Sunday 29 August 2010

Settling in nicely :)

I've been fishing three times now since we've moved, nothing spectacular just a couple of sea bass and some small flatfish.... in fact the sea bass were caught just on the spot of beach you can see in front of Dylans boathouse... well a little further back than there but literally just out of picture.... as you can see it's a bloody awful place to live..... a complete eyesore ... (yeah right...) ;¬)

We still haven't managed to get the heating sorted out yet, we've been promised and promised but alas nobody has turned up.... the famous Pembrokeshire promise it seems..... thankfully it hasn't been cold of late, wet of course but not cold.... well it's August after all, torrential downpours are the in thing.... I guess that's why Wales is so green.... 

I'm off out fishing again this afternoon (shock...horror) after Andrea gets back from running the St Clears 10k .... She's incredibly fit now and doesn't think twice about knocking out an 8 mile run... but she needs to keep doing it if she is going to do well in the Snowdonia Marathon in October I've walked that course it takes you right around Snowdon and it's bad enough walking it let alone running it.....but she seems to be looking forward to it... I honestly didn't think she'd stick to this running lark, but I've got to take my hat off to her (if I had one) with the London marathon under her belt and numerous half marathons and 10k's....not to mention the seventy odd miles she's doing a week.... she's doing very well indeed and I'm very proud of her :) not to mention the fact that she's become very toned all over...she's a lean mean racing machine.....

I just broke off from updating my blog to get a coffee only to find that the kettle had died, it's been a bit iffy for a few weeks... you'd turn it on and it would go off with a crackle then back on again... then off then finally it would boil.... well it's finally blown when I tried to get a much needed cup of ambition.... so out came the screwdrivers and I disassembled it.... I found out what was causing it to stop working and have jammed a piece of cork into one of the leaf contacts to keep it down and a further piece of cork to keep the on/off latch switch down so it can boil.... it has to be watched now because it would boil dry.... but at least I've got my coffee :) it will last until we get another one.... another Bodge-it & Scarper job with a good result :) (I doubt it would pass an electrical safety test) but my coffee is hot and I care not .....


Well I'm going to have to break off yet again because my little daughter Freya has just come up and said "Daddy .... you're my best friend"

So until next time :)



Monday 23 August 2010

We've moved

I have to say it was one of the most knackering experiences I've ever had... we only had a small van to do the move because we simply refused to pay the £150 to hire one (plus fuel).... so it took 252 miles or 7 trips there and back....

The teenagers were suspiciously absent except for the odd occasion, so basically Andrea and I did it all, FOMO boy was more help than both the teenagers put together... We did have some sterling help from Lauren's boyfriend Tom who's muscles and spatial ability came up trumps at a point where my brain had been frazzled by lack of sleep, tiredness and aching muscles. But eventually it was all done and all that remained was to put everything in its place and unpack everything.... (which is actually the hardest part!!!)

I have to admit I lost my rag on a few occasions, mainly through tiredness and  muscles screaming out to be rested and although I didn't fly into full blown massacre mode it was close..... however I did manage to keep a lid on it (mostly) but my patience was thinner than the skin on a rice pudding... I was bubbling away for quiet some time .....


It wasn't helped by the endless heap of teenage bodies which seemed to be appearing from every crack in the front door (Lauren's friends) ..... last thing you need after a house move are teenagers... in fact I think they should be banned from being seen or heard by adults until they are at least 21.....

Broadband and the phone appeared on the 20th as promised by the Post Office and at a blistering full rate of 8Mbits but I'd be silly to think it would be anything else considering how close we are to the exchange.....

I had to "undo" some "Larney" wheezes, such as the pub powering it's beer garden lights off our ring main.... that was disconnected immediately I found out.... we did have the landlord poke his head over our fence and ask us to switch a light on and off on our wall which they had "tapped" into... which was completely pointless as it had been removed at the fuse box ;¬)

We still have a few things to sort out such as the Rayburn only fires on the oven side not the heating, but we'll get that sorted out fairly soon before the cold weather hits.... (oh sorry it already has it's August already!!!)
other than that we are moved in and all systems go......

