AndrewC

Basically it is a CYA (cover your a*se) exercise by the installer and supplier. In the rare and it is very rare, case there is something amiss with the installation, once the power is switched on there can be a spike or if there are too many things plugged in, a current inrush similar to what is experienced with DCC sound locos causing cyclic breaker tripping. Better safe than sorry.

Ouch. All off before he started. Spend ages trying to access the socket switches. Done and dusted in under 90 mins. Unlike the last muppet who worked on the gas meter, this one knew what he was doing and did a proper post installation purge. Smelled a bit but at least the boiler and cooker are working properly. My next trick will be trying to remember how to reset the clock on the cooker.

As Nigel stated, your PSU has to be at least 3a or it will shut down before your DCS, not a good thing. Ebay is showing a 15v 3a supply which should be more than adequate.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Warmer than yesterday but still bloody cold for this time of year. TFIF Package containing "stuff that must not be mentioned" from Canada was released after paying the ransom. HMRC have over charged the VAT by a significant amount. Most likely they converted from USD instead of CAD from the declaration form. Strange that trying to get a refund is the only process of theirs that still requires a physical printed form + physical evidence. Cost of getting a printed and stamped card statement as well as postage will eat up a fair chunk of the rebate. I can see why they do it. Anything under £10 is just not worth jumping through the flaming hoops to recover. B*stards. Hopefully some good news from Mr Hunt sr, and Gordon is forthcoming. Work still sucks. One of the expected ship jumpers fired off his resignation yesterday. That means my team is now down to 6. That leaves just one more flight risk who is still waiting his formal offer. <sigh> I've got another interview this afternoon. We shall see. None of the supposed new hires will be in place before either of them go. I really don't have time or patience anymore do do the onboarding. Smart meter installation day. The bonus of this is I can cry off a meeting that I've been dreading all week. (not bad, just dealing with c*ntpuffins of epic asshattery levels) "sorry, power going off for meter install, can't make it" Votes cast via post. I long ago learned to support the person that will f*ck me over the least. That's why I've put my X next to Count Binface. He's got to be the least useless of the whole bunch running for London Mayor. coffee calls. On that note, I bid you all a good day and enjoy the weekend.

Hours? More like nano-seconds. I'm sure I've bored you all with the tales of the metal fairies when we did our renovation 3 years ago. The boiler chap had put the old one on the front path while he went to grab his van. It was gone by the time he got back. < 5 mins. When the radiators were being replaced, a polite older lady asked if she could take them. She got all 7 over the course of a week. Not like the house next door when it was empty after a repossession about 9 years ago. Idiot estate agent had left the ground floor windows open to air the place out. Half the radiators and the boiler were gone the next morning. Nobody heard or saw anything. Ninja metal fairies no doubt.

Greetings all from a rather February like boring borough. Global warming my a*se. (tongue in cheek mode) Little of note really. Technophobes look away now. I've procured an Apple watch. If it takes a little gizmo strapped to my wrist in order to improve my fitness and health, then so be it. One advantage is I don't have to dig my phone out of my pocket to see who is calling. I can ignore them with a figurative flick of the wrist. Chris: check your printer settings. My Canon allows me to print from only the larger black cartridge without affecting the colours. I'm sure my old Epson did similar. Week away booked. The downside is Eurostar won't be reopening Ebbsfleet for at least another year, if ever. That adds an hour to the trip each way when having to go via St Pancake. All refundable up to the last minute. Also looking at a long weekend at the end of the month to visit the offspring oop norf. Time to go, the watch is nagging me to stand and stretch. Enjoy the day.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Another glorious sunny and warm bank holiday weekend over. (bollards) Cold, wind, rain, meh# We did manage to have a bbq with friends on Sunday. A very good time was had. Their 2 kids are like having a full barrel of monkeys set loose. I paid for it yesterday. Every bone, muscle, and tendon was screaming in agony. Gave up trying to catch up over the past 3 days. Commiserations and congratulations as appropriate. Jab #2 is now just 27 days away. Seems as if the council has read the riot act to the manager of the HMO next door. Far less noise over the past few days, and the neighbour on the other side has been given full contact details which she has shared. Planning has begun on a Post lockdown week in the low countries to attend a beer fest that is confirmed to be happening. They rolled over last year's tickets and aren't selling any more for this year so attendance will be around 75% of normal. That's about it here. Enjoy the day.

