Second Shot

Readers you will probably remember how annoyed I was about the debacle regarding my second Astrazeneca appointment.  My philosophy is “Get Mad… Then get over it!”  Obviously I needed to do something about getting the second vaccine injection quickly.  An internet search revealed a number of local GP surgeries were offering the vaccine.  None displayed the availability online, although a number stated they only did vaccinations on a specific day of the week.  Some required you to phone for an appointment and none had a vacancy in the immediate future.

Eventually I went to the State government “RollUp” website where; after considerable faffing around; I managed to create an account and look at vaccination sites.  I was also able to look at available appointments.  The site with the nearest vacancy was Perth Airport, where the bookings were 15 minutes apart.  My immediate thought was “If the government plans to vaccinate individuals 15 minutes apart many will die of old age before reaching their appointment date”.   Nevertheless, I booked an appointment for Friday at 1.30pm.

Today I drove to the airport hub for the appointment.  Needless to say the signage was woeful and I spent 10 minutes walking around attempting to find the vaccination centre.  Fortunately I had allowed sufficient time.  On entering there was a row of six receptionist waiting to take peoples details.  I was the only arrival.  There were also three security guards.  One assumes they were present to either stop people fighting over the vaccine; or stealing it!

I was required to give all the details I’d previously provided online when making the appointment.  Then I sat with eight others awaiting my turn.  Ten minutes later I was called forward by a security guide and directed to a nurse.  She went back over the information again (the third time) before giving me the injection.  She was very good and I didn’t feel the injection.  Next, I spent 15 minutes waiting to see if there were any adverse effects.  All clear and I departed.  Unlike the surgery, there was no sign of a doctor.  My summary is there were three negatives from today’s experience

• The government website is poorly structured
• Signage at the location was poor
• Too much duplication in administration

The one positive was the painless injection.  At least I am vaccinated. 

On returning home we went online and attempted to book Jan’s appointment for her second AZ.  The website would not allow us to create an account for Jan as “The email account has already been used!”  I retried using an alternative email account but the website defaulted back to my personal details which I couldn’t change.

Eventually I was able to overcome this problem and register Jan’s details.  Bear in mind I booked my appointment at the airport centre two days ago.  Today there are NO vacant appointments from today until the end of the year!  Yet there was a surplus of staff and few people waiting for the vaccine.   However I was able to change the location and find an appointment at another government vaccination centre.

To date our experience with this COVID vaccination program is it’s a fiasco!

Incompetent Twits and the Trailer

With the delivery of the drawer slide the last modification to the camper trailer has finally been completed.  Two mounting plates were required which I manufactured from some spare scrap metal.

I’ve mounted a folding shower screen across the front of the trailer underneath the folding hard shell bed.  It needed to be inside the dimensions of the trailer to avoid it being struck by trees etc.

When extended it needed to be clear of the side of the trailer.  This meant the drawer slide required an extended length of 2.4 metres.

Extended

The next photo shows what it look. like when open.  I haven’t pegged down the base.

Of course I have now realised I need to make a bracket to go on the side of the trailer for the gas instant hot water heater. 

Now for the “incompetent twits” comment.  I am (of course) referring to the federal government’s vaccine program.  This morning I was up and off to meet my 8.00am appointment for my second Astrazeneca injection.  On advising the surgery receptionist I had arrived for my appointment I was informed I didn’t have one!  Well I did….. and Jan was with me when I was last at the surgery and was advised of the date and time for my second shot.  The receptionist then told me they only take COVID vaccine appointments for a Friday morning (today being Wednesday) and I didn’t have a booking.  No point in arguing with the receptionist so I enquired when I could book.  “We are fully booked until Late September” was the reply. I informed her I’d get the injection somewhere else.

That has proven to be very difficult.  Most of the vaccination centres are doctors surgeries and they are fully booked for the next month.  How that can be reconciled against the urging of our political leaders to get vaccinated NOW defeats me.  This vaccination rollout is painfully slow and too dependent upon local GP practices.  There should be mobile vaccination centres with leaflet drops into letterbox advising the population when and where to get vaccinated.  I won’t be voting for this lot at the next federal election.

Meanwhile a sizeable percentage of the local population has become very blasé about the COVID threat and isn’t interested in vaccinating.  The pandemic has scarcely touched Western Australia resulting in people not seeing the threat.  I suspect that will change when there is a major outbreak and then there will be a chaotic scramble when all the unvaccinated panic.

Success at Last

More on the blog post title shortly.  First I need to reply to yesterday’s blog post comments.

