The General Conversation Area

I just got back from Norway. Lovely country. Visited various places, including the Troll Wall (it keeps the trolls from escaping), a Glacial Finger (it was huge, therefore the hand itself must be massive), many beautiful fjords and mountains, and the most amazing mountain road with eleven consecutive hairpin bends. :D
 
Mutsumi said:
a Glacial Finger
I thought they were a strictly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.

icedfin.jpg
 
Shite day at work today but tbh I’m looking forward to the weekend and can get away from this place for a while. Had a few worded fights with management staff but I ‘ve managed to speak with my manager and iron out some concerns.
Tinkering with the cars this weekend and shopping for holiday clothes, I’m hoping to just destress and chill out.

Should really open that bottle of wine I’ve had in the fridge for a few weeks now and have a glass with a Chinese or Indian.

More benching lastnight without a spotter and managed to get myself to a higher weight than I was doing the other night with my spotter – must have gotten stronger 
 
Went to the job interview today. Seemed like it went well. It was mentioned that I was one of eight interviews from a list of seventy five candidates. I should find out if I get the job or not sometime next week.
 
Late last night, as a result of one of my idiosyncratic perambulations, I made several notable discoveries.

Firstly, one third of the former Millenium Dome is still empty. One circles the inner perimiter only to reach a line of barricades before a vast concrete expanse. I hold that an indoor pond should be installed in its place.

Secondly, bankers are most fond of temporary food vendors serving Americentric cuisine at 22:30 outside their offices, especially if accompanied by an improvised beer garden. (I walked straight through such a location, needless to say.)

Thirdly, there is no way to take a short-cut around the headquarters of Barclays Bank. A dead-end faces anyone believing overwise, as I found to my slight consternation.
 
Tachi said:
I've noticed some misting on my drivers side headlight! so i now need to find the cause and get it fixed. hopefully this weekend i'll have it all sorted and be able to raise the light level anyway (currently its dipped so low that you can't see its light over the nose of the bonnet) might even sort it out tonight before the gym.
Take off the old sealant between the plastic/glass and the back of the light unit and reseal with the stuff you use for bathrooms. Simple job, plenty of guides on the internet.

Speaking of cars, I get my new Fiesta tomorrow. My happiness cannot be contained!
 
I went for a day-trip today down to Brighton...

...didn't think of checking to see if anything was happening. If I had known it was the gay pride parade I would have got later in the month.

And I lost my glasses :(
 
mangaman74 said:
Went to the job interview today. Seemed like it went well. It was mentioned that I was one of eight interviews from a list of seventy five candidates. I should find out if I get the job or not sometime next week.
Good Luck! I hope you get the job.

Joshawott said:
I was in talks with the apprenticeship co-ordinator for a week or so about the possibility of me being moved to another department, but there were no vacancies. So I received a sick note from my GP covering the time I had been absent, as well as my 2 weeks notice and handed in my resignation.
That sucks big time and you shouldn't have had to put up with the ****** treatment at work Josh. I wish you all the best in finding another job.
At least now you're gone from there you can find an employer who actually appreciates and looks out for you.
 
Tachi - Thanks. Being my first ever job, it was pretty nerve-wracking as it was - I had no idea what to expect. Funnily enough, the people I ended up having a problem with where the ones a friend of mine told me I'd get along with - and the one that I was warned about was actually nice. The disheartening this is that everyone else in the office were nice and friendly - it was just my mentor, but due to her close relationship with my manager, I couldn't trust her with such matters.

What was even more annoying is, even after all of that, I had to fight with payroll to get the overpaid tax I was owed. Due to being on such a low wage, I wasn't legally required to pay tax but I got hit with emergency tax after the first month. I told payroll about it and was told it would be fixed for next month, where I would receive a refund of my overpaid tax. Was I? Nope - I was hit again. I resigned a few days before the payslips would have been delivered to the office and no one forwarded my May payslip to me and it took me another month just to get payroll to send me a copy. I emailed Payroll about my overpaid tax and they said that they were withholding it due to me accidentally being paid for some sick days I had, so I sent them a wordy email, going through the exact calculations of how much money I was owed (including four days worth of annual leave I was told I had left unclaimed) - except when I finally get some money, the figure is about half of my calculated figure. My apprenticeship coordinator even lied to me by saying that I wasn't expected to serve my 2-weeks notice due to the circumstances (I only supplied a note out of courtesy)...obviously just so payroll could claim more money from me.

