2020++ - smiling and waving and looking so fine

savingholmes

Great when we no longer pay stupid tax!  I paid DS's stupid tax today - giving £20 reward to someone who found his dropped phone. Kids!!

mark55man

Hi SH - I saw the £20 spend on your diary - I think you got away with that.

In techie news, my plans to upgrade DS2 PC (not DS1 PC - it does get confusing, and I live here) for his birthday have come to nothing and all going back to Amazon tomorrow, and we'll start again.  He had an old higher spec PC that did some stuff in a very odd way and can't quite get up to modern.  Not sure we are going for a new PC though but might not be long so don't want to spend too much in the interim - mmmm thinks

Weighed in for the week this morning (try to do that Friday or Saturday), so another 1kg down, which was what I was hoping for as I have got with the programme, so now only 1kilo above my lowest pre Christmas weight - heading in the right direction.  I have to have an annual check up soon, so I am putting that off until I achieve being under 200lbs which hopefully will be March, as I don't want to bother the doctor really until lockdown is finished.

savingholmes

Well done on the weight loss. We've been debating wifi solutions - as our £23pcm BB isn't as excellent as your more expensive one... We are potentially going to pay extra for DD to have unlimited data for a few months and trial a new extra box at £32 and see if either make a significant difference... If not DH is going for a mesh solution which should boost signal around the house without lots of extra wires... Did I say it right? LOL. Hope you get DS2's pc sorted soon.

mark55man

basically one option for mesh is you take wired ethernet cables (sometims called Cat 5 or cat 6) from the main hub to separate units in rooms where the signal is week, that mesh device then emits a stronger signal (on the same wifi) - the cost is wires and boxes.  Some people use powerline, which is where, rather than run an ethernet cable, you plug in a cable from you router to a mains (powerline) plug device and then do the same from another plug to the mesh unit.  we did this for a while - but it can be a bit noisy if you have lots of stuff being turned on and off. 

the box you are trialling is likely a signal booster which means rather than going all the way from the main router to the weak signal area, you put the booster half way as the maths of signal propagation and data encoding is that you can't multiply a signal that's too weak, but if you boost it at half way then you're enlarging a signal that is strong enough to not get squelchy (technically speaking). Sometimes these boxes work by setting up a separate wifi network/signal based on the first - and that means you have to change networks as you move round the house.  BUT if its mainly used upstairs that might not be a problem.  Some mesh solutions work on this wireless principle and keep boosting the signal until you have it strong enough everywhere

An alternate solution on some routers is either to enable or disable the separation between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels (5 is known as 802.11ac and is faster but weaker 2.4 is more old fashioned but is slower yet stronger).  If you are only getting 50mbps its unlikely to make much difference and I would look at setting the router up to not use 5GHz (mainly used by 802.11.ac devices) - most end point devices will cope with 2.4Hz (mainly used by 802.11.n devices) .  you can certainly look up your router box on g00gle and   learn how to log in (usually on your private IP 192.168.0.1 - (private in that it is the IP address within your house, and pretty much every house has the same, and your public IP address that is what the world sees your whole house as.).  

OK I like this stuff, but there is a lot of help out there

I think you could have insisted on trialling a booster for nothing - SKY gave us one for free and it kind of worked.    

mark55man

The solution I used was to just get a better base Router - but depending on your house no guarantees that would work, and you can spend a LOT of money that way

savingholmes

I'll ask DH if he can get a free booster.

mark55man

Did an important little bit of admin - which was made easier by simplifying my financial life - namely wrote out a list of all my personal financial admin (accounts, policies, regular spends) and put it with my and OH wills so if the worst ever happens my kids (or OH) won't have to cleudo their way around my affairs.  Boring but getting to the grand reveal after 5 minutes probably helpful in those circumstances

ETA: The article that triggered this said it was also important to ensure that even if as a household you have divided responsibilities up there should be at least a basic shared knowledge of how it all works and preferably more  - so that's what I'm doing

Sarahwithlove

I agree in my line of work I meet so many people where one of them always dealt with finances and other had a no clue and suddenly they find themselves having to deal with everything as their partner can't anymore. 

savingholmes

Well done Mark. Mine is all in spreadsheets. I also have a special manual folder that has our wills, pensions and life insurance docs in....

mark55man

The next thing will be a more helpful essay type thing - kind of - if I kick it before retirement do this, and after do this (although I will update it at that point).  But there are some estate planning / pension treatment things that are not obvious if you haven't read up on them so I will be doing a but more for that "special" folder!!

I'm not really planning on doing a full "how to be an executor" sort of thing, more here's all the information you need to work it all through!