NFG

Hi That sounds fair to me, let us know how it works out & perhaps share nice old chaps e-bay handle with us as there are far too many rogues out there. Bonne Annee N

Hi, Without more specific information, OS, Browser, broadband provider this is difficult to diagnose. Could be congested exchange/Internet routing and so on... However, clearing your browser cache may help. Agreed, the telly is naff & YT much better oh & Happy New Year

Not yet! Anisette Gras Floranis avec l'eau for apero followed by plenty of vin rouge we did bring back some Thatchers Gold Vintage 2011 tho... Anyway, what ever you drink - Happy New Year - Bonne Annee to all

Hi I used chainsdirect via their E-bay store, very good service, quick to deliver & would use them again. Bonne année N

Hi, Seasons greetings to all, Some good comment from Skyhuck, Business banks objective is to shaft you when ever possible, they're all bastards so be careful what you sign up for. I run a small (non Arb) biz with Santander, theyre not bad but sometimes need telling things twice. I would avoid Lloyds, I used them a few years ago, but they are expensive & being large dont give a toss about small enterprise. Big mistake to bail them out IMO N

Hi, We used to see quite a few in Cornwall & some occasionally when we lived in Corsham. Now we see them frequently & even had one fly around the living room N

Hi, cant answer all your questions, but: We had an oak floor in the study of our previous house, it was 22mm thick by about 125mm wide. Some people are very fussy about knots but that sort of thing dosnt really bother us, fewer knots = more expensive. We had to leave it for a week to acclimatise & once it was down we just rubbed beeswax (I think) into it which seemed to last for ages. Cant remember where we got it from. N

Best wishes all, My son got married on the 23rd then partied till about three in the morning & I got a bottle of Isle of Jura single malt Bon Noel

Hi all, Nothing like a glass of champagne to start the day around 11.00 or a large G&T then a nice bottle of good red Bordeaux with a glass of vintage port to finish.

With 100K I would buy another house, yes that really does buy a reasonable house in these parts which I would rent out for income. My (non Arb) business is as small as I want it and dont need to spend on it. But I would buy an MS441 with 20" bar oh la la N

Hi, I have a Fabrilor wood burner with a large window of Schott glass, I clean it by spitting on a piece of kitchen roll or dip in water, then dipping into the burnt ash, to form a nice damp gooey grey pad. This makes for an effective scourer that is not too harsh & very effective. N

Hi, I would consider that selling something thats 10 years older than stated constitutes fraud and you could have easily recovered your money - although I dont know the full facts of the case - my learned friend! Anyway, Im posting to say thanks to Alec for the info regarding models & so on, One suggestion though, would it be useful to have a "how to spot chainsaw fake or fraud" sticky thread with some typical pics and examples? As members report them to Ebay, the items get pulled before the rest of us get a glimpse of what to look out for although the phrases such as "new last year & only cut a few trees" or "stopped working and been in my shed every since" spring to mind, a rogues gallery of pics would help the rest of us mere mortals, no so eloquently versed in chainsaw identification avoid them. Just a thought and hope your 341 goes well, I wouldn't mind one also. N

Thats very well done to raise £487. N

No, the flexible wire stuff wont be man enough to drive the brush vertically If you do get some poles & a brush, check they flex enough to fit & the brush is the right size for your flue, so consider to source locally rather than e-bay. If I rotate the poles when brushing then I turn in the direction that would tighten the brush onto the pole, or you will have to send an extremely thin child up the flue to recover the brush! I also tie a length of strong chord to the brush, so if the brush did come undone it permits easy removal.

I dont run an Arb biz but a lot of the ideas here are transferable. I ran a reward scheme for successfully passing on my details. fairly simplez: Customer gets a card to pass on then if I got some biz from a new customer once they paid me! ie - Joe Bloggs referred me, quoting a reference from the card, then Joe got a cash-back. Seemed to work quite well at the time. Oh and for larger businesses, I think "Badgers Arse" toilet paper a fine preventative for time wasting in the bogs!

