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Posted

Grrr, deleted my original post rather than quoting it, sorry...

 

We all got called into a meeting earlier to be told that our biggest customer, who basically props up the work we do with volume and revenue have said c u l8r.

 

Doesnt affect me too much, my job is fairly safe still but the department who looked after that side were back an hour later than we were, all teary eyed and 2 have just walked out, wether for good or just for today I'm not sure.

 

Bad times, time to possibly stop being such a lazy arsebandit for a while...

 

Because they've given everyone who might be being made redundant a letter, and told them to go home for the day, there's about 5 of us in the office now... The atmosphere is gr9.

 

Myself and my immediate colleague have already been to the pub and formulated a winning plan to make ourselves indispensable, I need to do my iseb foundation software testing qualification pretty quickly

  • Like 2
Posted

We (well, 4 of us) have considered this.

 

There are a few Patent issues and we don't want to end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit from a bloody massive american firm with more lawyers than Engineers, but the biggest issue is that cash that would need to be invested in getting the first sale.  The investment that would be needed to bridge between where we are now and a new independent company doing it is pretty significant, and none of us are in a position to Bankroll it.

Are there any big customers that might suffer if you stopped making widgets and could be induced to approach the parent company to buy your subsidiary out or fund an MBO?

Posted

Just watching Fantomworks.

Fiat spyder in the workshop.

Instead of pronouncing it Fiat they are saying Feeyot. (20 million times).

It just sounds wrong.

Posted

Bollox. Just decided to go out and get my last motorcycle running before putting it on the market (a DMW Deemster). Of course, the battery was flat (expected) so went and dug out my old dual voltage charger. Not used it for years, but I knew exactly where it was. Found it, and my memory is shite, because this one is 12V only, and then I remembered my old 6V one died years ago, and I fully intended getting a replacement straight away, as I knew I would need it. But I didn't.

 

Oh well, there will be a short delay whilst the bay of evil delivers another one.

  • Like 1
Posted

Grrr, deleted my original post rather than quoting it, sorry...

 

We all got called into a meeting earlier to be told that our biggest customer, who basically props up the work we do with volume and revenue have said c u l8r.

 

Doesnt affect me too much, my job is fairly safe still but the department who looked after that side were back an hour later than we were, all teary eyed and 2 have just walked out, wether for good or just for today I'm not sure.

 

Bad times, time to possibly stop being such a lazy arsebandit for a while...

 

Because they've given everyone who might be being made redundant a letter, and told them to go home for the day, there's about 5 of us in the office now... The atmosphere is gr9.

 

Myself and my immediate colleague have already been to the pub and formulated a winning plan to make ourselves indispensable, I need to do my iseb foundation software testing qualification pretty quickly

I'd also dust of, update your CV and start searching Indeed. Hedging your bets.

Posted

Piazza is back together - but the battery isn't holding charge.

 

Of course, like everything else on the sodding car, it's a weird size you can't get readily. Argh.

Posted

I'd also dust of, update your CV and start searching Indeed. Hedging your bets.

Wasn’t someone looking for a shite fixer in chief with cheap accommodation etc the other day?

Posted

Wasn’t someone looking for a shite fixer in chief with cheap accommodation etc the other day?

Between 10am and 11.45 until I was told I'm safe I was drafting a Pm in my head!

Posted

Grumpy cos I dont have 3 grand to buy this: ok its mega money for an old cooking model Ford but it seems minty, original, local reg, and i think its its cool as fuck:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ford-Orion/273015507302?hash=item3f90fe0966:g:N5UAAOSwfpBaUpoP

 

s-l1600.png

 

 

FWIW, I had an exact one of these and if you want to know what it was like to own, drop me a PM and I'll tell you all about it. Your not missing much TBH. Get a 1600E

Posted

I was an Orion botherer back in the day...I had a 1.4L I bought from my parents followed by a 1.6i that I bought off a mate.  The 1.6i was a flying machine until it went in to have a recon gearbox that it didn't really need and they put the gearbox out of a carb model in it, which has a higher final drive and totally blunts the performance - I'm still bitter about that..