Sorry to hear this. Have you considered looking into one of those newer style vertical lifts? It may be an option to the upheaval and stress of moving. In the 13 years we've been here our house has slightly more than doubled in value. The major refurb 3 years ago paid for itself before the paint had dried. Bas, I'd be going to the local media as well (if such a thing still exists) to let them know their council is ignoring objections by saying none received. I'd also be telling the property owner to go f*ck himself as far as access is concerned. Maintenance, yes they can negotiate access but not for new construction, especially if it requires alteration to fencing, walls, or existing infrastructure/garden. Make the b*stard do all the work from within his own property boundary. I'm rather vindictive that way.

Snap. Exactly what happened to our next door neighbour's place. In this case dodgy Oriental owners with workers being illegally billeted in the garage. Well until Border Force pressed the issue with the council after said useless p***ks couldn't be arsed to initially enforce the rules. They can get away with dodgy works by hiring a private building control company and skipping the party wall notification to suppress opposition. Once this happens the council has lost all ability to enforce building regulations. The only way is via CICAR as the private company won't even talk to anyone but their client. Any party wall damage to surrounding properties has to be through civil court.

There are always ways around a system. Bidding wars prior to a formal offer are old school but at least once there is a formal offer and acceptance it is rare for any other hanky panky to happen. Not like the UK where the lady we bought this place from had her chain collapse 3 times because someone further up decided they wanted more £££ or one who kept changing their mind on whether or not they wanted to actually move. In the end ours came down to the last possible minute as one old rat bag kept dithering. 3 hours later and our mortgage offer would have expired and we'd have pulled out. 4 1/2 bloody months of farquing about. Good moaning all. TFIF and all that. Bank holiday weekend approaches, as does the rain. <sigh> Little of note otherwise so I'll just bid you all a good weekend.

Either some D-bag trying it on after seeing the news about house prices, or they've got an under the table offer of around £40k more and are trying to start a bidding war. Either way, I'd be telling them to go forth and multiply. Again, I prefer the Canadian system where a signed and accepted offer is the contract, no chains, no gazumping, without major financial penalties.

While the website is a scam, there can be actual risks involved. Quite often these pages are hacked redirects from legit websites. Very often the redirect page with the warning is attempting to install malware or other phishing software on your machine while telling you you are infected. Depending on your browser, it can even alter your start up page so that you end up with the same message and lock up refresh every time you start your browser up. (simple solution is to disconnect from the internet before restarting which prevents the page from loading) I'm a big fan of Malwarebytes and their Browser Guard which prevents 99% of these redirects. Please do a full malware scan of your machine using either Malwarebytes or your preferred anti-virus software package.

Good moaning all from the boring borough. A belated Happy trip round the sun day for Andrew P. I'm a big fan of online banking, apps, and things like Apple Pay. As Tony mentioned you can see exactly what you've spent, where, and when. At any given time I know the balance of my current, savings, mortgage, credit cards, and pension(s) to the penny. The Natwest app now has a spending synopsis. It uses AI (really machine learning) to identify the types of spending. That sure opened my eyes to the amount of takeaway we were purchasing every month. From a security standpoint, the only time I've had any fraud was when a card was cloned in a cashpoint. My only security recommendation is to never ever let a site store your card details. That is the weakest point. A co-worker of SWMBO had that happen to her when a site's security failed to be compliant and several thousand card numbers were stolen. Lucky for her the bank's fraud detection software spotted the attempt to buy jewellery in Dubai on her card. Unlike having a wallet nicked, she lost nothing apart from having to get the card replaced. To each their own though. I can understand the preference for cash, whereby once it is gone from your wallet, it's been spent. No chance of an over spend. Home wifi is a viper's nest of differing opinions. Personally, I've never been a fan of the power line adaptors. They work reasonably well if both ends are on the same ring but can be problematic if the signal has to pass through an RCD. I went with an Asus AI mesh system. This gives me coverage from the alley at the back to the bus stop across the street. At the moment these are using a 5ghz channel to communicate which drops the speed from the most remote point to about 1/4 of the main node. Plans are afoot to run cat6a between the nodes and into the office meaning I can get my personal and work laptops off wifi and onto a proper 1gbit backbone. Time for coffee and another waste of time meeting. Enjoy the day.

