Month: July 2019

The saga continues . . .

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Went on Sunday to fetch mobile phone, because the shop’s website said they were open Sundays from 11 am. Well, they weren’t. I was there from 11.15 to 11.20, got fed up and went home. So I collected it on Tuesday. It works fine apart from the SIM card, which works in the tiny little Nokia 105, but not in the Moto G5. Not sure why that should be, because I held on to the SIM card while they fixed the Moto G5. So Virgin are sending me a new SIM card and I’ve backed up all my contacts, a number of times. So I’m still using the Nokia 105. Sigh.

The plumber is currently here, the cold water tank is drained, and he’s fitting the new Salamander shower pump. So we have various large pans full of cold water and, should we need to, we can use water from the water butts to flush the toilet with.

Just back from the vet, where the cat had her annual vaccination and check up. That went fine, but before we got there she landed a scratch or two which are quite sore. And we hadn’t even tried to put her in the carry box, just the harness. She accepts the harness ok, but as soon as she realised she was going in The Car/Scary Noisy Monster she fought like, well, like a wild cat. Great.

Looking forward to having a nice shower with the working pump. The electric shower is ok but nothing like as good.

Just finished reading A Spark of Light by Jodie Picoult. Brilliant. Very, very good. Love her. Before that I re-read Circe by Madeline Miller (excellent) and before that Song of Achilles by the same person. Also, Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. It’s like I’m actually living in the book, almost. Next up is A Rose Petal Summer by Katie Fforde, then I have a Ruth Rendell to have a go at.

Painful appointment at the osteopath yesterday, but better today.

Right. Off to do the on-line weekly grocery shopping list. With a cup of tea, in comfort.

 

Onwards and upwards

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Well. My smartphone is still at the mending shop. I’m hoping to fetch it on Sunday. They fixed it quite quickly, but I haven’t been able to get there to collect it. It will be a relief to get it back. The Nokia 105 I bought cheap as a temporary measure works ok but literally only for making and receiving calls and plain texts. That’s ok though. I’ll have to sort out the mess that my contacts are in when I get my Moto G5 back. I’ve also bought a “rugged” phone case to prevent the same thing happening again. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, I have been struggling to set up a wi-fi repeater. It involved setting up an old router (a D-Link 880L) with new, open-source/free software called “dd-wrt”. Installing that went fine, but setting it up to work as a repeater took me ages and ages. Eventually, I set up my laptop next to my desktop, connected the router directly to the laptop (via an ethernet cable plugged into a LAN port, not the WAN port), and tried a variety of things. One set of instructions didn’t work. So I changed the ethernet cable, the ethernet port, re-booted the router, the repeater and my PC, with no joy. So. Then I tried instructions from this url and it worked. It actually worked.

The trouble is I have no idea what I am doing in this particular area, so just have to follow instructions blindly and hope for the best.

The next thing is to see whether the wi-fi signal is improved in the room with the repeater. I can access the repeater’s GUI from my desktop, laptop, and hubby’s desktop (wired connection) but not my Android tablet (wireless connection). But to be honest, if it’s accessible via the wired connections I don’t need to access it from my tablet anyway.

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The shower pump.  Mm. The guy came from the manufacturers, and had a jolly good look, and advised us that the wrong pump had been fitted two years ago and that’s why it burnt out. And that’s why the first one burnt out too, because it was the same (wrong) pump. We have had to order a different pump, which deals with the lower water pressure from our cold water tank, which costs more money, and a gizmo to fit into the cold water tank. I can’t pretend to understand what these things will do, but we are assured they are what we need. New pump to arrive on Monday, then we’ll get somebody in to fit it. Probably the guy who fitted the last one. . . .

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Had some Reiki yesterday. Very relaxing. Then slept for 5 hours straight all afternoon.

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This morning woke up feeling a bit odd, and realised I couldn’t see properly through my left eye. Was just getting to the point where I thought I ought to do something about it, and the aura arrived. Phew. A migraine. Fixable. Took my Maxalt Melt and slept for two and a half hours. All better.

Tomorrow am planning to go to the Stitch and Sip at the local yarn shop. Plans to buy some yarn for a new project. Yeah. A toy. Not too specific because it’s for a present.

 

 

Frustrated and muddled

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Dropped my mobile phone on the tiled floor a couple of days ago. I checked it cursorily and couldn’t see anything wrong. But that’s because the background was black. There is a forked crack.