Wednesday 11 August 2010

We are moving !!!

For those of you familiar with the picture on the left will realise that we are moving to Laugharne the town where Dylan Thomas lived for the latter part of his life... I actually grew up in Laugharne and my parents still live there... so it's a kind of homecoming for me... it's a sleepy little town right next to the sea or should I say Estuary.... it's going to be nice to wake up to the "ding" "ding"  of the town clock again (its a very distinctive "ding" trust me) :) We have been buzzing about like blue bottomed flies in this house packing boxes, throwing stuff away, burning stuff we don't want to turn up on a dump.... we've been pretty ruthless, but it does feel good to get rid of stuff that's been hanging around for ages, old paper work, old insurance documents, seven year old bank statements, computers bits and pieces and old computers I lugged around with me, all gone...

The only problem is I think I've thrown out my mobile phone.... I hope I haven't, I'm hoping it turns up in some box we unpack when we get to the new house.... which is enormous, we fell in love with the place as soon as we walked in .... it has a huge kitchen, with a big rayburn in it, gas oven, gas hob, granite work tops, very nicely done out...

All the enormous bedrooms have en suite shower/bath/toilet... Freya already loves the place because it's close to the park with the whirly slide as she calls it.... so no doubt I'll be getting dragged down there at all hours...

As much as I love this place where we are now for it's isolation and lack of neighbours ... it's not doing the kids much good.... arranging sleep overs and visits is becoming a major logistical nightmare... then you have to drive miles to pick them up.... I think I will have to wait for desolation and idyllic peace and no neighbours for a few more years yet..... besides once Freya is a bit older and less of a handful we have handy baby sitters on the doorstep ;¬)

Anyway I will be offline for a while whilst our ISP sort themselves out... we are due to resurface online on or around the 20th August apparently .... (yeah of course) one thing for certain we are a mere stones throw from the BT exchange (literally) and I will cut off both of my arms if we don't achieve over 7Mbit (there may be some blood spilt as I might regret that statement) ....

We are all looking forward to the move.... well except Xbox boy ... he isn't chuffed that he now has to travel even further to visit his girlfriend.... ahhh well I'm sure the extra 15 minutes on the bus won't kill him......but at least with the regular bus service the taxi of mum and stepdad will cease... no excuse now...

"Oh dear you missed the last bus..... unlucky!!!"  I've walked to Laugharne many a time after missing the last bus in my youth.... let's not break the tradition :)

Saturday 7 August 2010

No more Mr Nice guy

I've had it up to the back teeth with re-installing the kids computer because of viruses and I've told them if it gets taken down by another virus I'm killing Windows XP on it and installing Linux ... like it or lump it end of viruses it just works and keeps working...

My 18 year old step son is the prime culprit (no he actually is the culprit) he like all 18 year old lads has a fascination for porn, most if not all porn sites are designed to deliver a virus or some kind of payload to your computer and it doesn't seem to matter how many times I've told him not to visit those sites he persists, I've blocked network access with OpenDNS and Netelligence which filters out I'd say about 98% of them but it's not 100% ... 

I've not actually got an issue with him looking at porn... the only issue I do have is that the computer he views it on is a shared computer and his younger sister does all her banking on it... which is like playing russian roulette with a semi automatic pistol, it's not if you'll get shot it's more when.....plus every time it gets infected with a nasty virus all the kids lose everything in their profiles....which simply isn't fair

Anyway I've warned him and he's ignored me, so he's had his internet/computer access revoked indefinitely, He's lucky I was going to send his girlfriend a list of websites he visits on a regular basis.... but that's too cruel....

