technology

Nearly March

/ Loony Feminist / 5 Comments

I am absolutely delighted to report that I have finally found some plant-based “cheese” that is just delicious. It’s made by Cathedral City, and is a very creditable substitute for mature cheddar. It’s wonderful. It’s been 20 odd years since I have eaten anything like it. For many years I managed with goat or sheep cheese, but had to give that up too a few years ago, so for a while now I have had no dairy at all. I’ve tried various vegan “cheeses” but they were all disgusting. Until now!

I made a fruit cake today. It’s very dry. I have put a piece of frozen bread in with it to see if that will help. If not, it’s going in the bin. I baked it for 20 minutes less than the recipe said too. Ho hum.

And here is a photo of a granny square blanket. I could either crochet lots of little squares and then sew them all together, do stripes, or just one huge granny square. So I’m doing one huge granny square. It’s going well. I had decided I’d use up some stash yarn which is not really any good for anything else. Blue, cream, lilac/purple, and I’m doing whole rounds before changing colour. Also waiting to see how the mood takes me before I actually choose which colour to do next.

It’s on hold for the moment (27/2/23) while I do some coasters for a birthday present, but handy to have next to me in the lounge when I feel the need of a bit of crafting without too much brain power involved.

The latest on the “getting the tv to play sound through the hi-fi”: I need to switch the TV and the hi-fi off. Then switch the TV on and make sure it’s in Netflix. Then switch the hi-fi on and make sure that is on the correct source. And it has worked ever since! what a faff though. Quel bazar.

I’ve been getting on with my Duolingo Spanish, and that seems to be going ok. I learn well like that, and am able to pick up on vocabulary, grammar, conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns ok. I do make mistakes, but learn from them. When I’m happy enough with the Spanish, I’ll brush up on my Italian too.

Picking up my new specs tomorrow. Bespoke lenses, FFS, because the double vision has worsened. Quietly excited but also a bit worried, because they were expensive, and there was a problem a few years ago which involved six visits to the opticians before they sorted my new specs out. Hmm. Fingers crossed.

Feb update

/ Loony Feminist / 2 Comments

Well, I hardly dare even type this, but it does seem as if our new system for getting Netflix on the tv working with the hifi is successful – three times now. I’m not going to explain it, partly because it’s boring, partly because I’m worried that explaining it will break it, or at least stop it working. I have, however, made a note in one of my many little notebooks, otherwise we’ll just forget what to do.

Took some photos in the garden today – very excited about the winter aconite! and planning new plants for when the weather is a little kinder.

The one with all the stones has a story attached. We have a few of the neighbourhood cats come into our garden, and one of them uses the area around the bergenias as a toilet. I have no problem with that, but I do mind that she’s digging up the plants! or at least, digging quite deeply around them. So I have protected them with said stones. We shall see what she makes of that. They’re quite heavy, so I don’t think she’ll be able to move them. Hmm.

February 2023

/ Loony Feminist / 2 Comments

Well, my goodness me. Amazon wouldn’t upload my review of “Spare” because it “violated their guidelines”. Oh well.

Vodafone finally, after my fourth (slightly testy by this time) contact, admitted that they don’t do voicemail on full fibre. Why, may I ask (and did), did they not tell me this on the first contact? Fortunately, our landline phone has a facility for voicemail, so I’ve set that up. Just need to remember to switch it on . . .

Technology is not my friend, or so it seems. I spend an inordinate amount of time deep in the bowels of the software of the TV, and Netflix, trying to sort out why we can get the sound through the hi-fi on everything except Netflix. We have to go straight to the tv for Netflix, everything else (BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime) we can get through the Humax box. From time to time something works, but only once. This morning I have changed something on the SPDIF (wtaf?) to PCM (again, wtaf?) and it has worked. But now I’ve switched everything off at the plug, so who knows what will happen this evening when we switch it all on again. I certainly don’t.

And Virgin have finally, finally collected their kit. We also went to the tip (recycling centre) yesterday so the house is not full of crap.

