Now that Audi are driven by people who would have previously driven a BMW, there should be room for Saab, but not if they can’t get away from the fact they’re Vectras underneath.

They won’t be Vectras underneath if Tata buy them! That was only because GM owned them. Think of them as the new Rover, some Indian designed and built car with a Saab badge on?

Would the money in the house be included in any divorce settlements Mrs FD (or her sister) might be stung for if it turned nasty?

Or, if heaven forbid, yourself and your wife died before the parents and any beneficiaries of your will wanted their cash – they could potentially turf out your folks.

To be honest I think Local Councils are on to this sort of thing so I’d be interested to see how you could avoid lumping up for any retirement homes.

Condor Fratello frameset for £600 or is that too much?

Has anyone tried the new michelin pro 4 endurance yet?

It’s basically last years Krylion tyre with a new name. I really rate them. Done a good few miles over winter without any issues yet. Always seem to get a good write-up, though I’m sure someone will come along with horror stories in a minute…

What if you’re not on benefits?

Going back to the original post – wasn’t child benefit paid separately so it could be given directly to the mother to pay for things like food rather than going into the fathers pocket (and straight to the pub with it?

Anyway, it’ll cost more to administer a revised policy than just give it to a couple of billionaires…

Next door had some hooky ‘tree surgeon’ sort out a couple of their overgrown trees, they also took away some cardboard boxes as a ‘favour’. Council came knocking on their door a week later as the scrotes had tipped the lot randomly somewhere and the cardboard boxes had addresses on them. Gave the contact details of the workers who presumably were collared.

The council should do something about it.

I guess the fundamental question is – do you want to buy a road bike?

A bit of this ^^^ – if you already have a mtb go out and ride that on the roads (maybe get some slicker tyres/wheels). What you have is little time, so IMHO there is no point buying a bike that makes riding easier (ie less rolling resistance) which means for a proper workout you have to pedal further for longer. If you have 30 minutes to spare you’ll do more work on an mtb with 2.4″ tyres than a road bike with 23c ones.

I could be in Vortex too.

Though I’d have to stipulate mine had mudguard bosses on the dropouts and seatstay bridge – for that money I’m gonna have to use it as the commuter too….

Oh, so the baggies go OVER the lycra? 😳

Problem Solvers will be gutted the UN55 has an alloy cup – they were flogging their own as a replacement for the UN54 plastic one for £15!

Think the black boxes are being trialled for younger drivers to reduce their premiums.

Wouldn’t be shocked if it became ‘optional’ for most drivers. It would have to save me a significant amount to consider it.

Will be interesting to see how any people want cameras/gps in cars until the insurance company decides it was their fault for the accident and get a reduced payout….

Always remember when I got my first car a friend of the family came along with me – he was a car salesman (and ex mechanic so knew what he was looking at) and certainly opened my eyes to negotiation.

Basically don’t look too keen – keen enough to want to buy it, not enough that you’re going to buy it regardless.

Do your homework, have another option (even if you don’t want option B) – looking at a Seat, tell the guy you’ve seen a good deal on a Toyota or something.

Oh, and don’t fall for the old “I need to check with my sales manager” routine – if the guy can’t sell the car then ask for someone who can.

Cervelo make a very convincing argument about aero vs low weight, in favour of aero

Nah, pro bikes are easily below the UCI weight limit so there is no point making them any lighter. So you may as well use a little bit of your spare weight you’re going to have to put back onto the frame to make it aero – rims, etc.

With PC/Macs there is always an upgrade along the line at some point. If you keep waiting you’ll just grow old and die before the ‘uber’ Mac comes along.

Just accept when you buy a computer there’ll be something new along 10 seconds later that 99.999% of people will feel they want but will never actually use to any potential.

How about JavaScript? Then you can much around with HTML5 as well and CSS.

Nothing to get, can literally run it off a browser and Notepad (or notepad++).

Then you can start charging mates money for doing websites for them!

magazines was negative. fast forward to now and they are loving them. i don’t think the bikes have all miraculously improved, so there is a lot of media hype going on at the moment.

To be fair the magazines a while ago had decided unequivocally that a trail bike had to have 5.265″ travel front and back, 723mm riser bars, their favourite saddle and be in blue. Anything that remotely veered from this view was derided.

Maybe they just started riding again without prejudice. Though as they probably only get 29ers to ride these days that might help too…..

I assume you don’t know if you’re one of the 57 (yet), in which case consider that there might be a further round of redundancies and they’ll always be wanting to let go the least effective/productive employees.

As Druidh says, if you don’t know you’re for the chop, try at keep working (as daft as that sounds). We had the same thing, half the people that were under threat basically switched off – they all seemed to be the people that got the bullet.

