Learning to drive

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

Once again this site has been pushed onto the back burner.

In fact it has been pushed back so far it has tipped over and fallen down behind the cooker.

It has been a busy few days. After a lot of arranging and waiting for the banks to process finances [it is a known fact that the banks use electronics that is hundreds of times slower than normal electronics] I finally collected my [nearly] new car yesterday.

The young lad in the showroom asked if I needed him to guide me around its workings. I pointed out politely that it had a steering wheel, three pedals and a handbrake and all in the right places so what was there to learn? He laughed but suggested I have a lesson anyway. I mentioned that I had been driving for well over fifty years – a lot longer than he had existed – and that part of the fun was exploring for myself. He was happy with that and told me I could phone him any time I had a problem. I wonder if that includes problems with the house or Herself?

Okay, it’s different from the old Focus. The engine is smaller in capacity but seems to have more power which is a bit of a contradiction. The switches are all in the wrong place and I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of the light switches. It has weird things I haven’t come across before such as telling me how many kilometers I have left before running out of petrol, or how efficiently I have been driving. Vital information?

I had to go out again today to head up the motorway to that damned Beacon Hospital for an eye check. [Need I say I got lost in it again?] Anyhows while I was on the motorway I started playing with the cruise control which is another new gizmo. It was weird but it seemed to work well. I had to switch it off though as Irish motorways are full of cars driving at different speeds [anywhere between 50 and 200 Kmph] and I spent my time overriding it.

A new problem is the length of the car. I look in the mirror and there in the dim distance is the rear window. This is no problem until it comes to reversing as I have no idea how far I am from reversing into a kerb or another parked car.

I think I may have to invest in a rear view camera.

Seek and ye shall find

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

I came across an interesting headline yesterday.

Unexplained Vaping-Associated Illnesses Prompt Health Advisory In New York

Now I haven’t heard of any “vaping associated illnesses” before apart from that ridiculous and ridiculed “Popcorn Lung” farce. I read the article.

There are around 19.5 million people in New York [or 19.49 million if you want to be pedantic]. Of these, 11 have succumbed to this illness. Now that’s not 11 million or even 11 thousand. No, it’s plain eleven. Time for a bit of detective work?

So what have these eleven got in common that could be causing this illness? They studied this and came to the conclusion that all eleven were vapers or had vaped in the previous three months. Vaping had to be the cause!

This confused me lust a little. Surely they must have some other connection. Had they all breathed the same atmosphere for example? With 19.45 million in the state, there must be a few cars around? The number of vehicles must be well over a million so I would imagine that there is a fair amount of shit floating around up there? Or maybe there is something else in common. Where they frequenters of dry cleaning establishment? Had they at some point come in contact with each other? There are tons of variables out there but no, it had to be vaping!

Or look at it from another point of view. I don’t now how many vapers there are in New York but I will be very conservative and say around 5%. So there must be around a million who have at least tried vaping within the last three months? Yet only eleven have succumbed to this mysterious illness. If vaping is the cause then why aren’t there more victims?

What I would like to know is the attitude to the various doctors to smoking and vaping. Could it possibly be that they are very anti-smoking? I would imagine that is a dead certainty. I would also imaging they are also rabid anti-vapers too and would love to discover some deadly disease brought on by those tools of the devil [i.e. the tobacco industry].

I get the distinct stench of wish fulfilment here.

A close shave

Head Rambles Posted on by 5

Way back in the mists of time before even God was a twinkle in his own eye, I used to love pottering around The Workshop.

The Workshop was a little lean-too that my father built on the back of our abode of the time. It wasn’t very big, consisting mainly of a shed with a long bench and racks of tools. My dad was a dab hand at the carpentry and used to knock up the odd piece of furniture. I loved watching him cutting and planing and then the tricky process of heating the glue in a special glue-pot. Often I would try my hand at a spot of cutting, shaving or drilling. The Workshop was a great play area.

Sadly, little remains of his efforts. I still have a couple of his smaller pieces but sadly had to part with a lot of the larger bits of furniture into various skips over time. The one thing I did manage to hold on to was a selection of his tools, which have been put to very good use over the years. I think I even still have the old glue-pot and certainly have the old Primus [used for heating the glue-pot] and the blow-lamp.

