Not last Post

Not last Post

Thanks for the interest.

Added the rest of the blogs consolidating MS, winemaking, geology advert, and hobbies and weirdness.
all the things posted elswhere apart from wordpress blog- thinking on that, no last post  there yet- but should I put Everything on one site. I know links go to the old sites, so that just confuses people. leaving them on the net. I imagine so anyway.

The way I write is not scoring hugely I note with dissapointment- maybe I cannot write whre people are just wringing their hands and grinding teth- "Just where/when is the next one Tony?

diy or not

Expensive month of Sundays really

Blue moon month of Sundays anyway.



About.
You know, 5 weegens worth of pain suffering success and lack of adulation. 
Had some money left over after tax and pension pay out adjustments and trying to be...cheap. And it is only the start of the financial year...
PS: a Lotto win paid for itself, only, like, the ticket entry....



Whinge needs rants wants and had to be dones...




Ideas/Tasks	DIY?	Follow up	Bargain	success	cost
new 55" LCD 3d smart tv	no	no	blank	blank obviously	yep...
Fix the windscreen of the family car	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	250
Kitchen spout and taps [FAUCETS for the yanks]	yes	Yes	No	Yes	75
Shower head	yes	Yes	No	Dunno	22!!!!
Shower taps	yes	Yes	No	Dunno	43
cracked window pane in Piano room*	no	Yes	Yes	Yes	110
Laundry window pane **	no	Yes	Not really	Yes	110
Front door Side Light Window panes***	no	Yes	Spose	Yes	180
New computer	yes	Tomorrow	Nearly	Hope so	~500?
Fix memory in this computer	yes	Tried	No	No	90
Expand memory in gels pc's	yes	Tries to	No	No	a/a
MCC annual	no	Yep	No	yep	###
Car rego	no	Had to	No	Yep	150
Phone/net/mobiles	no	Had to	Nup	Spose	250!
Water	no	Had to	Nup	Spose	445!!!!!!!
Power	no	Had to	Nup	Spose	450!!!!!!!!!!
Service the car	no	Should	Wont be	Will see	Argh
Girls' new pc's or tablets	no	Maybe	Should be	Could be	Argh
#2son's birthday pressie- acoustic geetar?	tes	Will have to	Hope so	We'll see	Cheapo soonish!
Windows7 64bit, usb3 4port for nu pc	yes	Yes	Yeah	Hope so	110
Plastic stakes for portable Vineyard Pots	yes	Hmmm	Maybe	Hope so	Dunno yet
fix shed lights	yes	have to	no	hope so	dunno yet

 Used the modern way to pay bills, amazing the frequent flyer points accruable doing it that way. Just wish I flew more instead....

*****I finally noticed the OTHER DAY- Cracked and nearly falling out, fixed after too many years!!!!!!!!! Bloody kids fault too!

So the start of Spring was four really nice warm days. Fingers crossed for next day or two...

  

diy glow plugs left me glowing

diy glow plugs left me glowing

Battery?

The last few months, avid followers would know I changed the work/windsurf transport van battery because the bloody thing was slow to turn over and start chugging. Well, the last week it has been like that again, and I blamed the cold. One hint was to use 'Aerostart'  in the air intake to make it start. Another relative said DO NOT DO THAT, it's the glow plugs! Marvined again! Should have RTFM, at least!

Whoops.

Glow Plugs?

Well, a call two days later to a service centre suggested that the glow plugs were buggered or the relay to heat them was gone if white smoke was erupting from the anus of the bloody van. Bloody vehicles.

Hmph! well, to replace the plugs looking like sixty dollars a piece for Mercedes recommended types, forty for another type. And probably four hundred for a new relay or only two hundred for a substitute.

Ouch! $775! And service charge too? Oh no thank you! 

Pulled the pin plugs out, what a hassle! And the relay was removed too. An hour or so of time...

Expert advice.

Three places were visited. The service guy I have used before said I could probably DIY. Mmm. Went to merceded service centre- new quote- still the same. The cheapo relay was available though if I needed it... Next store could get the plugs for about twenty bucks, two days to wait. Great. The next place was only fifteen, two days to wait also. 

I could wait! Good old Repco! They said replace the lot even if one was okay...

Went to the auto electrician with the relay- and with a hand lens he could say nothing was wrong with the board [as an aside, you might have a diesel too, but with a nuclear explosions EMP- you will be buggered too, like I say, an aside..], so there was all that money saved... if the new glow plugs he recommended to get worked okay... 

He also showed me how to quick test- grab some jumper start cables, spit on a suspicious glow plug end, connect it to the battery and if no steam- buggered! Do not put a good one into your pocket right away...

