Rapid progress at a snail’s pace

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

Today is a good day.

Or rather it’s as good a day as could be expected with a background of aches and bits falling off and the like.

The tree in the lane is sorted. A kind neighbour attacked it with a chainsaw while standing on some scaffolding while his son dragged away the bits and I did traffic duty. Rather surprisingly I have very good neighbours in spite of the way I treat them all.

The phone is sorted and is now fully charged. Though maybe sorted is a bit optimistic as I still haven’t worked out some of the finer details of how the fucking thing works. It’s the same operating system as my old one so it should be the same but it isn’t.

One of the yokes that is missing is a little row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. One was a “back” button, one was a “show home screen” button and the last was a button that displayed all the programmes that were currently running. That last one was great as I could switch between programmes or close individual ones. I know there is a way of showing all the running programmes as I just found it accidentally. The problem is that I haven’t a clue how I did it.

Never mind. I can use it as a phone and can send and receive text messages. The camera is a little more powerful and I have to explore that to the point of breaking it. At least I managed to rescue all my old photographs which is a double edged sword – most of them are rubbish. The new phone has three lenses on the back instead of the old two. I have yet to work out what the third one does. Exciting times.

Herself is a bit pissed off with me as I keep playing different alarm tones and ring tones and some other tones and she keeps telling me to shut the fuck up. I’m going to try giving her my old one [if I can charge the battery]. That will be fun. She hasn’t used a touch screen before apart from her Kindle.

I’ll have to remove a few contact numbers first though.

[*cough*]

 

So much for compatibility

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I have been having a little spot of bother with my phone.

It’s nothing much. It’s just a small matter of its battery and charging of same. I plug it in to charge and leave it. I come back a while later and it’s still half flat. There’s something wrong with the connection.

Anyhows, I know it’s probably a simple quick fix but my attitude was one of fuckit, I deserve a new phone. Yesterday I ordered one and forgot about it.

The new one arrived this morning which is something quite remarkable.

Naturally I unpacked it. I’m not going to mention the name as doubtless everyone will queue up to tell me it’s a heap of shite and I should have bought something else. Suffice it to say that it’s a mid range Android and has 5G which is fun as I have a problem here getting 3G.

So far so good. My problem now is transferring all the crap from my old phone to the new one. Naturally it happily transferred all the rubbish but balked at transferring the good stuff. I have yet to work that one out.

But then I noticed a problem. Naturally the phone arrived with only a little charge in the battery. I went to plug in a charger. Bugger! It has a type of connector I haven’t come across before – a Type C [apparently]. Now they conveniently gave me a cable with a Type C on the end which I plugged in. But the other end of the cable is a Type C too which is fuck all use. Damn! I have no way of charging the phone and the battery is almost flat.

So now I have to head off to Dublin to buy some proper cable or at least a mains plug that takes Type C.

Never mind. I’m in good mood today.

It’s the Spring Equinox and the day is now longer than the night.

 

I’m a lumberjack and I’m not okay

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Once again life has dealt me a tricky card.

One of my trees has fallen over. Or it may not. It may have just snapped half way up the trunk. Or it may just be leaning.

I first noticed the problem the other day when driving out of the lane. Where once there had been open sky there was now a huge lump of ivy overhanging the lane, low enough to brush the roof of the car. Fuck!

My first problem is that I can’t see exactly what’s at the heart of this lump as ivy tends to just tie itself into a mass of twisted trunks and that mass may or may not include a tree trunk. So I can’t tell if it’s just a lump of ivy or a lump containing a tree. The lump is a few feet across so your guess is as good as mine.

Another problem is that it’s near the entrance to the lane so if I sling a ladder up then I’m likely to be sent flying when a car turns into the lane and takes the ladder from under me. I don’t have any “men at work” signs. I do have one for “loose stones” that the County Council kindly left dumped in my ditch but that would just be confusing.

My next problem is that if I need a chainsaw then I am bunched, for today anyway. My chainsaw has lost its teeth [at least we have that in common]. I need a new chain but of course the shops are shut as it’s a fucking bank holiday.

I suppose I could order a delivery of something that involves a large lorry as that would hit the bunch of ivy and hopefully bring the lot down. But I don’t need anything [apart from a chain]. And anyway the bank holiday strikes again.

I think I’ll just wander down and stare at it. At least then the neighbours will know I’m aware of it. And maybe one will offer to help?

At least it has stopped raining.

For now.

 

Sitting on a fortune

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I was rooting through a drawer the other day looking for something.

It was one of those kitchen drawers where everything eventually collects. Old screws. Old Biros that no longer work. Dud batteries. You know those drawers as everyone seems to have one.

Anyhows, way at the back of it I found a calculator I didn’t even remember owning. Judging by a calendar that was stuck in the case, it dates back to ’93. What was very strange was that it still worked so the battery still has a kick to it. It’s a Sharp EL-373.

I know collectors are mad for old electronic devices for some reason, so I wondered what my Sharp might be worth.

I did a search on eBay and found a few for sale.

€9.00

Fuck! Never mind. There must be a lot of them out there.

My prize possession though is an original Sinclair Cambridge Mk I which is the first electronic calculator to hit the popular market. It’s in near perfect condition and is in its original case, complete with the instruction card that tells you how to add, subtract, multiply or divide. It was really cutting edge technology. That must be worth a fortune.

I did a search in the Interwebs.

€7.00

Double fuck!

It looks like I’ll have to hold onto them for another couple of hundred years.

They might be worth something then?