m0n1xX3r

Best of luck with it mate, but as Dave points out, not sure it'll make any difference. Unfortunately I doubt they can put somebody through disciplinary proceedings merely for being a bit of a knobber... bit of a shame really as I don't think the kind of attitude he displays is representative of the police force in general.

This pretty much sums it up: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8841340504849794258&q=red+vs+blue

Got to agree. The first time I saw the site I thought it was quite funny, but dig into it a bit and it's just a bunch of the same old people being nasty for the sake of being nasty, and it became boring quite quickly. I don't know that the police should be concentrating on their work 100% of the time in the sense that, let's say he chats to an old lady for half an hour whilst out on patrol. Is that work? Not work? Good community relations? I don't want them feeling like they've got to be looking over their shoulders the whole time in case somebody perceives them as "not working". OTOH maybe this guy is abusing his position a bit, and he certainly seems pretty smug and self-satisfied: "hey, look at all these poor saps who've got less money than me, and who spend time modifying crappy cars." Would you rather they were out mugging people instead? Honestly, where's the harm? In any case, maybe people who start out being crap at modding cars get better at it as they go along. Who knows? There's a guy drives an old white Porsche not so far away from here, and TBH the thing's a mess: two spoilers, a wide-arch kit that's all gone wrong (or maybe he's just put massive spacers on the wheels, not sure), and to top it all he's just stuck these Ferrari style lights with grey surrounds on the back. Every time I drive past it I wonder if he actually has functional eyes, but the thing is, as minging as his car is, he's not doing anyone any actual harm and he's not breaking the law. Who knows, maybe the next one he mods will turn out to be great. All just an opinion obviously.

Mate, you might find this simple rule of thumb helpful (although its results aren't entirely accurate). At around today's interest rates you'll be paying off roughly £600 per month for every £100,000 you borrow. So I'm guessing you want to borrow around £133k. If you work out from my repayments what I'm borrowing it comes out at just over £158k using this rule, which is pretty close to the actual figure of £160k. This is for a 25 year mortgage by the way, if you want to go for a longer or shorter term the monthly payments will obviously be less or more, respectively. Going the other way, say you want to borrow £125,000, you can work out your approximate monthly repayment using: (125,000/100,000) * 600 = £750 per month. Whatever the amount though the monthly repayment is always going to come out at a frighteningly large amount of money these days though. I'm really not looking forward to being much worse off in about two months time. :-S All the best with it, Bart

I think mine's going to weigh in at around 950 per month. That's for a three-bed end-terraced place with a driveway and a reasonably big garden out in a village. Think twice that for the same thing in town. It's nuts.

Who exactly is Nikki? (For those of us who never saw BB.)

Uh... Si, I tend to be a bit slow on the uptake with women myself. Not too hot at picking up on the signals, blah, blah. Dude.... SHE TOOK *ALL* OF HER CLOTHES OFF IN FRONT OF YOU!!!!!!!!! ALL of them. This is *not* normal. Even I might have spotted that.

:rofl: Cheeky get!

I used to have dual 17s and liked it, for just the same reasons. Then one day our sysadmin gave me a couple of 19s. It's just like having two 17s but even better. Seriously, I'd recommend it. I always work at the highest resolution I can get away with and 1280 x 1024 on a 19 is much easier on the eyes than it is on a 17. Also, if you went REALLY large and could sit further away it would mean your eyes were more relaxed when working, which I don't think would be a bad thing at all. Worth giving it a go if you can persuade your company to shell out anyway. You can always switch back if you don't like it. Cheers, Bart

RIP. Always enjoyed watching him, but I guess he did take some risks and sooner or later something was bound to go wrong. A sad loss. I think it's fair to say that he raised a lot of peoples' awareness about reptiles, and got them more interested in the natural world. Gutted.

Dude, you should know by now that when it comes to monitors there's no such thing as overkill, except on your bank balance.

Agreed, you need the height for programming, although you could always go dual head with one monitor stacked on top of the other. Mmm... dual 27 inch flat panel monitors.

Happy birthday!

All right, for a manual TT my understanding is that the "official" extra urban figure is around 27 mpg. I'd say this is likely to be pretty accurate assuming you drive like a granny: I managed 26.5 mpg once on a long motorway trip where I didn't push it. Under anything other than ideal conditions expect much less.

Thanks for this. Plenty of ideas there... and I totally agree about 2 strokes Rodders, can't stand the sound of them for one thing. That DT125R looks pretty made though... 30-odd bhp from a 125cc engine? Daft question, but why don't they make car engines the same way... or just put a couple of those engines in your average commuter car? I guess the answer I get back is going to be torque related. There must be some sound reason for doing it. Annoyingly I've just found out I need to take my CBT first before I can ride anything on the road, so that'll be the next step. I always thought that you used to be able to ride anything up to 125cc without bothering with any of that? Guess not, but fortunately it's not too expensive. Thanks for all the advice. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled over the next few weeks. Cheers, Bart

I'm thinking of getting one for commuting to work as the road I'll be travelling on get's pretty congested, and the zed'll cost a fortune in fuel. Anyone recommend any decent ones please? I want to get something second hand where I can do most, or even all, of the maintenance myself. Thanks, Bart

That might be pretty normal: I have a manual and the tunnel gets warm after an extended period of driving.

If I had an auto? Yes. Heck, if my J-spec was an auto I'd have upgraded the cooling on the box within a month of getting it. They burn up. Your autobox isn't cooled properly, especially if it's a J-spec import? Well it's gonna burn and that's that. Search this forum: that answer is everywhere. Sorry to say, but whilst I'm no expert, not cooling your autobox is a dumb idea, and your bloody mechanic should have known that. I barely knew which end the right end of a wrench was which when I first looked into getting one of these cars a couple of years ago, so almost anyone else is without excuse.

It may be one of the relays in the boot is stuck (on RHS under plastic panel). I've had this happen myself, and if that's the case a sharp tap with the blunt end of a screwdriver should fix it temporarily. However if this were the case it's likely that your ABS pump wouldn't switch off after you switch of the ignition, and this could obviously lead to a flat battery if not rectified. If you do need a new ABS unit it won't be cheap as I understand it, but one of the traders on here might be able to help you - you might also be able to pick up a second-hand one for not too much money from Andy at supercarparts (I think they're called). HTH, Bart

Uhhhh.... you have a 70% resemblance to **RACQUEL WELCH**?!?? What the heck were the guys who programmed that thing on? Whatever it was, right now I feel like I could do with some of it.

Nice one. I like that a lot.

Think you might be right there. Shame, but if I had the money I'd probably think twice before buying an Aston even though I love them.

Interesting. Did they say anything about the Blitz kit?

Well all I can say is that the advertising at the pump implies that it's a different/better fuel that Optimax, so if it ain't and it's just a simple rebranding exercise... I reckon they might be in a bit of trouble. Maybe anyway, they're a big corporation so equally they might just get away with it.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure seeing back along that ZCentre do them. Also I'm pretty certain GetGreddy do/did, although at the moment probably not a very good bet.