Two days wait.

Went to the wrong store. 

Embarrassing as the last time with the new tyres!  

Had to drive away, and park 50 yards down the opposite side of the road!!! 

Picked five plugs up for seventy five dollars thank you very much! 

Home for the last DIY stretch

And swore and banged knuckles for an hour or so putting the bastards back in the engine. Dropping shit on wet ground, argh! Lucky it was only cool, and not freezing! Plastic tarp was spread after the first dropsy! And a fencing wire kludge to pry the fallen thingos from tight spots in the engine bay the next time. I do like my tool collection this week, no new purchases required!

Happy at last

Fingers crossed. key in and turn for-

First start, brmm !

Ha life, bloody hahaha, a winner today! nyah nyah nyah

diy glow plugs left me glowing

Notta so good

Successes, Failings and successes this week

In black and white: the kids, the cats, the cars and me.

Celebrated Tarn's fifty-first birthday quietly this week with the three cheeky little monkeys. May have a pizza with her dad Friday. Mine soon enough.
[new addition- at bottom 22-5-12]

Family Car

Finally found the problem with the windscreen wipers not wanting to work on the family vehicle. Or, there was a short in the tailgate wiring. The wiring loom passes through lots of holes in the car body, and the auto-electrician I had to see in the end, spotted some bare wiring, on the loom from the car side of the tailgate, not exactly where it passed through to a protective tube, but further inside by a few cm/inches.

Ah backhgh, That Was All!

Mark the car sparky just wrapped some tape around it and we put it back together. Thirty three buckaroonies though, and a 40 km drive. Self findable?

Patience and money, patience OR money?

The Van

Then. THEN... Well, Back then... Last week actually, the van really started to play up.

The battery would not turn the engine over after a cold night. A few times the last month. New one purchased. STICKER SHOCK!
THEN...
There was definitely a wobble from the front tyres, booked in for new tyres. Went along to the wrong tyre garage. The guy at the right one said he had just sent some-one to where I had just been. That was funny. Until the STICKER SHOCK hit me again. There was bare metal showing on the old tyres...

The kids

Gel#1b managed to drop my old fluorescent  desk lamp and broke the tube. New one. And a ballast. And a bit of maintenance.

Gel#1a needed new globe in her bedside lamp. A few nights later spilt red coloured drink all over the old flowery carpet. At bedtime. Her sister's bottle of course. Another late night.

Son#2 was picked up on his job so he could Drive rather than pedal, and as I put the bmx in the back of the wagon, the front wheel dropped off...........!!!
Another front tooth nearly lost? The first one he lost is going to cost an arm and a leg and more to replace. I may have to mortgage his phone and bike...


And the beer, a wheat milk stout, I started to brew last week, does not want to ferment at all. I wonder why- fed it some DAP...

Then...

The white cat left us a smelly reminder this week. We could not track where he had left it. Was it the junk room, cos he fled from there today? No. It was left on some power cords right next to the fermenting beer vat in the laundry...

Me

Trying to buck myself up and it looks like I am losing out more. My credit card is starting to cost me too much ie I am living it up tooo much (?), and employment advertisments are depressing around here- like they know the person they want EXACTLY, like my skill sets are not upgradeable to even an assistant librarian?

I want to vacuum up information, but that is not cost effective either. Who else around here likes to know about and share shit about archaeology, geomorphology, astronomy, geology, oilfield news... No-one.


A fail for my 50th birthday present though- last year my family [sibs n folks] gave me a voucher for a Ballon Flight over The Big Smoke to be taken by May this year, so I was reminded by my eldest son to get a move on and book it. And guess what? I tried to early this week and was told "The company went belly up before xmas, and no-one was told"- so much for the customer is always right?



Cathartic? I have to tell myself that I do like myself, to smile and to vent and rant more.... Make more friends?

Books

I am really enjoying 'guns, germs and steel' by Jared Diamond 1997.

A new Plonking Addition
For my 50th a matching barrel for the 40th, to put the Garage Grape Sherry into!

Did not save cash

"Come around by midday"

And the clock was--- argh!

A catch up on the un-failed windscreen wiper tale.

During the week, the family vehicle's wipers did fail again. Another couple of fuses, testing the back wiper, banging the front wiper, and nada, zilch, nought, nil, Nothing!!! It won't work. It was dead. Gone, kicked the bucket. Muttley-like chuckles heard from beyond the frontier...

Bugger, all that crowing the other week saving my wallet from waking the moths.

Called the Sale Car Wreckers yesterday, well, just before closing time. Wrong time?

Took the kids to a youth meeting at dusk and the sky fell as we drove off.

