- entry 2025/05/01

Thank you!

Toilet repair

Doing something involves putting in a septic system. Because there is very little soil above the rock, doing something would involve, quite literally, blasting holes in rock. We're not looking at thousands, we're looking at tens of thousands.
And I am paid minimum wage.

To add insult to injury, once the system is installed it would immediately fail inspection. Due to how the waterways run, the only feasible "solution" would be to run the drainage underneath the barns and... nope, too close there. Can't run it under the house and put it out front, two wells.
Back around 2010 or so when we had our first visit, the company drew up a plan for where we could site it... in a neighbour's field and paying absolutely no attention to the waterways. Our mayor was not amused.

My grinder is old and half dead. The method of flushing the toilet was... prepare yourself:

• Push a button on the wall (this replaces the water level sensor that is duff).
• Put a flat-bladed screwdriver into a hole in the top (lines up with the top of the motor) and give a good twist clockwise while pulling the screwdriver out (this starts the motor).
• Push the button on the wall again.
• Pull the cistern flush.
• Hold the button on the wall until the flushing has finished.

I'm sure you'll agree that was rather ridiculous. It would have been a hard sell trying to explain that rigamarole and have anybody believe that I do that and don't just go crap under a bush or something.

So I unscrewed the clamps holding the unit in place and removed it. Which was gross. I wore my blue work overalls and some latex gloves I conveniently had in my pocket from work. I'm never hack it as a plumber...

Anyway, the thing was easy enough to open, I did it before to hook up the flush button. Once it was open, I took out the capacitor nestled beside the motor and replaced it with one from my old washing machine. A quick test and the motor started by itself. Whee!

Everything was reassembled, which was even more fiddly, and there doesn't appear to be anything leaking which is nice. A few flushes - and due to water pressure back there filling the cistern takes forever and a day - and the method is now:

• Pull the cistern flush.
• Immediately push the button and hold until flushing complete.

Much better.

Actually, I didn't press the button quite quickly enough when I was testing, and, well, the motor started up by itself. The broken pressure switch...is now working? <shrug>

Battery differences

It has about as much enthusiasm as me in the cold.

And in the current warm weather, this is the battery charge level from going to work and coming home, then going to work and coming home again. If I went to work today, I could have got a third trip on the one charge.

FOUR times farther than the previous photo.

I think this, more than anything, is what I don't like about an electric car.

This is SO sad

I am writing a fiction book. Don't hold your breath, I wrote nearly a hundred pages during mom's cancer treatments and when she was in hospital during my summer holiday...which was (gasp!) five years ago. I might get around to finishing it, but I feel like I need to be in the right mindset to want to write fiction and, well, too many dumb distractions.

Anyway, if I fire up Google Docs (that I am using to write it as it is device agnostic) and go down to the page with the dedication, this is what it says.

The screenshot says it all, really.

I think that says it all really. Mom was very big on me reading. She bought me lots of books, and quite often when I was able to choose books and read for myself she would get me a copy and a copy for herself and read it in step with me. Then once I had finished a chapter we would then talk about it. The character motivations, would I have done things differently. If so, why? How did the story make me feel? How do the characters in the story feel? It wasn't just reading lines in class one after the other where the main thing there isn't the story, it's the "oh crap I'm next" thing, plus of course the mockery when somebody stumbles over a word which you hope and pray doesn't happen to you. How can that be enjoyable?

But, obviously, that all started with mom reading to me. Introducing me to words and letters and how things are written. I don't really have any memories of that as I was young, but I didn't wake up one day thinking "I can read!", it came from somewhere, until my visits to a child psychologist when I was nine resulted in...

The result of a Patient Access Request to PCSE.

I can't imagine not reading to your child. You can see from the things that I do - all that mowing! - and all this crap that I write, that I do a full time job and still manage to find time for other things. So surely it can't be that hard to find some time to read to a child? Especially as there's only a short length of time between when they're just starting out and when they are able to do it for themselves.
I like reading. I also had a high forum post count because I like writing, although my muddled brain has rather more trouble organising itself. I'm sure you have noticed. ☺ And all of this began with a mother who took the time to bond with me over something she loved, which is now something that I love.