Debby it’s summer in the UK which means it’s winter here in Perth.  We have experienced several days of storms and rainfall with some localized flooding.  The farmers in the wheat belt will be delighted as it means there will be a bumper harvest this year.  I don’t believe those in the UK complaining about the heat are being wimps.  People acclimatise to their regional conditions building and living accordingly.  Here in Australia we’ve had locals wearing beanies and gloves whilst point out the frost on the ground.  Actually it’s morning dew   UK is experiencing an unusual heatwave and the public isn’t used to it.  Moreover the infrastructure hasn’t been built to handle it.   The same would happen here if it started to snow.

Jennie the cynic in me believes the UK government decision to open up is a philosophical one.  The government believes the economy is now of greater importance than the health of the public.  Provided the number of COVID cases don’t overwhelm the NHS they will continue with this approach.   England hasn’t reached the internationally recognised minimum fully vaccinated rate of 80%. so in my opinion the government have taken a risk and gone early!  Best of luck with the sale.

Ade we have decided to replace the existing brick pavers with concrete for three major reasons.  The first is ants.  The entire sub surface of Australia is alive with a multitude of ants, termites, etc.  Somewhere under our existing driveway there is at least one large ants nest.  No matter how much I try to poison them, the ants keep coming up through the cracks between the pavers bring the ground with them.  Perth is built on sand.  The ants bring up the sand which then washes down the driveway into the drains blocking them.  The gaps in the pavers created by the ants eventually start to fill with weeds.  Ants can’t burrow through concrete.

Lisa thank you for the information regarding carbon tablets.  I already rattle from all the tablets prescribed by my doctor, but will bear your comment in mind should the need arise.  I did wonder how you’d come upon the information and then recalled I’d heard your nickname was “squeaker”?  I was too much a gentleman to ask David why, when drinking his beer at Braunston!  

Now to my success.

Prior to leaving for life on a narrowboat a decade ago we had an internet router.  A Cisco Linksys WRT610N dual band wireless and ethernet router.  It was a good router (I’d done my research) and I intended to use it on our return to Australia.  That didn’t happen because our youngest son bought me a more modern router as a present prior to leaving the UK.

Three days ago I was looking at the old router thinking “what can I do with that?”

Original Router

I thought “wouldn’t it be nice if I could wirelessly connect the two routers together having one at either end of the house thus extending the range of our wireless network”.  Easier said than done!  It didn’t take long for me to realise the firmware (operating system) on the old Linksys didn’t have the functionality to do what I wanted.  However I could achieve it if I replaced the firmware with something more modern.  The DD-WRT website has an extensive range of alternative router firmware and I was eventually able to identify a suitable replacement.  The Linksys was then “flashed” with the appropriate DD-WRT firmware. 

 

It was then a matter if configuring the DD-WRT firmware to act as a wireless repeater.  Writing that last sentence was easy.  The actual configuration has taken several days, as I attempted to identify and implement the settings.  Along the way I discovered the DD-WRT firmware was very “picky” about the web browser being used.  It didn’t like Firefox or Opera and I was eventually forced to use Chrome.

It’s now completed and I have the Linksys in the front room wirelessly connected to the main router at the rear of the house.  Did I need to do this?  Well no! The wireless coverage from the main router is excellent throughout the house.  I just wanted to see if I could. 

Another Tick

Back on the 28th June I mentioned the front video doorbell and how it had a voracious appetite for batteries.  My plan was to hard wire the doorbell into the house 240V system via an adapter.

Today the project was finished.  I established that whilst the doorbell has four 1.5V AA batteries it wasn’t a 6V system.  There were two separate 3V circuits.  Fortunately the 240V adapter had multiple DC output voltages with one being 3V.  I had a length of lightweight speaker wire which I used as a cable run between the 240V power socket in the garage and the doorbell position.  However before running the wiring I decided to check the cable was of a sufficient size to deliver 3V at the doorbell. 

 

There didn’t appear to be any significant voltage drop in the cable so I turned my attention to the doorbell. 

The house has double brick exterior walls with an air cavity in between.  I needed to drill through the exterior brick into the cavity.  However I would need to drill in an upwards direction in order to feed the plastic” snake” up the cavity into the ceiling.  As the doorbell was mounted beside the door it meant the hole also had to angle horizontally to reach the cavity. 

After drilling the hole I fed the “snake” up the hole into the wall cavity and then into the ceiling cavity.  I also tied some blue string to the end of the snake as it would be used as a draw cord to pull the wiring back down the wall.

I’m just too old to crawl around in the roof cavity so I used my long surf casting fishing rod to snag the string and drag it into the garage.  I then pulled twice as much string as I need to create a large loop from the doorbell to the garage.  Then I taped one end of my power wire to the middle of the loop before pulling the string and wire down to the doorbell.  This has resulted in me having both the cable and a draw string between the doorbell and the garage.  Should I need to replace the wire or add another I have a drawstring.

The doorbell was modified so it would operate of the 240V converter.

 

Everything was then connected and tested.  We now have a video doorbell that is powered by the main electrical supply.

