| October 31st |
I met Andy in
World of Warcraft,
and we (and my new guild) did a run on Scarlet Monastery.
Easy, with a level 70 in the group :o) Afterwards, I tidied up a bit, and my
druid
made level 29. I'll rest him for a bit, to get the rested bonus next time I take him out. |
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|
| October 29th |
I had the sales guy from the solar power company come out so we could get
everything sorted out for the panels on the roof. I'm getting a 2.5KW system, and hopefully it'll
be installed by the end of the year. There are a couple incentives that I can take advantage of at
the moment, so I'm paying a bit more than half of what it would normally cost to buy a system of this
size. It'll roughly halve our summertime electrickery bill, when it's most expensive due to the air
conditioning usage. I might look at adding more panels in a few years, so that's going to be taken
into account in the design of the system. I'm quite looking forward to getting it in, and looking at
the indoor monitor that tells you how much power you're generating at that second :o)
I got in a little
World of Warcraft
time, and my
druid
made level 28.
In the evening, we had thunderstorms and some rain - it's nice to see that
Tilly
isn't afraid of noises like
Chloe
was :o) |
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|
| October 28th |
I took
Tilly
out of the bedroom to give Vic a chance to sleep in, and after a while went to help Jim with his
garage door. When that seemed like it's working, we crated Tilly and headed off to go
hang gliding
in the
van.
As she was so loud, we had to pull her out of the crate, and she ended up sitting on Vic's lap most
of the way there, looking out of the window. This was the first time she's seen dogs bigger than her
since being adopted, and she did pretty well. Again, she was like a little sack of bones when we got
her home.
Vic didn't get to fly, as the tow winch blew a hydraulic hose, rendering it inoperable. We still
didn't get away before dark though :o) |
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|
| October 27th |
As we had visitors,
Tilly
was actually behaving pretty well. Simon and Anne-Louise's son, Ben, and Tilly wound each other up a
few times, and had to be separated, but generally things went fine. |
|
|
| October 26th |
We waited for Simon and family to arrive, then sat around chatting until the wee
small hours of the morning. I tried to keep
Tilly
awake, but eventually she was just this little sack of bones that I could shake and poke without any
sign of life. |
|
|
| October 25th |
Tilly
got to go to the vet's for her first check-up. They pronounced her seaworthy, and gave her a couple of
shots and sent her on her way. She then pooped and peed in the
van
on the way home, as I was too busy driving to stop her. Oh well. |
|
|
| October 24th |
Tilly
was introduced to next door's dogs, and got to play with Molly while Alex and Ellie were shut in, so she
wasn't outnumbered. |
|
|
| October 23rd |
I had another solar power guy in to quote for panels on the roof. I'm just waiting
for their quote, and then I'll decide who gets the order. In a perfect world, it'd get fitted this year,
as there's a tax rebate that I can take, and the tax year ends in December :o)
I managed to get in a little
World of Warcraft
time, and my
druid
made level 27. I want to be able to get his tailoring up to the point where I can make biiiig bags for
the rest of my toons. |
|
|
| October 22nd |
After a pretty miserable night, we had a pretty quiet day, with
Tilly
helping Vic in the garden a lot. She seems to have decided that she wants to be a goldfish when she
grows up - at least, we have to drag her away from the pond a lot :o)
I saw that the
FAA
have finished the investigation of the
plane crash
just over the back of our house
last year.
Pilot error. Error? Aerobatics at 200 - 800' over a built up area? Sounds more like suicide to me,
but what do I know? |
|
|
| October 21st |
Tilly's
10 weeks old today. We'll see if she makes 11.
It was too windy to go
hang gliding
so we, and I mean all three of us, worked in the garden, before going to lunch at a place with outdoor
seating. We got Tilly a new toy at the local
PetsMart
- the thing is it crinkles and squeaks when she bites it, so she constantly sounds like that guy behind
you at the cinema trying to open a bag of crisps without making a noise.
When we got home, we watched the
MotoGP
race for Malaysia, and got an early night. |
|
|
| October 20th |
Tilly's
house training seems to have taken a nose-dive, with "accidents" for most of the morning. The strange
thing is that she doesn't even whine to go out, she just stops where she is and pees. I finally figured
out that she thinks the bedroom and the office are part of our den, but she doesn't spend enough time in
the family room to think of that as not to be peed in. Dumbass. She's still biting everything in sight,
so I'm tempted to pick up her bed(s), wash the house to about 18" in
Bitter Apple.
