What makes you grin? Antidote to grumpy thread

[dollywobbler]

Oi! This is the grin thread!

 

Speaking of lying companies, this made me grin. Had a call yesterday. "We've been passed your details because we understand you've got debt problems."

"Oh really? Who gave you that then?"

"Well, perhaps you've recently applied for a loan."

Cue me laughing, lots.

"I've got no debt mate. Ta-ra!"

 

You have to laugh. My Mum got phoned up because my sister had apparently applied for a mobile phone. My sister has a mental age of about three or four. If you didn't laugh at their blatant lies, I think it would make you go mad with a shotgun.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

this CD is making me grin like a moron:

 

 

I used to have this on tape years ago and lost it somewhere. I remembered about it the other day and bought it off amazon. Now i'm listeneing to it and remembering just how much I FREAKING LOVE IT! There is simply no better music to accompany wobbly but enjoyable 'shite travel' than this.

 

Here is a taster on YouTube:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-XrNiFtMuo

[scaryoldcortina]

People complaining about windows makes me grin! Linux is the autoshite choice, imo, you KNOW it isn't going to work without some effort on your part, but it's free...

For some reason, I get a lot of calls from people who are convinced that I'm crippled with debt, and prepared to take a loan to solve it all. Despite being debt free and a home owner (not mortgaged) I string them along for as long as I can, then pretend to be a tenant.

 

My grin for today is particularly evil. Earlier today, I was trying to practice guitar, but Conor was bored and kept bugging me, so I responded by playing (and singing) star trekkin' by the firm. C was convinced I was making it up just to annoy him, so i dared him to youtube it (to prove it exists) He did, now he can't get it out of his head. He's been humming it all evening. It's great being a parent sometimes....

[myglaren]

Oi! This is the grin thread!

 

Ooops! Sorry

[myglaren]

People complaining about windows makes me grin! Linux is the autoshite choice, imo, you KNOW it isn't going to work without some effort on your part, but it's free...

 

It's rarely any trouble either. Even my wife, who never looked at a computer until a year ago, manages fine with it.

 

Windows SP3 still installing, which is about three times as long as it takes to install Linux on anything

 

I rarely have trouble with my Vista laptop though. Been running Ubuntu 10.4 on that and the granddaughters this afternoon and then Linux Mint - which oddly enough couldn't fathom the wireless dongle on her machine. The NDIS wrappers are supposed to come with it. Never needed them for any of the other machines.

[scaryoldcortina]

Yeah, I find that, as long as someone in the house can work a command line, linux is the solution. My wife has no troble working it, asperger boy won't use anything else - his current laptop came with vista HP preinstalled, but he didn't even boot it! Straight out with a USB stick with mint 8 on it....

once in a while, it misbehaves, and I have to fix it with a bash shell, but not often,, and at least it is easily fixed. That has never been my experience with windows.

[eddyramrod]

Star Trekking, dear me, I actually bought that! Ye cannae change the laws o' physics cap'n...

[Vin]

this CD is making me grin like a moron:

 

 

I used to have this on tape years ago and lost it somewhere. I remembered about it the other day and bought it off amazon. Now i'm listeneing to it and remembering just how much I FREAKING LOVE IT! There is simply no better music to accompany wobbly but enjoyable 'shite travel' than this.

 

Here is a taster on YouTube:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-XrNiFtMuo

Well Fuggin Hell, Alf Bollox, there's a blast from the past.

 

My Dad had 'Sky 2' on vinyl. Recorded on to cassette, it accompanied many an early eighties journey in the Saab or the Alpine

 

Tocatta was brill. I also loved Herbie Flowers doing 'Tuba Smarties'. Class in a Glass

 

Francis Monkman also did all the music for 'The Long Good Friday'

 

 

[Cavcraft]

Raymanboy/ChelseaFruitcakeAntiques has some competition...

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Pandora-22-int-ya ... 93&afsrc=1

 

What the fuck is all that about?

[Mr H Sceptre]

Had a stroll round the market yesterday & the bloke with the 2nd hand record stall decided he would get off his sorry arse & open up. Glad he did. Made some nice cheap purchases (all vinyl;, of course):

 

The Clash 'Give Em Enough Rope' lp. 50p

Stevie Wonder 'Songs in the Key of Life lp. 50p

Beach Boys 'Greatest Hits' lp. 50p

Bookr T & the MGs 'Soul Limbo 7". £1.

