venta

Well. I feel quite effective.

Last night I:

- Fixed the indicators on my car. OK, so it was really only a matter of joggling some relays until they worked again, but I'm a girl so that counts as impressive.
Cue associated rant about Haynes manuals[*]:

Why the hell are they so difficult to use ? On the way home last night, my indicators packed in. Not in a nice, conventional way - they merely stopped flashing, giving me steady, orange lights.

So, I grab the manual and look up indicators in the index. This told me how to change the bulbs. Which, since the lights were working, pretty much wasn't the problem.

My A-level physics gave me a sneaking suspiscion (confirmed by

ao_lai) that flashing things are made to flash by relays. So, look up relays in the index. Sure enough, there's some more stuff about indicators. Look, guys, cross-reference, you bastards.

According to the manual, the fusebox is "behind the lower trim panel on the passenger side". Is it bugger, I think, it's inside the glovebox. Eventually, I locate instructions for removing the fusebox hidden in the things-that-changed-with-different-models section.

This is section 13*60. "Remove glovebox according to instructions in section 19 of this Chapter". 13*19 turns out to be stuff about the bowels of the engine, and the index finds me the glovebox-removing instructions at 13*58. Which don't appear to work. So I just remove the fusebox by guesswork instead.

Now the manual tells me that relays practically never go wrong, I should check instead the wiring/fuse/bulbs. We've already rules out the bulbs, and I decide that I can pretty much rule out the others too, but check anyway. They're fine. Taking the relay out, thumping it and putting it back solves the problem.

For now ;)

- Tried again to rid my laptop of the Blaster Worm. Actually, this still hasn't worked, but I did manage to establish that I seem to have acquired a variant to everyone elses. Which is nice. (Or I'm just very stupid. Update on that later. Update: it seems I'm not wholly stupid. The newly-LJ'd-up

grumblesmurf has kindly fixed it all for me. I won't be trusting Evesham's notify-you-of-updates software again, though.)
- Bleached the sink. Having a white sink in a house full of inveterate tea drinkers is a crap plan.
- Scrubbed the toilet, bath, washbasin. Scrubbed the mould off the bathroom wall. This was only a minor mould incursion, not the exciting full-on affair I reported to you ages ago. (Note to self: get out more)
- Did lots of washing. (Note to budding thesps: create cheap fake blood by the gallon by washing cheap, bright red clothes!)
- Tidied up. I have a bedroom floor, it seems. Not much of one, but some. I still have no desk or other flat surfaces, however.

I don't know what's brought on all this domesticity. I even vacuumed the floors downstairs before going to Intrusion on Tuesday...

Worrying. Definitely worrying.

[*] Haynes manuals are the standard what-goes-where DIY guides for cars.