FLOOD!!!! (by sarah)

No this time it isn't part of the curse instead it was a bit of bad luck for peeps upstream of us. The dam of their lake broke and a huge surge of water came down the stream that runs through the garden here! This was in the afternoon of the 13th of Jan 2007.

We weren't actually here to witness this but a neighbour took some photos - we were quiet starteled when we saw them!

This is the stone bridge by the water cress pond, there is normally a little statue of a boy called Gilbert residing in here. He was missing after the flood but once the water level went down it turned out he'd just been knocked off his plinth!

Our compost heap is now responsible for phosphate and nitrate contamination of the water courses! Yep thats it half submerged there.

Beleive it or not there is a tunnel that thestream flows through just under the road there - it is completely below the water line meaning water had to have come over the road!

As you can see compared to our little trickle this was something else! Poor Barbara had not long planted out a load of iris and rushes along the stream which all got washed away 🙁

VLAN woes (by alaric)

At our house, we have three LANs; the external one, which is connected to the ADSL router and has a range of six public IPs; the internal one, which is joined to the external one via a NAT router (so using a single public IP) and contains my workstations and the fileserver; and the guest one, which is bridged to wireless Ethernet - and also joined to the external network via the NAT router.

Now, since I've not cabled the place yet, the physical layout of the network is dictated by the lengths of the cables I have. The ADSL router is at one end of the building, near the phone sockets, while the workstations are right at the very other end of the building. Therefore, the NAT router is in the airing cupboard, roughly in the middle of the building; my longest cables reach from the ADSL router to the NAT router, and from the NAT router to a switch in the office from with the workstations and server connect; and the wireless bridge sits in the airing cupboard along with the NAT router.

Even when I have structured cabling in place, I don't want to be having to cable three separate LANs around the house anyway; the natural solution is to use VLANs. That way, you can have switches joined by single-cable trunks, and those trunks carry all of the LANs in one; at each switch, you can either configure a port to connect to a specified VLAN, or configure the port to use IEEE 802.1Q tagging to connect a machine that understands it, in which case that machine can join whichever VLANs it is allowed using the single cable. This saves on the cabling a great deal.

Car Parking in a Quagemire (by sarah)

Where we park the cars has been getting muddier and muddier to the point of Sarah slidding right over when getting in a vechile!

Barbara said she had some gravel from the graval path around the veg gardens that we should move there to stop the problem. So yesturday Al and Mike put their backs into shifting the 'gravel'.

NOw being a geologist I was amazed to find that 'graval' in this instance means - mud with lots of pebbles in!

The result as I predicted is an even more muddy parking space than before though without the great ruts that had begun to appear! We are hoping that the rain is going to was the mud away leaving just the pebbles which might actually work but given our current bad luck field is unlickely to!

The sad demise of the Dishwasher and the Rise of something better (by sarah)

The dishwasher repair man was supposed to be coming yesturday to repair our dishwasher which has been sorely missed these last few months. He was supposed to arrive at some time between 8 am and 1 pm so there we were waiting by 7:30 - he turned up at 2 pm just as we had given up on him coming. But he had got lost and been delayed etc... so we forgave him.

We explained the issue - ie the RCD tripping everytime we put the thing on, he explains that its probably the heating element as that normally cuases this problem. He turned the machine upside and with a lot of screw driver work he got the bottom panel off. He had been jovially chatting away until this point, then his face fell and he started saying things like 'ah...' and 'ooo...'.

The reason?

The inside of our poor dishwasher was a thick red sludgy soup of red rust 🙁 There was so much water in it, it really was unbelievable! Everything was corroded 🙁 Here are some picks after a bit clearing up.

He apologised lots that he couldnt fix it and even if we did replace all the damaged components it would still probably trip the RCD as there would always be something else that we had missed 🙁 Also the cost of all those components including pumps and motors and what not would be more than the cost of a good new dishwasher.

So off he went after giving us a thing to get a discount from his shop as he had still had to charge us call out (he seemed really worried about this as if we would shout at him or something?).

Al had had a trip to IKEA sceduled for a birthday treat but we decided that my budget for that would have to go towards a new dishwasher, then we looked at the looming piles of washing up and I looked at my hands where the sores had just started healin. Al sighed and we checked the balance on the credit cards.

Then we ended up in the shop checking out the dishwashers, we already knew that we wanted a full sized one now we have Jean - effiency and water consumption where important as was price! The January sales were for once at the right time to benifiet us as the one we wanted (durability being important) was a Boshe it cost us just over £200, as always I got grumpy when it came to handing over the money but within an hour we where heading home with a dishwasher.

Our friend Mike had been supposed to visit but had got serverlly deleyed and arrived just after we got home with the machine. He took us out for Pizza Hut as a birthday treat for me - yummy!!! 🙂 Thankyou Mike 🙂

Once back from that the poor sod then ended up helping us to take the old dishwasher out to the van and bring the new one in. He then helped Al set it up with me growing more impatient to use it by the second! The house was in complete dissaray with furniture move hither and thither to let things pass. There was also the obligatory polestrene thought it said it was CFC free and the wooden strutts where untreated wood from stastanable woods etc.... Plus I have uses for the white stuff I've always dispised before!

Here are the photos of Al working out how to install it and make it work.

After a lot of faffing he appeared to have hit on an idea and got down to work.

He then had an eureka moment and looked scarily excited. He promised me he knew how to make it work!

His solution?

To rebuild the polestirene packaging around himself and to pretend to be a dishwasher - this mainly involved miming the actions of washing up and going brrrrrrrr!

Mean while Mike had got hold of the safty travel device in the washing machine - otherwise known as a big yellow foam arrow!

As you can tell the boys where focused and completely mature about all of this! Even Minni jioned in though I think it was more a case of being in the wronge place at the wronge time though she did purr and was happy to pose!

Eventually the Dishwasher was installed! We loaded it and set it going - its so quiet!

Today we dismantled the old dishwasher as a) I wanted photos and b) Al was convinced there had to be some salvagable components that he could keep for future projects!

Part of me wonders what he is planning to make!

Will the Curse Ever go Away? (by sarah)

Today we discovered the wooden cube cabinate had cat urine soaked into it - AGAIN!!!!

We only moved the thing back inot the house just before christmas from last time 🙁 On top of that I had said last time I didnt want it back in the house until it was sanded and varnished so that things couldnt soak into it - but alas this did not happen and we had to bring it back in 🙁

So I spent a huge chunk of today trying to find homes for the things that live on the cabinate and getting a very stressed Al to bring it upstairs for me - it is now in soak in freash water after its disinfectant soak etc... It is most definatly not coming back into the house this time until varnished and its obvious we cant stand it back where it was as this will just keep happening. Also it turns out that Minni has been a very naughty cat - she though female is 'spotting' to mark her teratorry - sigh.

I wasnt very happy with her today.

On top of that the ADSL was down which lead to a slightly annoyed Sarah (who had planned to get loads of stuff done online whilst bobble was in nursery) and a very stressed Al indeed 🙁

Still I did get a nice birthday suprise of a great book arrive today so its not that bad - even if I did find a kitten mess in the stable by slipping on it - whilst trying to see if we needed to clean the litter tray - sigh.

Oh and I am desperate for the Dishwasher repair person to be able to fix the dishwasher tomorrow - my hands are a mass of red sores and bumps cuased by washing up and wearing gloves makes it worse (grrr! silly x-mar) - this means that I havent been able to do the washing up for the last week as its too painful. We therefore have a kitchen full of stuff waiting to be washed up 🙁