Sirbendy

Monday off (Bank hols, yes?). Working Tues, weds, thurs..hoping to get Friday off, as we're (in theory) exchanging contracts on the house...

Could be worse..you could have an intelligent building with ground source heating, aircon, a computerised building management system and the latest self actuating windows, and still have that. Not speaking from experience, honestly...*cough*

Since we're moving to our first "bought" house, I made a deal with the missus - she can have a corner sofa, if I can have a Roomba. We bought the sofa on Sunday, heh. Game ON. It won't replace my Dyson, but with my spannered knee, 3 cats and a toddler, and a house with solid downstairs flooring throughout..it's too good an opportunity to pass up to have an autonomous vacuum that'll take a lot of the hassle out of it in theory.

Heh, it's all on Dysons site re: filters and removal etc. Nowhere does it say about washing out the cyclone, but trust me, it makes a hell of a difference and shifts a heck of a lot of otherwise invisible muck

No, I strip mine and the parent's one down, wash the pre and post motor filters out, pressure wash the insides of the cyclone out (disgusting but the improvements are worth it), let it dry and reassemble them yearly.

When my car blew the ECU and was out of action for 3 weeks...I bought another car. *cough* (In my defence, it was a £200 runabout that also shared 90% parts commonality with the main car, so I'm going to save money in the long run in spares!)

Golf MK5. That was fun. 1.6FSI auto, 450 miles to a tank, goes like hot snot. Mind you, I DO love my Astras..both my MK3's and my MK4 are fun to drive (boggo standard). Chassis is very nicely set on them, very very compliant, routinely gets hurled into roundabouts at 40+ with nothing more than tyre protests. Economy..not on the autos like I have. The MK3 could crack 420 to a tank round town, the the MK4 struggles to hit 300. Yet on a long run (think Wales), the MK4 would have been on target for approx 500 miles to a tank. Quite liking the MK6...the MK5 left me cold, I think it's got a fat bum.

Hmm. A 2010 rerelease full sized BigTrak. Before that a ruddy huge 57cm clock for the living room from IKEA The next one...I predict..a Roomba..heh. Just for the fun of it in the new house - if it works, it'll save me time and less vacuuming. If not, it gets hacked..

IIRC, I used to use Aquarium air hose on one of our old mowers..that worked well.

Yes, I've seen those...and one that had a turbo..well, the turbo whine, but no apparent benefit..heh. That said, they do have a following, there's LOTS of Vx engines you can bung in them, and the bits are cheap...

Foresters I like. Mitsubishis I like. Fronteras? Old and obsolete now, but tough as old boots...

The house we're buying has an attached "strip" of odd garden (looks like a previous land purchase) that the missus wants to convert to a planting garden for Veg..it's been AGES since we've had that opportunity. We do container planting at the moment..I have a dwarf apple tree that's been through 3 moves so far! Re: Slugs..ooh, that's a naughty word in our house. We used to go out about 11pm with a headmounted torch and a salt pot...heh. That was FUN.. Also copper wire - they dislike copper. They disliked ours especially, as I hooked it to a 12v SLA battery. Sizzly! Eggshells never seemed to work for us. Re: watering...apparently tapwater is not so good, rainwater is better..so I'll be investing in a big butt (snigger). Always wanted one.

Hah, I recall it well.. We did a lot on this in Primary - we even had (and how well I recall it) the Videodisc player and the MASSIVE great videodiscs..I remember very nervous headteacher loading the disc, wearing white cotton gloves and trying very, very hard not to even breathe near it.. Ahhh...memories...

In mine is: Paper notebook Lunch DWP paperwork (joy) USB lead to charge the Ericcson baby swimsuit (don't ask) 2x bottles of water, plus one little squeezy bottle for daughter when I collect from nursery Payslip/P60 Shampoo and conditioner. Ruddy useless painkiller. In fact they're making me ache more FFS.. I dislocated my kneecap 3 weeks ago at work (still gives me the shuddering cringes), and now I need a rucksack I can wear whilst on crutches. The only one at home is our family swim bag, hence the costumes, shampoo etc. I must get a proper work one that I can put a 17" tft in.

Was recommended to us as well...put a bit aside every month or so, as much as poss really without causing issue, then every few months or so pay that in, lop off a chunk of mortgage/interest. Also maintain a buffer zone of cash "just in case" etc.

The first place we looked at was a 3 bed. Very nice, conservatory etc. Asking price of £128k. We offered full price, only to be told "not selling it, it's going into auction". Their loss (still gutting though). Had to chuckle yesterday as I drove past our new place (30 seconds away)..they still had their "For Sale" sign up, so the owner has put it back on the market again, same price. Doorknobs to 'em.

