Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was The Lost Bus (2025), an Apple TV+ movie that was released last Friday, based on the true story of a school bus driver rescuing some kids in a Californian fire a few years ago (not a spoiler, because we all know Apple wouldn't fund a movie about 22 little kids plus their teacher and bus driver being horribly burned to death). If California's as good as they keep telling us, why do people need rescuing so much there that they can make films about it? Anyway, it's pretty good, though I don't know yet how loosely it's based, as if that matters

Somebody I follow on Bluesky watched The Villainess (2017) the other day and spoke highly of it, which made me think I should watch it again, so I did, and it's as excellent as I've previously said it is

I got the bed made before all that, which is good because now I've forgotten the suffering involved and can just enjoy my lovely new-made bed

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea: lamb chops with chips and beans

That reminds me, I meant to buy beans. Ah well, there's one tin left so that'll see me through to the next expedition

To watch, the rest of the fare dodgers thing I started yesterday

Some bed making has been done. I suppose I ought to see about the rest of it before I forget and suffer endless misery later

[ladymuck]

I have returned from my trip to the nether regions (although definitely not the furthest point) of the Metropolitan Line.

An interesting walk through the trading estate, then some common land with coos on it, over some locks, through some woodland and then finally a short stretch of proper road to Croxley station. I hope it's not raining when I pick the car up at the end of the month as that walk will be squishy and muddy.

There was an intention to do a bit of work on getting home, to make life easier for myself next week, but I can't be arsed. I've checked my emails and no-one missed me, so I think I'll just clock off.

[NickFitz]

The bed has been stripped and left to air

And in an unprecedented move, rather than neatly folding the old bedding and then staring balefully at it for the next couple of weeks thinking "I need to put that in the wash", I took it and put it in the wash straight away!

[NickFitz]

Lunch: sausages in finger rolls

The new t-shirts appeared to have shed a lot of cotton fluff - well, more like dust if anything - during their First Wash, and there'd been a bit from the towel wash the other day, so I put the machine on its six minute "Clean out fluff" cycle while I was cooking the sausages. This is quite good fun to watch as it spins at high speed hurling water all over its innards with great vigour. Absolute mayhem in there

[NickFitz]

Many meetings this morning then off this afternoon. Firstly to get the greys painted over and then to take yea olde jalopy to Rickmansworth / Croxley Green way for it to have a very expensive make over for the next couple of weeks.

I've sometimes stayed at a Premier Inn near Croxley Green, though just over the border in Watford. Once, heading back there late, I tweeted that it looked like a rather dull place - it's the last but one station on the little branch line that terminates at Watford. By the time I got back to the hotel, less than fifteen minutes later, my post had been found by a Twitter account dedicated to Croxley who indignantly replied that it wasn't at all dull, ACTUALLY

I apologised profusely for my inexcusable rush to judgement, whereupon they exhorted me to attend the Croxley Revels, an annual event which was happening in a few weeks. Sadly, I was unable to do so, though a while later I watched John Betjeman's film Metro-Land (TV Movie 1973) in which they feature ("a tradition that stretches back to 1952")

And it was a while after that before I realised that it had been the source of Croxley Script typing paper, which my father used for his writing throughout my childhood; the paper mill closed in 1980

[sadkingbilly]

Morning.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the grey gloom and drizzly mist or misty drizzle as the case may be.

Colossal Towpath??

[NickFitz]

Shopping done!

I had been thinking of popping into M&S as well as Big Sainsbury's, but then I remembered that I'll have plenty of time for that kind of thing when I'm on leave, and also that I need to be rejigging arrangements around freezing, including using up stuff I already have while I work out how to organise the now-limited space available. (The old one is only managing to hold at around -8°C after running overnight, which is no good long term.)

So instead it was a fairly quick scoot around and not too much spent, though of course I got the new Viz

I also picked up four plain t-shirts in assorted colours; they were already cheap, then there was a discount for getting two, and finally a blanket discount on all clothing, meaning they ended up being just over £3 each. They're nowt special, but fine for normal everyday use. So I've removed all the sticky labels and such from them and chucked them in the washing machine on its "first wash" cycle, specially designed to ensure they don't leach their dye into other stuff in the future and so on

And so home, where I was initially dismayed to see that somebody had grabbed my favoured parking spot. But then I realised that it was a parcel chap here to deliver some stuff, and it turned out it was to me! Also to one of the ladies in the ground floor flats, so I left the car blocking the drive while I let him in to drop off her stuff, telling him to leave mine down in the hall as I could take it up. So he moved on, there being stuff for the adjacent block as well, and I was able to reclaim my spot!

