In the expectation that someone will swivell on them?

1.9Tdi (130hp) Passat. All day long!

I've read a good few of these posts, but not all. I was thinking about bullying yesterday funnily enough. Seems like we live in a country where meaness is endemic. You only have to observe the way the public vote on reality TV shows to see this. What a bunch of saddos!!!

School is probably the worst place for bullying (though the workplace comes a close second). The thing to consider is that children are in the early stages of developing their social skills. Many haven't yet worked out what they have to loose, some have, but know they are below the age of legal responsibility. With young people, the situation is like shifting sands and blame can sometimes be apportioned to both sides. The hope is that this behaviour can be positively shaped at this stage. It requires skillful mentoring for both parties.

I certainly was on the receiving end of quite a bit of bullying at school and even after my parents intervened (against my will – my fear was it would make things worse – it did!). The upshot of the parental intervention was that I was treated like I was 50% to blame. The bully continued, so I eventually gave him a taste of his own medicine (without actually laying a finger on him). It obviously worked because his parents then went to see the head after listening to their son's croccodile tears. Of course, I then became the bully! So you can't really win.

Some 35 years later I still wonder why some individuals feel compelled to make other people's lives such a misery. Is it their insecurity, their uber-negative emotions, their coping stategy for life (they have been badly abused by the people who are supposed to care for them the most). I make no excuses for these sad people because they damage everyone around them. They can seriously affect normal people to the point where they become like them. Like a cancer I suppose.

In school age children who have very little life experience, I can only put this bad behaviour down to weak parenting and lack of effort on the part of those charged with their care. Parents should sign a contract with a school saying that they will support them. If they don't, their children should run the risk of permanent exclusion. Harsh, but fair!

To understand what is happening with a 9 year old bully, you need to consult the parents. You will probably get a defensive reaction, maybe even some abuse, or perhaps they will be the kind of slimey idots who will charm their way out of the situation and go to any length to twist things around. Either way, you'll know better what you are up against, but will have flagged that there is a problem which will invade their space and disrupt their free time if the bully continues.

So my advice is go and talk to the parents of the bully. Perhaps when things get this close to home, the bully will wind it's neck in!

They're all a bit flaky in my experience. I have an ageing Thomson that is now 7 years old and working fine. A Grundig that croaked. Bought 2 Sagems for my kids and both failed. It's the luck of the draw, especially with all the over the air upgrades.

Humax seem to have a reputation, but this is for PVR technology. I have two old Pace Pumas PVRs. One i've had for 5 years or so, the other a year. The picture is ace, but in the early days, before numerous code upgrades, these were hopelessly unreliable. At the last upgrade a few years ago they fixed the problems, so I picked up another on Pikeybay last Christmas for £35 – bargain!

Then there are HD decoders just round the corner – I think Sigmatek have one, but check that it has a DVB-2 tuner. Of course, just because a box has an HDMI output, it doesn't mean to say it's HD compliant. It has to have a DVB-2 tuner to decode HD, period.

Good luck!

We never had all this shxt 20 years ago!

Who screwed this country up?

It's all down to the legion of sanctimonious "peaked caps" we all pointlessly take notice of IMHO.

What we need is a stiff dose of corruption in amongst these people

(no way!)

And thanks for the begrudging messages about how I look 'alright'…!

No Mark! People are being honest. You do look very well! The irony of it eh.

Great photos which clearly convey your happy day.

The best of luck to you both!

Someone said "Volts jolt, amps kill". This is very confusing and can give out the wrong message that any voltage is safe if the amps are low. The fact is, it only takes a tiny amperage to kill you. The reason we don't all die when we touch a battery is because it takes a lot of volts to pass though your heart.

Unfortunately, what they teach in schools up to secondary level is wrong. They can't seem to explain the difference between volts and amps and this was one of the first things our lecturer at college put is straight on. Years later, I had an argument and lost a friend over this one evening. She was being paid to mark science exam papers, incorrectly! No wonder people get confused, hate Physics and that this country has so few people wanting to be engineers!

