Same! I first noticed a small drip a couple of years ago and it has held up since then.

Friday morning it finally gave way (luckily I was still there as ten mins later I would have been cycling to work).

The model I have was superseded in 1984!! I have had a good hunt around but cannot find a replacement heat exchanger unfortunately.

Six months ago noticed water pooling by the 10 year old boiler. Heating engineer came, looked and said the heat exchanger was cracked and I need a new boiler. He quoted and I think I blacked out at that point. Happens that my builder was fettling in the house at the time and he said why not weld it up. He came along with his welding mate and sorted it out for a 100. Has worked a treat since 🙂

It’s an expensive decision to get wrong, so guess you should take professional advice. But I agree with above, unless your current boiler isn’t actually working properly, why change?

Sometimes the system will not work as you expect.
.
.
covers all bases

My company has just put some software out to tender. 3 different independent companies. All came back with rough figures of between £750 to £1200 per programmer per day. And these were fairly long, 6month+, jobs. There was even set up charges on top of that.

Admittedly it was a fairly esoteric branch of software, but still didn’t shock us too much.

Wow – we’re not charging enough! What sort of esoteric software are you working with?

Just came across this link that discusses some of the issues being raised here: exploring-digital-childhood-kids-and-technology

If you need to do this on the cheap, you could try one of the freelancer sites like http://www.getacoder.com/%5B/url%5D The idea is that you put a spec of the job you want doing up and someone, somewhere will bid for it and you choose who you want to do the work. Bids will come in from anywhere but especially Asia. If your job can be precisely defined and you don’t need ongoing support, it might work for you.

If you need ongoing support or it’s complex, you need to revisit the

quoting double what we think the job should cost

cos good programmers are expensive (think 250-500 per day)!

This might be confirmation bias, but the only immigrants I know work their arses off. The whole anti immigration argument is the lamest thing ever.

Same as my own experiences, but seems hard to convince those who have been persuaded otherwise by some parts of the UK media. Nice to have facts to back up anecdote.[/quote]
I guess if you’re motivated enough to up-sticks from your homeland, you’re already demonstrating the sort of qualities that will make you a good employee. My company is a small high-tech business and we’ve taken on people from eastern Europe who are just fantastic to work with.

Agreed. Any suggestions- what tyres for riding on roads where farmers can’t be arsed clearing thorny hedge trimmings?

Same problem in my neck of the woods. Have had lots of punctures on the MTB recently but none on the road bike using these Continental Gatorskin[/url]

Your figures sound about right to me. I did a similar size area a few years ago before laying Indian sandstone flags, though I used a dry mix at about 1:10. I ended up using more than I’d calculated. If you haven’t already discovered it Paving Expert[/url] is a fantastic resource for home groundworks!

The Cirque de la Soitude on a bike!!!!!!

Good one!

I’ve done the GR20 and have also done the TMB. GR20 is a different kettle of fish in terms of physical demands and the mountain terrain it traverses. The full GR20 is normally 2 weeks (I think) although mates and I did it in 10 days (back when I was a lad and very mountain fit). The terrain is very rugged in the northern section. You could just do the northern section which would be a week. Accommodation is in refuges. It is very beautiful indeed, best done in the Spring.

90 degree F maybe? Are you from the US??

It’s probably one of the more sensible insurances and depending on your circumstances isn’t normally too expensive. Why don’t you cost out both options and see what the costs are?

😀

For something a bit different try “The Honey Guide” by Richard Crompton. A Masai detective working in modern Nairobi.

Will be surprised if your travel insurance helps – indirect losses are nearly always excluded. As above however, why do you you have to pay for your colleagues costs?

Rigoletto. Fantastic tunes throughout; an easy to follow story line with good characters; a totally bleak storyline!

We did one of those spooky tour things one evening which was surprisingly good fun – the buried street place was part of it. Scottish house of parliament is interesting if you’re into architecture. National Gallery is very good if you like that sort of thing.

Fancy using Perl? I can get you started..

Open your first file (with all your files, you’ll need to add some way of parsing a directory tree and reading in each filename):

open my $file, ‘<‘, “filename.txt”;
my $firstLine = <$file>;

#See if firstline contains your C or F
$substr = “C”
if (index($firstLine, $substr) != -1)

#and if it’s true then read through your file doing your conversion:
while (my $line = <>) {
# do whatever you like with $line. Might be easiest to write it out to your new file
}

Arten Gill viaduct, Yorkshire Dales, is my nearest and you can see the bit of bumpy bridleway I ride regularly on the right side of the valley…

The downside of storage heaters is their inflexibility. So you can’t really turn up the heat when you’re cold and if you’re hot, you have to open windows or strip off. It’s a particular pain if you want a warm house in the evening, just when the storage heaters have lost most of the heat so you often need secondary heating. That said, they can be cheap to run – certainly cheaper than ch (not just fuel costs, but boiler maintenance) – and an if you’ve got a wood burner, maybe would work for you.

