Hi Emptybox and Mollie.

Twitter is very interesting, it's down at the Mo, over capacity it says, but I think it's more than that.

I got a reply from one of Chanelle's friends this morning, which surprised me.
You don't get many reply's.

Gerry tweeted the wedding pics of Pete & Cherry so they came into my Twitter inbox.

Hi Mollie and Hicky.

I was just joking about you being impolite Hicky. I know you are politeness personified.

I saw Gerry's pics. Pity he didn't post one of Ash. I hear she had her hair in a beehive, in sixties style, but I don't know any more than that.

 I think they have revised the forecasts, and decided it's going to be colder here?
The next couple of nights they are predicting -5 temps. Snow showers for tomorrow, but dry for wed and thurs. We'll see how it turns out.

Just watching the Winter Olympics in a little box on my computer desktop (satellite card). These snowboarders don't half fly over the jumps.

Night all.

Well for here it says light snow, sleet and rain, a mixed bag then.

I didn't see any Pics of Ash, strange really.
I think i'm recording the Olympics, but some is pretty scary.

Good morning all
Showery here so far this morning.

Emptybox... sounds like you need to keep that electic blanket on a while with the cold up there persisting.

Hicky.. is it a day off today?

I am going to Tescos soon to do a grocery shop, after I have had my cheese and tomato on toast for brekkie.
Son is spending all week at the local theatre getting ready for 2 youth theatre performances, in front of a paying audience on Thursday and Friday night.  He was at the theatre for 12 hours yesterday, with sound checks, press pics etc.

Hope you all have a good day.
wonder if there is anything good on tv tonight?

Good Morning Mollie.

Yep, day off, Cheese and Tomato, very nice, I made Sausage, Bacon, Tomato Beans, Mushrooms, Egg & Toast for us both just before.

It had been sleeting in the night and freezing, but it's nearly gone now.

Your Son is being kept busy anyway, that's nice as long as he doesn't get too tired.

Don't know what's on the TV, will have to get a paper later, need to put my Lottery on anyway.

I've got MrsG & Dja on twitter.

Hello Darloboy, hows things then, you on holiday this week from Uni, half term?
Hows it going there anyway?

Hello Hicky i'm good thanks, yeah i'm on half term from College i'm so up to datee with my work that I can enjoy the week off with lots of free time.


I've been spending time with family, went to watch my 2 bros and our mates play footie the other day it was fun...  i've been cutting back on the time I spend on the forums recently for a while now.

Good evening all
Hicky
hope you enjoyed your day off today. Sounds like you had a nice brekkie, anyway.

Seems to be quite chilly here today too. Wonder if it cold for Emptybox too?

Is that "THE" MrsG and "THE" dja you have come across on twitter?

My lad has come home exhausted from the theatre, it was rehearsals with full lighting today. But at least he doesn't have to be in till 10am tommorrow, instead of 9am.

Hope you have a good day Emptybox.

Darloboy
Are you having a good relaxing break from college?  I hope so.

Goodnight all xx

Hi all,
Hope you're all well.  I'm off this week.  Loving the Winter Olympics.  Just back from a cracking footie match.  Derby beat Preston 5-3.  That's enough footie talk. On the down side, my computer seems to be playing up - going really slow and acting strange.

Hi Mollie, Hicky and darlo.

That must be exciting for your son Mollie.
Are you going to one of the paying audience?

I can see i'll have to got onto Twitter Hicky.
Not sure i want anyone following me though?
I like to come and go incognito.  

I was waiting in for some of my parcels, but nothing came.
I'm going to have to wait a while for that fan that I need. I got an email saying sorry for the delay in posting it, but due to the Chinese New Year, the post offices in Hong Kong are shut for a week.
Mind you, at £2, I might be better trying to find another one in the meantime.

While I was waiting for my parcels I washed and cleaned my vehicles, inside and out.
Also I had to go up on the roof to fix my satellite cable.

While I was watching the Olympics last night the signal went dead. I investigated, and found the problem was the cable.
If you remember, I said that one of them had some water damage and corrosion?
Well it had corroded through the the centre wire and cut off the signal completely. I had to cut a bit off the cable and make a new connection, but it's still showing signs of corrosion, so it'll probably only last a wee while before it happens again.
I should really get it all recabled.  

You can maybe gather from my outdoor activities, that I didn't get any snow, not a flake.
It was frosty in the morning though, and looks like another frosty night tonight.

Overheating John?
Those were the symptoms of mine.

Yeah, I thought your post count looked a little puny?

Hi Mollie, Boldjohn & Emptybox.



Hi Mollie.
Yes it's the MrsG & Dja that used to be on the old C4 BB threads, they are on twitter.