According to several trade mags (the Mrs company does a lot of work in the hospitality trade) Wendy's and Tim Horton's are the biggest growth brands in the UK at the moment. Interesting that they were the same company for a while. What really killed off Wendy in the UK was the difficulty in getting fresh beef in bulk during the mad cow frenzy.

We used to refer to McDonald's as Rotten Ronnie's for good reason. Apart from the breakfast McMuffin, there is nothing I'll eat there. It is interesting to note the UK Ronnie's are quite different than the US version. https://www.insider.com/we-found-every-difference-between-uk-and-us-mcdonalds-2020-5 eg: UK fries = oil, salt, potato. US = Hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor, dextrose, sodium aspid, pyrophosphate — pyrophosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium chloride, potato. Wimpy. My first exposure was as a 14 year old. Bloody awful compared to the takeaway/drive in burgers I was used to at the time. (A&W) KFP (Kentucky flailed pigeon) is now a shadow of its former self. These days if I have a craving for fried chicken, I'll hit Morley's. It's a SE London chain and very tasty. Doesn't hurt that a former work colleague created a business to supply all their meat. I am looking forward to the UK return of Wendy's. For a fast food burger it blows Ronnie & Wimpy out of the water. 5 Guys isn't bad but the price is eye watering for a rather dull burger.

Greetings all from the boring borough. A belated happy Birthday to Dave. Good to see his dad doing better. A fairly quiet weekend. Finished off the replacement bit of deck so SWMBO has space for her billions of plant pots. A "quick" trip to the garden centre yesterday to obtain additional bark chips for the front was accomplished with only half a dozen new plants added to the cart. That must be a record low for her. Pub lunch enjoyed. So much so that we decided not to cook last night as neither of us were very hungry. That means I've got 2kg of pork belly to go into the smoker today. Tonight's dinner shall be pork belly burnt ends, slaw, dirty courgettes, and hasselback spuds. Lately my cooking mojo has been as absent as my modelling mojo. Time to get back into the groove. When it comes to steak, for me it has to be a thick ribeye with decent marbling. Reverse seared is the absolute best way to cook to medium rare. I long ago gave up on steak that was still mooing. Coffee calls, enjoy the day.

Good day all. Finally had some sleep. Still feel like moderately microwaved death but better than yesterday. Little of note else. Best wishes for Dave's dad, little Topham, and Gordon. It is Friday, TFIF. Today I will be mostly dealing with corporate compost via Teams, and later on, the real thing via a delivery of wool compost from oop north. We seem to have a dire shortage of birds this year. Normally by now we'd be inundated with various species all dining on the feeders. All I've seen recently are a couple of pigeons, one great tit, and a small flock of Bexley parakeets. Even the starlings and bloody gulls are absent. Enjoy the day.

Morning all or is it good night. Insomnia struck. Could not get to sleep at all last night. Ended up reading from 11 till 2 am. Tried to sleep again, no chance. What is the bet I fall face first into my laptop in the middle of a Teams meeting today?

Area around Plumstead SE London has a very high Nepalese population and many many retired Ghurkas. It goes without saying that also means a good selection of Nepalese restaurants. Sadly our favourite recently changed hands and is more traditional Indian now and they've taken my favourite Gurkhali Chicken and Holy Basin veg off the menu. <meh> So the search is on for a replacement.

Moaning all from the boring borough. Off shortly for a round of spinal origami. At least it gets me out of the house on a chilly Wednesday morning. I'm so looking forward to this new Super League. Just think. Barcelona v Real Madrid EVERY Wednesday for 38 weeks of regular season, then playoffs, and finally the Super Cup. All for the low low price on Amazon Prime of 75€ a month. <chortle> As one person on Twitter commented, they'd seen Sugababes lineups that lasted longer than the ESL. Enjoy the day.

