Early Risers.

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Great to hear from GDB and hope he’s soon back posting. 
Happy birthday to Ian and hope you enjoy your feast.

As for me, not much of a day really, spent most of it either sorting work matters out or taking Mil for a walk with Syd and SWMBO. Only just finished so no films, shed time, or catching up on here.

May be more of the same tomorrow so I’ll bid you all a goodnight,

Robert

[Coombe Barton]

... finally disposed of the Christmas Tree ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/are-we-too-fast/

[Gwiwer]

Happy Birthday to Ian

 

Good night to all

[PhilJ W]

I'm normally a tea drinker but I will drink coffee sometimes. The best coffee I have ever tasted was in a small restaurant in Ypres, and the food was good as well. The restaurant was called Sante and if you are ever visiting Ypres I can highly recommend it. Now to get on with Farcebook, be back later.

[Dave Hunt]

Happy birthday to Ian and many more of them.

 

Still having a lot of trouble with sciatica causing loss of mojo so no workshop time today. However, Jill has allowed a carry forward of the pink chit to whenever I'm finally able to contemplate some muddling so all is not lost.

 

Night night everyone. Stay safe.

 

Dave

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Whilst I was sat reading I nodded off for a few minutes! I could feel my eyes going as I was reading but couldn’t overcome the urge to shut them. I woke up when the magazine hit the floor! Anyway, after that I seemed to be a lot brighter and was able to stay awake for the rest of the afternoon. I spent some of that time get information about my second pension, which will mature in August when I can start to draw it. This is from my first job, the one I started when I left school and will basically be a top up for my current pension. It won’t be a great amount, but it’s better than nowt! It does mean however, that I’ll have to do a bit of research into annuities etc, not something that'll need to be done to gain the full benefit, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

 

As for coffee, I can’t stand the stuff, the smell of freshly made coffee is very nice, but that’s it, as soon as it gets to my lips the taste makes me want to vo..., you get the picture. It’s been that way since I was a kid and my mum used to buy cheap instant coffee, it put me off for life. Sheila feels the same way about tea, as I do about coffee, but will happily drink coffee, usually freshly with a cafetière, so I get to smell the freshly made coffee, but don’t have to drink the stuff. 

 

Tomorrow I’ve been tasked with keeping an eye and ears open for the window cleaners, as they’re due about now and Sheila will be busy tackling ironing the duvet set, which for a king size bed is quite large, so is something that once stared, is difficult to stop part way through to answer the door. So this will give me an opportunity to have a play, the plan is to settle down at a table in the cellar and have a play with my DCC controller and a few accessories to see just what I can do with them. 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[The Stationmaster]

Happy birthday Ian, and many more of them.

 

Having once had part of a cup of a strange liquid Starmucks called tea  I don't think I'd have anything they were offering even if they paid me to drink it.    BTW the only reason i went in was because 'someone'- who'd best remain unnamed - decided to try their coffee so dragged me along in her wake.  Apparently the coffee didn't impress her although it was, unlike the 'tea', considered drinkable.  Good job we had a takeaway and there was a large litter bin just outside.

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

The languages were AL, RPG, and COBOL*. I wonder if any of those are still used.

COBOL skills were in great demand around the time of Y2K. (Most of the applications sensitive to Y2K were written in COBOL since it was primarily a punched card-based system and using two fields for the year was ubiquitous.)

 

I suspect there is still plenty of COBOL out there, but since 2000 much of it would be updated.

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all, with belated birthday greetings to Ian Abel.

 

The hidden costs of lockdown revealed themselves yesterday when the gas bill arrived.  Oh boy.  My monthly payment has been increased by £12.  This comes of not going out nearly as much as I would.  It will prompt a hunt for all my thick sweaters and an immediate reversion to the practice of only turning on the heating when I feel cold and not always then.  When it starts to get cold, much advice is bandied around concerning the relative merits of having the heating on all day on a low setting or at full blast for not very long at a time.  At this point I expect with confidence that expert will disagree with other expert.  Bring it on.

