Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

8 hours ago, PupCam said:

Ah a positive benefit I would have thought!   (I hate auto stop/start, thank heavens I no longer have to drive hire cars OCS!)

7 hours ago, Tony_S said:

My battery isn’t in the tip top charge condition to allow stop start to function but it can be deselected if you don’t like it. When I bought the car it was recommended that I didn’t use it for my first few drives in the car if I wasn’t familiar with such a feature. I had experienced it before in a Skoda hire car and it was quite obvious the engine had stopped but my Evoque is so quiet at tickover and the stop start is very smooth anyway. 

7 hours ago, pH said:

Agreed! I hated that on UK rented cars. I would immediately find out how to turn it off. I’ve never had the ‘feature’ on any car I’ve rented in North America - in fact, I don’t know if it’s even available here.

I suspect they do, or did. Some years ago, I was returning a car to Hertz in Newark, NJ when I thought it stalled at a traffic light right as the light changed to green. With an impatient* motorist behind me I freaked out a bit and turned it off and on again. Later I realized this might well have simply been auto stop/start.

 

* May I remind people that this was on the road from the highway to return a rental in New Jersey - quite possibly the highest possible set of circumstances to find someone in a hurry.

 

I mentioned the 'stall' when I returned the car. The attendant was unimpressed and suggested that the car was probably operating properly.

 

Pre-pandemic there were by then a lot of hybrids in the rental fleets. These of course regularly turn of the IC engine. I doubt they have many purely IC cars with auto stop/start.

[PhilJ W]

On the subject of air crashes I found this on you tube.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Crummiest hotel I've ever stayed in?

This one.

 

Featuring:

• Under the primary landing flight path to SJC
• Across the street from a heavily used freight railroad - all night long (As Lionel Richie is fond of singing)
• Backs onto a trailer park
• Homeless camp up the street
• Boarded up hot tub (warped plywood)
• 'Sloppy' room door latch (jamb was evidently repaired after the locked door was forced open)
• Dirty chairs, floor
• Was bitten by something in bed
• Wall hooks but no artwork remaining
• Badly installed shower rail
• Holes in the walls for three different installations of towel racks
• The KFC up the road had a boarded up front door (break-in? gun-shot? who knows)

The AC worked!

 

This was not my normal accommodation in the Bay Area. Pre-pandemic, it was not possible to get my customary digs without booking well in advance and the trip that led me to this choice was booked the day before - everything else was full.

[simontaylor484]

Sounds like Guest House paradiso

[jonny777]

For my least favourite hotel, I didn't have to go very far - because it was the Travelodge in central Cardiff. 

 

The experience did depend on the room allocated, but there were a few which were immediately above Walkabout. If I was unlucky to get the ones which faced onto Great Western Lane, the thump thump thump of the music would stop around 2am, but then the p1ss artists would discover the multi-storey and start racing their cars round and round several floors with much wheel spinning and loud exhausts. A short gap would ensue around 4am, and sleep might be had until one was awoken by the sudden sound of masses of smashing glass, as the bin men upended the glass recycling tubs, at the back of Walkabout, into their lorries. 

 

The outside events could be mitigated somewhat by having the windows closed, but with bedroom temperatures at around 24C throughout the night, sleeping conditions were rather difficult, especially as on certain nights people would appear to be running up and down the hotel corridors shouting, and banging on bedroom doors at regular intervals. 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by jonny777

[Coombe Barton]

... and report of inflatable dancing unicorns ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/04/14/is-your-journey-really-necessary-boris/

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Arthur Itis is keeping quiet and so is his sidekick Si Attica. However the eczema is getting rather irritating so ointment will be applied. Tea has brewed so I'll be back later.

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[polybear]

Bear has spent a fun (not) evening trying to decide which slimline dishwasher should grace the Bearcave.  AEG?  Bosch?  Neff?

Bear's head hurts, and no LDC in stock.  Custard Cream consolation prize incoming.....

[Compound2632]

28 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear has spent a fun (not) evening trying to decide which slimline dishwasher should grace the Bearcave.  AEG?  Bosch?  Neff?

