You could well be screwed.

If you bought non-refundable tickets then that was your lookout I am afraid. You would have had the option to either choose a higher fare with flexibility or use another carrier whose product suited your requirements.

If there is a very good reason you can't travel then the airline may show some discretion (e.g a death in the family etc) but otherwise you will be at the mercy of your travel insurance which you may not even have bought yet.

Airline tickets are generally untransferable (ie. no name changes). Depends on the ticket types and how close you are to departure. Very likely to be prohibited within a certain timeframe to stop intermediaries brokering airline tickets.

Of course I do not believe you have been screwed maybe mis-sold – did you buy on line? Where the T&Cs disclosed at time of booking/sale etc?

Mick if you split – I would be very interested in the chainset and very possibly the shifters and mechs. Gary

Depends what it is worth? Senditnow.com include £150 cover for about £11-12. Parcel2go.com will do it cheaper including £50 cover. Expensive to increase insurance cover so best to do online comparisons. Senditnow.com with £500 cover is about £23? I think the last time I looked.

All of Enigma's steel bikes are built in the UK as are their higher end 2010 Ti models. Not really a strong reputation for MTBs though. When I spoke to them they can pretty much build what you want/choice of materials etc.

I notice one of the reasons cited for surgery it that some women find it uncomfortable to ride a bike. Surely, it follows therefore that we should all be supportive of this trend. Perhaps it could be subsidised by the tax payer in conjunction with the C2W scheme.

1. Had a shave before going to work – first in a very very long time
2. Exchanged my USD back to GBP following last weeks jaunt to the US – but overlooked filing my expenses that I really need to recover ASAP
3. Moaned all day to my colleagues that the Flu jab has made me feel really rough and the GP wants me to go back on Friday for the Swine Flu jab – fat chance
4. Got my client to sign off the requirements for his project
5. Bought a curry for dinner/tea/supper whatever

Enigma had a stunning steel MTB at the London Cycle Show. £900 mind so not cheap and the one displayed I would describe as retro. Same sort of money as RM I guess.

Why do you assume the 50th percentile corresponds to the arithmetic mean?

Who designs these things and makes up such complex terms for doing stuff, though?

Hmmn …. Geology you say …… 😆

Being a graduate/entry position and first interview I would probably not bring the subject of salary up unless the interviewer(s) gave you a specific lead.

I fully agree with the not wasting your time if the salary is far below your expectations etc but if you are time rich at the moment then the experience will be good experience etc. Such advice IMO seems better suited to people with a few years experience and a proven track record that supports their existing salary etc.

I would have thought that you have some idea of what typical graduate starting salaries are this year and some notion of whether the employer is likely to be toward the top end or very possibly lower than the mean.

I suspect there is very little room for any negotiation this year as if there ever was for graduate entrants. This year has been very tough for new graduates and competition is more fierce than ever. I would not want to risk alienating a prospective employer with unrealistic expectations of my own worth unless I had very good grounds and would be perfectly happy to walk away with no offer. Again a position easier for those currently in work and with a regular income.

I suspect however that since the OP stated he should be using minitab then the objective was to obtain a result with a little more scientific basis then simply drawing a line by eye?

As good as the advice is do any of us believe there is an actual trend or just random noise against a mean value?

I am hard pushed to convince myself there is any trend in the above graphs

Well it is a long time since I did anything like this – but if by a trend line you mean find the regression line that provides the best fit to the data y = mx + c then to find the regression coefficients you would need to write the least square error formulae and solve it yourself in EXCEL! I would use Minitab or some other stats tool – although perhaps EXCEL now has these functions?

Re your central tendency measure. Then the arithmetic mean is probably the most appropriate and certainly not the mode. Your data is ratio data (I think) (nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio) in the sense that you can say 400mm of rain is twice as much as 200mm of rain. Whereas you cannot say 40 deg C is twice as hot as 20 deg C – an interval scale.

I was once a maths geek although not a stats geek (0% in first years exams!)

Gary BSc MSc PhD 😆

Mulholland Drive – although still not sure I can completely follow it.

I bought a mac a few months ago after using a PC for the last 20 years and it is an absolute joy to use. Just a pity I need to use a windows PC for work.

From my experience if you were able to continue riding then it can't be that bad.

I have only broken or badly bruised my ribs once (hard to tell the difference I believe unless they are very seriously broke) and there was no way I could continue to ride. Don't remember any obvious bruising developing as such either.