 

The discussion on coffee is interesting.   I am not at all fond of the stuff and find the current popularity of Costa Packet bewildering.  The last time I recall setting foot in a Costa was in Harpenden.  More out of rebellion than to slake my thirst I bought and consumed a cup of tea, which I greatly prefer.  At home I have a jar of instant in case a visitor would prefer coffee to tea.  I do not receive many visitors!  Overseas travel presents the occasional dilemma.   I can cope with coffee by adding much more milk than it is designed for and by dumping into it large quantities of sugar.   At times I have recourse to hot chocolate, especially in Switzerland where they really do not know how to make tea.  The lower boiling point of water at high altitudes may have some bearing on that but such an excuse would not have held water [sorry] in a Bristol hotel where I was once subjected to tea Swiss-style.  A glass vessel contained water which had probably never boiled.  It shared a saucer with a tea bag which the customer was ecxpeced to dunk in the water for as long as it took.  When I complained I was told that they used to make tea properly but it took so long to be taken from the kitchen to the table that it was stewed when it arrived.  I won't be staying at that hotel again - mainly because it burned down after my last stay.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Bit misty again this morning up in the North West Leeds Highlands. 

 

I will drink coffee or tea at any time. I do like the flat white sold in New Zealand. I has one in Wellington airport. My nexrcone was in Manchester Airport railway station q0 days later. The one in New Zealand was tastier and cost half the price of the one in Manchester. 

 

Her indoors likes tea. Once she found out where to be Yorkshire Tea in Oz we could have a decent cupoftea on our visits there.  

 

Today is house cleaning day. I must wield the Shark then wash the non carpeted floors in the house. Frabjoy!

 

Enjoy your day if you can. Time to check that all is well with our missing ERs.

 

Baz

 

 

[pH]

2 minutes ago, chrisf said:

When it starts to get cold, much advice is bandied around concerning the relative merits of having the heating on all day on a low setting or at full blast for not very long at a time.  At this point I expect with confidence that expert will disagree with other expert.  Bring it on.

OK, I’ll start. Some years ago the local energy companies were subsidizing energy upgrades to homes. To get the subsidy, you had to get an energy audit of the house before and after, done by an approved inspector. We wanted to replace old single-pane windows with new double glazing, but we asked the inspector at the ‘before’ audit about possibly getting a new high efficiency gas-fired central heating furnace. He advised against spending money on that if the existing furnace was still working well.

 

He said that furnaces use a significant proportion of the gas they do use in heating up each time they fire. With the new window insulation, the furnace would be firing less often, and would run for shorter times. That would mean that a bigger proportion of the running time would be high-consuming heating up use, and that would apply for both the existing furnace and any new replacement. While the new furnace would be more efficient, it would take several years to recover, in reduced running costs, the initial cost of the new furnace.

 

Applying all that to your question, it would seem to suggest running at a steady, lower setting and avoiding repeated heating up from cold.

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, Inner Temple Hare,  641 / 401.

 

5 hours sleep , long gap 1.5 hours sleep pretty good by my standards..

 

Ben the decisive Collie didn't want to go out this morning, this head appeared looking round the corner from the living room, watching me open the back door, no attempt to walk down the corridor to me.. I asked him if he wanted out.. He said no..

 

We did have two settings on the heating, 10C overnight 17C during the day (plus coal stove in the living room) But found when the heating went on high , just before I went to get up, it went roaring away for over an hour before it settled. the difference in overall bills was negligible.. This in a house with solid 9 inch thick brick walls. Now it just sits at 17C, only being put down to a low temperature if we're away.

 

We've once been to Star*ucks... . It was only because of  Covid.  There wasn't a gaggle of people standing around the serving hatch unlike everywhere else, They were serving from a table in the doorway of Star*ucks.. I had a latte, the milk of which,  dented the strange flavour of the coffee, SWMBO had tea which was very "flowery", I could smell that without tasting it. It was a rapid unanimous vote not to go there again..

That Stupid red clowns place we don't go to either, again once tried never again.. not because of the coffee but because of sweet tasting buns for the burgers and "fries" not chips.

No wonder the USA has a 10%+ diabetic rate..

