Dingley Dell Do the Business

After my tries and tribulations with the folks down at Dingley last week it was a great surprise to discover that all my equipment has now arrived on campus. The only mistake that they had actually made was to read the letter I as the digit 1 on our order, which confused the order finding system no end. The stuff that arrived is just what I wanted, including a beefy server for my new classroom installation and a couple of Dell Axims for demonstrator marking (if I ever get round to producing the software).

Doors are complicated

What's in a door? Quite a lot as it turns out. Tonight number one son and I spent a happy couple of hours stripping down the car door in search of the cause of "Windows - non moving version". I reckon there is more electrical compexity in this door than there was in the whole of my old Mini. There are four motors, a heater, a whole bunch of switches and heaven knows what else.

The good news is that we managed to dismantle the door and put it back together without causing any lasting damage - at least not to the car. The bad news is that we don't think that we can fix the problem. We need to remove the window glass to get the regulator out. The manual says that to remove the glass the first thing you do is lower the window to around 3/4 down and then start work. Bit tricky to do this if the window is stuck in the up position.....

We reckon that the only way to attack the problem is to cut the thin wire which is used to pull the window up and down. Of course, as soon as we do that we are deep into recovery mode and it would help at that point to have a spare assembly. Which we don't have. And which costs 220 quid. Ho hum. Any ideas folks.

Do the Sausages Last

Had a BBQ today. The weather for the last few days has been fairly dreadful, but we went for it anyway. Ian and Geoff and Chris and a whole bunch of other people turned up and a good time was had. For about the first time we managed to get the charcol fired machine to work a treat. My top BBQ tip, do the sausages last of all. If you do them when the thing is real hot and has some flames you get loads of fat and massive conflagration. If you do the bangers at the end when things have cooled down a bit the results are much more restful.

We had one sausage left at the end, which went next door to Jack. Our neighbour's dog is vey partial to our BBQs, and apparently stands quietly next to the fence waiting for us to hurl a sausage or to over to him whenever he gets wind of of one.

Window Wind Up

The car is starting to worry me again. Only a few hours after having been given a clean bill of health I was using the electric front windows (posh eh?) at the council tip yesterday and ran into a little difficulty. The first visit was fine, with me all suave and James Bondy. The window smoothly whirred down and I was able to ask the chap where to get rid of most of a holly bush and accompanying debris. Then it jus as smoothly slid back up again. At the second visit things were by no means as suave. The window shuddered down making a sound rather like a team of blackboard finger scrapers practicing for the Olympics Blackboard Finger Scraping finals. A very talented team with a good chance of getting gold. Having staggered half way down the window then refused to go back up again. This is problematic. Leaving a car outside all night with an open window is not a good thing to do, even in an area as genteel as ours. Particularly if it rains.

By a combination of pulling and frantic button pressing we managed to get the window back into place, but something is definitely wrong. Something under several layers of trim panels, funny breakable clips, one way screws and complicated wiring. The Haynes manual says that it is a "four spanner" job to dismantle the door and take a look inside. I'm not sure if I am a four spanner mechanic. Fortunately for me fate, in the form of an afternoon of pouring rain, has prevented me from getting to grips with it today. Something to look forward to next week methinks.

Holly Gone

Did some gardening today. Spent the afternoon grappling with the undergrowth. I don't like gardening. I don't like any job which you do and then have to do again later. When I do a job I like it to stay done, but gardens are not like that. You can spend a whole hour (or even two) getting rid of all the weeds and stuff and then in a year (or sometimes even less) you have to do it all again.

Anyhoo, one of the few garden tasks that I do well is getting rid of stuff. Ask me to plant something and the odds are I will perform something akin to a burial. Ask me to dispose of something (but remember to ask me to get rid of the right thing because my targeting is a bit wayward) and you can be pretty sure that something will be removed. Today it was the turn of the holly bush.

Holly is cute on Christmas cards. It is not cute when it is 8 feet tall, prickly as hell and hiding the dustbins. So it had to go. By a cunning combination of cutters, brute strength and ignorance and innumerable plastic bags the holly bush is now spread around the council dump. A little holly removal tip: Leave yourself a nice long bit sticking out of the ground for you and anyone else daft enough to help you. This can be swung on most effectively to lever the stump out of the ground. Oh, and wear the thickest leather gloves you can find.