Many many moons ago when I was a kid, I had two rabbits. They started off in a self built rabbit cage but we ended up letting them have the run of the garden. Each evening they would be put back into their cage. Over time the built their own burrow and it was lovely watching them digging and pulling the soil out. When they died, we discovered the burrow had stretched for about 5-6 meters in two directions. They lived as good a life as any pair of pet rabbits could have (IMHO).

^^ excellent

I’m in IT based in Ireland and working for an Indian company. We work 37.5 hours per week and I believe our Indian colleagues work 40 hours. We don’t get overtime during the week and it is rarely required but we do get paid well for weekend overtime (also rarely required).

When I tried to login this morning (Windows 11 & Chrome 108.0.5359.99 – what a version number!) I got the same error as @BearNecessities but a hard refresh of the page got past the issue. I got the same on my Android 13 phone using Brave browser and a second attempt got past the issue.

We got artificial grass in our back garden about 5 years ago because of our two female dogs (German Shepherd and Collie). Their urine kills off large patches of grass and the buggers never seem to urinate in the same area twice! While weeds do grow in the grass it’s easy enough to remove them if you don’t let them grow too large. Any debris can easily be brushed off and as for the grass being too hot, ours never got even close to that in our hottest of days.

Hoods and helmet lights are not that compatible! 😲

Aren’t there some new fancy Aliexpress options yet? The P90 version of this says it has 10,000 lumens!! What the chinese lumen to real lumen scaling factor?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004651592247.html

Be careful as this doesn’t seem to be very waterproof, the link describes it as small rain/splash water!

I have one of the Halfords 1600 lumen bike lights (the one with the 3 bulbs) and its been really good but the rubber strap has broken.

The same happened to me a few weeks back. I still haven’t done anything about it but I do miss the handlebar light so I should get my act together!

I’ve had three Nukeproofs over 5 years and currently own a Nukeproof FS 290 Pro (2018) and a Megawatt Elite. I’ve had no issues with the frames and I wouldn’t consider myself a delicate rider.

Well as I tend to read more than I contribute, I was content to be a free member. However, after reading about your financial issues, I’ve now become a digital member.

I hope it works out and you continue to operate.

Last year I started in on the Ryobi range and I’ve bought a brushless circular saw, router, jigsaw and an orbital sander and so far I’m happy with them as a casual DIYer. To power them I’ve a 2Ah & 5Ah batteries and I’d like at least one more but as mentioned by others, their batteries aren’t cheap. You can of course buy cheap knock off batteries for the Ryobi range but I’ve no experience with these.

‘Near miss’, does that mean they nearly missed and actually hit?
‘Slow up’ is the opposite ‘speed down’?

I’ve the Google Nest Doorbell and I find it’s normally very fast. Of course if you are in an area of poor cell coverage then it will suffer.

My wife has my old Pixel 3A XL with Android 12 (it was running the beta version for months and now the released version) and it has no issues.

I started mountain biking at 50 and haven’t looked back. Age is only a limit if you let it be (within reason of course).

We fostered a now 25 year old girl from the age of 7 and she is now married. She caused us no trouble at all and was always grateful. She keeps in contact and never forgets birthdays, mother’s / father’s day. Our one ‘failure’ was that she has never worked a day in her life, she takes after her birth mother.

At the moment we’ve two brothers (15 & 16), both are fairly ungrateful and expect everything with little in return. As an example we brought them to Orlando earlier this year (Islands of Adventure…). As an extra treat we asked if they would like to fly in a helicopter (a 5 minute trip) and they said no if they had to sit in the helicopter together – FFS! Needless to say we didn’t comply.

The youngest has anger/authority issues and has been suspended from school four times this year (he’s currently not allowed back until the school year begins in September), countless detentions… This causes all sorts of trouble, meetings with the schools, social workers, time off work to attend. But yet he can be quite kind and outside of the school and home. Most people love him – street angel, house devil.

Neither of the lads want to improve their ‘lot’ in life and I’ve tried to reason with them but nothing works. I suspect once they turn 18 they’ll leave the house and never look back. Nature versus nurture?

We have two biological children (21 & 23), the youngest is living at home studying radiography and hoping to use that to get into medicine while the eldest moved to London (from Ireland). They both give us grief but in different ways but are mostly grateful.

We won’t be fostering anymore despite there being a big demand for foster parents. We’re both in our mid 50s and need to start thinking of ourselves now with less stress in our lives. We’ll just see the lads through until they walk out the door. We’re not in it for the thanks but it would be nice to think we’ve made a positive difference.

Any just my experience and I wish the OP all the best.