 

In normal times You see the twenty something females arrive here at work clutching their cup of Costa Packet or Star*ucks coffee.. quite why, I've no Idea , they can make their own at home or, have free coffee here, machine made from beans with, unfortunately,  uht milk.

 

I'm now doing a second major unit this week, due the the different cal periods of some equipments, I had 3 scheduled for a fortnights time, a bit much.. Then yesterday after handing back the first one, I noticed one of those three wasn't in use.. A quick chat to the user, and they had nothing due for work .. So I'm doing that one a fortnight early..

 

Time to go get started again...

[polybear]

1 hour ago, chrisf said:

The hidden costs of lockdown revealed themselves yesterday when the gas bill arrived.  Oh boy.  My monthly payment has been increased by £12.  This comes of not going out nearly as much as I would.  It will prompt a hunt for all my thick sweaters and an immediate reversion to the practice of only turning on the heating when I feel cold and not always then.  When it starts to get cold, much advice is bandied around concerning the relative merits of having the heating on all day on a low setting or at full blast for not very long at a time.  At this point I expect with confidence that expert will disagree with other expert.  Bring it on.

 

 

 

This may help:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/energy-saving-myths/

 

Should I leave the heating on low all day even when I'm out, or turn it up only when I need it?

This is a hotly debated one. According to experts at the Energy Saving Trust, the idea it's cheaper to leave the heating on low all day is a myth. They're clear that having the heating on only when you need it is, in the long run, the best way to save energy, and therefore money. (A timer's best as your thermostat turns your heating on and off to keep your home at the temperature you set.)

The key thing to understand here is that it's all about the total amount of energy required to heat your home.

It's a given that a certain amount of energy is constantly leaking out of your home (how much will depend on how good your insulation is). The Energy Saving Trust says if you're keeping the heating on all day you're losing energy all day, so it's better to heat your home only when you need it.

 

However, it's not quite that clear-cut. Some specialists disagree – and argue you should keep the heating on constantly for an entirely different reason.

They advocate keeping the heating on low all day, turning all radiator valves up to the max and the boiler down to the minimum, and say the problem with turning the heating on and off is that every time it's turned off, condensation collects within the walls. This condensation can help conduct heat outside the home, they say – meaning you leak heat more quickly and so will use more energy as a result.

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, chrisf said:

Greetings one and all, with belated birthday greetings to Ian Abel.

 

The hidden costs of lockdown revealed themselves yesterday when the gas bill arrived.  Oh boy.  My monthly payment has been increased by £12.  This comes of not going out nearly as much as I would.  It will prompt a hunt for all my thick sweaters and an immediate reversion to the practice of only turning on the heating when I feel cold and not always then.  When it starts to get cold, much advice is bandied around concerning the relative merits of having the heating on all day on a low setting or at full blast for not very long at a time.  At this point I expect with confidence that expert will disagree with other expert.  Bring it on.

 

The discussion on coffee is interesting.   I am not at all fond of the stuff and find the current popularity of Costa Packet bewildering.  The last time I recall setting foot in a Costa was in Harpenden.  More out of rebellion than to slake my thirst I bought and consumed a cup of tea, which I greatly prefer.  At home I have a jar of instant in case a visitor would prefer coffee to tea.  I do not receive many visitors!  Overseas travel presents the occasional dilemma.   I can cope with coffee by adding much more milk than it is designed for and by dumping into it large quantities of sugar.   At times I have recourse to hot chocolate, especially in Switzerland where they really do not know how to make tea.  The lower boiling point of water at high altitudes may have some bearing on that but such an excuse would not have held water [sorry] in a Bristol hotel where I was once subjected to tea Swiss-style.  A glass vessel contained water which had probably never boiled.  It shared a saucer with a tea bag which the customer was ecxpeced to dunk in the water for as long as it took.  When I complained I was told that they used to make tea properly but it took so long to be taken from the kitchen to the table that it was stewed when it arrived.  I won't be staying at that hotel again - mainly because it burned down after my last stay.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris 

Wow I wouldn't won't to get on the wrong side of you that's all I can say. If you burnt the hotel down just because they couldn't produce a good cup of tea heaven knows what you might do if I slighted you.

