Quote of the week

Here’s my favourite quote of the week:

A skirt on something built like a brick

The was from the George delivery driver on Tuesday, and we were talking about the new trailers.

It started off with the driver slagging off about how slow the tail lift is, and then it moved on to the skirt around the trailer.

I mentioned that it was probably to help with aerodynamics, and the driver replied, “a skirt on something built like a brick”

In the end, the best thing about the new trailers was the magnet on the back of the control box!

Hey! The things you talk about while waiting for a tail lift to lower!

Just stuff!!

It’s November now! The time of year that I start changing stuff around on my website and blog, but I’m not going to this year! I think I’ve found a design I like. But I still need to tweak the homepage though!

I’m not updating my website this year, but that’s not stopped me from changing one of my websites! I’m currently working on an update to Linux-Links.co.uk.
I’m working on adding screen shots of the websites. I think I’ve got it working, I just need to do more testing on it.

To keep page loads and image display fast I’ve split up the retrieving and display of the screen shots

First off all the screen shots on the page do is a couple of checks. If there is no screen shot, or the screen shot is older than seven days, then the url is added to the queue, it then either displays a place holder image or the screen shot.

The second part does most of the heavy work, and it is a little icon at the bottom of every page. All it does is grab a url from the queue and fetches the screen shot. If everything is good the icon displays Tux’s head, otherwise it’s the Windows logo!!

Halloween has been and gone, but not the pumpkin pie yet! I’ve made the last pie out of the goo from this years jack-o-lantern, but it’s still to be eaten!

Fireworks night has also passed us by! Even though we’ve not had the weather for fireworks we did manage to get to a firework display before the rain fell!
It was a very nice night, the field was packed, and the setting off of the fireworks was delayed because there was still people queueing up to get in! But the fireworks themselves were good. And it was mine and my girlfriends first firework display together!

And that neatly brings me on to the next subject! It is our three year anniversary tomorrow, or today by the time this is posted! So yes, me and my girlfriend have been together for three years!

Here’s to the next three!

The house is still standing, and so are we!

Ok, it’s been a good couple of months since I have last posted on my blog, but that’s because I have only been able to snatch a few minutes a week on the Internet at my mum’s house.
But we now have the Internet installed at our house, so here I am!

Not much as changed with the house since the last post. The kitchen is still not finished, but we do have a sink, and I have been painting the ceiling! I’ll post up photo’s of progress on flickr soon.

We have managed to strip the wallpaper in the hallway, and have wallpapered half-way up the stairs already! It’s only lining paper, but it’s much better than the pink woodchip that was on the walls!
And again expect photo’s soon!

Since having Internet installed at our house, my girlfriend has been addicted to Facebook. In fact she on my computer right now, and all I can hear is the music of FarmVille, and the occasional pop of the chat window!

Building Kitchens!

Ok, it’s been a while since I last updated my blog, and it has also been a while since I’ve been on my computer!

The progress with the kitchen has been slow but steady, but, the sink is in!!!

On Saturday we were finally able to wash up downstairs in the kitchen for the first time!

Today I’m going to replace the wiring to the sockets in the kitchen and dining room and wire in a new socket for the washing machine.
I will also hopefully wire in in an additional socket into the small bedroom so that I can finally move my computer to our house!

I have uploaded some photo’s to my flickr account, I don’t have any photo’s of the sink in place, but there is one where the worktop is marked out ready to be cut for the sink.

That’s all for now!

Destroying Kitchens!

Oh what fun!!
The past week we have been ripping the old kitchen out of our new house!

The amount of plaster that came off of the walls is shocking! In some places we have managed to get right back to the brick wall!

We have attempted to re-plaster some of the smaller holes, which went ok, but we are now stuck with the larger expanses!

To make matters worse, we have the new kitchen cabinets lying in flat-pack form on the dining room floor, and we have our new fridge freezer being delivered tomorrow, and no kitchen for it to go into! Lol!

I have plenty of photo’s but I have had no time to get onto the Internet to upload them.

I have only come home to eat dinner, and nick more tools, and have only had about half hour on my computer a day! (Which is more than my girlfriend thinks I should be on here for! Lol!)

To top it all off, I have no car, as it is making a really loud grinding noise. We hope it just another wheel bearing, but it sounds nothing like last time!

But it’s not all bad news, as we have managed to get the lounge/front room painted, and we have a dining room table and chairs! We have also got a bed!

But we have no mattress, so we’re sleeping in a sleeping bag on an air mattress.

But it has been so hot at night we have just ended up on top of the sleeping bag!

It’s time to go now, we’re only here to look for a spanner and to check the delivery time for our fridge freezer!
More soon

We’ve got a house!!

For the past month me and my girlfriend have been in the process of buying a house.

Yesterday (Thursday 18th June) we collected the keys to the house!