All that and it's not even time for lunch yet

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday apparently.

Damp.

Misty. Very low cloud, no blue to be seen.

Sunless.

Chilly in here at 17.4 deg, 17.5 in the kitchen, 16.5 in the leanto.

1029 mBar, 30.39 in Hg, 771.8 Torr, 14.92 psi, (up from 1025.5 last night), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 22nd of February 2020 Brillo popped in a lot, xogg was graced with scam letter about some long lost relative leaving £11M, WTFH was building the footins for the new chicken house, NF was pleased about the ZX Spectrum Next, and LM had a scam called purportedly from Ofcom. .

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the grey gloom and drizzly mist or misty drizzle as the case may be.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: the last of the Chinese lady book thing. She got into trouble for her biog of Mao the Monster.

Stone me I need more practice with the welding. Seem to have lost my touch somewhere. Let's see if we can find it before I ruin this gate repair. .

And yes, I gave up with the inverter welder & brought the buzz box up in the wheel barrow. Might get on better with that if I lay enough beads as practice.

It must be 10 or 15 years since I used it last. Now seeing if the 70V setting is more to my liking than the 48V. I've never used the 70V before. Had to change terminals.

Now sat down for a while getting outside the usual 15 o'clock (delayed) mug of indifferent but consistent coffee.

I think I'll need a lot more practice. All put away for the afternoon.

Tea: chilli con carne with some Basmatic rice BBE March. .

Entertainment: PM. <click>.

News Quiz.

WWII in colour: Road to Victory. The septics doing it all on their own again. <click>.

Freecell score: 93%, running average: 84%.

Book. Other book. Other other book. Checks other other other book to see how many stories in that are already read in other book and other other book, and possibly other other other other book.

Bit of "Alien (1979)".

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Overcast. Currently 14 degrees with a high of 17 expected. A low level chance of some moisture falling from the sky throughout the day. Barometer up to 1033 mBar.

Sunrise 07:17; Sunset 18:18 BST

Many meetings this morning then off this afternoon. Firstly to get the greys painted over and then to take yea olde jalopy to Rickmansworth / Croxley Green way for it to have a very expensive make over for the next couple of weeks.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Foggy out

Leaving aside that subjective observation in favour of real data: it's already 12°C and will be 17° for much of the afternoon. The barometers are up to 1021/1029mB. And it's expected to remain cloudy all day, but not particularly windy

I've just heard the trundling of bins beneath my window as the management company person arrives in search of rubbish. After a brief moment of panic, I remembered that I put the recycling out on Monday and the black bag on Wednesday, so there's nothing for them here today

And while I was in the shower, I recollected that I recently booked the week after next off in order to use up some of my accumulated "annual leave" which means that this time next week, I'll be on holiday! Can't wait

[NickFitz]

In Random Acts of Senseless Violence, the diarist is becoming more streetwise in the company of her new friends from the block. A few blocks away in Harlem, the army is on the streets trying to quell the rioting. And the President has been killed, again; Presidents aren't lasting long in those troubled times

I'm off to Big Sainsbury's in the morning, for it is Viz week!

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

There's a new series of Trauma Room 1 on My5 so ents while eating dinner is watching that.

[NickFitz]

Tea: pork chow mein

This was made using belly pork out of the freezer, which made room for some stuff out of the old freezer. I'm not sure what's going on with the latter. I turned it off overnight in the hope that a rest might reset something, then turned it on again this morning, and although it hasn't run properly, it was quietly making noises and doing something. I checked the thermometer I keep in one of the drawers at lunchtime when moving as much as would fit in the other one, then checked it again a couple of hours later, and it had gone down about two degrees! So it's making some kind of attempt to freeze, but obviously not finding it easy. It'd help if it can limp along for a little bit longer, but I'm not sure it's viable

[NickFitz]

That's another week done! Timesheet was submitted earlier and has already been authorised, so the weekend may definitely commence

This morning mainly involved some rather dull stuff about upgrading a bunch of things to the latest version of something or other

And this afternoon there was a long discussion about using GitHub Actions for a bunch of stuff I don't work on

With that out of the way and only a couple of hours left, I set to work dealing with the out-of-date mandatory training stuff. Not very interesting, but I suppose it has to be done. I got about halfway through it