Mine advised me not to stay on for sixth form and instead do a YTS…the guy had never met me before !!!
I did leave school (a few of my teachers were asking where I was when the 6th form started) luckily I didn't take his 2nd piece of advice and went to college then on to do my BSC(Hons) in Computing Information Systems.

Do you have plenty of spare time ? I wasted months collecting the right tools, doing an hour here and an hour there (all I could spare with a recent baby)…I couldn't get the headset right (took LBS quite a while too)…couldn't get the Shimano brakes bled right (despite previously doing it on my old Hopes a few times).

Lost loads of riding time and ended up paying shop to sort out it out anyhow.

I was looking for an Iphone alternative and now I'm about to buy an iPhone !?

If I didn't 'need' the 32GB storage (music collection) then I would be buying the new HTC Hero from Orange (i.e. an Android phone)…only downside for me was that it takes memory cards and 32GB cards are not available yet. There is a Samsung android phone (i7500 / Galaxy – expected on o2) coming with 8GB internal memory and can take memory card (so total 24GB) but I think it's RAM (128MB) and processer is of a lower spec than the HTC android phones.
There is the Nokia N97 …32GB, built-in FM tranmitter for sending tunes to the car radio, slide-out keyboard…BUT…I've played with it a couple of times and the touch-screen is just not anywhere near as responsive / accurate as an iPhone.

have you asked a main dealer…I was suprised how cheap they(Ford) were for a touch-up stick

same has happened to me…
The .co.uk appears to work but then all the links from the forum go back to .com and get stopped.

Time for an iPhone (other phones are available)…

Should try Bare Arts in Tod.

every time I pass it I read the sign as 'BreAsts'…either I've got a one-track mind or I'm dyslexic!

Muddy – [sorry to hear that] which section of the canal was it ? (I'm in Littleborough so interested in case they strike again)…

No disks just recovery partition (6.55GB with 2GB free (why?))…although I think there is an option to create disks (which I will do). [It's an HP pavilion laptop]

I think the shadow copy stuff on Vista is eating up loads of space (which is silly when, as far as I can gather, the home editions do not allow you to restore previous versions of files !
Spacemonger sounds like something I have been after..I'll give it a spin tomorrow.

1TB drives (Seagate or Western Digital) £68 on Amazon..sounds ideal…

'night

ta – I'll check O&O defrag- I've just found 'Backup and Restore Center' in Vista (although unsure how functional it is in Vista Home Premium)…sounds like it would do the backup job if I bought another drive…might try a cleanup for a starter.

I might get a better response in the week when the IT Crowd are in!

it's just startup (possibly shutdown) which feels slow…I've just installed so many bits of junk over time. Should (!) be virus free as I have always been running anti-virus (currently avast but previously AVG then Kapersky)…

question I suppose is what software is available and what benefit does it offer…if I had an external drive I guess I can just drag my C drive over to the new drive (and wait a couple of hours whilst it copies…erm…except Vista sometimes likes to take it's time copying files !!!)

[biting-tongue]I've found the workshop pricing a bit random…one day excellent value another day wallet raping.
[unbites tongue]…I don't think I'll get over the £130 bill for finishing my bike build for quite a while, however much they say they had to start over again they had previously fitted the fork and headset so don't see where it all went.

just thinking about this and remembered once coming up from Cragg Vale, straight into a headwind and rain….once I got onto the open moorland I was so gone that I was looking down at the ditch to the left of the road and thinking how atractive a place it would be to just roll into and fall asleep (for ever!)

short but steep from Littleborough, or long and steady through Cragg Vale – depends what you find hardest ? (Cragg-Vale is longest so there is scope for more suffering if you want to keep pushing yourself…or you can take it nice and steady and not trouble yoursef too much)

Is this where you bought the bike ? If so it's out-of-order IMO….you bought a new complete bike from this shop (?)…if so I'd expect to be put back in the same situation i.e. with a complete working bike – certainly in the 1st year and dealing with the shop where the bike was bought. If it's not where you bought the bike then that's a bit different and they need paying by somebody .

3) Saddle Height (too high) ?

I want to harangue someone at Vodafone

Save your breath..whoever you speak to it won't be the right person…so they will then pass you to another holding queue or just cut you off.

