We got a plumber in to investigate and there's a pin hole leak on the heating element. But the heater is a balanced flue which according to him is no longer made and the whole thing would need to be replaced -- not what we needed a few days before Christmas Day.
The plumber turned off the gas and water to the heater, cutting off the hot water (at least it means the heater is not leaking) -- the pinhole leak was still going for a bit though
Booking a slot in the gym due to covid costs me nearly £10, versus £8 before the pandemic, but I can understand due to the additional cleaning and disinfecting work needed by the gym staff.
Decided to run instead of walk, but not sprint, just jog. Will work my way back up to faster running slowly.
Turned out they hadn't opened the changing rooms and showers for gym users yet, so I ended up having a cold shower at home afterwards.
Had an early start today so my walk was a bit slower, but still did it.
Has now gone totally dark during my normal walk time making it harder to see where I'm stepping -- risking stepping in poop or mud.
I got a replacement strap for my FitBit Ionic as the existing one is starting to peel away from the plastic. It arrived yesterday so I replaced it today.
Forgot to log this walks yesterday, but yesterday morning the entire area was covered in fog and at 7am you couldn't see more than 50m in front of you. Within 30 minutes, however, it had started to clear.
As for the walk, it was freezing cold at only 3degC at 4pm so my feet were beginning to go numb, even after only a 30 minute walk.
Hit the 200 day mark in exercising while in quarantine. Although, strictly speaking, I've passed the 200 point already, just forgot/didn't bother to log it.
Today's walk was cold and dark, and absolutely freezing. Went out with a wooly had and gloves and STILL felt the cold.
The temperature has really dropped in recent days and it's been absolutely freezing when doing my afternoon walk, not to mention its getting darker a lot earlier than before.
In other news, I found my replacement to Revolut -- Curve.
Curve seems to be different. It's not a bank of its own, but lets you put debit/credit cards onto your account and when you use the Curve card, the transaction goes onto the default card you have set on your account. And you can move the transaction from one card to the other (only once per transaction though).
Plus Curve supports FitBit Pay, meaning I can use that instead of Google Pay which has now broken again due to my device being rooted.
Evening walk from yesterday that I forgot to log -- short walk, the weather was looking ominous and did actually end up heavily raining.
Also, I got a notification a couple of days ago that Endomondo is being retired at the end of the year.
I knew this was going to happen soon at some point after Underarmor picked it up.
I'm saddened by this as Endomondo has been my go-to for a lot of running things, including helping me train for the Half Marathon. Strava is my alternative and a lot of my colleagues are on that, but I really do not like the interface and only really use it for storing my walk/run tracks.
Another evening walk, and this time I went to look at the back of a house that my folks really like post-viewing.
The back has a shared parking space -- which, during the day seems okay, but in the evening, when everyone else is there, it looks very tight for space, meaning unless you have backed into the parking space, it's going to be difficult to come out of the parking unless you reverse out.
Now I work on top of Victoria Station, so I walk past the memorial plaque dedicated to the Unknown Soldier every day I commute to the office. Obviously not so much this year due to covid.
The Military Wives Choir did the song for Abide With Me using the now-common feature of a virtual choir:
The virtual choir idea has been used a lot this year due to social distancing, but let's not forget, the idea dates back way further, even as far back as 2009 with Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir project (https://www.youtube.com/user/EricWhitacresVrtlChr) which also made it into several TED talks
My last logged walk was 23rd October. I've been slacking off logging runs since then, so this is my first logged run since then, even though I have been doing near-daily runs since then, so I'm skipping through to Day 191 since I've done 10 days of walks since then.
I've also got a few other updates.
My house purchase fell through a while ago so I have been actively house hunting a lot and my past few Saturdays have been spent house viewing. Viewing during the day is tricky unless I take time off to house hunt.
Dealing with different Estate Agents is a pain, with some not even bothering to give you the time of day, let alone
I also upgraded my phone to Android 10 LineageOS and I've been having quite a few issues with internet speed and stability. I'm seriously considering forcing a downgrade back to Android 9. In the meantime, I might switch from Adoptable Storage back to portable storage to see if that helps with stability.
Got caught in the rain on my walk today. It didn't last long though, but I had made it home by the time it stopped. Seems like that's a pattern when I go for a walk....
Installed more apps that were missing from my phone and set most of them up. Did my walk as normal, no issues there. Had to re-pair my phone with my car since everything was reset, though.
Late out today -- my phone wanted to upgrade so I attempted it (it was an upgrade from Android 9 to Android 10), and it didn't work, and I ended up having to factory reset and install from scratch. I did have some Titanium Backup backups, but they didn't seem to work a lot of the time :/
So for the most part, I just reinstalled all the apps I remember using and logged in. For most, that was fine. But I lost the MFA codes on Google Authenticator, meaning I had to remove and setup:
AWS
LastPass
Wordpress
GitLab
all over again
AWS was quick and painless after a security check to confirm I was who I said I was and they called me on the number on the account.
Wordpress was painless too -- I was already logged in, so just removed MFA and set it up again, then logged in again. Similarly with LastPass
GitLab however, is proving to be more of a pain. They no longer accept MFA removal requests for people on the Free plan. So I wonder if they will accept me going to a subscription model so I _can_ then request the MFA removal. I think it is better anyway, since I'm hitting the 400 minute CI limit pretty regularly. The 2000 minute CI limit would be better. At least until I can get my own GitLab install working.
As for the run, yes, it was a run -- well, more of a jog, anyway. Still did the 3km lap, doing it in 20 mins rather than the 30 mins it normally takes me when I walk it.
Forgot to log my walk yesterday. So doing both today.
Yesterday, I decided to look at a house up for sale on Zoopla, but couldn't find it. The map marker was where a gated house was, but there was no estate agent sign. Maybe it's been sold already?
But at least I got a nice walk out of it.
Today I did my normal lap around. Tesco have made progress on the forecourt of their petrol station, but I haven't the foggiest what kind of work they're doing.
Later walk than normal -- the weather was colder and darker, but still made it around without any rain soaking me this time.
In other news, you may recall I spoke about a prospective new house I was looking at. Well, even though my offer was accepted, the seller decided to pull out of the deal before any contracts were exchanged. I'm bummed as heck over it, but not much I can do about it, I guess.