Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Cadmium

We used to test for cadmium in silver alloys when I used to work in the assay lab. About 3% was the highest we tended to get. It is quite toxic. It gets added to silver to make it less brittle so it will be more malleable.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Kitchen Door Revisited

Things aren't finished with my kitchen doors. I spent the weekend whittling away! It is a production door from when house was built. It has huge lock which takes up a lot of the room. I had to reposition it. It had me remembering school woodwork. About all I made was a pencil sharpener which was just a block of wood with some sandpaper stuck to it.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Bus Pass

When I renewed my buss pass, I needed a new wallet/holder for it. They didn't have any proper bus ones so I've got a Network Rail one instead.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Fox

Someone in work has crashed a hire car - it overturned when they swerved to avoid a fox and lost control in the wet. That's what happens when you ban fox hunting. There are all these foxes running around the country, causing accidents.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Warm

That's the trouble with warm weather. I have had to adjust my watch bracelet. Had to take it out a notch.

Ear Plugs

I used to live in a house on a main road. It had double glazing but the noise from the road was so loud I needed ear plugs at night.
The show home had secondary glazing. It had the normal double glazing fitted but had tertiary glazing put in as well. They must have known the noise was a problem.

Clunk Clip

Yesterday my wife got a phone call from our son. He was pulling into the car park at college when he heard a clunk clunk sound. At first he thought 'oh no, the bearings have gone' but it turned out to be a huge metal clip embedded in the tyre.

When I got home I had a look. The tyre didn't seem to have gone down. I thought it might have been a slow puncture. The big clip was like something electrical. It was a square inch across with sharp spikes. It was stuck in the tread. I didnt remove it. I thought I should wait for my son before touching it.
The car had had new tyres. When we bought it we though we'd got a good deal but it needed a new timing chain.

This morning the tyre had not gone down any. It would have been slow puncture if there less tread on the tyre so the spike would have gone through.

I had a new car once, a citroen. When I took it for a service it came back with a dent in the boot. There was red paint in the dent. I went back to the garage and had a look in their service bay. They had some of the big storeage shelves which had red paint on them. I said that is where it must have come from. They took the car back and had it fixed, cheaper than if i'd paid and given them the bill. They must have known where to take it. I never went back there again. That's the trouble with new cars. You have to take it to a proper garage for servincing because of the warranty.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Mortgages

The halifax once forgot to take a months mortgate payment. Of course you would keep the records just in case 5 years down the line they come back and say 'you haven't paid this'.

Years ago I had compensation for a motorbike accident. It wasn't much I shopped around and put money there, thats why I went with the halifax for my mortgage. 20 years ago not many banks did it but everywhere does now. You can get a mortgage from Asda.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Kitchen and Cars

On saturday, I had to sort out the dimmer switch in the dining room. I thought there was a loose wire in the fitting. My son sorted it out and replaced the switch. That's what you keep a son for!

He also fitted the wing mirror onto his car. It wasn't quite the same as the original. He had to dismantle it and refitted it.

Were going to move everything back into the kitchen over the weekend but the washing machine still needs installing, and there are the valences etc.

He bought a haynes manual for his car but the wing mirror shown in the book is completely different to the one on his car. There was supposed to be wire clip and we should put screwdriver down the side of the glass and wiggle it to unclip it. We couldn't get it to come apart. We pulled it apart and there wasn't a clip. It had a plastic swivel with the glass attached but no wire. There was also another mirror glued onto old mirror where a previous owner had put a replacement on.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

measure twice, cut once

I'm putting these door up in the kitchen. They're half glazed. The doorways in the house are narrower and taller than normal. When I fit them I will need to put something on top so they are the right height. I've bought matching doors. One doorway has a folding door alongisde. It's still glazed like the others. I borrowed my brother-in-laws electric saw. It's one of those battery powered circular saws. I need to take 1-1 1/2 cm off each side of the doors. The sliding door will be lower because of the runner it hangs from. I can't just hang lower because the glass won't be level so I will still need to cut some off and add another bit.

