On, off, on again

warning light
Rant alert!

Jo took her car in today for the oxygen sensor to be replaced. This is the follow up to the last visit, a couple of weeks ago. OK, so Steven Eagell Toyota didn’t manage to resolve it before the end of the summer holidays, but they did provide a courtesy car.

On the way home this evening, the engine management light came back on. Wow, that £300 resolution lasted a long time.

I rang the dealer to let them know that the light had come back on. Jo can take it back in tomorrow for them to reset the sensor and check that one of the other sensors hasn’t failed. Evidently once a sensor has failed, it puts additional strain on the remaining sensors which could cause them to fail.

Now, I know I’m not a car mechanic, but a sensor is just a measuring device and it either returns a signal or it doesn’t. If it were some kind of filter that had failed, I could understand the sensors behind it becoming overloaded, but with a sensor, the others will measure what is there regardless of if the first is working or not. If however, contrary to what Jo was told, there is a detrimental effect from driving the car while the sensor has failed, then its a whole different matter.

Jo is fuming. It’s not just the cost, but the inconvenience of having to take it back and wondering what will have ‘failed’ this time.

Posted in Car, Rants | Tagged , | 2 Comments

That’s what you call an anniversary giveaway!

David Airey, a logo designer in Edinburgh, is celebrating the first anniversary of his graphic design blog by holding a massive $4000 prize giveaway. Although the blog has only been going for a year, it has been very successful, which has meant that many people have sponsored prizes.

The Gold award contains

The Silver award is

There are many other prizes; for details of how to enter, see David’s $4000 Blog Anniversary Prize Draw post.

David’s was one of the first blogs I started following when I joined MyBlogLog back in February and he was the first comment on my blog. In the comments on his Boost
Your Technorati Favourites by 200% in 10 days
post, David gave me some very useful advice, which led me to give my blog layout a makeover in March of this year.

Best wishes for future successful years David.

[Edited 2nd October to remove logo design links at David’s request]

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Back to School

I don’t know where it’s gone, but the summer holidays are over. The kids both went back to school into their new classes this morning.

They both had good days, which is the best way to start a new term. As Jo isn’t working at the moment, she was able to take them and collect them today.

I think they are both going to sleep well tonight; they were very tied.

Jo’s probably going to help out at the school again until she gets another job.

Posted in General, Watling Lower School | Comments Off on Back to School

New shed door

I know, not very exciting, but today I have been replacing the door on our brick shed.

It had to be replaced as it wouldn’t have lasted another winter. We replaced the door about 13 years ago when we moved in. As funds were a bit tight then, I bought the cheapest interior door that I could get. The paint has long gone (I know I should have painted it again) and the outside plywood has disintegrated and is peeling off.

So, anyway, we headed out to B&Q this morning, where we got a proper exterior door, some more Weathershield paint and a power planer.

Since then, I’ve trimmed and planed the door to size, hung it, fitted the lock and painted it with the Weathershield primer. It doesn’t sound much, but it’s taken most of the day.

The power planer was a good purchase; I think I would still be out there now with my hand plane. Of course I didn’t add the ‘dust’ collection bag when I was using it, so our patio ended up looking like it a monster attack of grated cheese. It was all over the floor, stuck to the brickwork and up in the top of the gazebo. Oops!

The primer will have finished drying by tomorrow morning, so I’ll be out putting the undercoat and gloss on tomorrow.

Posted in General | Comments Off on New shed door

Poor internet connection

Our internet connection has been extremely intermittant this evening.

Pinging the next VirginMedia router on our route out has given awful results all evening. You get a batch of low latency 7ms pings then it goes up into the 200ms and 300ms. Then you get a time out, or maybe 5 minutes of time outs. Then it comes back and you start all over again.

Checking on the service status page, I see issues with TV/Internet all over their network this evening. I hope they hurry up and get this fixed because it’s a nightmare to surf when the connection drops between pages.

Posted in Computers, Rants | Comments Off on Poor internet connection

Scattergories Meme

I’ve been tagged by Vijay with the Scattergories meme.

Here are the rules:

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the questions. They must be real places, names, things . . . nothing made up! If you can’t think of anything, skip it. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question. If your name happens to start with the same letter as mine, sorry, but you can’t use my answers!

Famous singer Ice-T
Four letter word icon
Street Icknield Street
Color Indigo
Gifts/Presents introductory flying lesson
Vehicle Isuzu Trooper
Things in a Souvenir Shop ice bucket
Boy’s Name Isaac
Girl’s Name Iris
Movie Title I, Robot
Drink Irish Whiskey
Occupation IronMonger
Celebrity Isabella Rossellini
Magazine Ideal Home
U. S. City Indianapolis
Pro Sports Ipswich Town Football Club
Fruit Indian Prune
Reason for Being Late for Work I slept in
Something You Throw Away inedible food
Things you Shout I won
Cartoon Character Ivor the Engine

I’ll say thanks Vijay, but it was a bit of a challange and some of my answers were stretching it a bit.

I’ll tag Gary, James and Bobby, hopefully they’ll have an easier time of it.

Posted in Fun | Tagged | 6 Comments