 

I saw a 1600e recently at a show, dodgy wood trim and leather might have been all the rage back in 1988 but it looks shit now, i'd sooner have another 1.6i Ghia

  • Like 1
Posted

Okay, so my Pug 107 suffered a flat battery recently - eventually traced to the heads up display I'd got that plugs into the OBD port.  Turns out that doesn't fully switch off and pulls a small standby current.  Wasn't the slightest issue when the car was in regular use - but it will flatten the battery if it's left for a few weeks (just like a 90s car alarm then!).  Only reason it's there is that the 107 like many cars these days doesn't have a temperature gauge, and that bothers me!

 

Now because it's bloody modern...you can't really lock it with the battery removed.  You can't lock it with the bonnet open as it behaves as though there's a door open, and immediately unlocks itself again.  You can't open the bonnet with it locked as the alarm then goes nuts...You see where this is going.  There's also no way to manually lock the boot other than via the central locking.

 

So the boot got left unlocked.  We're in a quiet neighbourhood and it was only intended to be over one night.  Yeah, right, totally forgot about it until a week later.

 

Went to put the battery back in, and found all the doors unlocked.  Turns out some swine has climbed in through the boot and nicked the heads up display.  Which cost all of £15 off Amazon.  They didn't touch any of the loose change around the vehicle, the £50 air compressor that I'd totally forgotten was on the back seat (and spent about half an hour looking for at the weekend!) or any of the assorted iPod cables and stuff in the door pockets...Just the cheap & nasty battery-draining HUD.

 

...Not sure what the purpose of this really is other than having a rant for the sake of it.  I've only myself to blame, but it was one of those "how can it be this hard?!?" moments when I was trying to disconnect the battery.  The ease with which things will "walk" still comes as a complete shock to me as someone who grew up in the back end of nowhere and spent the first fifteen years of my life in a house to which we didn't even *have* a front door key...

  • Like 1
Posted

I definitely didn't take it out, just unplugged it.  Getting it out involved having to try to bend myself in half and stretch a mile and a half over the steering wheel (usually setting the horn off) to try to reach it.  Dashboard on that thing is like on a first generation Espace, the windscreen is about a mile away from the steering wheel.

 

I've had trouble with silly stuff happening before too.  Rental van I had once had a side-door that didn't lock (which I discovered of course at nearly midnight, having just driven 450 miles).  Local kids got into that overnight and let the handbrake off.  I found out in the morning when I found it having rolled down the hill and embedded itself in the bushes in the roundabout by the school.  Cost me £350 to get the bloody roof repainted, in spite of my having phoned their "24 hour assistance line" and being told not to worry about it.  Now I know that wasn't me - as I've been a Saab driver forever, so any vehicle gets left in reverse, and the van was no exception - especially as I'd already ascertained several times that day that the handbrake was somewhere between poor and useless. 

 

Having a Metro snap its handbrake cable while I was at college and go for a stroll the whole width of the old Tesco car park in Inverurie helped remind me this was good practice not to trust the handbrake...By some miracle it didn't hit anyone or anything and came to a halt neatly parked at the far side of the car park!  Confused the hell out of me when I got off the bus and the car wasn't where I'd left it though.

 

My guess is that whoever nicked it must have decided it was a satnav, dashcam or similar...Hope they're suitably disappointed.

 

Good demonstration of reason 3932480239424 why I'm selling the car though so I no longer have anything parked on street!

Posted

My boss's Alfa 156 FTPed in Wales over the weekend - his AA cover only got him recovery to a local garage, who were meant to phone him with a diagnosis today. They didn't, so he called up.

 

'Oh, we gave it to your man this morning'.

 

Eh?

 

Turns out someone rolled up in a flatbed and said they were there to pick up the Alfa the AA had brought in, and they handed over the keys. I assume it's now bean tins...

Posted

Sitting in Macdonalds at LGW using their WiFi whilst waiting for the RAC to send a recovery truck. Looks like that £600 fuel pump two days before Christmas was a good* investment, haven't even paid the credit card bill yet !

