Flick's Writing

Flick's Journal
Flick's Contacts
Add Pictures
Tags
Calendar
About Flick
Update
Search

iPhone, part 2

♥Mar. 31st, 2016 // 08:59 pm
[Tags|]
[xpost |http://flick.livejournal.com/1149775.html]

Or, you know, it could be that none of the passwords I can think of work because it's got Mike's password on it....

(No idea, best guess is that it's because my first iPhone used to be Mike's, but that doesn't explain how I upgraded to the one in between!)

Password now changed. iPhone now backing up over a wire. Life is good.
LinkWho loves you?

Catching up, yet again

♥Mar. 31st, 2016 // 06:50 pm
[Tags|, , , , , , ]
[xpost |http://flick.livejournal.com/1149537.html]

Eastercon was good, except the bit where I woke up snotty one day and voiceless the next. I'm back to talking again, but still sniffly and with a bit of a sore throat. Still, an almost-entirely enjoyable con, other than a few wobbles that were either relatively minor or only short-lived. As I am weak-willed, I managed to get roped into doing things next year and the year after. As I am feeling crappy, I have failed to do most of the post-con jobs that need doing.

While we were in the area, we had dinner with my parents (but not my sister and other half: he tripped over one of the dogs, fell down the stairs, ripped the child gate (there to keep the dogs from going upstairs, um), and came to a halt on the back door, which is now needs new hinges. In one of those 'could have been worse' ways, he's got a broken wrist and toe, is black and blue, and only didn't break his hip because he had it replaced a year or so ago). Mike also had dinner and some time wandering around town with his mother, but I didn't make it along as they were running late and I had jobs to do by the time they went to eat.

We had a crappy journey up but a fairly good run coming home, so I suppose that it balances out. Mike finally gave in and got the Tom Tom app on his phone, so that I no longer have to spend the journey hitting refresh on Google Maps and trying to work around problems (which Google seems to be frankly crap at: there's no point telling me that Route 1 has a one hour delay and Route 2 a two hour one, tell me Route 3 that - gasp - leaves the motorway for a couple of junctions to avoid it!), although I did spend the trip home being an occasional stunt iPhone holder (proper one now acquired).

We don't seem to have suffered much damage from the storm, other than one of the stems of the elder on the drive having split and (fortunately) landed on the fence rather than the sitter's car. There are a lot of broken branches on the roads and in the woods, though. Animals all seem fine, although Bugs was a tiny wee bit lame (in the same leg again) today: worrying but probably not reliably enough present for a vet visit.

Today, my new iPhone arrived. I didn't make it to the Virgin shop at weekend, and I failed to order a new SIM yesterday, so that will be arriving tomorrow. It's a moot point anyway, though, as it turns out that I once enabled encryption of my iTunes phone backups and none of the passwords I'd expect to work did so. We're now, very tediously, doing an iCloud backup: it's been wandering between 19 and 22 hours remaining for about the last two hours. And, of course, once it's done and I've got the SIM, I'll have to re-download it, and then download all my apps. Mike's in work tomorrow, and if the process is at a stage where it makes sense to do so I may have him take the new phone and syphon off a bit of the office wifi.

I also made wild garlic pesto, so there's a stock of that in the freezer. There's also still masses of garlic left, and I'm vaguely wondering if I could bottle it instead of freezing.
LinkWho loves you?

Eventful day

♥Sep. 24th, 2015 // 07:54 pm
[Tags|, , , , , , , ]
[xpost |http://flickgc.livejournal.com/1108970.html]

This morning it was moist, so we put of riding until the afternoon and, after we'd done the yard jobs, I retired to the kitchen: spiced elderberry cordial, sorting the boxes of apples and tomatoes with subsequent passata and apple juice, general tidying.

Mike, meanwhile, was upgrading my iPhone to iOS 9, as he'd already got it downloaded and wanted to do it before it started requiring 9.1 (or whatever the never version is). It seemed to be taking a terribly long time.

When we got in after walking Jo, the phone rang and a nice young man said he was calling from the bank. I pointed out that my phone was showing a different number to the bank's, and he said he'd leave a note on my account with his extension number. A quick call to Mike's mobile Just In Case and I was soon speaking to him again: First Direct is running a reward scheme for long-term customers, and they're sponsoring the Northern Ballet this year, and they're doing Wuthering Heights in Canterbury next month and would I like to go? Two free tickets, drinks receptions before and after, talk from the director, Meet The Cast. Oh, go on then. I don't think Mike's very keen but I'm sure I'll find a taker (anyone fancy it? I have asked Mrs Next Door as well, but she doesn't strike me as the ballet type).

(Mike is in a small huff, because he's been a customer for much longer and they didn't offer him tickets to a thing he had no interest in seeing. I pointed out that they may be deliberately offering them to women. Then I remembered the time they gave me a case of wine for being a good customer, too!)

Around this time, Mike learnt that there was a known bug in iOS 9, fixed in 9.1 (see above), that left it hung at the 'swipe to restart' stage, and started downloading 9.1 (ditto) in the hope he could just overwrite it.

