| November 30th |
Stuff we've ordered has started to arrive. Today we received my new
camera and Vic's iPod. Eschewing the manual, I charged the battery and started to play
with it. It's a bit bigger and heavier than the old camera, but it's got an absolutely
massive zoom, which should come in handy when Vic's
hang gliding.
Of course, my first pictures will all be of
Tilly,
as is tradition. |
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| November 29th |
We got up disgustingly early and headed over to
Stephan's Autohaus
to pick up the
van.
The web site says they open at 7am, so we got there shortly after that, but it was all
closed up, and the sign on the door said that they open at 8. Bugger. We pulled up the
street, and I was trying to find the nearest Starbucks when we saw a Vanagon drive along
behind us. We went back, and they were open. I paid the bill
and drove home just in time to start work. Joy.
When the mail arrived, my new 5570 graphics card had arrived, so after work I sat down to
install it. Where the old 4650 scored 5.0 in graphics and 6.4 in gaming graphics, the new
card scores 6.7 and 6.7 - I might be able to get a little more out of it with the latest
drivers and suchlike. Hopefully when I start playing
World of Warcraft
again I'll be seeing better than the ~30fps I was seeing with the 4650. |
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| November 28th |
It was a crappy day, but Vic went to the
SPCA
to go out on the Petmobile. It did brighten up eventually, so I rode the
DRZ
over to Freedom Field to see the Flightstar that Vince has been working on. It's
looking pretty good, all in black with fluorescent yellow sails. Mike apparently drove
home last night. |
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| November 27th |
As it was raining and I had nothing to do, I decided to buy the
the latest version of PowerDVD,
so I spent a while downloading and installing that. While it'll play the special edition
of
Avatar,
it's doing it in a black frame. Interestingly, if you quit Media Centre and run the
program in Windows, it doesn't display the frame. I can find others who have reported
this same problem, but no solutions as yet. After a lot of work which saw me lose some
of the add-ons I've installed, I gave up and logged a support ticket with Cyberlink. I
can still cancel the software within 30 days, so here's hoping they fix it.
I got in a gas cap for the
DRZ
and installed it - the Clarke one's torn the gasket, and there's at least one piece of
rubber still in the tank. The hot ticket is apparently to use a Honda XR cap, so I
ordered one of those.
As the sales are getting crazy, I've ended up buying a new laptop - I've been threatening
to get something faster than my netbook for ages, and now I have. I figure I can try and
sell the netbook on Craigslist or something.
Vince called to say Mike had driven up, so we were expecting him to show up at some
point. After a while, we went out to dinner, and there was still no sign of him.
Eventually we gave up waiting and went to bed. Vince has an air mattress and a spare
sleeping bag after all. |
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| November 26th |
Today was Black Friday, when everybody has their crazy sales for
Xmas. I woke up fairly early, so I say and looked at stuff online. I had been thinking
about the obsolete Canon SX120, as it was on sale at
Target
for $130. But then I found the replacement, the SX130, online for $150, so I was
considering that when I found the camera I wanted, the SX210, on sale online for $200.
Then I found the SX210 online with a 4Gb memory card at Amazon for $200, so no sales tax.
I went ahead and ordered one.
We went out and braved the sales a little, as there were a few things we wanted to get.
I managed to totally fail to get them, but Vic did decide that she likes the new
iPod Nano.
Luckily
Best Buy
were out of the 16Gb ones, as when we got home we found that the Apple Store had them on
sale and ordered one. It was shipped that evening, and should be here on Tuesday -
outstanding.
When we got home, I took the
Tilly
out for a few laps of the block. I stopped and adjusted the throttle cable, and I think
I still need to do the clutch a little, but it worked just fine. The thing still feels
totally unstable though :o)
In the evening we just lazed around watching TV and eating leftovers. |
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| November 25th |
Today was Thanksgiving, where the Americans celebrate the conquering
of the Indians by eating turkey. Vic had bought an organic turkey (that looks like a
normal bird, rather than one of the steroid bulked freaks that you get frozen at the
supermarket), so we cooked and ate that. Vince came over to entertain
Tilly
and eat with us. |
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| November 24th |
Sara called from
Stephan's Autohaus
to say that the
van
is ready to be picked up, but I couldn't get over there to pick it up today, as they were
closing early :o(
In the evening, we went out to dinner, and stopped by
Best Buy
while we were out. There are a bunch of people in tents camping out for the
Black Friday sale.
Um, it's been below freezing at night recently, so whatever they're getting had better be
worth it. |
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| November 23rd |
Sara called from
Stephan's Autohaus
about the
van.
Apparently the leaks are just gasket leaks, so they're going to use sealant to stop those.
I'd asked them to look at the air conditioning, as it pretty much didn't work when we
drove down to Los Angeles. Seems that it was empty. They'll fill it and add a dye, so
they can see where it's leaking. I'm starting to wonder whether it was ever filled, as I
don't recall being charged for the refrigerant :o) There's also some leaks and suchlike
on the rear brakes, so they'll look at that too. Another big bill, but I don't think
there's much that hasn't been replace or rebuilt now. |
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| November 21st |
After clearing the leaves in the front garden, and getting up on the
roof to clear the gutters after the latest rain, we packed up some stuff and headed for
the airfield
to look at doing a little work on the
Flightstar.
Sadly the cable I've bought to replace the cable for the trim tab is too thick (it's the
only size you can get, so I'll have to replace the outer, too), and the bolt I'd got to
replace one that Vince pointed out as too short in the annual inspection is too big.
Still, I did manage to get the tyres pumped up. |
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| November 20th |
I managed to spend the day installing
Windows XP
on an old
Asus EEE.
