The Thousand Natural Shocks that Flesh is Heir to

80,000 kms of good rumpy-bumpy potholed Irish roads did for
the poor Panda's suspension. New shocks at the back and a wishbone
at the sharp end. €290 - ker-ching. Ah well. 

OK. The normal PC I use for this is at the 'doctors' (slow and old like it's owner; hopefully more fix-able!). This  is being typed on Liz's posher, newer and faster lap top which I am able to blag while she is out at knitting. The machine is, though, unfamiliar to me so if this blog posts has any howlers in it - typo's, missing pictures etc, then bear with me and I will try to fix them when I get the old familiar dog of a machine back, improved.

Shiny new wishbone drivers side front.

Also, little happening just now so I will keep this one fairly short. Main job today was to take the car round to the local tyre place and get new shocks fitted at the back and a wishbone at the front. Fiats are highly regarded here for the cheapness and ease of fitting of parts but even they will eventually wear suspension parts rumbling up and down our pot-holey, rippled roads.

Rain has stopped play in silage locally, but we heard a mower
going round a local field - we might be back on.

I'd noticed uneven tyre wear at the front and a "play in the suspension" rumble at low speed, so got it checked out up on the ramp at the tyre centre. Mr Fixer there declared play in a front wishbone and the upper bushes of both rear shocks very tired. Also recommended a tracking adjustment (after the new bits, obviously!).

Twitter stats for that @IrelandsFarmers account I steered
last week. You can see where I took over at the right hand
end of the graph. I did 3 times the traffic of the 3 weeks prior
combined. The boss was delighted!

I was quite impressed by the tracking machine - 4 laser/mirror contraptions get clamped one to each wheel rim and then the computer screen lights up with little graphics, diagrams and results for each wheel vertical-ness and horizontal toe-in. Modern cars apparently have adjustment on the back suspension as well as the front. Very cool. Ah well, I am €290 poorer but the car is safe and should see us through the next NCT, at least on that aspect.

I managed to get some statistics back for my week on the @IrelandsFarmers Twitter account. I knew I'd been busy and I was fairly sure the owners/bosses of the account would be delighted. I was and they were. Turns out you measure Twitter 'traffic' on 3 main criteria as well as how many posts you create, pictures you put up etc. These are "impressions" (where someone else clicks on your post to expand it or do other things with it (copy, follow links etc) - they create an impression of your post on their own screen. Secondly how many people 'like' it and 3rd, how many copy it on to all their followers (called "re-tweeting").

In the 28 days ending with my week, the account got a million impressions and over 500,000 of these were from my posts - they told me I got more in my week that in the 3 weeks prior. Not bad All the other graphs also show big peaks on the right hand end, my days - re-tweets, likes and replies. Some of the latter may be my own - Twitter only allows 140 characters. If you need more space you reply to your first tweet with the 2nd part of the anecdote and on and on. Some of mine went to 4 'replies' which were not really replies at all. I am quite proud of all this even though it probably confirms to all my own followers that I talk too much!

Baby George being minded by his 4 responsible adults.

The only other news is that the adult geese have finally brought the one baby gosling off the nest and started to show him off and show him around.

I'm saying "him" here; we have no idea really but for now he is Baby-George. I may have posted before that there were two. There are not and I don't think there ever were. I just miss-saw a 2nd between all the 6 legs in the nest.

When they go out for a sensible amount of time and I can shut the door on them safely I will get a chance to finally get in there and clean up, and throw out the failed eggs. Right. That's it for this lap-top post. I hope it all works.