Well, being in Italy makes it tricky to be certain, but I *think* yesterday's power cut at home was WPD fixing the transformer, and the very limited logging I can access from here suggests we're now getting 240v ish.

Also, I have the phone number of the lovely engineer who both apologised for how long it's all taken, and pre-approved me for a full export limit (just in time for winter, but still...)

So the power saga looks to be almost over, and mostly sorted by leaving the country ;-)

I feel this town understands my base needs

Ordering beer in Florence.

"What size, small or Italian?"

I like this country

Despite being in the process of shutting MyCo, *and* the fact that I "verified my identity" as Director of said company like a week ago, I've now got a snotty letter complaining that I somehow missed the stop of verifying the same identity, for the same company, in my "Person With Significant Control" guise.

Seriously, how can ukgov manage to implement an idea so, so badly?

First harvest of the Thai chillies, 100g or so. At least as much still on the plants to ripen, weather willing!

Finally getting around to shuttering MyCo Ltd, given that it hasn't earned anything in living memory.

The rather surreal side-effect of this is having to give myself a P45...

Article on the BBC talking about the theft of keyless cars has the remarkable advice that "drivers can also keep their keys in a metal container, such as a biscuit tin, or even the microwave at home"

This would seem to be an excellent way to ensure that your car keys are microwaved within the week.

Anyhoo; in case anyone is still following the saga of "actually 256V of mains is a bit excessive"...

WPD has examined the readings of the second voltage logger and conceded that yes, it's still a bit high and maybe just replacing some LV cable didn't fix the problem and they need to tap down the transformer.

This is... what every tech who has actually come out to look at it has said, but now head office has said it, it might happen.

But they want to log another house first...

Because of it's federated nature, my timeline is slowly catching up with the day's events in a strangely chilled and relaxing way - in a bizarre way, it reminds me of watching the news spool catching up over UUCP when the internet was intermittently dialed-up.

Grr; quiet day in the fediverse because an upstream provider suddenly decided they need to "rebuild their network" which took ~18 hours.

Personally, I'd try not to take out a live network for 18 hours, but what do I know?

Thanks to my USB surgery, my eBay Optiplex is looking good. Could do with a bit more memory but holy crap SODIMMs are expensive these days aren't they?

I mean that was more of a faff than I hoped, but it does mean the Optiplex i5-10500T that came from eBay as "broken with damaged front USB port" is significantly less incapable of booting now...

Have managed to delicately remove a faulty USB socket. I fear I may not be able to reuse it.

I'm not saying I'm getting old, but in my head an eye test should cost about the same as a driving lesson - about £15.

On the bright side, my astigmatism is ... curing itself?

BirdNET-Pi: Week 38 Report
Total Detections: 0 (-0%)
Unique Species Detected: 0 (-0%)

= Top 10 Species =

= Species Detected for the First Time =
No new species were seen this week.
---
* data from 2026-09-13 — 2026-09-19.
* percentages are calculated relative to week 37.

Abergavenny Food Festival, and it's only taken an hour or two for me to remember that I hate people in general and festivals in particular.

Days like this make me miss lockdown.

Seem to have successfully 'side-graded' my slowly failing graphics card.

I say side-graded because thanks to AI, new cards are the wrong side of £400 so instead I've got a mildly-used 5500XT that comes with a ridiculous 5 year warranty.

It's not AI-grade super fast, but it plays Satisfactory happily without crashing when it hits a heavy load, which is more than enough for me.

On a related note - I miss my old barber in London, Dino, who barely spoke a word of English and had cut my hair sufficiently long that I didn't even need to say anything. Just walk in, sit down, get cut, give him some money and leave.

No chat about the rain, or if I'm going anywhere nice on holiday, or why my opinion on sodding AI is.

My barber (who insisted on talking to me instead of shutting up and cutting my sodding hair) got onto the topic of AI.

Apparently, somehow she knows does risk assessments for some sort of motor sport, and was enthusing that rather than having to spend hours actually going to places and evaluating them, AI can now do it all for him.

We're doomed, aren't we?

BirdNET-Pi: Week 37 Report
Total Detections: 0 (-100%)
Unique Species Detected: 0 (-100%)

= Top 10 Species =

= Species Detected for the First Time =
No new species were seen this week.
---
* data from 2026-09-06 — 2026-09-12.
* percentages are calculated relative to week 36.