I'll explain why high voltage kills, not high amps: Put simply, you need high voltage to "jump" through you. The higher the voltage the easier this becomes. A deadly shock attacks the heart and the most effective way is to allow current to pass through your rib cage. To minimise this, people having to work on live high voltage equipment will often stand on rubber mats/wear rubber boots (to prevent a route to earth through their feet) and always have one hand only on the equipment.

Alternating current (AC) is used for transmission of power as it looses less energy than DC. In order to efficiently transmit power over distance, we use AC high voltage and low current. That's why power lines suspended across the countryside are at very high voltages. If we used DC and low voltages, the lines would need to be incredibly thick to handle the current, but we'd still loose a lot of power. e.g, double the voltage, halve the current. If you've ever installed a powerful car ausio system, you will have found that the power cable on offer is very thick. It needs to be to handle the current demand of a system powered by just 12-16v.

Back to living creatures… It only takes a few millamps to kill you (I believe the figure to be 1.6 Milliamps or 0.0016 amps ) – it will cause your heart rhythm to be interrupted and if you don't survive, it will be because you've had an heart attack.

Conversely, holding the terminals of a low voltage, high current source, such as a 50Ah car battery, will not even register the slightest tingle and is completely safe.

I can't remember exactly what a safe voltage is, but it's something like 50v, or maybe a bit less. 50v will give you a nip and it really does depend on moisture (a conductant). Sweat is a good conductor, perhaps due to the salt content. If your skin is bone dry, you are less likely to get a circuit through you.

Conductivity is a big factor in whether you get a shock or not and how bad the shock is. If you are soaking wet, expect a big one. If your dry, you might not even get a shock.

However, if you introduce high voltage and high current over a period of time, you will fry – nasty.

Just don't fxxk with high voltages. Turn the juice OFF, but if this is not posible, proceed with extreme caution (like when diagnosing electonic equipment faults). Better still, get a man who is qualified to deal with it.

I like the quote somebody else made

I think it effectively just rebooted my head lol.

Lucky George says: "ello, wos this then?" 😆

(you have to be old and have watched Alas Smith and Jones to know what i'm talking about)

Sounds like a typical situation I would find myself in when I was in large system support. It took me over 20 years of trying to get away from all that nonsense. That was around 5 years ago. I've been struggling to get work ever since.

Employers take the fxxking piss!

Either accept this, or work damned hard to get a job where you are only expected to do a sensible working week.

god fortune

WTF!!??

they'll be loads come on and tell you Dysons break easily and then loads say they don't.

They don't last! I've seen plenty of these at my local tip and know at least two people who defended theirs, but had to replace them.

I have had a Meile for 18 years. We bought another to get a HEPA filter version(a family member has alergies). The new one, which is a cyclinder type, has rotating brushes driven by suction (along with all the standard attachments). It's much less noisy than other vacuum cleaners I've used.

Meile will clean better than a Dyson. I saw this in a Which report – no contest!

You need to wait until the next BMF show, where you will get kitted out properly from head to toe for as little as £150 (decent brands).

Google "BMF" and look at their website.

😆

Left click on "computer", select "manage", select "device manager". Look for any yellow attention symbols. If one appears next to your network adapter, you have a problem. See what it says. If there are no attention symbols, look down the list for the adapter and click on it to look at "properties". One of the tabs will say "this device is working properly", (or not). If not, try the "uninstall" option, then right click and "search for hardware changes". The device you deleted will then re-install.

After his look at "network" and look for your adapter.

Have a fiddle with it until you work it out. Swot I did!

Good luck!

If your dad's affairs are straightforward, my strong advice is to get a book on it and do it yourself!

My father's estate was simple, but we chose the family solicitor. He actually turned out to be a legal executive, but working for a reputable firm of solicitors. This firm took three and a half years to close this one out! The legal exec was off sick with a bad back for a period of six months, but nobody delegated the task to someone else. Sitting in a chair is so demanding on your back isn't it! Nobody notified us of his absence and this information did not come to light until much later on. He actually attempted to blame us for the delays (without any justification whatsoever). Arrogant xxxx!

After three years and after the case had been passed to a senior partner in the law firm, but we still faced a long wait. I invoked the Law Society's ombudsman who, after several months, ruled against the firm and we were compensated. It was a piric victory as the compensation barely covered the loss of interest on the money sat in the solicitor's account.