A bit more faffing in the kitchen, and sticking a cake in the oven, and going Harvesting in the garden (the tomatillos in the ground have done much less well than the ones in pots on the patio, which seemed odd. But suddenly they've gone mad with enormous fruit since I took out the tomatoes plants next to them!) and it was time to take Jo to the vet for jabs and a general check-up. I got about two miles from home and the car started making A Noise, which I thought might be a branch under the car: I pulled into a parking space and had a look. Couldn't see anything but, oh, wait, that corner of the car seems to be lower down than it should be: flat tire. Better call Mike. Oh, wait, my phone's both bricked and at home. Just as I started to swear, a dog walker came back to his car and let me borrow his phone (I think he was a bit worried I was going to ask him to change the tire!). Mike remembered, as I had not, that there was an electric pump in the car, so I got the tire pumped up and made it home. One quick tire change later (he's had practice, recently!) and I was re-booked at the vet and on my way again.

Jo was her usual good self, even if she hates having the Kennel Cough vaccine up her nose, and was long-suffering when having her bum squeezed (she's been itchy lately). She didn't want to lie down and roll over for the vet to check where she had the cancer removed, so in the end I just picked her up and sat on the chair with her on my lap, facing out. The vet was bemused and impressed, particularly when Jo stayed in the same position to have her claws trimmed! ("I'll have to remember that trick... although I can't imagine many dogs would stay in that position while I did their claws...") Jo'd not been brushing her teeth properly, though, and needs them cleaning. The vet sternly warned me to keep an eye on her weight until I get it done, as the price for sedation goes up at 35kg and she's currently 34.45.

We did manage to ride, after I got back, which was good except that GB was favouring his dodgy leg a little, which is always worrying. There seemed to be an awful lot of washing up when we got in, though, and that plus cleaning the kitchen floor (shocking state, simply shocking. Please don't listen to anyone who tells you I'm house-proud) occupied the time until dinner, and now that I've written this I'm off to give the boys their evening hay!

Edit: Oops. It appears that the things we failed to do today was put the ducks to bed after we'd ridden: the perils of breaking your routine. They'd gone in on their own, though, and nothing had followed them home. Phew.
LinkWho loves you?

Mobile phones

♥Aug. 22nd, 2013 // 07:34 am
[Tags|, ]
[xpost |http://flickgc.livejournal.com/905636.html]

So, mobile phones don't work so well in The Countryside.

With ee, you can reliably make a phone call if you stand outside the front door. You can often get text messages, and occasionally a bit of Edge, if you leave your phone in a room at the front of the house, but if you try to reply then your signal mysteriously vanishes while you're typing, and then you have to go outside to send it.

With O2, you can get good voice reception if you walk all the way up to the top of the paddock, and you might even get a little data.

With Vodafone, you have no chance at all.

So, we've switched our phones from Giffgaff (O2) to Virgin (ee).

And wow but Virgin is crap. Even when we go to The Big City (er, Canterbury), it's not unusual to have no signal and even when there's full bars of 3G you can't load a webpage half the time. Sigh.
Link5 kisses // Who loves you?

Out and about

♥Aug. 15th, 2012 // 04:04 pm
[Tags|, , , , , , ]
[xpost |http://flickgc.livejournal.com/880247.html]

I seem to have been doing a lot of driving to strange places for side saddle reasons, lately.

The other week, I went up to Addington, in darkest Buckinghamshire, for the national side saddle show. We were just watching, not taking part, and it was very interesting. I now actually know what the jumping position is. Not sure I'm actually going to use it any time soon, but I know what it is. Gorgeous venue: I'm incredibly jealous. Two huge indoor schools, overlooked by the cafe and the bar, three (four?) outdoor dressage arenas and two (three?) outdoor jumping arenas, oh and it's in a country park for hacking. God knows what the livery fees are like!

Today, I went to Headcorn, in darkest Kent, for a side saddle lesson with my instructor's instructor, on her schoolmistress. As predicted by my instructor, I got on the horse and she immediately started going in tiny circles until I Got It Right, which I think I was starting to do by the end. Very useful, I just need to actually do more side saddle (been a bit slack lately, at least partly because of GB's impressive collection of bites. Which thankfully has not increased in number lately).

Today I also went into Boots to talk to the pharmacist: something bit me yesterday (I really need to stop thinking 'ah, sod it' and hacking out in leggings after my Pilates class because I can't be bothered to get changed and it's hot), and I have an enormous lump on the outside of my left (fortunately, else I doubt I could have done today's lesson) knee. I took an antihistamine last night, else I'd probably be unable to walk or something. She said "I could give you some hydrocortisone cream" and I said "oh, shall I put some HC45 on it?" which made her look utterly bewildered (she actually said "no, hydrocortisone is a steroid": how can a pharmacist not know what HC45 is?) but eventually she agreed and told me to try it. We shall see. At least it hurts less now than it did this morning.

I have a new phone, which was remarkably painless other than the half hour wait for my appointment at the Apple Store. ("The battery tester says that there's nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, it also says you'd get ten hours of standby and two hours of use, so there obviously is something wrong. Just a minute and I'll get you a new phone.")

I also have a hair cut, which looks remarkably the same as it usually does, and I went to the Unicon last weekend, where I played what I can only describe as the board game version of the first part of Spore. It works better when the computer does the adding up for you, I fear, but it was quite fun.

This weekend, we are actually at home. And not doing anything! I suspect we'll be bored by Saturday afternoon.

(Phil the Greek's been taken to hospital in an ambulance. Radio 4 is stressing that it's just a precautionary measure, but as it's doing so between programmes, rather than waiting for the news....)
Link3 kisses // Who loves you?

Navigation
Viewing // Most recent entries