Tree!
We did the tree tonight. And a lovely, smelly tree it is, too.
Our wifi router is definitely going. We’re having to reset it several times a day. Worse, something about it has jiggered the wifi card in my desktop machine – I keep having to restart it to get wifi back even if the modem is working.
In short, my connection is tenuous at the moment. I’m typing this on the little laptop I usually use to read Kindle books. We’ve ordered a new router, but god knows if it’ll get here before Christmas. The Post Office is striking periodically over Christmas (as are the train companies). Including Christmas Eve. Aren’t unions wonderful?
Anyhoo, I may lose comms. If that happens, I can at least check in with my phone and tell you so.
December 14, 2022 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 3
Asneth Jones (1786-1867)
From a site on cartes-des-visites:
A portrait of Asneth Jones of Winchelsea, a carte-de-visite published in 1867 by R. B. Thorpe, 110 High Street, Rye. (The christian name Asneth was also spelt Asseneth or Asenath) Asneth Jones (born c1786) had acquired local celebrity status because she had sat on the knee of the Methodist preacher John Wesley during his visit to Winchelsea in 1790. John Wesley (1702-1791) preached his last open air sermon at Winchelsea on 7th October 1790. Asneth Jones died towards the end 1867 at the age of 84.
At the base of the card itself, it says:
In the year 1790, the Rev. John Wesley preached at Winchelsea his last outdoor Sermon, and was the guest of Mr Jones, Asneth’s father. The chair is the one in which Mr Wesley sat with Asneth on his knee and is always considered as the Preacher’s Chair.
I wonder where the chair is today. I did a quick google in case it had come up for auction, but no luck (lots of cool old chairs called the preacher’s chair, though).
Curious about her name, Wikipedia tells me:
Asenath is a minor figure in the Book of Genesis. Asenath was a high-born, aristocratic Egyptian woman. She was the wife of Joseph and the mother of his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. There are two Rabbinic approaches to Asenath: One holds that she was an ethnic Egyptian woman that converted to marry Joseph. This view has her accepting the Lord before marriage and then raising her two sons in the tenets of Judaism. This presents her as a positive example of conversion, and places her among the devout women converts. The other approach argues she was not Egyptian by descent, but was from the family of Jacob. Traditions that trace her to the family of Jacob relate that she was born as the daughter of Dinah. Dinah was raped by Shechem and gave birth to Asenath, whom Jacob left on the wall of Egypt, where she was later found by Potiphar. She was then raised by Potiphar’s wife and eventually married Joseph.
A bit of old history and a bit of old, old, old history.
December 7, 2022 — 8:47 pm
Comments: 6
Guess the product…
It is…drumroll, please…a garden gate hook and eye fastener.
It’s to fasten the wonky door on my wonky chicken house. But the door is so wonky, I can’t get the hook to meet the eye. Guys, I’m seriously about to thrown it into the water.
December 6, 2022 — 8:25 pm
Comments: 11
India rubber, uses
The lining of my wellies is coming loose. This calls for rubber cement! Or whatever they call rubber cement over here.
More adventures in finding what the hell I’m looking for in a foreign land.
Ah. Wikipedia helpfully tells me the Brits call it cow gum. Why? Near as I can figure, it was a brand name. As are Marabu-Fixogum and Copydex.
A poetic people.
An enterprising Ebay user calling herself longsufferingwife1 is selling fifty year old vintage cow gum from her father’s gallery. It was always an art studio staple, but I don’t think it’s changed much over the years.
It’s literally just rubber and a solvent. Solvent evaporates, leaves behind plain old rubber. Brilliant for things like fixing my damn boots.
Rubber cement is one of those adhesives that sticks better to itself than anything else. You could always get the best bond by coating both surfaces, letting them dry and then sticking them together.
Which brings us to the very best use for rubber cement: RUBBER CEMENT SCARS! Slather cement on yourself, let it dry, then pucker it up. It makes a long-lasting, truly convincing, seriously disfiguring scar.
On slow days in the art department, the boss would sometimes come in and find everyone at their desks sporting gnarly facial wounds.
December 5, 2022 — 8:05 pm
Comments: 6
Yes, I’d like to report a murder
This object was in my path this morning. I saw it from a long way off because it’s red.
It’s an old dead Christmas tree in the middle of the cycle path, which is along a long, straight stretch of road. Oh, there’s a story there. I just don’t know what it is.
Welcome to December. We’ll be tree shopping soon – though perhaps not as soon as this weekend. Have a good one!
December 2, 2022 — 7:57 pm
Comments: 5
Big Bro
Several of these have cropped up along my route this week. Each one is a bank of four cameras. On closer inspection, they looked like ruggedized, heavy-duty versions of my old wildlife camera.