The other annoying thing was that the ombudsman pressured me into accepting an offer before the case had been closed. I put them off once, but they persisted. My mother was stressed out and wanted the matter closed, so I caved in. I concluded that the ombudsman were not on my side, but just there to make justice appear to be seen to be done!

I spent at least a full week collating the case details for the ombudsman alone, let alone the hours spent drafting letter to the solicitor and consoling my mum on the phone. It was very stressful, but still cost us £££'s. In the meantime, some of the investments tumbled in value when the recession stuck.

In all, we shelled out and got a nightmare in return!

Conversely, my mate's mum died in February and by the end of June he had concluded the whole process, by himself!

It's never a good time dealing with such matters when a loved one has just died. What shocked me was that, even after your parent has died, we were still liable to file a tax return on their behalf until the estate was wound up. This went on for three years. Taxing the dead is immoral in my book!

Good luck and please accept my condolances!

Well actually, this is £25k more than I am earning right now! For the most part of my working life I earned an average salary, but have had to put in considerable O/T to make ends meet (50-130hrs a month, plus standby). This does not put me in the category of high earners who often look down their noses at hardworking people!

What I can't reconcile in this day and age is how it's ok for a few to earn vastly more than an average wage and how that totally floors anyone with aspirations beyond keeping much more than a roof over their heads. Normal people are priced out of so much.

If you live in an area of low house prices, or are contented to constantly watch every penny for all of your lfe, go ahead, knock yourself out!

Where I live, a humble flat costs over £200k. I don't live inside the M25, where a similar property could fetch twice, three times as much (if not more, a lot more).

So as somebody pointed out, in the real economic world, £25k isn't going to touch the sides. It'd put you in the market for no more than £100k mortgage and you'd need a deposit of 10% before a bank would entertain the prospect of lending you money. How long would it take to save up £10k on a £25k salary, whilst paying for day to day expenses and the odd discretionary item?

As someone with experience in project management, this is not a great rate of pay. However, considering that this is a public sector job, there will be a gold plated pension which would boost the equivalent private sector salary by a substantial percentage. The terms and conditions will be "comfy" too.

I'm sure when the swingeing cuts in public spending are made shortly after the next general election, this post will vapourize anyway.

I had a Nokia 6300 and just wanted a simple phone with an MP3 that wasn't a brick! I was swayed my a demo of the Nokia 5800. I am so pleased I got a full blown smart phone and have tolerated the resulting "yorkie Bar" bulging in my pocket. The benefits comfortably outweigh the disadvantages.

The Nokia X6 is due out any day now – like a slimmed down, better looking 5800.

The 5800 battery life is awesome in comparison to a 6300 – a big flaw in this old handset. I've had dozens of Nokia phones, none were as bad as the 6300.

The BBC iPlayer and MP3 capabilities are more than gimmicks. I am always time shifting BBC TV. You can stream live BBC over wifi too. MP3 performance is impressive and with the X6, you will get what looks like a decent pair of headphones.

The GPS is very useful. It supports Viewranger and Garmin satnav sw, but Nokia Sports tracker is a free download – fantastic sw.

The web browsing experience is passable (only let down by the 3.2" screen being a tad on the small side).

There are added bonuses such as apps to make the camera flash work as a torch, standard build in FM radio, some internet radio stations are available over wifi, A2DP Bluetooth audio out (which does work) etc. There's email, MSN messenger, Facebook and MySpace quick links.

Nokia also works consumately, as a phone! 😆

The 5800 is an example of convergence which actually works! The X6 will be awesome with all these feature plus the 32Gb of internal memory (5800 has a max of 16Gb)

I have an low energy bulb in my porch light – 18 years old – still works.

The latest low energy lamps have a much nicer colour of light than the earlier ones. They are cheap too.

In my kitchen, to get round the warm up issue, I have two low energy and a traditional filament. It costs me a bit extra to have the filament lamp, but not a great deal. Worth it for the istant light you get from these.

LED's are the future however. Warm white variants look a similar colour to tungsten. There are some lamps available now, but they aren't yet priced at a point that is economic. I'd give it 2 years before they are flying off the shelves at real world prices.