On the plus side, she's whining and waking me up every 3 hours or so to go out at night, so she's got
the basic idea of house training. We're working on staying in the crate for a while from time to time.
One of the problems there is that she's used to free feeding, which is great from a "lots of puppies in
a cage, discouraging food aggression" point of view, but sucks from a house training point of view.
I'm trying to get her to eat twice a day, rather than her current
Hobbit-like
breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch kind of model.
Dog food companies piss me off - there's a big pet obesity problem here, and I find it amazing that the
puppy food label says that at her age (6-11 weeks) and weight (up to 15 lbs), she should get 2.5 cups
of food a day. Even free feeding, she doesn't take much more than a cup a day, and then she walks
around with a fat belly, and poops a lot more often. Hmmm... conflict of interest?
I managed to play
World of Warcraft
for a while and my
druid
made level 26. |
|
|
| October 19th |
Vic was going to be puttering about in the garden,
Tilly-proofing
the vegetable area, so I managed to get to the gym for a change.
Tilly and I were playing in the garden when
one of these
(I think) came over at a few hundred feet and scared the crap out of her. It was bright red (could even
have been
this one),
and sounds weird.
I managed to play
World of Warcraft
for a while and my
druid
made level 25. |
|
|
| October 18th |
Tilly
and I had a pretty good day... she slept a lot, and listened to most of what I said. I even managed to
play a little
World of Warcraft
with her asleep on my lap, or watching the screen. No levels though. |
|
|
| October 17th |
Ever eaten a
pomegranate?
What a miserable fruit that is.
I planted a tree in the garden several years ago, and this year it bore fruit. It's an awful lot of
work to get the fruit covered seeds out - I think this'll be like celery, and take more calories than
it gives. Jeez.
Tilly
continues to work on her house training - she's actually doing pretty well when you figure she's only
been here for a few days. I also think she's starting to learn her name, as she perked up when I was
watching a little video I shot and she heard me call her name :o) |
|
|
| October 16th |
Obviously, I'm an idiot. At about 10pm last night,
Tilly
was whining, so I put her on her bed. Where she promptly peed. Lesson - if the dog's whining, take
her out even if she peed 15 minutes ago :o)
She spent the day with me in the office - chewing paper, standing on keyboards, the usual office
behaviour.
The central locking controller came in for the
van,
so I spent all of 5 minutes plugging it back in.
Speed had deigned to show the
MotoGP
race from the weekend, so we watched that, in between trips to the garden. They never showed
this
which I thought was hilarious :o) For the uninitiated, they were practising starts. Modern MotoGP
bikes have traction control, so they use a setting of this, called launch control, to allow them to
pretty much go full throttle, and just dump the clutch. This is what happened to the poison dwarf
when launch control didn't work :o) |
|
|
| October 15th |
I spent most of the day with
Tilly
either sleeping on my lap or stealing bits of paper off my desk.
Vic's foster guinea pig, Stewart the Winky, who lost an eye to an infection he's been fighting for
several months now, had to be put to sleep - he wasn't eating or drinking, and he was having real
trouble breathing. Once he started to get cold, and couldn't control himself, it looked like the
infection was in his brain. We took him back to the
SPCA
:o( |
|
|
| October 14th |
As Vic had to work today, I went to
California Animal Shelter Friends
with Jim in the van
to take a look at a litter of lab mix puppies, and ended up bringing one home with us.
Tillamook, like the cheese, or more often
Tilly.
Bill over the road had asked me to look at draining the fluids out of his grandson's XR 50 so it can be
shipped to Wisconsin in the week. I said to bring it over, but I'd be out on Sunday afternoon. I got
home to find him cutting and edging the grass in the front garden :o) I said it wasn't necessary, but
he finished up, then brought the bike over. It took me maybe 10 minutes to drain the oil and gas, and
the float bowl. I felt guilty, but I've fixed this bike before, so I guess we're even now :o) |
|
|
| October 13th |
I started the day at the
SPCA,
but it was pretty quiet, and there were a load of dog walkers, so I came home and played
World of Warcraft
for a while. I ran through Zul'Farrak with my
hunter
and a pick up group, and managed to do all but 1 of the quests in there, and got up to level 46. |
|
|
| October 12th |
I had a guy come to talk to me about solar panels on the roof. I'm looking at a
roughly 2.5KW system, as that should more than halve my electrickery bill. Plus I get to feel like I'm
doing something to help the environment.