We went away last weekend, to the Cotswolds, where we rented a “lodge” with a deck outside – and a hot tub! it was really excellent. We will be going there again, certainly. The hot tub does wonders for my stupid old back/knees/hands/shoulders/boomps-a-daisy. They change the water for each new visitor, I’m relieved to know. (Bluewood Lodges)

ED, her hubby and their 8 year old son came too. That was lovely too. He is so cuddly and affectionate, and so much fun. We played charades, Dobble, hide and seek (a lot) – which caused a lot of giggling (both of us). Particularly when I sat very still in a chair with a blanket over me . . .

I’ve started crocheting, just to use up waste yarn. It works up quickly and is fun to do in short bursts.

I’ve used up 50g of pale blue and cream and have done two sides in pale blue. The other colours I’ve chosen but not decided in what order to use them yet. I think I’ll just see how the mood takes me. I’ll either try and finish a whole round, or at least get to a corner before changing colour. This time, instead of doing little squares and joining them up, I’m just going round and round until it feels big enough, or until all the yarn is used up. It does mean that the rounds get bigger each time, but that’s ok. The third way is to do rows, but I considered, then discarded that idea. Nah.

Christmas Eve

/ Loony Feminist / 1 Comment

We don’t do religion at all, so for us it’s a sort of mid-winter beanfeast. We do gifts for our loved ones, phone those we don’t get to see, and make contact one way or another via technology. We have roast turkey on Christmas Day, and open our presents, and generally have a very jolly time. Just us this year which is wonderful. All those fraught difficult years with my difficult mother are gone. Nothing to worry about. Except cooking the turkey, which hubby does. I do everything else. Gifts, wrapping, posting, tree, decorating, baking. I made some mince pies which I finished off today – will make some more next week. Frozen dairy free pastry, shop-bought filling, but somehow the process makes them look and taste home-made. Result.

Today I made an apple cake (Nadiya Hussein recipe) and got into such a mess with it. The whole kitchen seemed to be covered in sticky stuff. But it’s all cleaned up now, the dishwasher (thank goodness for dishwashers) is running, and it’ll all be fine.

Yesterday I did my ironing. Wednesday ES came to stay with his youngest son, and that was lovely. Wednesday I sorted our landline and made a trifle (premade, dairy-free frozen sponge base, frozen mixed fruit, shop-bought soya milk custard).

Sorting out the landline was slightly fraught. We are in the process of leaving Virgin Media and have signed up with Vodafone, for half the price. We wanted to keep the same phone number, and on Monday we had no phone line. This does happen from time to time with Virgin, so I left it a couple of days, then phoned up and managed to speak to an actual person, who was very helpful. Turns out that Vodafone now have the number. So I plugged the phone into the Vodafone router and hey presto! it worked. Maybe, just maybe, Virgin or Vodafone could have let us know they were doing that two weeks before the contract with Virgin finished . . . just saying.

Next Monday (26th) we’re off to Malvern for a walk with YS, his wife and their Spanador puppy. Can’t wait to meet him!

Then later in the week ED plus hubby and son are coming to visit for a couple of days. They stay in an apartment in the middle of Birmingham which works well for them. Very excited.

So I wish you all a very happy holiday and a much, much better new year. Mazel Tov, and l’chaim (good luck and to life!).

June

/ Loony Feminist / 2 Comments

Well. Where to start.

Today would have been my Dad’s birthday so a bit nostalgic for me. At his barmitzvah he had strawberries, so my mother always tried to make sure there were strawberries for his birthday. Not so easy years ago.

Yesterday we returned from a long weekend at Center Parcs, with ED, her hubby and their little boy. He gets travel sick, and we all travelled from our separate homes by car on Friday, the hottest day of the year so far. Our air conditioning is fine, but theirs wasn’t working, so LCS ended up with heat exhaustion. A fair amount of vomming, lots of lying around being pale, and very difficult to get him to drink. By Sunday, however, he had perked up dramatically, and was much better. So Friday was much too hot. Saturday it rained all day. Sunday it was cooler and sunnier until the evening. I struggled with all the walking (really, really can’t ride a bike!) and the IBS, but we had a lovely weekend nevertheless. It’s great to see them.

Just fetched the cat from the boarding kennels. All was going swimmingly, despite the howling (her not me) until I took a wrong turn and missed the motorway. That’s actually ok because she hates the motorway worse than almost anything else, until I smelt a suspicious smell. Yup. She’d pooped. Then the yowling ratched up several notches, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it until we got home. Except for opening the car windows wide. And luckily it was all neat and contained within the towel/puppy pads in the carrier for just such an occurrence. Yeah.

