Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tea has been a Pukka chicken & bacon pie with chips

To go along with that, I’m watching the new Ambulance on iPlayer

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

I got distracted by the forum import stuff earlier and forgot to post weather stats!

It’s cloudy and windy again. Currently 10°C which is as good as we’ll get, but “feels like” 1° because of the wind. The barometers are roughly unchanged at 993/1001mB, and showers are expected to start soon and carry on through the afternoon

On the forum import stuff, I sorted out the vB5-style quotes so they’ll end up with the correct values. I also checked video and image tags are converted correctly. And they’ve changed [noparse] to [plain], though their conversion code takes care of that OK. But I’m so used to [noparse] that I’m tempted to add it back as a custom code and point it to the same functionality, as that appears to be an option

Quick lunch break now though I’m not that hungry, so I’m making do with a bag of chicken crisps

Walkers have changed the packs to a slightly redder shade of orange. I assume this involved extensive consumer research and focus groups and such, but I’m sure it was money well spent

[xoggoth]

Family thing was ok yesterday, my favourite nephew was there. Sister staying for weekend, but I'll get a nice meself day tomorrow.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny with lumps of fluff. Dry. A bit of a breeze tickling the trees. Currently 9 degrees ('feels like' 7) with a high of 11 expected. Barometer up to 1014 mBar.

Sunrise 06:16; Sunset 18:06 GMT

Off to see Mum today. For a change, my brother will be there rather than gigging with his band. That means an opportunity to get him to do a job on my car

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Sunday.

Dry.

Grey.

Sunless.

Chilly in here at 13.5 deg, 12 deg in the kitchen, 10 deg in the leanto.

1006.5 mBar, 29.72 in Hg, 754.9 Torr, 14.598 psi, (down from 1007 last night), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 20th of March 2020 AndyGarbs, Brillo, covbob, and NF popped in, with AndyGarbs grabbing the Om.

It's not dry any more: walk cancelled due to inclement weather.

Freecell score: 85%, running average: 84%.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: a thing on R4 I couldn't be arsed to listen to.

Still raining. Grey. Sunless. Windier.

Tea: beans on toast (cheesy). Nice enough. Entertainment: 17 o'clock news.

Sergeant Cork S3 E8 "The case of the monk's hood murder". Shades of Brother Cadfael.

[NickFitz]

Today’s TV included Monkey Life plus there wildlife stuff

And tonight I finished reading The Three-Body Problem. Onwards to the second part of the trilogy!

I also won £250 on a local lottery I subscribe to

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea tonight was brought to me from KFC

And while that was on its way across town, I paid the Council Tax, this year’s bill having arrived in the post yesterday. I prefer paying it off straight away rather than doing instalments, so I don’t have to think about it again for a year

[ladymuck]

afternoon all
just wondering whether to carry on supporting the economy, or retiring due to all the extra admin sh1te this guvmint's imposing to make tax even more of a cockup than it is already.
I'll get away with this year by just doing a tax return, but then they want upfront money for work i may not actually get!!*
so i have to give them money and ask for it back 1 year later.
Really??
I don't think so.
HMRC don't seem to get that freelance people don't get regular monthly/annual wages.
I don't know how much i'll earn until i've actually been paid FFS.

The whole self assessment thing is a bit of a nonsense sometimes. If you have a reasonably fair idea of your income for the next year but HMRC are forecasting your up front payments to exceed what you'll owe, you can reduce the payments on account. You can do that any time before the first payment is due in January so plenty of time to get a feel for it. Although, if you're self-employed, not sure if that's different under MTD.

[ladymuck]

Chocs and flowers procured to take down to Mum tomorrow.

Chilly out but still nice in the sunshine.

