Be Excellent To Each Other

It's political correctness gone mad, is what it is.

Anyone that doesn't have a hivis waistcoat / jacket in their car should get onto fixing that.

You can buy them with your name on!

Being a builder-y type I always got my faithful hi vis coat and PPE. Sod ringing the AA to change a wheel.

The subaru is a pain as you have to jack up the suspension sag, then the car, and the wheels are heavy. MrsA could probably not do it.

Once you jack up the suspension, do you hold it in place with a tie of some kind?

A bow tie?

Never thought of that.

So what do you currently do? I'm confused as to what "jacking up the suspension" is.

On armoured 4x4s with miles of travel, you sometimes see people with a suspension tie (I don't know the proper name so I can't find a picture, but it's basically a 18-inch length of rope with a clip at each end) to hold the bottom of the spring to the chassis, so that when you jack the chassis the wheel goes with it. If you're really desperate you can do it with a winch, too.

Hardcore armoured ones just pick the appropriate wheel up themselves with hydraulics, which is far easier:

He didn't say jack the suspension, he said jack the suspension sag - so jack the chassis until the suspension isn't still keeping the wheel on the floor.

Oh, maybe. Technically you do that with all cars, though.

yeah but scoobys are extra saggy so you run out of jack. I'm guessing.

Yeah, it seemed to take ages. Not doing that in the rain.

But if you run out of jack without some way of strapping the spring up then you're buggered.

using a strapon can bugger you too

Just cram the jack under the axle. No way for that to go wrong.

Or get some BURLY HELPERS to tip the car onto its side.

PROHINT: Fold the fucking wing mirror in first

Jack up car, when you run out of jack put bricks under sill, let down jack, put bricks under jack, repeat.

Then run off with expensive alloy wheels #Glasgow

For the last 4 or 5 days my wife has been complaining that the garage smelt of cat piss.

So came home early to sort that and some other jobs out.

First suspect was the cat carry case, so I picked it up and yes it smelt of piss, its a week old if that .

So job done, cat was obviously a bit upset by her trip to the vets and paid me back, stuck the case in the greenhouse with a mental note to wash the cushion over Xmas

Go in a few hours later and still the garage smells, so I start looking at all the things I've moved in there over the last few weeks that the cat could have pissed on.

Then I get a strong smell just by the door. I have a water tap in there that has never worked, but it managed magically to fill a plastic dustbin with water.

Inside that dustbin was a old wicker laundry basket that I used to store paddling pools over winter.

A combination of those ingredients had produced 50 litres of water that smelt like sprouts all the way to rotten eggs depending on how much you moved the water about

So I tipped that out on the flower bed, cleaned the dustbin with bleach and moved all the other stuff to the bottom of the garden

My stomach hurts form retching. although I skipped lunch so wasn't sick

I've hacked some randos heating and every time they reset it I have to go back in and turn it of.

A few years ago I modded my Xbox to enable it to install games on the hard drive and play emulators.

Last night, I tried a few games but it doesn't seem to be reading the discs anymore. I think the disc drive it knackered. Annoying.

Replaceable! IIRC, it's a standard IDE interface

Yeah, I've just been reading about it online but I think that you can only use original Xbox drives. I don't believe a normal DVD drive will work. Shame as I think I've got a couple of those somewhere.

I've just sent a message to my local retro game shop to see if he's got any in. If so, I'll buy one and swap it over.

Assuming you can still get into the dashboard you can also install stuff via FTP to it - not having the drive is problematic but not the end of the world.

Yep, I can still do that but I've got a load of original games on disc that I'd like to be able to play without ripping them then FTPing them across.

I did use my Xbox for emulators but just recently, my Wii has become the emulator of choice and I've moved back to my PC for MAME so I think I'm going back to using the Xbox for what it was originally made for rather than messing about with it.

If you have no luck, I've got a spare (just the console) that you can have if you cover the postage (obviously they're quite heavy things to post, but it'd be less than a tenner). If you're interested, let me know and I'll test it over Xmas just to make sure it works.. it's been gathering dust a bit.

Brilliant! Thanks Devilman. I may take you up on that offer... My shop guy is having a look to see if he has one but he reckons he's sold loads on the run up to Christmas so I may be out of luck there.

Probably cheaper to post just the DVD drive bit out of it and bin the rest.

I thought that but it would be a hassle to take it out and I don't mind paying the postage for it. I was expecting to spend something on getting it fixed so I'd rather Devilman have it.

We took the kids to Chester Zoo today to see the new elephant calf. Upon returning home, my son revealed that he had lost his favourite elephant toy that he's had since birth.

Luckily, the zoo lost property department has it, but now I have to drive all the way back. Bah. It's only 10 miles or so, but I'm missing Christmas Movie Night

But you formed a nice memory and have a great story to tell when he's older.

And something for him to unwrap on Christmas Day and take to be a Christmas miracle.

Ha. Didn't think of that

Clearly he's been on a Christmas adventure !

My wife who is 23 weeks pregnant had a fall last night

So off in the ambulance on her own as we have nobody to look after our boy, could have normally asked people next door but they are away.

All is well with the baby, although she has a bruised rib and is in a bit of pain for that, she can't take very much for it either.

She got home at 1am and I was waiting up, in bounced our son @5.45am this morning I was stating to loose the will to go on!

So I persuaded him to get in with us and told him stories etc, and he fell asleep for once, next thing I know its 10.30 and he is still asleep!

The sleep has helped us all I think, also in a odd way this is not a bad thing for my wife, the rib pain is forcing her to stay in bed and take it easy, something she is not very good at.

Back at work today... I honestly don't know how people do it? It was horrendous.

I think I should start looking for a new job if this is how I feel after a week and a bit off.

Everyone feels like that after the Christmas break, too much eating, drinking and sleeping in.

Also I always find that I forget what the day of the week is as you focus on Christmas Day and Boxing day, then before you know where you are its your last day off and you are looking for work shirts to iron and trying to find your building pass

Just had my first stats exam. The questions were nothing like the ones on the mock that we were given and I'm sure that one of the answers was wrong!

At least you got the rest right though.

Heh, it was multiple choice. I'm pretty sure that I was right and the paper was wrong!

Wow, what are the odds of that?!

*Groan*

Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago a colleague of mine was killed on her way to work.

The trial started last week and the jury started their deliberations this afternoon.

http://m.nottinghampost.com/man-on-tria ... story.html

Hadn't heard about this, Jazzy. Very sad indeed. 2 years ago too and only just going through court!

Fucks sake. This happened right around the corner from our house last night:

http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/ ... -1-8351918

Knew the bloke who was killed. He ran the local Post Office when I was growing up.

Just remembered that he only just survived having his whole Post Office collapse on him after some idiot builder left half of it resting on a single acrow prop.

Sorry to hear that.

Ak, how shit. Sorry to hear that.

Really sorry to hear that Mark.