So the cat is happy now, pottering in and out of the house/garden. I’m a bit fraught but not too bad. Hubby has popped to Marks and Spencers to get the stuff we need.

Today my job was fetching the cat. Done that. Knackered now! Tomorrow is sorting out the new router day. Last week we had major problems with the internet, some of which was the providers’ fault, some of which wasn’t. I had set the provided router up as a modem, and we have a separate router in the lounge, which improves the signal no end. But when I cut out the router, and made the old router back into a modem, it all worked. Sigh. So now we have a new router which I need to install. Yeah.

The washing is drying nicely on the line – love it when it’s dried outside. It just smells so nice!

Three Things

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Unamused Face Emoji

Thing 1: my Kindle died. Told me it needed charging, despite 57% showing. Plugged it in and left it while I slept for 2 hours or so, nothing but an exclamation mark when I woke up. Dr Google says that means the battery is not communicating with the device. So I’ve ordered a new one. Huh.

Thing 2: I managed to drop a full bowl of cold porridge on the tiled kitchen floor today. Cold porridge and broken bowl all over the place. Cleaned it up, harrumphing the while, and had toast for breakfast.

Thing 3: the Royal Mail has only just delivered, today, 11th February, the 18th birthday gift for a granddaughter whose birthday was 5th February. I posted it on 24th January. However, on the plus side, at least it was delivered. I’ve just managed to obtain a refund for two parcels to Dublin which were returned to me because Royal Mail mucked up the Customs process. Twice! so I’m highly relieved that the birthday gift has arrived, even if it’s late. Grrrr. Won’t be using Royal Mail for any more parcels to Dublin!

Love/Hate Technology

/ Loony Feminist / 1 Comment

Oh. My. Days.

I have just spent a very fraught hour or so trying to access my local doctor’s surgery on line. They’ve recently changed their website service, so you have to go through a whole heap of trouble to get there. You have to wait for text messages with special codes, special url addresses, special documents with yet more special codes in, and then put everything in the right place in the right order. It’s just like an obstacle course for the Very Advanced. Not meant for 65 year olds like me, even though I’m a techie.

Anyway, finally managed it. The whole point was to order repeat prescriptions. With this new system you have to put a message in too. I put “I need repeat prescriptions of these”. What would they like me to say??

At the same time, probably not terribly wisely, I was setting up our Netflix account and trying to talk to the water supply people about why they are sending letters to our address with the wrong name on it.

But it’s all sorted now. Netflix – subscription sorted. Water supply people – sorted. Surgery on-line access – sorted.

I now need a lie down with a cold compress on my forehead. But the cat needs feeding, and her day has been even more fraught because we had the guys in, aka The Noisy Boys, trimming the leylandii and various thuggish shrubs in the garden. She was terrified, so needs a nice calm evening. Yeah. Me too, kiddo.

The Noisy Boys did a great job though. The next thing, when the weather has sprung into spring, is the front lawn. Exciting.

what a morning

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Well. The printer, once again, decided it hates me. I bought the postage for a birthday card to New Zealand online, and it wouldn’t print it. But before that, I went to weigh the card and the battery in the scales had run out of juice. Changing the battery requires a very particular screwdriver and a very particular sort of battery. Luckily I did have both of those, so changing the battery wasn’t too bad.

However I have spent almost all morning trying to get the blasted printer to work. Apart from removing the printer from the computer, reinstalling, switching everything off and back on again countless times, I’ve rolled back the last Windows update, growled and harrumphed a lot (because that always helps with recalcitrant hardware and software), and eventually the printer spat out eight copies of something else, and one copy of the postage labels. I think that last thing was by accident. But anyway, it means the birthday card can actually be posted.

Success of a sort I guess, but it’s only a truce. I have no idea what caused, or solved, the problem. It could be any or all of the things I tried. We hardly use the wretched thing now but when we need it to work it’s such a damn nuisance when it doesn’t.

Ever since I started working with IT, which is well over 30 years ago now, printers have been the bane of my life. Their peculiar ways have always been a mystery to me. How can the computer say “can’t find printer” when it’s THERE?!

