Irregularities

No. 30     Thursday 28 June 2012

I think I must have syncopated blogs. My reasoning for this is that somebody once described syncopation in music as "staggering irregularly from bar to bar" and looking back my blogs seem to be staggering irregularly from month to month!! Anyway at least I have managed to start another one today - and I don't know why it has taken me so long.

The solar panels, which I mentioned in my last blog, are working well. Everything was fitted as planned and it didn't even take a whole day for the actual fitting and electrics to be done. The panels produce something even on a cloudy day but on a day when there is wall-to-wall sunshine it is obviously better. A cloudy day, at its worst, will produce about a fifth of the electricity that are fully sunny day will produce - even so that bodes well for the winter. I get paid 21p for each unit generated and 3.1p for each unit exported back to the National Grid. In the legislation about solar panels the government has decreed that, for smaller units (like mine), it will assume that we export 50% - which is, I suppose, a fair average. I was advised by the surveyor who fitted them that I should use as much of my electricity during the day as possible, for example charging my wheelchairs or using a washing machine, thus using my own electricity.

When my indoor wheelchair was checked, some time ago, they noticed that I needed some adjustments, so they fiddled some of them. I think the problem is that I never had a proper assessment done when I first had this wheelchair - I was just presented with it. As a result I am going to have a proper assessment done on Monday (2nd) which means I have to go to Cheltenham. Fortunately the assessment is in the afternoon so it gives me plenty of time to collect my scattered wits - I am not at my best early in the morning.

As far as watching television is concerned I will be very glad when the summer is over what with Euro 2012, Wimbledon, the Olympics and Paralympics and even the Olympic torch relay. These all seem to monopolise some of the TV channels but at least some of the channels which I prefer to watch are not blighted by this problem. I won't carry on about this because I explained my sporting interests in blog No. 28.

I am having an interesting problem with my printer. Microsoft put out a number of updates recently one of which has upset the communication between computer and printer. I have found a way round this which is just a little bit long winded but I don't need to use the printer very often. It would be nice if Microsoft got their act together a little better before putting out updates which have an adverse effect on other programs. I have a feeling that a small problem I had with Dragon NaturallySpeaking (the program which converts my speaking to typescript) was also due to this batch of updates - however that problem is now sorted. I use this Dragon program whenever I have a significant amount of typing to do such as these blogs or longish e-mails. The reason for this is that, only being able to type with one hand, my typing is very slow.

Mike