SiliconBog.com

Year: 2016

  • And I will try-y-y-y to fix you…

    The Bongo has been repaired.  It was as simple as paying an extortionate amount of money for a second-hand fuel pump, having it shipped over to Ireland to a mechanic, then paying them an only-slightly-less upsetting wodge of cash to rip out the old and install the new.  So far, so good…

    We went to visit the house yesterday evening to check on the renovation progress.  I was warned by someone I’ve been working with that you can’t trust Irish builders, but the roofs have both been replaced, and work has really moved on in general.  I would reference the second (and easily worst IMHO) episode of Fawlty Towers at this point, but don’t want to tempt fate as they’ve got an internal wall to knock down and a doorway to seal up yet.

    Anyway, overall I’m very impressed, and they even put up some tinsel on the scaffolding 🙂

  • “New” kitchen arrival

    “New” kitchen arrival

    Earlier in the week we looked at a kitchen that someone was selling via DoneDeal (it’s a classified advert website that’s very popular in Ireland).

    The sellers were a really nice couple from Gdansk and it was very informative talking to them about their experience over here as fellow immigrants (or immigrant-elect in my case).

    The main gripe was the weather, which is fair enough for many, but in their home town it hits -20 in the winter so they probably can’t complain too much.

    The other issue they had was with those claiming benefits and not wanting to work. There’s been plenty of bad press about people from other countries being dole scroungers, but it’s well worth remembering that the vast majority of people motivated enough to leave their own countries to seek a better life do expect to put in the hours to achieve that – they just want the opportunity.  The native population perhaps less so at times – very similar to the UK in that respect.

    They ended up delivering the kitchen to us, as getting a van was impossible.  So the place we’re renting now has a kitchen in one of the sitting rooms.  I think it’ll freak out the landlord if he comes in at any point!

  • The Bongo is sick

    The Bongo is sick

    Following a week of it not wanting to set off first thing in the morning (I’d assumed it was in sympathy with me, or down to the cold weather), the Bongo became progressively more ill.  I’m no mechanic, so I took it to one.  They tried it out for a couple of days but couldn’t find anything wrong, so I went to pick it up.

    Seconds after I’d started it to go home, the juddering commenced, followed by coughing, shivering, then a funereal silence.  Feeling perversely pleased that I’d demonstrated that I wasn’t making it up, I left the Bongo with them to be further examined.

    The next day I got a call saying that the reason it’d been misbehaving was that the fuel pump had a big leak.  Apparently this causes issues with fuel not getting into the engine, which seems perfectly logical.  The mechanic slightly scared me when he said that it’d been squirting cold diesel onto the outside of the hot engine for some time.  I got confirmation that it would be dangerous to drive it, so it’s stranded now.

    At least the diagnosis tallies with the increased smell of diesel I’d noticed a while ago.  On reflection, my purchase of one of those “magic tree” car air fresheners probably wasn’t the best response to that warning sign.

    Now to source a working fuel pump for a 20 year old Japanese import vehicle, and then coax the mechanic into having a go at fitting it…

  • Further evidence of proof by assertion’s flaws…

    “It’s not a cold house”. Yes, my crazed landlord, it is.  Or rather, when it’s cold outside, it’s also cold inside. I know it’s been one of those years that has shown a callous disregard for logic and truth, but as a Nobel prize winner once sang, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The answer is “through the poorly-sealed double glazing and all around the house, as almost none of the internal doors shut properly”.

  • Revenge of the Treaty City

    Revenge of the Treaty City

    Limerick is known as the Treaty City due to stuff that happened a long time ago that was no one’s fault really. That said, I do think that some payback may have occurred today at the hands of an Irish barber. I’m pretty sure I just asked for my hair to be made tidier, and didn’t say “please can you make it look exactly like Hitler’s”?  Anyway, with suitable use of gel, the always-wise refusal to sport a moustache, and taking care not to mention the war, I might just get away with it.