Other than that, a new POTUS has been sworn in, and calm seems to have been restored, along with sensible health and financial measures to help deal with Covid . The lying, bullying, rude, spoilt loser is off to Florida but is threatening to be back somehow or other. Ok. I thought Florida was where people his age go to retire. One can but hope. I would just love to know what his letter to the new POTUS said!

The birds in our garden are going bonkers today. It’s sunny and beautiful, but very cold, so I’m guessing they need their peanuts and seeds. One particular blue-tit is repeatedly picking up a dry leaf, flying across the garden with it, then dropping it. On to the ground. I’m thinking that Mrs Blue-tit is saying “Not dry leaves, you idiot, I said not dry leaves!” We also get flocks of long-tailed tits. They are just so pretty!

The jumper I finished for LCS is on its way back to me for mending. He loves it, and wears it a lot, and apparently he has been seen picking at it. Hey ho. Luckily I kept the bits of yarn left over for just such an eventuality.

Knitting is going slowly, but ok. Received some lovely 4ply cotton craft yarn – might crochet a dishcloth or two. Another day though. Today has been too fraught.

Hubby decided that we don’t need almost 1,000 cds in the lounge, we need the room for books. Which is true, as he prefers his books printed. I prefer mine on Kindle as books are difficult to manage with my stupid hands. However, we don’t actually play the cds, they’re all copied on to the music streamer. We have to keep them, though, it’s illegal to have the music without the original media.

So. After some discussion, I managed to persuade him that shelves on the ends of our desks would look awful, and that they would look much better next to the matching shelves in one of the spare bedrooms. It’s taken a good week or so, partly because getting the shelves and brackets etc isn’t that easy in lock-down, and partly because it’s quite a big job. Anyway, despite the fact that we both prefer to get a job done, we did it between us gradually, and now we have more space for books yet to be bought (sigh), the cds are in the house but not too obtrusive, and the re-organisation is done. Pictures would be a bit boring I think.

Busy, busy, busy

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I found 35 fox turds in our front garden. It’s like a public toilet for foxes. “This way, guys, it’s wonderful here”. The smell! so I’ve got some fox repellent called Scoot. It’s powder you mix with water and use a watering can to sprinkle. It doesn’t hurt plants or animals (or humans) and it makes a smell that only foxes can notice, and that smell tells them it’s somebody else’s lair, so keep away. It does work, but has to be replaced regularly. That’s ok though.

Then there’s the heating system which is still to wonk.

The wi-fi range is a problem in our house. It’s been working fine for years, until lockdown, and Skype and Zoom became regular things. I’ve been under the delusion that these powerline/homeplug/whatever-they-are-called things work through the whole house, but apparently, to my horror, they only work on the same electrical circuit. So I’ve ordered a wi-fi range extender with all sorts of bells and whistles, and am hoping that will help. We do have an old router I made into a wi-fi booster, but even that’s not helping with the Skype and Zoom problem. Last Saturday hubby and I sat in the study, using his tablet, next to the router, so that we could join in.

The network fell apart last night. The music player in the lounge (hubby streams music) was not visible on the network. (everything else was!) I had moved the router  (which is in the study) nearer the door (we’re on cable, so it can’t be moved out of the study) in an effort to improve the wi-fi range, though I hadn’t unplugged any of the ethernet wires. After a fraught and sweaty half hour, with lots of switching things off and back on again, eventually, the music player re-appeared on the network. I am sure the problem is that the only reason it’s visible at all is because of a huge long ethernet cable from the router to the music player, which looks a bit fragile where it’s attached to the plug. So I’ve ordered two more huge long (30m) flat ethernet cables, one to go from the switch box in the study to the switch box in the lounge, and a spare. (Resilience, I think the techies call it). The idea is that the switch boxes in the separate rooms will then talk to each other via the ethernet cables, as they clearly don’t talk to each other via the powerline / homeplug / blah blah blah. We shall see. Flipping technology.

And hubby hurt his back turning the compost. It’s a regular problem. So we’ve ordered a tumbler compost bin, which should help.

Lots of money going out. Lots of deliveries arriving, but somewhat sporadically. It’s all fine. It’s all FINE.