3 July 2020 (Friday) - New Blogger Publisher

Over a bowl of granola I watched the last episode of the current series of “F Is For Family”. Now that is watched I wonder what I can watch next in the mornings.

As it finished so Treacle came downstairs carrying a pair of socks. I ignored her. Some dogs (Fudge) destroy things; Treacle doesn’t. She just walks round showing off when she had something she thinks she isn’t allowed to have. If you ignore her she generally loses interest.

As always I sparked up my lap-top to see if I’d missed much overnight. More had happened last night than the night before. One friend was posting from a hospital (no idea why), it would seem to have been very hot in America, and there had been quite a bit of action on the Facebook group “Extreme Dishwasher Loading” where I seem to have become rather judgemental of other people’s dishys.

I saw that “Unknown” had made a comment on my blog entry of 1 January 2019. On that day I had a rant about how I don’t like people spouting motivational rubbish on social media, I talked about the walk we had around Burham, and I watched an episode of “Doctor Who”. On reading this “Unknown” somehow formed the idea that I would like to “do the dirty deed” with him/her/it. “Unknown” is out of luck today.

 

As I walked to my car I captured the Munzees down the road that I’d been saving. The new Munzee clan war started today and I’ve evos and jewels and resets to do. I’m quite getting into this Munzee thing – there’s a lot more to it than just randomly scanning barcodes that have been stuck on to lamp posts.

As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Apparently the American authorities are very keen to interview Prince Andrew about his alleged involvement in the case, whilst Prince Andrew’s lackeys have contacted the American authorities twice only to be ignored. One side is lying…

I got to work; I did far more than I hoped I might have to do and came home. I am reliably informed I drove past "er indoors ^TM" and the dogs.

I came home to find I had some post. Two months ago I ordered some Lego dogs which hadn’t arrived, so I ordered more on Monday. Today they all arrived, and unfortunately they are too small.

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up fish and chips which we scoffed whilst watching Gordon Ramsey’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back (which seemed rather scripted), and then I ironed some shirts whilst celebrity Googlebox played. With a couple of dozen celebrities I’d heard of three of them, and one of them is famous for being famous. I could do that….

And when I came to publish today's entry I found taht Blogger has a new publishing page. I don't like it... If I can't get to grips with it I shall be relocating the blog...

2 July 2020 (Thursday) - Four and a Half Miles

I slept well – when the dogs are settled, so is everyone else.

Over brekkie I watched another episode of “F is for Family” (which has improved over the last few episodes) then sparked up the lap-top. Apart from my cousin having made a cake, very little had happened on Facebook overnight; in fact the most exciting stuff on social media this morning were the “likes” and comments on the videos that "er indoors ^TM" had made on our dog walk yesterday. However, despite my having unsubscribed from most of the local buying and selling groups there were no end of adverts for stuff for sale locally. Facebook seems to be fast becoming a rather chaotic version of eBay

I did have some emails though. Sixty-one “found it” logs on geocaches that I’ve hidden over the last year. People are getting something from my efforts, which is something of a result.

Yesterday I established that my GPS unit “Hannah” is both accurate and precise (with less than one per cent error in fifty miles). This morning I started the “drift” test. There is a theory that the things just add distance whilst sitting still and doing nothing, so I turned it on, sat it on the windowsill (where I would get a good GPS signal) and left it whilst I went to work.

Eventually remembering where I'd parked my car I set off to work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing some head teacher or other who was expounding his views on how his school is going to operate for the foreseeable future. Apparently the children will be "safely apart" if not "socially distanced" but this chap openly admitted that all of his plans will fall over if anyone actually goes down with COVID-19.

Not so much planning for the future as burying his head in the sand?

There was then an interview with Lord Heseltine. He was big in government thirty years ago, and he's apparently revitalized many of the northern cities. He was asked for his opinion on how the government should repair the economy after lock-down.  He then proceeded to waste ten minutes of prime-time radio by making all sorts of unintelligible grunting noises (like many upper-class twits make) rather than speaking understandable English words.

I got to work; the new car park had opened, and the security staff were herding people about. What is it with security staff? I'm sure there must be some who are decent people and not officious little bullies, but I've yet to meet any.

I did my bit, and with my bit done I came home to an empty house. "er indoors ^TM" had taken the dogs out, so I fed the fish (inside and out), fed the washing machine, fed myself, and killed time until it was twelve hours after I’d set “Hannah” going.