  • Stop press: builder thinking about starting work sometime next week maybe

    Hopefully a more accurate headline than many we’ve seen of late, but not holding our breath on that one.

    We’ve whittled down our list of things for the builder to do:

    • Main roof replacement.
    • Kitchen flat roof replacement.
    • Electricity – complete re-wiring.
    • Plumbing – fitting of new back boiler stove, new cold and hot water tanks, etc.
    • Knock two of the bedrooms into one, seal off one of the doorways, make flooring nice and insulated.
    • Replace all ceilings, plaster and insulate.

    That’s pretty much the whole budget used up, so the oil boiler I wanted is going on the long finger, as they say around here.

    The featured photo in this post is one I took the weekend before last when we did a day trip over to County Clare on the Tarbert ferry.  The view is of the dock on the Clare side as the sun was going down while we were waiting for the return ferry.  It’s a really decent (if not particularly cheap) service – you can take your car/van/whatever over with passengers for under €30 return and it takes about 30 minutes to cross.

  • Wow – over a month since my last post…

    …. since then, things have been pretty busy.

    The best event was my mum and dad coming over to visit for a week – their first trip to Ireland and the sun mostly shone.  Since I wasn’t working at the time I was able to go around the area with them, not that I’m much of a tour guide being just a blow-in here.

    I also got a contract at long last – I’m now working on cloud computing stuff for a multinational manufacturer.  It’s quite interesting, and a substantial departure from previous office environments set within a factory – this one has sunlight and no buckets collecting rainwater in the roof (to the best of my knowledge).

    Probably the oddest thing to happen within the last month (geopolitical events notwithstanding) was the other weekend when we were out on the bog measuring up for curtains, etc.  V heard a car coming down the drive (which is very much a dirt track still).

    We went around to the front of the house to greet the visitors, assuming they’d be neighbours having a nose around.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered a car full of people looking up at us expectantly.  What are the chances that we’d get doorstepped by some Jehovah’s Witnesses in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon?

    It was quite worrying watching their car trying to turn around to leave with the wheels sliding in the mud.  Unfortunately for them, they left full-handed (of Watchtowers).  At least they didn’t try the “science has no answers to global warming, so God will sort it out” approach employed by the last lot I spoke with in England… maybe it doesn’t work so well if you’re visiting people who are happy to cut and burn peatland with wild abandon until there’s nothing left.  See this site  for more info on that.

  • The old kitchen…

    The old kitchen…

    In case you were wondering about the state of the old kitchen prior to its removal with extreme prejudice, I present it here.  That’s actually quite a long work surface (3m), but it’s only 45cm deep.  The previous owner made it himself to a pretty good standard – the wood was solid and everything. Before the rot.

  • Things ain’t cooking in my kitchen…

    Things ain’t cooking in my kitchen…

    I’ve “taken out” the old kitchen in the cottage in the mafia hitman sense of the expression – very enjoyable use of a crowbar.

    It’s now hammering down with rain so I’m set up inside the Bongo with my laptop and WiFi, waiting for a man to deliver a 9 cubic yard skip.  It sounds quite big, and possibly won’t be able to make it down the roads – not currently my problem as I sent exact coordinates and haven’t paid them yet, but I do need to find something to do with the junk that the previous owner has left behind.

    The worst thing is to get tempted into looking at some of the stuff… ooh, those glass bottles look quite cool… what about those plates?  Surely a quick wash and they’d look great!

    The challenge will be to get it all squirrelled out of the way before V comes to help out tomorrow – she’s a junkie for old china so it could get tasty…

  • It pays to increase your word power

    It pays to increase your word power

    Word of the day is “antimacassar“. Previously known to me as “those stupid headrest doilies”. I thought I’d wash them to see if it got rid of the musty smell in the upstairs sitting room. We now have very wrinkly antimacassars, and I certainly can’t be arsed to iron the feckers. Maybe they’ll flatten as people rub their oily heads into them. I’ve emptied a bottle of Febreeze over the curtains as they’re now my chief musty suspects.