Visitors to my blog

I was curious about where people came from when they found my blog.

It appears that many people are looking for information about central heating systems supplied by British Gas, some are having problems with their Lexmark printer and some people are interested in music.

I will try to be more helpful in future, explaining how to solve printer problems in more detail perhaps - or visitors could contact me or comment perhaps :-)

I've been doing a bit more with Twitter this morning, but I can't get into pushing out comments about what I'm doing all the time, but it is interesting (to a point) looking at other people's comments.

I saw that a company who interviewed me in July (how time flys) for a MIS Director job are now looking for another member of staff: reporting to the guy who got the job. I applied. Looking at the job description that they sent me I found his name in the document properties and looked him up on Linked In. It appears he's a 3rd degree connection of mine. Scott brought me back to earth though by pointing out that he has 1.5 MILLION 3rd degree connections on Linked In.

Another TV marathon last night: "American Idol" eliminations, "Waterloo Road" from earlier in the week and then I watched Sean Connery / Ursula Andress in "Dr. No". They followed "Dr. No" with "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me" on the Sky Movies Comedy Channel. So there are people with a sense of humour working at Sky Movies. It was "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" that featured the parody of the Ursula Andress bikini scene as Austin arrives at Dr Evil's volcano lair. I didn't stay up to watch it though.

Insulation Inspection

The guy came yesterday to survey our insulation.

What a surprise, it's not as inexpensive as they said in the advert as those costs are based on a smaller home, but even so it "should" pay back in about 2 1/2 years.

Mind you it would mean losing most of the storage space in the attic, or extending the joists and re-boarding it. The main saving is from adding to the loft insulation.

Where are we going to put all the junk though?

He said the quote is valid for 6 months, but the small print says 28 days. We'll probably get it done when I'm working again.

The heating is fine now. The heating engineer changed the pump which was sticking "on". Maybe the battery had died in the RC1 too.

Dante's Inferno

After yesterday's post mentioning Dante I was inteigued to find out that EA are making a GAME out of Dante's Divine Comedy. Images above are copyright EA.

See this... from Wired Blog

http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/02/san-francisco-.html

Pancakes, TV and Books

It was Shrove Tuesday yesterday, so I made some pancakes.

In fact I ended up making 7 of them, between 2 of us :-). The 7th one was rather small, so I ate it rather than show it off as an example of my culinary skill. The first one was a bit too thick too.

It would have helped if I'd thought that the recipe that I used to get the ratio of flour to eggs to milk would probably be designed for 4 people, not two.

Lemon juice and sugar since you asked. Keep it simple :-)

Then we had a TV marathon as Tuesday is BBC's "drama night" we watched "Holby City" and "Mistresses" and then a recording of Sunday's "Damages".

I started reading "Illuminatus! book 1, The Eye in the Pyramid" again - man that book is weird! I last read it about 20 years ago I guess. 

I've just finished reading "The Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson which was very good (IMHO). I bought that and "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale on a buy one get one free offer a few weeks ago. I enjoyed "The Suspicions..." too even though it is more of a history than a novel. "The Gargoyle" premise - was a bit obvious I thought, but it was good fun getting there. I liked the Dante references too!

London

I went up to London yesterday, to Kensington in fact, for another interview.

I had a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake in a place called "The Muffin Man", so of course my brain was then stuck in "the muffin man" scene from Shrek even though I wasn't in Drury Lane which is near Aldwych/Holborn/Oxford Street. I had to then "google" the words to the song too. See the Wikipedia article.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muffin_Man

"Do you know the muffin man?"

"The muffin man?"

"The muffin man!"

"Do you know the muffin man who lives in Drury Lane?"

aaaghhhh!  "not my chocolate buttons!!"

How to Quit Smoking

My sister sent me this... if you smoke you need to watch it

Teenage dad Alfie Patten ..........

has joined 'Fathers for Justice'. In an interview, the 13 year old said "it made sense as I already have a Spiderman outfit"

Heating again

The house has been freezing all day.

It was down to 14 degrees when I got up (woken by the cat) at 7:40. The heating came on at 7:50 but its only just reached 19 degrees.

We've got an energy survey being done in a few weeks - we need cavity wall insulation I think!

Apparently this is where to find the manuals for the RC1 and WRI thermostat/receiver.

http://www.invensyscontrolseurope.com/InvensysControlsEurope/Pages/Product.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={EA65767E-D57E-4472-9B56-A1F317FD8ECE}&NRORIGINALURL=/InvensysControlsEurope/en/ProductsServices/MarketSegments/Heatingdomesticcommercial/Drayton/RoomThermostats/ComingSoon-thenewDigistat.htm&NRCACHEHINT=Guest

or - 

http://preview.tinyurl.com/bozew9

http://tinyurl.com/bozew9

Boiler guy

The British Gas guy came today.

He diagnosed a faulty valve, which he swapped. But he booked a return visit for Monday as he wasn't sure this would fix the problem. This also would give him time to order the parts he may need.

So we've got to monitor it over the weekend.

Its been fine the past two nights - so may be fine over the weekend too.

WRI & RC1 and British Gas 330 Boiler

I had fun last night with the central heating. It wouldn't turn off! We thought there had been a problem for a few nights as it got very warm, but the weather has been quite cold so it didn't matter too much. But last night it woke me up it was so hot.

I came downstairs and checked the timer. It was off. However the boiler was lit and the pump was running. After some messing around, turning it off and on again (well, it works on computers) and checking the Wireless Thermostat Receiver (WRI) in the airing cupboard I thought that maybe the batteries in the thermostat (RC1) had died or were dying, so I changed them.

All seemed well. 

I ran some tests during the day and it seemed to shut down and start up normally. Then tonight at 11 pm we noticed it was still running again. I checked the timer: it was set to turn off at 11 pm and it appeared to have shut down on the timer, but the boiler was lit and the WRI was reporting it was active. To get it to shut down I turned the boiler off.

I guess tomorrow I'll have to call British Gas :) Lucky I've got a service contract!

Odd that this seemed to have started since the service visit to check the water leak from the boiler. The water leak was apparently due to the condensation drip tray overflowing after the drain pipe froze. However the weather has been too cold for us to notice a problem before now.

Snow clearance

We spent 2 hours yesterday working with neighbours to clear snow and ice from the road. One of our neighbours is a nurse and she needed to leave to get to work for her shift.

After 2 hours the road was clear enough for our neighbour Mark to get a car out to go to the DIY shop to get some salt.

With salt on it the road was clear enough to use :-)

There was ice under the snow - thanks in the main to the local lads driving their motorised tricycle on it yesterday, spinning and throwing up snow. This compacted the snow into ice, on which more snow fell. They didn't come out to help shift it though.

Snowy here...

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=8e115437-c5bb-4273-8f15-850f0b3cc888&i=0:1:3&z=621.1224471900001&g=1&p=0:0&m=false&c=-0.0773902:-0.0252638:-0.0434345&d=-1.14069:0.830727:1.05787

 Photosynth of our snowy garden - view by clicking on the link.