On the flip side, we had British Gas come out and replace the main PCB on our 25 year old Potterton Suprima no questions asked. Though they did ring up a few days later to tell me it was getting old just in case I was wanting to replace it!

https://croxley-green.cylex-uk.co.uk/company/alan-oborne-15648977.html

I can recommend a guy, based in Croxley. Always reliable for me (though I’ve moved away and haven’t used him for a few years). I’ll drop you a PM when I’ve dug out his details.

Bikmo, it’s about £280 a year for a few k or bikes

I went with a mate a few weeks ago and think we did the same. There’s a point where there is a sign pointing right, but if you keep going past it there’s another sign pointing left. Left/straight on takes you down to the bottom.

The signposting of both trails is a bit pants in places.

I found about 1/3 of the way into each season I wondered if I should really bother continuing. Finished each one off and enjoyed overall though.

We were only down a kitchen for 2.5 weeks, we just did dishes in the bath and used a camping stove and microwave to cook. Throw a few takeaways into the mix and it was pretty painless.

Ref the 10%, I questioned this recently as our 10% deposit comes from the deposit our buyer pays and our house is worth less than the one we are buying. Our solicitor advised that the deposit we ‘receive’ will be forwarded up the chain, but we will be liable for the full amount should we fail to complete after exchange.

Thanks guys, I’m not fussed about spending the whole voucher in one go, so I guess I’ll just pick one of the generic cheaper ones then!

We have 2 young kids and a relatively new mortgage. Took out:

Decreasing life cover (joint policy pays out if either of us die), Pays off whatever remaining mortgage there is.

Income protection cover for me – if I’m long(ish) term ill for up to 2 years it pays 50% of my monthly salary – covers mortgage costs and a bit.

2x annual salary death in service benefit from work. If I pop my clogs it covers essentially everything until the kids are out of the house. If my wife goes then it’s half the amount, but I’m more able to cope on my own salary so it would cover after school clubs and suchlike so I can continue to work.

There’s obviously other scenarios that could play out but what we have covers the most likely ones.

If we both cop it, the kids are pretty well set up…

Aston Hill is closed for the foreseeable unfortunately.

Both my PCP cars I have gone and found a CC that does 6 month money transfer (cash into my bank) at 0% interest. Sign up for that, transfer the balance required into my account, pay off the PCP, then in 6 months get a card with 2 years balance transfer at 0% (plus usually a small fee). Net result is giving myself a couple of years to pay off the ~8k balloon payment for a small cost in balance transfer charges.

@tjagain the secret barrister article points out that:

1. They could be not guilty of criminal damage
2. They could be not guilty on grounds of prosecution not being suitable (or something similar)
3. They could be guilty and the jury delivered a perverse verdict of not guilty.

It also points out that we will never know which of these three the jury chose so there’s not point guessing.

I have a hamax siesta rear mounted seat that my daughter used from about 9 months – it was great as it flexes so bigger bumps don’t have as much impact, and it also reclines so when she fell asleep when she was younger it offered a bit more support.

Now moved on to a kids ride shotgun seat which she adores but she’s nearly 3 and I wouldn’t have wanted to use it with her much younger.

We have had three different carriers for our kids and they all had good and bad points.

Started with a cloth wrap that was great on the front until about 3 months

Switched to a baby bjorn that could be front (front or rear facing) or rear (front facing). On the front, front facing it only really worked for me, was never comfortable for child 1 or 2 around my wife’s boobs. Rear facing on the front was fine for either of us. We never really used it on the back as it never seemed to get the baby into a decent position, but I wore it on the front for a good few 2 hour walks.

Last carrier was a framed rear carrier. Think they advise not to use before 9 months but as above baby 2 is pretty large and is just going into there at 7 months. He could have been in it earlier easily enough.

At 5 months I’d probably go try out a few proper framed carriers and if baby will nearly fit then get one, put up with the existing carrier for a bit. The baby bjorn was great but it’s expensive for something you might only use for 3 months. The framed rear carriers are by far the most comfortable to use.

@lorax I had the same issue with my 2012 MBP and a 4K monitor attached. Teams calls (especially video ones or worse video and presentation) would make the fan go wild.

Done a bunch on the new MBP with the same monitor attached and not a whisper yet. Running multiple other apps at the same time.

I would expect that if the company expects you to install something on your phone to support your work, that they would support the installation and management of it where required. If you replace or update the phone and the app no longer works for any reason, that should not be your problem.

On the flexible working front the gov website says this:

An employer can refuse an application if they have a good business reason for doing so.

I would assume a good business reason for refusal would be ‘employee refuses to use an app that dramatically improves the security of company systems/applications, though it would be dead interesting to see a legal case around this.

If this is ultimately all about the ability to work from home, flexible working etc etc, should the company also be contributing to your internet bill?

With MFA being recommended for basically everything these days, does it not just become like the expectation that the password for work is not ‘password123’? Yes it’s inconvenient having to remember a 20 character password that changes every 30 days, but we do it in the name of security.

Ref the multiple monitors, I think with the M1 pro chips you can now connect 2x 4K screens @60Hz

@Cougar what if you need the MFA app so you can work from home? Would you refuse and request a work device, or just go into the office?

We had that situation, a handful of employees requested MFA codes sent to their desk phones, then realised that was stupid and switched to their mobiles so they could work from home.

@trail_rat these MFA apps in no way give anyone control of the phone. When you log into the thing that requires MFA the app server generates a push notification on the phone for you to accept, or you enter a code shown on the app. The only control the company have is being able to remove the phone from their MFA system, thus stopping it from being able to get the codes. Nothing nefarious.