From my experience it got worse before it got better in so much as mobility improved the pain seemed to increase. Biggest mistake I made was not taking the GP up on some prescription pain killers.

Think I was completely off the bike for about 3 weeks then I few gentle weeks – had niggling pains for a few months.

When I posted in here most people were suggesting about 6 weeks but my recovery didn't seem to take that long.

+1 for St. Helens and it used to have pit to please Ton. The first 18 years of my life were spent there and it has pretty much put me off ever moving back North

I thought it did mean your lungs were infected – but with a viral infection rather than a bacterial infection. Agree with the flu bit.

Mine (Joystick MaXX) says 4.2v DC 1500mA centre +ve

Oh no John and edward now …. FFS they should be locked up or lynched for what they have done tonight.

Solarider – Thanks for the info. I know Lee very well – he is my personal shopper 😆

BTW do you deal with Seven direct or via Sigmasport.

They are my local LBS and are always telling me to stop faffing around and changing bikes every 12-18 months – and just buy a Seven. In truth it would make sense financially provided of course I didn't get bored of it.

I used it for a quite a long time with my previous Golf V5 170bhp and I can't say I noticed any improvement – if anything I thought it was worse. However, it did appear that running the car on 95 Octane for a period of several months did seem to lead to a deterioration.

Can't really say on my current car Audi 2.0T FSI – will buy it if I fill up at Shell otherwise just buy Sainsbuy's stuff. But also, based on previous experiences with lower octane petrol I now never really use 95 unless filling up at my Dad's near Liverpool where high octane pumps seems few and far between.

FWIW Audi recommended BP ultimate to me – but I have never used it.

AFAIK the NICE guidelines state that first line treatment for depression should be a generic SSRI – hence the GP's use of fluoxitene (PROZAC), paroxetine (Seroxat) and Citalopram as a first drug of choice.

This would suggest that newer drugs like Escitalopram and Venlafaxine (Effexor) are seen less initially in a primary care setting. GPs prescribing guidelines for Venlafaxine (Effexor) are even tighter these days

GPs are also advised I believe to provide each patient a leaflet that describes things like they take 3-4 weeks to work; perhaps first line treatment only helps about 60% of patients rising to 80% when a second choice of AD is used. Together with the withdrawal effects and the need to taper off these drugs under medical supervision.

AndyP – Member
If you feel you need them, then use them. If you don't, then don't. Simple as that…only you cna make that decision.

This looks like the best and simplest piece of advice on this complex subject I have heard

I am also bi-polar and like Jahwomble above I have also been diagnosed as soft bi-polar or bi-polar II rather than what is often regarded as classic bi-polar I.

I was just in my 40's when I was fully diagnosed although it has taken me perhaps another 4 years to finally accept or recognize and come to terms with my condition.

Sadly, I recognize myself in the description of the behaviour of your friend and have also lost several friends over the last few years during my frequent but thankfully self limiting manic phases.

From what I remember from the Stephen Fry documentary he had only cycled through his depressed and manic phases a few times in the his life. He certainly experienced several years between depression and or mania. Not sure what the definition of rapid cycling is but I am lucky if I get a few months of relatively stable mood at time.

Me a young academic researcher teaching "top flight" undergraduate business students how to use spreadsheets as part of quantitative methods course.

I am walking around from student to student and find one guy tapping numbers into his own calculator and then typing the totals back into the spreadsheet. Shocked I ask him how is this new computer technology helping him and making him more productive … it finally dawns on him.

Ah the business leaders of tomorrow, perhaps not so surprising our country is in the state it is in.

I also used to do business with a girl in Japan who commuted something like 300 miles each way on the train every day.

Isn't this about one hour each way – sounds reasonable to me 🙄

I hate this job.

The mistake I always make is cutting the tape at a taper when you get to the end. Having unwrapped some tape that I had fitted by my LBS when stripping a bike down I realised that you get a better more even finish if you taper from the inside of the tape rather than at the stem side (I think). Seemed counter intuitive to me.

I also use Spesh tape which is not sticky so you can try and try again.

I have used them for the last two winters for both road and mtb and I have no complaints. TBH I think I wear them all year round to be honest – seem just as comfortable in the summer as the winter

I would definitely buy them again. I only have one pair and they seem as good as new. Before these I had some Assos ones which I probably only got one full winter season out of.

