Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, BSW01 said:

I made myself a Bloody Maria, it’s basically a Bloody Mary, but made with tequila instead of vodka, something I’ve not had before. At best I’d describe it as interesting, but I think it’s a complete waste of tequila, the flavours just don’t compliment each other

I'd concur on the Bloody Maria, having said that, a 'good' sipping Tequila, neat, with a Sangrita* chaser is excellent and traditional.

 

* Tomato juice, orange and lime juice with a dash of hot sauce, salt and pepper.

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

The cynic in me again wonders if  that is less an anti-theft measure and more a response to auto manufacturers lobbyists  who want to dry up a source of cheap second hand car parts!

When those parts are taken from functioning cars in an electric saw grab and dash, (like catalytic converters) the ability to tie dodgy scrap metal dealers with specific thefts might help a bit. Right now there's no easy way to build a case against the scrap dealers.

[Ozexpatriate]

Just home from the Endodontist and feel a bit wrung out, having had a Number 2 tooth (upper right molar) root canal on all four roots. I had pain about three weeks ago (enough to wake me up in the middle of the night) which went away a week later.

 

The strangest sensation was the impedance measurement tool he used to determine the depth of each root prior to plying his trade as a dental navvy, and dredging out the canal.

 

It was weird agreeing to let the Endodontist drill through a crown into a tooth that was not painful, but he confirmed the dentist's diagnosis from a week ago that the roots were necrotic (hence no pain). Other than restoring the crown, hopefully it is all done (other than paying off the credit card).

 

Modern dentistry is a far cry from what I remember as a six-year old. The Endodontist had a lot of nice kit, like the 3D dental CT scanner that spins around your head* and his Zeiss binocular microscope to work with.

 

* I first encountered one of those about 20 years ago when my wisdom teeth were removed.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[Barry O]

Ey up! 

One last day of walking about before I then travel to Canley for our conference. How time flies when you are having fun(!).

 

Woke very early but managed a bit more shut eye so now ready for the day.

 

Time for my mugadecaff then..off to set the world to rights.

 

Enjoy your day!

 

Baz

Edited October 27, 2022 by Barry O

[jamie92208]

Good moaning, it's due to get warm here, mid 20's.  The Christmas  cake wasn't made yesterday but the fruit has been soaking in alcohol overnight so there is a chance thst it will get made today.  I had to go to the bank yesterday to find out why my card was refused at the Supermarket  on Monday.  Some explanatios were given about a monthly spending limit that is in place.  This is in spite of there being plenty of funds in the account. The lady did reset the card but there are still questions to be answered. I'm going back forva longer discussion this afternoon. 

 

Apart from that not a lot to do.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, from a rather dark rock where it persisteth down. 13c, relatively warm.

 

No orders for the morning, but getting the electric train from Royal Ramsey to the Big City with friends this afternoon, to meet Mrs NHN at her workplace (her office is in the horse tram sheds next to the station) to have drinks and eats at the nice pub next door - she is then driving us all home, as a T totaller.  Handy 😁

[TheQ]

Morning unfortunately Awl,

3hours sleep, loooooooooooooooooooong awake, 3/4 hours sleep, woken by heavy farm machinery outside.. 

Ben I'm not sure Collie taken out , went for most of a full patrol till a pheasant squawked, then he ran back to the house...

Breakfast has been had, muggacoffee is under consumption.

 

Bin studying plastic printer enclosures, these stabilise the operating temperature.

Hmm, most of them put the power supply and sometimes the control panel inside the box.. not a good idea when the build plate is held at 100C and the print head at near 300C.. Electronics is generally designed for 20-23 C max 70C even mil spec is designed for a max 125C. 

I doubt consumer cheapish electronics, uses top spec components.

 

An oddity is the print head often needs a cooling fan, to stop the heat of the nozzle spreading back to the filament intake.

 

Heavy machinery is intermittently travelling past..

 

So once I've assembled this printer, tried and tested it, I'll look at building an enclosure with PSU and control electronics outside the box..

A secondary consideration is I might get asked to demo it at  one of our shows, therefore the box needs clear panels for the public to see through, it needs to keep hot and moving items from little fingers and it needs to keep little fingers away from electrics.

 

More research is needed on this.. particularly on optimum operating temperature.

