Super strength Rob

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There’s a scene in most superhero movies where the would-be hero does something while unaware of the incredible strength they now have. The results are things like baseballs going into orbit, cars flying in the air and really unpleasant handshakes.

I’ve just had that experience myself. I was taking my morning row when there was an almighty bang and the rowing machine fell into two pieces. Obviously my super-strength was the problem. I tracked it down to the above bolt which I have managed to snap after only 9 years of regular use. It seems that every rowing stroke bent the bolt slightly and eventually it failed. I wasn’t too worried about this. I’ve repaired the machine several times. I looked up the availability of bolts and found a suitable replacement. Then I took a look at the fitting it goes into on the machine. The head of the bolt had been welded into place. I’ve no idea why. It makes it impossible to for me to replace and increases the chances of the bolt failing in the first place.

So, it was onto the internet and a search for a replacement machine (I don’t want to stop rowing). I took the old one down to the tip and bid it a fond farewell. The new machine arrived this afternoon (thanks Argos). I hope it lasts as long as its predecessor.

Masked Fun at Comicon

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They had a unicorn there.

We went to Comicon today. It was great fun. Although the Covid protection measures were laughable. Our carefully printed COVID passes were checked by someone who could apparently read QR codes by just glancing at them. Social distancing was non-existent, the place was more packed than I've ever seen it and we were pretty much the only people wearing facemasks that weren't part of a costume. It seems that "mask friendly" means that they won't throw you out if you are wearing one. Oh well. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much more. And we still went and had a good time.

The halls at the NEC are pretty big with high ceilings. And we didn't stay in one place for very long. With a bit of luck we’ll be OK. Although I'm not convinced that hope really counts as a pandemic management solution.

Google is still broken for me

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Google search is still broken for me. And a few other people too. Apparently the search team is looking into it. I just hope they can get access to their pages.

This really brings home to me the benefit of paying for services. If I was paying for a search service I’d have proper leverage with the supplier. It would be directly in their interest not to upset their customers. And I would know exactly how my service was being paid for. As it is, they seem to have made the call that giving the problem a proper level of priority isn’t worth it.

Google is ghosting me

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I don’t use Google search that much. The search built into Edge does most of what I want. And for really hard stuff I use duckduckgo. But recently I don’t use Google at all. When I go to google.com I get the above error. I’ve tried it on different machines and I get the same error. I think it might be something to do with my Google account, although mail works fine, as to other Google services.

When I was at Tech Week on Tuesday I made the mistake of trying to read my Gmail on a machine I hadn’t used for a while and when I tried to sign in it offered me the chance to complete the process on a device that I didn’t have with me. Which was tricky. The process failed, I got an email telling me that someone was trying to access my account (yes! it was me!) and ever since I’ve had this problem accessing the site. I think it is having a form of digital sulk.

Amplifiers for sale

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Amplifier.png

I found this camera that I really wanted. But I really shouldn’t buy it as buying cameras is a waste of money. Really.

So I decided to raise the cash by selling some stuff that I don’t need any more, which includes a couple of home entertainment receivers I seem to have accumulated. So today I spent a happy afternoon plugging them in, making sure that they work and then wondering why I replaced them in the first place……

They will be on eBay next week…. As for the camera, I’ve already bought it - so I really hope these things sell……

Simply Piano has made me into a Disney Princess

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Much to my surprise, I’m still doing my piano practice every day. I’m using the Simply Piano app which works very well for me. Up until recently I was able to coast a bit, what with being made to play the piano when I was much younger. But now I’m learning stuff that is properly new to me and making a tiny bit of progress every day.

Anyhoo, Simply Piano has got hold of the rights to a bunch of Disney tunes for me to practice which has been great fun. The way they arrange the exercises it sounds like you’re part of a performance with singers and full accompaniment (although I’m always a bit sorry for the person who has to sing along with my playing). Good playing gets you stars for each piece. Eighteen stars and you’re a performing princess. Twenty four stars (a perfect performance in everything) and you get to be a prince. Not sure if I’m going to make it, but I’m enjoying trying.

Achievement Unlocked: We now own a shed

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Actually we don’t own a shed as such just yet. Rather, we’ve got a collection of pieces of wood which one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) will be fixed together to form a shed-type building. The pieces arrived this morning at 6:45 am. At 6:55 it started to rain for the first time in a while. So I was out in the wet before breakfast trying to cover over the really big bits of wood so that they would remain dry enough for painting.

Fortunately I seemed to manage it and later on in the day when the rain had stopped and the sun came out I was able to give all the woodwork two coats of hopefully waterproof paint.

VOIP phone

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The chap from Kingston Communications came along today to fix our broken phone. Except that he didn’t fix it, he changed us over to “voice over internet”. This was actually a very sensible move. There’s not a lot of point spending time and effort mending a connection to something that will be torn down in a few years anyway.

Now our fibre optic connection is also our phone connection. The dial tone is the same and everything works as before. This means we can continue to receive the spam calls that make up most of our landline use.

The only snag that I can see is that if the mains power goes off our phone connection goes too. However, we all have mobile phones, so in that situation we can use those instead to ring someone and ask “Our power’s gone off, has yours too?”.

Broken phone

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We hardly ever use our land-line telephone. Most of the calls that we get are of robotic voices telling us that our Amazon account is about to explode or we owe a bunch of income tax. However, we’ve stopped getting even those calls now, as the wire to the phone seems to have snapped somewhere. The good news is that the Kingston Communications folks are great to deal with and someone will be coming out later this week to take a look.