CodeStore.net comments on "A Christmas Carol"

Reply from Janez Štupar

Janez Štupar — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:59:18 -0600

Regarding your back...

You might want to exercise a bit. That is sort of insurance against all kinds of maladies.

Just a little bit core exercising (back and stomach) will get you out of many troubles - you just need to do 20-30 reps per front and back.

Reply from Jerry Carter

Jerry Carter — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:41:20 -0600

Happy New Year and God Bless you and yours Jake. I woke up with a hip muscle doing what your back did. Thankfully, only 3 days recovery for me. Aren't we blessed to have family and friends all around us. I hope I never take it for granted.

Regarding an energy efficient house, I envy this mans approach: http://www.geopathfinder.com/index2.html

It's all custom built but done in a very sensible manner taking the best advantage of the sun and a material sciences in terms of thermal mass. The wood stove might not be your thing but with the insulation and solar capacity of this house, your heating costs should be low. He doesn't berm the structure on the S, W and N sides but doing so would increase his efficiency bringing geo-thermal heating and cooling into play very inexpensively.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:12:33 -0600

I'll see him again soon as he said he ought to service the boiler. At the time he installed it he told me not to bother insuring/servicing it as he's always there on-call (for free, in effect). Now, 5 years on, he says I ought to let him give it the once-over.

If you like I can ask if he'd come that far out?

Reply from Steve Castledine

Steve Castledine — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:51:32 -0600

Good going on the plumber, whats his number lol? I will pay for a taxi for him and it will still be cheaper than most! I left my boiler knowing it had "an issue", and when it finally gave up it was over a grand and cold visitors that weekend.

Did the back thing myself last year. Being the first time "that" had ever happened to me, you do worry about age catching up etc

Glad you had a great Christmas anyway.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:11:22 -0600

I often wonder what it will be like here in the UK in 10 or 20 years. Houses like ours (Victorian era and +100 years old) are ridiculously under-insulated and with the increasing price of natural gas, on which our heating relies, I dread to think what the bills will get like. Makes me think about selling, buying a plot of land and building a flat-pack house from the continent with minimal heating needs.

Reply from Palmi

Palmi — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 06:55:01 -0600

am sorry to hear about you trouble over xmas , i KNOW what is like to pull a muscle . its Not good at all and it REALLY is a wakeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup call on " we are not getting any younger" On the heating issue we are so spoild over there as we have Geothermal heating - From my time growing up in Ohio freasing my ass off i know that feeling.

Reply from Darren

Darren — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:46:54 -0600

Christmas and New Year coincides with IBM's Q4, so if you're in the sales organisation time off is a no-no. One could consider that a bit of a bummer.

But I look at it this way... a couple of years ago, just before Christmas, a colleague's daughter died of a brain tumour. Anything else pales into insignificance. The weather, traffic, having to work right up to close of play on Christmas Eve, all that stuff... if you have your health (and can ignore non-fatal stuff) and your family, and all is well with them, we are indeed lucky.

By the way, that plumber must have been blessed with some season-of-goodwill feelings. Either that or he has some dementia problem making him believe 1960s plumbing prices are still in force.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:43:14 -0600

Not funny is it!

With my 36th birthday less than a week away it's a good reminder that I'm definitely not getting any younger.

Reply from Jake Howlett

Jake Howlett — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:41:13 -0600

Don't I know it! At first I thought "This is going to be very expensive!"

The boiler was fitted about 5 years ago by a friend of a friend of a friend. He works for a large "heating engineers" company but does household jobs for holiday money. Luckily he wrote his name/number on the wall next to boiler. Even luckier his number hadn't changed and he answered at 8:30 am on Xmas eve!

Apparently he squeezed us in between calling at about 10 other houses to make sure people had heating for Christmas. In his words he "felt sorry" for people and almost felt ashamed to ask us for £40. We gave him a nice bottle of wine too. Kind of restores your faith in humanity when people are like that and when you can't help but feel (especially at this time of year) that every bastard in the world is after for you money!

If we'd cold-called a plumber from the Yellow Pages it could have cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

Reply from Paul

Paul — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:34:46 -0600

£40 for a boiler repair on Christmas Eve ! You are indeed very lucky!

Hope your back is better now.

Reply from Caroline

Caroline — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:28:54 -0600

Oh dear I'm not laughing about your back - I did the same with an over-zealous arm-stretching yawn (of all things!) last Wednesday. That was a 5 day recovery as well...