Hi Boldjohn.
The Olympics are great, very dangerous though.

Hi Emptybox.


Had to leave before, work called.

They only follow your posts on twitter, it's amazing, I've posted to a few Celebs this morning, they don't usually answer anyway, at this stage.

A blow about your parcel.
I had an email yesterday saying my new Kitchen blow torch had been sent.
I have some gas in a little cannister left, I'll see if that will do for now.
Don't think they use much, I have a gas soldering iron which works great.

I think my Satellite cables must be letting in water (the end), or something like that.
As soon as it rains my picture breaks up awful, can't think what else it could be, my O/H's tv does the same, both on the same dish, multi LMB.

Good evening all

Hi Boldjohn
nice to see you here again.   I hope you enjoy your week off, and carry on enjoying watching the Olympics. Hope there is not too much wrong with your pc,and you can fix it ok.

Emptybox
yes we are going to become part of the paying audience to see my son in his play. We are going Friday night to see it.
I don't think I fancy being followed on twitter either.
Oh yes, it is the chinese new Year, Year of the tiger, I believe. So that was a bit of bad timing for you to get your order.
you went on the roof!!  You must be carefull doing stuff like that. Sounds like you need to get someone in to sort those cables out.

Hicky
hope they didn't overwork you today.
Sounds like Twitter is keeping you busy.
How are MrsG and dja, and what are they up to?
Nuisance about your satellite dish playing up too. Hope you can get it sorted ok.

OH has had to change my mums handfree phones, that we had to get her because she had no phone connection in the lounge area. They kept cutting off, or fading. We got the Panasonic ones this time, so hopefully they will be better for her.

Not much on tv tonight. I bet my OH will watch the football though.

Hi Mollie.

Twitter is good fun, it takes a lot of time up if you want to keep up with it when it's busy.

Think MrsG has gone to her mums for a break with the little ones during the school Holiday, problems with O/H.

Dja is still with his G/F .
It's great when you can tweet to so many people.
Almost anyone in the world if you know their name.

We have the BT set of 4 wireless phones, they were cheap as a set, a while back, they are very good.

Evening.

Well it was very frosty today. The puddles were iced over till mid afternoon. It's below freezing again tonight.

No parcels again today.
I went into town to see if the computer shop had a fan, but he was shut.  "out on a call", so the notice said.
I also tried in the hardware store to get some good quality phono leads for when my music gear arrives, but they only had the thinest ones I've ever seen, so they were no good either. Ended up sending away for those online as well.
And they ask us to shop local?  

Bet you'll be very proud on Friday Mollie.

Hope the new phones work for your Mum.
I have 3 cordless phones  (BT ones, I think?), from the one base-station, and they seem to work OK. They each have their own charging station.
One of them seems to run out of charge quicker than the others, so if I'm going to have a long conversation I have to remember not to use that one, or I get cut off after ½ hour.

When I say I was on the roof to fix the satellite, I just mean the flat roof over the back kitchen. I can get out of the upstairs window, and just walk along to where the dish is, It's actually very convenient.
I'd recable myself, but with the stone walls, there would be great difficulty in pinning the cable to the wall. I've still got a lot of slack on the cable, so I'll just keep making new connections for the moment. Unless I want to put in a recorder box or cable another room, then I'd get someone in. 
Course the damp might damage the LNB, but they're less than a tenner to replace anyway. And my connection is working better than ever at the moment.

Hicky, what kind of Signal Quality do you get, if your Sky box tells you?
In good weather the likes of BBC1 should be getting 80 - 100%.
Rain can knock 20% off that, but as long as you have about 30% quality, then the signal still comes through.
If you have significantly less than that to start with then weather can seriously disrupt your signal.
My worst channel is CBS Reality at about 40% quality, but I still get a good picture, unless there's severe weather.

The most likely cause of lower Signal Quality is slight misalignment of the dish or LNB. i.e it's not quite pointing at the satellite. But I guess water damage might cause similar symptoms?
Or a heavy bird might have perched on the cable and loosened the connection to the LNB?  

Watched the Horizon programme about Genius, but got bored half way through.

Hi Emptybox.

I'm expecting a parcel soon as well, my kitchen blow torch may come tomorrow.

You can usually get phono leads etc in B&Q, you can round here, but not maybe as long as you want.

I will have to do more checking of the Sky signal levels and write them down under different conditions.

I think the dish has been moved when work was being done on the house outside, but i'll have to check the signals, and if I get some good ones from BBC in good weather it couldn't be the alignment surely?

Check this out Hicky.


tinyurl.com

Hi Darloboy.

