The Diaries Of An Un-Furloughed Grendel

[grendel]

well I have a job to do tomorrow, after trying to print something as a favour for a friend I left the printer too long and the print broke free, and I ended up with a huge clog of filament around the  hot end., that will be a fair while tomorrow to clear that off without affecting the temperature sensor wiring.

[BroadAmbition]

Ok, Evaporust, I need some for our 'Sea Magnet' but that is all, I reckon in the right container 1 x Litre should do it.  Which band do you recommend and from where? - Ebay / Amazon?

Thanks,

Griff

[grendel]

I bought the 5 litre container for about £36 on ebay, the 1litre bottles seem to be about £16 to be honest i just went for about the cheapest i could find, shipping from the uk with free postage.

 

[grendel]

Day 16, Friday, 

I thought half of today would be spent cleaning the hot end of my printer, but then the old noggin engaged, and I had a thought, this plastic melts at a specific temperature, the hot end contains a heating element, all I had to do was apply the correct voltage and current to the heating element to get the plastic to melt, ok, on to the power supply, I started at 5V, nothing, it was barely getting warm, so I slowly ramped it up to 12v, now its pulling nearly 3 amps and yes the plastic is starting to smoke, out with a metal pointy thing and the stubborn plastic just peels off, all it needed was 200 ish degrees heat to solve the problem, printer is now reassembled and running its first test print.

[BroadAmbition]

That's the thing with the evaporust.  I got a right eyebrow lifting moment when I saw the price. - buying 1 x Ltr is proper expensive so it will have to be 5Ltrs, but at £36:00 to clean up our sea magnet - It'll have to wait until I start earning once more.  Not earnt a farthing since third week in March now.  Today is 01st May and on we go.  That's not a whinge / complaint, it's just the way it is

Griff

[grendel]

yes i ordered mine just before it was announced i was being furloughed, the good news is that some of those who were in the first batch to be furloughed were called back in to work this week, as a lot of the big construction firms are slowly restarting working now they have determined how to with appropriate social distancing.

our main business dropped to 10% of its normal demand, the part i work for dropped down to about 40% of normal workloads as construction slowed down, but by all reports we are slowly building back up.

[BroadAmbition]

I was being furloughed

That's the thing being furloughed equates to receiving 80%  I would be chuffed to bits to receive 80% as it is we are currently in receipt of 0%

Yes, I can apply for the self employment grant - I've looked into this, I can't apply till mid May, they will contact me apparently.  Whatever I'm entitled to will not be paid until end of June.  By then I hope I may be back at work so won't need it!

Griff

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, BroadAmbition said:

Yes, I can apply for the self employment grant - I've looked into this, I can't apply till mid May, they will contact me apparently.

Griff, not sure if this applies to you but I have a friend in the village who is a long time self employed mechanic, he works alone in his workshop, he sent off his paperwork(vat number etc) for the grant....10k in the bank already.

regards

 

John

[ExSurveyor]

1 hour ago, BroadAmbition said:

Whatever I'm entitled to will not be paid until end of June.  By then I hope I may be back at work so won't need it!

Griff, apply for it as it is to cover the period you haven't been working, just remember it will be classed as taxable income.

It isn't often the small self employed gets help, take it.

[grendel]

Day 17, Saturday, 

Shopping this morning, this will take most of the morning unless i am really lucky.

[grendel]

gahh

shopping is over, what an ordeal, lidls straight in no queue, round the shop most of what i wanted was there, 1 person in front at the tills, great, 

Asda, the queue went up and down the car park in 7 lines, it took me nearly 45 minutes to get in the doors, then there were the people going against the flow designated by the arrows, meaning they had to pass less than 2m as they crossed, then some of the stuff i wanted wasnt in stock, no queues at the till. off to the post office in the pharmacy in the village a mile out of town - well i needed to post stuff, and when i got there i just had to wait while the person at the counter concluded their transaction, got in, and the person behind me was the postie coming to pick up the bags for sorting - result. sainsburys was the last stop, the queue was 10 minutes and they had all the bits missing from the other shops, then home, 3  hours to do a shop that used to take 90 minutes, and leaving me so worn out i have had to have a long sit down and some cream buns with a coffee.

just about getting to the point of deciding what to do with the rest of the day.