So his ass is banned .... it's the only way it seems

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Derek vs Epson

We purchased some more incredibly expensive ink for our Epson DX4450 all-in-one printer yesterday to print something out.... it's rather annoying that if ANY colour runs out the printer simply won't print... so I opened the beast up and put in the cartridge and it went through it's ink priming cycle only to be confronted with a paper jam.... so I cleared it .... or thought I had and tried again .... same thing happened.... RIGHT !!! I reloaded the paper, fanned it, checked the paper path all seemed fine... would it print ? would it buggery....

It was at about the 10th attempt to print something, that it made the most expensively loud and grinding sound after which it simply stopped trying to feed paper and just sat there endlessly winding itself on with no paper movement... so I went onto the Epson web site which proved about as much use as a chocolate fire guard in front of a steel blast furnace... there was only one thing for it.... I needed a Philips screwdriver  and I wasn't afraid to use it !!!  So I set to work dismantling the beast....

Now I'm a trained Epson Engineer on their laser and dot matrix printers of yestermillenia but that was many years ago and I may as well have been an untrained baboon taking it apart, I have to say these new Epson printers aren't built to be taken apart at all, they have fire once plastic clips on them once fired they stay fired....they are basically throw away printers and once you get inside them, which is no mean feat you realise why.... there is very little in it to throw away.... gone are the days of massive circuit boards with endless heatsunk transistors to take the wattage....and an enormous switch mode PSU.... you could run these things on a single AAA battery....

So once inside I could actually see what was causing the problem.... I had a chunk of paper which had torn off under the back paper feed wheel ... all crunched up.... but being old and wise to these kinds of faults it meant that wasn't the cause of it.... paper doesn't simply rip off there is a reason for it...  and a little further digging and peering about I discovered this little beauty :-

Freya !!! come here a minute please....

Can you see the frayed edges ? that's where the paper drive mechanism had tried to feed it through the paper path... needless to say it failed hence the expensive grinding sound it made.... So after removing the offending item above, I set about putting the printer back together, which with no disassembly /assembly manual requires a brain capable of navigating the Dan-y-Ogof cave system blindfolded using nothing more than echo location to find your way back.... I had hundreds of screws on the desk and a very taken apart printer....

the worst part was assembling the scanner module which although clip together technology with just two screws required to secure it, it required the balance of a trapeze artist and the dexterity of a juggler to put back together... that done the rest clipped back together without much of a problem.....
Bits and bobs
The picture above is about half way through the assembly process....

Now the universal sign of a good engineer is always to have at least two or three screws left over because you have improved the design of the device by removing excess weight and still it works... 

Well I must be losing my touch because I had no screws left and no I hadn't lost any on the floor.... The moment of truth was upon me... I powered it up.... it went through it's initialisation procedure of priming the ink cartridges pumping half the ink out as usual and sat there waiting for some data.... s

So I sent it a test print with my fingers and other body parts crossed.... I have to admit I was half expecting that horribly expensive grinding sound.... but no I still had the printer magic and it performed beautifully even the scanner scanned.... all was well in my world..... 

now what was it I wanted to print out again ????



Normandy (last day)

half way across the new bridge
We had to be out of our hotel by 10am on the last day, so we had a long (homeless) day ahead of us... We had taken in Pegasus Bridge on the previous day which I found rather amusing because there were a lot of American tourists there marvelling at Pegasus Bridge and snapping away reams of digital storage at the thing when in reality the "real" bridge which had been removed some time ago and moved onto the other side of the river/canal was practically unvisited......

The real Pegasus Bridge
Anyway we tucked into our breakfast at the hotel and set off for Bayeux, I had already warned my father that we WERE visiting the Bayeux tapestry and probably the Cathedral.....he rather grumpily accepted he was outvoted... so off we drove to Bayeux which is remarkably close to Caen only a few miles really .... we got there and I have to say it is a beautiful town, very clean very bright stonework and we parked up and headed straight for the Bayeux Tapestry

I was particularly amused by the medieval flasher

I managed to shoot this photograph from the hip because photography was strictly forbidden in several languages !!! my camera was supposed to be on "Museum mode" but no it FLASHED in a VERY dark room and I quickly pocketed my camera and whistled unconvincingly.... 