Sadly my days of DIY are becoming fewer. It’s easier to get an expert to do the job, and a lot less tiring.

I got an expert to knock through an extra door when I was revamping the Back Room. He did a brilliant job. The trouble is that he did too brilliant a job – he inserted the door precisely into the frame with no free space around the edge whatsoever.

Over the last few weeks the door has been becoming harder and harder to open or close as it just jammed in the frame. I can only assume that the timber is breathing or expanding slightly in the humidity. There was no room for error and the error is now there in an abundance.

It was the top of the door that was rubbing off the lintel so I dug out the good old trusty plane. It was old when I was a child which means it must be close on eighty years of age. It still has a razor sharp blade and no motor to jam or batteries to expire – a good old-fashioned hand tool. I whacked it across the top of the door and the latter now closes smoothly.

You can’t beat the old ways.

Sink or swim

Head Rambles Posted on by 14

So the Greater Thunderbird [or whatever her name is] has set sail?

There has been a bit of a flurry on the Interwebs and of course the mainstream meeja are loving it. You would think that this one voyage is the last chance to save humanity by discovering a new planet. But no, she’s just going to Merca which has already been discovered.

There have been a lot of comments on the Web hoping that she’ll sink. The thought had crossed my mind but I don’t hope that. After all is said and done, she’s just a child who has been sucked in by the Climate Alarmists as a Golden Goose, and frankly I feel sorry for her. She will probably grow out of her current obsession and take up counting spoons in the kitchen drawer or washing her hands a hundred times a day, but she will be forever tarred with the Eco-Saint label.

Anyway if she did drown she would only be sanctified [or deified].

I do wonder though what would happen if her millionair’s yacht gets into trouble? After all, it’s only forty years ago that a sudden and vicious storm caused the Fastnet Race Disaster. Is she prepared to accept help and rescue from a passing oil-guzzling ship, or is she going to go down with the boat in an eco-friendly way? Or maybe she’ll just walk for the rest of the trip?

The site I use for weather forecasting [and I might add, my forecasts are generally more accurate than the Irish Met Office] has a gizmo that shows the little darling’s live location including coordinates –

https://www.windy.com/track-team-malizia-and-greta-on-their-journey-across-the-atlantic

You can use that information to cheer her on her way.

Or to programme a missile.

The end of an era

Head Rambles Posted on by 25

Time flies when you’re having fun?

I see it’s three days since I looked at this here site? How remiss of me. But the fact is that I have been very busy at other things.

For a long time now I have been increasingly concerned at the state of my poor old car. I have had it for fifteen years and it has clocked up a grand total of 33,000 Km give or take. It has also collected a few scrapes and bumps, whether by some fucker doing some bad parking or the hospital car park [the latter is one of those fucking monstrosities that has concrete pillars everywhere and it’s almost impossible to avoid them when reversing into a spot].

Anyhows, as I said, I have had it for fifteen years and it is generally showing its age. I have been told not to open the sun-roof as it is prone to jamming and if it jammed in the open state, I [or rather the car] would be fucked. Also one wing mirror is barely hanging in there, the boot leaks and I cannot see it lasting another fifteen years.

So I finally made a decision, after a couple of years pondering – it is time to do something about it. So I spent a day trawling web sites looking for something that fulfilled three criteria – it had to have a lower mileage [kilometerage?] than my current banger; it had to have a much larger luggage space [to carry a wheelchair, a stroller and various other bits and bobs as are required by someone who has very limited mobility] and finally it had to be affordable.

Yesterday was spent driving around the Wild West of Dublin where most of the car dealers [and drug dealers] seem to congregate.

I settled on one that fitted all the criteria. It’s almost new and has fewer scrapes and bumps than the poor old Focus.

Now I have to go through the process of getting a loan. It’s about thirty five years since I last borrowed anything and I forgot about all the hoops that have to be navigated. For a start they want my last three payslips which is weird as the Credit Union in RTE is just down the corridor from the Payroll Department. And anyway, who the fuck hangs onto payslips?

If all goes to plan I should have the new yoke next week. I’m not wildly excited. In fact I’m a little sad. Focus has been right down to the heart of France a few times and I have some great memories from driving it.

I’ll miss it.