In 666 there lives a Mr. Miller He’s our local vicar and a serial killer

Egg Master will solve all your breakfast conundrums :-)

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/15/kitchen-gadgets-review-egg-master-horrifying-unholy-affair

The first time I fitted SPDs, I practised (probably to the amusement of the neighbours) by cycling round the back garden with lots of clipping in and out.

So before I venturing on to the road, I had a reasonable amount of confidence I wasn’t going to drop the bike the first time I stopped.

Thanks for replies,

They’re cheapo unbranded brakes. I can’t recall off hand if there’s an internal pivot – will have a look tonight.

I’ll see if there’s anything I can file down

Think pretty much Vaxuhall I’ve ever been more than 12 months old has the engine management light on

Open plan kitchen/diners? Seems like everyone who has an extension or refurb carried out knocks down walls to create a through kitchen-diner.

While it would make my house look modern, having a separate kitchen means you can be busy in the kitchen without an audience

No one using the Park tooks? Very expensive, but their bearing cup press looks a nice bit of kit.

The lack of dipstick on my BMW 320 was really annoying.

Less than 24hrs after being serviced by a BMW main dealer the top up oil light came on. On complaining to dealer, they advised they only change the oil if the computer tells them to(!) and there is no way of checking the oil level other than by the gauge in the car (which only has a reading after the car had been driven for a bit).

Sounds like good advice. If he buys a petrol C-Max and it turns out to be a a dog I’ll never hear the end of it

Pretty sure it’s something like this, in ‘hire car silver metallic’. Not quie such a looker as the estate…

Great set of responses – cheers guys.

I suspect there are a lot fewer petrol C4s about than diesel, don’t think Motor Point had any. I think BIL having experienced no reliability problems with his old skool Galaxy diesel engine assumes a newer engine will be equally reliable. We’ll see…

It’s certainly a lot for the money – BIL basically said what he’s saved on going for another Galaxy or S-Max will more than cover any potential future garage bills.

Had new shape 2.2 diesel estate as company car for a couple of years.

+’ve:

Absolutely loads of space – even with rear seats up can get an incredible amount of stuff in the back

Frugal – Usually averaged mid -40s – early 50s out of a tank, with a mix of motorway and town driving. With just myself in it driving in moving but busy section of motorway (so prob doing about 50 MPG for most of the way down from Leeds to M25), it claimed over 60

Comfortable – can drive 400+ miles in it without any back or shoulder aches

-ve:

Bit un-inspiring – it doesn’t pretend to be anything sporty, but it never really put a smile on my face driving it

Niggling faults – the tyre pressure light seemed incredible sensitive. After 3 failed attempts by garage to reset and recalibrate it, the conclusion was problem was caused by different brands (although identical size) tyres on the front. Next new set when both were replaced cured the problem

No spare tyre- don’t think was even an option – flat tyre meant a 90 min wait to be towed home

Keyless start – ok, bit of a first world problem but lack of ignition key means when you get out the car, you have to remember where you chucked the key!

Equipment – for a brand new car, was a bit dissapointed no DAB radio. I don’t think it had USB port for charging either

It was is a big car, so the parking sensors are a worthwhile option for when squeezing into parking spaces. As I recall, this was standard on fit on the SE-L model

I had a Cubot (via Amazon) a few years back. For the spec of the phone, it seemed a good deal at under £100.

It was fine (if a bit slow and short on memory) for a about 9 months, and then the screen started getting more and more dead pixels until the screen just flickered wouldn’t display anything.

It seemed like it should be a warranty return, but Because I’d had it for 9 months and it had come from Amazon Market Place, I had to deal with the Amazon seller direct.

They were in China and less than responsive. In the end I got £25 quid back.

The phone had generally positive reviews on Amazon, so maybe I was just unlucky. Guess you just have to take a calculated risk on it, and accept any warranty that comes with it is probably worthless.

I need to clean the chain on bike I picked up eBay – chain seriously minging, so plan to take off and soak.

Is Gunk any good for cleaning chains? Or stick with white spirit?

Cheers

>>of which station? Paddington and Waterloo are 45mins walk away from each other.

sorry, wassn’t clear there. Looking for pubs that can walk between, but fairly are central, can jump back on tube at end of night and head back to mainline stations.

