[Richard]

I was always under the impression that 2.4GHz had better penetration than 5 so if 2.4 was marginal 5 would fail. My walls appear to be death to Wi-Fi so between floors and with the odd diagonal ‘line of sight’ through a wall Wi-Fi reception was grim. I am not certain that a roof mount unit would overcome the issues for me.Wi-Fi only items can be a pain as the bedroom wall is over 50 feet from the ground floor router with a couple of walls in the way. A second access point on the 1st floor is only about 30 feet away but again has a couple of walls in the way so that is not an easy pathway

[Richard]

As others have said there are many good places to visit so something for every taste. The park should have some brochures with not always wonderful maps of local and not quite so local places to visit, so do make your own printouts or, if possible help your wife to use Google maps for a live map that can show any problems.  My wife found it surprisingly easy to find the way when bypassing a road blockage on the way to one of many recent hospital visits. I trust you will have a pleasant break and that your wife stabilises with a rest.

If your wife has any difficulty walking and getting tired do NOT be tempted to drive down on to the beach, the beach loves cars and tends to EAT them.

We find out this afternoon what is possible with my wife; though an appointment at 09:00 on Wednesday with oncology suggests she may be about to start on a similar pathway to yours.

At least I am on an easier pathway, a cut, stick and forget skin cancer. I can see May is going to be a busy month for us.

I wish the two of you well, whatever the weather have a great time and above all relax and enjoy the sights sounds and air. There is usually a shop on site for any forgotten essentials or a trip into town will furnish anything like soap, toothpaste or whatever.

[Richard]

I trust you mean a rest day rather than a gloom and doom day. Sadly there could be a few of those as you recover but from what I am hearing from you with all the support and the right sort of assistance you are getting that should not be a big problem. Have rest and be thankful days along with I want to do a bit more today days – as long as they  are not do too much days, ever. The weather may change to something a little more seasonal again soon so enjoy the relax weather, gain strength so when the time comes you can join the bale us out crew when the rain returns.

[Richard]

Thank you JayCeeDee it does explain much of the difference, though no current accounts even with overdraft facilities appear, perhaps because they are not showing a negative balance – and have not for a long time. The same also applies to some credit cards, but they may not be declared to or be known to Equifax.

That was a good point about unsubscribing, I will look to unsubscribe from the loan offers.

All in all thank you.

[Richard]

It could be too early to show up a clear pattern and my usage could be too far off the wall compared to what they expect. They only found one bank account and that was an executor account that closed a while back. Credit cards that get little use appear not to be counted.

I agree that reminders every month are a good idea, – and not just for this purpose. The mobile, desk top and my wife’s wall chart are now key elements for managing reminders and knowing when additional appointments can be taken onboard. Currently the ones from ClearScore have only been loan sales puff, but that should change.

Currently on-demand bills take a huge priority on my to do list, so it is currently; get bill, check bill details, pay bill, file copies.

[Richard]

That is some reassurance, though the power company does tend to give a everything a regular power cycle. I had heard the suggestion that WAN side disturbances can affect LAN side equipment.

Some years ago I had a long distance domestic (i.e. with the country) data link and needed a couple of modems to carry it. Rather than bargain basement types the company bought real top of the line ones that could do all sorts of magic. The snag was that the end to end comms needed total transparency as they also used command signals. It took weeks to disable all the ‘smarts’ and turn those super expensive modems into dumb versions that were immune to such signalling.

[Richard]

The most common pump that I have encountered is a synchronous type with a coil on the outside and a driven shaft with an iron mass on it to move the impeller sealed in a water proof container. They are fractional horse power devices so can be quite easily stalled, though once they are running the iron mass helps them to keep running, though inertia could slow down their initial spooling up. So a rusty shaft, a few bits of crud and a stall can be the result.

[Richard]

Taking a brief ‘honesty break’ I should perhaps say that EE admitted several weeks back that an equipment failure has restricted capacity for a number of months with no fix date yet available. They also gave a rebate on the bill.

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

Don’t worry Richard, 5g will be here soon to avoid you ?

I can feel very confident of that, happily EE are not organising parties in breweries.

Getting reliable voice would be a good starting point, and that really used to be only 2G – when it used to be better.

[Richard]

Having recently put in HomePlugs to reach a couple of hard to serve rooms, the loss of performance is is not a welcome issue. Wi Fi is not an option, it has been used and found severely wanting, cable is the preferred choice but almost impossible to achieve due to decoration + tiling + access issues + my mobility issue, so I now hope that more recent HomePlugs are more reliable. In any case I suspect a slow HomePlug set up is faster than EE broadband and infinitely faster then EE 4G, (or more likely No G) in the house.