 

All modernz are Shit- FACT.

 

Took 3 hours for the Patrol to arrive wonder how long for recovery? Then a pleasant 100 mile journey at55 mph .

 

Me, feeling sorry for myself? Maybe.

Posted

Very sad news about Dolores O'Riordan, I'm a big fan of the Cranberries, amazing voice, 46 is no age at all.

 

Neither is 59 for that matter.

 

RIP both

Posted

Dan Gurney.  Little bit older than Dolores or Big Cyrille, but sad nonetheless.

Posted

I started a thread 6 weeks ago about a trip I was planning to buy a new car that I couldn't get in Ireland so planned to travel

 

The thread got canned to some tools etc buying thread

 

As the OP explained, it was real, involved foreign travel (for me) and a nice purchase

 

Seen so many others be treated the same way since

 

I understand the concept of keeping threads where they should be

 

But, like the baby with the bathwater, the hammer that decides is arbitrary

 

It's not a great way to treat people enthusiastic about the same things; or maybe it's ran as a clique without some people that really should know better realising it?

 

I wouldn't feel encouraged to post much content tbh

Posted

I fucking hate online banking.

Posted

I fucking hate online banking.

I don't have anything to do with online banking. Way too many scams going around.

Posted

Cyrille Regis RIP.

 

Very much this. Had the pleasure of seeing him play at Chester many times, still had it even then.

Posted

I started a thread 6 weeks ago about a trip I was planning to buy a new car that I couldn't get in Ireland so planned to travel

 

The thread got canned to some tools etc buying thread

 

As the OP explained, it was real, involved foreign travel (for me) and a nice purchase

 

Seen so many others be treated the same way since

 

I understand the concept of keeping threads where they should be

 

But, like the baby with the bathwater, the hammer that decides is arbitrary

 

It's not a great way to treat people enthusiastic about the same things; or maybe it's ran as a clique without some people that really should know better realising it?

 

I wouldn't feel encouraged to post much content tbh

 

I think the mods are doing a good job of keeping the place as free as possible of unnecessary separate posts myself, and that's not a clique thing. Did you raise your objection with the mods? They have to make a lot of decisions, all the time, knowing someone will no doubt kick off about something they do. It's a pretty thankless task to be honest.

Posted

Had to drive up to Blackpool today-which for a confirmed Suvvener is a grump in itself. Had to use a works car, so took a 63 plate Golf GTi (Mark 6?) with DSG gearbox (which is nice). My grump is that the door mirrors are fucking useless-all the road grime collects on the outside edge of the mirror so I can't see what is overtaking me, or what is on my inside. So here's a big "Thanks you, you fucking wankers" to that design team.

 

post-19526-0-45665000-1516056794_thumb.jpg

Posted

I started a thread 6 weeks ago about a trip I was planning to buy a new car that I couldn't get in Ireland so planned to travel

 

The thread got canned to some tools etc buying thread

 

As the OP explained, it was real, involved foreign travel (for me) and a nice purchase

 

Seen so many others be treated the same way since

 

I understand the concept of keeping threads where they should be

 

But, like the baby with the bathwater, the hammer that decides is arbitrary

 

It's not a great way to treat people enthusiastic about the same things; or maybe it's ran as a clique without some people that really should know better realising it?

 

I wouldn't feel encouraged to post much content tbh

Which thread are you referring to?

Posted

I think the mods are doing a good job of keeping the place as free as possible of unnecessary separate posts myself, and that's not a clique thing. Did you raise your objection with the mods? They have to make a lot of decisions, all the time, knowing someone will no doubt kick off about something they do. It's a pretty thankless task to be honest.

I just raised my unease here after a couple of months of seeing the same threads get canned and the same similar threads by some bods running on

 

Edited to add; I believe the mods are doing a great job too; but baby and bathwater again; there's a half way interesting repair thread that met the same fate until the OP reposted; and its proved interesting

Posted

Which thread are you referring to?

My request for aid in purchasing a car in another country ended up in a wanted tools thread that I can't find

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