Kitchen drain blocked

 After 15 years the 10cm pipe from the kitchen sink wasn't draining quickly. Even the dishwasher was filling the sink. Too little washing by hand to push the grease through?

A drain snake cleared the block at what felt like a T with the utility.

Shameful packaging - or is it just me

 iLast care hyaluronic moisturising cream. 30mL

I use a tiny amount of this stuff, despite it's eye-watering price, it works for me. About 25€.

After 18 months it ran out. Well I thought it had. I took it apart and found a disgusting waste of plastic and packaging. A lovely design, but for fuck's sake, I need a finger to apply this stuff, so just put it in a pot and let me dab some on my finger. I cut open the 'empty' pot and carried on using it for 4 weeks. There are various type of plastic, O-rings, pistons. These parts will have taken precision moulding, so more expense and energy, in the manufacturing plant, design office, prototyping and consumer trials to name just a few.

Note it's stated open time is 6 months. Why? It has this totally over-engineered dispensing system that keeps it sealed. Well, it must keep it sealed as there is nothing to remove to start using it. It made it from the factory, with a use by date of a year or so, but once I press the dispense button, it magically has to be used in 6 months? Not a chance I'll buy this every 6 months. In fact, I'll now look for another brand in a little-heard-of thing called a pot.

Stihl FS56C strimmer

Think twice if you're offered a seized small engine. If it's been sitting around a few months the petrol will have evaporated leaving gum everywhere, and you know how carburettors love goo.

So factor in a lot of cleaning of the crank etc, plus potentially a new carb. An ultrasonic bath might do it.

I got away without a bath, but it took 2 thorough cleans, and obviously I needed a rebuild kit.

All original parts. About 80€ and ~8 hours (strip + rebuild) to fix a 300€ strimmer.

The Deck (again)

Previous renovation

The deck went in around October 2011.

Quite a few beams to replace this time, plus all the uprights. The uprights have rotted off above ground. All the wood set in concrete is as-new. There is a rose and honeysuckle which have done a good job of pushing the pergola north

Of the 6 posts, 2 can't be removed due to the rose and the honeysuckle. The southern 2 (3) are both at 500mm deep and in with speed beton. The RH one thursday 22nd, the LH one saturday 24rd August. Of the northern 2 (3) the LH one has a decent socket 25cm deep and is anchored onto a large rock. The RH one was dug fresh (easier) and is 600 from grass, which is 100mm higher than the original.

The intention is :- southern end, link the 2 good posts with a chevron and attach the horizontal part as-is. No point trying to force the rose around; northern end, make Y pieces between the post and rail.

The concrete sets hard quickly, but like any concrete is at design strength in 28 days. After 7 days is nearly 2/3 full strength

Ryanair error message 'an error has occurred, please try later'

 A reminder to myself. This is the second time it's happened.

The problem. You want to add your passport details, but you have to add your name. However, when trying to add your own name to your account you get the message 'an error has occurred, please try later'

The first time this happened I spent ages on chat with Ryanair as they didn't know why. Finally someone worked it out. However, the utterly moronic fucking witless twats didn't update their website. This was years ago.

The solution? Go to the section marked travelling companions and delete your own name.

Now, the question to ask is why Ryanair thought that you would want to add your own name to your own account as a companion. The next question is why the dick that sets up the error messages did not put up something meaningful.

Router UPS

We have a SFR/RED router and ONT. It takes up to 20 mins to connect after the shortest of brown-outs. It needs a UPS and I sort of have one. It's a house battery - see my posts on Victron. However, that won't keep stuff going during a firmware update, or if someone restarts the dbus....

Enter a UPS. The router has a 2A 12V psu. The ONT has a 12V 1A psu. Combined operating current is 1.3A max (15.6W) A Y-lead means you can delete the smaller PSU. That will save a watt or 2 vs 2 mains bricks. Turning off the wifi will save another ~4W (see later post on Asus router as why this matters)

A quick and dirty router consists of a 3S li-on battery scabbed from a very old Dell laptop. Added a 3S protection board and put it in parallel. The battery will have about 80% capacity at 12V. The discharge curve is pretty flat, and I only need protection for maybe 30s if I change supplies over.

The protection board will cut out a 8.1V and it will prevent excessive charge.  I'll need to test this otherwise there is a risk the battery will collapse the 12V supply.

Fibre comes to the village

Technically fibre came to the village last September, but when you have VDSL at 90Mbps, who needs fibre?  Over the following months the speed kept dropping. 60M last week. And increasingly intermittent, suggesting a broken core; the last time it dropped below 20M I got the ladders out and repaired the joints on the post which got us back up to 90M.

Long story short I approached the operator Sosh to ask if they'd negotiate on price. They wanted 31€ for 300M. RED wanted 26€ for 500M with 2 months free and install of 39€. The 2 free months covered the install. It was a long and frustrating conversation with Sosh. They kept telling me fibre wasnt available, even though I knew 5 others with it. Sosh online mapping for house selection chose not to use the official postal addresses in the village and instead thought that using the plot number off the cadastral listing and the place name would be better. After all, everyone knows that information from when they bought their house.  I offered to send them a screen shot of their map showing the house and the local fibre box. They told me to post it. Yep, in the 21st century an IT company didn't have an email address.

I terminated the conversation and signed up to RED. I was being lazy staying with Sosh, and part of me doubts they would price match for a worse speed! I should thank Sosh as RED had dropped their price to 25€ in previous 24 hours. This was Thursday. I booked the install for the following Monday. I got a call Saturday saying they were coming to install. They turned up, but their system showed that we already had fibre, and it was too late to pull a cable.

Monday comes around, and 2 hours later it was all done. I got outgoing phone calls immediately, but I had to wait until the following morning for incoming calls. 500M up/down. You also get 10G of cloud but it's too pitiful to use. I won't be using the email as I will probably be changing ISP again in the coming years and it's too much hassle to advise everyone of change of email. I'll stick with gmail.

Sosh have been helpful in cancelling the old contract. Their bill will be forwarded to RED!

13/7/24 Been playing with the router. It takes an amazing 20 mins to synchronise. 20 mins!!! I have an ONT + xDSL box that accepts a WAN. It looks like the ONT syncs every 10 mins and it needs 2 syncs before it connects. If you're lucky it will connect in 10 mins. Unlucky and you wait 20 mins. If you think that's bad, it takes around 2 hours for the VOIP in the box to reconnect.

See my next post for a UPS

On the plus side, repeated disconnects push the speed up. Currently got 920/417 4 ping and 7/13 latency.