Very hard to see through a teeming wet windscreen. Managed to drop the kiddies off, and got home with toes crossed. have not done that ever before, scary!

After a late night (spaced out Angry Birds to level 30...) arose after the descendents descended to/on the chicken shop, leaving me with the laundry. And a nagging feeling while getting the endless laundry started before the sky fell again [thought the weather was weird]... Looked at the clock again and BAM argh the wreckers! By midday.

Zoomed to the outskirts, a small shower of rain spoiled the anticipation.

John forgot to write down his first chore- removing a motor for me. Hah. So at least I got to see how the job was to be done.

Miscreant...

Returned home with a lighter wallet, but an extra too- the linkages to Repair the vehicle- Restored the second-hand wiper after half an hour with some newish tools, and it appears to work, yay me. Fingers crossed.

Small chit chat. And a rant too.

John and I chatted over a wreck getting the wiper-motor out and got around to how poker machines and casinos are just rip off businesses in the small towns and the city. We agreed that the first time playing was good, but to hear from sources that the local poker machine operators get more than four million dollars a week from two country towns [less than twenty thousand odd people] beggars belief in an Un-Australian way IMO: some people are profiting from mostly the poor end of town. And lotto winners are not always better off in the long run

I suppose I am a capitalist and socialist rolled into one- never let a golden opportunity go by etc., but, really, big business like poker machine operators, banks and miners are trying too hard, whining too much, and don't really give a stuff as long as the bottom line ain't red and productivity is 'up'.

Productivity. How much blood from a stone do they expect? Modernity means a more social life, less work, spreading the wealth from being cleverer with production. Less office paper and stuff, faster communications, Internet shopping...

And now the car makers are complaining that they need government money or less tax or they are taking their business overseas. Well, bugger me pink and blue and brown. Obviously the damn vehicles cost too much! Charge more, make them last,what ever! But dang, the taxpayers help a car maker out by sharing tax dollars with capitalists that make lemons. Something not quite right there.

And why oh why does the GDP have to go up? I suppose if you want more money you ask the boss- he says yep if you do more work...

Life.
Bacteria has a lot to answer for.
Intelligent design NOT!
Evolution...

On the road again

A Not a DIY Situation
I did try but!

Two weeks ago, I took my lil yacht out to the lil lake for some quiet time. The kids were all out with friends, it was sunny and a nice lil breeze from the northeast. Then it got windy...

You know the rest.

The catch up is that the broken down van had a problem at the repairers too! Poor guy was told by Mercedes that the Mercedes Vans [made in Korea by SangYong] have this special alternator and pulley combination- [the power supply and battery charger unit][BTW- a $1000 special!- that will fit. But they sent one pulley for him to fit because the mechanic knew that that was all that was needed. (3 x that in a sentence! Ha!) It did NOT. Back it went! He finally had to find one made for a Japanese 4WD to fit the "Korean built Mercedes branded vehicle". Cos he has seen this problem before. Wow. Anyway, $300 later, we are moving people. Yay. Cost the repairer quite a few phone calls, but good him. Owe him one.

He also told me that he could fix the sticky buggery hard to shift gear lever too. "Seen it before". Again!

Next time I win Lotto, I'll get it looked at. Like the LCD screen in the family car. Lotto. Later.

Carelessedness-itis

I have a bug
With me
About me
Because:

I have so much
house things
I have to do
want to do
need to do
and don't care when it is done....Carelessedness-itis

Garden Blitzkreig UN-complete,
still have to rake up shit
cut up shit
move shit
with a shitty chainsaw
on an extension lead.
Where's Geoffry Peterson's dad Grant? Help!








Removing old shit caused
an outside feature to fall down
and that cost 40 bucks and
time fooling around and
making a huge mess at the backdoor
and a big Kludge on a rotten
post top. Extension anyone?





My Getting
my self bogged twice in half an hour with
my two cars in
my own yard was not on
my favourite things to do.
Last week.






Endless vacuuming of the hoose
The letter box made with
love for the child bride is
falling apart... 13 years is a long time?

The gels need desks for their rooms...?

So many
or
Too many [?]
Sc-Fi mags
National Geographics
Archealogical Diggings
Posts
- to finish

Paint eldest gels room
so she can move in
to her OWN room

[breathe in]

And
Paint the Bungalow too.

Wants.... well don't let me start.

And I find the time for this.............................. Ho Hum I wonder what the rich people are doing?

I know it was wet, see?

It rained and the ground was wet. 
Boggy, in fact. 

Yep, I knew that, but still...

