Loki taking a post-op R&R cat-nap:
Archive for the 'Rambling on…' Category
Thinking inside the box
If almost every item of shop-bought oven-cookable food has to go on the middle shelf of the oven, why do we waste money on redundant features such as three adjustable-height shelves and five height-settings when something half the height, twice the width and with one middle shelf would be more useful?
Breaking the rules.
Nanny State
At the Royal and at the General we're invited to make our own, but at Glenfield it's a no-no:
If anyone bothered to do a proper Risk Assessment they'd find that the Glenfield water's always tepid anyway.
People in glass houses…
The school has a hi-tech ID-card-entry security system which feeds info into a little box called a computer. In theory, at all times said computer should know exactly who is on the premises and where they should be, logging all arrivals and departures.
Sadly, said computer isn't very clever and often has to be corrected by manual input.
And when the absentee isn't the pupil but is actually the member of staff responsible for making those manual corrections, the system goes to shit, sending out all sorts of inaccurate automated texts to unsuspecting parents, and waking the synthetic voice which rings our land-line to further the spread of fake news...
Press "1" for Bollocks, press "2" for Bullshit, press "3" to talk to a hapless keyboard-jockey.
In loco parentis, eh?
Omission and Commission
If the standard of SPAG in their text messages is much to go by, I'm relieved that she's not studying A-Level English Language there:
I think the question of the commissioned apostrophe may not be sufficient, I'll probably have to organise my own search-party to find the missing colon, the absent full-stop and the omitted capitalisation of the sentence-start. I'm fairly sure that there aren't enough "the"s or "a"s in there either.
One of the Water Signs
About this time last year I returned from one of my longer stays at LRI to find that we'd had a slow leak where the cold water feed was joined to the plastic cistern at the back of the loo, the cause was a fibre-washer which had perished. I had to rip up and throw away the floor covering in the bathroom and allow the units, floor-boards and plasterboards to dry for a few months. Luckily the leak was caught before it seeped down so far for it to trash the lovingly-crafted suspended ceiling beneath the bathroom and above the kitchen. Said suspended ceiling is actually laminate flooring stuck to a suspended timber-batten framework using aero-adhesive, so repairing it would be either a bodge-job or a complete replacement, neither of which would be a job to look forwards to.
When I was satisfied that everything in and under the bathroom had fully dried I made plans to re-cover the floor, only to be thwarted by a new leak - the shower-screen seal had given up and had to be replaced, and a load of silicone sealer was applied for good measure. Yet another drying-out period was required. Again, the suspended ceiling survived.
At about the same time we noticed some dampness on the kitchen floor, and there were some water-damaged laminate-flooring planks. That was puzzling, because we couldn't find a cause for some time, but it definitely wasn't anything to do with the bathroom leaks. After a few days we found the cause - the tumble-dryer had "walked" slightly from its proper location and was resting lightly on the plastic ring-nut of the cold-feed pipe for the adjacent washing machine. The gentle tumbling action had made the dryer's chassis slowly undo the cold-feed ring-nut and it was allowing water to seep out. Once tightened, it was fine and the leak was stopped, it's not been a problem since then, and the laminate planks are now dry with minimal damage which we can live with until it's time to renovate the whole room.
Two days ago I noticed that one of the unpopulated grow-bag trays in the greenhouse had water in it, and I know that I didn't put it there. This morning the water was deeper, so I surmise that there's a minor leak in the greenhouse roof. It's not an urgent matter, and it wasn't raining so I put the simple repair job on the back-burner while I put the finishing touches to the fruit-cage - I had to transplant an established redcurrant plant to a container, haul it into the cage and then finish spreading bark around it.
After that I went back to the house, made a brew, and decided to have a few minutes planning the refurbishment of the now-dry bathroom. I looked up at the suspended ceiling, thinking how lucky we'd been that it had survived undamaged, but when I did I noticed that it wasn't right, it was buckled and slightly damp. It looks like fresh water-damage and it's directly below the bath-taps and bath overflow. Looks like I have another strip-out to do, another plumbing job, and another period of drying out. It's an extra-wide bath, so to get to the undersides of the taps and to the overflow I'll have to cut an access-hatch in the stud-wall in Anna's bedroom, that won't go down well but it's either that or rip out the tiled-in bath and start again.
Looks like the bathroom floor will have to wait a bit longer 🙁
Unlike our good-for-nothing MP I don't believe in astrology, but, according to those who do, I'm a Cancerian. Ooda thunkit?
