Author: Buck

I’ve just managed to drag myself away from a German website devoted to cafe racer-ing W650’s. Now that tax discs are no longer being issued you can buy vintage ones for decoration if you want. I’ve bought a May ‘66 one, registered in Hinckley (home of Triumph Bonneville, hehehehe), which got me thinking. You can buy very cheap (£12) custom pre 1973 black and silver number plates. Not road legal, of course. Just for *cough* ‘show’. *cough* I’ve bought one! When I replace the seat there will only be the tank badges (which apparently will pull off) left conspicuously saying Kawasaki. I’m going to run it like a 650 Bonneville cafe racer. I don’t care that it’s not, you have to trade authenticity for reliability. It’s going to be very hard to tell it apart from the real thing, so hopefully the coppers will let the ‘plate slide. Should I forget and ride it with old style ‘plate on. M’lud. So after buying the plate and the tax disc I wanted to ditch the long mudguard and replace the seat. With a tail tidy I could transform it in one hit. It just means instead of the seat and back end looking like this: they look like this: The shape and the general tidiness, not necessarily the colour or that exact seat. In fact, that seems to be a BMW engine (curse you, Google images!), so not like that at all. But that’s what a tail tidy and cafe racer seat (with a black and silver number plate by coincidence) can look like. Anyway, I was looking. And window shopping. And tracking down different styles. I found that German site again (all my saved links were lost when I had to reinstall Windows form scratch). It’s all to fit the W650 on that site, so no fannying around trying to make it fit. Short mudguard €130 Seat €290 Nice new (louder) exhaust system €469 Progressive fork springs and oil (which is next on my list even thought it won’t alter the look. It will sharpen up the handling so no bouncing around on rough corners, less chance of crashing.)  € 150 Stiffer rear shocks € 240 Plus postage and package from Germany.. There’s £976 before P&P.   I want it all, and I want it now! In the end I closed the site down and set to blogging instead. We’ve just bought a washing machine, tumble dryer and soundbar for the telly, we still have £2.5K outstanding on the card, the car is having work done for the MOT, and we are fast approaching February, when work is supposed to drop off. So I resisted. Reluctantly and begrudgingly. I hate being a grown up. *sigh*   Work has had an event, as well. The procedure when coupling up to a trailer, by the book, is to reverse to just before the trailer, stop, get out, check the trailer brake is on (it always is) check the unit is level with […]

Well, what fun. I’ve been having tech issues of my own devising. I read a post by Anonymous (the loosely affiliated hacker collective) on how to set up an encrypted, hidden partition in your computer and use an external Operating System (OS) boot on a USB. In other words, if you start the computer normally it will go to Windows as usual. If you plug the USB in you can start it in the sneaky encrypted bit. And unlike,say, a clever password, if you destroy the USB no amount of torture could make the encrypted part work. It’s totally pointless for me, really. I’ve got bugger all in which the security gestapo of the NSA or UK equivalent would be interested, it was just a token gesture to Stick It To The Man. So, the scene is set. Me (muppet) read an article by Anonymous (clever buggers) which was a step by step guide for beginners and eejits, decided to be down with the cool kids and set it up. Can you see where this is going yet? I was halfway through the install, I’d formatted and encrypted the 500 GB of memory, it took 16 hours just to wipe it all (I don’t know, something about being able to infer stuff off the overwritten memory otherwise) then I realised the guide was saying there were 2 options. Install most of the OS on the PC and just the boot on the USB, or put everything on the the USB. The latter being the easy option. I’d been setting it up in the former mode. Balls. I decided to cut my losses, pull the USB, restart the PC and wipe the USB and start again. Now can you see where this is going? I pulled the USB out, restarted the computer, black screen. Errrr, what? Turns out I’d somehow destroyed the Windows boot and possibly OS, but hadn’t completed the OS or boot on the USB. Nothing. Nada. Not an electronic sausage. In the end I had to reinstall Windows from the ground up. I reloaded the recovery discs you get with the PC but couldn’t connect to the internet as the disc didn’t include the drivers. These seem to be the software programmes that make the hardware work. Anyway, whatever they actually are I couldn’t connect to the internet without them. The wifi and such was still working so I tried to download the drivers on my ‘phone and transfer them across. Not knowing which drivers I needed that proved impossible. I wanted to let the PC find it’s own and update (their is a free download called Driver Booster 2 that will scan an auto update all your drivers) but no internet, ‘cos no drivers, no drivers ‘cos no internet. I finally worked out that I could use a wifi dongle to connect to the internet to get the PC to do it’s thing. I put it to Luke and he suggested tethering my ‘phone and using that […]

