credit card gives you payment protection. are you fluent in german ? would you want to try getting your money back yourself?

we have a cat that catches, kills and eats them. he was up to about half a dozen last season.. have to keep an eye out in the cellar, that's where he hides them.

have you contacted the council ? they have pest control, they would at least tell you what you can and can't do, and what they will and won't do.

spud gun ?

as someone who's had a break in recently, practicalMatt is right. middle of the afternoon and they come through the front door (or door with the least amount of visibility to neighbours/passers by) with a crowbar.

burglar alarm, good quality doors and windows, strong hinges and multiple locks on doors, nosy neighbours are the best security devices. make sure they have no reason to know about stuff in your house, if you have scallys hanging around don't let them see you going in and out with expensive stuff like bikes (easier said than done)

don't leave jewellery in one place

dogs are no good, they get drugged (meat/food/treats with sedatives) or their mouths taped up (disgusting I know but then again people who break into houses aren't nice people)

make a man at work feel uncomfortable by making it known i was 'checking him out' to the point that they felt like a sex object!

but you'd only be inflating his ego….

I'd like to turn up for work and have someone say let's just ditch all the unimportant stuff

I wouldn't bother with a workshop course either, get the park book and you'd be fine, or just get onto the park website, they have everything on there.
Although having said that the headset replacement and wheel trueing is just about the only work I would get a shop to do, only cos you need proper tools or really know what you are doing.

drivetrain etc and just about everything else can be done with a mixture of the usual tools and lubes, enough available time and the application of swearwords and brute force until fixed :D

ballsofcottonwool has a point – how long did the bits run for until you had to replace them? and bear in mind that the replacements may well last more than 12 months

also you're comparing on road to offroad – compare what I spend on my red commuter to the car numbers. In the past 12 months I've had a new brake blocks (£7 from decathlon), chain (£10 from lbs) and brake cable (£3 from lbs) – ok I needed a new back wheel in january (pothole killed it) but the last one was 10 years old

I would bet that the AA numbers err on the optomistic side as well, they are a pro-motoring organisation after all :-)

IIRC correctly there are a lot of people who rate Ed Oxley, he's got a huge beard and a didgeridoo = epic win

I've not been on a skills course myself, unless you count the one that I had in 1979 under the expert tuition of my dad

ok then, which one works best as a gps device for tracking bike ride routes?

I've got a focus hatch and I can get a bike in the back with only the front wheel popped out (and let's face it, one wheel isn't exactly difficult) but I would go for a diesel Mondeo estate according to your criteria, the 2L would be fine, the 2.5L would be heavier on fuel

I'm a regular purchaser of budget motors – my big tip is go for base models, less to go wrong and less likely to have been driven by idiots who think they are sports cars

so is the question stupid or the headset? I won't know who to vote for unless you tell me

I went from north manchester to near northwich today through Lymm and back in the afternoon, got lots of waves and a few missed waves but surely as long as you get a few waves then all is good no???

I must admit I miss waves sometimes when commuting as I just give a nod – I need to concentrate on not being killed by other road users either half awake or not giving a sh1t….

it's not that far !!! if you've never ridden any of the 7stanes then it's well worth it. tent in back of car and couple of days riding :)

you don't need a mac they are silly price

ubuntu, get the .iso file off the website and burn the cd with it. you can boot from the cd to try it before installing and even when you install it will put a dual boot in and partition the drive for you

I'm just waiting for the full release of v10 (because v9 didn't work on this laptop so just waiting for the proper release to be sure) and I will be happy to relegate windows to a necessary evil to be used only when I have no option, which is very seldomly.

my commuter is a single speed fixed gear, it's very good for low maintenance and relatively flat terrain, good call in the winter as well

but in the summer or if you are in a hilly area then gears are where it's at

I went onto 1×9 recently and it was surprisingly good (got round the llandegla black ok), maybe it's the sensible solution for those wanting simplicity but need to save knees/get up a 1 in 3

one one are knocking them out for 15 at the moment, they also do the michelin xc/aT 2.0 for a tenner, I had a set on my last bike and they were great (for £10 each) although struggled when cornering really hard at muddeglla – which could have been the very cloying mud there it turns all types of tyres to slicks…

mrs Ed has one and I thought they would be a good idea until I had a go on it, I find it a bit too small and fiddly and the screen is a bit on the small size

get a proper laptop and put linux on it, the open source OS uses less battery power

solarider, it's my view that indurain and riis used the early variants of EPO, allegedly the entire banesto were once tested and all 9 riders had a red blood cell count of within about 1% of each other (and the values ranged from 48 to 49.5 when the unofficial limit was 50%). Bjarne's nickname in the peloton was supposedly 'Mr 60%'

anyway… is Fabien clean? maybe. I would love him to be. The way that he doesn't nail people in the climbs as well as the TTs as other previous dopers have (in the big multistage races) makes me think that it's less likely. but impossible? no, sadly, but I still love bike racing

it all depends on what is the worst hill you'll ride on it. London is pretty flat and you'll be able to get up to a big gear if you are feeling hardcore but if not then don't worry about it