There’s a facebook page, but you’ll have to join a very long queue! I didn’t like the last refresh they did of it a couple of years ago but eventually I got used to it. Guess I’ll get used to this too.

FWIW, its illegal to be monitoring your activity without officially warning you they are doing so. Un til you’ve had an official warning, go careful of revert to smartphone without using the company’s wifi.

Yes – there has to be a policy saying the company has the right to monitor what you’re doing. However if someone said that to me at my workplace, my first thought would be that I’m using too much space on networks shares and the like.

+1 for LastPass, used mainly because work requires me to manage lots of online credentials on multiple computers. I do a lot of work around software security and in my view there’s no perfect solution – many of the suggestions above are as good as anytying. GoFaster’s cartoon hits one nail on the head!

If you’re interested, here’s some thoughts on password managers
http://ask-leo.com/are_password_managers_like_roboform_and_lastpass_safe.html

Similar position to you (but +50) re knees and, in my case, lots of Dales hills to worry about. Perfect excuse to buy a new Whyte 29C. For health reasons.

BTTW how old is the rest of you?

You can wash riding gear?

Here’s an interesting infographic of US debt – all 17 Trillion dollars of it!!! For the US, China is owed a relatively small amount, don’t know if that is the case for the UK. Bizarrely the US owes most money to itself.

Satellite is an option of last resort (when you can’t get any other sort of broadband) and if you’re rural I guess you don’t have a good 3G/4G service from anyone?

As wwaswas says, you’re probably going to have BT somewhere in your sevice. Other than paying them line rental, why are you having any dealings with them?

Here in my part of Cumbria we’re trying to sort out our own fibre based broadband service, because if we don’t do it ourselves noone else will and we’ll never get much more than 2Mb/s.

We’ve trialled a couple of chromebooks at work and I like them too. Although it’s touted as a cloud-based device, in fact for most apps, much of the time, it works OK when off-line too.

However using Google Docs at work wasn’t an option for various reasons and we found managing compatibility between Google Docs and Office a real pain. Our solution was to use Office 365 instead of Google Docs, which kind of sorted out that issue for us. .

If your daughter can use Google Docs instead of MS Office then I think it’s a good option for her. However if she’s going to have to manage the compatibility issue then I think you’re better off getting a conventional laptop with a student edition of Office.

Our experience of a wood burner and unlined chimney was not good. For reasons why unlined chimneys aren’t good see Chimney Relining. We have now had relining done and the difference is fantastic – much happier!

My only regrets: not becoming a parent earlier and not having more than one child.

Same here – totally with you on that. Why did no-one tell me (and make me believe them)?!

Maybe in a sportive there’s a sense that it’s the “organizer’s” responsibility to help out? Fair play to you and you mates – hope the chap was none the worse.

Booked for 24th for an appointment

10 days to see a GP! Is that normal where you are?

Herons eat crows.

There’s a YHA in the middle of Kendal next to the Brewery Arts Centre?

I’ve got an HMDX Jam bluetooth speaker. About 25GBP. Works perfectly with my Android phone. Portable, rugged, easy to use and a pretty good sound.

Natural History and Science museums at half term will be unpleasant! If you’re City side, HMS Belfast is interesting; Tower of London surprisingly good but expensive – go early to beat the hordes; St Pauls and walking around Pudding Lane.

In the living room we’ve got a small cheapo chinese-made stove from a builder’s yard; in the kitchen we’ve got a mid-sized Morso (a Panther I think). They both do a decent job and look OK. In truth I’m perfectly happy with the cheap one and wouldn’t now pay the significant premium for a ‘named’ stove.

Things to consider: get the right heat output for your room size; you’ll need a lined chimney; you’ll need a suitably sized hearth of a suitable material; consider multi-fuel rather than just wood burner. Wood burners are subject to various regulations (under building regs?) and should be installed be an authorised installer. Or, as people have been doing for decades without problem, you can install it yourself!

As to where to buy – builder’s merchant for cheap end stoves; stovesonline for other models.

I’ve had a pickup similar to that pictured, but in the UK. Wife and x1 child – all of us outdoorsy.

Cons are it’s a long car with a turning circle to match; security, as in theft from – those canopy jobbies are a bit crap; running costs are high the UK; ride on poor roads can be awfully uncomfortable; you need some sort of container or system in the load bay to stop stuff bouncing around.

Pros are that they are hard as nails; primary safety; ground clearance; huge luggability/towability and, in my view, they’re fun to drive.

I hired the Avanza in South Africa recently and thought it quite nice. For me I’d take it over a Fiesta. But if costs are all much of a muchness, I’d go for the Isuzu!

cheers

+1 for Khan Academy material.