You forgot to put the speech marks around the text as "Hicky's Chat Room".
You should always try that first if you have more than one word in the search words.
Then it looks for the string as a whole rather that a search on each individual word which is usually worthless as you get a million worthless sites.

My Kitchen Blow Torch came this morning, haven't tried it yet, will have a go later, must get some food.
Didn't order the gas on line as the postage was as much as the gas and it's a standard refill can like you have for lighters, and I have some in a can left over anyway.

Weather not bad today, dry, no wind, chilly.

The forecast says heavy snow next Monday.

Hi Hicky and darlo.

No parcels today for me.
Dry and cloudy here. It was frosty earlier, but that's away now.
Don't think there's any snow forecast for me at all?

Think I'll go and do my weekly shop later.

Yes Hicky. If you get good signals for the BBC programmes, that should mean your alignment is OK.
It's the signal Quality reading that is important though, rather than just the signal strength.

Also some of the channels are on Astra2 (BBCs etc) and some are on Eurobird (CBSs and Luxe HD etc) so you want to check the Eurobird ones as well.
I get better qualities on the Astra ones, which might show that my dish is pointing too far towards that satellite, but it's not critical as long as you can get all the channels.

What are you planning to do with the blowtorch?
Is it for browning puds etc?

Hi Emptybox.

Just checked Signal Strength & Quality while weather not bad, BBC2 Strength 75% Quality about 10% if that.
Other channels not much better.

Just bought some more gas for the blow torch, going to use it were you need a bit of top heat on the food in the pan and can't really put it under the grill, well my grill is awful anyway.

You can use it to finish off lots of food that has just come out of the oven and needs a little heat to brown it off.

If you make a good omelet you need top heat to finish it off.
Just nipped to the shop for the gas, got some pasties, a Duck, and some more Pancakes.

Have got my Lad coming for a special Curry tonight, have bought frying steak and cut it into thin strips which I will put into flour then fry in a very hot pan, the flour will also help to thicken the curry when I add it, I've got the peppers and onions and tomato's all ready to prepare, he's coming at 7pm.

Hi Hicky.
10%? That's not very good.
You've definitely got a problem that needs investigating.

Enjoy your special curry.

Hi eveyone. Thanks to Ian and Mollie for their comments about my computer.  Its a laptop actually.  It just keeps going really slow and things keep popping up.  I can't always access forums, Facebook or Twitter, which I like to use mainly at weekends - if there's time.

Hi Hicky. Good news about the arrival of your blow torch.  I hope it was worth waiting for. 

Hi Ian.  Good luck with the signal problems.

Hi John.
You've maybe got some malware on the laptop then.
You could give this a try and see if it finds anything, if you haven't already scanned thoroughly
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Hi Emptybox, Boldjohn.

I have a Sky bloke coming Saturday afternoon, it's getting too hard to watch anything, the slightest rain and it's terrible.

The curry was so good, Wow, when you make very thin strips of steak and put in flour and then fry small quantities at a time, it's so delicious, then you add to the curry sauce.
I must have used about a whole jar of paste, but comprised of Rogan Josh, Madras and Vindaloo.

Hi Boldjohn.
A few different things can cause overheating in Laptops the same as in Desktop models.
Dust etc clogging up the vents and throughput of air, the Laptop not standing on a flat firm base to keep it's base free for air to circulate.
Maybe the internal cooling fan isn't working, but I would expect the Laptop to stop all together or keep rebooting if that was the case.

I expect to have some fun with this blow torch, I love kitchen gadgets, not much I haven't got now.

Good evening all

Emptybox...
shame your parcels didn't arrive, and your local shop did not prove too fruitful. Did you had more luck with your weekly shop today? That's a relief that you weren't climbing on the really steep part of your roof.
I too got bored half way through the genius "Horizon".  
It is quite cold here tonight, wonder if it is only Hicky's area that is due for snow on Monday?

Hicky
glad to hear the blow torch came. I was wondering what you were going to use it for. I bet your lad enjoyed coming over to yours for that curry tonight.   Let's hope the Sky bloke can improve your reception ok. And hope he doesn't charge you too much to do so. That is good that you caught up with MrsG and dja. Please give them both my best wishes.

Son said that their performance went well, and that they got a large audience, so that is good. Yes, I expect I will be very proud tommorrow Emptybox, especially as he is such a quiet shy lad, yet he has always enjoyed drama.
Have been swimming again tonight, which is good because daughter made a lemon drizzle cake, that I couldnt resist having a slice of.

