Brain dead

Well my over busy life style is finally causing things to fall apart. The last 7 days have been a blur of activity from fixing the hot water plumbing last Friday night, working at the radio station until midnight on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, playing cribbage on Tuesday night, and hospital radio on Wednesday.

Yesterday was rather unpleasant in that I oversplet for the first time in a very long time. I'd had a rotten nights sleep with bad dreams about hacking my left foot off with a panel saw. Anyway, I was only an hour late into work, and with all the late finishes I've been doing lately, I'm counting it as flexi-time. Not really ideal though.

The problem is, I feel just as tired today. Long gone are the days when I'd wake up just before my alarm clock goes off. After Tuesday, I'm going to have to sort out my sleep patterns again.

Drip... drip...

Worked from home yesterday for the first time. I've never been a big fan of it, I miss working with other people, and the office is only round the corner. But we had someone booked to come and look at our electric meter, so I thought I'd give it a go. Turns out that the suggest problem with my electric meter (no boost facility) is down tot he way the house is wired, there's not a lot that can be done about it, but if I was to have it wired up, it'd be for the water heating only, which isn't what I was after.

I noticed, while washing my hair yesterday morning, that the hot water wasn't very hot. Dismissed it as the meter missing its radio pulse - sometimes happens.

This morning, the hot water was positively cold. Either the water heater has gone, or the electric meter has developed a fault. Decided to try to catch the afternoon session while I was home for lunch by watching the neon lights on the water heater switches. It didn't come on. Still don't know if it's the element or the meter. However, I noticed a few things that have worried me. I'm not sure this is to do with the pipes now being cold and contracted, but there's some calcification around one of the old solder joints on the hot output pipe. The junction was also wet. I then noticed some wetness around the bottom of the tank. There also seems to be some wetness around the lower heater element.

Well it looks like my Friday night is all planned for me. BUGGER!

Happy Birthday

I've just realised I've been writing this for a year now.

Blimey!

The Whirlwind of Life

For the last 2 weeks I've hardly stopped for a moment and had some rest. Lots going on, so a quick summary...

Final preparations to the studio went fairly well, although there were some problems with overheating in the racks. I'll need to spend some time sorting that out for future broadcasts.

Had a "musicians" meeting at the vicarage. Not an awful lot to report, but at least the ongoing problems with the organ are being looked at.

The broadcast started ok - I turned on at midnight, and then went for a drive to Lincoln. Made the mistake of deciding to drive through Lincoln, and got lost. Driving at 2am isn't fun.

Steady lack of sleep as the broadcast has progressed. I ended up replacing the TBU on the first Friday evening, and the rack now sits open faced most of the time to keep the heat under control. Had some fun last weekend with many many OBs, and an unexpected failure of a link transmitter, which caused me to do some rushing around trying to save the day in many places at once. I think everything went as well as it could considering the problems.

Work is busier than ever, and I've got mountains to do before Christmas.

I've given up thinking of doing any more house painting this year - not enough time and not enough good weather left in the year.

Must... get... more... sleep... :(

5 days...

Another slightly longer gap than I intened, but I've not really had time to write... and with just 5 days before the start of RSL 3 I've got a small pile of things to do.

The new MD player arrived, and after a bit of a clean up, it's now working in the studio, although I don't have the right plugs to make up a retmote control for it. I must get round to ordering some more D plugs. Studio building work to fit some air-con and tidy up the ceiling panels is well under way.

Transmitter install was done nearly 2 weeks ago now. I decided to remove my compressor from the TX chain because there was some apparent distortion. However, there's still some distortion present without it, and I'm not sure why. I'm hoping it's my off-air tuner that's the problem, but I didn't really have time to investigate it with a dummy load. At least it's all set up to push out 25W erp now.

Got round to painting some more exterior woodwork on my house over the weekend. I've now only got the bathroom windows to do, and then it's onto the porch, door frames, doors and then the garage. Had some fun and games getting the guttering on and off, but at least I don't have to do it again for another 3 years.