Those nuns had vivid imaginations
Obviously he was doing "I'm a little teapot... short and stout" and they did it naked in Norman times.....

We then went onto the the Cathedral and I have to say it's a must visit ....well despite the homeless man (I question that statement) begging at the huge front door... although I had to laugh at somebody thanking him for letting him visit his Cathedral ...(some people....rolls eyes) He was being very sly... when somebody put some money into his tin he'd wait for a few seconds then remove some cash to make it look like he hadn't collected much, I estimated 20 euro's in the tin and judging by the steady flow of tourists and contributions he must have been making a fortune.... call me cynical .....he wasn't that hard up....

The Cathedral is just monstrous... you walk in and your jaw just drops.... it's beyond massive, quite awe inspiring and a huge achievement of medieval  builders and stonemasons... my father made me laugh by saying "what a waste of money" .... but then with my dad if it hasn't got a sharp point at one end and an engine at the blunt one and travels in water.... it would be a waste of money

Bayeux Cathedral... HOOOGE

As you can see by the photo above I couldn't even get the spire in... a very impressive building....

We then went on to the tank museum in Bayeux... again worth a visit and very eye opening as to what went on starting on the 6th June 1944... I found it particularly ironic that one of the gun barrels of the tanks parked outside had a birds nest in it complete with chicks...  so where once only death and destruction came.... sprung forth life !!!

We then ambled back via Omaha beach  which was pretty awe inspiring and you could understand the great loss of life on that beach by looking at the beach defences still there....very sad ..... then back to Ouistreham where my mother finally got her lamb chops which she had been coveting at a very nice restaurant, right on the front of Ouistreham beach (Sword beach) ... we then simply waited around until our ferry left at 11pm and had a very nice trip back again it was like a billiard table much to my mothers relief !!!

My parents however have the spatial ability of a hamster between them, I think they did more mileage walking the wrong way up and down the ferry than the whole time in France they very nearly wore out the lift.... very funny though....

all in all a very worthwhile and enlightening trip.... and I didn't crash their car once !!! :)

ps/ if you click on any of the pictures you'll see it in higher resolution :)

Sunday 1 August 2010

Normandy (continued)

The end of the second day ended rather stressfully in that I thought I had had my digital camera stolen, we had ended the day in Ouistreham at a brasserie to have a meal and a drink and watch the sun go down.... on returning to the car and driving for about 7 miles back towards the hotel I had that "where is my camera...moment" I then remembered I had put it down on the floor next to my chair... 

So we turned around and headed back to Ouistreham.. we finally got there and I shot out of the car back towards the brasserie at warp factor 9 and interrogated the waitresses with my best camera impression I could muster.... they all said "non"  and lifted their hands skyward in the typical French fashion shaking their heads at the mad Welshman standing in front of them gesturing wildly like a demented fool .....

Ahhhh well it was gone.... I wasn't upset about the camera I was more upset about all the lovely once in a lifetime photographs I had taken.... I think I was visibly upset when I got back to the car... so much so that my parents plotted behind my back to get me a new camera and stating that we had one more day and we could re-take the photographs... which was a poor substitute but our only viable option really .....
So we got back to the hotel and I ripped into the French on Facebook calling them nothing short of a set of froggy camera stealing people with no fathers who smelt of elderberries.....   

then my parents sprang the "Right we are getting you a new camera.... and no arguments" I've learned not to argue with my mother once she sets her mind to something... there is no turning her to your point of view.... 

so off we went to Cah fur and on parking up in the blue disabled car parking bay I automatically reached into the glove compartment to pull out my parents disabled badge to put it on the dashboard and there looking up at me was my "stolen" camera.... it was a mixture of relief and utter stupidity that washed over me.... ahhh well alls well that ends well....

I deleted my derogatory French bashing post on Facebook.... hoping nobody had noticed and slunk away to my room .....