Yesterday was one of those days. Or, come to think about it, perhaps it’s just been one of those weeks. It started with the washing machine. Last week the washing machine decided it didn’t always want to play any more. Or perhaps it was the week before – I can’t quite remember. Anyway, over the week-end it got worse. It worked when it wanted to, which was very infrequently and usually only for a short time. I found myself keep turning it on and off at various parts of the programme, depending on what stage it was at in the washing cycle when it packed up. So over the week-end I pulled it out, checked the hoses and the drain, cleaned the pump, but all to now avail. It was clearly the electronics which had gone wrong. And although it must have been about 10 years old, it was state of the art when I bought it. So on Monday I gave up and ordered a new one.
Of course, the washing machine has packed up in a week when I’ve needed it. The rain has continued and was pretty incessant on Tuesday. Which has meant Chris and I are covered in mud from walking the dog. Not to mention my bed lined which is covered in mud from her insistence on jumping on the beds and re-arranging them when she comes in from a walk, as are my newly cleaned carpets! Anyway, Jez has not been impressed with the weather and has chosen to spend a lot of time sleeping. Although to be fair she will go out for a walk in the rain now.
And we’ve had some nice walks, despite the weather. She has been making new friends. On Tuesday I took her up the Delph in an attempt to shelter from the rain a bit, and we met a local veterinary nurse with her 4 dogs. One was a 10 month old Northern Inuit, but of more interest to Jez was the rescue dog she is fostering: a 7 month old bull terrier/ Labrador cross. They had a great time. But I hope he finds a new home soon. If you want to see him you can go here.
So, back to yesterday. Well firstly I had to get up early as I was given a 7.30-9.30am delivery slot for the new washing machine. In the end it arrived just after 8am. Of course, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as we’d hoped to fit. Firstly it had a moulded plug, which I had to cut off cos the lead has to go through the back of a cupboard. Then it’s only got a cold water inlet (its all they make nowadays), which would have been ok if we could have fully turned off the tap on the old hot water inlet. As it was I had to go and get a blanking plug and Chris spent ages trying to stop it dripping. But after that it was all fine.
Then, just after lunch Chris asked if we had a microphone as he wanted to record something to the PC for the work he’s doing. I told him where it was, but he couldn’t get it to work, so I started to play around with it on my laptop. It would work, but not properly. So next I tried a headset we used to use with some voice recognition software. And that worked fine. Plus I found that the PC has Windows voice recognition on it, so I spent all afternoon playing around with that and teaching it to recognise my voice. Only the laptop started blue-screening on me. By dinner time it was doing it persistently – about every 15 minutes. So last night I started various cleaning / scanning routines. Nothing seemed to work. I was assuming that the voice recognition stuff had messed up Vista. But in the middle of trying to sort it out I spotted that it said I only had 3Gb of RAM, which was funny as I had fitted 4Gb two weeks ago. So I took it out and put it back in again and it still said 3Gb, but at least the laptop didn’t blue-screen quite so frequently. Which helped as I was trying to defragment the disc. Needless to say I was not a happy bunny.
This morning I’ve replaced the new RAM with the old RAM (only 1Gb) and the PC is fine. So it looks like one of the new RAM cards has a fault. Now I’ve got to take it back, which should be fun. Bet they won’t want to change it. I’ve been running defragment all day though, and it’s still not finished.
Tomorrow is Jez’s first birthday. No doubt I’m going over the top, but I need to go and wrap her presents shortly, safe in the knowledge that even if she doesn’t like the presents she’ll have lots of fun with the wrapping paper. And I’ve made a beef casserole for lunch tomorrow (Dad and Pat are coming to lunch), which I can warm up. I’ve made it today as it takes 3-4 hours to cook. Plus I’ve just made a cake for us humans (although no doubt Jez will have some as she loves Victoria Sandwich cake), and some ‘chocolate & choc-chip muffins’ for Jez (which are made from carob rather than chocolate). I’ve also taken her a nice bone out of the freezer. Anyway, I’ll try and take some photos to post, and maybe a bit of video (depending on how she reacts to her presents).
No comments:
Post a Comment