testing,1,2,3

Another year (nearly) over a new one just begun (in a bit.) And so this is Winterval, and it’s bugger all fun. Hmm, I’m obviously wasting my time not working for Hallmark cards. Anywho, not been blogging ‘cos nothing has been happening. After the tentative proposition about a possible job nothing further has been said. I think that’s because at then minute they are rushed off their feet and need me to keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t think it’s any reflection on that bump I had. Instead of just disciplining you they show you videos and do a talk on how to avoid further accidents. Better policy all round. The work has been constant. 5 days one week, usually 6 the next. The shifts are alright, Sun-Thurs usually 11.30 or 13.30 start, before midnight getting home. People are beginning to get on my tits. Not the ones I work with, the other road users. I have to travel around the Manchester ring road (M60) and over the M62 each day. They are upgrading it to smart motorway so a long stretch of it is 50mph average speed cameras. The amount of muppets I have to avoid killing daily is a real drag. It’s starting to get me down. I am having to remind myself what a cushy number I’m on compared to,say, the army, or order picking in –28 C. Talking of which, I was watching a documentary on Sci-fi the other day (Tomorrow’s Worlds, it’s a series, very good.) and the theme was time travel. It seems I completely missed the underlying philosophical premise of Groundhog Day. It was the same day. Yes, I know. But at the beginning he went through it pissed off and pissing everyone else (my preferred M.O.) but at the end he was happy and he made everyone else happy. It was the same series of events, it was how he chose to react to them that made the difference. I vaguely remember a Buddhist text saying that happiness cannot be found externally. Which makes a silly bit of  whimsy quite a profound film. In short, I’m trying to turn that frown upside down.   One thing that tested that maxim for Wendy was the boiler breaking down. It suddenly stopped on Friday morning, just as we’d gone into a really cold spell. I rang them, they said they’d be here in 24 hours. Wendy waited all day Saturday, no-one came. Called again. Sunday morning the guy turned up, grumpy and surly, obviously gutted that he’d been made to work on a Sunday. Not my problem,  pal, it’s your job. “CPU’s broke. Common problem.” Oh good, can you fix it then? “Not got the part I’ll let the office know tomorrow.” I rang on Monday. Nothing, maybe this afternoon. Wendy rang in the afternoon, fix it tomorrow. Wendy took the day off work to wait in. Nothing. Rang again. Got the wrong part. Thursday. All of this time it was freezing cold. […]

Work has been eventful. After them saying there were jobs in the offing I asked about and the consensus is that there is plenty of work, not just the 3 days minimum, and that leads on to 5 day contracts. So at the very least it’s a foot in the door. Splendid. All positive and peachy. Then I had a bastard bump. The same place I had to reverse in to on my assessment, in the corner of the yard, past a skip. This time to add to the degree of difficulty it was night time, in the rain, and there was a trailer sticking out even further than the skip. I reversed tight in on my blindside, having to rely on my mirror. I didn’t see the black lip of the trailer sticking out an extra inch. Clipped it with my trailer. There was bugger all damage, slight scrape on my trailer, nothing on the lip of the one I hit, but because it was empty, and I caught it at it’s furthest point, it span the trailer around a bit. The trailer was parked up against the triangular stops, so one wheel mounted the stop. This meant I couldn’t drive under the trailer and pick it up, the 5th wheel wouldn’t engage with the pin because it was at an angle. I was crapping myself. I’d already admitted my fault to the manager, who was going to to try and cover it up as no damage was done, but security got in on it and were going to bubble me so we had to make it official. Anyway, in the end I had to reverse under the trailer from the side to which it had turned, pick it up a bit, and reverse/ push it back around. I was shitting bricks because it was at a bad angle and I thought it was going to fall over, and the manager kept disappearing from view so I was worried it was going to land on him and kill him. Bad enough getting sacked without killing the guy who was trying to cover up for me. That was an official warning. Balls. The next day I went to pick up a load as usual, got given my paperwork, all normal. It was for trailer TD308, which is to say TearDrop (shaped) 308. The only one of that designation in the fleet. I picked it up, did all my checks, then drove it back to Warrington. I was about to go home when a warehouse guy said “why’ve you brought the Bristol trailer?” He showed me the paperwork off the load, TD308, Bristol. I showed him the paperwork I’d been given, TD308, Warrington. Not my fault, some arse in the warehouse had ballsed up, big time. But I didn’t check the load, so it was my fault. Everything is always the driver’s fault. Everything. Always. It’s never happened to me before. The Warrington warehouse guy had never know it to happen […]