Greetings all from a sunny but cool boring borough. Good to see Dave's Dad getting his escape planned. Let's all hope it is option A: the closer one. Football: I'll stick to the mighty <cough> Wings of Welling. I can wander over to Park View road, watch the match, have a half time beer and still get change from £20. There are also a couple of good micro-pubs nearby as well as the Wings bar which serves real ale. For TV we've got a Sky dish even though it is line of sight to Crystal Palace from here. This was originally installed for our previous place which was in a bit of a valley and any other reception was dodgy at best. We just decided to keep it as at the time it was cheaper than cancelling the contract, although now the amount we watch is minimal and the channel package we have is the absolute basic. We've both noticed that Paris has changed a lot over the past decade or so. Far more accommodating for tourists from the far east it appears. As such English seems to have become more accepted. We have our preferred hotel near St Georges. Small, quiet, stupidly clean, and just a short walk to a little cafe which is both excellent value and doubles as a coffee roastery. mmmm coffee. The Frog bars are quite good for beer. Although I think there are now a couple which don't have their own on site brewing. If you know where to look there are some excellent craft beer places and taprooms in Paris. Man from Wickes expected to deliver some decking material today. The downside is the boards are coming from their supplier which means they could take another week to arrive. The weekly fruit & veg delivery is also expected this morning. No word on the supposed new job offer. Even the recruiter is baffled by the potential new employer at the moment. I've now filed the whole thing under "time waster". That's about all for now. Enjoy the day.

Not even close. Our previous one was 4 when we moved in. Required only one bit of maintenance which I was able to perform. It lasted 14 years and we only replaced it because we wanted a more efficient unit. The current one has a 10 year parts and labour warranty. It gets a look over every spring. Not a peep from it. Realistically there are only 3 parts that can go wrong. The pressure bladder, circuit board, and heat exchanger.

Good moaning from the boring borough. Pleasant and sunny at the moment. Off to the beer mile today to meet up with an old friend. Some shopping at nearby Spa Road market will be done as well. @chrisf Toronto is not like the rest of Canada. They have an undeserved arrogance and try to think they are as good as New York. All of the really bad experiences with hospitality we've had in Canada were in Toronto. Hotel, restaurant, car rental, etc. Especially true of businesses at the airport. Fairmont hotels have a reputation of nickelling and diming everything they can. My younger brother who spends more of his life living in hotels than is healthy, refuses to stay in a Fairmont. We've got a Worcester combi-boiler. It was originally in the utility room but that is now the kitchen. The kitchen was actually built around it. It's perfectly disguised behind a standard cupboard door. The company we bought it from suggested the Salus wifi thermostat as it was half the price of the Bosch mechanical one. The app is stupidly simple. Basically a touch dial to set the temp, and a user created schedule if you want one. Time for more coffee and off to the untamed wilds of Bermondsey.

Greetings from a sunny but chilly boring borough. Another certification exam passed. Another bit of paper to stash in the filing cabinet. Oh well, only 3 more to go over the coming weeks. During the great rebuilding 3 years ago all sorts of strange stuff was found under the floorboards and in the walls, including a pair of specs. There must have been some rather major works done in the 50s as all the newspaper bits found dated from 1954. The house itself was built in 1900. My late step FIL was a general contractor. He wasn't a big fan of Bosch. The bulk of my power tools are therefore De Walt or Makita. Bloody indestructible those things. Good to see Mr York managed to pop to the offie and top up the forum's pay as you go key. On that note, we've had to book smart stupid meter installation. It appears as though our electric meter is out of certification and must be replaced. <sigh> Thank Fork its Friday. Time to pretend to work and await the coming of the blessed weekend. Have a good day all.

Good old Amex. <cough> The employer has recently dropped BarclayCard visa as our corporate expense card of choice and replaced it with Amex. I have yet to bother applying as I haven't needed any travel in 22 months now. The stupid thing is they had just replaced all the BarclayCards throughout the company and Barclay had issued card readers to all. Mine is still in the box. As mentioned, Amex is pretty crap apart from hotels and airlines. I think the company is really hoping to transfer a lot of the travel costs, especially meals onto the employee's own credit, to encourage timely submission of expenses.