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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Daddy Clanger's LiveJournal:
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | ||||
| 6:25 pm | Unix sysadmin vacancy Just in case anyone is looking for gainful employment: http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/news/110-ful | |||
| Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | ||||
| 5:21 pm | Second opinion So, the Citroën garage (who I've not yet spoken to since Tuesday) wanted £800 to replace the clutch, another couple of hundred for the flywheel and about £300 for the brakes, if I remember the conversation correctly. I've now contacted two local garages. P Bruno have told me that the cost of the parts is: clutch kit £155.35; flywheel £214.05; set of discs £73.87; pads £39.78, and gearbox oil £4.75. Added together with 7 hour's labour and VAT it comes to £923.22. Mr Clutch have told me that a clutch kit is £299.99 including labour and VAT; that it's very unlikely the flywheel actually needs replacing (as it's not a DMF) but that if it has surface imperfections then they can skim it for £50 (I've seen at least one web site that says this should be a standard practice anyway when replacing a clutch), and that the clutch and brakes together (but not flywheel skim) come to £450.92. So that's a saving of £900 off the original price, and Mr Clutch is coincidentally located on my bike route (and bus route) into work. | |||
| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | ||||
| 10:37 pm | Woe is my car My car is overdue for an annual service¹ and it's been roughly 12.5K miles since the last one, which coincidentally is the recommended service interval (despite what the odometer thinks). It's just coming up to 75K miles. In addition, the central locking had been playing up (the first time it happened was outside ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} oldbloke's house six months ago, and then it did it about once a month until a couple of weeks ago) and stopped working altogether this last Sunday, with the result that it's impossible to lock the doors — but I'm fairly sure this is down to a mere broken wire. And for the last few weeks it's been shuddering a lot during low-speed manoeuvres, which made me suspect the clutch was wearing out.So I sent it to a Citroën service centre. I deposited it at about 9am, and at 4pm I rang them to see if there was any progress. They were still making a report of the work needed. At about 5.10pm, just as I was getting on a bus to come home from work, my mobile rang with the news that the repairs add up to somewhere in the region of £2,000. Ouch. Apparently in addition to the clutch — and flywheel — being completely worn out, the back brakes are practically on the bare metal and need discs and pads. They want to replace something else that I didn't quite catch (tensioning pulleys?), and apparently when connecting their computer to try to diagnose the central locking problem they couldn't get any response at all and have thus decided that my "comms 2000" needs replacing (I assume this is the car's CPU, so to speak). But they did in fact find and fix the broken wire while they were looking at things, and I think they said that means the central locking is fixed. (But perhaps this story is garbled — I'd also asked them to look at fixing the automatic headlights that come on even in bright daylight, with the comment that it wasn't important and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it.) This is all in addition to the 75K mile service, of course (which apparently is quite a big one). And the air conditioning needs re-gassing. So, they want £300 to do the brakes, £800 (!) to do the clutch, £200 (or was it £300) for the flywheel, another couple of hundred for the comms 2000, some for the bit that I didn't quite catch, £100 for the air conditioning (although of course that one's not essential) and £400 for the service that I originally sent it in for (though for that price they were going to throw in the next service and two MOTs as well). And so that's why they didn't start doing any actual work, because it's pretty close to — or maybe more than — the value of the car. What Car? says² that I might expect to pay a dealer about £2,100 for a used car of this age. It's a Citroën Xsara LX 2.0 HDi Hatchback, 02-reg with 73,800 miles. I'm kind of expecting one of the garage's sales droids to call me tomorrow and offer me some deals on used cars. The value of my current car is now approximately zero as it's bound to fail the next MOT (August) unless the brakes are done. (That having been said, it does still have a few litres of diesel in it and five month's tax and the engine