I was always told about the credit card, little purchase, pay off thing....I mentioned that to the IFA too, and said that the natural cynic in me said we'd never be able to get a mortgage etc, so I'd never bothered. I also said I was raised with the attitude of "If you can't afford it, go without", by a trained accountant. He grinned and said "good rule to live by". He was recommended to us by the missus' boss, and fair play, he was excellent. 2 evenings of sitting in the living room going over income/expenditure, tracker vs fixed, option after option on his laptop with the software playing with the figures/length of terms, discussing possibilities, worries and all the stuff that occurs at these times. Cost to us? Zero. He gets paid by whichever provider we finally go with. Before him we went to HSBC and had a meeting with the adviser there (I've been with the Highly Silly Banking Company since it was Midland)..she was willing to offer us a slightly bigger mortgage. However, I'm a cynical sod and insisted on a non-prejudiced, impartial advisor. As it turned out, HSBC has the second best deal anyway! And agreed with above - our property was on at £119950, I was advised to offer £110k. Estate agent (lovely guy, ace service, can't recommend Harwoods enough) said "not a hope, they need at least £115k to release themselves from the mortgage they're in." SO, Offered £115k, hands shaken, job done. Notice put in on current place last night, contracts in theory aiming to be completed by month end (say solicitors)..and yet it still feels unreal.

I was going to say - must be an area thing. We're in the closing stages of buying our first place - a 2 bed Wimpy "no fines" semi with big gardens. I'm on 16kish, missus is on the same (would be more if she did 5 days instead of 4, but she prefers to spend the day with Izzy). Had an IFA round as we're paying £545/m rent, 300/y water, heating bills have been over £550 a time etc. I wanted an unbiased opinion. His verdict? No Problem. You're looking at £130k properties? What deposit do you have, if any? You have 30k? No problem. Even without that I could get you a mortgage for £95k. I was floored. In the end the place we're buying was on the market for 120k, made an offer of £115k..and it was job done. 25 year mortgage, over £100 cheaper than renting. Not overly worried about negative equity etc..as it goes, it's definetly at the lower end of things, it's a long term home for the 3 of us, and it's not shockingly expensive compared to a lot...it'll bounce back if it does drop. I've never had a credit card..I've never had a loan or anything else either. Yet we were fast-tracked though with flying colours. I still can't quite get my head round it..

Hah, I have a love/hate thing with dimmers. Last one I installed was an intelligent, touch sensitive unit with "multi stage" abilities, "dim to off" delay night lighting functions etc. Once the lights were out, the dark square in the middle would light up with a HAL9000-esque "pulsing" LED to show the switch location. It worked once. Then it emitted a sad "pffft.." noise, and that was it. Triac blown. Manufacturer gone under, and so on. Nice idea, poor quality execution. Went back to a dull rotary dimmer after that. New place has a bedroom dimmer that's a rotary..that can bin. I want one of the ones you can dim up/down with a remote control from the bed. Or maybe just lose the dimmer altogether as we have a capacitive touch lamp for night lighting. Moral of this story? Never buy a whizzy dimmer from a company who's slogan for the product (printed all over the box) was "Touch me, turn me on..". I thought the postie looked at me a bit oddly..

Yep, I read this in a lot of our parenting books...books such as "Raising our children, raising ourselves", and "How to talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk" have a lot to say on the way we interact/word our feelings with kids. To be honest, it's all really quite fascinating to read and think about...and with an 18 month old toddler it certainly seems to have an effect. Mind you, toddler logic can be really rather entertaining and fascinating in itself..!

Hah, yes. Montego and Maestro keys were like that..as were Metro. It was handy sometimes!

Data1 Data2 Data3 AD1 AD2 MX1 DTOX (AV) DHCP etc etc. Boring, but simple and clear.

Some knuckledragging retard broke into my Astra MK3 while it was parked one night. Bent the door out, and unlocked it. Smashed the column after ripping the interior light out, tried to hotwire it. 3 reasons he epically failed... 1. It was an Automatic with a shifter interlock. No key, no shift release. 2. It was a Phase2 with the V-Grille...with ECU integrated immobiliser. 3. I had the fuel pump fuse on the book case. He then scattered the cars contents round the carpark before legging it. 7 cars were done that night, mine was the only one not nicked. I bent the door back in line, couple of dabs of paint. Set of locks for £7 from a breaker, new shroud for £1, couple of hours...back to normal.

Puppy? Lovely distro. Run it on my Atom netbook.. The new version uses ubuntu in places - software repositories for it are not a problem, there's a fair amount of stuff for it. I've got Virtualbox on mine, running an XP VM for when I need to connect to the car..

I drive a normal car! 2000 plate Astra 1.6 Auto. Nice, no complaints bar the 280 mile tank range. Had a Golf mk5 1.6 FSI DSG for a week, seriously WANT ONE. Can't afford it though, they're ruddy expensive even secondhand. That 6 speed DSG box was the sweetest shifting auto I've ever seen, and 110 in 4th says it's got some legs on it..same size tank as the Astra, yet even driven in semi-auto mode (for a play on an empty road at 2am), I still got 400+ miles to a tank. Serious weapon of a car for a boggo 1.6..