 

Today's plans, 

Transfer muddling stuff from Landrover to car,

Empty lots of stuff from Landrover,

Take Landrover to MOT.

Return via a Lidl which is enroute.

After that it will depend on what time I have left...

 

Time too finish that muggacoffee.

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

It was raining earlier.  Sunny spells and more showers forecast.  14°C rising to 20°C.

On our shopping trip yesterday I felt rather light headed and unwell when going into Waitrose.  Staff there very helpful finding me a chair and some water and a young lady shopper (who turned out to be a nurse) with two young children came to help as well.  After about 15 minutes I felt as right as rain but advised to check BP etc when I got home.  It was a bit higher than usual  but settled down.  I'll monitor it for the next couple of days and if necessary make appointment with GP.  Can't praise the people who helped me enough.  The lady at Waitrose gave the nurse a bunch of flowers and wouldn't let me pay for them so I bought her a box of chocolates and an email of thanks has been sent to Waitrose.

Today I will be mainly taking it easy as instructed by The Boss.  For once I am happy to do her bidding.

Bin men have been and Sainsbury's delivery has just arrived so farewell for now.

Have a good one,

Bob.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by grandadbob

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Woken up by Arthur Itis stomping on my left leg from hip to ankle. I haven't resorted to the Nurofen yet as he's receding now. The overnight rain has stopped and there's even a few blue patches in the sky. Although I'm not participating due to my mobility issues its my MRC's first exhibition since lockdown, new date and new venue but its not mentioned in any of the magazines but it is on the Model Shops Directory. I do have some items for the sales stand so I'll have to arrange to deliver them to the clubhouse or the venue.

[jamie92208]

Lots of heavy macinery is also going past our house. There has been very intensive activity over the past week.  It appears to be peak planting season. Some of the seed drills are enourmous and many have been working late shifts as well.

 

Jamie

[polybear]

10 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Aditi loves her Fiesta. It is a really nice car. It has the 1.4 L 16 valve engine. A few years after our one was built,  Ford started making them with smaller engines but we haven’t driven one of those. Ours is 12 years old but is still ULEZ compliant for London, not that we are likely to drive in central London but the ULEZ area is moving out to just inside the M25 soon. Aditi's sister’s husband (lives in Enfield) had a Diesel Golf which wasn’t compliant but he traded it in for a Toyota Corolla hybrid .

 

Bear seems to recall big problems with modern Fiesta's - the ecoboost models in particular; something to do with overheating and some catching fire.  I believe Ford actually gave owners their money back.  Call a Bear suspicious but when a 1.0 3 cyl turbo engine is kickin' out 123 gee gees (and the engine block is apparently small enough to fit on a sheet of A4 paper) then I get twitchy and think it's a bang waiting to happen....

 

14 minutes ago, grandadbob said:

Good morning all,

It was raining earlier.  Sunny spells and more showers forecast.  14°C rising to 20°C.

On our shopping trip yesterday I felt rather light headed and unwell when going into Waitrose.  Staff there very helpful finding me a chair and some water and a young lady shopper (who turned out to be a nurse) with two toddlers came to help as well.  After about 15 minutes I felt as right as rain but advised to check BP etc when I got home.  It was a bit higher than usual  but settled down. 

 

SBT's to GDB; I can't help but think you missed a golden opportunity though.....

" My blood sugar has crashed - and I've forgotten to bring my emergency humongous lump of LDC......"

 

Bear here.....

Up at silly o'clock to get to Wickes nice n' early to buy some coving (how on earth a diddy hallway and landing can need 16m of the stuff is beyond me) and a bag of sand; their website said they had 81 tubes of coving adhesive in stock - cr@p, the shelf was empty.  I didn't bother askin' cos' I couldn't be ar5ed with the usual "if it's not on the shelf then we ain't got none" reply.  Turdycurses.

So it was down to Toolstation just a few minutes away and I spent the dosh there instead; as the nearest high st. Tesco is just a few hundred yards walk away I dived in there as well and got some bits for a cheaper price than the local Co-op, so it wasn't so bad after all.  T.C.'s cancelled as a result.

First plan of the day is dive into beamland to check what skirting and architrave may be there - I'll then order a load more before cracking on with getting the landing and hallway ceilings painted.  That's the plan, anyway - it may well go to r@tshit......

 

In other news....

