Protobikes

A very different weekend. I was at the pub on Friday late. It was pretty quiet, but my friend & neighbour Paul was there. He runs a landscape gardening company. I asked him if he was interested in resurfacing my drive. It is grotty old cracked concrete and needs doing. We are in negotiations. I was just thinking concrete. He is thinking about block paving.

It was a fairly late night, so I wasn’t getting up on Saturday, but Rainer rang and came round. He suggested a walk, so dodging showers we did my usual route. I found I was fitter than him. He suggested a pint. We got to one pub to find it was being refitted so we walked to another and had a drink. Back to the house and Rainer was uncertain if he would stay over. We went to Sushi Hama. My first visit. It is a tiny place with Japanese and Korean food. Good food and value and atmosphere.

Then to my local for a pint. Well… They had a rather good covers band on.  I think they were called Zapped. We stayed all evening. I met lots of friends and we had a really good time.

The pub tenant is from Sef Africa. I noticed a poster for a Brai for South Africa day, which happens to be my birthday. 

Sunday? I gave it a miss.

I’ve spent most of the last 2 days work wrestling with spreadsheets. Developing new stuff is better than the usual fire fighting.

It has been a pretty good week. I was daft enough to get the wrong date for Andy’s birthday do, but otherwise OK. I got quite a lot of work done. Did some new spreadsheets for monthly reporting. I had my last phone CBT session today. Good and sad as I could do with more support. The Lovely Samantha emailed me, for the first time in a while. The smile hasn’t worn off yet.

Tonight I have been working on more pics for the pages. I found some of the ones I want on negative, but the negative scanner does not index right for my camera. I think I will have to remove the index stubs so I can adjust the negatives. If the neg does not align correctly there is light spill which ruins the image. Might also need to blank adjoining pics. The good bit is the scanner has a better quality setting which means I can get better results on the pictures that came out poorly.

It is just after 10:00. I’m about to have a quick shower, then adjourn to the pub.

I an gradually getting the hang of comments on the blog. Looks like most of them are spam I really welcome geniune comments from real people, but If I click your comment and it comes up with a dead site or something commercial, I’m afraid I will delete it. My blog is not intended to be a commercial enterprise, so please don’t send spam. Thanks.

Over the weekend I also cleared the yard up quite a bit and put up a bird nest box. I finished the car washer jets and started on replacing the under bumper panel, which has rotted. I got the black plastic lip off and the grill out, but stopped because it was getting dark and cold. I think I will cut most of the old one off with shears so I can get at the fasteners. May have to drill them out.

Also planted up some seeds including some salad spuds which were sprouting. Did a tip run. Went for a pint on Sat night and had a nice evening. I found some more of the pics for My Bikes and hope to load them tonight. I actually felt like doing things and got carried away, doing one thing after another.

Sorry not to have kept up. A mixture of things, including a contact with my Dad’s best friend. I am not very nostalgic. I wasn’t close to my dad. I think he is in a cozy myth about our family. Not something I experienced.

Quite a few other things have been pretty good. I said I failed to do the CBT tasks. I was anxious about the call, but it was very good. Gemma’s view is that I’m artistic and not much suited to fixed task, but I’m pretty good at coming up with my own. I was so relieved I wept, but felt much better after. I guess I am going to have to do this my way, like I do everything, but a bit of review would help a lot.

I had quite a busy weekend. I completed disassembling the HP hub, including the steerer bearings. Drilling out the stainless stud was a bit scary but went pretty well.

Maybe an important thing is I am experimenting with snoring control. I have a reflux problem which tends to make me sleep on my back.  I try to keep my head to one side or the other, but it may be I wake myself up often. I have been trying Snoreeze oral strips and a Snore Mate mouthpiece. The latter is a thing that moulds to your teeth but moves the jaw forwards, Try making a snore  sound, them move your jaw forwards.  Can’t snore.  It is taking a while to sleep with it. The former is a strip that dissolves in the roof of the mouth. I can’t figure out what the active ingredient is. My nasal passages are already clear using a saline nasal spray, but it seems to have some effect. I have been waking up much better over the weekend.

More on the weekend later. Getting late now.

The week continues franticly busy. In the evenings I have been working on the Hocus Pocus front wheel. Now fully stripped down except that an M8 stainless grub screw which locates the hub brake is bent. I have spent quite a while trying to extract it. Now it is nearly flush with the aluminium hub. I went to the MDSME http://malden-dsme.co.uk workshop session to get some advice. Looks like drilling it out using my drill/mill and a centre drill, slow speed, with some force and Rocol. I need to centre it well, which the digital scales should help with, and push through the surface hardness.  After that, gradually increasing drills until only the thread is left.

This morning someone decided to walk over the A316, right near the footbridge near Sunbury. They didn’t make it, so all the M3 traffic was going onto local roads. I was an hour late to work, but the meeting I was supposed to go to did not happen. Not very much later I went to the gym for a spin class. Did I mention ‘The Bloke’? After 15 mins I wanted to stop, but I hung in there. I was shattered at work after but I am buzzing on endorphine tonight.

After the gym, there is Greggs (Meatball Ciabata) and the Fara charity bookship. I found a Henning Mankell and a Jo Nesbo, so I won’t be writing until I finish them;-).

When I got back, I had a panicky call saying a PC user had something wierd going on. I think it was ‘PC Disk Pro Antivirus’. Quite nasty as it disables things, but it’s a scam. It says you have loads of infections, and that you should give your credit card details to get the version that fixes it. Doh!

I was already planning to go to that department on a JFDI mission to install a cable. I fixed it and the cable thing worked well, but I have been asked to disable Games. I thought I had done it, but had to have another go. Later server versions have it as a GP option. Not ours. I tried another way. We’ll see.