 

I think you're making a category error here. You're looking for something slim to do the washing up?

 

 

[Barry O]

Haircut booked for 9am tomorrow so..

 

Goodnight all!

Baz

[PupCam]

53 minutes ago, polybear said:

AEG?  Bosch?  Neff?

I have no experience of AEG or Neff so can't comment.

 

My now ageing Bosch dishwasher is still operational (touching wood now) after I had to repair the main controller board.   It has a fundamental design flaw in that one of the PCB tracks is not man enough for the job and likes to pretend it is a fuse.   

 

The official repair practice at the time was, of course, to replace the controller board with an identical one  and oh yes, make sure you get a fully approved Bosch chap to fit it.     The price of the board all those years ago was ~£90 IIRC  and that didn't include the services of "Extra special Bosch Man"!

 

The more pragmatic, unofficial repair suggested by many "practical trades people"  on the interweb was to replace the burnt out track with a suitable piece of tinned copper wire.   Puppers has tinned copper wire, the requisite soldering iron and solder and the skill and knowledge to use it.    Total cost excluding labour costs of "Extra special Puppers Man"! of £0.  

 

Bear knows Puppers well enough to know which option I plumped for!

 

Latter that same decade the Puppers household required a new washing machine.   Rather foolishly Puppers selected a what looked suitable Bosch machine.   13 months after purchasing this (thus out of guarantee, you couldn't make this up)  Mrs Puppers alerted me to the fact that in essence the door had fallen off.  To be more precise the top pin of the door hinge, cast from the very poorest quality Monkey Metal  (Mazak) money can buy, had dropped off.  Puppers swung into action on the old interweb and found literally hundreds of door hinges of different shapes and sizes to suit (if the Ebay listings were anything to go by)  thousands of different  washing machine models but try as I might there was no sign of the specific model found loitering in our kitchen.   In desperation I phoned Bosch and the very nice customer services lady informed that the hinge was not available separately for my machine but they'd be only too pleased to sell me a whole new door assembly for about £120 which of course did not include the cost of "Extra special Bosch Man"!  coming round to fit it.   I of course, declined their extremely generous offer.

 

On investigating the door it soon became obvious as to why you had to buy a complete new assembly - the front and back mouldings that trap the glass window and the hinge are held together with "Thermo-plastic Rivets" (They melt the ends of rods projecting from the front moulding through holes in the rear moulding) so a one-shot assembly.     Puppers also has a drill ...

 

The "rivets" on the hinge side were drilled out and the broken hinge prised out.  A hole was bored in the hinge and a new hinge pin from finest B&Q 6mm brass rod was epoxied in place.   The bottom hinge was sawn off and similarly treated.   The hinge was then wrestled back into the door and the drilled out "rivets" were replaced with suitable self-tapping screws.    As Puppers already had the brass rod he's claiming that the material cost for this repair was also £0 but boy the labour costs of "Extra special Puppers Man"! were something else.

 

You maybe surprised to learn that Puppers no longer holds Bosch products in the high esteem that he once did.    Now, where's my barge pole ......

 

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by PupCam

[Tony_S]

53 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear has spent a fun (not) evening trying to decide which slimline dishwasher should grace the Bearcave.  AEG?  Bosch?  Neff?

Bear's head hurts, and no LDC in stock.  Custard Cream consolation prize incoming.....

Never had a Neff product, lots of Aditi’s family bought them when they were trendy. We did have some Bosch appliances including a dishwasher but it was so long ago they were made in Germany. We had a Siemens dishwasher, worked well until it failed. Replaced with a Miele. Had AEG washers and tumble dryers . Worked well until became uneconomic to repair. Replaced with Miele. Miele do make a 45cm wide dishwasher if that counts as slimline. 

[Mike Bellamy]

4 hours ago, Tony_S said:

 Anyway the treasurers department wouldn’t permit me to fly as I wasn’t senior enough to be allowed to fly and must therefore travel by train (second class) from London to Dublin. I did point out it worked out cheaper for me to fly but they were adamant.  