itself is probably basically sound.) Therefore, the question becomes: would I pay £2,000 or more for my old car, or would I prefer to spend the same amount on a different one? The chief disadvantage of paying for the existing car to be repaired is that on the face of it it seems silly to fork out the cost of a whole new³ car just on repairs. (And the fact that there's a dent in the passenger door.) And you don't know what's going to go wrong with it next. The chief advantage would be that I'd be getting a car with lots of new parts in it, and if you buy another one you never know what's going to go wrong with that. Also it's in a sense more "green" to fix something than it is to throw it away and get another. Obviously I need to know if the garage is trying to fleece me, so I may have to ring a local garage and ask how much they'd charge to replace the clutch, flywheel and rear discs and pads. Anyone who gets up earlier than me and would like to add a number to the mix, the more the merrier… Ho hum. I really didn't want to be back to looking for cars so soon after the last one. ²Or said, as for some reason it won't offer me an opinion now despite the fact that it did at 4pm today. ³Obviously not "new new", just "new to me". You know what I mean. Current Mood:  crushed | |||
| Friday, June 19th, 2009 | ||||
| 10:17 pm | lj_election_en It looks like I'm not standing this year, only because I didn't get my arse in gear. I'm sure the nomination process lasted more than four days last year? Anyway, with a couple of hours to go it looks like the election will be between five candidates. Given how well it went last year I think people are a lot less interested in it this year. | |||
| Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | ||||
| 4:20 pm | Another composition by smallclanger When I brought smallclanger home today, the keyboard was out. So he decided he would get some paper and write a piece of music for me to play. I happened to have Rosegarden running, so it was possible to make the notes we played appear on the computer. And after being tidied up, it looks like this:  | |||
| Friday, June 5th, 2009 | ||||
| 10:32 am | Advertisement If you happen to be at a loose end in Oxford tomorrow (Saturday) evening — and in fact also if you don't — I'll be taking part in a choral concert at Wesley Memorial Church from 7.30pm. Admission is free but there will be a retiring collection for the church building project. The leaflet for this concert promises "amazing anthems, show-stopping solos, charismatic choruses and much much more". The programme is set to include works by Tallis, Gibbons, Purcell, Mendelssohn, Rutter, Goodall, Flanders&Swann and a couple of numbers from well-known musicals. | |||
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | ||||
| 11:41 am | Jack o' diamonds is a hard card to play I've made a few wrong plays in this tournament, but I think I played this one correctly. See what you think. ! Your hole cards are Jh Jd Every player seems to have his nightmare hand, and mine is a pair of jacks. You can't turn it down, but it's often not quite high enough to win. In November 2006 I paid 9600 (out of 19250) to someone who eventually turned out to have AA (lucky I had the good sense to get out instead of calling the final bet of 5400), and although that season I went on to survive until May 9th and 49th place my perception of the hand suffered rather. In fact on that May 9th I was eliminated by someone who paired his J on the flop. (I had an open-ended straight flush draw — any K or 9 for the straight, any club for the flush, or any Q for a higher pair, but no: what came out was another J). I've only had JJ once since then — in November 2008 when I reraised pre-flop and then got out quickly when A77 was turned over. ! imc blinds $40000! James Scharf raises $100000 James is the overall chip leader with 1,197,850. I am the table's short stack with 364,200. I'm pretty new on this table, but the history tells me that James usually has something decent when he opens the betting, though he's been known to call a high bet with only A/x or K/x. I'm putting him on probably an ace and another high card, maybe a good king-high hand or an outside chance of a decent pair. But I can't not play the jacks at this stage. Everyone else folds. ! imc calls! Pot right ($342000), flopping/dealing/drawing cards ! 