I see that Evostick (purveyors of the most excellent "Sticks Like Sh1t" adhesive/sealant have a new one out; they've called this one "The Dog's B0llocks" 🤣

Bear gone.

 

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Last nights rain has stopped falling from the sky, but there are a lot of dark clouds to be seen, with the occasional spot of sunshine. Today I’m making a start on framing some of the prints that I got frames for a few weeks ago, as the 3 frames that I squared up are now ready to be used. 

 

After dinner charlie is calling round for his weekly model making session, so that’s the afternoon sorted then. 

 

Back later. 

 

Brian

[New Haven Neil]

IIRC the earliest Fiascos with the Ecoboost engine had the issues, related to overheating, due to the 'steam port' (who knew?) being incorrectly placed in the block. Later ones were OK. The automatics (in Focii too) however have a terrible reputation, in Aus I think a 'class action' was undertaken to recover costs against the Getrag 'Powersh!tshift box due to juddering issues and clutch pack failures.  I don't know about Fiascos, but IIRC the later Focii went back to a torque converter auto.   

[southern42]

' morning all from red dragon land.

Drizzling earlier, brightening up but not expecting much from the yellow ball in the sky, today.

Outside 14.2°C. Inside 18.8°C. Click n collect day, so hoping no downpours this afternoon.

 

Feeling a (little) bit more energetic this morning, hoping it lasts. A few odd jobs to do to keeping me moving  but first a mugadecaf.

 

On 26/10/2022 at 10:09, New Haven Neil said:

Morning, from a very windy rock, with 50mm of rain in the gauge showing since last night - sunny now though.  A lot of sycamore leaves in the garden - pah.

 

The lack of any stairs in our current residence is much appreciated, given we both have a selection of knackered joints.  The thought of all those stairs in the old house makes me shiver.  I do still miss the large rooms and ten foot high ceilings though. But not, as I said the heating bills, not the decorating and maintenance of a large house.  Downsizing was difficult in terms of deciding what to keep or not, but we got there in the end.

 

Miserable night, Mrs H coughing to add to the usual aches, so feeling a little jaded this morning.

 

Sycamore leaves are one thing, seeds growing up between the Betws sleepers is another, especially when muggins does the honours of doing the track check and ends up pulling up the seedlings in spring-summer! As bad as ash seeds, though ash seeds like to get down into tiny cracks such as between paving and walls of the house. Their seedlings are a devil to get out especially if you leave them just that little bit too long.

 

Polly

[jamie92208]

I had a Mk 1 Fiesta I think, red and rust coloured and T reg.  It was called Rattletrap but served me well for several years. No 2 son asked me to park at the far end of the school car park when dropping him off as Rattletrap didn't compare well with the Readman's Ferrari.  I once had to go to Bristol to pick some thngs up from an ancient aunt and came back up to Leeds with a proper mercury baroneter packed upright in the front passenger seat. Shades of the Antiques Roadshow.   Rattltrap is long gone but the barometer  is still going, on our wall here.

 

Jamie

[PupCam]

Morning All!

 

19 minutes ago, polybear said:

Call a Bear suspicious but when a 1.0 3 cyl turbo engine is kickin' out 123 gee gees (and the engine block is apparently small enough to fit on a sheet of A4 paper) then I get twitchy and think it's a bang waiting to happen....

 

 

You and me both, you don't get owt for nowt and in this case it must be longevity!

 

In Other News

 

I have a query with my medication so I attempt to phone the GPs .....

 

Attempt 1 :

Engaged

 

Attempt 2 :

Automatically answered and usual recorded diatribe about how short-staffed, how busy and how -worked they are (which no doubt is true) but my call was important and I was asked to hold and wait while the muzak played. 

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.   

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.   

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.   

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

15 seconds later I was reminded how important my call was.

...........

 

After 15 minutes I gave up (I'll leave you to calculate how many times I heard the message in total), clearly it wasn't that important after all.

 

Plan B - I'll drive down there and present myself at the Pharmacy window.    There's every chance I could be there and back in under 15 minutes.

 

And yes, that is a rant!

 

Try and enjoy your day, it won't be repeated and there's definitely a finite number of them.

 

TTFNQ

[grandadbob]

The sun is shining and I'm feeling a bit light headed.  This is nothing to do with yesterday's unwellness but more to do with the fact that I've just had a haircut.  The Boss dealt with it in her usual efficient manner and I still have my ears.