"er indoors ^TM" assures me that she hadn’t been playing silly beggars. I suspected that the odometer would go up a little just leaving the thing where it was. But only a little. I was amazed to see that it thought it had travelled four and a half miles when in fact it had gone nowhere.

Interestingly that’s adding (about) a third of a mile an hour which (almost exactly) explains yesterday’s discrepancy between what “Hannah” and Google’s estimates of my journey to work.

Whilst I waited for "er indoors ^TM" to return I tuned into the weekly on-line geo-meet. It was good to catch up with people.

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up a rather god bit of scoff which we washed down with a half-way decent bottle of plonk whilst watching “Fun With Dick and Jane”’ a film I could distinctly remember as being far better than it was.

1 July 2020 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

I had a shave with a new razor blade today. Those who sell the things advise it should be changed weekly; the old one did me for two months and was still perfectly serviceable yesterday.

Being a new month my lap-top proudly told me of how many cyber-threats it had thwarted in June. It claimed it had blocked a thousand risky connections and protected twenty-two thousand of my files (I never knew I had so many). An in the same spirit of helpfulness it then offered to shred everything on the hard drive just in case. Just in case of what was unclear, so I declined the kind offer.

As I peered into the internet I had a message from an old colleague. There was a vacancy in a supervisory role at one of the (relatively) nearby private hospitals; did I want her to put in a word for me? Quite frankly I didn’t. I’m quite content working where I am. Having spent thirty years in (what was in retrospect) a rather toxic working environment I’m very happy where I am. The travel might be “a pain the in the glass” sometimes but it is a small price to pay for not feeling sick at the thought of having to contend with certain people every day. I’m sticking with what I know for my last few working years.

I saw a family member was still posting stark staring nonsense about the supposed health risks of 5G technology. He seems to want to believe it is dangerous even though h there is no end of information disproving that which he is posting. There seems to be more and more people wanting to believe in crap which has long been disproved these days. Only a couple of weeks ago one told me that I could believe my facts and she would believe hers. Even though her “facts” were made-up bollox.

I kicked everyone out of the Munzee clan in readiness for a new Clan War, then together with "er indoors ^TM" I took the dogs out to Great Chart where we walked from the cricket club up to the river. The dogs do like spuddling in the water, but Treacle does get very over-excited. "er indoors ^TM" video-ed some of the fun. As we walked the dogs were very well-behaved, but we did have a “near-miss episode” – an idiot farmer had driven into his sheep field and had deliberately left the gate from the track to the field open. Fortunately I’d spotted that (and we got the dogs on their leads) and even more fortunately the dogs didn’t react to the sheep. You would have thought that the farmer would have taken a few seconds to close the gate, wouldn’t you?

Once home I made a cuppa, then chased up an outstanding Lego order I’d made. Seeing how I like the 1970s style Lego I’m having to order the stuff second-hand. I’ve found a website called Bricklink which is effectively eBay for Lego. So far I have only ordered a dozen or so items, but I’m getting about an 80% delivery rate. Compare this to eBay or Amazon who have never once failed to deliver in hundreds of transactions. Am I just unlucky? I was looking at getting some electrical connectors this morning. I found what I wanted and it was advertised as “from £0.14”. So I clicked on the link and saw it wasn’t “from £0.14” at all. It was actually “from £3.87”.

I played “Cookie Jam” on Facebook Games for a while then set off to work.

I picked up "Hannah" (my GPS unit) and set off to work. Earlier I'd read a minor squabble on one of the geocaching pages asking just how reliable is the mileage quoted by sat-navs when they record a route. I've always thought that "Hannah" over-estimates distances walked. Someone else was saying that their car's GPS never matched their hand-held one. But how can anyone know how accurate a GPS unit is? Bearing in mind that measuring stuff is what I do for a living I'd had an idea....

I got into my car, zero-ed "Hannah" and the car's journey trip meter and set off to work.  I got there to find both were reading twenty-five point two miles. Google Maps said the journey from my house to the hospital's front door was twenty-four point seven miles, so allowing for a little farting around driving right round the hospital's orbital ring road thingy to the car park, I'd say both were about right. So "Hannah" (and my car's odometer) are accurate (get the right value), but are they precise (get the same value on multiple measurements)?

I re-set them and measured the mileage home – twenty-five point four miles on both… but then the one-way system out of the hospital does go a little further on the way out than on the way in.

I wonder just how many other people have done this measurement... I expect most people have better things to do with their few remaining years...