Today I mostly .....

[Zelandeth]

Not what you want today! Hope you got it sorted.

Nothing much to report here save for rescuing someone who had broken down in the car park at Sainsbury's this evening. Disconnected a few sensors and managed to get it going again (albeit like a sack of spanners and with the CEL on), but enough to get home. It was an N plate Vectra after all! Followed them home to make sure they made it (she had three kids in the car so breaking down on the A5 wouldn't be ideal). Had phoned the AA but they weren't expecting to be able to attend for three hours! Not much use when the car park shutters close in half an hour.

Guess that's my bit of Christmas good will.

...not that I wouldn't have offered help any other day of the year mind you!

[Zelandeth]

A poverty spec 1.6 at that!

[Neil Chowney]

love Debs' "should we be worried" statement!
Happy Christmas and new year to you both

A belated Happy Christmas to you and Sarah as well. (and anyone else who's in the house).

The man with the van and an enormous thing on a pole turned up withing 2 hours and gave the system and damn good rodding.

This immediately cleared the obstruction downstream but, and i've fallen for this before, the load that was backed up upstream suddenly hoved into view down the manhole we were peering into.....ack.......

On a separate note, my neice hs got a mac laptop about a year old, on which the CD drive takes the CD/DVD in and then spins up, fails to read the disc and spits it back out again.

Does anyone, and i'm looking at someone in particular here Mary , know what if anything can be done?

[Neil Chowney]

Tried the lens cleaner CD thingy just spits that out as well.

I don't think that its anything more than some data she needs is on the CD/DVD system. I know it can be got at through other means but some of it is on 'factory' CDs etc.

[Neil Chowney]

Ta David, that's probably the wisest thing to to.

[excossack]

You gone to the dark side David with a Mac?

[excossack]

I am sure I can find a group for to join to 'talk' about the issue(s)....

[excossack]

Still hating Office 2010, used Windows 8 once or twice not liking it just yet, and windows 2012 server eeek !!

[Zelandeth]

Today I mostly...

Did some impromptu electrical detective work as when I went into the bathroom to wash/shame etc this morning, there was a loud "phut" from somewhere above the ceiling and all the lights went out.

Then had to de-ice the garage door to get into there to turn the breaker back on.

Opening the hatch to the loft revealed immediately the unmistakable smell of burnt electronics, leading me to think one of the transformers for the halogen lights had probably died. All looked okay though (the cases are helpfully clear so spotting a major burnup would be easy), and turning the lights back on showed them all working. Cue some headscratching while I tried to clear up the rat's nest of wiring to the lights (three out of the five lights had the transformers actually resting on the lights, nothing is fastened down, and half the wiring is several feet too long because the fitter was too lazy to trim the wires. This *was* fitted by a reputable company too! Nothing a couple of hours can't sort...but 20 minutes extra time at installation would have meant it was unnecessary!

Eventually figured out the cause of the problems about an hour later when I realised the I had ignored the extractor fan (it's buried in the very far corner of the loft). Within a few seconds of turning that on, there was a bright blue flash from that corner, and the lights went out again.

Cause? A bloody stupid design flaw on the behalf of Vent-Axia!

It became aparrent that something was amiss the moment I touched the control box, as about a thimble full of water poured out the moment I cracked the first screw.

Reason for this is simple. The motor wiring goes into the fan body on the outlet side of the blades. There is no seal around said wiring, nor any provision for one that I can see. This means the warm, damp air from right over the shower is not only being blown outside, but also being blown through the control box. Where it then formed a nice pool of condensation...until it finally built up enough that it reached the mains in terminals on the control PCB! At which point as you would expect, there's an almighty bang.

This isn't a cheap fan either, equivalent models seem to be retailing for around £150.

Will see tomorrow whether the PCB can be salvaged and put things back together. If not, know I have a couple of delay timers and matching contactors floating around in a box somewhere. Can tell you now that the control box will no longer be attached to the fan though, it will be attached to the joist by the isolator switch!

Checked the other fan for the en suite, and it's control box was also full of water, so it's not just one random one-off I think.

Is it just me that gets really peeved at finding really daft design flaws in things like this?

It's a fan for goodness sake, that shouldn't be that hard to get right...

[excossack]

Got my intermediate license certificate through the post from the RSGB. Now I have a 2E0 call sign

[Zelandeth]

Found a bit of wire to poke into the instrument panel of the Xantia through the hole around the tripometer reset button to flick the rev counter needle back to the right side after it "flipped" itself earlier in the week when the battery went flat. Thankfully easy sorted and took about two minutes.

Spent a large portion of the day without power after the power company accidentally turned our street off when they were trying to track down a fault elsewhere in the neighbourhood...and forgot to turn us back on!

[Ged]

spent most of the day talking to a horse.

and getting answers

[Zelandeth]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Listen carefully to the advice!

[Ged]

spent most of the day talking to a horse.

and getting answers

dammit, your horse answers? Mine doesn't!

yeah, you say "do you want a mint" and he nods his head.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Listen carefully to the advice!

hes white, so he knows nothing about cars.........

[Zelandeth]

Finally had the opportunity to take the Xantia for a half decent run, not that far but a 20 minute blast down the dual carriageway - ahem - at the legal limit should have blown out some of the cobwebs. No smoke on acceleration now though and she is definitely pulling better.

This evening I have mostly been playing around with a freebie that one of my housemates brought home from work. A foldout from What Car that was stuck to the front of the mag with shiny print and all that proclaiming Skoda's victory in two of the award categories - with a video screen in. It's like one of those singing birthday cards, but for the 21st century.

So far I've ascertained that it will play quite a few different video types, smoothly at up to 720p (displays native resolution ) quite happily. There are a shedload of switch terminals on the board, which I would almost be willing to bet will map to other buttons (skip, menu, fast forward etc) in addition to the play/pause and volume controls that are wired in. Really looks like a generic portable video player board just without a case to me.

Not totally sure what I'll do with it, but it's a fun little toy to fiddle around with. If I can make it address extra storage it could actually be really practical as a portable media player. The 1gig of memory is a bit limiting as it is though - there is a footprint on the board though which looks like an SD card slot - and a usb connector...so we'll see.

See if I can find a suitable enclosure tomorrow to hack together a case for it anyway.

Has kept me entertained for the evening anyway!