I removed woodchip from the ceiling of one of the bedrooms in my house – I was fearful of what I’d find behind it. The plaster however turned out to be almost perfect, so the previous owner must have papered the ceiling with woodchip because they liked it!!! (they had also papered downstairs loo with the same wallpaper as the walls – never seen that done before!)

If you’ve a lot to do, then it may be worth hiring a steamer. I found the steamer I hired significantly more powerful than my own Bosch (DIY-grade) one. Do need to be a bit careful though so’s not to blow the plaster.

That little spiking tool looks great!

Thanks for the replies.

My soldering skills unfortunately only extend as far as circuit boards and plumbing.

I was hoping that someone might suggest something like Epoxy glue might do the trick…

I’d steer well clear of Silverline. I’ve bought a couple of their handtools and they’ve been crap. I can only assume their powertools would be equally bad.

I’m sure there are better budget power tools out there if you can’t justify the Maikta/Dewalt/Bosch Blue etc.

yes, did pass him. But then had to stop at roundabout about 25 meters later, so he caught up. Luckily or otherwise, we then went separate ways

+1 for Honda Izzy. Had mine for 5+ years – always starts first time, even after winter hibernation, only ever needed basic DIY servicing and runs perfectly.

My neighbour bought a B&Q own-brand petrol mower at the same time as me and gloated at the £100 or so he’d saved over buying an Izzy. Within 3 years the starter mechanism had broken and he couldn’t source any spares. Being a resourceful sort of chap he managed to work around the problem (now starts it by attaching a battery drill/driver to where the cord starter used to connect!) but the engine sounds like a bag of spanners compared to mine.

I read somewhere that painting the underneath of a metal deck with old engine oil helps prevent rust. Never tried it myself.

What kind of garage door can you have that it humanly possible to squeeze underneath?

In addition to getting another set of keys cut tomorrow, I’d be looking at reviewing security levels.

I was on one recently, hosted by a major provider of business communications systems, using their own web conferencing system.

The call was an absolute shambles, with the first 25 mins+ of the call taken up while they tried to get audio working, getting rid of deafening feedback, and umpteen “can everyone hear us now?” questions.

Smiths coffee[/url] for me. Love their Brazilian blend for making espresso.

I’ve tried quite a few different coffees from Happy Donkey, HasBean, supermarket, Costa, local coffee shops but always come back to Smiths!

Can collect from their Hemel office to save the P&P if local.

I recon regular decent money would be in a mid-week position on a light industrial unit.

There’s a van near one of our offices – he opens early and caters for all the lorry drivers doing early deliveries , then busy doing bacon rolls etc. for the office workers, before being really busy with lunch-time trade. Then shut up shop at about 2. Sells decent food, so gets a lot of regulars and recommendations.

Must have been doing ok as he regularly disappeared for a week on foreign holiday!

Guess getting a decent pitch would be one of the hardest thing, and then having the on-going worry of someone else turning up in direct competition.

On the Reading – Gatwick train, most mornings the guard walks through the train asking if anyone needs to buy a ticket (even though I think all stations have a ticket machine). Some mornings, the guard seemingly can’t be arsed, and people knock on his door at the end of the train and ask to buy a ticket.

Makes me wonder how many people, who alight from the train at a small station without a barrier only buy a ticket if the guy happens to come round the train.

There’s also a guy who buys his ticket from the guard, even though he gets on at Reading where there are barriers at every entrance. How does he get as far as the platform with no ticket?

My old company’s car policy if you went cash for cars was so strict (car had to be <3 years old, <70000 miles, 4 doors, must be serviced by dealer etc etc) it pretty much forced your hand to take the company car. I used to have to do loads of business miles, so it was generally worth the BIK burden.

Place I’m at now is far more relaxed. Coupled with the fact that I’m not doing many business miles means I could buy what I liked.

That said, having to buy/insure/look after/sort out any problems did come as a bit of a shock after 10+ years with company car.

Remember to add business on to your insurance policy.

We recently had the old poly roof in ours replaced with the solar-reflective glass – it’s made a big difference in not getting so unbearably hot on sunny days. It also seems to keep the heat in during winter. Loads quieter when it rains too!

Will see how it goes in the summer, but not felt the need for roof blinds yet.

Would have been nice to add a stove, but would have added a lot to the cost.