Just found out the Tamar bridge - Plymouth/Torpoint is shut & its getting a tad breezy over here

I am not a professional however, I wear gloves, SIP arm sleeves along with chaps, helmet & steel toecap boots to cut a fair amount of firewood and infrequently trees when the need arises I consider these no substitute for correct handling and common sense, but should an incident occur then the severity of that incident should be reduced. A couple of months ago a friend had an accident with his saw - quite serious one, which bounced off his steel toecap before slicing into his foot. He was off work for 6 weeks, but Im convinced that without the protection the accident would have been a lot worse & he would have lost the end of his foot. To me, this fortified the PPE argument & I think the same goes for gloves, although I can see where people are coming from with the arthritis angle. Don't think Im telling you what to do though, drink beer, smoke fags & enjoy em!

Hi I agree, less rules and regs which dont seem to be enforced with the same vigour as in Angleterre. Et tres beau temps! N

IMO in a crisis, Great Britain has teetered before on the brink of joining the Euro at the wrong time for the wrong reasons & once again this is one of them. Its not just the common currency, its all the bull that goes with it thats the big no no. Im sure, that just like 'decimalisation' the price will be rounded up & the change rounded down. Integration with the common currency should have occurred at a much more beneficial price, but GB only seems to consider this option as a last resort when the entry price is wrong. Whilst I respect & support Mr Cameron's decision, I do think some common ground between France, Germany & GB could/should be found and with some clever manipulation an agreement achieved to benefit all. On slightly different notes, I think retail & commercial banking sectors must be split to protect smaller investors, businesses & individuals. To me, its fairly obvious what UK businesses need is more customers which an improved alliance with Europe may provide along with increased monetary supply. You cant give people jobs without more customers, unless you decide to, say re-surface all the roads - which desperately needs doing! I saw all this coming a long time ago, unrealistic market expectations/values based on continuing increases in growth, cleverly massaged statistics reliant on an ever expanding economy. To counter the massive fail, I re-arranged my lifestyle to one more independent & self sufficient, with a diversity of Euro & Sterling incomes and what ever the outcome things wont go wrong. I did consider setting up my own bank, lending and buying debt recklessly, having gone bust, obtain a huge bailout form the taxpayer, award myself a massive bonus & a collection of Stihls to impress! N There have been a number of good posts to this thread, this is my opinion and yours will be different!

8 years is pretty good, I did run a PC for a similar amount of time & the HDD failed and when I restored from my Acronis image it then told me the license was invalid. Microsofts answer was to ask me for another £170 which they diddnt get & I removed the offending registry keys.

Agree entirely, I have worked in IT for over 25 years, with MOD & a number of blue chip clients in a variety of roles; security, networking, hosting etc. I have a MacPro & a MacBook Pro, they do everything I want with ease, over the years all our family switched to Mac and the free support line for help with Windows is now silent. Not that I dont talk to them, its just the enormous scope for trouble that Redmonds offering has & always will have. Windows 2000 Pro was my fav with XP Pro next But hey, it will all be fixed in the next release!

Diet - whats that? Im rather partial to a glass or two of rouge, as for exercise theres always plenty to do in the garden.

PS You can always alias your .com domain to the .co.uk or the other way around that way both names will point to the same website N

Hi Daniel, There are a few differences between the two top level domain names, as .com addresses are governed by ICANN & UK domains ie .co.uk / .org.uk etc are governed by Nominet. A UK domain is cheaper for registry fees. I would personally register & host a .co.uk address particularly if your venture is UK based. .com would still be fine, I think clients are more comfortable with .co.uk I find sometimes spam bots 'harvest' the registrars email address from the WHOIS registry and its advisable to select a secondary e-mail address with which to register your domain. Be aware there are some companies that act in an underhand manner with domains, in that they will send you what looks like official paperwork which if returned, ends up transferring your domain to another host that charges a lot to host it, essentially they are scams. I think thats the best way to describe it without swearing! see Domain name scams good luck regs N

If each side is 80m & one is 40m then the land forms an isosceles triangle. The area of an isosceles triangle is half base * height - but the height is not 80m! To calculate the height you need to drop a line from tip to base & use C=A/H from SOHCAHTOA so Cos(some angle) = 20/80 or .25 So use ACos of .25 = 75.5224878 degrees as the angle at each side of triangle The height can be calculated by ATan 75.5224878 = O/A or A Tan 75.5224878 = 3.87298334 3.87298334 * 20 = 77.4596668 lets say 77.5 so the land area is actually (40 * 77.5)/2 = 1550 sq meters = reaches for coat - asbestos one to protect from flames - but it looks right to me!