Week of 23rd April, 2018

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Monday, 23rd April

St. George's Day - Patron Saint of England

Liz has a hospital appointment today, at Northwick Park, near Harrow, to remove the broken end of one of her hearing aids. Our local hospital didn't feel capable of carrying out the task - Northwick Park apparently specialises in such work - so we had the hayride.

We got there very early for the appointment - almost an hour - because Liz and I both believe that "it's better to be early than late", and I didn't know how difficult it would be to find a parking space. Previous experience, with Jane's Mum, suggested possible problems, but in the event all went very quickly.

As did the actual appointment. It only took half-an-hour to extract all the wax in her ears, and recover the broken bit of the hearng aid. A quick issue of a script for ear drops, for an ear infection, completed the consultation.

Getting the script filled was a different matter - Northwick Park's onsite pharmacy was slow. Over an hour to fill the script for one small bottle of drops.

After paying UKP5.50 for parking - pay-on-exit, which is good - we decided to have a coffee, and stopped at the Costa in the Westway shopping centre. Then I dropped Liz at her home, and came home myself.

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Tuesday, 24th April

Yesterday I forgot to make the appointment to get Ulysses serviced and MOTed, which needs to be done before next Monday, or I won't be able to use him, legally. So today I excursed to my tame independent garage. Appointment made for this coming Saturday, so that's all well. Even if I'd had to wait until Tuesday, I would still be legally allowed to drive to the garage, it being permissible to drive a vehicle with an expired roadworthiness certificate to a pre-made testing appointment.

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Wednesday, 25th April

OK, the password for my original Government Gateway ID has arrived, so now there's no excuse not to file my tax return for 2016-2017, and every reason to do it - UKP10 per day is not affordable.

I need more storage for my BBC iPlayer archive - the N-Z segment has nearly filled a 2TB Seagate Backup Plus drive. So I've just ordered a 4TB version from Amazon. Should be here tomorrow - Amazon Prime ftw! Mind you, copying the existing nearly 2TB of files is not going to be fast, even though inspiration2 has USB 3. Two ports yet, even though one of them is in use for the ScanSnap. Which is a waste of a fast port - I should think about what plugs in where.

Jane found an envelope with 3no old-style UKP5 notes down the back of one of the kitchen cupboards. These paper notes were withdrawn, in favour of the new polymer notes, last year, and are no longer legal tender. They can be exchanged, certainly at the Bank of England, and maybe still at local bank branches. I have been tasked to do this - tomorrow, after Amazon deliver.

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Thursday, 26th April

Amazon aren't here yet - their latest e-mail suggests delivery "before 8 p.m.". But Jane has just returned from a hairdresser visit, so there's someone here to take delivery. Which means I can visit my local bank branch, in the local big shops. Where the note exchange was done immediately, no questions asked. That's a result. The money is probably Jane's, but at this late date we don't  know what it was originally put aside for.

While I was out, I bought in a lunch, and while eating, I was minded to browse the Web, via the Gemini, connected by wifi hotspot to the N5X on Three. But it didn't work - "no internet". I've seen this before, most notably on the Steam Dreams trip along the Settle and Carlisle line. A reboot fixes, but by this time I'd nearly finished eating, so I gave up.

I returned to find Jane baking up a storm - little fairy cakes (Merkin: cupcakes) for the start of the new term at Rainbows - tomorrow.

So, while I'm waiting for Amazon, let's see about filing my tax return...

<Pause for much typing and clicking>

FILED!!!!!!!!! Yay! And they tell me that I owe less tax than I thought. Has to be paid by January. I can do this - just not this minute.

The e-filing pages are extremely picky about formatting - in some places you have to explicitly say 0, in others it's leave blank. At least the error messages are explicit, and there's a pointer to the erroneous line.

Now to wait for 72 hours while HMRC's tin mind thinks about all this. I'll probably have to log in again to check status. But at least I have an estimated amount for tax due. And I can appeal the UKP100 penalty from January.

And while I was doing that, an Amazon minion pitched up with my latest order, the 4TB disk drive. Next up, move the data to the new drive.

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Friday, 27th April

I brought up the new Seagate 4TB drive late last night. Window$ reports 3.63TB capacity, and it assigned drive letter K:. I'll fix that later, but for the moment just drag and drop the entire N-Z directory from its present location onto the new drive, and leave it running.

<long pause - overnight in fact>

9 hours later, the copy completed, all 1.8TB of it, at 57.5MB/sec. Then I could pull the old 2TB drive, and reassign it's drive letter. After that, the only sign of change is that H: is now 3.6TB, rather than 1.8TB. Result.

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Saturday, 28th April

It's Ulysses' MOT test day today, so I rolled out of bed earlier than is my wont on a Saturday, and drove him to the garage and test centre. Then it was the schlep home, on foot and bus.

By which time, Jane and Liz had been picked up by Katy for their excursion to the Country Living Fair in Central London. So I'm alone for most of the day.

Just before midday comes the phone call from the garage, "Car is done, uncluding fixing an MOT fail point. UKP185". They close at 14:00, which means I need to get my finger out and collect, and it's 40 minutes or so away.

A successful pickup, so Ulysses is now road-legal until this time next year, when I'll have this to do again. Next month, the 21st, will see the same ritual for Nyree, except the garage for that is even further away - 2 buses.

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Sunday, 29th April

Today is the first Holy Communion for one of Jane's minded children, and her parents were kind enough to invite all of us to the event, both Service and afterparty. Jane and the girls accepted the invitation, I didn't. I felt it was not my place to attend, not being a practicing Anglican, leave alone Catholic, as this occasion was.

Due to a scheduling snafu, and traffic, Jane and Jenny needed a lift to the church, which I did chauffeur duty for, being reminded in the process that Ulysses needs petrol. So I filled that lack, and then sat down with a couple of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter), which are very competent murder mysteries, set in Medieval Shrewsbury, in the late 1130s to early 1140s. Cadfael himself is a Benedictine monk, of Welsh extraction, about 60 years old, who came late to the monastic life, after his return from the Crusades. He serves as herbalist to the Monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, but has an avocation as a criminal investigator, in collaboration with the Deputy Sheriff (later Sheriff) of the County of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury.

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