Did consider think about converting to tiled roof, but would miss being able to look up at the sky

I saw one in my garden a week or so back – first one I’ve seen for a couple of years.

Last time, we were advised (by neighbour who’s retired pest controller) to stop feeding the birds as the rats just feed off stuff dropped off the feeder and bird table. He also suggested getting rid of my log pile, as apparently would make nice habitat for rats’ nest. (I only did the former…)

I suspect this new one could be living down the garden under shed, but I also saw it (or could it be one of its friends/siblings/parents) on the patio, which did concern me – too close to house for comfort, especially with summer and leaving patio doors open.

I don’t fancy the idea of putting down poison so instead bought an electronic zapper; they get fairly positive reviews on Amazon. So far though, despite being bated with bread (obviously in true STW fashion made in bread machine) and peanut butter I’ve not caught anything yet. Not seen ratty this week though, so maybe one of the neighbours has dealt with it.

A few of the parents at my kids’ school seem on the edge of a total melt-down, and it seemingly takes one little thing to top them over the edge…

Just the day I was walking past and a woman’s trying to turn her (huge 4×4) car round in the fairly narrow road. Another parent is approaching on a bike and has to pull up sharpish to avoid being reversed into (from my view, she car driver was oblivious to her presence).

Not unreasonably, the woman on the bike remonstrates with the car driver but instead of an apology gets a load of verbal and mental waving of arms.

Guess you never know what else is going on in peoples’ lives.

Just follow Jay’s example from the Inbetweeners movie and chuck ‘em in the pool

Definitely recommend using Twitter. I had no end of problems with Virgin Media over a c0cked-up phone line installation. Calling their customer service was just getting me nowhere other than raising my blood pressure. Within a few hours of a polite and to the facts post on Twitter, we had a response from VM, and even better a named contact who took ownership of the problem.

What is it with these big companies though? With a few exceptions, the level of customer is appalling at all of them!

As a slide aside, on chatting with a BT engineer recently, he had similar sentiments to those posted by bigrich –all he old boys retiring into their final salary pension schemes were leaving a big knowledge gap.

He mentioned that if there was a line fault, he’d be able to trace it all the way from the customer’s house back to the exchange and fix it. The younger lads though would only be able to do one part of the trace, and if fault elsewhere probably have to pass it back to someone else to sort out.

When British Gas (think it was Trasco who did the work) replaced our external cast iron pipe they somehow inserted a plastic inner pipe within the existing pipe.

I wasn’t in on the day they did it (would have liked to see how it’s done), but there wasn’t any visible sign from outside the house of anything being done.

Sorry if naive question, but is clamping on the top tube advisable? I understood (from a bike shop mechanic) that this was not advisable as the top tube wasn’t strong enough, and you risk denting (ie crushing it) it.

His recommendation was that best practise was to always clamp using seat post.

That would be nice, but Reading to Guildford would be a bit far…

I need a laptop too. That Dell outlet place looked good (as in some attractive-looking deals) however if you Google for reviews of Dell outlet, most of the reviews are atrocious

Thanks for advise guys, EPDM looks good stuff.

My existing felt hasn’t deteriorated and there’s no water ingress, so I wasn’t planning on remove it. This is more of bit of preventative maintenance to try and stave off future problems.

Ours Bosch dishwasher has had about 2 years of daily use and has never given any grief. Ditto the Bosch washing machine that’s now 10 years old and still going strong

Thanks for your responses guys – appreciated. Should have posted here before contacting him..

Should have asked for pics, but as already suggested kicking the box around a bit and a liberal spraying of WD-40 and I’m no further forward i.e. still not admissible proof. I will ask for pics and some more info before refunding anything though out of principal.

At the end of the day, like most transactions on eBay there’s a degree of trust required from both parties. He may be posting (up here for all I know) of some w@nker whose sold pair of leaking old brakes.

I packed the brakes (separately) in the Shimano box my new brakes came in. It was a fairly sturdy box although with hindsight I perhaps should have taped the brakes down and put some form of spacer in the caliper. Hindsight’s a great thing though!

At the end of the day I could do without the hassle of getting them returned/relisting/responding to a dozen ‘will you end it now for some derisory sum questions’/packing up again and shipping so would rather resolve it amicably.