I'll look out here (Littleborough) – any photo's as I've no idea what they would look like

ooh – my thread has come back….

well since I asked I went wild and ordered a N97….but now Vodafone how made a mess of the upgrade order / not sent it…(called customer services 4 times today…each time they 'lost' me whilst transferring to somebody who might have been able to sort it out….so now I'm looking for a new network too! (iPhone re-enters the contest)

Citizen Eco-Drive watches have been brilliant – worth a look

I just put some monitoring software on my pc and racked up 20Mb pretty quickly (clicking through a number of posts…)

With care I could get by, but 500Mb a month is a long way from ‘unlimited’..no youtube for me then !

maybe I should get that iPhone instead (presume ‘unlimited’ on 02 is less limited!)

My experience – AA good / RAC bad (twice sending local recover agents = lack interest in fixing) …I get the impression (via internet stuff – not real experience) that AA has gone downhill in the last 5 years or so (probably about when I last called)

hard work! (Had 2)
Very very hard to tire out – need LOTS of exercise…e.g. always wanting ball/slipper/stone [anything available] throwing.
IME not very ‘relaxed’ dogs. Can be destructive if left alone in the house – they like chewing stuff. (can also be a bit snappy)

I suppose a lot of that could apply to many dog breeds (and could be improved with some more training perhaps) although parents now have a lab which is a bit easier.

All that said, I loved our first collie (even though he bit me)

roundwheels = Andy Murray ?

I’ve had a Logitech one for a couple of years – works great….
just checking Amazon…

something like this

or in blue

vodafone…
£25 HTC Magic

just realised that this isn’t the ‘latest’ that I’d read about i.e. the Hero…guess that will cost a few quid more

Well I’m not a photographer but I knew a man…
My understanding was that a photography degree is very artistic. Guess that sounds a bit obvious but what I consider a good photo were largely ‘postcard’ shots (his term) – I didn’t ‘get’ a lot of the art, so you need to be more than just technically good with a camera.
The course at Blackpool is (well was) highly regarded !? [The guy I knew studied there…won national (Kodak ?) competitions..and was whisked off for a few weeks, all expenses paid, to the USA shadowing a pro photographer out there]

My LBS decided the only thing for mine was a new caliper half :-(

make that 3

Soggy biscuit ?

I’ve more sympathy with chambers than the likes of Christine Ohuruogu who ‘got away’ with missing her tests and ‘achieved’ a nice olympic gold as well…I get the impression that her achievement was not celebrated as much as to be expected due to her history.

It has cost Chambers dearly (not allowed to compete in olympics and I’m sure he has lost sponsorship which he will never regain) – he appeared desperate – trying to move to american football and rugy league. I give him credit for sticking with it and to come back after a 2 year ban to still be near the top of his game. He has shown more grit than many others.

p.s. looks interesting…

I just tried to donate (honest!) and the ‘just giving site’ failed….next year perhaps (unless I remember to try again later!)

Wow – put mine to shame

perhaps George Fishers (Keswick, Skipton…) – also hire out stuff

We were asked to move on from Helvellyn many years ago…think it was about 6am and we would have been going soon anyhow. Also had ‘police’ boat ask us to move on as we were camping on a small isalnd on lake windermere. But other times (perhaps 10 times) no problem….just don’t pitch until nearing sunset (unless weather is a problem) and expect to be off early next day

Thanks…I’m not feeling as bad about it now.
I’ll probably give them another month then slowly fill it in. I will also keep a look out for any local frog ponds I could move them to (although creating an alternative pond in a further corner of the garden is a pretty good idea)

Maclaren XLR copes well with gravel / rough tracks..much better than Quinny Zapp, for instance. It has larger wheels than the lower/smaller models and feels to have a little suspension. It’s above your suggested budget if looking for new (ours was about £180) and is still quite large when folded (especially when compared to the Zapp) but overall very good.

I’m thinking of getting into religion – I have 2 work colleagues (one jewish the other ? – 7th day adventist I think) who insist that every Friday they have to leave work early (in daylight hours) as they can’t burn fuel in their cars / or turn lights on and must be home before it is dark….

Amazing what some people get away with.

Trust – one vital ingredient but it can’t be bought. e.g. I’d apprecaite a shop that rang me up to dissuss the workshop work I asked them to do when it has become more ‘complicated’ and not treat me like a free cash machine and do what they like.

I guess they put their vests on as it might get a bit chilly when they get out on the open road. I for one appreciate that they went to the trouble to dress up for a sunday drive.

…just a thought…when you say you have to turn your sky box off and on again to get it working…I had similar (lost channels but would come back for a while if I reset the box) and it turned out it needed a new LNB on the dish. Other thoughts…second-hand sky-boxes are available from ebay etc.
If you are looking at saving money then 1st I’d cancel HD, then perhaps turn one of the multi-room boxes to free-sat…