Robert

Edited April 11, 2021 by Erichill16
Typo

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

It’s been sunny for most of the day, but we did have a little snow during the early part of the afternoon. I did start to pack up, but it stopped, so I decided to carry on and the snow started once again. The snow was so light I decided to continue the working, by the time I’d packed up for the day, I managed to get one side of the wheelbarrow run pegged out and the shuttering installed. Ironically, once I’d packed up and come inside, the snow stopped falling, the sun shone and the clouds cleared revealing blue skies. Today’s temperature however, has remained in single figures all day, but this afternoon it reached the heady height of 7C this afternoon. 

 

Neither my first or second names are linked in anyway to previous male family members, in fact only one of my siblings, the eldest of my 2 younger brothers has a family name, his second name being that of our late father, who, like his brother and their father had no second name. 

 

My mother’s grandfather was Portuguese, but grandmother was English, in his (her grandfather’s)  family there was a tradition that the first male child was given the name, Raul. This went on for at least 6 generations that I know of, my cousin ‘Raul’ finally broke with this tradition when he called his first son Eric!

Edited April 11, 2021 by BSW01

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

People coming to your door begging to be let in get put somewhere (quarantine)  where they can be watched to make sure they aren't going to turn into zombies.

Or keep the zombies in your garden shed. 

[Ozexpatriate]

The weather here was odd today. Freezing overnight (or very close) and not a cloud in the sky all day, but chillier than it looked with the bright sun relatively high in the day. It did reach about 15°C if my telephone can be believed. The thermometer on the covered patio reported around 13°C. Nice in full sun, but less nice in the shade.

 

My back yard, which at this point really needs weed-pulling attention is in heavy shade all afternoon. While it was the sort of day that looked tempting to be outside. I watched golf instead.

 

Warming temperatures are forecast for several days.

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[monkeysarefun]

13 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Or keep the zombies in your garden shed. 

We could use Tasmania.

[trisonic]

Did someone on here ask for the extended version of "Outro"?

 

What's almost more interesting is if you go listen on YouTube are the incredible comments - some of them very moving.

Anyway if someone wanted it here it is... Pete. PS There is also an hour long version - too much.....

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by trisonic

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

We could use Tasmania.

I was joking with my cousin the other day that I'm surprised that Lord Howe Island isn't already a quarantine station - there's historical precedent for keeping undesirables there. (Or slightly less facetiously maybe Nauru - it's already set up.)

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[iL Dottore]

12 hours ago, trisonic said:

...I'd call it "draconian" because the vast majority who have actually had Covid - 19 (like me, I'm 69) thought it rather over rated. I used to be a heavy smoker too. I even conceived the thought that it was a practice run for something really serious...

 

 

Yes that is a draconian approach, which is why I said that it wouldn’t work outside of a totalitarian state. 

The problem with CoVID-19 is not its mortality (now estimated at somewhat above yearly influenza mortality, but not horrendously so) but the morbidity. CoVID-19 is mild or asymptomatic in about 80–90% of cases, which means that that 10%-20% of the infected will require hospital and possibly ICU (ITU) care. There is no country in the world that has enough ICU (ITU) beds to take care of all the CoVID patients requiring hospitalisation and also intensive care.  There is also the matter of Long CoVID - another manifestation of the disease that places huge burdens on health systems.
 

I think that the dilemma facing much of humanity is that we are facing a choice between the health of the individual versus the health of the species. In the absence of real starvation, any predators (and in sufficient numbers) then the only thing left in Nature for removing the sick, the elderly, the unfit and the vulnerable from the population is disease and modern medicine has done much to nullify that. 
 

Every human’s death is a tragedy to someone, but are we really doing the right thing by safeguarding the elderly, the unfit and the vulnerable at what appears to be the expense of the rest of society and the future of our children? I think we may end up in the situation whereby once a significant portion of the population is vaccinated and the health services are no longer over run, then we will come to accept that every year, like with influenza, there will be a certain number of people who will die of CoVID-19 - mostly, but not always, the elderly and unfit.