In the end, I decided it just wasn't worth the hassle. I had also been advised by Mum to make a formal complaint to the chief executive, but I just couldn't be bothered to drag it out any more.
 
i am also now jobless as of Wednesday :( , and will need to apply for jsa on monday , yay cant wait . I have also rescued a kitten so hopefully that will get me some karma points :mrgreen:
 
I'm a happy Gnome. Rocking in my 58 plate Fiesta ZetecS And I must say, with a bit of modding it'll be a Vtec eater. Twin-cam engine, basically a DOHC Vtec block but backward. Still a lot of power to get out of it yet!

Also, my new nends *should* arrive this month! Can't wait to get my new Miku & Hayate ones!
 
Payroll, if they are anything like my payroll – are useless! They cocked up my pay entitlement when I was off sick, hence the rebate (of sorts) it does seem that as soon as payroll have a difference from the normal hours they freak out and cannot process changes properly.

If you feel that they didn’t support you properly and that everything was done incorrectly then send a formal complaint in to the HR department, they will have to investigate the allegations and you’ll get some sort of justice (so long as the HR dept isn’t also corrupt) being part of a union is helpful if only to apply pressure to a NHS trust, I’m part of Unison but I haven’t had to get them involved, only warned that I’ll get them involved if the trust don’t play ball.

Gnome: Vtec takes so long to kick in, you’d be lead footing yourself through thousands of revs before it kicks in, whereas the power to weight ratio from a Ka to a MK6 fiesta would be more than enough to beat the **** off the fiesta lol

Ford Ka 802kg
1.3 engine

Ford Fiesta over a ton
1.25 engine.

And that’s just stock, if I was to add in a electric supercharger to the end of a cold airfeed onto a cone air filter and a heatshield around the filter for added defence, the car would jump off the starting line and stay in the lead for a long time. I’m not sure on the fiesta’s gearstick reach but a KA is a short shifter, the difference between gears is a couple of cm,

I’ll get my hands on a fiesta this weekend and will probably have a race with it to see how slow it really is, the cosworth alloys I have will be put onto my car this weekend aswell and that should increase weight distribution (as they are wider) and lower the ride height by a few cm so drag wont be as much, a spoiler would be helpful aswell but finding a decent one is hard
 
Mutsumi said:
Joshawott said:
Blu-ray hasn't really taken off yet.
Why do you say that? Just because it didn't kill sales of DVDs completely? Also don't forget that it has been the main storage medium for games since 2007.
That's true enough, but my personal taste is that DVDs have done nothing wrong for me - so when there's a DVD complete set of a series I like as well as a BR set, I'd get the DVD set usually, because it's cheaper and I still enjoy the viewing. They both still come in quite large boxes, it's just in the beginning you had to buy more boxes for DVD content (individual disks = 4 eps) than Blu-Ray and DVD sets of today (DVD = 4 disks a box/BR = 2 disks).

I saw BRs more of something you can add more High Def stuff on, like today's games as you've already mentioned. But is it needed for animation/screening? Maybe if you wanted to add more compatibilities/add-ons to it, like 3D viewing and interactive modes, I'd be more inclined to get BRs more or even this new media disk.

Speaking of which, I'm actually surprised that the next storage medium for viewing wasn't something like a flash/pen-drive, I mean they have their own docking ports for hardware storage already - why not push this, and just plug-and-play? Physical storage would be more efficient and you can still put HD stuff on there as well as have huge storage in software/content etc.
I suppose the downside of this for both business and fans would be "any need for box sets?" The fans wont get the lovely cover arts, which may make a sell for either a domestic or international sale. Plus, how will these items be protected if not by a box for each device? (Or would the docks for the pen drive have it's own cover, so you dont need individual boxes.)