2 players ! Flopped cards: 6h 10d Kh Drat, missed. If there were an ace on the board I'd check and fold, but with only just over 200K would be in a very bad position for future hands. If he has a K I'm probably finished, but otherwise there's a decent chance. Two hearts on the board mean a slightly better than 1 in 16 chance that he has a four-flush (slightly better because you're more likely to bet a suited hand than a non-suited one). My only options here are check-and-fold or push — if he's interested in staying in then he'll raise enough to put me all-in anyway. There's only the chance that if the flop missed him he'll fold, and to make that happen I have to bet high. ! Ian Collier bets $218200 and is all in ! James Scharf raises $833650 and is all in ! Pot right ($1612050), flopping/dealing/drawing cards ! 2 players, 2 all in ! Flopped card: 10h ! Flopped card: 4d ! Hand over, current board is: 6h 10d Kh 10h 4d ! imc has: Jh Jd ! James Scharf has: Ah 9h What rotten luck, he made a flush! Even after the 10h fell it wasn't completely over for me — another 10 or a J would have made a full house. But it wasn't to be. I finish 36th (out of 1072 starting players) and win 56,816 virtual dollars. In practice this means my initial investment of zero real dollars is multiplied by 5.6816 and returned to me. I knocked out one player. Unusually, oldbloke is still in. :-)Only five months till the next one. | |||
| Sunday, May 24th, 2009 | ||||
| 7:04 pm | Proofreading The following introduction to TANDOORI MASSALA SPECIALITIES appears on the menu of a local Indian/Bangladeshi takeaway: Invented by Indian chef in world famous british curry house in 1980 as aThis is the same one whose address on the front cover misspells the name of our estate by adding an apostrophe… The food was reasonable, though. | |||
| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | ||||
| 12:41 pm | Hello You may be wondering why I've cut you out of my posting filter the last few months. Well no, there is no filter — it really is that long since I've posted. So what better to break the silence than a content-free post such as this one? (Incidentally, about DW: I'm not moving, and probably won't unless LiveJournal folds or becomes a heck of a lot more evil than it is now. I do have a namesquat there lying pretty much unused, and in consequence I've recently been allocated two invite codes.) | |||
| Monday, November 24th, 2008 | ||||
| 12:00 am | Spelling in advertising  This was on the side of a 2kg bag of Tesco Demerara unrefined cane sugar which I bought long enough ago to have finished (it goes into the bread machine 2.5–3 tbsp at a time). The new one still says the same… | |||
| Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 | ||||
| 11:38 pm | Truth in advertising "Cow&Gate dairy desserts — less sugar than Mum's bangle." Exactly how much sugar do they think is in Mum's bangle? In case you've missed this, Cow&Gate are sponsoring some programmes on C4 (in particular, Supernanny) so there are these bookends before and after the ad break featuring a small child trying to eat his or her toys and other household objects. It's quite humorous really, but sometimes you have to actually think about what you are saying. Another one I seem to remember is "more iron than a set of keys", which is only true because the keys in question happen to be made of plastic. | |||
| Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | ||||
| 4:17 pm | Voice Post, as promised
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| Friday, October 31st, 2008 | ||||
| 11:58 pm | Trick or Treat The activity below is something that anyone can join in, but it originates from LiveJournal Support. It's actually been a fair while since I did any support, but I decided to Trick or Treat anyway. It's late, so you get all week. It is still technically the 31st in the USA, though as I'm in the UK I did have to fiddle the clock slightly… So. I have never voice posted before. I will personally work out how to do it and speak any sentence of your choice (see small print below) if you do one of my tricks. If you do both tricks you get two sentences. Yeah, other people are doing this too, but I had this idea months ago damnit! Trick 1. For anyone. Comment here to say hi and tell me something nice about any other LiveJournal user. Trick 2. Also for anyone, but if you are totally not interested in LiveJournal support, stop reading now. Note that I don't currently have any privs at all, so I can't see your screened answers and I wouldn't be allowed to comment on how good they were even if I could. So this will be on the honour system. Post your links, and someone else will tell me if you are fibbing. :-) Small print: Voice post will be a public post and will contain all the submitted sentences joined together. I get to choose the order, though if you get two sentences you may request they be read consecutively (or not). If there are many entries I may split them up into two or more posts. There is no maximum length of a sentence but please keep it to a size that would reasonably fit into a voice post with other sentences. This is a family journal — please keep it decent. I reserve the right to ask you to rephrase your sentence if I deem it to be unpronouncable or unsuitable for broadcast. | |||
