Zapper
Posted: Fri 20 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Back at the start of July, I finally caved and bought one of the big bug-zappers, to see how it worked out in comparison to the other devices I’d purchased in previous years that proved to be far less successful.
And I have to say, I’ve been really pleased with it – it’s not 100% perfect, but that’s mainly because flies and bugs are stupid, and don’t just dive straight into the zapper. However, it’s been a lot more successful in its body-count than any of the other devices.
Even better, it’s been pretty good (surprisingly so, in fact) on power – considering how much it’s been in use, I think it’s added a pound or two to the summer’s bill, but that’s it.
Really, the only downside for it is that it’s somewhat… explosive. The fly/moth bits can pop outside the case/grille of the zapper, so I’ve had to use the hoover a couple of times to just clean up the bits. And sometimes the zapping itself is noisy – occasionially, the bugs get caught on the wires, and sit buzzing away for a surprisingly long period of time. Even the usual zaps can sometimes be loud and sudden, if it’s been quiet for a while beforehand.
Regardless though, it’s been a good buy. I hope I won’t need it as much between now and next Spring, but we’ll see.
Kindling Discontent
Posted: Sat 14 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Kindle, Reading, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last weekend, while down in Devon, I lost my Kindle. Entirely my own fault, and primarily due to being a dickhead – but still, bloody annoying.
I ordered a replacement pretty much immediately, and hoped that Amazon had improved the method for restoring all the books I’ve got onto the device. It’s been a bloody awful experience the last couple of times, but the last time was three years ago. So, knowing how swiftly they release new stuff on AWS/Cloud, it’s got to have been worked on, surely?
Welllllll, yes and no.
The experience is a bit better – at least now it keeps a record of what books have been put into Collections (think of each Collection as a bookshelf) which sort of makes things easier. But not much – because you can’t actually select, for example, a set of Collections and say “Deliver these”.
Instead, it’s still horrifically manual, and dirt-slow. You have to go to the Amazon site, and then “Manage Content and Devices”. If you only have a few books, then great, that’s fine. I haven’t – I’ve got about 600. So even selecting the maximum of 200 books at a time – which is sort-of easy, although still involves scrolling the page down until it’s got that full 200 listed, and then “select all” – then takes forever to actually push them to the Kindle.
With the Collections, once the books have been pushed to the Kindle, it should then put them into the right places – so that’s at least a small improvement. Last time, I had to re-add books to the Collections as well, which made the entire thing a massive pain in the arse.
The thing is, none of this should be difficult. So long as one does backups of the device (and the Sync process is actively encouraged by Amazon, so one can read a book on one device and then continue it on another) then it should be a simple matter of going “Copy the stuff from this backup onto that machine”, in the same way it does for my iPhones.
All told, even with the improvements, it’s a rotten first experience with a new device. It surprises me just how bad it actually is – the entire thing seems to be something that Amazon doesn’t expect to happen, or that’s only been tested with five or ten books. I wonder if it’s something Amazon will ever get round to fixing…
Slightly Clobbered
Posted: Fri 13 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Single Life Leave a comment »The last month here seems to have been a parade of minor health complaints, and it’s been more than a bit annoying.
This time last month I got stung by that poxy wasp, and that’s only just healed. Because it was right in the crook of my elbow, it kept on opening up with every movement of my arm, so it’s scarred up a bit more than I’m happy with. Still, there we go, that’s life.
The weekend after that, I was spectacularly unwell – and no-one needs the details of it, but it wasn’t fun.
Then over the start of September, while also doing the whole Meatopia thing, I’d picked up a summer cold. Again nothing epic, but it hit me hard during the week once Meatopia was over.
This week, I managed to slightly bugger up my back – again, nothing major, just the muscles around the lower back rather than the spine itself. Not that that stops it from hurting like a twat every time I stood up, of course! It’s easing off again now, at the end of the week, which is at least some kind of positive.
Individually, nothing has been significant – but when it’s all combined, I’m just feeling a bit run-down. Let’s hope it gets better from here on.
Summer Cold
Posted: Mon 2 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Health Leave a comment »All through last week, I’ve been dealing with what appears to be a summer cold, and not a nice one.
No idea where or how I picked it up, but it’s been bloody unpleasant – almost verging on the feel of tonsilitis a couple of times.