I ride round manchester on 18/16 but I've been riding fixed since I was in school so I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point.

try 44/16 and then you can up the chainring size when you get the bug :-)

oh yeah, same gear size rules apply to fixed and free but don't ride fixed without a brake like some of the eejits round here do, brakes are a good idea :-)

tories identify group of voters by common identifier (i.e. married couple) to entice both in household to vote for same party they invent a tax rule that makes average joe and mrs average joe think 'we'll get some money out of them, lets vote for Dave'

time honoured tory tactic

theirry Henry, just a pleasure to watch

him and Dennis Bergkamp, what a strike force….

ok, all of the above mentioned are good shouts (with the exeption of shearer, he was a striker who scored a lot of goals in the prem but world class? not a chance, euro 96 he was decent but did we win? er no we didn't whereas maradona would have dragged us over the line on his own as would zidane or best or pele yadda)

ok here's one for a bit of a change… look where he gets the ball and the 30 yard strike flat right along the grass, and he in the end he played for Man City ha ha ha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt49QZwpru4

btw I'm not a fan of any specific prem team

are you a tinkerer or not?

I had a set of U-turn toras (heavy but great for what I needed them to do) and found that once I had them set to about what seemed to be a good setting (which was probably about 110mm) I left them there… but that's because I know jack all about fork settings etc.

that happened to my brother recently…. we were on our way to the northwich beer fest and me and dad laughed incessantly until we realised that it could have happened when we were all hammering it down the hill at a rate of knots 8O

he now subscribes to the 'new bars every 2 years or so' rule…

oh hang on he's on this forum !!! paging tthew !!!

when you pull it all apart, check the cone nuts, if there is a groove worn by the bearings then chances are there will be one worn into the hub body as well. if there's a groove in the hub body then it's dead. if not, bonus :)

apologies people, I've been offline for a while and CBA'd to read all 7 pages, have we got a winner yet?

me and the trouser wearer in our house bought a tv last year and did a load of research, the 1080 thing isn't as important as the refresh rate at 32in, you're better off looking for one that will update at 100hz rather than 50. if you're going to be playing games then the refresh rate is definitely a consideration. we bought a panasonic lxd85 and it was brilliant.

note use of the word was? we got burgled and it was nicked, so we replaced with another panasonic and haven't regretted either decision (we now have the similar model but with the freesat tuner built in)

the panasonic screens are really good, the colour quality is superb and only the sony and to an extent the toshiba and LG are in the same league for panel quality

a bit above the 380 ceiling but how about this?
http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/539007/PANASONIC-TX-L32X15B/tab/specification

avforums are really good

cheers bernaard, walla, nice pics…. I'm torn between having a bokor or a wanga (I have halfrauds vouchers) but is the extra 150 quid worth it for steel and an ever so slightly better fork ???

I did a single seater and it was brilliant (esp as you get a load of laps in a mini beforehand) and faster than the ferraris; a more visceral experience

put this way – a road car on the track is like riding a mountain bike on the road, yeah you can do it but the mountain bike is so much better on the dirt and a road bike is right for tarmac – so track car for the track :)

plan some rides, either solo or with mates, and anything else that you didn't have time to do in the past 12 months. it's true that it's not easy but getting out and doing stuff occupying your time is the best way – too busy for 'grieving'

don't get mad or sad, get motivated :) oh yeah, I know that other girls are the last thing on your mind at the moment but register with match.com and dating direct anyway just to have a look at what is out there…. let's face it we all enjoy riding our own bikes but still look at other peoples :D

If I'd have said no to the voucher they'd have offered cash but that probably would have been a lower value (because insistence on cash is a fraud indicator for insurance companies). I'm not bothered about the vouchers – they offered me the full RRP of the Fury in vouchers so I'm up on the deal :)

time for some research on forks I think… jeebus there are lots of RShox models!

I did a skills course ages ago….. my dad was the tutor, I was 4 years old

michelin XC AT 2.0s tenner a pop from on-one

ooh ooh me please for the summer one :-)

I promise to be there afterwards getting leathered and making an idiot of myself…

– he's just left the pub, pissed as a fart and would really, really appreciate an early morning wake up call.

pubs are ace – of course rusty was completely sober all night. Apologise to Mrs Rusty from me if I was annoyingly p1ssed

If it was a bike race then a spoiler title would be the right thing to do but it's only pig bladder kickers…

[nelson from the simpsons] HA HA! [/nelson]

that was quality! the changes to the course were definitely an improvement, a bit of everything for everyone. lots of fun, cheers guys

DS are the coolest car ever imo

if you do get one for god sake don't drive it in the winter, tax it for 6 months and SORN it for the other 6 months, the sills are constructed from cheese

there probably will be some frost tonight, it's a bit parky here… that opening hill will be fun!

there's not going to be an official song this year, thank you the FA

and if we're talking football related songs it has to be 'eat my goal' by collapsed lung

what's the latest on the course? I'm guessing it's gonna be a tad soft with some moisture :D