M1 pro since Saturday, the only pain point so far is I used to be able to virtualise some networking kit, and now can’t. Otherwise all the standard work stuff still works just fine.

Went from a 2012 pro. It’s quite an upgrade though all I can really say so far performance wise is the old one was at its limits and the new one barely ticks over.

Some interesting overreactions here. The way I see it there are three sets of circumstances:

1. Field employee. Needs VPN access. Should be given work mobile.
2. Office employee wanting to WFH. Should just install an app that gives them a code to login to VPN – it’s there to make your life easier after all. You could just go to the office instead.
3. Office employee wanting to access emails, teams etc so they don’t have to sit in front of their laptop when they WFH. Should suck it up and install the monitoring stuff on their phone. It’s not like anyone is actually checking up on what you do and it’s for your convenience.

OP sounds like case 2.

If you need it because of mandated work from home during covid, then it’s probably unreasonable to expect your employer to buy everyone a mobile. Considering what the app does, I don’t get why there would be any problem.

For people saying they’d rather get a text, this way you have to give your number to someone. Surely an app is better?

Buying and selling at the moment. I think it all comes down to the agents and solicitors involved. Our agent has been great though I imagine would have been a bit pushy if the people we are buying from had taken any longer to find somewhere to move to. Our solicitor has been fantastic. On top of everything, very good at communicating (even doing it digitally!). Compared to the last move, this has been a breeze so far.

I think I’ve given up at day 4 having spent the best part of an hour today writing the world biggest nested for loop to get halfway to the answer and then being stumped on where to go next. Maybe next year I’ll have more python skills.

There are two Forza games. Horizon and non Horizon.

Horizon is the arcadey one and I wouldn’t imagine it’s huge fun with a wheel. If you want sim racing then the standard Forza is what you want.

I got the Wera one after seeing it on here – had no idea it was a thing but didn’t have any of the tools in it so thought it wouldn’t be too much awful consumerism. Was £60 not £90 and could have got it earlier for £50.

Never usually bother though.

Does tenancy in common not work in such a way that you agree a split (eg 50/50) and then you both have essentially separate mortgages with different amounts owed/ paid based on what you put in to start with?

We bought a couple of sofas from DFS somewhere between 5-7 years ago and they have been perfectly fine. We did replace/upgrade the budget cushions on one of them but only because we should have done that in the first place.

We have some newer (last 2 years) wooden furniture from Next (sideboard, nest of tables, display ladder thing) and it seems to be pretty decent quality. I think that’s where our next (lol) sofa will come from.

I have an Olight S15R baton which is pretty great and is to all intents and purposes an LED mag lite. Not overly cheap though, I’m sure I paid £30 years ago but it’s £55 now.

https://www.flashaholics.co.uk/products/olight-s15r-baton-rechargeable.html

Gifted deposit adds ‘quite a bit’ extra as there are ID checks for the additional person(s) involved as well as bank statements showing the source etc. Went through that 3 years ago. Buying now and have provided 3 months of bank statements from my savings account showing the funds in there. No questions of where they came from or how long I’ve had them. No extra charge for AML though it is listed as an item on the list of tasks for the solicitor.

My team (professional services) of around 20 technical guys had 6 leavers including me from March to July. I was the only one who sold out for a significant (1.5x) payrise. Our pre sales team has halved in the last three months. There’s a good number of other leavers across the company but the technical teams have had the highest percentage. I think it’s largely due to the way the senior management are trying to run things and cut costs.

We’ve really struggled to recruit replacements. I can’t help but think that’s because there are better financial offers elsewhere.

I made a big batch of the chilli paste and froze it into ice cube trays, now there’s a big bag of it in the freezer and you can pretty much just follow any chilli recipe and chick a couple of cubes in for extra flavour.

That hardest part was finding somewhere that sold all the right chillies!

1. Make yourself some real chilli paste: https://www.seriouseats.com/chili-puree-replace-chili-powder-recipe

2. Use short ribs, take them out maybe an hour before serving, pull the meat off the bones, shred it and stuff it back in with the bones.

3. Other generic chilli ingredients, onions, garlic, kidney beans, chopped tomatoes etc

Steps 1 and 2 made the most difference to my chilli (though I’ve not done it in a slow cooker I usually oven it for 3-4 hours which is similar I guess.

I’m not sure I’d expect it to occupy many nights. From memory I built mine in a couple of evenings. Was a while ago now though so they may have been long evenings!

I think they were £300-£350 retail and when the Bugatti released they dropped to about £200 to clear stock (same seems to be happening now with the Bugatti).

I plan to sell mine at some point when eBay has cheap listings, they look to go for £200+ which would fund a replacement Bugatti.

We bought a Tommee Tippee sleep trainer clock for our 2/3 year old. You turn it manually to a night colour at bedtime and it auto turns to a day colour at a preset time. You might not need the clock functions of it but the colours are fully customisable via an app as well as dimmable so low it’s barely on.

@soobalias – my local farm shop! Never tried their black pudding, guess I know where I’ll be shopping next week…

I use the iCloud 200GB plan. Syncs all my photos across all my devices, plus documents and desktop across two macs.

If I wasn’t going iCloud then I probably wouldn’t use photos for photo storage, but if I did use it, then I’d move the data file to whatever I’m using (Google drive, Dropbox etc).

100% A – keep the flow of tiles on the top the way it’s been designed, B throws that off.

@diz £200 plus p&p? Seem to be about that on the bay. Even happier to do collection from Aylesbury.