 

 

Working for the University, only the most senior staff were permitted to fly business class. We had a group of six flying to Botswana and as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (second highest in the executive) was leading the group, he was entitled to fly 'up front'. However he was a decent chap and didn't want to be there on his own for an eleven hour flight and so he asked me to book everyone into 'Premium Economy'. Finance refused to do this as the rest of us weren't allowed to use that class of seat. After a lot of argument at the highest level it was eventually agreed, by which time all of those seats had gone so the boss travelled cattle class with the rest of us. I was really nervous about being the 'officer' (note taker and bag carrier) for such a high powered delegation but it all went well. 

 

On the day of our return, our hosts booked us a visit to a game reserve as we were on an evening flight back (via Johannesburg). Two taxis were ordered but when we arrived, the drivers wanted paying and although the big 4x4 vehicle had been booked for us, none of it had been paid for either - that day out cost me about £40 to see lots of antelopes and not much else apart from two cheetahs that had been hand reared and were in a large enclosure so we could get close to them. I was quite pleased when my photo of the DVC was enlarged, printed on canvas and presented to him when he left a couple of years later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

I used to lodge in central Cardiff - directly across the river from the Arms Park as it was called in those days and apart from occasional cars and a few inebriants passing by after closing time it was really quiet.  Next place I lodged after that was on a farm just outside Frome - about half a mile from the nearest road and everything else - it was one of the noisiest places I have ever stayed especially as morning milking time got near.

 

In my final big railway job the amount of air travel was initially considerable although it declined quite a lot once we started running trains but I still had meetings to attend every few months in Germany or Holland so they were usually flying jobs at least for the outward trip and sometimes for the return if they finished on a Friday.  The timetable conference took place twice a year and that was a movable feast as it went round Europe to a different host country every year although it had two successive years in Switzerland because the two main railways provided the joint secretariat - Lucern was a nice venue and Grindelwald was very pleasant indeed and the two sessions in Bern were helped by finding an excellent restaurant (no menu in English and seasonal dishes).   Another advantage of Switzerland was that it made for a nice, and interesting, return journey by rail after having to fly on the outward trip in order to save time.  All flying was business Class and - for me - rail travel was 1st Class.

 

Expenses wise we had to account for every penny, franc, mark, or whatever we spent and were supposed to provide receipts but you could hardly ask for a receipt when buying a newspaper or technical magazine so all of us in the know 'bought' a'paper everyday, sometimes two, in order to keep abreast of local news ;) .  Initially we all had an Amex card for emergency use should we get stuck somewhere and need to book a flight to get home or something like that.  they were withdrawn after one of Mr Branson's imports into the company treated his card as some sort of personal payola scheme getting through a four figure sum in a month - when the MD found out Mr Branson's import was duly exported back to one of his enterprises where, presumably, that sort of behaviour (I believe it is called theft) was apparently tolerated.

 

When i was working out in Aus for lloyds register we were on a fixed daily allowance and after I had managed to get it increased to a more sensible figure it was enough to buy a weekly ticket for the central area (which covered me for commuting in from Mosman) plus a decent lunch in a food court every day in the CBD plus a snack of fruit or fish & chips in the evening and essentials like tea and milk for the flat where I was staying..  No receipts needed.

Edited April 14, 2021 by The Stationmaster

[monkeysarefun]

So we commissioned a new ship, now we've got 3. 

 

From the look on the faces of the Top brass someone's navy career just went pffffffffff  but the reporter has some fun with it.

 

 

 

 

 

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Sorry but not been able to keep tabs on you lot today, there seems to be a lot of traffic on here today. I hope therefore that all is well.

Today was much as predicted but unfortunately not particularly successful, nothing serious but disappointing, but I’ll not bore you with the details.

I’ve never worked abroad and have never worked away from home to such an extent that I needed accommodation. When I first qualified I traveled a bit around Yorkshire and Lincolnshire as a relief manager but only for about six months.