Well when you get home from work hungry and tired, skip diner, skip the shower. Go and pedal round a dark, cold and muddy forest, whilst getting rained on!

If you want an outdoor lifestyle, this is the wrong country! Given that daylight is a scarcity for half the year and rain frequently spoils the procedings, it takes all but the dogedly determined to keep up any outdoor routine.

Nice job, shame about the salary, but if every day is great fun doing something you love….

Yeah congrats from me too!

I was on that dose 7 years ago for about a year. All I can really remember them doing was making it hard to get a stiffee. They didn't seem to do much else.

I'd recommend them to ppl with premature ………

Fix the undelying cause of your problem. Pills are a sticking plaster.

Some say they can leave you in a worse state than before you went on them, but this might be nonsense. Mind you, I do have my moments 😀

Getting the power off is important, but sometimes you can be lucky.

Once fell asleep listening to my fully charged Zen MP3 player. Woke up the next day to find it had fallen off the bed and into the pint of water which i'd placed on the floor next to my bed. How unlucky was that?

Got it open and removed the non-removeable battery. Stuck it in the airing cupboard and to my amazement, it powered back on as normal 2 days later.

Don't try this at home!

They should stop eating "them genes". Far too many calories!

Should stick to pies instead.

What did I do wrong?

Easy!

She wanted sympathy, not a summary of her situation and a highlight of all it's positive aspects.

Women don't want to hear practical solutions, they want empathy and sympathy.

Next time run her a hot bath with herbal salts, light candles, give her a nice glass of Pinot Grigio and then sit and listen intently whilst she pours her heart out to you. Then say things like "I can understand how you feel darling" etc.

If none of the above is workable, sit the kids infront of the TV and put the Iggle Piggle DVD on. Then slip out for a pint before she gets home. 😆

But only with cheese.

Horses taste good in burger form too!

Hmm, i'm not a medical person, but I know fluid retention is quite common when patients are suffering from heart problems. I sincerely hope this is true in your case and that there is nothing more going on. I wish you the very best for a speedy recovery!

I also admire your courage and positive spirit! You are a shining example of these qualities and the guys who provide the STW forum must be proud to have on their site "the mother of all positive threads"!

I hope you both to enjoy your day on Saturday. You clearly share a very special love between you for which we can only be envious.

Good luck for Saturday.

If you like the idea of paying to post your expensive item off to this annonymous buyer before recieving a penny, carry on with the auction!

If Paypal get a positive feedback from the buyer, you will then get your money.

"Feebay" isn't good value anymore. They are uber slow to resolve issues, but uber fast at taking their fees from you.

My advice is to encourage buyers to contact you via email (put it in your ad) and then seal the deal outside of eBay. Pull the ad before it finishes, accept cash on collection and just pay the insertion fee. Simples!

Give "Feebay" and "Gaypal" some of their own medicine!! 😀

Righto, this is easy (advice from a person with 25 yrs experience as a computer hardware support engineer on large systems). You might have to have more than one go at fixing this.

Spilled drinks shouldn't be a problem if you immediately powered down the PC after the spill.

Remove affected items.

Remove all the keys from the keyboard placing them in order as removed. The remaining assembly should be in two layers. If it can be separated, do so and wash and leave to dry. If not, give a soak in a bowl of clean water. No detergents.

Do the same to the mouse pad.

Then stick both in an airing cupboard.

If the units aren't separable, allow at least a couple of days to dry out.

Reassemble affected items, but leave keys off.

Reboot and test.

If keys don't work, get a dampened cotton bud and dab the affect key. Actuate the key until it works. If it doesn't, accept defeat and buy a new keyboard. 😆

If all seems ok, replace all the working keytops. Leave the iffy ones until the next day.

You may need to repat the cotton bud process to get the offending keys working.

Should be fine.

Ban GF from coming within 10m of you PC when she has a drink in her hand!

I once got a call to a firm who's roof had leaked in a heavy downpour. I arrived at 1 am to find water pouring into the top of their IBM mainframe. Talk about bad luck – it was a fire extinguisher company – the irony of it!

