Make sure that if you do end working for the client on a freelance basis that you keep formal records of dates fo meetings/discussions etc. to show that you approached them after they stopped placing work with your employer. With regards to non-compete I would say it's not worth anything if you are made redundant.

I suspect the real reason is that his Mum is Danish. The Danish and English sense of humour don't mix so he's developing a split personality.

Or could it be that with Winter coming he knows that pickled herring is likely to be on the menu and isn't looking forward to it :wink:.

I'll get back to you.

The advice given above is mostly correct. My recommendations are:
1) Join a local association – check on the BBKA website for more information:BBKA Association list
2) Register for a course – most of them run over the Winter but as Bunnyhop says they are likely to be booked up. Ours in Surrey is 10x oversubscribed!
3) Attend a local taster session – likely to be in April/May next year as most beekeeping associations will be in the final stages of getting their colonies sorted for the Winter.
4) Don't buy the Beehaus. Overpriced and not very practical for the sort of activities you need to perform on a colony during the season. Also I believe that the BBKA don't approve of it because of concerns about how ill suited it is for beginners.
5) Look out for your local association's honey show – likely to be sometime in October.
6)If you are in the South then go to the national honey show in Weybridge at the end of October.
7) If you decide to keep bees expect to spend around £300 – £500 getting kitted out with equipment, suits etc.
8)Best way to get hold of bees is to try and get a swarm, typically via your local association. Or you can buy a nucleus colony from one of the bee breeders for £100-£150. Ideal tme to get bees is May but you may have to wait for a couple of months depending on demand in your area. Judging by the number of people registering for courses demand will be very high next year.
9) Spacewise – plan on a hive requiring about 6 x 8 feet of space in your garden. Of which allow 6 foot in front of the hive needs to be clear as this is their flight path. If you don't have space you will probably be able to get a site in somebody's garden or a local farmer's field. We currently have 10 or so sites being offered in our area.

Forgot to say if you want to use a travel agent that knows Mauritius go to: http://www.mauritius.com. Ask to speak to the owner Giselle – she's from Mauritius originally and knows all the hotels on the island and can also get some good deals on packages.

Married to a Mauritian and have been about 10 times. Best bet is as CFH suggests go for an all in package. Times to avoid are Christmas & New Year – very expensive due to South African's on their annual vacation. Other times are January through March as it's the cyclone season and you may get hit with some very windy and rainy weather for 3 or 4 days.

For young kids most of the hotels have kids clubs – best one is probably Sugar Beach or the Baechcomber DinaRobin. If you go to a Beachcomber hotel you can normally stay a couple of nights at one of their other hotels on the island.

Hotels on the east side tend to get a bit more of a sea breeze which is nice if you go when the weather's hot.

At least it leaves Flavio free to stand for FIA president to replace Max!

Try running scanpst.exe (Microsoft Outlook file repair program)on the outlook .pst file. If there are problems with the file this might fix them for you.

You might need to search for the location of both scanpst.exe and the .pst file on your pc.

Most wasp colonies are now starting to wind down for the Winter. Unfortunately this, and feeding on overripe fruit (which makes them a bit drunk), means that they are also at their most aggressive.

The nest should be emptied out by the end of October and will not be used again, so it's safe to take it down yourself in the new year.

Bit obvious suggestion – have you gone into the Bios and set it to boot from CD as the first boot priority option. Normally F1 gets you into the Bios.

Certainly contest it. Not only is the other party at fault but it could affect your No Claims Discount (assuming you have one).

Why not check by plugging in an external monitor. The laptop should be able to display on this and then you’ll know if it’s just the screen.

TRAILS – for mapping my bike rides – really good and is meant to track amount of ascent & descent, but not sure if it’s accurate for this
Brick 3D – old fashion brick game
Skype
TV Guide
Blocked
eReader

If you can raise you arm above shoulder height then it should heal of its own accord. Will take quite a while though as it’s a soft tissue injury – upto 3-4 months.

If you can’t raise your arm above the shoulder then the tear is likely to be too big to heal by itself and an operation is likely to be the answer. Keyhole surgery – in and out on the same day.

If you fall into the second category get your GP to refer you to a specialist.

I am currently using beta version of Windows 7. Seems to be stable and not too buggy. Best thing it’s free to download and use for the next year or so.

Find out who’s going to be paying you – UK or Swiss as this could have VAT implications. If it’s more than 3 months then customer will expect a reduced daily rate so you are probably OK at £650 for short term but expect to be at £500 if it’s longer term.

With regards to travel – make sure that if it’s not agreed in advance (say 1 weeks notice) then you reserve the right to charge for travel time. What I found happened to me was that with very limited notice the only option was to travel during the day time meaning that I lost a billable day. Obviously you need to be careful not to appear too greedy if you want the arrangement to workout for both parties.

Good luck

Avoid the cheque route if possible. Ask him to pay cash into your bank account at his local branch. This way the money doesn’t need to clear and it’s safe.

Otherwise offer it to the second highest bidder if you are able to.

In Outlook go to File, Import and Export. Then follow the steps in the wizard – selecting
Export to a File
Choose .pst
Select the Contacts folder
Then name the file and decide where to put it.

You’re not making him wear lycra or ride a Marin are you? I mean the combination of inappropriate gear can be quite off putting!

Great news – hope that your wife’s happy with the result. So you’ll soon be having sleepless nights for the right reasons!

Sorry – bit of a gloat.

We’re lucky our mortgage was with the Portman which was acquired by Nationwide. Fortunately they agreed to keep the old terms in place and we are on a tracker with no floor or collar and our current rate is 0.79%

Simon – you’re sure that your missus was doing it as gently as possible and not looking to exact her revenge for having to put up with you over the years!