Hotels, I have more experience of those. In one particular resort I have stayed in approximately 10 different hotels and the one I’d least like to go again to was the one with the highest star rating. It was just too formal and SWMBO and myself hate that kind of thing. We much prefer to go to family run hotels that are clean and provide a good breakfast. One hotel at this particular resort we have been to we have visited probably 10 to 12 times. It’s in a lovely setting and as regulars we often get an  upgraded room.It is becoming less practical as we get older and last time we visited the resort we stayed closer to the resort centre. The resort is in Switzerland and in the size of hotel we stay in the evening  meal has two choices, take it or leave it. That’s slightly unfair as usually an alternative can be arranged if notice is given. I’ve always been a faddy eater and now it’s worse so be tend just to book bed and breakfast. 
Sorry for boring you,

Goodnight,

Robert

 

 

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well that’s it, the 2 dining chairs have now had 2 topcoats, so unless any touching up is required, that’s it. The are now sitting in the cellar until the weekend for the paint to harden off and then they can come upstairs to the kitchen. There’s still another 2 to paint, but they can wait until the new cellar ceiling has been installed. 

 

This afternoon an email came through from the RHS letting us know we can now book tickets for the new RHS Bridgewater Garden in Salford, which opens next month. It’s only about 8 miles from our house and as we’re members, we not only get to go in for free, we also get first dibs on tickets as they don’t go on public sale until Monday. We couldn’t do the first day as Sheila has a hair dressers appointment booked, so we’re going the next day, 19th May. We’re really looking forward to this, it was due to open last year, but was delayed due to Covid. No doubt the credit card will get a bashing and we’ll be heading back home with a boot full of plants, but who cares, you can’t take it with you!

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Wikipedia has the following:

 

Alternative explanation

The television documentary series Mayday also reports claims in Season 9 Episode 3 that the plane's flight recorder might have been tampered with and indicated that four seconds had been cut from the tape; this was shown by playing back a control tower tape and comparing it to the remaining tape. Asseline argues that he attempted to apply thrust earlier than indicated in the flight recorder data. When he increased throttle to level off at 100 ft, the engines did not respond. Asseline claims that this indicated a problem with the aeroplane's fly-by-wire system rather than pilot error. After a few seconds, Asseline claims, he became worried that the plane's completely computerised throttle control had malfunctioned and responded by pulling the throttle all the way back then forward again. By that time the aircraft had touched the trees. Mayday also looks at the theory that it was the computer at fault, not the pilots. Because the aircraft's altitude had fallen below 100 ft, the plane's computers were programmed to believe it was landing and therefore they would not allow any drastic manoeuvres from either pilot. When the crew suddenly asked the plane for more power and lift, it simply ignored them.[7]

It was also claimed by the Institute of Police Forensic Evidence and Criminology, based in Switzerland, that the flight data recorders may have been switched and were not the original ones in the airplane.[7][8] Airbus made a detailed rebuttal of these claims in a document published in 1991, contending that the independent investigator employed by the filmmakers made an error when synchronising the recordings based on a misunderstanding of how the "Radio Transmit" parameter on the flight data recorder functioned.[9]

The "Mentour Pilot" video linked to by Sidecar Racer is an extremely good explanation, well worth watching and very well made (Petter Hörnfeldt is a training captain with Ryanair and all his videos that I've seen are exemplary explanations of many aspects of aviation)

I read the BEA report some years ago and never really doubted its conclusions. I've just run the numbers and given that the grass runway they ended up flying  along is 800m long and they were flying at 120kts their total time over the runway would have been less than fourteen seconds- actually rather less given the aircraft's accelaration as they tried to climb away. Given a couple of seconds to actually push the thrust levers forward, five seconds for the engines to spool up plus the time it would take to gain enough height to  clear the trees, and also the fact that they wouldn't have descended to their flyover height till they were actually over the runway,  that leaves almost no time between arriving and having to push the throttles forward to clear the trees at all, let alone with the margin of safety you would be crazy not to allow with an airliner full of people. 