Edited April 12, 2021 by iL Dottore

[iL Dottore]

Morning all,

 

Up early again and for the usual reasons. It is plummeting down outside and that doesn’t help things one iota. Perhaps I need to emulate what many birds do and fly south for the winter.

I managed to finish a reply to Trisonic (above) which I started yesterday evening and abandoned owing to falling asleep.

 

This morning a trip to the Dog Club is planned for exercises, training and games with the Wolfpack (at the club I can train them outside but under an awning - so avoiding the worst of the rain).

 

Following which, it’s back to work and, if I get my “urgent“ tasks out of the way quickly enough, I can set up my new ink jet printer. I have a colour laser printer for company work but the running costs (i.e. new toner cartridges) are verging on the obscene. I spent SFr.400 (£315) to replace the set of toner cartridges on Saturday, I also spent SFr.115 (£90) on a replacement ink jet mini printer (which is also a scanner and copier). The idea being that all print jobs destined for internal use only are done on the inkjet printer and only those things going outside of the company (such as statements to the taxman) are printed on the laser printer.

 

The company laser printer is a Hewlett-Packard multi purpose one (scan, print, copy)  a good printer that can also print on both sides of the paper before spitting out the result. The problem is that HP are a bunch of money grabbing @#£#@!!**# as they have designed their printers so that it is impossible to use any non-HP replacement toner cartridge (each toner cartridge has a chip imbedded in it which talks to the printer and if the chip doesn’t say the right thing, the printer will not work). And if that isn’t enough, the software monitoring the laserprinter will tell you that you are running out of toner and need to replace the cartridges long before you actually run out of toner. I learnt this midway last year when the printer software informed me, just before I was starting a print job, that the cartridges needed to be replaced. As this was in the middle of lockdown, getting a replacement was not immediately possible. So I soldiered on and the printer kept on turning out nice crisp and unfaded prints for quite awhile after it started telling me to replace the cartridges. So now, I ignore these “warnings” and continue printing until the prints start fading,

 

With so many now working from home (and needing a printer) HP and the like must be laughing all the way to the bank.

 

Well, time for another coffee, then slowly get ready to take the dogs out and I mean slowly...

 

Enjoy the week

 

iD

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all

 

Not for the first time, I woke this morning at 2 am and lay in bed in something approaching limbo.  Radio 5Live dd not do what I wanted, which was to send me back to sleep swiftly and effectively.  I do not know at what time I did drift back to sleep but slumber was too little and too late when it came.  At something like the right time my bladder dictated that it was time to be out of bed and about my business.  On past form it will not take me long to feel rather groggy.  I will need to go out this morning because I neglected to count how many slices of bread remained before the last fodder run and it's not enough now.

 

The upcoming presentation made good progress yesterday and is all but done.  It will benefit from tweaking and fine-tuning but that can wait.  So can my overdue haircut.  As far as I know the salon that I patronise does not offer advance bookings.  Its more resilient customers are not averse to queueing.  The last time I did I arrived at 7.15 am and was third in the queue.  I will leave further thought on that subject for a few more days.

 

Recent talk of second homes prompts me to revisit a vaguely related issue.  The idea of owning a camper van is one that will not go away.  If I had one it could save me a bit of time and trouble when it comes to finding b&b or hotel accommodation.  It could even take the place of my venerable tent when I attend a festival.  The trouble is that I have nowhere to put one.  The street on which I live is difficult enough when it comes to parking my modest Polo and the possibility of finding a suitable parking space in a strange town could be remote.  There is no obvious answer, I feel.  Oh well ...

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[jamie92208]

Good moaning to all and of course Sundry.   Mr J Frost has visited overnight.  It is however sunny outside. 

 

We had a very pleasant lunch with a friend yesterday then did not a lot.  Today I am planning to start digging a trench round Cluckingham Palace that will be filled with concrete  to complete the fox proofing.  