SFB – if you are ever looking to raise money for charity you could go for a sponsored “sack, crack & back waxing” job. I’m sure a lot of the STW’ers would pay to see a video clip of you undertaking this challenge.

Yes, you can just go to the Post Office and drop off the item and pay for it. They will also print out the label etc. and give you a barcode receipt so that you and the other party can track the item online.

If someone has zero feedback then as IamSparticus states you are protected. However, the problem with newbies is that they are not always as accurate in describing the condition of what they are selling as you might want (unless of course the goods are brand new). Best course of action is to ask some questions and see how responsive they are. If they are very slow or evasive then best to avoid.

If you’re into puzzles try Blocked and Sudoku. LastFM and TV Guide UK are good and also free.

Had a friend who had a driveway that people would park in front of on a regular basis. As it was the same few cars all the time he got some really sticky A4 “posters” made up asking people not to park in front of his drive. They were a real bu**er to scrape off and it soon stopped the silly sods parking there.

I worked in one as a student. Wasn’t qualified to do the killing so just moving carcasses around and boiling up some of the offal. Found it quite depressing and refused to eat sausages for years after seeing what went into them.

It did seem to be a very macho environment and not a job that attracts your average type of person. I certainly wouldn’t want to work in one again.

also Houns thread asking about dating advice

Sounds like nerve damage, likely to be just bruised. But may take upto a couple of weeks to return back to normal.

On the other hand it could be the start of MS……

molgrips – we might be recruiting Java developers, but it’s in London by Southwark Bridge. If interested can you could send CV to me at:

mail@andyrobinson.co.uk

Looking at the website, they are providing physical contact details which is a good sign. However, the address appears on google maps to be a residential area. They are not a limited company from what I could see which is a bit odd as I would expect a company selling the types of products they are offering to be. Their credit card processing is via protx which is a secure and reliable system.

I would give them a call and ask them a few questions and see what they sound like over the phone.

As badboy said the most effective way to increase sales is to improve your conversion rate. Driving traffic to a site is not the same as increasing sales from your sites. Yes you may want to do both but the quickest payback is to improve your conversion rate of browsers to buyers.

A couple of things you might want to consider before going down the SEO route. Have you analysed current traffic to your site using a traffic analyser like WebTrends or you may find that your ISP provides one for free.
What is your current position in Google?
How long does somebody spend on your site?
Can you detect where the peopel who buy from you come from – if not spend time and money to find out – this will give you the biggest increase in sales.

What do you think appearing on the first page in Google for the common search items (check Adwords and your web analytics reports to see what people are entering). Is it worth the £30k for an SEO to get you higher up?

As mentioned there is a lot of good DIY stuff that you can do to improve your ranking and conversion rates before using an SEO company.

I am married to a Mauritian and go back every couple of years. If you are on your own I would recommend staying in or near Grand Baie. It has a bit more going on for the single person and also some great restaurants. There is a lot of rental property available in and around the town. If you are going to work with Mauritians they are likely to know somebody with a cottage or bungalow you can rent. Prices for hotel and rental properties are quite expensive but food and beer is cheap!

Hire a car or motorbike whilst you are tehre to get around – be aware that in the villages pedestrians believe that they have right of way!

Visit all the spots that everyone has mentioned (if you get time) plus try and visit one of the sugar cane factories. If you are into fishing then you can go deep sea fishing for marlin, tuna and shark. Normally half day trips – a lot of them are based in Grand Baie.

If you are going before end of March be aware that there may be a chance of cylones; not really dangerous but can disrupt travel, power and water supplies for a couple of days.

I am sure you’ll have a really great time – you lucky sod.

I think you might need to use a free utility like Powerstrip. Check out the AVforum website and search on there for more technical info.

Home Cinema Forum[/url]

I’ve got the 8GB model. Having previously used Nokia’s for the last 10+ years I am really pleased with it. For web use it’s very good especially as my contract with O2 doesn’t penalise me for data usage, so I can surf as much as I like. Beware though if you go abroad as the roaming agreements typically make any form of data use very expensive.

Texting is OK – the keyboard popup window is fine if you have normal sized fingers but if your’s are like sausages it might be a bit tricky! :lol: The only drawback to the sms application is that it doesn’t support MMS – though this is not an issue for me.

I would get the 16GB version if you want to load it with loads of music, videos etc.

MF – having been down the unfair dismissal route a few times on both sides of the fence I would really try and get it resolved without having to go to a tribunal. It doesn’t matter whether your case is a strong one it will still be a very stressful time; which given your wife’s condition is something to be avoided.

Also I would check with the solicitor about what the likely costs will be just so that you don’t end up out of pocket.

Finally make sure that any correspondence is copied to the head office/parent company, HR magaer or even MD, to make they are aware of the situation. This was one of the best pieces of advice given to me by my solicitor – as the people responsible for your wife being made redundant will be emotionally involved and want to prove they are right. Somebody at a more senior level from the parent company/head office will usually make a more rational and objective assessment and look for a quick resolution.

Not sure Prince2 would be that relevant toyour role unless as others have stated you are on the project management side. I would look at something like a short course at somewhere like Cranfield which has much better industry recognition in R&D especially in high tech engineering.

Maybe you ought to take some of your own advice and google the word “doyen” because I don’t think it means what you think it does.

Snigletrack – this time I think you are totally wrong and overly cynical.

Whilst I dislike Max Clifford’s business the one thing I would think he will never pull a stunt about is cancer. The reasons being his own wife died of lung cancer 5 years ago and he is a patron of the Royal Marsden Hospital – the leading cancer treatment hospital in the UK. I don’t know what you mean by “doyen of oncology” but he may well be reasonably knowledgable on the subject of cancer.