There is a tree lopper making his way along the street, tidying up low branches of the nature strip trees. He has been doing it for a while now. I thought, at last, he is up to my place. I dutifully moved the family car further into the backyard yesterday so I could park the van after it. But, no, it was raining and no workmen doing the trees at my place

In case you don't keep tabs on it, the backyard here received another 35mm or 145points, or 1.45 inches of rain up to 9am today...

After dropping off the gels and their friends this morning, I drove right in again, and left the van out of the way too after the next grocery delivery run.

Well, not really...

I had swerved in to the front parking area a little too fast and moved sideways a little into the drain at the front gate.
And got bogged to the hubcap.
Freaking hell!
Spent 10 minutes rocking forward and back, throwing in dead foliage under the wheel, some flat wood pieces, a log, and then went away.

Tried to get the car out of the back yard to tow out the van.

BOGGED the wagon in the backyard too!

A bit of gravel, some gentle too-ing and fro-ing and swearing, and IT MOVED. T'anks a lot Marvin!

So then I moved the car to the van, looked for a towing rope [I had one somewhere] but made use of a new length of nylon rope I only just bought. A nice yellow one. Inserted tow ball into van tow bar, wrapped rope around it and the wagon's tow ball eight times, and tried to pull the van free. Very gently.

Ah. Nah. No way José. Too wet, bugger it, the wagon slipped--- so STOP!
Another driver may have helped at this stage!

Sucked it in, swallowed my pride, and asked the tree guy for help.

Yep- no worries! Just had to fetch his Ford F250 ute* from the garage across town... 10 minutes...

Yep! it pulled the van out no worries! Gave him a bottle of my best homemade red wine.

The van and the wagon left big tracks in the lawns, bugger it.

That was my hour lunch break- getting out of a bog of my own causing!
Yeah, the ground was soft, so I really did not think clearly about it, and shit happens.  Wet dirty shit...

halfway

Big milestone over the weegen.
Halfway to a century old!


This is the Marvining site, where lifes' tribulations, some times tributes, are turned over, examined minutely and completely disregarded by me and the [other?] smart alecs*people. Well, I hope not. Lets KISS.



*Special note at this point. Looks like I hit the wrong key somewhere at this point in time and put published unfinished business out to air, another point to the post in any case, like how fast is the Alzymars catching me. And I was caught out in seconds by a friend!!!! LOL or what! Refer to FB entry of 5Jun11@10pm!


To continue... A. Ahem.


The Marvin highlights of the weekend. 
BEFORE the Weegen Away For Me. A Fiftieth Celebration


I was to get the old sailing dinghy out and tidied to take to dad's place. He wants to fix it up. I am not interested in it anymore. The kids were terrified of the open water and tipping over and It Was Not Fast Enough For Me... A lot of Marvin situations. So I pulled it out into the yard, hung the sails out to dry and let my attention walk away. Until Friday of course. On Friday, Work, then I washed it down, & tossed out any shite. Off to Work again. Back and cleaned more, and out to work again. Start of a comedy of errors.


Waited for the kids to get home from school, packed my crap, showered, coffee-ed up and got the kids to pack their crap in the wagon. 


Hitched the dinghy trailer to said wagon and tried the lights on the back of the boat. 
Nah. No working mistah! But it did six months ago!?
@$%^&& ! WD40 sprayed and nails and scratching and swearing and banging and then the second son seconded to watch duty as I tried desperately to get the shitful NEW light system going! 


"Brake, Left flasher, Right flasher, lights?" nah, yeah, maybe, nah, yeah. @#%$%^ !!
Gee-zars Iscariot, was I cross with me! Timetable was shot to shite!
"Ah, nearly all, forget about the left flasher, lets check the tires".......
Hmmm. Flattish. "BIKE PUMP?!" Hmmmm. Nah.


To the petrol station!


By this time the kids had been waiting for an hour, patiently mind you!
At the air filler. 8lb..15lb beep 10lb...16lb beep. Took ten minutes as the "SPECIALLY designed" digitally enhanced air compressor kept telling me THERE IS NO AIR in the tire, Fill, beep, off, on , fill,  beep.... To Son#2- "Whats the pressure needed?", "Wha?" "I have not got my glasses on me, what's the proper operating pressure?" "Um, 44?" Nah, I don think so, but stuff it, it felt hard to hit with a fist, and spent another ten bloody minutes doing the same thing to the other one, and then the car tires.


Finally-- LETS GOOOOO!!!!!!!!! But I did not check the spares.... Took off in a pall of sound and smoke. Not.


So I missed out on going to see a football match with Son#1, Son#2 and my second brother(Bro#2). By an hour. The whole point of going to the Big Smoke for the night! But if ya miss the first bounce, why the feck bother going at all! Boy I was pissed off. With me. Had a week! Ah well. Mind the size of a planet and the power is off, or, no-one home...


