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I started lessons about a month after passing 17. My dad offered to pay, so why not! I also took about 5 months before taking the test and I also passed first time (just). I fact the 23rd anniversary was just last week :eek: I always remember the date because if you fail you have to wait a month which would have been Christmas day!
I didn't use it that much at first, just the occasional commute to college when mum didn't need her car and the odd joyride with my mates :D I didn't get a car till '02 when commuting to a different city for work. I could probably walk or bus it now have a job in the same city, but with shifts either starting really early or finishing really late a car is still the easiest form of transit and I love the occasional drive in the countryside either in the New Forest or South Downs.

Anyway, good luck @NormanicGrav and @Blaize if/when you start.
 
Gemsy-chan said:
I’ll be getting rid of mine when my insurance runs out in April as I just can’t justify the cost of the up keep (insurance, tax, MOT). As work is 10 mins walk from home I don’t need it for that.
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I work from home so my work is a six second walk from my bed. You wouldn't think it, but the more time you spend in the same place the less you want to go to other places.
 
I love cars (well, old cars which don't have unnecessary newfangled rubbish like computers in them that can only be accessed by the manufacturer, keys that cost ten times more to replace than the notched bit of metal that starts mine, power steering, electronic fuel injection, catalytic converters and side impact bars) and driving to the point I genuinely feel like I start to get withdrawal symptoms if I haven't driven in a while. I've loved cars* since I was little and my dad and uncle would almost always be working on the various old bangers we ran and if I can't fix and maintain a car myself I'm not really interested in owning it.

I didn't actually take or pass the test for a while though, and I ended up having to sit the theory a second time even though I passed the first time due to it running out. In the end I did a five day intensive driving course (which I would recommend to anybody, awesome way to learn, really throws you in there and has you driving all day every day instead of just a few hours a week) to undo my bad habits and passed first time at the end of that. Of course I probably picked most of them back up again, driving a lot in France shortly afterwards (where the only way to get round a roundabout is to force yourself onto it) didn't really help.

Always worth bearing in mind that if you buy a classic car (currently cars made before 1977) insurance is cheap and you don't have to pay road tax. Hell, if you get one made before 1960 you don't even need an MoT. :D

*All machines really, maybe one day I'll get that mechanical wife if the do-gooders keep their blasted human-centric morality out of things.
 
Neil.T said:
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? :eek:
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Well of course. Sweets are an even more of a legal drug than alcohol and cigarettes. Sweet evils are however a lot more intelligent. They disguise themlseves as angelic bliss hormone causers, while wrecking your oral health, blood sugar balance and possibly your whole blood system, when they participate in causing overweight.

I only eat fruit and very occasionally honey.
... And ice cream. I can't seem to able to get out of that addication yet. ;_;
 
Reading Luna's tale of woe (and some of the responses) puts me in mind of an experience I had recently.

To provide a bit of context: One of the reasons I've not been posting much on here lately is that I've got something cool in the works. I've been asked to assist with a new gaming channel on Youtube / Vid. Me next year. So a lot of time's been spent prepping material. I've also taken it upon myself to get the kit together to put out some content focusing on specific consoles.

One of these is the Playstation 2, which I've had to buy some kit for to modify and ensure it doesn't crap out on us at an inopportune moment. And the big spend here has been on hard drives that we can rip games to from disc and then run from there. What an... adventure it's been.

The toughest thing has been sourcing old IDE hard drives that will work in the PS2 I've been sent. Getting them to work isn't an exact science, and even some things that SHOULD work, or are documented to, don't always work properly.

Anyhoo... about time I get to the point, here. After doing an evening's worth of research, I found a couple of decent sized IDE hard drives on Ebay and ordered them. When they arrived, I dug out a screwdriver and network adapter and tried them both. Neither worked, for no apparent reason. The drives weren't faulty, and the PS2 formatted them without issue. But attempting to do anything along lines of actually USING them just locked the console up.

So, I spent another day or two reasing up on them, trying to work out why this was happening. Found nothing, alas. As I say, console hacking isn't an exact science.

So, I sent a message to the Ebay seller, explaining the situation, requesting a return and apologising for the inconvenience.

Two days passed with no response.

So, rather than be £40 down for two items I couldn't use, and having little tolerance for that kind of unprofessionalism, I sent a return request through Ebay's regular channels. At which point the seller responded, telling me - and I quote, exactly:

"Hi. Send the HDD back if you want. But I'm not paying return postage. You should have checked up on it before ordering. F*cking time waster."

So. The hard drive's gone back in the post. With a note explaining that - as I had already mentioned in the message the seller couldn't be bothered to reply to - I HAD checked up on the unit before ordering it. And I also assured him that I was not a 'f*cking time waster.' I've also told him that I'm happy to cover return postage, but he's obliged to offer a full refund.

I'll be reporting the seller to Ebay regardless of the outcome. Swearing at your customers would be unacceptable in a bricks and mortar store, and Ebay don't like it when their maretplace sellers do it either.
 
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