And the irony of all this point that I'm trying to make is: I need to go out and get a new pen-drive, as I've lost it somewhere... lol
 
Joshawott said:
Blu-ray hasn't really taken off yet, but Sony and Panasonic are already working on the next thing. 6x the storage of blu-ray discs though...interesting.
Not HVC? I'd have thought we'd at least be moving past the need to be spinning discs around with a motor by the next format. I'm not even convinced there'll be another physical format, given how everything seems to be moving to digital distribution - If they put all the money they were spending developing this into promoting and cutting the price of digital copies, I imagine that would do them just as much good.

What will the selling point be of the next format? It's not like they can improve picture quality much more, 4k is as good as it's going to get (and that's not even as big a quality jump as from DVD to BD) and they could start offering 4k downloads right now if they wanted to.
 
Tachi said:
Gnome: Vtec takes so long to kick in, you’d be lead footing yourself through thousands of revs before it kicks in, whereas the power to weight ratio from a Ka to a MK6 fiesta would be more than enough to beat the **** off the fiesta lol

Ford Ka 802kg
1.3 engine

Ford Fiesta over a ton
1.25 engine.

And that’s just stock, if I was to add in a electric supercharger to the end of a cold airfeed onto a cone air filter and a heatshield around the filter for added defence, the car would jump off the starting line and stay in the lead for a long time. I’m not sure on the fiesta’s gearstick reach but a KA is a short shifter, the difference between gears is a couple of cm,

I’ll get my hands on a fiesta this weekend and will probably have a race with it to see how slow it really is, the cosworth alloys I have will be put onto my car this weekend aswell and that should increase weight distribution (as they are wider) and lower the ride height by a few cm so drag wont be as much, a spoiler would be helpful aswell but finding a decent one is hard
Well the vTec I went up against was totally stripped at about 150whp. The guy has put a lot of work into it. But me and him are practically running the same blocks. Gonna have a browse around see if mapping my fiesta is worth it. If it provides a decent enough power/economy gain then heck it'll be getting mapped. Want to save for some nice wide BBS's too, seen some I like just need to see if they'll fit on mine. But that won't be for a while as i'm skint.
 
It helps to have mates who work in garages, - I guess you can tweak away at a car as much as you like but if the ECU is set to push out certain amounts/numbers then the car wouldn’t see a difference in power at all.
Which is why I’ve focused more on things that wouldn’t need me to mess with the ECU but will overall increase performance: so adding strut bars will increase strength when cornering at high speeds and lowering ride height (not something I’ve ever wanted to do purposely, I’ve just bought some cosworth alloys which are automatically lower lol) and a spoiler to add downdraft and anchor the car to the road better when turning and driving.

I’m hoping to sell my old seats on to another ka owner tomorrow – with abit of luck it’ll be out of my hair and I’ll be £50 better off.

I’m off to ford fair on Sunday, Northampton for 7am lol I must be mental.
 
Tachi said:
It helps to have mates who work in garages, - I guess you can tweak away at a car as much as you like but if the ECU is set to push out certain amounts/numbers then the car wouldn’t see a difference in power at all.
Which is why I’ve focused more on things that wouldn’t need me to mess with the ECU but will overall increase performance: so adding strut bars will increase strength when cornering at high speeds and lowering ride height (not something I’ve ever wanted to do purposely, I’ve just bought some cosworth alloys which are automatically lower lol) and a spoiler to add downdraft and anchor the car to the road better when turning and driving.

I’m hoping to sell my old seats on to another ka owner tomorrow – with abit of luck it’ll be out of my hair and I’ll be £50 better off.

I’m off to ford fair on Sunday, Northampton for 7am lol I must be mental.
Yeah, got a few mates with unit's so I know i've got the monkeys to help if needs be. And ooo, are you on any Ford forums by any chance? Need to look for gear for my car and ask some questions :p
 
Back
Top