NEXT day-Travelling to Bro#1 place for a light luncheon and plenty of grog....


Early enough start.Two thirds of the way there, nearly breaking the speed of light up a huge fecking hill and passing everybody else chugging away CTYTY CHT TAGR GRTS BANG CHTHER!!!!!!! SCREETCH KAK KAK a KAKAAKA  WHAT now? Look behind and the Boat and Trailer are sitting behind me, sitting pretty on the road, not like a missing wheel situation, and no one flashing lights or banging a horn away at me, so What The? I better stop.


Pull over and open the door into the oncoming traffic, feck em, and walk back and see that the adjustable leg stand had fallen down to the road, and lost it's foot.... Thankfully, that was all. I had not put the fencing wire pin in properly, and it had taken four hours travelling at 100kmh [plus] to work loose and let the stand down. Boy. Retrieved leg. Stomped back to the wheel and screamed off again.


My boys were on a promise to ride with my brother that day outta town. After the broken leg and  missing foot of the trailer, time to swap pillion passengers at the next off ramp. Swap done. Then took off mad as a bat thru green fields and down country roads away from the freakin freeway [and did not turn left as directed...] 


But we got to where we were goin'. Bro#1s' place. Luncheon. So excellent. 


After lunch and a nap, and just before dark, my old boy, Tezza, was going to take the boat home, but no one had a cross-over for the trailer lights... He had a round 7pin plug and a round 7pin-to-5pin cross-over round type, and I only had a 7pin-flat to round... MARVINED!!!!! I could hear Muttley in my head... trailer departure another time, driver and place...


So a fine day of Wine and dine and wine and dine til nine[?] with three videos and then bed and at 6am- acid burps, fecking shite! 
Sunday, travel to see Bro#3 and my sis-in-law. The gps tomtom sent us the back way... MARVINED again, but what the hell it was a different way there from last time!
And. This time we only left a cheapo windcheater behind.


BUT. We all got home safe and sound.
And had a good weegen overall!!

Update on the ex van delivery ad via facbook

Ah well.
Three weeks and only a few Likes, seventy impressions, and no calls to work.
Off with its head.
No matter the 'implorations' via the wall pages.

Apparently the Facebook way is not the way to spread the word for me, and bring so thoroughly ignored has been depressing, apart from some encouragement from #1 son and Dee. After all, having a few more Likes from the friend List may have begun a snowball effect. I think FB as a tool as well as a means to keep in touch is actually becoming unfashionable. [The gels would say different cos I won't let them use it or msn, I learnt my lesson there with #s 1 & 2.]

Live and learn, and now I am having second thoughts on putting an ad in Google Maps page for the area. Even moaning on about it here I seem a loser.

Money making is a risk venture, but I am a sole operator and wanting to stay that way. Making a bit more by 50%- 100% would be great.  Looking into other delivery services such as local postal systems looks like I need a new degree in transport/costs/thresholds/time/profits/losses. Just not enough here.

A geology degree ain't any good here either, apart from the calculus, statistics and spreadsheet efforts made to see how I am making any progress towards a profit. Noice graff.

Yeah. And I don't miss the "daily grind" of seeing the defriend grandstanding, may cut more off...

And if I hear anymore
crap about carbon taxes
and no smokestack fixes,
I will scream.

DIY complete

Finished at last.
Satisfaction not 100 percent, but looks great and works.
Three trips and a half out there.
Including two more trips back to the hardware store. Bolts. Hammer Drill.....

How long does drilling a hole in a brick take?

Well, six holes as I did do two in the wrong place...

Answer- bloody too long!

so--
DIY tools need to be better than present belongings!
Have to RTFM with spectacles on too.
Give up when approached when really a more proficient and sue-able person should do the jobby.
Well, nah, will do practically anything worthwhile nearly anytime, lookem whaten Oim' doum!

car #7

After 6 months of gazing at a Mercedes in the car-park, the bank let me have one.
And the family car can have a rest- poor thing. A quality vee-hee-cal doin' deliveries!?

Its only a van, mind. Second hand too.
But.
Big inside enough for the courier work, and ALL THE WINDSURFER stuff. Bigger than Lev
Oh yeah, and sleeping too.
So when the speed week comes up soon, off we go this year, the first time for years.
Maybe will afford it.
Even compete?
Will see.
At 30 bucks a month for another 3,003 years and 1 month, I think it is a cheap investment...

Weeelel, that's not quite right.
The investment was a better deal than that, within budget.
And hopefully will be able to do piece work for other little places around town.