Tony Sutton’s Blog!

In summary:

* Gas boiler in the kitchen - disconnected

* Airing cupboard upstairs - water tank emptied and ripped out

* Loft - water tank emptied and ripped out

* Both above - water pipes ripped out

* Upstairs carpet removed and floorboards removed to install new pipes (not done). This included moving or stuff out of one room to another room.

* New radiator installed in my study room and our bedroom.

That was for day one. Tomorrow, they will fit the radiators in the 3rd bedroom, 2 x in the living rooms and also the porch before making a start with other jobs.

Then the weekend of no jobs as they don’t work over weekend. They start on Monday with a possible of extending it into Tuesday as they said there are a lot of work to do. But with the amount of work they did today, I think they still can finish on Monday…otherwise I’ll have to ask my boss for another day off from work.

Things left to do:

* New piping around the house including under the floorboard

* New 22mm Gas pipe to be fitted from the gas mains to the new gas boiler

* Removal of the old gas boiler

* Other bits that I don’t know. Hopefully will find out tomorrow…

And we were freezing our arses off all day today with the door open as they had to route a water hose pipe to the front door get the water off. So the cold wind got into the house - BRRRRR. They also said there will be no hot water until Monday. Good thing we have electricity shower with its own heater.

They are going to turn up one hour earlier tomorrow, so we need to wake up a bit early. Ughhhhh.

The heating company contacted us yesterday, saying that they are going to fit the central heating in our house tomorrow (Thursday).

Yesterday evening and this evening, we did some mad moving around our stuff to make things easier for them to access and fit the heating around the house.

They are going to rip out the old gas boiler from the kitchen, the large water tank in the airing cupboard and also the water tank in the loft - all into one boiler in the airing cupboard which will control everything - hot water, radiators and timer.

We’re pretty excited about it as it will keep the whole house warm, since we don’t have one here. The old system is air heating which sucks, so you can see why we’re excited.

So for that, we’ve booked tomorrow, Friday and Monday as day off from work as the heating company do not work over the weekend. So we may be without access to hot water but that’s fine - we can go to our parents’ house anyway.

The house is, once again, a mess - looks like we have just moved in all over again!

Speaking about that… couldn’t believe it has been 1 year and 4 months since we moved to our own house! Time do fly quick…

Better get to bed now… no idea what time they will turn up tomorrow!

… write!

Can’t believe I haven’t posted anything for almost 2 weeks. Life has been busy and other things has kept me busy, mostly work related. Getting home pretty late for the past few days due to the amount of traffic on the road, which I suspect is related to people going shopping.

Speaking about shopping, we was at the city this afternoon, doing some shopping for Xmas. And a new pair of jeans for myself as I ripped the old one when I stepped down from a table at work, which was embarrassing! Then did some weekly food shopping afterward and now we are cooking our roast dinner for tonight. It smells nice at the moment. Mmm, yummy.

Cold weather, dirt on road & salt grit = my car is now all dirty. Need to give it a clean someday… don’t want to see it all rusted up.

Been thinking about getting a replacement car as I’ve ranked up almost 25,000 miles since getting it almost 2 years ago and it’s showing its age now. But money is tight at the moment with MOT and car service coming up next month, guess it’ll have to wait until next year.

Better check up the dinner… hope you all are doing well.

Is it just me or the TV channel - “Dave” - on Freeview has the most crappest subtitles display? Always slow and then burst of subtitles to “catch up” up to the point and then slow again.

Very annoying when I am trying to wach Top Gear!

Anyone seeing the same problem?

Update for IE to be included in Vista SP1, XP SP3 and standalone update available starting in December.

Finally, I really hated this! Can’t wait to see the update coming in…

read more | digg story

… cold this week.

Cold weather = more cars on road.

More cars on road = traffic chaos.

Traffic chaos = getting to work 15 to 20 minutes late.

Annoying.

But nevermind about that!

Hello to you all. Hope you’re enjoying November so far with a few weeks left till Xmas (what, already?!)

Haven’t started any Xmas shopping and I’m not looking forward to it. Hard to think what to get them. I wish I could get away by buying them vouchers or something. But it’s not nice and I would rather give them some presents.

Weekend is almost there… just one more day then yay!

to be continued…

Fire safety officers are learning sign language to help them install life-saving smoke alarms for the deaf.
The officers in Norfolk are studying deaf etiquette and methods of communication with people who have hearing difficulties.

“With these social and language skills they can more easily explain how the flashing light alarms work… “

read more | digg story

We went to King Lynn to test drive the Focus ST after seeing the car on their website. However when we got there, it was already sold! Nevermind….

Since we was already there, I thought I’d test drive two other cars which were:

2004 04 Reg HONDA Civic 2.0i-VTEC Type S - my god, so UNDERPOWERED! Even that it’s 2.0i, it doesn’t feel like it. I had to push it harder to gain power. And a very odd dashboard gearbox!

The other car was…

2005 05 Reg VAUXHALL Astra 2.0T 16v SRi (Turbo) - a very nice & nippy car. The turbo kicks in very early and it goes like a rabbit being chased by a fox! The only downside is it has a very poor suspension compared with my ST170.

Any other cars I should test drive next time?

This got to be one of my favorite short video!

The weather last night was warm, so we headed out to our local rugby place where they was holding an firework event.

It’s very small place, but very busy with loads of people. Only £3 each. But the fireworks was good… it lasted about 20 to 25 minutes! Pretty good for a small & local event for a good price.

Plans for today is to clear out the garage and throw away some junk I don’t need anymore. Let see what goodies I find in there…

My 4-5 years old digital camera, a Canon IXUS 500 has died a painful death. So I am looking around for a new digital camera.

It needs to be similar specs as above but with better features. Recently I saw on TV ads of this new camera:

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/compact/dmc-fx33eb-s/index.htm

Has anyone got one? Is it a good camera? Or should I be looking at other models?

Budget is about £200 to £250 or so.

Thanks.

My Robot Hoover - M-288 has started to act funny and kept displaying the three green lights on the S, M and L buttons. I thought it was dead because when I switch it on and pressed the “M” button, it would start up, move a little bit and stopped with these green lights displaying.

I looked up the manual to see what the 3 green lights meant and it turned out that it wasn’t serious as I thought.It means something is blocking in the brush area. Phew.

Took the brush apart, found a bi piece in it, cleaned & removed the hair and crap from the brush, put them back together and started it.

And it worked fine!

One thing to remember, when you remove the bin, ensure you check the filter as mine was pretty full up! Haven’t empted it since I got it… naughty of me.

Eastender tonight… should be explosive fun!

LogMeIn + PDA with Internet access = Geek dream

http://www.logmein.com

That allows me to “log on” to my home computer from my phone from anywhere as long as your phone has Internet access.

The speed is reasonable with GPRS, but I am sure it will be much better with 3G!

The freeware version is basic but it’s good enough for me anyway. There are few times where I need to access something but is not able to go home to get it. And this is where LogMeIn comes in.

Load up the software (via web browser on phone), log on, start remote desktop, get the file I need and either email it to my phone or copy it over. Success!

So, here I am, back home from work, feeling blah. Headaches, feeling dizzy, cold, nose bleed from blowing my nose too much and my body isn’t up to it.

Hoping it’s the usual 24 hours bug for me. Time to head to bed and get warm!