The silent screams

Tonight it will be a week since our return to Perth and almost everything is back to normal.  Molly appears to have forgiven us for deserting her and the majority of the small maintenance tasks have been completed ready for the ongoing house renovations.

This morning there were silent screams from the back yard as I went around ripping weeds from the lawn.  Almost half a large bucket of them.  The front lawns looks worse, so I’ll do that over several days.

The new master bedroom split air conditioning unit is been fitted next Monday and we will need to remove the water bed before then.  As you will appreciate, this bed is king size and rather heavy.  Thirty years ago I’d have picked it up with one hand and thrown it over my right shoulder.  This time I’ll need to be more scientific.  That means I’ll need Jan’s assistance (she provides the brute strength).  The bed will have to be emptied before turning it onto its side in order for us to get it through the bedroom doorway.  This will be achieved by syphoning the water out onto the front lawn using our garden hose.  As for the actual move;  I could pull whilst Jan pushes but that’s likely to damage the new hallway flooring as we dragged the bed over it.  The answer is to go back to simple engineering principles and use rollers between the bed and the floor.  So off I went to the hardware to purchase a suitable length of timber dowel.  Shock!   They wanted $70 for a 3.4 metre length and I’d need more than one length.  Greater use of the elderly grey matter was required.  Ah…. what about using 32mm PVC electrical conduit?  In the electrical section I found a 4 metre length of orange 32mm PVC conduit for $7.  Much better price!  All I needed to do was cut it into 800mm lengths.

Well that’s the move of the bed planned.

Yesterday we fitted the 58” TV on the bedroom wall.  The NVidia Shield will be connected to it so we can stream videos wirelessly from the media server using the LAN.  As usual I’ve made things complicated because when I rebuilt the media server I configured the hard drives differently.  This means the NVidia Shield doesn’t recognise the media server.  Nor does the NVidia Shield have a keyboard.  So I had to go looking for the small wireless keyboard I used on Waiouru when the laptop keyboard failed.   You know…….. the failed keyboard I forgot about when we took the laptop to the UK on our latest trip.  After digging through all the storage boxes I found the keyboard at the bottom of the last box  (why is this always my luck?).  Then I discovered the small USB receiver for the keyboard was missing.  A search online revealed you can buy a replacement from the USA.  No doubt they cost a fortune as only idiots like me lose them!  But then I had an idea.  Perhaps one of the USB receives from an old wireless mouse made by the same manufacturer would work with the keyboard.  Back through all the boxes and jars… and success (this is why I’m a hoarder).  Would the receiver work with the wireless keyboard….. Yes…. a result!  Now all I have to do is reconfigure the settings in the NVidia Shield….. provided it will recognise the wireless keyboard?

Why is my boring life so complicated.

Jennifer to answer your question regarding the size of the foam rubber seat cover…… The size is going to depend upon the airline seat.  We flew Qatar Airlines and I found the economy seat width online.  However we were on an Airbus A350 for the first leg and an A380 for the second.  The seats on each aircraft were a different width.  The smallest width was 18” and I cut the foam at 17”.  We could have managed with 18”.  For length I measure a standard kitchen table chair and added an inch so the foam would overhang the base of the airline seat.  The theory being the back of our legs wouldn’t be resting on the front edge of the seat.  We purchased the foam from Dunelm Mill doing a test run sit on the various thicknesses they had in stock. The foam was then cut to size using a razor knife purchased from Poundland.