Day: February 13, 2017

by

On a Shrewsbury Ramble

It was rather a sad day not to have work and to be waiting for deliveries since it was so sunny out! I managed to convinced Puppy to go for a decent walk around the block after the Amazon guy came, but she’s really not keen on the idea of walks yet so we didn’t get far.

I was expecting Tesco between two and three. In Hebden, they came right near the start of the delivery slot. Here, they came about two minutes before the end of it! The driver was really concerned that my pack of mixed veggies had been substituted for one that he didn’t think sounded similar. I assured him that I’d put “can sub any on offer without mushrooms” on my order form so what I ended up with was fine. I really like these Tesco stir fry “kits” for just £5 where you get noodles, sauce, veggies, and meat, which you can all mix and match in many different combinations. Last time, I did pork with egg noodles and a prune hoisin sauce. Tonight, it’ll be chicken with rice noodles and a lemongrass coconut sauce. These are really good value for me since I get three meals out of them.

The Tesco order sorted, I had a quick lunch of mediocre sushi that was on offer and then I exhausted Puppy so she could have a nap while I went out and enjoyed the blue sky and SUN.

I decided to go back downtown by way of the train station and see if I could do a loop back home. Spoiler: I was able to and it wound up being a two-mile walk. So the town is not as big as I thought it would be. I had less far to go in Hebden to get “downtown,” but there I had the huge hills to contend with while the terrain here is much more flat and a lot less slippery. It’ll be easier here to motivate myself to go out for a stroll.

The directions my host left me to get to their place had this building, Morris Lubricants, as a landmark. It’s rather impressive.

I can’t believe I didn’t notice the castle when I came out of the train station on Saturday or on my walk yesterday!

Overpass by the train station.

Shrewsbury train station. When I was there on Saturday, the emergency vehicles had “heddlu,” Welsh for police, on them, but today they were marked in English.

Passing this restaurant, I realised that I knew exactly where I was and got my first inkling that the town is very compact.

Looking back to the train station while standing in front of the restaurant. I like the tower on that building to the left.

I climbed a staircase next to this plaque, thinking I could get some information about the castle, but it ended up being a foot path on the outside of the castle walls.

Looking back down to the train station.

Should have brought my camera. My phone’s pictures suck in this kind of light. 🙁

Looking towards the castle entrance.

I ducked into a medieval alley to see what was what and turned a corner to find this interesting construction.

I turned back to the main street through downtown and from there followed yesterday’s route home.

It’s been a quiet day and a good one to get to know Puppy and her routine better. Not having work was rather lovely, especially since it looks like at least a small part of the large non-transcription project should be a go. I expect to hear back from the client about that in a few hours. Now, off to make some stir fry and try some of that very inexpensive Tesco bitter I bought. At £0.25 per can, my expectations are low. 🙂

by

Jackery Bar Power Pack

It was way back in Bulgaria last summer that it became clear that my phone’s battery was on the fritz. Kevin and Ruth recommended an external power pack that could possibly solve my power issues, but that brand wasn’t available in Bulgaria. Shopping for another alternative brand with the language barrier was daunting and I didn’t  have much access to to electronics stores anyway. I was also loathe to spend what is to me a lot of money on something for which I wouldn’t be able to use the warranty if it broke. Plus, I’ll admit that I have a short memory and it’s only on the rare days that I go out for many hours that I’m reminded of just how unreliable my phone is.

The phone has gotten exponentially worse and the battery issues seem to make it unresponsive as well. Since the phone was originally free, I thought that replacing the battery wouldn’t be an unreasonable cost, but it was about 125CAD to do that and I’d rather put that money towards a new phone. So an external power pack really seemed like a better investment since it could also provide charging power to my iPad and be used with whatever phone I get to replace my iPhone 5C.

When I got to the UK, I had a look at the product again, the Jackery Bar, since it is available through Amazon.co.uk. But the cost was twice what would pay for the device in Canada! It’s Amazon.ca for 25CAD with the taxes, but it was £30 on the UK site, so about 50CAD.

I came into some unexpected money my first night here in Shrewsbury and decided that that was the sign I was looking for to just buy the damn thing. So I logged into my Amazon.co.uk account to place an order and… found that the price had dropped to £10, or about 16CAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s even less than buying the Jackery Bar at Amazon.com. I signed up for a free Prime membership trial to get free delivery and next business day delivery. So that was Saturday night and now it’s Monday and this thing of beauty is currently charging:

It’s quite heavy and more bulky than I expected, but I think I picked the right model. There are smaller ones that I didn’t feel would give me enough power (since the phone really isn’t holding a charge) and that wouldn’t charge my iPad at all (this one promises me up to half a charge for my Mini). The bigger one sounded way too humongous to drag around. The Bar appears to be the compromise between power and portability. I had a choice of the full range of colours and thought the orange was pretty although the muted gold was a close second choice.

Now, to see it is the help I hope it will be. Note to self, don’t forget to pack it and the phone charging cable when I go out!

Of course, this is a stop gap measure as I still need to replace the phone eventually. I’ve finally admitted that I’m going to have to make the same sacrifice I do with my computer, accepting hardware compromises to get superior software. In other words, there’s no way I’m moving to Android and I’m just going to have to hope that my next iPhone isn’t a lemon too. I have to remind myself that of all the Apple products I’ve owned in the last 14 years, only two have been duds, so the odds are I’ll be thrilled with my next phone. If anyone has an unlocked iPhone 6 (preferably the big one) for sale, let me know as I’ll be in active shopping mode when I get back to Canada next month. 🙂