 

Chuffed.

[Cavcraft]

Had a stroll round the market yesterday & the bloke with the 2nd hand record stall decided he would get off his sorry arse & open up. Glad he did. Made some nice cheap purchases (all vinyl;, of course):

 

The Clash 'Give Em Enough Rope' lp. 50p

Stevie Wonder 'Songs in the Key of Life lp. 50p

Beach Boys 'Greatest Hits' lp. 50p

Bookr T & the MGs 'Soul Limbo 7". £1.

 

Chuffed.

Got that years back, fantastic album.

[myglaren]

Bloody thing is still updating

[Mr H Sceptre]

Had a stroll round the market yesterday & the bloke with the 2nd hand record stall decided he would get off his sorry arse & open up. Glad he did. Made some nice cheap purchases (all vinyl;, of course):

 

The Clash 'Give Em Enough Rope' lp. 50p

Stevie Wonder 'Songs in the Key of Life lp. 50p

Beach Boys 'Greatest Hits' lp. 50p

Bookr T & the MGs 'Soul Limbo 7". £1.

 

Chuffed.

Got that years back, fantastic album.

Aye.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Good television is making me grin.

 

The resurrected Futurama finished its latest season yesterday, and it's been an excellent batch of episodes. Really happy to have more Futurama

[Louise2cv]

I was just reading an interview in the Guardian and one of the questions was:

 

"property aside, what's the most expensive thing you've bought"

 

Of course the answer was "my car" and I imagine that's the same for most people...

 

...but for me, it's my dog! Now sometimes his behaviour would mean I post this in the grumpy thread; but today I'm grinning that at the age of nearly thirty all my cars have been cheaper to buy than my pet, surely a good measure of automotive shiteness?

 

Or did I pay WAY to much for Gruff?

[Negative Creep]

It's a car for me, though the most I've ever spent was 2000gbp. Excluding them it would be my plane ticket here (about 850) and a HD tv (about 500). Never taken out a loan besides the student one or had a credit card, something which I'm rather glad of

[Cavcraft]

 

Barks at the rabbit, attacks feet, plays chase with the cats and tries to dig holes in concrete.

[chaseracer]

...Or did I pay WAY to much for Gruff?

NO!! He's brilliant

[Rusty Pelican]

Hope you dont groom the pooch with that broom cavette

WHAT A SWEETY

[Gompo]

Could it have been this one? Can't be many that fit that description about

90% sure it's that one. Good work! How did you find that? I had a quick look online to see if there were any pics of it about. It was travelling in the opposite direction, but I'd have guessed it's last 3 digits were 'NOH'..

 

 

Mr.B, great call on 'Westway', my favourite Sky song.

[barrett]

It's one of my spots, lives in Brighton. You said Senator, and that's a Carlton, but gold early 80s big Vauxhalls on SERCKS must be in the single figures now. That one is one of three, possibly four Carltons in B-town, and it's by far the nicest.

 

All this talk of SKY has taken me back to my childhood, my mum loved that lot. I have '5' on vinyl somewhere too. If you ever get a chance, go and see Herbie Flowers playing, lovely chap and a natural raconteur.

[mattblack]

For some reason, I get a lot of calls from people who are convinced that I'm crippled with debt, and prepared to take a loan to solve it all. Despite being debt free and a home owner (not mortgaged) I string them along for as long as I can, then pretend to be a tenant.

 

We got a call from a bank offering a loan some time ago, O/H answered the phone. Conversation went something like:

 

Bint from bank: would you like a loan?

 

O/H: No thanks

 

BfB: are you sure? You could use it to buy a car for example.

 

O/H: Why would we want to do that?

 

BfB: Well, you could get a nice car, and...

 

O/H: Oh no, we only pay about £200 for our cars.

 

BfB: Well, if you had a loan you could buy a reliable car.

 

O/H: Why would a more expensive car be more reliable?

 

BfB: Well, what if you car breaks down?

 

O/H: We just buy another £200 one.

 

BfB: Er, well... yes... I suppose that makes sense , really...