[BroadAmbition]

and leaving me so worn out I have had to have a long sit down and some cream buns with a coffee.

Like it - even if it is just a whimpish excuse.  Think I might do the same even though I am far from worn out

Griff

[grendel]

Actually i had quite a quiet day yesterday, a bit of this and a bit of that as i was passing, kept busy, but not really achieving a lot, for example, on the model, measurements were taken for the water line and boot topping, compared to photos, sketches done and workings out jotted down, another coat of white was spreayed on the sides of the model, but no real advances.

 

[grendel]

Day 18, Sunday.

A lazy morning so far, watching engineering on youtube. 

I have a 9.45 session of yoga booked for an hour, so i am unlikely to get motivated to start anything prior to that, after that i have household chores to do. this afternoon, well we will have to see what i am motivated to do.

[grendel]

well yoga is done, all is at peace with the world once more, household chores (cleaning / changing cat litter trays) have been done, now sat down once again watching youtube engineering, i also have some chicken thigh being boiled on the hob, one of our boys has a dodgy tummy and the vet has recommended a bland diet, yesterday we had some mince (500g) of my daughters that was 1 day past date (she is fussy) so that was cooked up for the 4 of them yesterday, when i was shopping both lidls and asda had a deal on chicken thighs, so for £1.80 kg i bought 3kg of thighs, 16 thighs in total, so 4 of those are being boiled for the cats for tonights food (they are getting the normal cat food for breakfast, for all the additional supplements) we could just feed the one cat the bland food, but have you ever tried to give a single cat of 4 different food- almost impossible as if you feed the others first the one will try and eat that, and if you try excluding the one first all the others want to be where he is eating his food.

 the vet did give him special bland gastro food which did improve matters, which is why we are aiming for the bland food once a day.

[MauriceMynah]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

so for £1.80 kg i bought 3kg of thighs, 16 thighs in total,

I hope you have something to go with them, because,..... Thighs isn't everything.

[grendel]

Day 19, Monday.

all I have to look forward to today is 6 hours of training, as training is allowed under the furlough rules, my company is taking full advantage of the fact, and we have 2 sessions this week. the training last week was fun, with half the attendees able to see the presentation, but not hear the presenter, and the other half able to hear but not see.

this time it will be even more complex, with the attendees needing to remotely access their work pc's at the same time, now this wouldnt normally be too bad, as they have the skype app, but if you remote in, there is no sound. so we will see how it goes.

[grendel]

Well after 1 1/2 hours training was cancelled, as not all of the participants showed up, then there were issues with the software we were supposed to be using to train on, so this weeks training has been put on hold until next week, once the issues have been sorted out.

[grendel]

Just a quick note to say that following a phone call received from work today, that tomorrow will be the last furlough diary entry, because from Wednesday i will be back at work (from home).

[grendel]

After the training was cancelled i was at a bit of a loose end as i had planned my day around 6 hours training, anyway i decided to tidy up some of my clothes, an hour and a half later, a pile of old shirts and trousers with embarrassing holes went in the bin, and i now know where all my tee shirts are.

[Ray]

If you've got to the point of sorting out clothes it's just as well that furlough is over!

[JanetAnne]

And there was me thinking Peter was going to have time to finish the BA model and get the keel laid on the Water Rail model before he got the call.

[grendel]

JA I dont have any measurements yet.

[grendel]

Of course working from home is still better as it does give me an extra 3 hours a day that would have been spent travelling. so i will still be doing things, especially on the model, but i wont have to fill my day with them.

[SwanR]

Working from home does have its advantages. I am getting up later and enjoying that when I turn the laptop off, that's it, I'm home. It will be interesting to see how anyone envisages getting us all back into our offices. I don't think that's going to happen for a while yet for me. There's no way of being able to socially distance where I work.