Got a new LED bulb for the bathroom as CFL aren’t good for being turned on and off so often.
April 3, 2014
February 23, 2014
New Full HD TV
With season 4 of Game Of Thrones coming real soon and my old TV getting a bit tired it seemed like time to replace it.
Getting the stand on was the biggest hassle. It’s not really a one-person job.
Have to tidy up a bit.
January 27, 2014
New Microwave Combination Oven
After 23 months our previous Microwave Combination Oven died for an unusual reason – the control knob broke making it impossible to set cooking times. For ten pounds more than we paid last time we got an almost identical model except in a black finish and with a different control panel. Why buy the same make again? Because it worked well until the knob broke. The identical model was available but cost twenty pounds more than this one which appears to have exactly the same innards and a different control panel.
December 28, 2013
Xmas Swag
Game Of Thrones season 2 DVD box set, the Cogman Game of Thrones coffee-table book, the first three volumes of Buffy series 9 the comic book and the last two Banks books I hadn’t got. And I got a House Stark official GoT T-Shirt. And on top of the pile is a very small 32GB flash drive.
December 13, 2013
Powerline 200
So I was down to three 85mbps Homeplugs again which meant the PVR wasn’t connected any more. Replacing a single 85mbps Homeplug was rather expensive as they are obsolete and it would be even worse the next time one blew. So I bit the bullet and got four new 200mbps Homeplugs. These cost me just about £30 for four including delivery from Amazon.
Two twin-packs.
Very compact. I worry about the lack of ventilation given that heat seems to have killed most of my previous 85mbps home plugs but maybe these ones run cooler.
Instead of having to run a setup program you can just run around pressing the little black reset button in the correct fashion to assign a random encryption to the network. So far so good.
September 27, 2013
Electrical fault
On the 25th we had a ten-minute power outage. This is very unusual – normally years go by without a power cut around here. A little later in the day several vans arrived and men dug a hole in the pavement in front of my front door. They found what they were looking for and cut the power (not my power – it’s still on). They need a bigger hole to replace a section of cable.
The next day they put up lots of no parking bollards and put notes in windshields waiting for the parked cars to go away.
Today they dug the rest of the hole, patched up the fault in the cable and went away.
I expect somebody will come and fill the hole in again soon.
September 17, 2013
Sennheiser PSU
My Sennheiser wireless headphones had taken to cutting out (no lights on the base-station) after several hours of use. Unplug it and leave it and they’d be working next day. Since the cheapest part I can replace is the PSU, that’s what I got for £13.75 with next day First Class post delivery. The new wall wart is a switching unit whereas the old one was a heavy copper transformer. It’ll be a while before I know if I’ve cured it as it was an intermittent problem anyway.
August 14, 2013
Approved Food
Another order from Approved Food arrived today. I had some PayPal funds and it was easier to spend them in places that take PayPal than to transfer them out into the bank account. So eBay got several orders as well, and I renewed my F&SF subscription for another two years.
A big box
Containing four smaller boxes
Each of which contains an assortment of weird foodstuffs I bought. Here are 12 soya desserts for £1, three energy drinks for £0.99, sixteen cans of stuffed green olives, half with almonds and half with lobster for 50p a can…
The rest of the olives, 3 cans of tuna for £1.20, 6 cans of sardines in olive oil with hot peppers for 50p a can, a free gift jar of hoi sin sauce, and some loose cupcakes (48 for £1.99).
8 kosher beef flavour vegetarian instant noodle soups for 50p each, 3 twin packs of vegetarian mango jelly for 50p a pack.
The rest of the 10 packs of salted peanuts for 20p each and a box of 15 muffins for £1.49. There were 2 packs of roasted jumbo cashews at 75p each in there too. About 130 things if you count the individually wrapped cakes.
