I could never have imagined how hard today was going to be! In our one-to-one training hour Rikku had me doing everything we learned in all sessions, all in one go, from heading the ball through to goalie stuff, and it’s been hard work!

The match was really intensive, even the girls on my side were working me hard. I’ve never worked this hard, even in the bedroom with Kassie and Mika, and they’re quite demanding ladies Boy am I glad I didn’t have another rugby match earlier in the week, I would never have managed it! As Rikky mentioned afterwards, I’d got too used to the girls being gentle in the training, so that when it came for them to step on the gas, I wasn’t really ready! But, as she said after, that was how she intended it. If I’d been expecting it, it would’ve been too easy! Phew, women, eh?

I didn’t realise until I thought afterwards that I hadn’t had time to admire the team running around looking cute, I was working so hard! Next week is going to be hard, I can feel it, so Tuesday is going to be interesting. I don’t know any of Riky’s social friends team, or how they play.

Playing next Sunday’s match in a full football stadium is going to be a real experience, that is something I’ve never done. So is knowing who the other girls team are going to be, because according to Rikky, they are pretty good at what they do, and it’s a full on match, not a training session…..

Footie on a Sunday, and it’s sunny, cloudless, and not sloppy and muddy! I’ve never had conditions like this since I started training before Christmas! I’ve always had to battle through a wet/muddy pitch in some way, so this should see how I perform on normal pitch conditions.

Next week, though, is my final training session with Rikku and her Hopwood team. It’s going to be a full match, with me, and Hopwood, against another team, on a full size football pitch, up in Runcorn somewhere, so I guess today’s going to be Rikky gearing me up for it. She wants me to have a test match on Tuesday with her other social friends team against Hopwood. She has a group of friends she plays footie with now and again, and they seem quite competitive.

That should be quite fun! Me, being the only guy, with two teams of hot footie babes! If there’s something every guy should try, this is it! You think women aren’t suited to football? Think again! They’re the cutest, sexiest, friendliest, yet competitive footie players you can have, and you can get turned on watching them play, in full kit Yeehaw!!

Rikku’s leaving Hopwood in May, as I mentioned, the team Captain is coming back from maternity leave, and Rikku’s only filling in for her. Where we’ll go after this, I’m not sure, but I know for a fact she wants to DEFINITELY manage her own amateur team again….

I’ve had a hectic few days!

Monday I had to fix our main Hyundai 52″ HD plasma, as the power supply went bang last Friday. Mika was missing out on her Sky+HD Corrie catchups, and kept mithering me, in a sweet little girl-even-though-I’m 29 voice, to get it fixed as soon as possible.

Jenny’s internet went on Wednesday morning, at 1am. She’s switched back to ADSL from Virgin, because she doesn’t use the internet as much these days, so wanted to save a bit. Virgin weren’t supposed to cut her off till the end of the month, but they did, so I had to go to Whitefield from Birmingham, pick a router up for her, go all the way down to Bolton, fit the router and set it all up. Then go all the way back to Birmingham, to pick Jill up from after school class at 4.30pm. Which I successfully managed, which made Rikku proud, and made me look ever the sweet loving dad she thinks I’ll be when I have kids of my own.

Then last night the leased Zen line Kassie had set up for us before she went back to Tokyo went down. I had to contact her to get Zen to sort it, as she set it up. We can’t use Kassie’s leased Sprint line for general internet, as that is a crucial vein for all her servers, which links us to her datacenter in Altrincham that holds servers for backups and redundant servers if our main ones go. Meanwhile, I’ve been out and bought an 02 dongle, which compared to 20MB leased fibre optic, is painfully slow!! But, it works, I can keep up on eBay, and Mika and I can keep up with Kassie on Messenger.

Then today our 56 plate B7RLE has developed a weird problem. When the engine is cold, she’ll start, without hesitation. If the engine is warm/hot, and running, then switched off, she just won’t start again. Cranking sounds perfect, speeding up as though she’s gonna catch and tick over on her own, but it never happens. Let it cool and it starts perfectly. I think it’s a temperature sensor somewhere.

Bloody buses and sensors! On a typical Volvo B7RLE with Wright Eclipse Urban body there’s ALL these:

1. Body mounting sensors

2. Body door sensors (bonnet, driver’s cab, emergency door and passenger entry door)

3. Engine sensors, including gearbox and temperature monitoring as well as all fuel/air intake sensors

4. Impact sensors for the airbag (a godsend, I’m glad THAT’s there, but they do go funny sometimes!)

This computer controlled vehicle malarky is getting slightly old, and I’m a computer expert! Today, though, is my chill day, with lil Mika. I was hoping Tuesday might have been OUR catchup day (yup, that’s the one!) but she was too busy catching up on her TV stuff! Ah well, at least I’m busy!

Yesterday was good! I got changed into my kit at Jenny’s this time, before setting off for Manchester on the bus and tram. I was deliberately doing a Rikku trick, showing off to the ladies on my journey, and got quite a few admiring glances from some very cute ladies! If you were one of the girls on the 471 going to Bury and Rochdale yesterday, the lad in the sky blue and navy silk football kit was me!