 

Sainsbury's delivery had two relatively unimportant items missing but for some reason they gave us a pizza we hadn't ordered so we'll call that quits.

Waitrose have replied thanking me for my email praising their staff and the comments will be passed on.  Having been at the sharp end of the service sector for all my working life I know how nice it is to receive a bit of praise from a customer.  People expect you give over and above when doing the job you're paid for and  that's fair enough but boy are they quick to complain if that doesn't meet their all too often unrealistic expectations.

 

Just had a message from Abbie checking up on her aged grandparents and inviting herself to lunch.  It will be a very brief visit as she's working from home today and is popping round in her lunch break. However it will be good to see her if only for about 45 minutes. 

Edited October 27, 2022 by grandadbob
Speelinking

[PupCam]

28 minutes ago, PupCam said:

Plan B - I'll drive down there and present myself at the Pharmacy window.    There's every chance I could be there and back in under 15 minutes.

 

Yes Plan B worked, proving Mondogs travel faster than electrons maybe ......

[southern42]

18 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Afternoon all. 
 

As a Point of Order I don’t normally post t***n pictures here but I was quite pleased with how this morning’s effort turned out. 
 

This one 

 

 

And this one 

 

 

For a bonus point where was I? 

 

I was first there as a wee, wee lass on a visit up to the Valleys via BR(W) (steam). Apparently, some other passengers commented on me being rather fidgety! Not that I remember though I do remember drawing the sheep on the hills in infant school. Some impression made, then. The next time, I went to Cardiff Central (via slow stopper from Bangor via Chester and Shrewsbury) to see the Dr Who exhibition (Experience, sorry!) in the days of the Tenth Doctor:

 

 

I had better drink my mugadecaf...

Edited October 27, 2022 by southern42

[BoD]

3 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

getting the electric train from Royal Ramsey to the Big City with friends this afternoon, to meet Mrs NHN at her workplace (her office is in the horse tram sheds next to the station)

Reading  some of your posts and seeing pictures of the different trains and trams on the IoM makes me think that a holiday over there at some point will be well worthwhile.

 

Morning all

 

Yesterday the dizziness disappeared as quickly as it came on. Woke up and it had gone. At the same time BP returned to normal for me.  I even managed a walk this morning even if it was just a short walk to the coast and back.  I won’t cancel my GP appointment for Friday as she asked me to keep a BP diary.  There are still one or two unanswered questions. 

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, BoD said:

Reading  some of your posts and seeing pictures of the different trains and trams on the IoM makes me think that a holiday over there at some point will be well worthwhile.

 

 

Well of course I agree......but being honest, yes it is, provided you can bear the cost, and don't expect roasting sunshine.  We have three big railways and two small ones, lots of nice scenery, and wallabies. Eating out is only OK, shopping not special, beer good.  Mostly.

 

The real killer to coming here is the cost of the ferry, making holidays here the same expense as somewhere with guaranteed sunshine.  Flying's not much cheaper!  The ferry is expensive as it subsidises a twice a day, 362 days a year service, which in winter obviously is not heaving (unlike the passengers....) with trade.

 

But when you're here......

 

There's also some trains I can't post on here.

[New Haven Neil]

Then again....

[New Haven Neil]

There are a couple of weeks you may or may not wish to avaiod.  It's a touch busier.

[jjb1970]

14 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... six student meetings scheduled - only one turned up, one was unwell, one didn’t realise it was a face to face meetings and three ignored me completely ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/10/26/downward-drivers-uncertain/

 

Apparently when I was at sea one of the names I had behind my back was 'I'm not your dad', which stemmed from a very cliched pep talk I gave to cadets who struggled to get out of bed. I used to tell them what they did off duty was their business and I wasn't interested in standing over them, but they turned up for their watch or day work on time, sober and ready to work. I found it depressing how many of them struggled with that, first offence I'd just remark to the effect of don't do it again, second I'd have a quiet word and tell them more forcefully, third time I'd lose it andbreak into a spiel about how I wasn't their dad and if they couldn't be bothered to turn up for work I'd have them flown home and they could look for something they did want to do. Invariably they behaved after that but some of them broke down into tears because it seemed to be the first time anyone had really thrown the book at them on anything.