Category Archives: MobLog

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Cars, MobLog

The Golf Wants Servicing Again

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Needs a Service Again

Whilst my experience with the Golf has been a lot less annoying than the Focus, with an engine that doesn’t misfire, works absolutely fine on the regular fuel, and a windscreen that can survive a stone chip without cracking, there is one thing that is starting to get annoying, the variable service intervals.

The theory is great – the car with it’s specially developped oil needs an oil change less frequently, so on board sensors will monitor your usage and driving style, and also the oil quality, and then at some point between 9000 and 20,000 miles will request a service. It is beneficial for people who use the car for primarily long trips, rather than lots of short hops that don’t give the car a chance to warm up, so sounds ideal for someone like me whose main use is for trips to work, 44 miles away. However the practice is a bit different. The car has just announced that it needs a service in 1200 miles, with the mileage on about 25,000. Not too bad until you realise that this is the third time it has done so. The first time the garage just reset the indicator, but right on cue, at the minimum interval level, it came on again – when they did the first service and reset it, and here we are after the minimum mileage again, with it asking for a service. Incidentally, after the mileage, it then gives you a number of days before the next service – in this case 238 – 8 months time!

My assumption is that when I phone the dealer tomorrow, they’ll just ask me to bring it in, and they’ll reset the interval again, the assumption being that it is a problem with a sensor. The question that bothers me is what if it isn’t a sensor, and this is just a symptom of something bigger? (Of course maybe that is because I watched a documentary about the Columbia crash yesterday, where they did exactly the same thing – assumed that an unexpected reported fault was a faulty sensor….)

Update: Chatting to a friend who owns a Seat with the same engine today, he said his service indicator does exactly the same, and his dealer has just told him to ignore it and bring it in on a regular fixed length service interval!

MobLog, Pictures

Birthday Party

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Birthday Party 5

So tonight we went out to celebrate the 25th birthday of one of Beth’s fellow teachers. We met up with Kerri and another 14 of her friends at Zizzi’s in Reading, oddly enough where we’re going for the Geek Dinner in a couple of weeks. If there are any Geek Dinner attendees reading, I can confirm that there is Wi-Fi coverage in the restaurant. 😀

Anyway, it was one of those evenings where there was a pretty broad cross section of the hosts friends from a number of different places – old friends, housemates, workmates. Having said that there were a lot of teachers, however we were also sat next to an old University friend of Kerri’s who worked for the Crown Estate, and was rather surprised that I knew what it was! (Essentially it is the land which is owned by the British Monarch, as a role – rather than the person who currently sits on the throne. However although the Queen theoretically owns the land, it is passed to parliamentary control in return for her payment from the civil list. The current portfolio of property is worth in excess of £4 billion, and includes quite a bit of land around the local area. You can read more about them at http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/
)

There are a few more snaps from the dinner over in my Flickr stream. They were again taken with the camera on the Sony Ericsson K750i phone, although this time there were at least three other people in the party with the same phone – definitely seems to be getting popular!

MobLog

Washing Machine Fixed

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Faulty Module

So the repair man has fixed the washing machine in a grand total of 13 minutes, including shifting the machine in and out of it’s slot (expert tip here, put two trails of washing up liquid in front of the machine to get it to slide better :)).

As with our earlier speculation it was a simple job. The repairman said it could really only have been one of two items – either the motor (a big job), or the control module. It being the control module it took longer going to the van for the part than actually replacing it, and most of the visit was taking the top off the machine, and looking up our extended warranty on his laptop computer.

Burning on Module

He left the failed module with us, and pointed out the blackening around one of the contacts where the component that had burnt out was attached to the board. Having said that, this was the only evidence of anything having shorted out, aside from that the module looked fine. I asked him whether anything in particular could have caused it, but his response was that there was nothing in particular, it just happened, and that it was normal to just replace the entire module.

Slightly worrying considering that the washing machine mixes electricity and water, but anyway, we now have a fixed machine.

MobLog, Pictures

Butterfly

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Butterfly

I know I keep harping on about it, but I continue to be amazed at the quality of the pictures I can take with my Sony Ericsson K750i.

Take tonight for example, at Choir Practice I spotted this butterfly, which had settled for the night onto the ledge at the bottom of one of the windows. It being Choir Practice, I didn’t have my camera with me, but of course I had my phone. So I switched it into macro mode, and turned on night mode, and with a very steady hand, snapped the picture above. Sure with the normal camera the picture would probably have been slightly sharper, and you can see the effect of the small sized lense, but I have to say that for a phone, that cost me nothing, it is a stunning little picture – so much so that I’ve entered it into the latest Flickr Camphone competition, which has the theme ‘Out the Window’.

MobLog

Finding the Long Wave

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Tuning to Radio 4 Long Wave

One of the results of my employers dabbling with the Fish Philosophy was a somewhat more relaxed attitude, which in part has led to staff being allowed to listen to music whilst working. As a result, a look down our floor on any normal day would find quite a few staff wearing the tell-tale white headphones of an iPod or one of it’s clones.

However over the past few weeks, various people have been coming in with some mighty big and strange looking iPod’s. Here we see Andy trying to tune his to the ‘Long Wave’.

Of course, it’s all down to a certain game of cricket taking place at the Oval, where England have the chance to regain a small urn containing the ashes of burnt bails said to symbolise the ‘ashes of English Cricket’ following a defeat by Australia at the Oval in 1882. For the first time in many years, England have a real chance of regaining The Ashes, and it all hinges on the final game over the next few days.

However, the problem that most people have discovered, is that all these new fangled modern radios, only pick up stations in the FM band. The ball by ball cricket commentary is broadcast on BBC Radio 4, but in order not to annoy non-cricket loving listeners, for the duration of the matches, there are two BBC Radio 4’s. The FM one has normal programming, whilst the cricket goes out on the old long wave frequency. As a result, the new fangled mini-radios on phones, and some of the media players just can’t pick it up, so a range of odd looking devices have been brought in, including Andy with a radio that looked very similar to the one that my Grandmother had in her kitchen when I was a child, and whilst now with RDS you can just select Radio 4, here you can see him trying to tune in…