I stripped out all that I could, disconnected all the channel cables and power connectors and set a large fan on it (which the customer happened to have). By nine o'clock and with three replacement power supplies, the machine was up and running again. I thought this was an achievement, but my employer was like "yeah whatever". Glad i'm not doing shxt like that anymore!

OMG, I forgot "being greedy"!

Twisting the truth.

Being comfortable in throwing your weight around when you think it's necessary.

Successfully offloading culpability onto others for your mistakes.

Successfully gaining recognition for someone else's good work and/or ideas.

Leaving everyone else to do all the organising and being utterly disinterested in informing subordinates about key issues.

Being completely comfortable in exploiting people whilst making these individuals feel lucky they still have a job.

LOL. Have I become an old cycnic?

How about cheating?

Dualit! Had mine for at least a decade. Fully serviceable, but it hasn't failed yet. Worth the extra expense IMHO.

Religion rearing it's breathtakingly stupid and ugly head again!

I say vote for freedom and abandon all this nonsense (all faiths).

Even the most moderately religious person is silently discriminating in their piety and self-righteousness (whatever their faith). They look at the world with a jaundiced maner, one governed by bizarre and frankly, incorrect ideas.

I think the main problem is that some people are unable to think freely and are just plain rubbish at understanding science. So they just make up what they don't understand with fairytales. They are completely ignoring logic, abundant evidence and robustly proven facts. Are you one of these? I pity you if you are!

You don't need a religion to do good by your fellow man, or to live a morally correct life! Altruism is a naturally occuring phenomenon which is driven by selfish needs. Even colonies of insects operate by such rules. Our species has had the wherewithall to build the civilization we have today. If we had rigidly stuck to our religious beliefs and discredited and punished the work of scientists and engineers every time they weakened the plausibility of religious dogma, we'd still be living a barbaric life in mud huts with a life expectancy of not more than 30-35 years!

Without this mumbo jumbo, there would also be no more people confusing religious discrimination with racial dicrimination. The two issues are separate in my view and it is tiring to here all the same old objectors' lines. Just like it's tiring to here references to Hitler in response to someone who holds a controversial opinion. Guys, challenge controversial ideas, don't shout them down! Silencing people indicates you know you have no wish or ability to pull apart a flawed idea, or that you just know you have no counter argument.

Religion is just divisive. The problems start when one group feels excluded, threatened, or disadvantaged and then conflict follows. When will we ever learn?

It wouldn't be so bad if these "faiths" were based on something more than a pile of dusty old supersticious storybooks which are routinely misinterpreted in a "cap fits" manner to suit some other agenda!

As for the Dutch guy causing a stir, well why can't he raise some valid points? Why should his voice be silenced by a minority who protest loudly about their precious faith? The reason is that they know their book of rules is flawed, but the same book grants them permission to behave unreasonably in order to "defend" their faith.

I don't think you will ever get through to anyone so brainwashed and blinkered. This applies to all people of all faiths who get too obsessed by religion. The big question is: How do you tell if an individual is moderate, or extreme in their beliefs?

Being a tolerant liberal society has allowed all this nonsense to take hold.

I used to have a D-Link router and had no end of trouble with it. It could go for weeks without fault, but then be thoroughly unreliable and the only solution each time was a power on reset. I did all the usual flashing of firmware and tried several updates issued by D-Link specifically to resolve my problem. The support was ok, but fell apart when they failed to rectify the problem. Searching web forums revealed that I was not alone. I'd recomennd googling!

The retailer who supplied the unit finally admitted that there was an inherent problem with this model and offered a replacement from a different manufacturer (took 9 months, but i persisted).

I now use two U.S. Robotics routers and both work fine.

If you don't want to shell out for a new router, you could buy one of those wireless remote control plugs to P.O.R. your duff router.

Will you look back in years to come, full of regrets?

Ask DFS, they can see into the future.

I'd take cash on collection and save your 4% Paypal fees.

I'd also recommend not using ebay to sell, or buy stuff! Ebay/Paypal customer service and charges are now insulting. By their behaviour, it's patently clear Ebay don't want private sellers anymore.

Look elsewhere obline when you are buying stuff. 95% of the time it's cheaper not using ebay and getting a problem put right is hugely more straightforward with a proper retailer.

Valves and horns! OOH sir! 😆