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Apologies
Dear Family and Friends,
Today I fully intended to go Christmas shopping. However this is the view I have outside my window:
Therefore Christmas shopping will not be happening and no one will be getting any presents.
Thanks for understanding.
Lots of love,
Adrian
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Car Troubles, Pt. 2
Here’s what happened to me today:
It happened about a mile away from my house. At first I wasn’t sure what had happened but then the noise/shaking got worse and so did the steering. I wasn’t sure if it was going to make it all the way home, but I did (just).
My housemate and I tried to fix it, but the bolts were too tight so I had to call out the breakdown people (for the second time in [Edit:] two three weeks).
I do however now need to buy a replacement tyre since my spare is rusty and apparently its not a good idea to drive a mile on a flat tyre (destroying my old one). The question is: Do I buy just one tyre, or a whole set of four (at about £25 each)? Any thoughts?
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Snow time
So on Friday afternoon/evening, we had some heavy snow causing traffic chaos and other problems. Fortunately for me I finish work early on a Friday and was just getting home as the first flakes fell.
I was going to go for a cycle on the Saturday, but instead I decided to make it into a walk. Here are some snow photos I took:
My original intention for my walk was to follow the Rhymney Trail, unfortunately I didn’t cross a bridge that I had to and walked down the wrong side of the river before getting trapped and having to turn back. Anyway here’s some fancy GPS stuff I did on my phone:
[flv:http://adrianyoung.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/20101127_walk.flv 480 360]
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Car Troubles
On Thursday, I drove from Cardiff to Cheltenham and then onto Sheffield. For the first part of the journey, there was very heavy rain and strong winds. The second part was much drier.
However, as I was speeding (legally) along the motorway, my car (a 15 year old Ford Fiesta) decided to make a strange grinding noise. Odd. The noise was of variable length and at random intervals. First guess was the tape player, I hadn’t used it before as I had only picked some up at my Cheltenham stop-off. Nope, with the player turned off and the tape ejected, the noise continued. Was it when I accelerated? Nope. Braked? Nope. Turned a corner? Nope.
This probably can’t be good. Should I keep driving? Pull over straight away? I decided to stop at the next services if the noise went on. The noise stopped.
About 2 miles from the services, I was preparing to carry on past and then gnnrrrr. Time to stop. At the services I phoned up the insurance company who arranged for a breakdown vehicle to come and visit. About 30 minutes later, a man arrived. I explained the situation and he said that he would have to take it for a spin. We drove off and everything was going OK, OK in that the car wasn’t making a noise. “It’s definately not the brakes or the wheel bearings”. That’s fine, but still no noise. Fortunately the noise kicked in a couple of minutes down the road and the man had an idea of what it could be.
Back at the services, he had a look under the car. He came to the conclusion that the heat-shielding around the exhaust had come loose and was flapping about in the high winds. I wondered why this hadn’t happened earlier, in the actual high winds, but I guessed that it might have just come looser later on. I wasn’t driving differently to what the car had experienced before.
I was safe to drive on though and did so. The noise wasn’t quite so bad after that either.
On the way back, the noise was still gone. Strangely when I got to roughly the same location, the noise started again. And when I got to the point at which it first started, the noise stopped again. I have no idea why this section of road was different to any of the rest of it. There was a slight rumbling at times later but it seems to have gone again.
It’s like my car is just allergic to the M42.
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My summer update
Since its coming to the end of summer, I’ve harnessed the power of Google Earth to create a map showing the various locations of places I’ve been to (some places for more time than the others). There was also a short visit to a place in Wales but I’m sure I’ll cover that in a future update ;).
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5 Things I learnt about Italy
This was meant to be a list of 10 things, unfortunately I could only think of 5 things and its been a week since I got back so I don’t imagine I will come up with any more.
- Italians can’t drive. It’s true, they either drive stupidly slowly or ridiculously fast and like to overtake on blind corners on mountain roads. It’s just crazy.
- Pizza variety is strange. There is a wide variety of choices, but they are all essentially the same with very small modifications.
- Wine is cheaper than beer. A glass of wine comes in at €2 rather than €4.50 for beer.
- Nothing happens during siesta time. This is even true for the man who would rather stand outside his office for an hour rather than pressing the gate button to let us off the campsite.
- They frown on women drinking beer. The waiter almost refused to accept that Amanda could drink beer.
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Discussion: Phones on the table
Here’s the background:
I was out for a meal with my parents tonight and I saw a guy with his iphone lying out on his table [Note: I didn’t actually see him using his phone at all, it was just out]. I then saw another woman with a basic non-smartphone samsung phone out too and it got me thinking.
So here’s the discussion:
Is it permissible to have a phone out at a mealtime, especially if it’s at a restaurant?
My view:
I think it says that the person has more important things than the meal. On the other hand they may have been waiting for a very important message/phone call. Personally I kept my phone in my pocket and resisted the temptation to read the three emails I got until after my meal (they weren’t anything interesting anyway).
What are your views? Should it be acceptable? Is it wrong to pre-judge? Leave me a comment.
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Where I’m at now
First off, its been a while since I updated, rather than just apologising, I found this comic (which holds a lot of truths):
Back on topic, here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been doing:
- Completed my degree – a masters in Aerospace Engineering with Private Pilot Instruction – I got a 2:1. Graduation is in 3 weeks
- Had a two week holiday in Germany where I spent a lot of time looking at the local wildlife – they have these massive flying blue beetle things which seemed to be everywhere. This beetle looks very similar, but its not quite the same (since its only found in North America)
- Moved back to my parent’s home where I’m currently looking for a job. If you know of any jobs going, let me know
I still have a few ideas for blog posts which I shall hopefully get round to writing soon.