It has been an up-and-down journey. Thinking: “Will we get it?”, “Are we doing the right thing?”

It started off pretty fast, with instructing the solicitor, arranging a mortgage, getting quotes for all of the insurances that we will need, and the survey.

Then it seemed to go dead.

Then suddenly, more paperwork to sign! Followed by the exchange of contracts, and a rough estimate as to when it will all complete.

Then on Thursday I got a phone call from the solicitors saying they had the money from the mortgage company, do we want to complete today?

Two hours later, we were told it was all done, and we could pick the keys up!

We are now the proud owners of a 1960’s mid-terraced three-bed house in Lawrence Weston!

We are hoping to move in around the start of July.

More details and pictures to follow…

The bit the Haynes manual forgot to mention…

Yesterday I was trying to work on my car replacing the clutch cable, the Haynes manual made it sound so easy

8 To refit the cable, thread it through from the engine compartment, place it over the self-adjusting cam, and connect the inner cable end to the quadrant. […]
9 Refit the inner cable guide to the top of the pedal.

Easier said then done, luckily I tied some string to the end of the old one so I could just pull the new one through.
Now, try doing that when you are led across both front seats with your head and shoulders cramped into the foot well.
Oh yeah, you are also upside-down resting on your neck, and you have your hands weaving their way through pedals and other bits of car designed to get in your way!

10 Working in the engine compartment, slip the other end of the cable through the bellhousing bracket, and connect the inner cable to the release fork […]

Yep, done! Only its down there, and you need hands as small as a childs to get to it, and fingers as strong as a professional finger weightlifter!

11 Depress the clutch pedal to draw the outer cable into its locating hole in the bulkhead, ensuring it locates properly. At the same time, the inner cable guide will be automatically pulled onto the top of the pedal to hold the inner cable in position.

Only the outer cable doesn’t move! The self-adjusting cam doesn’t lock, so the quadrant springs back and the end of the cable springs free.

Back to step 9!

Oh what fun!!

Family!

I’ve just started doing some research into my family and finding out where I am from!

Ok, I have only just started, so I’ve got my mum, dad and sister so far!

I thought I’d start by following my dad’s side of the family.
I’ve got some information on my granddad, it helps that he’s still alive! Lol!
I just need more information on his late wife, parents and family.

For now I will only concentrate on my dad’s side, but I will at least get my great-grand-parents on my mum’s side!

Where have I been?

To be honest, there hasn’t been much happening!
Apart from the fact building work has begun in the part of the garden we sold last year.

It is now day 32, and it doesn’t look much different to what it did last week.

At the moment there is two people on site, and they seem to be doing some work, probably building up the level of the base ready for the flooring, but there is a six foot wall up stopping us from seeing what’s going on!

To get a better view we need to go along the road at the top, I’ll try that on Sunday when no one is on site and get some photo’s uploaded to Flickr.

On Sunday I went karting at SupaKart in Newport with a few mates from work. We raced in the mini endurance, which was a 10 minute qualifying race followed by a half hour non stop race.

I went out onto the track in 9th place, got placed 6th on the grid after qualifying, and finished the race 5th.

There is no photo’s as we were all racing, but there is a video of the podium on Facebook though.

It’s Snow Gone Now!

What weird weather we’ve been having! When we were forecast the worst snow for 18 years I was thinking, “Yeah right, it’ll all be gone in a day!”

It started snowing heavily Monday lunch time, and it was quite thick by the evening when we built a snowman in the back garden. There was a fine dusting of snow during that night, and by Wednesday it was all gone!

During Wednesday night it snowed again! And again Thursday night! Some places had up to a foot of snow!

Driving Thursday and Friday was hazardous, as no roads had been gritted, but the motorways had been ploughed.
There was also a lot of fuss about low grit and salt levels, with supplies in Bristol, South Gloucester, and BANES not having enough grit to grit all the roads, with reports that the supplies wouldn’t last till Monday!
It got so desperate that South Gloucester council had to use table salt instead of rock salt to grit the roads with!

Friday was the worst day of all, as the snow just settled on top of the snow left over from Wednesday night.
Friday was also the worst day for school closures, as all schools in South Gloucester and BANES were closed, as were most schools in Bristol.

During Saturday the snow stayed around, and conditions were icy.

Today (Sunday) it has been raining most of the day which has cleared all but the thickest deposits of ice and snow from the roads, but the forecast is for more snow for either tonight or Monday night.

I have posted some photos on Flickr, but I do have a few more to upload which I will do in the next couple of days.

News stories on the snow:
Heavy snow and low salt supplies may turn UK roads into ‘death traps’ – guardian.co.uk
In pictures: Snow in Bristol – BBC Bristol
Snow latest across the UK – BBC News
Where does road salt come from? – BBC News