Other What's ruining your life right now?

Went in to get a quick tyre repair (rogue nail) and ended up having to get new front tyres too as the old ones were on the limit.

Not exactly life ruining, but money that could've gone towards something more fun, not to mention I've had to wait around while they're fitted.

 

Nearby lightning strike appears to have taken out the oven and all the Ethernet ports on my orange supplied modem router. On the plus side somehow the modem itself, phone and wifi is still working so I do have internet and no other equipment appears to be damaged. Another surprising side effect is that the speed has gone from 3 to 4.25 Mb/s.

Now back to chainsawing the plum tree that fell last night, narrowly missing the swimming pool.

 

I totally empathise, I used to live in Paris, pumping me full of anti-dep pills to handle anxiety and stress, I moved to this quiet countryside place 10 years ago, and since, breathing fresh air and eating healthy food, and I must say it has been the healthiest approach, after few years, I stopped pills and well, I manage without it, more or less depending of days but without meds...

 

I'm quite the opposite. I currently live in a fairly quiet small town. It drives me insane. No anonymity, nothing to do, people always looking and judging. Man, I miss living in the centre of Amsterdam. The tram bells going off at 6am onwards, the hustle, the anonymity, all the available services and commodities. No one cares who you are, what you look like, what you believe in. It brought me more peace of mind.

 

That's one of the things that a lot of my clients don't seem to get when it comes to lightning and protecting their equipment. A lightning strike can affect electrical and electronic systems for up to a kilometer away from the strike and the strike doesn't even have to have a ground connection. Cloud to cloud strikes can be just as damaging especially to overhead lines due to the electrical fields generated around them. Most of the time what happens is just as you have found, a bit here and there gets knocked out (unless we are talking direct strikes) and that is normally as a result of being worn down and being degraded over time before the "surge that breaks the camel's back". It'd be fairly safe to say that the rest of the bits and pieces that are working are not as resilient as they were before.

We need to have a new distribution board fitted at some point as the smart meters that we are continually being pushed towards are incompatible with our current one for some reason. Once that goes in, I shall be taking the advice of the current lightning protection standard and fitting hard-wired surge protection devices to all lines that are entering or leaving the building. Thankfully easy enough to do on a domestic building with only the power, telephone, and cable tv/internet connection being needed. We have been lucky so far considering that Nottingham has quite a high strike density (for the UK) and we are pretty high up too.

 

I have the best of both. I live in a town 7 floors up so no one knows I'm even there and I'm on a direct path to the local night club so I get to listen to people of a weekend.

Two girls had a cracking punch up a couple of months back.

Then when I need peace I head inland to mum's which is in a tiny village with just a quiet country pub.

You can be anonymous anywhere dude. Simply don't speak to people.

Lessons learned from my past. Everywhere I went in London people would call out my name and want to talk etc. Sod that. I've really kept myself to myself as I got older.

 

Yep defiantly not a direct hit, very minor surge so a strike near the power lines but within 360 metres of us I'd guess. The only piece of kit not powered from a "surge" protected UPS (fully aware that it will offer zero protection in the event of a power line strike) in the office was the modem router, lesson learnt adaptor from C14 to europlug ordered already.

Surprisingly upon visiting the local Orange shop I discover that there is a self service automatic tester for all their modems at the back of the shop, simply plug in the offending piece of kit, follow onscreen instructions and at the end you get a ticket that you hand to a member of staff and they exchange for a new modem. I mean it still took an hour but by french standards that was express service, we British have got nothing on the french when it comes to queuing patiently. As for the oven it was in the property when we moved in and had been a little temperamental before so not to annoyed to have to replace it and it was made in 1996.

 

The first nice weather to coincide with my day off in AGES. The perfect opportunity to go wandering with my Mavic...

..and I'm sick.

 

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!!

 

Budgerigar! Such disappoint, it's been SO windy and a calm day has been rare.
I did take my Mavic out on Sunday at a less gusty moment, but still had strong wind warnings.
I managed to photograph and video the other end of the flood plain in Christchurch, as it's too far to do all of it VLOS.
Hope you recover soon, and fingers crossed for good weather too.
I'll try and post some pics on the drone page, but amd pressed for time this week.

 

Don't knock it. I've bought one thing in the past two years that is XXL. Usually they're XXL alright, extra extra long. Come down to my knees yet tight AF.

Pjs should be enormous !!

 

Finding suitable comfies is an underrated stress in life I find.

 

lol mine do that. Usually when I'm half way up the stairs carrying loads of stuff hahahaha

 

Add braces?