Early Risers.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Rick, I'm in the same situation regarding the car. A few months ago I had to fork out £850 for a new clutch and for new suspension components (saved a bit of money when the front end was dismantled by replacing the anti roll bar linkage.) I depend on my car as my mobility has deteriorated over the years.

[polybear]

Bear here......

First job of the day was visit the Timber Yard to order some 290mm wide Meranti window board for the alcove shelves; I asked for three at 595mm long and expected to be told that I'd have to come back in a day or so to collect them, so it was a real result when he headed off for a few minutes and came back with them all cut.  Result No. 1

Result No. 2 was the fact that he'd cut four and charged me the same price I'd been quoted for three 😀.  A Happy Bear.

Then it was Wickes to collect some timber batten and shelf brackets - I've decided to use adjustable rails and brackets so the position of the shelves will be, er, adjustable 😄  I'm not totally keen on the appearance of two rails screwed to the wall (I prefer much less visible brackets) but if I want adjustability there's nottalotta choice unfortunately.  I find there's nothing worse that fixed shelving positions that don't suit what is to go on them - and as Bear's Crystal Ball is less than reliable at predicting the future it's gonna be rails.  I'll probably order a colour-matched aerosol and respray the white rails so they match the wall.

The timber batten has been bonded to the bottom edge of a section of skirting using "Sticks like sh1t" adhesive (yes it really is called that) and once painted it'll blend in and solve the large gap problem.  Tick.

I've realised that the two shelf rails purchased earlier are a little too long (@ 4ft) - so I'll swap them for 3ft jobbies tomorrow.  Turdycurses.

I also cut a couple of pieces of Meranti off-cut (saved from the window sill/mantle piece job) and I'll use them to widen a couple of the shelves by 25mm as I have a couple of display cases that are very wide (like 300mm).

[Coombe Barton]

... Porth Kidney, a bay between St Ives and the Hayle Estuary. Golden sands – check – lots of it – check – blue sky – errrrm …

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/08/01/postcards-from-the-periphery-2022-11/ 

[Ozexpatriate]

I was expecting the HVAC people between 10:00 and noon. I had just finished showering around 8:30am when the telephone rang. Apparently the new fan unit did not arrive but they are expecting it in a shipment today. They are now scheduled to arrive between 8:00am and 10:00am tomorrow.

 

Ironically, (likely intentional scheduling) one of their trucks was in the street a couple of doors down. (The same company installed all the HVAC equipment on my end of the street.)

 

Today sees a push of onshore marine air. It is less hot but more humid and we're expecting a high of 32°C. Onshore flow had started last night and I was able to get temperatures inside down a little bit.

 

The laws of thermodynamics being what they are, it is amazing just how stubborn an insulated thermal mass is. Even when I get temperatures down, they bounce back to around 27°C quite quickly. That's still better than 30°C.

 

We need a strong onshore airflow today to scour out high altitude wildfire smoke from a large fast-growing wildfire 400km / 250 miles away (as the smoke blows) on the Oregon/California border. The sky was hazy and pale and the sunlight had a very slight orange cast.

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[simontaylor484]

How bl00dy difficult is it to talk to an actual person at the bank, my credit card has stopped working  ring the customer service number loads of computerized menus no option to actually speak to a human being.

Ended up reporting the card Lost to save any further piddling about

[BlackRat]

Greetings one and all from a scorchingly sunny Florida.

 

Combined 60 th for me and Mrs BR and to mark my retirement after 42 years or so crown service.

 

Started planning this holiday in 2018 for 2020 but alas Covid meant it wasn’t to be….. rolled over to 2021 and had to roll it over again to this year.

 

Each time we added a bit, then a bit more so here now for 31 days with the family, making memories that will last forever.

 

So far visited Miami, the Everglades national park and now entertaining the grandson ( and me) with theme park after theme park.

 

Forgotten the sheer joy of being absolutely terrified at great heights and great speeds but if a 9 year old can do it….

 

Just as you start to flag you hear ‘Come on Gramps’ and it’s the best tonic to get you going ever.

 

Just Googling to see if there are any choo choo shops around, just for interest of course.

 

Take care one and all…. Normal service will be resumed at some point.

Edited August 1, 2022 by BlackRat

[simontaylor484]

7 minutes ago, BlackRat said:

Greetings one and all from a scorchingly sunny Florida.

 

Started planning this holiday in 2018 for 2020 but alas Covid meant it wasn’t to be….. rolled over to 2021 and had to roll it over again to this year.

 

Each time we added a bit, then a bit more so here now for 31 days with the family, making memories that will last forever.

 

So far visited Miami, the Everglades national park and now entertaining the grandson ( and me) with theme park after theme park.

 

Forgotten the sheer joy of being absolutely terrified at great heights and great speeds but if a 9 year old can do it….

