and today i have mostly been...

[Welly]

Seems sensible* to remove the eye to me even if you stopped to think about how many other possible visits you'd have with the gammy eye again in the future it might be best for the cat, your wallet and your sanity to just remove it and be done with it. I bet the eye doesn't really work well anyway?

Are you looking at a large bill for this?

It's a big decision though I have to say.

[OllieNZ]

My cats didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest by the fireworks.
Apparently my mates dog was running round the house like mad, not because he was scared but because he was looking for the dead ducks.

[steve_earwig]

Are you looking at a large bill for this?

Ummm, we've not actually paid the vet since before Viki died. I keep asking but she doesn't think it'll be a problem as we'll only be paying for materials. It's an odd situation but Mirela's worked something out with her boss because I make myself useful there fixing stuff (e.g. the last thing was their autoclave, a dog chewed the lead off it, they couldn've called an electrician but he would've changed the lead in it and charged for that and his time, where as I simply cut the lead back leaving just enough to reach a socket, nicked a plug off an old lamp they weren't using and charged them nothing.)

Find a vet like that in the UK!

I'm not too worried about continual visits, for both the above reasons and because the vet's is 5 minute's drive from here, Teatime doesn't even seem to mind much either. However it's the infection thing, if he gets something nasty in there the next stop is his brain.

Btw we've decided his testicles are staying, at his age it won't make much difference, he's already a nice cat, clean too as if he's not eating or sleeping he's generally washing himself.

[steve_earwig]

...fixing our vet Mirela's passenger side mirror on her Modus It got taken off by a tractor she was overtaking suddenly swerving to avoid an imaginary object. Pretty well screwed but half an hour with a few screwdrivers, a cordless drill and a couple of cable ties and again we're in good stead for ringing her up in a panic on a Sunday evening because one of the animals has malfunctioned again...

Just in case: Glass levers off best from the side nearest the window. Mirror shell has clips all the way around it, start off from the bottom outside and work your way around across the top. Don't bother with the ones you can see inside, they're impossible to undo and will probably break but the ones around the outside still do the job.

[Doggy]

Sounds like a good deal. Barter makes more sense than money sometimes and generally confounds the tax system.

[Welly]

Barter makes more sense than money sometimes and generally confounds the tax system.

I have a similar* arrangement with Family members, it goes something like this: I go to their houses in my spare* time and do numerous repairs and maintenance works which would otherwise cost them a small fortune and then I get nothing in return.

I suggested to one of them that they might want to get an odd-jobsworth man in to do something and holy f*ck they were taken aback; they must have been in shock or something as they stated that they'd rather wait until I had more time to do it for them. Well, like if you weren't in a f*cking rush then don't ask me now then

[Doggy]

I can't imagine a situation like that.

I don't have any family members that ever need cars fixing, appliances reviving, electrics sorting, rubbish dumping or house removals. Honest.

[steve_earwig]

I don't have any of those sort of issues here myself, maybe because I have no family here but my family are generally quite a handy bunch anyway. Bits and pieces for some of the wife's family but again, they're all generally handy so generally I point them in the right direction and they get on with it. I do stuff for friends here but I get plenty back.

[steve_earwig]

I finally found the lead to connect my phone to the PC so....

This has been bothering me: The last time I drove the D9 there was a lot of rattling from the eggzorst. Climbed underneath and...

It's one of the brackets that holds the rear silencer up on my D9 (the other is welded to the silencer). If I was in the UK I could just buy a replacement for 9 quid but nobody does one here and nobody will send me one either (size more than weight probably), even Pug won't sell you one separately, you have to buy the complete silencer, which I'm not keen on as the existing one is fine. So ok, I'll make one. If I can find anything like that here. Closest I've found is the stuff to make the water bar under a door which is way too heavy - it won't be too easy to make the shape and then I can imagine crushing the silencer when I'm trying to fit it. Goran is trying to find someone to make one ("but they can make anything here!") but, in the meantime, I've just been out with an angle grinder and attacked the air handling unit they dumped out the back of the fire house and I half inched. It's a bit thinner but I can't see that being a problem.

[Welly]

.....fixing* my 17 year old Karcher 620M.

This pressure washer had been playing up recently and 'pulsing' rather that giving full pressure. I decided to take the thing into the Kitchen and set about taking the head off for a look/clean up on the basis it must be scaled up etc. 3 of the 4 'head' bolts (torx) came out without a fight except the 4th one which rounded the torx slightly what would any normal person do when their tool won't fit the torx properly? that's right carry on regardless and mash the whole thing into an unrecognizable shape!