I’ve had a go on one of the new trams, and they’re sooo quiet! I’m not sure of the colour scheme though, bright yellow? I suppose Serco Stagecoach don’t know about inconspicuous? Or is it so the drunks can actually SEE the tram when they’re pissed so they don’t end up railkill? Trams are boring, quiet, and electric. Buses all the way! Noisy, powerful growlers that let you know they’re working hard!

I got to Manchester, and there was cute ol’ Rikky herself, waiting for me at the tram stop looking as cute as can be in her football kit, her lovely long red hair flowing sexily over her shoulders, gleaming in the sunlight, big hazel eyes looking at me in their usual aren’t-I-cute? look. Woops, got carried away there…..! I could write a book about her, spend a lifetime writing it, and never finish, we’ve got so much history. I just love her with red hair, I’ve always been used to the brunette Rikky look for the past 7 years, with her hair black occasionally. Cue more blokes and ladies (women at me and blokes at Riky!) giving us the “ooooh!”  and “phwoar!” looks as we got to her Merc, and drove to Birmingham. I should wear my footie kit permanently, I’ve never had so much female attention!

The training and match was good, the pitch was squelchy but not sloppy like my rugby match on Friday. The other girls hadn’t seen Rik with her hair red (the name for it is Radiant Red, according to her, but she looks more Ravishing!), so they were taken aback when they finally realised it was her!

Rikky and I spent our usual hour in one to one training, this time she was teaching me heading techniques, and chest control. I’m just glad she wears a padded bra and protective inserts, the speed at which she chested some of my shots would have hurt her puppies

The match was a bit more competitive than I’m used to. I think Rikky’s upped the ante a little, to see where my current limits are. She was against my side, and tackled me a lot faster and harder. I fell and slid a lot more! All in all I didn’t do so well this week, mainly due to me still aching from my frantic rugby match on Friday!

Note to self: Don’t do too much sport in a 3 day period, as a training player. It doesn’t work! If I was a pro, maybe!

Football looks set to go ahead this weekend, it’s been raining all week, so the pitch will be muddy. I know that, because I’m aching all over from yesterday’s last minute rugby match!

Yesterday was fun! It was raining all day, the ground was nice and wet, and I fancied a game of rugby. So, I got on the phone to my partner in crime, and co-head of our gang The Stretford Saints, Pete, and challenged him and the guys (and the girls) to a nice rough game of rugby. Our gang is about 24 strong, with 7 ladies, 3 of which have rugby skills. I’ve never done this with them before!

So, I got Rikku to go to Manchester to pick them up, and bring them back. She was on a quiet day, and quite liked the idea of watching me play rugby. Off she went, and while she was gone, I got my footie kit, rugby boots, and rugby ball ready. The guys and girls got here, got changed, and Rikky drove us to the public rugby field.

The game was absolutely brilliant! Wet, muddy, fast, competitive, with the added bonus of me and the guys in my side playing against the girls of our gang in the opponent side. They were really awesome! Women go so well in football and rugby! Annie is the best, she’s the same height as Rikku, 5ft 9″, and she runs like a bullet, even on a muddy rugby pitch.

I had the ball, running as fast as I could towards the goal, Annie chasing me, with Rikku cheering me on to go faster, “She’s right behind you, RUUUNNN!”. I wanted to pass the ball to one of the guys, but two quarters of me wanted this sexy babe to pull me down into the mud. I wasn’t going without a fight though, so I ran as fast as I could! No matter how fast I ran, she still caught up with me, diving at my legs, pulling me down. I slid for about 2 and a half metres, leaving a massive muddy skid mark in the grass, and a big muddy streak all down my shirt and legs.

She’s such a babe, our Annie. She looks after the residents where our gang is headquartered, like an angel. I’ve never seen her as cute and feisty as she was yesterday though! Something about her in her rugby kit, all muddy, with a ferocious look on her face in a scrum is something else!

I have to do that again! The achiness of being bear tackled by a rugby chick is sooo worth it!! That pitch was like a swamp, but I love a muddy rugby game, I tend to let myself go, and play a lot more competitively, specially if there’s ladies!

UltraSexyHeroines is a good site. They have sexy women, in tight shiny spandex superheroine pictures. That is about it. Their customer support is crap, their pictures are at a resolution that was used back in 1980, and the quality is degraded. The webmaster is ignorant, and  blocks comments on the official blog if you complain. Oh, and some of the girls on the site have fake boobies, which I’m not really a fan of.

Bailey is one of those girls. Why she had to go ruin her figure I don’t know. But, those boobies seem to make this shiny seductive costume sooo much sexier, and you end up wanting Bailey to come rescue you, then you can have her exercise her dominant powers on you! Phwoar!! Take a look! I’ve left the topless ones out, remember, TideLog is a clean blog, so sexy goes, but not topless or nude.

I just wish these pictures were proper high res, we’re talking 1920×1200, but the guys who own UltraSexyHeroines and SuperSexyHeroines never listen, even though they claim to. I joined several times, on both sites, but all the SuperSexyHeroines guys seem to be bothered about is doing their comic strip rubbish. They don’t listen, I don’t join, and I share their content on my blog!!