Beltane

Today is actually Beltane, or Lá Bealtaine in Irish, Latha Bealltainn or Bealltuinn in Scottish Gaelic, etc. This is the first day of summer, and it marks roughly the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It is also usually the transition between the cold seasons and the warm seasons.
Here in France, the three "Saints de glace" (Ice Saints) are the saints whose feast days are on the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th of May (which is very close) that marks the time when one can feel certain that - excepting anomalies - the cold snaps and frosty mornings are over.

The opposite festival is Samhain, which is the transition point back to the cold.

Recalibrating a Silvercrest (Lidl) weighing spoon

Don't bin it, this is fixable!

This is fixable. What is needed is to put the device into calibration mode so that it knows "empty" and a specific "weight" and from that can measure everything else.

What you will need is the weighing spoon, a known test weight, and something that weighs exactly 200 grams. Not sort-of-maybe, bang on.

You can see here that my test is a little hundred gram weight. As for the 200 grams, it's three Twix and a Mars bar. A bit of the Twix has been nibbled, and then some bits of folded paper towel added. This allowed me to get right on 200 grams.

If it works, it ain't crazy.

So here's what to do. And please appreciate me as this is not documented (that I could see). I literally spent an hour and a half trying every sort of combination I could think of until I hit upon the solution.

You will need to put 200g into the spoon. This will deflect the scoop body downwards. In order to avoid faulty readings due to touching the table, it is worth either putting the spoon on to something, or letting it hang over the side of the table.

1. Turn the spoon on. Wait for it to read "out2".
2. Press and hold the On/Tare button.
3. Then press the σ/Unit button four times.
4. Let go of On/Tare.

You will see that the display changes to a five digit value like "21739", as shown.

The raw measurement values.

5. Press the σ/Unit button one more time. The display will briefly read "CAL" followed by "200.0g" slowly blinking.
   
   Please place 200g upon the spoon.
6. Gently place your prepared 200g weight onto the scoop. After a few moments, once the weight has settled, the display will read "PASS" and when you remove the weight it'll tare itself to zero.
7. Test with your known weight to ensure that which is shown is accurate. My 100g weight read 100.2g which is close enough for me.
   
   Calibration complete, spoon working again.

I hope this helps, if you have a similar spoon exhibiting similar problems.

If you prefer pictures that move, I made a YouTube video.

Finally: If your spoon is reading incorrect and/or weird values, first change the batteries. If that doesn't fix it, you can fool it into reporting "out2" and letting you enter calibration mode by turning the spoon on whilst it has something over 50g in the scoop. Use a proper weight (a chocolate bar will do) as if you just try to hold it it'll say "Unst" which means unstable, or unable to get a steady reading.

Your comments:

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jgh, 2nd May 2025, 19:14

When I got back from Japan, the first thing I did was use the loo.... and snapped off the flush handle. Being a high level system it was a *beuggeux* to replace, needing to position my eyeline occupying the same space as the ceiling, and requiring my elblows to bend in the wrong directions.

jgh, 2nd May 2025, 19:24

Rick, for your sanity.... do not watch the UK news today.... （>﹏<）

Rob, 3rd May 2025, 00:02

Probably best not to pay any attention to the US news either. :-(

Rick, 5th May 2025, 23:00

JGH: Unfortunately I'm aware of the grifter's advances in Runcorn because for some reason Love 80s has been playing the *same* hourly news bulletin since Friday afternoon. It was the same one at 4pm (your time) this afternoon.  I wonder if this is Love 80s screwing up, or RadioNewsHub?    It's actually really quite disappointing. The country elected Labour because they were fed up with all the Tory lies and bull, and rather than an actual Labour government we seem to have ended up with a piss-poor Tory tribute act who's only claim to bring "left" is in not being as far right as the Tories.    If Labour has *any* hope of being elected again (or, at least, not utterly screwing the pooch by getting Farage in), they need to stop arsing around, stop trying to suck the Trumpian teat, start making inroads towards more interaction with the EU, and most of all start doing stuff for the working class rather than the rich. I mean, "Labour", "Conservative"... it's right there in the name, isn't it?    But, alas, it seems the faces change but the 💩 stays the same. God forbid anybody think Reform would be any different.  They all want to put their snouts into the trough, the only reason to do anything useful for people like us is to convince us to choose them to remain in the trough for a little bit longer...

Rick, 6th May 2025, 07:01

Tuesday morning...same news bulletin. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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