It’s hard, from personal experience, but a bit of effort might save the day.

well i wasn’t suggesting you went out and bought one just for that.

I know you weren’t but now you’ve got me tempted. The missus was liking them in the shop so she wouldn’t mind, I’m sure!

Looking at the specs of that drive Haze, it seems to imply you put an external eSata drive on as the ‘mirror’, there’s not much point in having one drive split into two mirrors as if the drive goes bang you’ve lost everything.

Raid 1 is good, but only for disk failures. If you want to get a version of a file from 2 months ago (say, you’ve deleted something, or overwritten it) then backups are useful.

if you have a mac plugged into the ethernet it can act as a wifi router.

Oh man, now that’s a good reason to go out and get a Mac….

Nah, it’s a powerline modem so purely wired connection.

I’ll go and dig out the old wireless powerline plug and have another play with it.

I’m not sure if there’s much you can do – sounds like you’re on an https page which is pulling in http stuff (maybe like images). Have a look and see if you can pull everything via https.

I would also want to cover her as if something happens to me I would need to pay for the kids care…

Someone gave me a good tip a while ago – if you’re thinking of life insurance for yourself and your other half check the price out for two separate policies, it was a fiver a month more for me and the missus to have individual life insurance rather than a combined one.

First one to pop the clogs covers the mortgage so you’ve got a roof over your head. If second one goes then that money can be used for the kids.

how do I know which crank bolt I need?

Pretty much only two kinds of chainring bolts – narrow for single ring and normal for fitting two rings (sure there’s probably bashring specific ones too but thats a different worry).

If you;re feeling rich
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=7064

or you could chuck some spacers/washers under your current bolts where the outer ring should be if you’re just trying it out. Or a lightweight chainguard…

Steve Bruce must be knocking at the doors at Wolves surely?!

I’d be tempted to use them until they need chucking/replacing unless you’ve got a compelling reason for doing an immediate swap over.

Giant seem to have just started ‘making’ their own wheels (presumably a rebadge job from someone else). Personally it’s not something I’d pay good money for on here or eBay so you might get £100 maybe – just guessing mind and hopefully you’d make more.

Oh, chain isn’t routed round the jockey wheels incorrectly is it? There’s a little nubbin on the mech cage and I’ve occasionally wrapped the chain over it, but that is a fairly obvious noise.

Rather buy some Easton stickers and put them on a cheap pair of bars I know are FSA/EaA30/whatever than risk a set from a random Chinese knockoff shop that even the seller isn’t convinced about.

And eBay don’t like fake stuff so really if the seller has any doubts he/she shouldn’t be selling them.

As Jedi says – check the jockey wheels aren’t too close to the cassette – might be a simple case of adjusting the screw.

Stowa watch and the rest on a custom made titanium frame engraved with your names?

If it’s insured then surely the bike is now the property of the insrance company if they’ve paid out?

Sorry, know that doesn’t help. Maybe the insurance company would be interested if you could be fairly positive it was yours?

OK posties, a couple of questions, why do you have to wait 48 hours before you can collect a parcel you have had a red card for?

According to my postie mate, the posties round ours go straight home after deliveries (issues with overtime etc. hence don’t have to go back to office to ‘clock out’) and they are not allowed to take parcels home with them.

So they get dropped off at the local Post Office where they are collected along with the other sent post and basically put back into the big sorting office as if they were just new post.

So crazily it gets sorted again, sent to the local depot, resorted etc. so it’s just like being resent hence the two day ‘delay’ and put away for you.

My postie goes back to the office to pick up his car so he seems to just put the parcel away there so I can often get them earlier.

I waited in all day for the next door neighbour to collect his parcel from me that I kindly looked after. It’s a disgrace he didn’t know I had to go out at 6 to visit my sick grandmother.

Kona Smoke? I picked a new one up off eBay for £180. Not gonna set the world alight in terms of spec and weight but for a commute I didn’t care trashing mine.

^^^

what jambalaya says, unfortunately.

Would have to be 100% aligned with no weld standing proud of the steerer to even fit through the headset.

After than it’s just how brave you are feeling and how confident you are in your ‘mate’. Or ex-mate…

How long before those disk calipers start appearing on some very light MTBs?

SRAM have probably made it so the road lever is the only one that works with it!

So assuming we all have to have zip-tie cable mounts now on our road bikes?

Surely the rim brake still needs a method of spreading the pads to get a wheel in and out anyway

I think it you look to the right of the ‘Red’ decal on the brake that’s the qr lever to open the pads up.

To be fair, at some point ALL decisions are taken by a single person (maybe with a consensus or peers).

Whether this one is fishy or not I don’t know. Just because the prosecution think they’ve got a watertight case doesn’t make it so. If that was the case we wouldn’t need to bother with trials and juries.