AMLinington

I don't miss hitting the keys at the right time because usually I button mash from the second I boot the machine so it's hard to miss it really. Mostly I'm guilty of doing 2 and 3 on my home systems. Work stuff tends to keep focus a bit better. That being said, large file downloads like ISOs tend to be distraction traps.

I can't say I've done 1, but 2 and 3 I'm definitely guilty of.

LeBoyfriend has an Astra so we fill 3 or 4 4-pint milk bottles with cold water then stand them in the hall against the radiator - they get vaguely lukewarmish when the rads come on at 5am and we found this quite effective at clearing the windscreen. For the record, my windscreen clearing process was tongue in cheek - I don't have heated side windows or anything so lights, windows and wing mirrors still need clearing, although the warmish water does that quite well and the two hardest screens are a doddle with heated front and rear.

Heated front windscreen FTW - I have a Ford Focus. My Ice clearing process is as follows: Get into car Turn engine on, put windscreen to quick-clear, turn on 'heated front windscreen', turn on iPod. Listen to music for 3 minutes Turn wipers on. Sheet of ice crashes sideways onto the driveway. Drive away. Win.

I had to stop drinking caffeinated drinks - I used to get the 'come down shakes'. I now have 2 cups of 'normal tea' a day and fruit teas the rest of the time. The Twinings range in the red boxes is excellent. I think I deserve kudos for working in IT support without caffeine if you want the truth - I'm hardcore XD lol

Worlds Strongest Coffee + Worlds Largest Coffee Cup = Caffeine Toxicity

LOL Our Office needs this - our engineers already make the strongest coffee known to mankind. Although I'd be very worried about the side effects of caffeinating almost an entire support team.... That 'Number of days since a Velociraptor incident' poster springs to mind....

Might be worth popping in another SIM just to see.

Or paying an obscene '£25 Administration charge' from your provider! From what I've seen, if it's an Android phone, there ARE apps to do it but you need the phone rooted... I have an S3 and found this: http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/how-to-unlock-your-samsung-galaxy-s3-50008597/ I have an old S2 I might try this on - that way if it dies I can just hock it to Mazuma mobile or something XD

When I was at school there were charity events almost every other week - non-uniform days were the worst. Not only do you have to PAY to come in 'normal clothes' but if you don't have much money and can't afford brand name clothes, you risk getting belittled by your peers for your unfashionable clothes. I hated non-uniform days more than any other charity event as I would usually not have fashionable clothes as my parents couldn't afford to buy me 'United colours of Benetton' jumpers and stuff from River Island. I got things from MarkOne and NewLook if I was lucky. Eventually I started 'forgetting' about non-uniform day (I rigorously endorse school uniforms) then I just out and out refused to participate - it was less hurtful for people to make fun of me for wearing my school uniform than it was to make fun of me for not having expensive outfits. At least in school uniform it was the same uniform I wore every other day so they couldn't mock me for it being unfashionable or cheap (yeah our outfitters were not cheap in the slightest) - the best they could do was to mock me for being a sad case in school uniform which was nothing new. I think if schools focussed less on arranging faffy 'events' and more on educating, we might not be turning out such a cohort of dipsticks...

When I was at school there was a 'Parents and Friends' society that basically sold raffle tickets for rubbish prizes and teas and coffees at school concerts and performances. My dad thought this was rubbish so he volunteered to be chairperson and put a rocket up their rears - while my dad was chairman they generated more revenue from fun events like a race night and from investing properly in decent raffle prizes than they ever did before. When my sister and I left the school I think he had to step down and when we went back from an alumni thing they were back to the rubbish way they used to be. My dad was quite disappointed tbh. He'd worked really hard to improve their practises. Cake sales are a bane! You spend time baking cakes that someone decrees as being unsuitable because they are home-baked and hygiene standards cannot be assessed and blah blah blah. Thats why most people send store-bought stuff. I think if my kids were sent home with a cake sale flyer that requested mandatory donations, the school would receive a strongly worded phone call and a letter to their teacher specifically stating that my child will not be participating. To then prevent the sproglets moaning about how unfair it is, I would bake epic cakes and send them to school with sufficient cakes that they would not feel that they needed to buy some from the greed sale, sorry, cake sale.

It seems crazy to me that you should buy a set of supplies presumably 'designated' for your children only for them to be given to others? Surely if you buy 24 pencils for your child, the teacher should hold them in reserve for that child? Sounds to me as though you should tell the school to get knotted and send your child to school with a pencilcase of supplies the way we do in the UK.

Is it sad that @synaesthesia has sparked an idea in my head for a 'charm bracelet' idea? I need a life I think... WTB 1 life.

I was expecting that too. I once knew a girl that wore a Male-Female USB extension cable as a bracelet. I thought it was kinda cool but a bit useless. I think we should all come up with our own geek line of actual 'recycled' componant jewellery. I do jewellery making so this wouldn't be too hard. I'm thinking some sort of Cat5 bangle and maybe something arty with thread and CPU pins...

Oh dear! I'm glad she was okay! You've been through a bit of a rough time lately haven't you? Guess it pays to drive monster cars when the roads are terrible. On the plus side, it's a pretty impressive story to tell ;-)

Interesting that you mention that as LeBoyfriend works for a well known South coast car dealership, but he's in an admin/customer service role, not an active car role like a technician (mechanic) or sales but if we put him down as working in the motor industry the insurance companies aren't interested in the slightest that he has nothing whatsoever to do with cars or the fact that he's covered under the site insurance policy should he need to drive a customer car for whatever reason so we put him down as 'Customer Service'. Since he only takes my car to work when it needs work doing, it's covered under the site insurance anyway - he certainly never takes it just for commuting. It seems ludicrous to me that this should even be a consideration - especially with site and business insurance covering cars that go into dealerships. It's crazy. The whole industry is legalised fraud IMO.