| 3:48 pm | WRGPT I've just doubled up. Unfortunately the scores get wiped later today because it's only the practice round. Ah well. Mind you, if it were not the practice round I probably wouldn't have pitched in $4000 to stay in with only a pair of 2s (A2 to match a board of K42). I won it because the last card out was also a 2. PS. I took the keyboard apart (it has about two dozen screws — I kept having to go back to look for more when I couldn't get the lid off). I cleaned the contacts. I put it back together again. And verily it now works. It is probably lucky for me that it was a relatively cheap one (cost me about 200 quid back in the day but it would probably be a third of that now for a better model) because that meant the switches were just the same kind of rubbery things you find inside a calculator or mobile phone. Lift it off, clean the bottom of the rubbery thing and the top of the circuit board, put it back on, and Bob's your uncle. | |||
| Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | ||||
| 12:01 am | Thank you for the music On Saturday afternoon smallclanger said he wanted a piece of paper, then a ruler. He asked me to hold the ruler so I helped him draw some lines, just where he wanted them on the page. Then he got busy drawing, and the result was this.
He decided he would ‘play’ this on my keyboard and requested me to sing (so found me a random sheet of music with some words on it). This was an… interesting experience. :-)
Unfortunately, on Sunday afternoon I came back from a trip to the loo to find that I am kind of hoping that it will get better as it dries out, but if it doesn't then, like Gabriel Gray, I may be compelled to take it apart in order to understand how it works. | |||
| Monday, October 27th, 2008 | ||||
| 12:01 am | Citation needed This morning someone happened to mention that there is a law stating that putting a stamp on an envelope with the Queen's head upside-down constitutes treason. My first reaction was: obvious urban myth, innit. But a quick Google failed to find anyone who has done the research to prove it either way (although it did turn up several people trotting it out including the BBC page linked above, which doesn't cite any sources although it does claim that "several examples of laws from the survey which we have been unable to verify … have been removed"). What say you o lazyweb? | |||
| Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | ||||
| 2:11 pm | Jobs Just in case anyone happens to be interested or knows someone who is looking, two computing support positions available: Windows and Mac Systems Administration Network and Infrastructure Projects | |||
| Monday, August 25th, 2008 | ||||
| 11:58 pm | Greendrops and Moonsquirters So on the 15th the garage phoned me at almost the last possible minute to tell me they had indeed fixed the car and smallclanger and I travelled North. The next day we took a local train to Manchester and hopped on the free number 3 city bus which conveniently delivered us to the doorstep of the art gallery. The exhibition was upstairs.
One section of the room was devoted to The Princess and the Pea and there was a little theatre where you could put on a show. ( +5 ) There were a few other activities I didn't get pictures of. We were there for quite a while, and then it was lunch time. As we went down in the lift we overheard someone else telling her child it was time to go because the museum was closing (child: "Why are the other people not going home then?") and I think | |||
| Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | ||||
| 12:00 am | Charlie and Lola smallclanger and I are contemplating going to a Lauren Child exhibition in Manchester. In fact, this weekend is meant to be the weekend.Small problem — the handbrake has broken on my car. I had hoped to get it fixed today but having taken it apart the garage said it would take "a couple of days" to order the correct part from Citroën. So fingers crossed it arrives on Friday morning… Irrelevantly, if you type "Marston Ferry Road, Oxford" into Google Maps it says "Did you mean: Marston Ferry Rd". Why, yes I did, how did you guess? | |||
| Friday, August 1st, 2008 | ||||
| 3:21 pm | *How* much? I frequently get sent invitations to take out a personal loan, which I laugh at (because the interest rate quoted is typically about twice what I'd get if I just went to the bank) and then throw in the recycling bin. This one takes the biscuit, though:
*Example. Cash loan amount £300.
Typical | |||