Whilst writing this blog post I noticed another boating couple are reluctantly selling their lovely narrowboat.   NB Tentatrice is for sale..  Details [here].

Jan and I went out and did a large food shop as soon as the supermarkets open this morning.  It’s not that we are low on food…. We think it’s only a matter of time before the State goes back into lock-down and we want to be prepared.  The COVID outbreak in New South Wales shows no sign of abating and it has already spread to Victoria and South Australia.  You can see the difference in strategy between Liberal and Labor State governments.  NSW is Liberal and they tend to only lock down when the infection is starting to get out of control. Whilst Labor governments go early and hard with their lock-downs.  My own opinion is it makes more economic and public healthy sense to go early and hard having a short lock-down, that go late resulting in a prolonged lock-down.

Meanwhile the vaccine rollout continues to move very slowly.  NSW has one million doses of unused Astrazeneca which will shortly time expire.  People are fearful of Astrazeneca refusing it and are prepared to wait for Pfizer.  Of course the longer it takes to vaccinate everyone, the more lock-downs we will have and the greater the economic cost.  Declining to have Astrazeneca because of a potential blood clot risk is irrational.  Life is daily full of risks which we frequently subconsciously accept.  How great is the risk of blood clots from Astrazeneca?

Statistically 4 people in a million (0.0004%) will get blood clots from Astrazeneca

The risk of blood clots from the contraceptive pill is 0.05 - 0.12%

The risk of blood clots from smoking is 0.18%

The risk of blood clots from COVID is 16.5%

The Retaining Wall

Yesterday I got very enthusiastic and ripped out the rotten timber retaining wall beside the driveway.  Then I dug a trench beside the removed wall and buried a length of 70mm diameter pvc pipe between the water meter in the driveway and the boundary fence.  We are going to remove the existing brick paver driveway and replace it with concrete.  I though a spare conduit pipe might be useful should we ever develop a leak in the water main under the concrete.

 

Then I got too silly and decided to cut up the old hardwood sleepers from the retaining wall using the bowsaw.  They are now stacked on the retaining wall ready to be disposed of weekly piece at a time into the wheelie bin.

This is when the body reminded me I’m no longer 30.     

 

Rim and Tyre Standards

Some light humour to begin

Being British is about driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then on the way home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab, to sit on a Swedish sofa and watch American TV shows on a Chinese TV. And most of all be suspicious of anything foreign. Oh and.... Only in Britain... Can you get a pizza to your home faster than an ambulance. Only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and chain pens to the counter. Where supermarkets make sick people walk to the back of the store to get their prescriptions whilst healthy people get their fags at the front. Brits are indeed funny people!

Today I purchased two new tyres for the camper trailer.  They are the same size (265/75R16) as the six outback tyres I purchased in 2018.  However they are from a different manufacturer.

I’d not previously heard of ROVELO.  The tyres are manufactured in China.  That doesn’t particularly matter as China is just a capable of producing a quality tyre compared to western manufacturers.  The tyres have a good All Terrain (AT) tread pattern and will go on the trailer, which is quite light compared to the 4WD. 

What was important to me was the DOT (Date of Manufacture).  The DOT is stamped on the tyre and consists of four numerals.  In the photo below you can see the number is 4320.

This means the tyre was made in the 43rd week of 2020.   Why is this important?  Like most western countries, Australia has a “Tyre and Rim Association” which annually produces a “Standards Manual”.  The members of the association are the manufacturers and sellers of tyres and rims.  Their manual states tyres be replaced every six years (ie, the tyre has a life of six years from date of manufacture).  Users of the manual include Transport Authorities, Government Bodies and Road & Traffic Authorities.  Essentially the association has produced a standard which has been adopted by relevant government authorities.  Unlike a government department, the association doesn’t not provide a copy of the manual in the public domain.  It has to be purchased.  The Australian Association is so small it’s unlikely they conduct any testing on tyres to establish a safe standard.  It’s more likely they accept the standards established by larger associations such as the USA and EU. 

It’s therefore quite probably that the tyres on vehicles which complete low annual mileage will reach the end of their “life” well before the tread is worn.  It’s for this reason I’ve ensured the tyres purchased today have plenty of life left in them.  However it does raise the question about the number of people who don’t know about the DOT date and purchase unused tyres which may be years old.  Consider also where the vehicle owner might stand with an insurance claim.  If a contributing factor to damage or an accident might be tyres would the insurer deny the claim on the bases the tyres were older than six years?  I suspect the answer might be YES!

Finally, I’m somewhat suspicious of the Tyre and Rim Association.  There might be a conflict of interest as the manufacturers and retailers have a vested interest in the turnover of tyres.  

