OneGuyFromBarlick

PanBiker wrote: ↑29 Jul 2020, 16:28 Just received an email from TalkTalk Business who we have our broadband connection with. They are upgrading us to Super Fast Fibre, around (76Mbps) at no extra cost. Will be advised when the upgrade is complete. Cant use it at the moment though.

Wifi and sit outside ?!

We will be recommencing our cancer support meetings on the first Tuesday of the month. First one since lock down will be tomorrow Tuesday 1st March commencing at 2pm. Tea, coffee and biscuits provided.

The group is open to all who are affected by cancer. Those on treatment, post treatment and anyone else who is thrust into a support role for them. The latter often hidden to some degree and often forgotten that they bear the burden as well. The meetings are informal and conducted around a group chat. You can speak or listen, no pressure and all under the strictest confidence.

We will see how the afternoon sessions go and see if there is a demand for an evening group as well.

I have a feeling I'll be turning up there one day!

You will be welcome Stanley. Some nice biscuits are being obtained this morning, (we already have lots of bourbons and custard creams). Sally and I will be doing LFT's before we attend. I have to nip round later this morning and put the heating and the boiler on for the brews.

Just a small observation..... sweet biscuits are the last thing I would be eating! As a newly inspired low carb dieter I would have to say no......

We don't force anything on to anyone Stanley. If you don't want biscuits that's your choice.

For the first session after effectively nearly two years of lockdown it was well attended. We had four folk turn up, three new attendees and one who has been before. They all said that they got some benefit from the session which is all we can hope for. Our motto is after all ""a helping hand and a listening ear"

It was the monthly Bosom Friends Coffee Morning today. Featuring the B team of Sally and myself. Our normal younger trustee baristas were other wise engaged, one with a nail in her car tyre that she had to get fixed. No Espresso Cappuccino or Flat White this morning as we don't know how to drive the machine! We managed with tea and instant coffee though, cakes were appreciated. We made a bob or two for the group and the attendees had a good natter.

We were late getting the notifications out for last months cancer support meeting. Consequently we only had one attendee. Still had a good chat though. Our existing poster was date specific, I have modified it to be more generic as we always meet on the first Tuesday each month.

I'm all for making notices of this kind as universal as possible but saying 'first Saturday or 'first Tuesday requires the potential visitor to mark their calendar up to find the date. I like the format used by the council on their bin collections with some icon set against the date. this could be set out to cover the full year.

Ian this is not meant as a complaint just a thought. In My mind Bosom Friends do a fantastic job.

I take your point Ken, might have a look at that. The current simple format was the easiest to do to avoid having to make new posters every month.

It's our cancer support meeting this afternoon by the way, 2 pm in our Green Street Centre. I think we have scones left from the Coffee Morning last Saturday.

The numbers attending the cancer support meetings are picking up. We had three on Tuesday,. Happy to report that as suspected we did have scones as well as butter and jam.

Trustee meeting tonight. Sally has just transferred the total (of what is essentially free money) donations from the Paypal Giving Fund for the last few months. Over £350.00 which is not to be sniffed at. We have a PayPal account for the group which I set up for exclusive use with Ebay sales that Sally manages for the group. As a registered UK charity, that gives us access to the worldwide Paypal Giving Fund. This accumulates all the small donations Ebay users make to charity from their sales and purchases. These are then shared out to the charities. We get random payments into our Paypal account from the fund, they range from £10 upwards and into the hundreds sometimes.

Efficient management....

In addition to our cancer support group meetings on the first Tuesday of each month. A new bereavement group has been started for the second Tuesday of each month. I has been running for about 3 months now. It is not a counselling service but a mutual support group for those who find themselves needing to chat with others with the same experience.

Just had a Baxi engineer round to the centre to sort our boiler which failed recently. Totally dead in the water, no display on the boiler. The remote was operating the receiver correctly which is powered independently from the boiler but to no avail.
Didn't take him long, off with the front and replace the fuse in the PSU which he stated "just goes" for no reason. Hmmm says I, that's not right, either there is a fault on the boiler or the fuse is the wrong rating or type, fuses don't "just go".
It's working again, no doubt about that but it begs the question does it have a quick blow fuse where it should have a semi delay variant of the same rating or do we have an intermittent fault. Time will tell, he left us his direct dial number for if we have any further problems.

Ian you probably know more about fuses than anybody. This YouTube from Bigdavedotcom. on Fuses. is worth a quick watch. He talks about glass fuses at about 20 mins in. Fuses can deteriorate over time with nothing wrong with the circuit. On the other hand deterioration in components in the circuit can cause fuse problems without anything being openly apparent.
All above my pay grade.

plaques wrote: ↑09 Dec 2022, 13:08 Fuses can deteriorate over time with nothing wrong with the circuit.

I suppose they could but in my experience a fuse is quite a resilient beast in itself although the whole point of it is for it to fail, (under the correct circumstance of course, usually a fault). I have worked on 20 year old equipment with original fuses in that never failed for "no apparent reason" Our boiler is less than 5 years old and as such I would not expect any detriment in the fuse itself which would cause it to fail for no reason, also for that to be an accepted stock fault on the boiler! As I said before it's either slightly underrated or the wrong type, or at worst case there is an intermittent causing the problem.

A lot of folk wont realise that there are there different types of glass fuses in general use. They may all be the same value, lets say 1 amp. You have quick blow which is just a single bit of fuse wire, semi delay and delay, which both have an added spring link at one end which introduces different minute amounts of delay into the failure time of the fuse. Delay and semi delay fuses are normally used where there may be an initial surge in current that has to be catered for before the circuit settles into it's quiescent current or normal operating state. These are often used in PSU and switching stages of equipment. The introduced delay is just a few microseconds but just enough to absorb the surge, it will still blow in a proper over current situation.

Of course there are also thermal fuses which work on temperature and resettable trip type fuses like the ones fitted in modern mains consumer units. The latter usually much higher current rated than internal circuit fuses.

For the record, my combi boiler at home is 17 years old and has never had a fuse failure.

I have an idea that in one of my treasure chests I have some glass slow blow fuses. I doubt if I could identify them now and can't remember why I needed them in the first place, it was a long time ago!

Not really centre related but just a note on our trustees meal. Here we all are assembled at the Tempest last night. Clockwise, Ashley (Ash), myself, Sally, Mary, Angus (Gus), Carly, Kirsty and Caroline. This was a partial working meeting which was actually in place of our normal monthly trustees meeting, no minutes taken though just bashing ideas for the group around.

Looks like a well deserved night out for a bunch of public spirited people to me. Well done, you have earned it!

Pie and peas social do at the centre this afternoon for our volunteers.