 

Just as you start to flag you hear ‘Come on Gramps’ and it’s the best tonic to get you going ever.

 

Just Googling to see if there are any choo choo shops around, just for interest of course.

 

Take care one and all…. Normal service will be resumed at some point.

Enjoy @BlackRat

[polybear]

26 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

How bl00dy difficult is it to talk to an actual person at the bank, my credit card has stopped working  ring the customer service number loads of computerized menus no option to actually speak to a human being.

Ended up reporting the card Lost to save any further piddling about

 

Bear's Bank has just announced that it's now charging for replacement lost cards; the first in a year is free but after that they're a fiver a time.  In the event of fraud or theft they'll be free

 

[southern42]

' evening all from red dragon land.

Sun, cloud, breeze, 17C. Enough to get the sheets dry (-ish). Got them indoors just before the R word fell from the sky.

 

It is beginning to look like autumn on the CVR with leaf fall between long lengths of parallel bits of metal, already, hastened no doubt by the recent hot weather. Sunday, the leaf fall was golden where and when the sun shone. Lovely. On the platform, it was like the London Underground with passengers moving onto it as fast as others were moving onto the tr**n. Jam packed most of the day. Not sure if that was strawberry or raspberry.

 

Today? The dishwasher threw a wobbler and protested with E4.

I spent half the morning washing, drying and putting away yesterday's dishes that were in the dishwasher. And spent half the afternoon lending a hand while Ray pulled the dishwater apart to find the cause. E4 includes a leak. The place of a leak could not be found but there was definitely a leak somewhere as there was water in the bottom compartment. All put back together again and back in place. E4 not showing anymore so it will be given an Early Riser's cheap rate test in the morning, before higher daytime electric charges come on. Better set the alarm for an early rising! Hopefully, it will be ok, at least for awhile to allow time to see what is available.

 

Not the sort of excitement I had envisaged for the day but I did play my second song on the bamboo flute from memory, so feeling rather encouraged by that because I got to the point of wondering if it was ever going to happen.

 

Raising a mugadecaf to pipe dreams - may yours come true.

 

Polly

[brianusa]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I was expecting the HVAC people between 10:00 and noon. I had just finished showering around 8:30am when the telephone rang. Apparently the new fan unit did not arrive but they are expecting it in a shipment today. They are now scheduled to arrive between 8:00am and 10:00am tomorrow.

 

Ironically, (likely intentional scheduling) one of their trucks was in the street a couple of doors down. (The same company installed all the HVAC equipment on my end of the street.)

 

Today sees a push of onshore marine air. It is less hot but more humid and we're expecting a high of 32°C. Onshore flow had started last night and I was able to get temperatures inside down a little bit.

 

The laws of thermodynamics being what they are, it is amazing just how stubborn an insulated thermal mass is. Even when I get temperatures down, they bounce back to around 27°C quite quickly. That's still better than 30°C.

 

We need a strong onshore airflow today to scour out high altitude wildfire smoke from a large fast-growing wildfire 400km / 250 miles away (as the smoke blows) on the Oregon/California border. The sky was hazy and pale and the sunlight had a very slight orange cast.

 

 

Just in time for the great cool off!  Its a more normal day here in GH tempwise, much to the relief of everyone including the cat. Although the air has just kicked in at 75 Degrees!

    Brian.

[BoD]

Happy 40th, Mr &Mrs Ian A.

I hope you can enjoy a  good celebration when you feel more up to it.  
 

[simontaylor484]

Yes Happy Anniversary to Mr and Mrs Abel.

 

Forgot to add McDonald and Dodds to my list of detective shows 

 

Also I quite enjoy Private Eyes the theme tune is an excellent cover of the Hall & Oates hit

[tigerburnie]

I must have broken a mirror or something, woke up to find a tick drinking my blood on my ankle, it fell off after my shower, leg is swollen, hot and red, so a visit to the nurse, 3 weeks of anti biotics in case of Lymes, so no cider for me, I seem to be falling to bits just lately, luck must be due to change soon........................

[Barry O]

@BlackRat there used to be avfew model shops in Orlando but most seem to have shut down over the years but I see Colonial Photos and hobbies are still there. They sell lots of toys including real, working model  rockets, ships etc it was great calling there when I ended up working there for 3 months a fair while ago. ( and no I didn't visit any of the tourist spots while I was there.. but I did use my air miles to take the family there for 3 weeks...)

 

 

Time for some sleep.. this may now be possible as RAF Airlines have now beetled off somewhere else with their A400M.

 

Baz

 

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

option to actually speak to a human being.

I don’t really like the ones where you speak to a robot and end up going round in circles. A nice man at one of the banks said just remain silent and you will get transferred to a human. Perhaps pressing no numbers has the same effect!