 

Not a lot else to report except that we had a good video chat with No 1 son last night and saw snow falling in Lincoln.

 

Chrisf, if you need somewhere  to park a camper van, have a look around for caravan storage sites.

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Ey up!

In anticipation of being battered by probes and lights this morning my eyes are  very watery ..pah!

 

Thick frost here this morning. Beautiful blue skies though.  

 

Mugatea already drunk.. need to stir myself and get on with sorting Monday out.

 

Have a good day! Stay safe!

Positive thoughts to all ERs especially our missing ones.

 

Baz

[Andrew P]

5 hours ago, trisonic said:

Did someone on here ask for the extended version of "Outro"?

 

What's almost more interesting is if you go listen on YouTube are the incredible comments - some of them very moving.

Anyway if someone wanted it here it is... Pete. PS There is also an hour long version - too much.....

 

Just watched it on You Tube Pete, and seen those comments, WOW.

[Andrew P]

Snow is snowing,

Lightly falling,

Although not sticking,

The clock is ticking,

Time will tell,

If all will be well.

 

Have a good day one and all, stay safe and well.

[polybear]

8 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

So will you be spending the next few days on your hands and knees applying masking tape so that none of the grout protector/sealant goes on the tiles or are you intending to do it free style?

 

No need, it seems - any excess can be wiped away - just don't let it dry.  Besides, it'll be a lot easier than lining a Pullman Carriage in 2mm....

 

5 hours ago, trisonic said:

Did someone on here ask for the extended version of "Outro"?

 

What's almost more interesting is if you go listen on YouTube are the incredible comments - some of them very moving.

Anyway if someone wanted it here it is... Pete. PS There is also an hour long version - too much.....

 

 

The short version would be too long for this Bear....a bit too "off the wall" for me I'm afraid.....

 

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Yes that is a draconian approach, which is why I said that it wouldn’t work outside of a totalitarian state. 

 

 

Seems it's not working too well in a totalitarian state either (though the economic sanctions don't help):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56685356

 

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Following which, it’s back to work and, if I get my “urgent“ tasks out of the way quickly enough, I can set up my new ink jet printer. I have a colour laser printer for company work but the running costs (i.e. new toner cartridges) are verging on the obscene. I spent SFr.400 (£315) to replace the set of toner cartridges on Saturday, I also spent SFr.115 (£90) on a replacement ink jet mini printer (which is also a scanner and copier). The idea being that all print jobs destined for internal use only are done on the inkjet printer and only those things going outside of the company (such as statements to the taxman) are printed on the laser printer.

 

 

 

But how does the cost per print compare between the laserjet and inkjet printers?  Bear is of the belief that whilst laserjet cartridges are expensive they give a lot more prints?

 

Bear's useless statistic of the day:

It seems that ebay's growth went up 28% since the start of the pandemic, due to people buying and also having the time to clear out all that junk they no longer need.

 

It seems that yet another police shooting in the USA has caused more trouble.  Despite the rights and wrongs of it all, the Rioters seem to overlook the fact that the victim had an outstanding arrest warrant out on him, then resisted arrest and was shot driving off after he managed to get back into his car:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56714346

(He died after crashing into another vehicle several blocks away - did the shot or the crash kill him?)

**In fairness the above is based on a Police statement & BBC reporting**

 

And Bear found this video interesting:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56707979

Call me old-fashioned, but if a Police Officer says to Bear "stop" then I stop.  If he says "get out of the car" then I get out of the car.  If he says "get on the ground" then I get on the ground.  And that's in the UK, where the Police don't routinely have guns - or the people in the cars have real potential for having a gun too.  I don't take such instructions as an invitation to start arguing the "why's" and "what have I done wrong". 

Incidentally, I've only been pulled once whilst driving a car - it was very late at night (early morning in fact) and there was very little on the road.  Just a routine check + what's in the boot cos' they were checking I wasn't out on the rob.  We could do with a lot more of it...if only we had the officers to do it.....

Rant over