I really must do more exercise, though I know the effects are diminishing. I have done none of the CBT stuff and have a phone session on Friday.

Tomorrow (Thurs) I have to present the new work order format I have been working on. Should be OK and live Friday.

Everyone seems better than me at joke humour, but the cartoon of  ‘Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area’ with a horse on the scales amused me.

I was talking with the Wednesday engineering teacher at MDSME about food scares. He mentioned cannibals so I told him about Kuru being like BSE, and that the preparers of the brain were susceptible. He said it must be hard to find the brains in black people. I was appalled and should have told him, but at least I came back with ‘Not as hard as with Daily Mail readers’, of which I know he is one. He is half German. Wierd. Please don’t do anything with this. I expect some decent (if deluded) people read the Daily Mail. I just needed to express myself. I will tell him when I see him.

I think any decent person would abhore the above. My grandfather came from Poland and my grandmother from Lithuania. They were Jewish, so my Dad was. My feelings of what is acceptable and what is not may be connected with this, but that makes them more real.

On Saturday, Sherri was passing, staying near Heathrow. We went for an excellent curry in Hounslow West and got caught up a bit. She was on her way to Hawaii, then to Oz.

On Sunday morning Rainer visited and stayed for an hour or so.

I got the front wheel of Hocus Pocus stripped. A spoke has pulled out of its nipples. I think I cut and threaded the spokes myself. Should be easy to fix. There is slack in the steering axis bearing, which will be harder. To replace those bearings I will need to remove at least one of the big low profile bearings the wheel revolves on. I would also like to start on replacing the front steel components with carbon fibre. I have most of the parts, but some machining is needed.  

Took some packing and a bag full of shoes to the recycling, but missed my walk. It was sleeting.

Today hasn’t been too bad so far, but I have so much to do I hardly know where to start.

Today was a better day, despite hangover. At work I am taking a JFDI approach. When I worked for BA we were deluged with ‘Initiatives’. TQM, PPF, WFC. No need to explain. They are TLAs (three letter acronyms). The one we came up with had four letters and stood for Just F…ing Do It! I am doing some of the tasks I have asked the general system to do. I will get them done. They didn’t.

Several ticks on the task sheet and finally one on the bike task sheet. The front wheel of Hocus Pocus, the bike on my heading, has some problems. I think a spoke has broken. Can’t see with the wheel cover on. Also, there is slack in the hub centre steer. I think the conical bearings apply a lot of force pushing each other out when I brake. The solution may be to replace them with normal annular bearings. They probably wouldn’t live long in a road bike, but HP is a racer.

Tonight I took the front wheel out. I used to have a special set of tool for this but they have dispersed, so it took over an hour. Tomorrow I can bring it in and check it out in the warm.

It continues to be a slightly odd week, with too much booze again. Work went reasonable OK. I made some progress on some of the projects, including installing and commissioning the new printer.

I don’t have a phone session until next week, so I guess I am procrastinating on the self-help. I’m supposed to write down stuff I plan to do. Seems like plans to fail at, but I guess I will give it a go.

Today was a better day. Last night, after doing relaxation exercises, I got rather drunk. It seems to have blasted out my worries from the weekend. A different reason to feel grim! The exercises are on my tiny old MP3 player. Rather weird as there are sound ‘artefacts’ on the recording. Could be eructations. The other stuff on there includes Little Feat ‘Dixie Chicken’ and another newer album. I can’t remember the name of the newer group, but DC got me singing, dancing and strumming the old Hof. A couple of oddities on there including a version of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, at higher pace, spoken rather than sung by an American. Very funny, but I have forgotten who did it. Wikipedia did not help.  

Yesterday afternoon I did something about one of the insoluble problems. Against my better judgement but it seems to have satisfied the users.

Today I did quite a few bits of testing, most of which worked pretty well. A report has gone back for further tweaking, but it is close. I was testing a new printer which needs to do 3 different formats. I got it all working direct connected. Not quite as good when networked but it looks possible. Excuse me if I go into geek here. I got the printer onto the network. There isn’t a spare network connection so I paid my own money for a 4 port hub, so the printer can run from the network rather than a PC. The boss has told me I must to recharge the customer for stuff I buy, but this is replacing an existing setup. Not worth worrying about. If it works I will get satisfaction worth more that £20.   

Spin class tomorrow. I got the date for Andy’s birthday do wrong. It’s not ’till March. Good as it is less tomorrow and still something to look forward to.

If there is anyone out there, it would be nice to have a few more non spam comments.

I have done quite a lot more on My Bikes. May get some more done tonight. If I get up to date, maybe I will get round to building one of the new ones.

Been a while… I had most of last week off work. Didn’t walk on the 10th, but was visited by Rainer. Mostly slept until Weds. Got the door jam finished and put a bookcase together.

A big white tooth filling broke. Had it repaired Weds. No pain, just inconvenient. I finally read the CBT stuff, but have been procrastinating. Phone session less enjoyable than the last. There is a ‘Mindfulness’ bit which is essentially meditation. It is suggested one works up to doing 3 – 4 hours! I’m not going to do that. Might work with walking. The relaxation exercise is a bit uncomfortable too. I have not started really.

I went up to town, had a look in Tate Modern and bought some cycling and other clothes. Staggered home, then went to the pub. I was enjoying it, but a row broke out which seems to have had some connection to me. No idea what but I am a bit glum.

I walked yesterday, 3 times up the steep hill.

Today has been a rotten day back at work. Lots of new problems, some of which I know I can’t solve. I wanted to get on with some development/testing work. No chance of that. Still, I think it is Andy’s birthday on Weds. Something to look forward to.