DIY

I had a very productive DIY day yesterday. I cycled to Cowley to go to the B&Q, which is what they call Home Depot here. On a related note, I find it to be a bit odd that they apparently independently both chose white-on-gaudy-orange for their decor. This may, however, make the changeover easy if B&Q accepts Home Depot's rumored acquisition bid.

In any event, I made a few necessary purchases (e.g. duct tape, which they call "gaffer's tape" and sell at an obscenely high price) and generally spent some time wandering around and thinking about which of my tools from home I wanted to prioritize bringing over here. Back at the house, I hung up some pictures and my US flag to make my room a little more homey. I then proceeded to rewire the cord for my Airport power supply to take a hideous UK plug (purchased at B&Q). I had to do the wire-stripping with my Leatherman (which I hate doing). This caused me to priortize my wire strippers on the aforementioned list, but in the meantime I managed to do the stripping without accidentally cutting the leads on the first try, which is pretty good for me. I expected to have to look up the correspondence of black/red wires to blue/brown, but it turned out the cable from my Airport had blue/brown wires for some reason, so that eliminated one possible screw-up step.

I'll post pictures of the house and my room once we get networked at home, which should be tomorrow (cross your fingers).