Someone mentioned the cost of bike hire in BPW and I see a full day costs £75 (about €88). In Ireland (www.thegap.ie), it’s €65 for the same length of time.
For a pedal up pass it’s €8 if booked on the same day or €5 if booked in advance. For an uplift it’s €45 for the full day (6hr).

BPW doesn’t seem too cheap but it’s on my bucket list. To be fair though, BPW is much larger than The Gap in Ireland.

@Tom D

I think any comparison falls down at the fact if you get fed up with your dog you can have it put down / sell on gumtree / abandom as you see fit. Without breaking any laws. It’s a resonsibility only so far as you can be arsed with it

I know it’s not the same as many kids are in care for various reasons but some are when their parents get fed up with their children and mostly they are not breaking the law. Below is an extract from: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/childrens-social-care-data-in-england-2021/main-findings-childrens-social-care-in-england-2021

Out of the 12 million children living in England, just under 400,000 (3%) are in the social care system at any one time. More than 80,000 of these children are children in care.

My wife bought me my first mountain bike (HT) for my 50th and so began a new chapter in my life. Nearly five years on and I still love it 🙂

Last year a Brazilian friend moved to Spain and gave our biking group a custom card with photos of us on various spins and some kind words. It was very thoughtful and I’ve held onto it.

Done

There are some cracking photos here! How do you actually post pictures on this site???

Ignore this message as I can’t get the image to display.

That’s a real feel good story (how you were helped by so many and not your crash). I also hope I have at least 20 years more mountain biking in me to catch up with your 74 years.

Done

During last year’s lockdown I installed smart TRVs (needs a hub) on most of the radiators and I can control each room separately. The one issue I have with them is they are a little noisy when opening and closing the value.

They can be controlled via Google Home and I assume Alexa… If you are interested this is where I bought them but the prices look link they have gone through the roof in the last year!

So I pre-ordered the Pixel Pro 6, the charger and a case. The phone and charger were due for delivery 28th/29th and the case late next month. I received notification yesterday of delivery today and sure enough the package was delivered this morning. Guess what though, the only bloody thing in the ridiculously oversized box was the case (not due for another 3/4 weeks) 🙁

I’ve being using the beta version for about 4-5 months with no issues (to speak of) on my Pixel 3A XL. I upgraded it to the full release on Tuesday without issues.

I ordered the the Pixel 6 Pro, the first time in years I have bought a ‘top-end’ phone. Interestingly, it cost €899 in Ireland and I think the same phone is £849 (approx €1005) in the UK. Previously the price of phones used to be cheaper in the UK than Ireland. Of course it is cheaper in America at $899 (approx €772/£651).

A few years ago, we were following a drag hunt. At then end of the hunt they passed a house in a country lane, when one of the hounds jumped into a garden after a pet dog and all the hounds went into a frenzy and followed. They tore the poor dog limb from limb, it never stood a chance and we could hear the cries of the poor dog from about .5km away.

My two lads (aged about 13 & 14 at the time) were accused of shop lifting (sweets and biscuits). We were only told of this by mother of one of their friends who got caught by store security. When we spoke to the lads they said they were completely innocent.

When we contacted the store they said they had CCTV that proved otherwise and while we didn’t see the footage they described the lads and what happened. Armed with this, we had another conversation with the lads and funnily enough they changed their story.

We also had a look at their phones and conversations they had with their friend after the event and that proved beyond doubt they were guilty as hell.

Taking their phone, PlayStations and grounding them was their punishment (and the shop banned them).

That’s so well done, it makes me want to stop typing and head out on the trails.

If none of the solutions above work for you, then please PM me and I can write some code to do the job.

I live in Bray and can show you the local trails (beginning on Bray Head) and those trails further away. And as you are willing to drive an hour in either direction then there’s plenty of places to go. PM me if you want.

A few months ago they replaced my out of warranty Edge 530 with a refurbished one in perfect condition. I sent them the old one and a few weeks later I got the replacement.

Our black German Shepherd just loves meeting up with another fellow dog walker’s male black German Sheppard but ignores their Great Dane mix dog. She’s not nearly as happy to meet other regular German Shepherds!

I’m using VM (Ireland) and using a wired connection to my PC I get exactly what I pay for: 500MB download, 50MB upload and 5-6ms latency for €71 per month (normally the speeds are always a bit higher).
However, doing the same speed check on my phone using wifi, I can only get 87MB down and 49MB up with a latency of 13ms. They also offer a 1GB connection but I don’t think I really need it!
BTW I stopped using the Virgin Media hub for wifi and now use Google Nest wifi. I’ve found the wifi speeds and overall reliability throughout the house have improved dramatically.