Snooze

I am faded-red-belt Tai-Phoon, which involves learning the art of defeating opponents with my overpowering wind. Would love to try Jiu-Jitsu, but my american football career put paid to any plans of having a working body these days!

Take it you haven't seen the amount of fraud related to this yet then: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/money/2006/05/27/cmcar27.xml

Get yourself an ISA. Nice and easy to set up. Tax breaks.

He's joined here as a manager, I think - not sure what his actual role was at Reuters. Guy named Coote, I believe.

Interesting - are Reuters downsizing at the moment? An Ops manager just joined us from Reuters.

Do they have Hovis in Zante?

Phoenix and Sky are the two most important things I ever found out about after getting my supra. Both thanks to the club here. Phoenix are an absolute quality outfit. I am in west Surrey, and I intend never to take my car anywhere except up to the Phoenix guys. The service Mark and Paul provide is worth the cost and effort of travelling up there one hundred times over.

Nother vote for Morgan Stanley's 2% here!

Actually, although this is an extremely common thing to make people livid, I recently realised that this shouldn't (and doesn't) annoy me. If someone is sat in the middle lane and the road is empty, who cares! If you have to move across two lanes rather than one to overtake them, does that really matter? Now if they're holding people up by sitting in the middle lane (ie. when more than car is trying to overtake them) then yes, they should be pulled over, hung, drawn and quartered, but if they're not then I don't see a problem. Of course, if a driver is not willing to pay 100% attention to what is behind them on the motorway 100% of the time and so are not aware when they are holding anyone up, then they should probably be made to always move back in to at least get into the habit of doing so, but then if a driver is not being this attentive anyway they shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel at all! So next time you see someone sat in the middle lane on an empty road, think that maybe they would move over if they needed to (to avoid holding anybody up) and give them the benefit of the doubt!

Ha! Be grateful you got any instructions at all!!

I heard that about 1 in 4 of them had to go back in for major work under warranty.....

Finally got mine this weekend. The seat I've got is part of the "Urban Detour Xtreme" travel system from Mothercare ( http://www.mothercare.com/invt/lx1308&bklist= ) - it's an infant seat, so it's only really suitable up to about 9 months old. You have to use the alternative seatbelt routing and actually wedge it in place with the passenger seat back, but it's as secure as I've seen a baby seat in any car and they were happy with it when they checked the install. Now I'm very happy with the seat. The problem is with all the other stuff! The pushchair completely fills the boot (you have to remove the wheels, although they're quick release, so it's not a major problem) and the carry cot has to go behind the driver seat so there's virtually zero space left for all the other stuff that will need to be transported (changing stuff, feeding stuff, etc.) - and if we're going away, when we've got to get our stuff in too, well - it just isn't going to happen, I'm afraid

I also think that you'll find it takes a little longer for SED to fit into a regular-sized TV set - I've heard that at the moment they can still only get a 720p image onto a 55" screen for a reasonable production cost.

Another interesting point, however: I have heard that the industry is expecting something like 20% of homes in the country to have bought a new TV in the first half of this year (mainly because of the world cup), and therefore there is some speculation that prices are artificially high at the moment due to demand and a big price drop could occur later in the year. That said, I'm not necessarily convinced about this myself, and it's not stopping me planning to buy in June. If you REALLY want more info than you can handle, I have found http://www.avforums.com to be a fantastic source of information.

I'm just about to buy too. Done quite a lot of reading up and have finally decided on the Toshiba 37WLT66. There is a 42WLT66 too, and that is quite exciting as it actually accepts 1080p input - the first affordable REAL HD. From what I can make out, however, there is still some debate as to whether the internals genuinely render in 1080p, though.

I had to send them photos and a mod sheet. The mod sheet covers valuation of any mods (although I think this is required for the insurance anyhow?). The photos were side, front, internal and engine bay shots. Oh - and I still can't say enough about how happy I have been with the price, customer service and communication from Sky......

You could try http://www.lotus-on-track.com - I have a couple of Elise-owning friends who are members, but I think they charge for membership?

Another big for the Smiths here. But I was at a Sleater-Kinney gig in Oxford last night and they rawked!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/11052006/356/giant-pollen-cloud-heads-uk.html

One which kind of flew under the radar at the time that y'all might like is VAST: Review here: http://www.millikin.edu/mr/music/f9903.html

PlusNet have just announced a similar telephone/broadband package starting at £21/month but with only a 1 month minimum contract! http://www.plus.net/registeryourinterest/index.html?link=bbcalls_landingpage

Hate to be a harbinger of doom, but with general legislation, averaging speed cameras and increasing petrol prices, I think time is running out in general for having fun with low cost performance cars. I plan to keep running mine while I still can........

Yeah - about 10 people I know got caught at the one here in Guildford.

One thing you have to consider - I think you'll probably find the vast majority of members here aren't going out and spending a fortune on their car. It's just that the posts that stand out are the ones that are about "my new wheels" or "my new bodykit" or "my new engine bling" - nobody really bothers posting up that they've just spent 3 months of their holiday savings on a couple of new tyres and a service - I think there's probably plenty more of us out here that fall into that category. My car has plenty paint scratches and the rims are in a pretty poor state, but by the time I've got another grand to spend on the car, it'll be going on a good old service and a pair of tyres, NOT on a new set of wheels and a re-spray!

Well, in my experience, the best way is to give return fire in language that they understand. ie. All your stuff will have to be physically moved - with re-settling, re-installation, re-filing of paperwork and a full test of everything set up satisfactorily. From a legal perspective, the company does not want you to be moving your own stuff unless it's part of your job description and you have adequate training for "moving stuff", otherwise they are horribly liable for any injuries you incur - so they'll have to provide somebody with appropriate skills to move and set up your stuff for you. Even if that's someone immediately available in the office, the liasing and communications required on top of the actual physical moving is a whole day's effort right there. Then you'd need to make sure everything was okay from a physical work environment point of view. eg. height of desk, alignment of chair, light reflections on monitor, seating position, etc. The company should be doing this sort of stuff for you. If there's an office manager, this should be their responsibility - that's half a day of their time and half a day of your time to sort everything out. After that, if this actually affects your direct communications with other key staff you need to work with, that needs to be accounted for as well - for ease, let's say an additional 12 minutes a day just total just to-ing and fro-ing to get the equivalent communications benefit of your previous location. That's another hour of effort for every week the project continues. Total cost: 2 man days' immediate effort + 1 hour effort/week. And that doesn't even include all the effort and cost already incurred by the ongoing communications and managerial discussions to get this far! So.....who is accounting for this time and the impact on your project costs and deadlines. Who's budget is it coming out of? That's the question I'd be asking. Office politician? Me? Nah....