Last attempt was to hammer a hexagon-shaped bit into what was left of the torx bolt and attempt an arm-trembling red-faced attack until the inevitable slippage and tools flying.

I was about to say goodbye to my faithful machine when I wondered if the pump internals would enjoy an overnight soak in Sarsons best Vinegar........well it only went and worked! full pressure and a saved machine

[steve_earwig]

Oh, I'm sure this board is hiding stuff from me

Nicely done sir! I think I have that exact model so I'll bear your solution in mind. Sarsons? Malt vinegar? I have a limeted supply of that, I wonder if the vinegar we use for descaling the kettle would do....


Anyway, this is following on from my partial hijack of Eric's "problems come in 3s" thread. My heating is up and running!

Fritz came up with the goods yesterday via Max:

This is the brass gland thing, a copy of the original pLaStIc crap we had made (it's on top of the valve there), the 3 vit..vitr... vi... verucca seals are already fitted and there are 3 spares in the drug baggy there. Total cost, 10 quid for the gland and 5 quid for the seals.

I was actually starting to feel a bit dubious about it all so I did some more Googling and found people selling the repair kit for 56 quid in the UK Oh, and 10 Eurines in Germany (rip off Britain strikes again), with the postage it came to about 20 Eurines so I went ahead and ordered it, just in case - I didn't want to be in a position where this one failed and I had to wait 3 weeks for it to come from Germany, wishing I'd done it sooner.

These are the real thing:

It covers both the 42mm like wot mine is and the 28mm version. Why on earth this thing needs 3 seals is anyone's guess.

So I was up at my gaff early this morning to fit it, and then I watched it like a hawk while I blew the system up to 1 bar.

Nerry a drop.

The other thing I wanted to do up there was replace the elctronic timer roomstat thingy with a mechanical one as I can't be asked to go up there every day (especially when the roads are all but impassable) so there's always the chance the batteries in it will crap out and it'd burn all my oil up in short order. So I got a mechanical one this afternoon and fitted it this evening. It's meant to go down to 5 degrees but it was still chugging away on minimum. Almost 10 degrees in the room, what's going on here then? Then I felt the wall, which was icy cold, so I presumed the stat was actually measuring the temperature of the wall, rather than the room, and I needed to wait until the wall got warm. I actually cheated and shut all the doors and turned the rads where the stat is up full but it still took about an hour.

Lastly, kittens:

"Look at the camera." "Look at the damn camera." "LOOK AT THE EFFING CAMERA!"

Note that, while Charlie's eyes are an unusual green and yellow combo, Camilla's are an even more unusual yellow and orange. The freaks.

[Welly]

So you can keep the heating on low as frost protection without needing to visit the house? good idea. You know you should've fixed that in the summer don't you!

I can just see someone in the background pointing at something in a Haynes Manual?

[trufflehunt]

"Look at the camera." "Look at the damn camera......

Must say, I think that photo is rather beautiful. You seem to have a talent for that.

[steve_earwig]

Do I really? Why thankyou I just thought I had a talent for taking dozens of pictures and then finding the least crappy one, cropping it down, correcting the focus and then sticking it on here...

It helps that they're two beautiful cats.

So you can keep the heating on low as frost protection without needing to visit the house? good idea.

I should really visit it every other day to check nothing's gone wrong or anything but that's not always possible, I could be prevented from doing so by various other issues, like waking up with a bad headache, bad weather, total laziness...

You know you should've fixed that in the summer don't you!

Well yes, I would've had plenty of time to sort it out, although I don't know about you but I don't generally run my heating in the summer... At least I didn't fire it up in the nick of time like I did last year, it was already below freezing and I'd have been in a right old panic.

I can just see someone in the background pointing at something in a Haynes Manual?

That's t'wife, she'd never have a reason to even open a Haynes, I took that picture while she was giving an English lesson so that'll be an English text book she's working through.

That's another scam they have going in here, the kids have to write in their text books, they have spaces in the lines to write the words in or they have to circle the correct answer. Obviously this means there's no point in handing books down so parents have to buy a new one for each kid. They aint cheap either. They also generally change the text books every year, even if there's no actual difference, it must be the book printed for this year.

[Doggy]

Well done, that man.

I was going to say, "show me someone with the time/patience/forethought to modify their heating controls in the summer", when I realised I earned that particular anorak, in 1993.