[Ian Abel]

5 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I don’t really like the ones where you speak to a robot and end up going round in circles. A nice man at one of the banks said just remain silent and you will get transferred to a human. Perhaps pressing no numbers has the same effect!

The greater percentage (not actually taken a precise poll ) of systems here will send you to a hooman if you say "representative", I general do so at the first robotic prompt, and quite loudly as they also almost always say "calls will be recorded to help train staff".

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, southern42 said:

afternoon lending a hand while Ray pulled the dishwater apart to find the cause. E4 includes a leak.

The leak sensor is a little tray that pivots when it fills with water. So if you dismantle the machine the tray will empty and all will appear ok until it fills again. Leaks faults were about the only fault our previous dishwasher didn’t report. We had the leak sensor trigger in the washing machine. It wasn’t actually a leak. Someone had put old lumpy powder in and water had bounced over it and flooded  the machine. 

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Happy anniversary Mr & Mrs Ian A. Quite warm and humid here, the clouds are keeping it bottled in, another night sleeping on top of the duvet.

[Ozexpatriate]

36 minutes ago, Ian Abel said:

The greater percentage (not actually taken a precise poll ) of systems here will send you to a hooman if you say "representative",

Eventually. Many still insist on asking prerecorded questions while I am yelling something like "agent" / "banker" / "representative" at the system.

 

For all the progress in machine learning, most call handling systems are still dumb flow chart, nested IF statements no smarter then ELIZA from the 1960s.

  

Lately I've had a lot of robocalls (from what might be a data harvester) with a prerecorded "Hello this is Susan on a recorded line" preamble. This was false - it's exactly the same recording every time. On one call I said "Are you a robot?" and while some *legitimate* outfits will actually have a programmed "yes" response, this one had the effrontery to say (in a weird unnatural way) "No I am a genuine human".

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well today has been a complete opposite of yesterday, today I’ve spent the morning in the garden and the afternoon in the workshop. All the outstanding dead heading has been done and I’ve even managed to trim the box hedging in both the back and front gardens. After dinner, I stripped down the blade of the hedge trimmer and cleaned it down. I then applied a coat of grease and then re-assembled them, before they were packed away until next time. I even found time to build and test another delay circuit board. 

 

Well I don’t know what happened to the council workers, but they never showed up! Still it meant that I had a productive day in both the garden and workshop. 

 

After tea I completed the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix, it was fairly quite in there. However, before that I dropped Sheila’s prescription in at the pharmacy, it was as I was walking back to Sainsbury’s that I bumped into Vickie, so we had a quick chat before heading our separate ways. 

 

Ian and Mrs A. Happy anniversary to you both. 

Edited August 1, 2022 by BSW01

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[southern42]

Hope I am not too late to wish a happy anniversary to Mr & Mrs Abel. 
 

‘ night all and nos da.

Polly

Edited August 2, 2022 by southern42

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, brianusa said:

Just in time for the great cool off!

Yes, though it's still going to be warm here (88°F / 31°C for the next couple of days) but not hot like it was.

 

The biggest improvement will be overnight temperatures which will drop to 57°F / 14°C. Statewide, there were about 14 fatalities related to the heat over the last week.

 

Next weekend will be hot again.

[monkeysarefun]

10 hours ago, Ian Abel said:

Murder Mysteries:

We're devoted fans of "Midsomer Murders".

Fans of "Brokenwood Mysteries"

"Murder in Provence" was "OK" but seemed a little slow overall. My pet PERSONAL peeve was him driving around in the stupidly old Citroen, should be at the breakers yard!

We love/loved "Inspector Morse", sad to see it end.

However, picked up with the offshoot "Inspector Lewis" which seems to have morphed into just "Lewis" for the title a few seasons in, really enjoying it.

Both "Morse" and "Lewis", in general, seem to have sustained the larger body-counts the "Midsomer" treated us to. 

 

 

Following on from yesterdays UK based WAG obsession question, what is it with all the English murder mysteries that clog up our national broadcaster each afternoon?? 

 

People are apparently getting bumped off all  over the place over there, every village or town seems to have bodies turning up every few minutes -  you've even had to offshore some shows  cos obviously everyone in the UK has been murdered by now so now we get to see people getting murdered on tropical islands, in France,  everywhere - the world is not safe from being murdered then having the case solved by some UK expat who lives there  obviously due to all the murders he's going to have to solve. 

 

Seems a UK thing,  for instance I don't recall a recent episodic US murder series since Angela Lansbury hung up her detective gear. 

 

Here we get the occasional mini-series, usually someone disappearing in the outback, but murder mystery series are rare as, although I think I know why cos pretty much every mysterious death would not be much of a challenge to figure out ,  even for  Dougal from Father Ted if he was given his own TV detective series and was sent over here to solve them all for us.

 

"Mrs  Oldperson is lying  dead in her back yard, who could possibly have done it!!?" - 

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by monkeysarefun