[polybear]

7 hours ago, BSW01 said:

I spent some of that time get information about my second pension, which will mature in August when I can start to draw it. This is from my first job, the one I started when I left school and will basically be a top up for my current pension. It won’t be a great amount, but it’s better than nowt! It does mean however, that I’ll have to do a bit of research into annuities etc, not something that'll need to be done to gain the full benefit, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

 

 

 

Bear assisted a friend with the very same issue some time ago - I used the following company (others are available) for quotes from various providers, one of which was selected:

https://www.hl.co.uk/retirement/annuities/your-options

Some companies give enhanced pensions depending on your lifestyle (e.g. if you've smoked 60 a day for the last 30 years you get a better deal).  How do they check that though.....     Bear recalls quite a variation in quotes, so well worth doing.  It may also be worth enquiring as to what effect the pandemic has had on your pot, since shares have taken a big hit recently - if this is the case then for some it may make sense to hold off taking the pension (or only take some of it) until things (hopefully) improve.  Of course the market could continue to fall.....  The good news is that for those very close to retirement then the pension companies often gradually transfer funds into "safer" funds (money markets?) for the last few years, thus minimising any risk of a big hit just before retirement.

I mentioned the above company to a friend who was about to retire - an adviser (read "sales rep") from his pension scheme was coming to see him to discuss options.  I mentioned that he had the option of transferring the annuity to another provider for (hopefully) a better deal.  I heard later that the rep told him he couldn't do that.  Lying B'steward.... :

https://moneyfacts.co.uk/retirement/guides/what-is-the-open-market-option/

 

Finally, Bear would suggest the following links (there are others), in particular checking that any provider you are considering moving an annuity to is registered and covered - there are some crooks out there, sadly.

HTH

p.s. I'm not a financial adviser etc etc 

(though profession cake advice is another matter entirely...)

 

https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/pensions-retirement-income

https://www.fscs.org.uk/what-we-cover/pensions/

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a land where high quality pain au Raisins are freely available but not eccles cakes.  Great news from France yesterday, Macron has reversed his petulant decision about the Astra Zeneca vaccine and it will now be given to our age group in GP's surgeries from Monday, we may not have to wait till April/May.  

 

Work started on the second gate yesterday. I thoughtbitvwould be a simple rub down an repaint job but many of the screws holding the slats on had rusted through. This mornings job is to remove/ file down the rusty remains so that the frame can be rubbed down.  I also got started on my last big scanning project, 900 slides taken in the USA and Canada in 78 and 79.  The first 84 got done in batches of 12 whilst other jobs got done.

 

It's sunny out at the monent but there is a lot of cloud around.   The shed beckons so I will wish Ian a belsted happy birthday and hope that Mike (60806)'s day goes alright.

 

Jamie

[polybear]

As regards the T&C debate,  Bear is a firm believer that any establishment charging more than a quid or so for a Tea is a rip-off.  Exit Costa, Starbucks etc at this point....

As for coffee

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

Greetings from a foggy estuary. 
I will be phoning the dentist later as I have a sore tooth. I have a routine appointment in a couple of weeks but hopefully I can be seen before that. 
We used to not have our heating on at night but since changing to leaving it on all the time we have noticed a change in our energy bills. Our smart meter readout rarely indicates as much daily use as it did previously. This could be due to other factors but our bills have not increased by leaving the heating on.  This is is a house with an efficient boiler, double glazing and cavity wall insulation. The roof insulation isn’t as thick as the latest recommendation but is ok. 
Tony
 

[Andrew P]

Dry start, and quite bright down here, but Sky Wee is due later I'm told.

 

I had a short walk as back ache started, and then the left Hip said can we go home please, so home and breakfast.

 

Just on my first Mugatea. back later.

[Andrew P]

Will watch the Budget later, I don't pretend to understand it all, but I do enjoy reality TV.

[Andrew P]

Tea or Coffee I like both in equal measure, NO NOT equal measure in the same mug at the same time.

 

When out, I generally have coffee as most people I meet make Tea in so many different ways, but Coffee stays fairly similar to how I like it.

 

Costa Coffee, = NO WAY, I find it more chewable than drinkable.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Andrew P