Drat and botheration! (was NOT what I said). So I took it into Solihull today and left it with Phone Club (or something) to fix. They took out the SIM card and the micro SD card, both absolutely tiny, and gave them to me, because, they said, “they tend to get lost”. Oh no. No, No, No. Not having that. It’ll be ready tomorrow.

So I was left phoneless. Thirty years ago that would have meant nothing at all. Now I feel bereft, so decided to go and get a cheap, non-smart phone. Long story short, bought a Nokia 105. Perfect, I thought.

However. Sigh. The contacts are not on my SIM card and there’s nowhere for the SD card to go. Spent fruitless hours trying to sort that out, but the Nokia doesn’t connect to a pc either, it’s so basic.

Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I’d use hubby’s smartphone with my SIM and SD cards in and transfer the contacts over that way.

Nope. Nothing doing. Not an option in Android any more. So I had to get a free app to do that, and now I seem to have all his contacts as well as most of mine on my Nokia. Oh for f*ck’s sake.

Anyway, anyway, anyway. Thought that was sorted, and tried to text message a few contacts to explain I can’t use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or anything remotely fancy until I get my phone back. But for whatever godforsaken reason, I can’t send texts on the Nokia either. I can receive texts. I can make and receive calls. But I can’t send them (helpful suggestions welcome).

I actually had to email the contacts (at least the ones I have email addresses for!) to let them know.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that technology would be a little (a lot) more seamless than this, wouldn’t you.

And tomorrow I’m having my hair cut and going to the library. Then I’ll pick up my mended phone and sort out the contacts. Jeez.

Today was supposed to be a relaxing day.  I have been round and round various internet loops, checked and re-checked the message centre number for Virgin (red SIM) to no avail.

I am so wound up with frustration, I just needed to rant. So I did.

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In other news, the makers of the burnt out shower pump (Salamander) are sending an engineer out tomorrow to replace it. No charge, not even for labour. I think that’s pretty impressive.

Also, what a fantastic Women’s World Cup. Really, really exciting. The final was much more interesting than I think anybody expected (particularly the USA!) but of course they won. What an excellent, excellent team they are.

I am such a doofus

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You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after having had a couple of leads (usb and audio) and a usb adapter stolen from my car I’d be a bit more careful. However, when I got back to my car on Thursday morning after Stitch & Sip I discovered that I’d left the driver side window wide open. I’d put the Stop Lock on the steering wheel, and made sure everything that mattered was not on view. Except for the stereo fascia, which of course had been nicked. Luckily, that was a replacement fascia, which only cost me £7, and I’d kept the original one. I’d replaced that because it was blank, so I just ordered another one from ebay which arrived today. I’ll check it works tomorrow. But how lucky that the actual car didn’t get stolen!

This is not because I’m a doofus, but the shower pump has burnt out after only two years’ use. That was a replacement for a previous shower pump which also stopped working after two years’ use. At £500 a pop including fitting, that is not a small thing. Husband has been talking to the manufacturers, and they requested photos of the installation. They’ve had all that and we shall see.

Meanwhile, we’re lucky that we have an electric shower in the main bathroom, so I’m using that.

Knitting mojo has sort of returned.

Am currently knitting a scarf for a present, have two toys on my list to knit, and will return to the Elfe top when I’m feeling more on top of things.

Another project has made itself known to me. The wi-fi in our lounge is not all it could be. The main router is in the study, and has to be there because our service provider is cable. I have been reading that you can get wi-fi repeaters/boosters/thingamajigs, and on researching this discovered that if you have an old router you can “flash” that with some open-source (legally free) software.

Now, I have an old router, but no power supply for it. That is in the course of being remedied – ebay – but it arrived with the wrong adapter for the router. They’re going to send me a new one.

When that arrives, and I can actually get the router working, I’m going to have a go at installing that new software. All new territory for me, though I have built and re-installed several computers, lots of times. Exciting. I’ve saved all the relevant internet pages I need onto my pc, because it looks like I have to disconnect my pc from the network and therefore the internet and connect it via ethernet directly to the router. So I wouldn’t be able to access the pages if I’d saved them as bookmarks/favourites. Mm.

Planning to do some clearing up in the garden tomorrow – lots of annual poppies and deadheading to get rid of. Waiting till tomorrow because it’s going to be cooler tomorrow which suits me better.

Have started wearing harem pants. They’re 100% cotton, very loose and comfy, elasticated at the waist and ankle, ridiculously cheap, and perfect for this weather. I have five pairs now. All from ebay (thai_vibes). Love them.