Holly Bush

The next thing we're going to do to the house is sort out the drive. Theres a big holly bush with some smaller varieties alongside which are still big. The big one is on the corner of the drive. When we back out of the drive we swing round to face the main road, looking up the road to check for cars zooming down the hill from the estate. You've also got to watch out for the front of the car hitting the bush. I'm going to get it cut back. It's not just the spikes, it's the branches. They are quite thick. It's not going to be easy to dig it out because it's been there 30 years. The roots are going to be big.
It would be useful to have double drive. We've got a long drive so if someone wants to go out in
the first car then we have to move both cars.
The bush in wrong place really. It gives no privacy, it doesn't block the view from the road.
A person walks past same time each day and seems to stare into the house. We've got those vertical blinds to try to block the view. We don't want to close the curtains. The window is split so there are actually 4 curtains. We have a long lounge and it gets dark at the far end.

Don't walk on the floor

When I got home yesterday I was told we couldn't walk on the floor til 6pm. I hope they meant
6pm last night and not tonight. All the floor had been done except for round door frames and
other awkward shapes. Probably not done yet because they are hard to cut out. Hopefully they'll
come back to finish that.
All the wall tiles were done as well.
They had big boxes of tiles which they must get from the suppliers. What don't use must they take back and use on another job. My wife saw a big box of unused tiles and said she wonders if they're going to use those - she wanted to keep a few for spares.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Kitchen Floor

Hopefully we'll be getting someone in today, in our kitchen. The floor needs laying and the
tiles need doing.

Wing Mirror

Someone in the college car park hit the wing mirror of my son's car, knocked it forward so it
broke the plastic surround, not backward where it would have swung. It didn't break the glass.
Thats what you get with car ownership, weekly disappointment, something breaks or gets dented.
He managed to get a replacement mirror from the internet for only £20.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Credit Card

The royal bank of scotland credit card, before chip and pin, they had a tiny photo on them. The
new one doesn't. I don't have my old one on me I must have destroyed it. I expect it was
expensive technology and not worth doing it now. The photo was tiny and you couldn't really
tell who it was.

Maplins

Yesterday morning when I went to Maplins, it was raining when I got to the car park. When I got
back home only 5 minutes down the road, I parked in my drive and there were hailstones. It was
cold overnight though.

Bank Holiday

I noticed that may day bank holiday was actually on may day. This must be some kind of
coincidence. It must happen every 7 years or 6 with leap year.

I needed a battery for volt meter in the dining room. I went to maplins but it was closed and
the sign on the door said see in store for bank holiday opening times but I couldn't of course!

Spilt Milk

Someone put another milk on the small shelf in the fridge. People shouldn't do that because the
bottles can easily fall off when the door is opened. This has happened once before. The problem
is the bottom shelf fills with half full bottles and people can't be bothered to sort them out.
Someone should remove the small shelf. That would stop it happening.

Curly Paper

The paper came out of the printer very curly. It's not usually that curly. It was printed double sided. Must have been the heat in the printer.

Carphone Warehouse

I took the wife to the carphone warehouse to get a new phone. We took our son along to help us because he understands these things. The phone we got was an nec. I think they are chinese. Isn't it the national electric company or something like that. It's one of those clamshell ones.
We put the old sim in the new phone at first because the new sim would need to be activated first. The old sim was not able to take photos though.

Our son asked the salesman some technical question about his own phone. I think it was just to confuse him.

Traffic

The traffic was busy this morning. The bus had no problem getting to spaghetti but it got busy from there. Something was slowing the traffic, whether it was the motorway I don't know.

It might have been something from the m6 north, you know when you get heavy traffic. I checked RAC website. The m6 north had congestion after an earlier accident. Thats all it takes a minor bump and it slows the whole road system down.