Early Cocktails at Bar 89 @89 Mercer Street in SOHO before going on to a nice restaurant.

Harlem (during the day if you have time) probably on the way back from the Cloisters Museum right at the northerly point of Manahatten – but I would place most of the other standard attractions higher Ellis Island, Empire State, Central Park, Shopping at the top end of 5th and Madison (in the 50's just south of the Park) etc.

If it were me I would look to stay down town (lower than 23rd) as you are then a lot closer to the nightlife and a not dependent on taxis and subway to get home at night. Likely to be fewer choices though. I would also not try to stay too far east or west (ie. probably no further East than 2nd Avenue or further west that 7th Avenue). A newbie may even feel more comfortable between 3rd and 6th.

New York is very safe, when I lived there I would walk around the city 24 hours a day and never felt in the least bit on edge or unsafe (obviously not the Bronx or Harlem!)

Have a great trip – where are you looking for hotels. NYC hotels always seem top dollar when I look? I would like to go back myself but more tempted by SFO or YVR as it is far cheaper.

I must confess I haven't really got a clue and have long since given up listening to the news – but somehow I can't see this ending well for the postmen.

Whether RM are making a profit or not today in the long run it is largely an irrelevance. Profit centered or not every organization has a responsibility to seek further operational efficiencies and drive out costs. If not to produce a return for its shareholders then to provide increased value for money to its customers. This is even more transparent to see when the organization itself has a monopoly over some of its service offerings with significant constraints on barriers to entry to enable fair competition.

The potential for a 1 or 2p saving on a first class stamp will mean nothing to me – but in aggregate could create material savings for many business customers who are facing very turbulent and difficult times with the longest recession in UK history

IMO the CWU need to "wake up and smell the coffee" and realize that further and continued modernization is inevitable and will help to protect jobs over the longer term.

The CWU and the postal workers may have significant pockets of public support at the moment but it will not last. In the medium term joe public will not give toss how many postal workers lose their jobs and pensions so long as they get get their mail delivered. Postal workers are low skilled, easily substituted and sadly there are far too many bad apples amongst them which distracts from the hard work that I trust many of them do.

Steps down from Soap box.

Carrying some low grade virus that I can't seem to shift resulting in my third Asthma flare up this year – so off the bike until it settles back down

mandog – Member
i use the clock on my phone. no need for a watch. it has an alarm too and a light.

and i can make calls on it also.

This also what I have done for the last couple of years – but now finding it frustrating having to carry my phone with me around from one meeting to the next in the office.

Fine outside work – but now also looking for a nice but not too expensive watch

No locations, contact details and prices. At the moment the rest of the site is irrelevant without these if its purpose is to secure business – but looks promising. You should allow the customer to chose how they contact you

Went to the Docs this morning for a flu jab only to be told I was too ill to have one 😆 The new Thai nurse was a little stunner though so quite looking forward to going back and I still have the swine flu vaccination to come.

Hmmn …. now when did I last have my thyroid tested ….

Not me 😆 How is the Pearson?

I thought that within 28 days they should offer a refund or replacement – customers choice. Outside 28 days retailer would put in a warranty claim. May not be consumer law – just best practice.

Sales of Goods Act – often misquoted – but if a component fails after 9 days seems like a reasonable case to argue not fit for purpose?

I find it hard to believe that the Telegraph could not see that their [BNP] "broader policies" at are odds and completely undermined by their racist underpinnings.

How can you possibly have a policy statement supporting a fully funded, free NHS for all Britons when you fail to accept that all people are born into this world equal in the first place.

Let's hope he hangs himself tonight.

Beyonce
Kelly Rowland
Shakira

Pretty shallow by some standards and I may prefer the music of some perhaps many of the other artists above but it terms of sheer vocal quality I would put Beyonce and Kelly up with the very best – may be pushing it a little with Shakira

Easy question ZERO for me – although I did have two beers last week whilst away on business in the States courtesy of my host.

I am of the opinion that the value of such information is somewhat dubious as it can't really be validated.

Perhaps the motivation is to identify what spend is discretionary and could in theory be displaced to cover the mortgage if things go a little pear shaped. This argument however seems a little like fiddling while Rome burns – if you lose your job and can't pay your mortgage then not sure that cutting out the fags and booze is a long term solution.

My 10p worth