The tag on it says they’re for monitoring traffic but not enforcing traffic laws, so I don’t know what they’re playing at.
I’d better not pick my nose on the way to work for a while…
Changing the subject – oh, dear. The last comment on my PayPal link from Tuesday:
Unfortunately I fell for the scam as I checkd my Paypal account and could see a transaction request from Clemment Tyler on my dashboard. Stupidly I called the number which was supposedly answered by a Paypal customer service rep and spoke to this really nice indian guy who told me he would sort this transaction out for me. During this long drawn out process they managed to change my password on my Paypal account, how I don’t know as I didn’t give them any information about my account. I actually use two forms of access, password and authenticator! As my Barclays bank card was saved on my Paypal account they were able to clear my bank accounts including savings of everything by asking me to log into my banking app so that they could credit my account and confirming my card with the card reader!! My MBNA credit card was also saved and they tried to make two transactions on there but were unsuccessful as the transactions were declined. They even had the nerve to phone MBNA and as them to confirm my online banking user name!! This whole experience has left me feeling sick and like the dumbest idiot on the planet. I really hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else!!
I can’t imagine who would get caught by the scam and THEN look up the number online.
And yes…I’m still arguing with idiots on Twitter.
December 1, 2022 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 4
We have the power!
Mostly because we have the generator.
Uncle B got it going today – it’s dual fuel gas/propane. I’m hoping it won’t be necessary. It’s been a mild November which gives me (probably false) hope we won’t have any extended blackouts.
But I’ve explained before our septic system is driven by a computer dependant on house current, so no power, no shit. We aren’t taking any chances.
Changing the subject entirely, I had to deal with a workman today who was limping badly. Poor guy is only in his fifties and is severely arthritic in both ankles.
Or was – he had the left ankle fused a few years ago. He said it stopped the pain and freed him up, but he invited me to admire his legs in shorts – his left calf muscle vanished! It was a stick!
No ankle movement, no leg day. And now his hip is going.
Oh, and our gammon was delicious. Have a good weekend!
November 25, 2022 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 9
Well, that was boring
I had to buy a scanned copy of a 19th C Sussex directory for work and it’s honestly the most boring. I was expecting ads for “Doctor Snodgrass Cocaine Suppositories” and “New! Modern! Electric hernia truss!” but no. This ad was the most interesting, if only for the word “dentifricium.”
We bought it for the directory part, but even that was a bust – it’s scanned but not OCR’ed, so it’s not searchable.
I did learn a new word – vade mecum. Okay, that’s two words. It’s a reference or guide you carry around and refer to constantly. The publisher of this directory also published something called the Letter Writer’s Vade Mecum and advertised it throughout. You can still find copies.
I read a sample. It was dreadful advice.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
November 18, 2022 — 7:08 pm
Comments: 2
The further adventures of Weasel’s fifty quid
On or around May 1, 2019 I bought £50 worth of bitcoin for a lark. I’ve posted about it before. The next day, it dropped £4 and I thought it served me right.
But by the end of the month, it was around £80 and it never dropped below £70 again.
The plan was to buy a little every month, but Coinbase won’t let me play any more without updated ID. I have my passport, but there’s some rule about it matching the country I’m living in. Probably a new rule, since they let me open an account in the first place. I believe they’d let me take the money out, but it’s more fun to watch it move around.
Remember, this is all from the original untouched £50 seed money. There’s the peak: November 14, 2021. £652.05. Whew!
So what is it in the wake of this whole FTX mess? £156.68. Not great, but a hell of a lot more money than it would have made sitting in a savings account for 30 months.
You know, watching past footage of world leaders smooching up to this FTX slob Sam Bankman-Fried in his shorts and t-shirt is really something. They thought them young’uns could really magic money out of thin air, did they? I mean, the gullible ones, not the co-conspirators.
When I went to buy my first computer, the salesman pointed to a boy messing with one of the display models and said, “look at that – kids are just natural at this stuff.” I didn’t know a whole lot about computers, but I could see the kid was just confidently mashing random buttons while the operating system spit back the digital equivalent of “please stop.”
November 17, 2022 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 9
Weasel fall down, go ouch
I caught my toe in something yesterday and did a faceplant in the chicken run. The filthy, muddy chicken run. I’m not badly hurt – I biked into work this morning – but I’m sore and inclined to feel sorry for myself.
The terribly pixelated image is Willy Weasel, punching bag of the Tufty Safety Club. I’ve written about Tufty before. Willy got an icecream, so they ran over him with a car.
They ran over him at least twice in that series, but I’m sure I remember one where Willy gets hit and spins around three times in the air while the slide whistle goes woo-woo-woo.
It’s enough to give a weasel a persecution complex.
November 14, 2022 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 3