[sadkingbilly]

afternoon all
just wondering whether to carry on supporting the economy, or retiring <permanently, this time> due to all the extra admin sh1te this guvmint's imposing to make tax even more of a cockup than it is already.
I'll get away with this year by just doing a tax return, but then they want upfront money for work i may not actually get!!*
so i have to give them money and ask for it back <without interest> 1 year later.
Really??
I don't think so.
HMRC don't seem to get that freelance people don't get regular monthly/annual wages.
I don't know how much i'll earn until i've actually been paid FFS.
<rant over>

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

It’s a sunny day out, tending towards the Simpsonesque. Still a bit breezy, so the current 9°C “feels like” 6°; the day’s high of 10° has already passed, and it’ll dip to a chilly 2° tonight. The barometers are heading back up at 994/1002mB

The daisies are starting to reappear on the lawn

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Sunny with large lumps of fluff. No breeze to speak of. Currently 10 degrees with a high of 11 expected. No rain forecast. Barometer up to 1006 mBar.

Sunrise 06:18; Sunset 18:04 GMT

Today's blood giving was rescheduled as HWMBO discovered something he'd ordered, and expected to arrive next week, was arriving today.

Instead of battling my way through Westfield shopping mall, I have given the kitchen floor a decent going over and washed some rugs.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

Bit chilly in here at 12.6 deg, 11 in the kitchen (thermometer works for that ), 8 in the leanto.

1002 mBar, 29.59 in Hg, 751.6 Torr, 14.532 psi, (up from 997 last night assuming it was tapped), 67% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 20th of March 2020 Brillo, covbob, quackhandle, Phil the Greek, and LM popped in.

Just noticed the next door neighbours (not the related idle lot) pegging out the washing on the line. I don't see or hear much of them at all.

Scaffolding going up next door but one. Well it's a nice day for it. .

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in sunshine. Chilly until I warmed up a bit.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Moneybox waffling on about tulipe.

Raining: the blue sky went away along with the sun.

Sun's out.

Tea: soup etc. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM. Robinson talking to some tory bastard <click>. Seems to think The Falklands War was A Good Idea rather than a fine display of incompetence in giving the South American Meat Packing Glitterati the impression that the UK didn't give a tulip abut the islands. His best boss was Murdoch FFS.

Last bit of "The long arm of the law" with Jack Hawkins.

Look at Life: High, Wide, and Faster: starring Ernest Marples, the minister for transport who was busy building motorways & such like whilst filling his own pockets. I wonder if any of those railway marshalling yards still exist: nope: all gone. The continuous loop coal feed to the power station certainly doesn't.

Maigret. "The Trap (1962)". The mummy's boy serial killer one. That's Oedipus schmoedipus rather than Pharaoh's.

BBC Scotland "The Beginning of Television (1976)" showing how things started in 1937.

Blaze Bollox: Power generation using the Egyptian pyramids. . WTF? .

Lot of channel changing without finding much to watch.

Book.

Scrolling back through the CUK bookclub thread finding how many books I can remember reading.

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Bad Boys II (2003), which is the one after the first one. Like that, it’s got a really good action film in it, which is interrupted from time to time by scenes that revolve around rather juvenile humour. But the action stuff is good, so one has to just shrug off the irrelevancies. They’re obviously just ripping off Lethal Weapon anyway with that aspect. But yes, the car chases and blowing stuff up bits are good, and take up most of the time, so I’ll let that other stuff pass

Then a rewatch - or possibly a premiere, because it hadn’t stuck in my memory - of RoboCop 3 (1993). This has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of around 14%, but I thought it was OK. I reckon it may well be happening for real in the USA soon, as it seems to align with the goals of the current administration, so maybe that will give its rating a bump

And then a further episode of S2 of Hijack. I assume they set this on the Berlin metro, rather than the Tube, because it would be impossible to construct a plot anybody could understand around the bizarre complexities that came together to form the London Underground

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been a ribeye steak with chips, fried onions, and beans

This was going to be accompanied by a police thing that I’d stopped watching ages ago, but couldn’t remember why. A few minutes reminded me: it’s constantly cutting to a couple of ex-cop talking heads who utter vague platitudes (“If somebody’s holding a firearm, that changes the situation” and the like) tangentially related to the clip being shown, though clearly not commenting specifically on it. This happens literally every ten seconds or so, and it’s so annoying that I gave up and switched to more of the motorway cops