[Richard]

If you can hear the whirling noise from the pump then the outlet is likely blocked, it the pump is silent then it has likely failed or been jammed. They are not too expensive and can be changed by some one who knows one end of a screwdriver from the other and what a spanner is and does. Pliers my also be useful to release the hose clamps.

However, if it is the timer/programmer or motherboard things do get expensive, quickly.

Our machine also gets very regular work outs two or three times most days, some times more, but generally they have held up OK; I think the current one is only a couple of years old but probably already had more than UK average use.

It is always a struggle to decide to fix or replace a machine, unlike Steve we have never gone in for insurance, usually the insurance costs over three years could fund a new machine and most of our machines do 8 ~ 10 years. So it worked out cheaper to buy even if the machine was a bit more expensive than average.

[Richard]

Bob, that sound like progress to me, all progress is good progress at the stage.

[Richard]

I had a look at the list of ideas contained in the spring update and nothing caught my eye. Have I missed something really good, or was it a whole collection of items that did not amount to much ?

I am not knocking those who feel there are some must haves in the list, I just did not see any such items.

[Richard]

Bob, it was pretty much the same with at least one windows 10 update, though it might equally well have been a Windows 7 update on the road from Vista to 10. I think I had to do something like 200 updates before it was happy.

[Richard]

A good spot Ed, I went there and found that I had already stopped that one and most others, only the new ‘specials’ had anything allowed – I stopped them, but could not be bothered to restart just yet. I allow almost nothing to run as a background item, warning others may not find this suitable for their usage patterns. (Yesterday, I had to loosen the strangle hold I put on my phone to allow something to work.)

[Richard]

Putin announced that Russian nationals living outside of Russia with whom he had disagreements should be liquidated, so when they start turning up dead in this country some people start to join up the dots, oh how unpleasant to think that the nice cuddly Tzar might be making good on his threat. Now who had something to gain, OK a few might want to blacken his name, though to me it is already the same as jet. Then on the other hand a few dissidents might quake a little more in their boots and a few more might decide that speaking out about the thug is not a good idea. So is it so hard to work out who wins in that scenario?

As for Putin’s poodle in Syria, so he bites a metaphorical postman for fun because he is like that and sitting in the safety of his Russian kennel he does not believe anything much will happen to him anyway. At best all that happened is that some of the barrel bombs were knocked over and once more Putin has his image polished because that was all the outside world could do. After all the fifth column lead by the likes of Vanessa Beeley, Sarah Abdallah will soon be ranting about how nasty the west is anyway to smoke screen all from view. So from Putin and the poodle’s point of view that is how the whole thing is being played out. Along with popular cheap shots about the ‘white hats’  playing to anti imperial sentiment, while welcoming a different imperialist Tzar into their midst. But everyone will still accept their own narrative no matter what.

[Richard]

Vanessa Beeley, Sarah Abdallah* and the other extreme right wingers and anti west interests are really having a field day with their Syria fantasies and alternative stories and altered reality. Their aims being to sow doubt and discredit previously trusted news agencies so the void could be filled by their make believe alternatives, e.g. RT.

I wonder what they had to say about the journalist who reported on a spate of recent deaths among Russian irregulars in Syria and whose death was dismissed as suicide and others consider very suspect.

*Sarah Abdallah claims to be in the Middle East while using images of a more North American flavour.

[Richard]

Glad and relieved to hear from you once more Bob. Your body has had a medical shock, it will take time to settle down and recover. Never do too much at one time, rush slowly, stop while you still feel you might do a bit more and above all continue to recover, – which will take rest and reset time.

[Richard]

On the same theme of hospitals, of which I have seen and experienced too many in the past few days my wife has already had all of her scans and the final analysis is awaited, the comments from today’s operative was ‘that’s not good news‘ – though it was not in relation to the scan that was done. My blood pressure tablets have been doubled and the plastic surgeon has been booked for mid May to remove the lesion; that should be a busy day with me half way across the county in the morning and my wife in the opposite direction in the afternoon. As the currently sole driver I am a busy person these days.

A specialist key cutter came this afternoon and cut the keys we needed. Then I found the previously failing key worked fine once more, another revenge of mechanical devices perhaps? Or perhaps it was a typical day for us.

[Richard]

I sounds  bit like the ‘believable work ‘of RT crew who recently trawled the public areas of Southampton Hospital Maternity unit at night and miss translated the cleaners wet floor sign until they were kicked out.

[Author]

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