I’ve bought a Polaroid TLU-01511C television on eBay, as a test TV for laptops and consoles we repair in the workshop. There’s a red tinge to the screen, which gradually goes to normal white. After 5 minutes the backlight goes out completely.

The Grundig GU15WDT & Polaroid TLU-01511C/U are the same telly, both with/without Freeview. They’re made by ProView Technology Co., Ltd. The power supply model is PI-XXXXTLTX Version:A / 200-001-XXXXTLTX-AH. Unfortunately, it’s a common problem. I did the Grundig version of this a while back. The inverter is part of the main power supply, instead of it being separate, and either this or the backlights that go bad, so the PSU either has to be repaired, or replaced. The PSU boards aren’t the best, to be honest. And the backlights aren’t standard, unsurprisingly!

I haven’t repaired one yet, as I had a spare, but it’s either the output transformer on the inverter side, or a capacitor/switchmode transistor. The fault (once the backlight is verified as good) can either be just the inverter section, or a main PSU feed to inverter problem. The main filter caps will all be fine. The TV will stay on, and display a picture, you can see it under bright light. I use a fluorescent inspection lamp.

Other faults with these boards include:

1. Whining supply, due to overload, or failing capacitors. This can lead to 2. below.

2. Intermittent operation, with buzzing/whining/crackling coming from the supply, due to faulty/burst capacitor.

2. Complete failure, resulting in totally dead supply, with no Standby light. To verify SB, check voltage of SB output pins, they should have up to 5V, but no less than 3v, less than that, and there’s a regulation issue. If at 0v, check PSU fuse.

3. Red hue on backlight(s), sometimes getting better going to normal white, and/or loss of backlight after 5 – 10 mins. Verify backlight(s) condition using known good laptop inverter. Wire laptop backlights up to the TV inverter outputs. The backlight goes out because the load isn’t optimal, the inverter shuts down.

4. Completely dead backlight, caused by blown Schmitt Trigger, or failed backlight. See below. Check operation of inverter first to verify using laptop screen backlight. Test TV backlight using laptop inverter. You can’t use just one lamp, both outputs require a load otherwise the outputs fail to start.

The reason the inverter goes is because of their nature, high stress, and these cheap supplies. A CCFT (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Tube) requires a high voltage pulse, usually around 1000v AC, to light it, lasting less than a second, delivered by a trigger chip. Once it’s lit, the voltage to keep it lit varies, usually 300/600v AC, depending on if the panel is dual backlight, which these are, and the brightness setting. The stress on the inverter is immense at high brightness, and unless it is a high quality circuit, premature failure is imminent. Complete failure of the backlight under a known good tube scenario is usually always a blown trigger, seen in my photos as the black IC’s below the output sockets for the tubes.

There’s a lot of tiny SMC components on the underside of the board, and these include Triacs, resistors, capacitors, these can be culprits, too.

Affected TV’s:

Polaroid TLU-01511C/U 15″ HD Ready LCD TV

Polaroid TLU-02241C 22″ HD Ready LCD TV with Freeview

Grundig GU15WDT 15″ HD Ready LCD TV with Freeview

The Grundig GU19WDVDPCX 19″ Digital HD Ready LCD TV with DVD Player has the same chassis type, but was not affected, as it used an external power adapter. I worked on one that had no picture, but it was PSU unrelated. The signal processor developed a resistance fault.

I’ll update this list as I work on more TV’s that use the same chassis, and find info on the web.

My motto I use in PC and telly repair: KEEP YOUR BRIGHTNESS DOWN!!

The headphone socket refused to work for me under both Vista and Windows 7. The sound would mute from the speakers, but nothing came from the headphones. I realised it was the driver that Windows was installing. The reason this happens is that the jacks are software controlled, meaning that when you plug something into the jacks, the software switches output to the correct socket, and pops up a dialog asking you what you plugged in:

The Windows driver doesn’t do this, so the headphones and surround jacks get no output. To fix it, install the VIA driver OVER the Windows one (don’t uninstall the Windows one first, the VIA install routine fails to detect the device if you do).

Once the VIA driver is installed, there is a utility that sits in your system tray/notification area, that will pop a dialog up, and detects what you’ve plugged into where (mostly automatic). You don’t actually need the utility running, the port seems to work even with it closed.

It’s snowed again here in the North West, and in the Midlands it seems to be worse! Well, if Rikku hadn’t called footie off last night like she did, she’d have done it today!

I wish all this rubbish weather would go away (kindly), and Spring come! I’m going to stay here at Jenny’s today, I’m due in Whitefield tomorrow anyway, so I think it’d be best. I was hoping to spend tonight with sweet lil Mika, too

I had a feeling she would. The weather has gone cold again since Thursday, and it has snowed and been icy in the Midlands, and now the pitch has frozen.

In a way, I’m glad. Given the choice of either a wet, muddy sloppy pitch, or a frozen one, I’d go for the muddy sloppy one, a frozen pitch is colder and harder to play on, especially for the goalie. Oh well. there’s always next Sunday!