One of Those Days

The feeling of getting nowhere, when faced with multiple tasks

I feel quite drained this evening, even though I don’t feel like I’ve done much today.

It’s not my usual sort of post, but here’s a snapshot of my day. It includes erasing an SSD, supermarket shopping, electronics, and feeling obliged to eat a pizza with too much cheese on it.

Preparing to Sell the Laptop

My son wants to sell an old laptop, so I took on the job of securely erasing (sanitising) the SSD.

Everything imaginable got in my way.

First I made a disk image, clone and bootable USB flash drive using Macrium Reflect. But the clone would not boot from a USB hard drive, and gave a blue screen saying something like ‘Inaccessible Boot Drive’, despite being 90% of the way through starting up.

So I decided to remove the SSD and put it in a USB caddy. But Micron’s Storage Executive software couldn’t work over a USB interface. So I tried a SATA caddy which connected via eSata. That wouldn’t work either, so I connected the SSD in place of a drive inside my desktop PC — and it worked. The next error told me to unmount the disk, and I ended up deleting all the partitions. To get rid of the recovery partition, I had to use the Windows command-line tool, which was a bit of a pain.

Once I’d finished, I restored the image and put the SSD back in the laptop, and everything worked!

The laptop originally belonged to my late wife, and is one of the last gadgets that she bought for herself. It feels sad to get rid of it, but I know she wouldn’t have kept it this long. It’s old, heavy, and has a 17" screen — so it’s no longer very useful to us.

Booking Dental Appointments

When I phoned the dentist, I found that it’s 2 years since I went for a checkup. Unfortunately, the earliest appointment is January, so I’ve got quite a wait. (I feel slight discomfort occasionally, when eating or drinking certain things.)

My sons didn’t go as long as I did without a checkup, and I managed to book them in for January and March.

Supermarket Shopping

These days, I shop at a range of different supermarkets, including Aldi, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Iceland. They each have things that we like, are better value, or that my gluten-free son needs. Today was Sainsbury’s turn.

Nothing particularly interesting happened, unlike the previous week, when I saw a man walking away from the self-checkout, when a staff member called to him that his payment was declined. He said he’d not realised. But instead of trying to pay again, he returned the item and hurried out of the shop, which made it look like he’d intended to steal it.

Savings Account

With a low income, I rely on my savings to pay for quite a lot of things — so I want to make the money last as long as possible. (I don’t know what I’ll do when my savings run out, but I try not to think about that too much.)

Inflation is much higher than interest on savings accounts, so my savings are slowly vanishing even if I don’t spend any money. So from time to time, I move to a new bank, to try to get the best rate. It feels somewhat desperate and futile, but every little helps.

I was about to move the money to a new account that I opened two days ago, after reading about it on Money Saving Expert (Investec via Raisin). Normally I trust that site, but I got a bad feeling about it. When I looked on Trust Pilot, I was shocked to see lots of terrible reviews, so I decided to find an alternative. (I transferred £10 as a test, but hopefully I can get that back.)

Heater Controller

My bedroom gets very cold, because the wall is thin where there’s a bay window. And even though the double glazing is only 12 years old, it’s in quite a poor state and needs replacing.

To fend off condensation, I have a small electric radiator near the window. Because I don’t like clicking noises from simple thermostats, I made a solid-state relay circuit years ago, which interfaces with a Honeywell wireless thermostat. A similar wireless thermostat controls my gas central heating.

Recently, the displays started to fail on the two thermostats, and I managed to repair one, but not the other. In the end, I decided to replace the bedroom unit with a new, cheaper alternative. Today, I spent some time preparing to make the necessary modifications to my circuit, to accommodate the receiver that came with the new wireless thermostat.

Visiting My In-Laws

We try to visit my late wife’s parents every Saturday and every Wednesday.

Sometimes, my father-in-law prepares food for us. Tonight, he’d got pizza and sausages ready. My youngest son couldn’t have any, because he has to avoid gluten. I don’t like sausages, which I tell my father-in-law on a regular basis. But he always acts surprised when I say that, and immediately forgets again.

With him going to all that trouble, I felt obliged to have something, and ended up having a couple of pizza slices. Unfortunately, he tends to add a huge amount of cheese, far more than I like. But I shouldn’t complain, because it’s nice that he tries to give me a break from cooking at home.

It’s also nice to talk to my mother-in-law. I suppose it reminds me of talking to my late wife, who had a similar outlook on many things.

Coat Shopping

After we got home this evening, my youngest son needed a new winter coat, so we dashed into the town centre about 15 minutes before Primark closed. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything suitable. I was 10 minutes away from getting free parking, which was annoying. On the way home, we called at Sports Direct, and found a reasonable coat there.

What I Didn’t Get Around to Doing

In the back of my mind, I’m usually aware of all the reminders I ignore, and all the things I keep meaning to do.

Here are a few examples.

Fifteen years ago, I bought a large music keyboard (synth) on eBay. It’s big and heavy, and I don’t have the room for it to be set up and used — so I want to sell it.

But it’s so big and heavy that I don’t want to risk posting it. So I’ve been dragging my feet when it comes to taking action with it. A few weeks ago, I took lots of photos, and even a few videos. So it’s sort-of ready to sell, but I just keep putting it off.

I need to get rid of my CDs, but many of the cases have my postcode and house number written on them using UV sensitive ink. Back in the 90s, people were advised to do that — I suppose nobody imagined a time when CDs would not be needed anymore. Even though I still don’t know what to do with them, the big stack of boxes is getting on my nerves.

Some of the magazines I need to deal with. Photo taken by the author.

In my living room, on top of a box of magazines, there is a stack of Personal Computer World magazines. Months ago, I emailed the World Radio History website several times, offering them as a donation (they scan old magazines). But there’s been no response. It feels wrong to throw the magazines away, so they just sit there, acting as visual clutter.

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