It seems to be on the wane again now, thank god. It’s been a week of feeling like absolute rubbish (and also while doing a lot of the idiot walking for Meatopia and so on) so it’ll be good to be back to normal.
Meatopian
Posted: Sun 1 September, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Food, Getting Organised, Getting Out More, London, M1, Stupidity Leave a comment »As usual, my September is looking like it’ll be my normal levels of silliness, with lots of travel and so on.
And also as usual, it started with Meatopia, a festival of various barbecued meats. It’s one of my favourite events of the year – and this time I was at all three sessions. Because I’m a complete lunatic.
I had intended to be more sensible – going down for the Friday was still silly, but I’d intended to then park up at Barbican on Saturday, have a hotel on the Saturday night (being able to collect my bag from the car at Barbican on the way, and deposit it on the way back before Sunday) and then come home.
But then I checked the football schedule – and it turned out that Arsenal were playing at home on the Sunday. Not usually relevant, but when driving back on the Sunday, it would’ve shoved me right through all the traffic and people at Highbury, which would add at least an hour to the drive. And frankly, sod that.
So it meant a change to plans, and instead doing my usual thing, parking in Very North London, Tube to Euston/Angel, and walk to Tobacco Dock. Yes, I *could* have still used the hotel, but it meant that all the travel to and from the car to drop off clothes/bag etc. would’ve made it a lot more hassle and a lot less fun. So it was ‘easier’ to travel further, but on my terms and with less general fucking about.
All told, as well as a ridiculous amount of food, it meant I did six walks of 6km, as well as further walking on-site and so on, so all told over Friday, Saturday and Sunday I covered no less than 44km (27 miles)
Meatopia was totally worth it again, and I’ll be there next year.
Anniversal
Posted: Tue 13 August, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Thoughts 3 Comments »Having gone through the six years of the bankruptcy process (as I’ve written about many times in that period) today marks a year since that process completed. Time flies, and all that rot.
It’s the final real anniversary of any significance though – even though it came off my record a year ago, most of the banks work on a “Six years plus one” basis (fuck only knows why, but that’s their choice) when it comes to ‘full’ current accounts and the like.
So that’s where we are now – the full “six years plus one” is complete.
It shouldn’t affect things much – it would be nice to have a ‘full’ account with overdraft facility and so on , but only because that’s another thing that is good to have. I’ve done fine over the last seven years with no overdraft and never needing one, and I don’t see any reason why that would change now.
However, it does mean I’ll almost certainly move away from my current bank’s offering, purely because they were lying dicks about it all the way through the process. Once I’d gone through the first year where I was officially bankrupt, I was fine to have a basic current account. When I got it, I was totally honest with the bank, and they said I could try to apply for an upgrade to a ‘full’ current account on a regular basis (every six months or so) and see how I did.
It was only after three years that anyone mentioned that they wouldn’t give me an account until the “six years plus one” – ‘but it’s not that we have a policy, sir, it’s just that’s how it works, we won’t do it before then‘ – and so had basically lied and wasted my time for all those reviews. That did cost them money in the end – a complaint went all the way to the Financial Ombudsman, who found in my favour. (The rule in this case is keep a record of all paperwork and appointments, so you can show a history of wasted time, and stuff that you wouldn’t have done if they’d been honest and said to not bother for seven years!)
So yes, I’ll probably change banks for the current account – I’m not yet sure who to, but we’ll see what happens.
But the most important thing really is that now, seven years on, there’s nothing else keeping me back.
Stung
Posted: Mon 12 August, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Looking Back Leave a comment »Last week, I got stung by a wasp. Nothing major (thankfully) and not something I’ve experienced often.
Indeed, looking back, it’s nearly nine years since I got stung by a hornet, and god knows when I last got stung by a wasp. After all, it’s not like I generally provoke the bastard things.
It was a silly thing to happen – the wasp got caught in my hair after I’d been doing a workout, so I brushed it out, it landed on my arm, and stung me. Poxy buzzy twat.
Anyway, fortunately there’ve been no negative effects – it was sore for about an hour, and has then just been itchy as fuck for the last four or five days.
All seems well now, happily. And hopefully it’ll be another bloody age until it happens again.