I did PassPlus back in the day when I was a new driver and it helped with the insurance but I don't think it's as effective now - it's better from a personal confidence point of view. It might be worth looking at one of these insurance policies where named drivers earn NCDs and insure your son/daughter as a named driver on a sensible family vehicle. These 'black box' schemes are good for new drivers but I wouldn't want one in my car so I'd only have one fitted if the car was specifically his/hers. I've seen comments in other threads (possibly) saying that the more of a certain type of car there are on the road, the more accidents occur statistically where that car type is involved so the premiums are higher. Age and value of the car are key as are engine size so if you are in the position to help buy the car you might want to look at something old, small engined and cheap but not overly common. Fiat Panda perhaps lol. If the sproglets don't like it, they can fund it themselves lol. Any car is better than no car tbh.

Scarification done right can look amazing, and to me it seems more 'natural' than a tattoo as you are simply using the bodys own healing mechanism to make the design - there are no inks or additions (although am I right in understanding that people are encouraged to put an irritant on it to 'improve' the scarring?). If I was going to have body art and was brave enough to cope with the pain I'd probably choose scarification over tattooing. Although the usual caveats apply re: location as scar tissue is less elastic than 'normal' skin so once it's stretched out, it's like that permanently. But I'm a total chicken so my fear of pain and needles far outweighs my desire for body art. Infection is a worry too I think - necrotising fasciitis in particular. What people choose to put on their bodies is up to them - we all have scars with stories and I imagine scarification is no different. Personally I'd probably choose a stylistic dragonfly or phoenix design although Mandie Manzano has done some gorgeous Disney Princess Ribbon art that might look great as a tattoo/scar. Her stained glass windows look amazing as tattoos. As long as it means something to you then thats the important thing.

We buy the 'Black Farmer' range of sausages in asda. They are the best I've ever tasted and that includes the ones we bought from a local butcher. 98% meat. They are lovely.

Indeed. Another good thing to come out of this might be that more people might start buying the raw ingredients rather than buying 'ready prepared'. I've witnessed it myself in ASDA where women who may have previously bought an ASDA Frozen Lasagne are now buying pre-chopped onions, mince and a jar of Dolmio. Okay, so it's not ideal - ideally they would make the sauce from scratch (we do and it's lovely because if I have wine open the food gets a dose and if I don't have wine open, it's a good excuse to open a bottle) but it's a step up from poor quality ready meals and at least they know the majority of what is in it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one not gasping and covering my mouth in horror - I was beginning to think I was going to have to fake it. I'm certainly not appalled - I'm not even surprised if you want the truth. A little disappointed perhaps that quality control is so poor that this was not picked up earlier, but as I cook all my food from scratch using raw ingredients and rarely buy frozen ready meals with beef in I can't say it impacts greatly on my shopping choices. I think I'd be more concerned if we started seeing contamination of fresh meat like Mince and Steak. Even the idea of having unknowingly eaten Horse doesn't even bother me that much and I think if someone served a horse steak and offered me a try I'd probably try it out of curiosity. I am more concerned that quality controls are not employed earlier in the chain to prevent ingredients getting into our food that shouldn't be there - if the horses were bred and farmed for meat and adhered to strict controls re: age of meat and health of animal then I wouldn't care, but Horses are not farmed actively for the food chain so we cannot be sure that the horse meat in our food is not from an unhealthy source. I agree completely that the best thing to come out of this scandal is the increase in british sources - that can only be good for the economy and I'm surprised that we don't source more food 'locally' so anything that ends up supporting the british farming industry can't be a bad thing.

Funny you should ask about Beef flavoured Crisps - one of our Vegetarian engineers was eating Beef flavoured Hula Hoops the other day and when we ribbed him gently about it he explained (and proved) that the label says 'Suitable for Vegetarians'. There is no beef in beef flavoured hula hoops... That is not to say that all Beef flavoured products are the same, but I think if we actually looked we'd be surprised. Since Stock is effectively boiled bones, organ meat and skin/hooves etc I should think they can (and should) be tested.

Previous posters are correct in observing that the reporting system is no longer robust enough for the needs of our customers and we have invested a lot of development resource into developing a complete replacement - this is due to begin phased roll out in the next couple of months. At present I have no definitive dates but it is incoming.

Which is a shame because IMO vocational experience-based qualifications really are the way forward in practical fields - I've seen some terrible applicants coming from University claiming to have degrees in IT and they don't hold a candle to someone with a vocational background. University is good for theoretical disciplines and very highly specialised jobs (Doctors for example) but for practical jobs involving technical skill I really do feel that we should examine vocational pathways as we all know that the best way to learn in IT is to do.

No, and the question is valid for any gender of Y11 leaver, I just put 'female' because this thread is about encouraging girls into IT. It's more about whether you'd employ a Y11 leaver without experience (and bearing in mind the age situation in schools - it is dangerous to employ 16yos in a school environment when their friends and siblings may still be in lower year groups and 'relationships' are more likely between a your Y11 leaver and a pupil) or whether you would encourage that leaver to go find work in the private sector to get experience.