Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

I finished Goodbye Mickey Mouse. It’s good; a kind of USAAF counterpart to Bomber. Then I move on to his XPD, which is one of his spy stories

Thursday tomorrow!

Despite having Monday off, this has felt like a long week. I need another holiday

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Beef and Gunness casserole with chips for tea

Quite a pleasant and fairly sunny evening out, though a bit breezy

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been a bratwurst with the usual trimmings

Cloudier now than it was, but still some blue bits here and there

Earlier, there was a kerfuffle between a crow and a magpie. I think the crow had gone poking around at the road end of the block opposite, and the magpies nest in one of the trees there. I was only in time to see the magpie chasing the crow away, both of them settling on different levels of the front of the block with the magpie taking the high ground. So I don’t know if the crow had been attempting to plunder the magpies’ nest, or if it just got a bit closer than they liked and was chivvied away out of an abundance of caution

I felt a bit sorry for the pigeon that was just flying through there and got caught up in the middle, with the crow and the magpie swooping around on either side of it. It looked quite taken aback as it took refuge in the trees along the edge of the big lawn

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Cloudy with some gaps. Currently 11 degrees ('feels like' 9) with a high of 14 expected. Slight chance of rain. Barometer steady at 1013 mBar.

Sunrise 05:24; Sunset 20:33 BST

Decided against going into the office and changed the in-person meeting to a Teams one. All the other meetings today (of which there are many) are on Teams.

[WTFH]

Morning all
Overcast, and spitting at 6am. This quickly stopped and it's not brightening up, but still cloudy.

Had sold some stuff on eBay and used their own postage - which this time was with InPost - someone I've never used before. I go through all the process and it tells me to drop off at my nearest point. According to their website, my nearest one is temporarily closed, and the next nearest was a newsagent in another town, but those were the only two they listed. The newsagent that was "open to 10pm" closes at 6pm, and I was there at 7pm last night, so I turned round and came back home.

Decided to check this morning and put in the postcode of the newsagent to see where the next nearest was. Turns out that the local Tesco and Lidl both have drop off points, but the website doesn't tell you that if you put in my home postcode.
Off to Lidl tonight then.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday.

Dry.

Grey.

Sunless.

17 deg in here, 17 in the kitchen, 15.5 in the leanto.

1009 mBar, 29.796 in Hg, 756.8 Torr, 14.6343 psi, (unchanged), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

As per yesterday: Meanwhile on the 26th of March 2020 BR14, LM, NF popped in, with NF having filled his fridge & freezer, and BR14 having chilli con carne, and LM watching something about the Corby poisonings. And whilst LM heard some pot banging for the NHS, NF heard nothing where he was (much the same around here IIRC).

This morning's dream before waking saw me sacked from some job or other, then driving into ?Swansea? to get a little part time job in some electronic junk emporium. Getting a bit fed up with all this now.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the grey gloom. Had a wander around the charity emporia in Neath, always a bad idea: one closed & empty and another closing, two books bought: one the Silverberg expansion of Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy", and a local history tome about the dim & distant days when we dug stuff up, made things, and exported same from the docks, and Swansea had a mere six railway stations.

Lunch: brunch, during which the turntable in the meekro wavey stopped going round.

Entertainment: poking the meekro wavey turntable to see if it would start going round again: it didn't. Thing about Alvin, the submersible, not the Stardust.

Now wondering if the meekro wavey down in the garage still works. .

Well the heaty up meekro wavey bit still works but the goey roundy bit is fecked, and in addition the lighty uppy thing is knackered so you can't see it not going around. .

There was a £40 idiot level offerering in Argos a couple of weeks ago, but naturally enough it's now disappeared. Striking when the iRon is hot springs to mind.

£49 from B&M: staggered home. The light flickers. Dunno how long that's going to last but I can't face trudging back down there today. . Other than that it's ok.

Extracted the motor from the old meekrowavey: there's a little metal patch underneath that lets you get the motor out without dismantling anything else. Looks like the motor is toast since it takes no current.

There's a little bench vice that I use when soldering stuff: said vice was lubricated with Lidl teflon loaded oil: it was seized solid: took half an hour of potching down in the garage to get it free again. Can't understand it: the slide was rusty. Cleaned it all off, greased it with MS3 grease & applied a little engine oil. We'll see how that lasts. Not impressed with the results of the previous oiling. WTF? Not mineral oil in the teflon oil can or what?

Tea: Tesco battered haddock etc. Cooked in the new meekrowavey: nice enough. Light does more than flicker: it goes out altogether.

Entertainment: Some bollox or other on R4. PM. More bollox. Tomorrow's PM will be totally bollox free due to election rules. .

"Out of Town" with Jack Hargreaves: exploring an abandoned railway line replete with Thanet Cress, followed by a torrential rainstorm judging horses at an agricultural show. (1981). He relates that Thanet Cress came from Walcheren Island during the Napoleonic Wars following one of our less successful adventures. Recalls that he was going across the Channel after D Day alongside some Commandos who were off to fight on Walcheren Island in a bloody battle, and how many of those men never came back.

The Lugubrious One relating the Scotland Yard "The Dover Road Mystery" wherein a "tuned up" Ford Zephyr MkII shows a fine pair of heels to the Wolseley 6/80 (or the faster 6/90).