Unless you're flying a glider, every landing is a go around that didn't happen so the idea that the computer would be programmed to commit irrevocably to landing below a certain height is nonsense. It may well have been programmed to not allow the AofA to be increased any further but at close to maximum lift (which is what increasing the AofA gives you until the wing stalls), spooling up the engines  would create an immediate climb in any case. 

 

The stunt, even as planned, looks like an accident trying to happen and to carry on with a last minute change to an unbriefed runway while actually on final approach really does seem like criminal stupidity.  The fact that the actual height ended up being a third of what they'd planned, which I suspect may well have resulted from the increased workload created by the last minute change of plan, only emphasises how misbegotten the whole thing was.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by Pacific231G

[iL Dottore]

8 hours ago, JohnDMJ said:

...TLA* jargon!...

Can be, can be.

But for frequent flyers these acronyms are well known and when you are jotting down your itinerary it is a lot easier to write BSL-LHR-SFO than to write EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg - London Heathrow - San Francisco International Airport (and that is one of the more straightforward itineraries I’ve done).

6 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear has spent a fun (not) evening trying to decide which slimline dishwasher should grace the Bearcave.  AEG?  Bosch?  Neff?

Bear's head hurts, and no LDC in stock.  Custard Cream consolation prize incoming.....

Bear should have consulted with Captain Cynical about his kitchen before starting renovation.  Captain Cynical is incredibly serious about food and cooking and would have been able to direct his ursine acquaintance to good kitchen gear.  Domestic dishwashers are, quite frankly, mostly crap. They take an awful long time to complete a wash cycle and very few really get hot enough to both sterilise the dishes and dry them just through the evaporation of water from the very hot plates.  All the commercial/professional kitchen dishwashers I’ve used are both fast and hot and whilst some dishwasher systems (which include a sluice, a deep sink with a powerful spray attachment for rinsing off plates as well as the dishwasher itself) can take up the whole side of the kitchen, there are small compact versions as well.

And as for domestic ovens: don’t get me started....

5 hours ago, PupCam said:

...Total cost excluding labour costs of "Extra special Puppers Man"! of £0.  ...

Hmmm,  sounds like just the man to join the Captain Cynical team. iD has a Miele dishwasher whose door retaining springs have given up the ghost (which means we have to very, very carefully open the dishwasher door any time we want to use the damn thing).  Unfortunately, due to building regulations around here, I can’t rebuild the kitchen to put in a decent professional set up (apparently companies that install professional kitchen equipment have to be assured that all the right technical specifications are met and most private houses do not meet those technical specifications -  even though the electrical and water/waste systems are more than up to the job).

Does puppers do “favours” in exchange for CAKE?

5 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

.... The resort is in Switzerland....

This, and other recent posts, has Captain Cynical wondering whether not one or more of the ER mob are trying to muscle in on his turf. Captain Cynical has seen it all before: first they turn up saying that all they want to do is enjoy the healthy mountain air and Swiss railway travel and the next thing you know they are running numbers rackets, trying to take over the illegal cake trade and operating money laundering scams. 

 

It got pretty messy once, when Captain Cynical was otherwise engaged and thus distracted, and the resulting turf war between the Zitronen-Nieselregen-Kuchen mob and the Kaffeesahne-Walnuss-Torte gang got the local police interested (and Captain Cynical prides himself on his extremely low profile when it comes to matters of interest to the Constabulary). Fortunately, a few of the new arrivals to the Captain Cynical team had considerable experience in wet work. All Captain Cynical will say about this rather distressing episode is “thank God for the building of the Gotthard base tunnel!”.

 

Having said that, Captain Cynical can attest that all of the ERs coming to Switzerland are vetted and most (like ChrisF and JohnDMJ) are found to be, basically, “mostly harmless“.

 

The Moderna vaccine, shopping and the collection of some new electronics gear for the office all await today. 
 

Carpe diem!

[TheQ]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think you're making a category error here. You're looking for something slim to do the washing up?

 

 

These , Long term, turn out to be much more expensive than anything mechanical...