 

O/H: Bye....!

[Pillock]

My grin? Spent the day at Skeg

Still getting the sand out of my hair though........

[dollywobbler]

Was getting bored of my hotel room in Milton Keynes and went for a walk. The Aston Martin Works next door suggests I'm not actually in Milton Keynes...

 

Bonus (cameraless) spot on my little walk - a locally-produced Vauxhall Viva HC outside 'The Tickford Superstore.' (which is a Londis shop...)

[seth]

I bought an adapter off Ebay so that I can use some of my old Canon lenses (like 30-40 year old) on my digital EOS. The chap making/selling them was a rock guitarist in the '70s playing in Thin Lizzy etc (Eddie Houston). Anyhow, it came in the post today and I've had a little play tonight. Pretty happy with the results so far. Can't wait to give it a go in proper light.

 

 

[Pete-M]

I've had quite a fun Saturday really. Even though I ended up using spanners and diagnostic stuffage all day, even though I don't work weekends. Or use spanners unless absolutely inevitable.

 

Diagnosed a slow VW Golf TDi as being the VNT flap being stuck, freed it off and all of a sudden the thing would pull quite well even in fifth. That was nice and simple, and free to fix

 

Billy, this could well be what is wrong with your Passat. If it goes well for a few minutes from cold and then turns into an utter slug for no apparant reason when you try and boot it, it'll be the flap stuck. Copious amounts of lube freed it up again nicely. If you VAG-COM it, it'll show up as being a positive pressure It's a little flap on a solenoid arm attached to the turbo. Easier to sort from underneath though.

 

Then fixed the aerial on an Audi A4 cabrio. Broken co-ax going to the aerial amps in the bootlid.

 

Then stripped the back brakes on the XJR to find out wtf was making all the noise. Linings are new, as are the discs and pads (which is nice), the little pin that holds the shoes in place had pulled through into the drum. Five minutes with a pair of pliers and vice, and a few minutes knocking the back plate back into shape and all is well again. Bonus item for the day was discovering the XJR uses the same handbrake shoes as a Peugeot 605. Yay, shite related.

 

Then went and rescued a girl I know who's Polo 1.4 TDi had gone wrong. "It sounds like it's got a cold, and it's shivering and a bit grumpy" was her description of the symptoms. Got there and discovered a 3 cylinder diesel Polo that was running on two cylinders. Possibly the funniest engine vibration I've ever seen. The thing was jumping about at idle like it was about to break free. Plugged in the diagnostic gubbins and injector number one had gone mental. Cleared the codes and it was back on three, purring away. Tie strap around the injector loom plug and it's happy again.

 

So, four fixed cars and the only bits needed were a bit of coax (stolen from an old RCA lead), three tie straps and a load of lube.

 

It's a serious bonus when cars tell you what's wrong with 'em. Also plugged in the XJR to find there isn't a single fault code in it and it's running exactly right.

 

Oh, and the spanish omelette from the chippy wasn't bad.

[Cavcraft]

Hey, brilliant thank Pete I'll have a look at that. I did buy one of those cheap FCRs off eBay but I think I spack'd up the plug on the car the FCR connects to

When I plug it in it says something like 'unable to connect' after it's scanned for ages.

 

When my lad gets up (probably about 3.00pm) and assuming he doesn't go straight round to his bird's house I'll have a look at it. Thanks for the heads up Pete.

[Pete-M]

Hey, brilliant thank Pete I'll have a look at that. I did buy one of those cheap FCRs off eBay but I think I spack'd up the plug on the car the FCR connects to

When I plug it in it says something like 'unable to connect' after it's scanned for ages.

 

Thanks for the heads up Pete.

VAG stuff tends to not talk to generic FCRs. More often than not you'll get data errors rather than anything useful from 'em. I've got a little Mac Tools ET80 that won't talk to VWs, comes up as an data link error.

 

Oh, make sure your lad doesn't go completely mental with the lube. Turbos get pretty hot...

[Station]

It's nice when a big problem is easily fixed. I had a horrible screeching from the front for a couple of weeks. Had the wheel off, and it was the metal brake shield thing bent into the brake disc.

[Pillock]

three tie straps and a load of lube.

 

Now that's a good night in.