Thing on BBC4 about Porton Down. . With the late Dr Mosely.

Blaze: The unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd.

That Scottish nutter climbing mountains on BBC Alba. Feck me, I got vertigo just watching it, the mountains in this case being vertical sea cliffs on Shetland. They couldn't climb one pitch because some inconsiderate bastard had built a rocket launch site & access was banned.

A different Scottish chap, Paul Merton, wandering around one of the Scottish islands. Odd: showed two cows & two calves swimming from the main island to an uninhabited isle with better grass.

Last 20 minutes of "The Foreigner (2017)". Good honest blood soaked value. .

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s a sunny start with some small fluffy bits hanging around, mainly lower down towards the horizon. Likely to get cloudier towards lunchtime though. The breeze got a bit breezier yesterday evening, so the current 6°C “feels like” 3°; the expected high is only 12°. The barometers are much the same at 1003/1011mB

[NickFitz]

Nearly finished Goodbye Mickey Mouse, in which the story is developing in unexpected ways

I discovered this morning that it’s actually next week that the other dev finishes, so I have more time to pick her brains than I thought

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been some leftover Turkish bits with chips

This was accompanied by E1 of To Think Like a Killer on iPlayer, a three-parter about Dr. Ann Burgess who worked with the FBI in the 1980s to develop the techniques of psychological profiling that they now use to catch serial killers and the like

[ladymuck]

There was a brief sighting of sky but the cloud soon covered it up again. It's been quite chilly compared to recent days.

Laundry has been laundered.

I'm supposed to go into the office tomorrow but I've just received notification of a parcel arriving a day earlier than expected. However, I have made arrangements to meet with some people who will also be in the office, so it feels rude to not turn up.

[NickFitz]

That’s Tuesday out of the way

Things went pretty well today. I got a slightly gnarly feature working, which was nice as it had already resulted in two or three side quests when working on it had exposed unusual edge cases

Then, as I still had about fifteen minutes to go, I thought I’d quickly experiment with another thing I’d been meaning to add, as the way somebody had done a similar thing elsewhere in the app looked quite straightforward. And so it was! It worked straight away and only took about five minutes, so that was nice

It’s mostly cloudy still, but there’s the occasional bit of blue showing through. It’s going to be a bit chillier this week, so it’s a good thing I didn’t get carried away and switch to the thinner duvet during last week’s relatively warm spell

[NickFitz]

Lunch: leftover pork cutlet in a wholemeal bap with apple sauce

And last night’s wholemeal loaf turned out extremely well, being just the right consistency for toast at breakfast

The desk hasn’t collapsed yet! I’m still getting used to the extra space though. I got distracted by the odd feeling something was amiss earlier, then realised it was because I’d swivelled my chair slightly and my leg hadn’t bumped into anything

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Overcast start but seems to be brightening up. Currently 14 degrees with a high of 17 expected. Cloud set to remain all day. Barometer down to 1013 mBar.

Sunrise 05:26; Sunset 20:31 BST

Lots of meetings today across all three clients. This means no actual work will get done.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Tuesday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

17.9 deg in here, 19.5 in the kitchen, 16 in the leanto, 13.7 in the saltinghouse.

1009 mBar, 29.796 in Hg, 756.8 Torr, 14.6343 psi, (unchanged), 68% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 26th of March 2020 BR14, LM, NF popped in, with NF having filled his fridge & freezer, and BR14 having chilli con carne, and LM watching something about the Corby poisonings. And whilst LM heard some pot banging for the NHS, NF heard nothing where he was (much the same around here IIRC).

Washing frenzy in progress.

Shopping trip to Aldi & Tesco done dusted washed dried sanitised & put away. Morrisons trolley returned from pavement 100 yds from Aldi as my good deed of the day.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Y&Y waffling on about care homes: been there, done that, got the t shirt. .

Wish I'd been kinder to my dad: he'd have been 106 yesterday: gone 11 years in October.

That requiring the attentions of the iRon received it & are now airing upstairs. Strewth I'm a bit .

Entertainment: Archive Hour: "Voices of the General Strike". 1926 and all that. Poor sods. It explains so much of "my son is never going down the pit" and yet other men loved that work.

Looks like a nice day out there.

Washing frenzy complete.

Tea: soup etc. Entertainment: PM. <click>.

Desperate search for anything whatever to watch on the idiot lantern: nothing.

Book.

Other book.

Other other book off shelf. Other other book back on shelf due to lack of innerest.

Freecell score: 84%, running average: 84%.

Still nothing on the idiot lantern.

My existential angst is now overwhelming. .

Freecell score: 88%, running average: 84%.

Idiot lantern showing "Black Sunday (1977)" with Robert Shaw etc. Saw that in the cinema in my long lost youth.

Later there's "Revenge (2017)" where it's a good idea not to take your mistress on a hunting trip. .

On TPTV there's "Road Games (1981)" with Stacey Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis in a Mad Max type serial killer thing in Australia.

Can't be arsed to watch any of it.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Quite a lot of cloud about this morning, but also quite a lot of gaps allowing for sunny spells. The cloud’s expected to win by lunchtime, though. It’s 9°C with an expected high of 15°, and the barometers seem uncertain, being down but only a notch, at 1002/1010mB