It's funny, when you start asking for quotes, everybody wants to know what your bill is, rather than how
much power you use - here in Roseville, power's apparently very cheap (at the moment - there's talk about
it going up.
We'll see if I think I can afford it :o) |
|
|
| October 11th |
I managed to spend some time in
World of Warcraft,
and managed to get my
hunter
up to level 45. |
|
|
| October 10th |
I spoke to
Stephan,
and sent him copies of everything about the
van's
smog failure. We'll see what can be sorted out now. We have until December to get it fixed, as that's
when the registration runs out. |
|
|
| October 9th |
I took the
van
to a State appointed referee to get the smog test done. Oh dear. First, it scored too high on the nitric
oxide emissions - investigation shows that could be due to overheating in the test warehouse (they backed
it in, meaning the cooling fans were blowing on the engine, rather than the radiator) and it being almost
out of petrol. More importantly the intake manifold and ECU part numbers don't match what's approved to
be installed on that engine in this upgrade. Oh, and it needs a "check engine" light and a vented fuel
cap (why, it has an expansion tank for the fuel?). Anyways, I drove home and called
Stephan
- he said they've had problems like this with
Tiico
before, so he'll talk to them and see what can be done to get this all sorted out. Hey, if I'm lucky,
maybe I can get the new
turbodiesel
engine installed instead :o) |
|
|
| October 8th |
I started the day off by tweaking my shoulder with a pinched nerve, so I'm expecting
that to slow me down for the next week until it either goes away or I get used to it :o( |
|
|
| October 7th |
I spent part of the morning trying to track down a knocking noise that sometimes
shows up on the
Subaru
without success, then we went
hang gliding.
Vic got to get towed for the first time... she didn't seem to be in the air a lot longer, but she
travelled a lot further :o) |
|
|
| October 6th |
I watched some TV, then went to the
SPCA
for most of the day. I walked a couple of dogs that people thought I might like to adopt, but
I didn't really get attached to them. Or the 8 week old labrador mix puppy that was there. I'm
starting to wonder whether I'm ready to get another dog after
Chloe
yet, or maybe I've just myself trained to not get attached to animals at the shelter perhaps a little
too well.
We stopped and got a takeaway on the way home, and watched a movie and Dr Who before passing
out. |
|
|
| October 5th |
I took the
van
over to
Stephan's
for it's oil change. I need to do this for the first year to maintain the warranty, but it's always
good to see Stephan and talk about Vanagons :o)
After work, we went and met a bunch of volunteers from the
SPCA
for dinner. It was pretty relaxing, really... Heather, the ex volunteer coordinator organised
it. |
|
|
| October 4th |
I took the
van
to get it smogged, and they have no idea how to do it. It looks like I need to get it to a referee to
get it all set up, then anybody can smog it. Triffic.
I went back to
the airfield
and finished with the rotating the tyres on the
Rans.
Because of the way the wheels bolt on, as I'd tightened it up, I'd been unscrewing the stud, rather
than tightening up the nut. Doh. I took the wheel off and tightened up the stud again, and it all
went back together easily. I've run in a wire to run / charge the radio when I'm flying too. I've
been getting a little paranoid about flying with anything other than a fully charged radio, as people
have said they can't hear me. The next step is an external antenna. |
|
|
| October 3rd |
I went to
the airfield
and took a look at rotating the tyres on the
Rans.
Because of the way the wheels sit at an angle, the tyres wear along one edge only, so I decided
to turn them around. Getting the wheels off turned out to be a lot easier than I thought, but
getting the tyres off the split rims was really difficult. The first one probably took me an
hour, and involved splitting the rim, putting it back together and splitting it again. The second
one took about 20 minutes. I put everything back together, only to find that one wheel wouldn't
spin properly. I thought that the rim might be bent a bit, as it passes very close to the brake
cable mounting, but I was too tired to screw with it any longer. |
|
|
| October 1st |
I spent a bunch of time integrating an area on Vic's
hang gliding
into the
flying
pages.
I also ran across
this,
which could very well be about
World of Warcraft. |
|