   

New Tool and Spare of Last Resort

Today I felt well enough to do something about the ‘spare of last resort’.  When I purchased the steel rims for the 4x4 and trailer five of them came already fitted with worn tyres. Tyres not only wear but age.  Often the age failure occurs out of sight inside the tyre.  Much like humans   The tyres I acquired with the rims are old… very old!  Whilst I’ve been prepared to run them on bitumen I wouldn’t trust them off-road in the middle of nowhere.  However my plan is to keep the best of the old tyres as my ‘spare of last resort’.  It will be the 3rd spare.  One under the 4x4.  One on the back of the trailer and the spare of last resort under the trailer.  Until today the spare of last resort had been on the back of the trailer where it has been exposed to the harsh sun and rain.  I’ve wanted to exchange it with the new spare that has been under the trailer.  But I didn’t want to expose the good tyre to the weather. 

Yesterday the vinyl tyre cover I ordered arrived enabling me to exchange the two tyres.

Before you think I went out of my way to buy a cover with the Australian flag I should point out I purchased the cheapest cover I could find. 

The other recent arrival was my new tool.  A digital protector.

It has magnets on the base which enables it to be attached to steel.  Today it was being attached to saw blades.  I wanted to check if the bench and mitre saw blades were at 90° to the base.

Zero the protector to the base

Blade is 89.8°   Close enough

Mitre saw base

Blade is 89.4°

I think the protractor will be very useful setting accurate angles on blades.

What to do with the Tablet

Jan’s has a 10” Samsung Tablet which she uses daily and it has a problem.  The issue is the tablet battery won’t fully recharge, which means she can’t constantly use it.  I’ve examined the tablet and identified the problem is with the tablet usb socket.  The connections inside the socket are now weak and when the power cable is connected the tablet often doesn’t recharge.  If the cable is held at a slight upwards incline then it will recharge.  However that proves difficult for Jan to achieve.  Apart from that the tablet is in good working condition.

I could disassemble the tablet and replace the usb port, but that is very “fiddly” and involves some minute soldering.  I doubt my old eyes are capable of achieving this these days.  The decision has been made for Jan to purchase a new tablet.  However that leaves us with her original tablet which is quite functional, apart from the usb charging issue.

I’ve decide to convert the tablet into an off-road gps.  I’ll install the OSMAND maps from the Google Play Store.  These are free, however you’re limited to six downloads.  If the maps prove useful I’ll probably purchase the enhanced version ($14.99) which provides unlimited map downloads, contour lines, hill shades and slopes.  OSMAND uses the Open Street Map data which is free with an open content license.   The application has route navigation, voice instructions, etc.  Just like a bought system.  Actually I think it’s better, as the maps are more up to date than a commercially purchased map (such as the map in our Isuzu).  

One of my pet hates with Android devices is the amount of “bloatware” the manufacturer adds.  Then they “lock” the operating system which prevents the bloatware from being removed.  Today I unlocked the tablet (the term is Rooted it) and then installed an application remover (instructions for Jan’s model here).  Finally I deleted all the unnecessary applications making it clean, lean, mean and fast!

Having done that I install all the OSMAND maps of mainland Australia.

The next step is to make a bracket which will hold the usb cable firmly into the tablet charging port.   In the meantime I’m using duct tape.

The plan is to mount in the vehicle like this

There is a usb power socket on the dash below the vehicle aircon controls.

Whilst researching gps map applications I also looked for associated apps like camping and fuel.  The following are interesting

1.  Camps Australia Wide (7 day free trial)

2.  CamperMate  (free)

3.  WikiCamps (14 day free trial)

4.  FuelMap (crowd sourced data on fuel station locations and prices)

I’ve installed CamperMate on the tablet (free…of course)

Netherlands

To paraphrase Mark Twain “News of my demises has been greatly exaggerated”.  It has been a week since the blog was last updated.  Back then I was already starting to feel the effects of the cold Jan had decided to share with me.  Coughing, sneezing, tight chest, runny or blocked nose and a constricted throat.  Could it also be the annual flu injection our GP kindly gave me 10 days earlier?  Probably not!  The one positive out of this miserable period is it coincided with the latest local COVID lockdown.  The good news is I’ve turned the corner; or is that “gone over the hump” and am now improving.  Jan also appears to be slowly recovering.

All the outdoor projects have gone on hold whilst we stay warm inside and recover. This morning the postman delivered the items of fishing tackle I’d purchased from www.joom.com back in late May.  On examining the contents of the package two things quickly became apparent.  I had failed to identify the size of the various items when placing the order.

 

They are smaller than I had anticipated… But still usable. 

The other interesting piece of information was the despatching location.  The package had been mailed from the Netherlands.  My knowledge of geography suggest the Netherlands is nowhere near China.  On further reflection I’ve decided Joom probably has a major distribution hub in the Netherlands and most orders are sent there in bulk before being forwarded on to the purchaser.