It would have been far easier if I had an external DVD drive, but I don't, so I did it
with a flash drive. I don't need an external DVD drive now :o)
In the evening we sat down to watch the special edition
Avatar
on Blu-ray, only to find that the software on the PC can't read the disc. A peer on
the Google
found that this is a problem with the version that we have - it was patched for the
theatrical release, but it's out of life now, by the looks of things. I figured we'd
look at the
the latest version,
but we've already demo'd that, so it's no use right now. I ended up downloading a
trial of
ArcSoft Total Theatre
so we could watch the movie now. I'll have to look into this further when I get
time. |
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| November 19th |
Mike's had Colleen come up and get him, so he's leaving his plane
here for Vince to fix when he gets to it. He's a ways down the list at the moment, as it
seems that everybody's suddenly wanting their planes worked on. |
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| November 18th |
After work, Vince and Mike came over and we went to dinner again.
It seems that Mike's replaced the windshield on his plane (that needed doing from the
last annual), but the parts to fix it haven't come in yet. |
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| November 17th |
Mike actually came up for his annual on his plane, and managed to
slam it into the ground just short of the runway. Hard enough to break the undercarriage
on one side, and damage the horizontal stabiliser. We have our theories, but he says he
ran out of fuel, so we'll go with that. Vince wasn't around at the time, as he's been
hard at work on his Flightstar, so Mike had to get Ray to help him drag it to the
hangars. Luckily Ray has a spare hangar at the moment, so it's all cuddled up there.
In the evening, we all went out for dinner and Mike stayed with us. |
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| November 16th |
In the past few days,
Tilly
has gone through tennis balls at an incredible rate. She won't even play fetch with
them before lying down to tear them to pieces. The current bag is made by Penn, so as
an experiment, Vic got some Wilsons - the ones that had lasted well before. Tilly was
happy to carry her new Wilson around and play fetch. We gave her a Penn, and she
proceeded to tear it to pieces. So, there's something about a Penn tennis ball that
screams "kill me!", and this'll be the last bag of those we get. |
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| November 14th |
I raked up all the leaves and cut the grass, just in time for the
wind to get up and replace all the leaves, making it look like I'd done nothing all
bloody morning. I did ride the
YSR
around the block, and I'm not sure that the battery's charging. Or maybe it's not
holding a charge. I might just disconnect one of the headlights when it's not on full
beam. Hmmm... there's a parking light circuit that's not being used :o)
When Vic got back from the
SPCA,
once again I headed out in the
Jeep
to run some errands. I ended up getting a new wireless keyboard for my computer -
mine's currently held together with duct tape. Sadly it won't work with my KVM switch,
so I got to take it back again. Joy. At least Best Buy aren't dicks about
returns. |
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| November 13th |
Vic was working on painting, so I got to take the
Jeep
to run my errands. On the way to
the airfield,
I passed a crazy old woman pushing a motorbike, so I went and ended up taking her to
get some gas for it. Once at Lincoln, I pulled the
Flightstar
out and went for a quick flight. It was very bumpy, so I didn't really enjoy it too
much, so I went home and fiddled with some O rings I'd bought for the
YSR
until we went and met Vince for dinner. |
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| November 10th |
I filled in and posted all the paperwork to get a new license
plate for the
YSR,
so it'll hopefully be ready to get registered soon. I'm going to see how that works
out before I decide whether to register it now, or wait for the renewal form.
Basically I'm not going to register it for a couple of months in the winter if I have
to pay for a whole year's registration. |
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| November 7th |
The clocks changed here, so I spent a bunch of time resetting
clocks. I know there are going to be some I haven't remembered, but I'll do them as
I come across them.
It was a rainy day, so I fiddled with the
YSR
in the garage, getting it (mostly) all back together now I've got nearly everything
working properly. I've put raw gas in it, and I left it running outside for about 10
minutes while I checked all over for oil leaks and let the paint on the exhaust cure.
It didn't seize, so I can only assume that the oil pump is working how the manual
says it's supposed to be.
I also sat and pulled the bits of the grille modification for the
Jeep
to pieces, then pulled the grille and epoxied the cable tie towers on (the sticky
blocks had come apart in the heat). I then zip tied on plastic gutter mesh, so
that looks better and will hopefully deflect anything headed for the radiator a
little. Not a lot. It's mostly for the look of the thing. |
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| November 6th |
It was a nice day, so we went and picked up some bits and pieces
I needed, then met Vince for lunch. After that we headed to
the airfield
so we could chat with Larry and Sid, and tinker with a few things on the
Flightstar.
We had all talked about flying, but the wind was getting up (it was over 10mph), so
we all gave up on that and headed home. |
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| November 4th |
The
van
has started to mark it's spot again (I think the drive up the
Grapevine
on the way to Los Angeles overpressured something - long long hills always seem to
be the thing that kills the seals), so we took it in to
Stephan's Autohaus
for them to look at. Again.
On a bright note, the flasher relay for the
YSR
finally arrived (don't ask), and I got that plugged in and sure enough the indicators
flash how they're supposed to. Excellent, now I can bolt it all back together and
look to see how hard it's going to be to register the thing. And get a new license
plate, as I never had one for it. |
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| November 3rd |
Yay!
Carly Fiorina
lost her battle for a Senate seat. I
(and a lot of other ex-HP
employees) never understood how she could run for senate based on "her experience
destroying running a Fortune 500 company". |
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| November 2nd |
It was election day here (finally, I'm sick of the ads), and at
least
Christine O'Donnell
had lost by the time we went to bed. Of course, seeing as
the voting machines are hardly
secure,
I'm just waiting for somebody to bring that up. |
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