Boldjohn
Hope you are relaxing during your week off. Are you still enjoying watching the Winter olympics?

past my bedtime.
goodnight all

Thanks for the advice Ian.  I'll give it a go.  Yes I'm still loving the Olympics.  Some pretty good stories of bravery with people badly hurting themselves one day and coming back to win medals the next day.         Hicky. Could you elaborate on your son's performance please?  I'm afraid I struggle to keep up with the chat on this thread.

Hi Mollie & Boldjohn.

The Sky people wanted money up front to come and look at the Dish etc,

Weather says snow here every day  for 7 days except today now,
But one of my Lads, the one who is on the BBC media city in Manchester says that the forecasts are that bad they can't use them.
When he needs to hire a 500 tonne crane he has to order it weeks in advance and if the weather says it will be nice with no wind and the crane comes and it's windy the driver won't erect the crane and at many thousands of pounds an hour it's an expensive do.

He said on the job, it is that big that the temporary buildings for the engineers and the men and the canteen cost £5million and the job is over £1 billion, and some sections are handed over soon, it is a massive job for all the BBC to move down to the North as you can imagine.

Hi Boldjohn.

Not sure what you mean about my Sons performance, I've got 5 Lads so not sure which one you mean.
Is that you following me on Twitter, looks like anyway, following you back.

Had a Li-in this morning, haven't eaten even yet.

Just mended my Safety glasses, brought a big folding magnifying glass from work, found some watchmakers screwdrivers anyway, the set had a 1.8mm one that fitted, but had to put the glass back in and thenput the screw in, but had a self holding miniature tweezer left over from the days of playing with the insides of Puters.
 
It was awkward because the safety glasses have a plastic side shield and I can't remove it because it's in fixed in with the epoxy resin I used to mend the side arms when they broke.

Anyway, they should be ok for a while, at £125 I don't want to keep replacing them.

We had a few minutes of hail earlier but the Sun is out again now.

Just been off line for a couple of hours, O/H couldn't get on line so I rebooted Router/Modem, then I couldn't get on, I have put the old BT one on again and got straight on.
Good job I've got 3 of them.

Now DS is down again, for maintenance, it wwas a bit strange this morning.

Hi Hicky.
Glad you got your safety specs sorted. Didn't realise they were such an expensive item.

How do you mean, the Sky people wanted paying for coming out?
Did you give up your subscription?

More Router problems? Good job you've got a spare.

I think my router is OK. I thought it might be faulty, because I was having problems with all my computers connecting, but I think they were all different problems in each of the PCs.
My  One upstairs seems to disconnect whenever I unplug a USB device, but I think that's a problem with Win7? Or perhaps there's something dodgy with the USB circuit?
The Linux one often has no connection, but a reboot of the computer usually fixes that.
And finally the one that was overheating seemed to lose the ethernet connection when it got too hot, and regained it as it cooled down. So I presume that was a function of the overheating problem.

Got some of my stuff delivered today.
The amplifier came by courier, and the various leads and speaker cable came with the postman.
I'm still waiting on the tuner, which i thought should be here by now.
I've also ordered speakers, but they won't be here till next week, and also that computer fan.

Been quite a nice day here. A very frosty and misty start, but then the sun came out.
Got a load of ironing done while I was waiting for the deliveries.

Hi Emptybox.

The safety specs are made to the spec of my normal glasses which are Varifocal, but they are bigger and have side plastic safety guards.

The Sky people said we had to pay for them to come out, think the Warranty has expired, we still pay various subscriptions as we have 2 boxes, a Sky-HD and a Sky+ the other Sky box we don't use.
He's coming tomorrow anyway, so we'll see what he thinks.

The routers/modems seem to be a pain and they always connect at different speeds every time they connect, don't know why.

I used to have that problem with the modem turning off when a usb device is removed, but only when the modem was a usb one, it doesn't happen when the modem is not usb.

Glad some of your stuff has arrived, you will get it all soon, just hang on a bit.

My Puter is running pretty cool and quiet now since I cleaned it all out, very pleased as the O/H could hear it from in the bedroom.

DS seem to be still doing maintenance, it had some problems this morning and it's been down for hours.

Going to go up to one of my lads with some curry that was left over from last night, he had eaten all ready so didn't join us here, I've kept a bit for myself as well, might have that after with a few chips, it's so tasty though.
It took a couple of hours to prepare and get ready, it was easy a LB of frying steak I used.

Hi Hicky.
Could just do with a curry.
I'm having the second half of a stew/casserole that I made on Wednesday, but I might just shove some curry powder in it.

I bet if you told the Sky bods. "Oh well! If it's out of warranty, I might as well just cancel the subscription", they would soon think twice about charging you for a call out?
Afterall, if you can't get a signal, you can't watch their blasted channels anyway.

Yes, it's a USB wireless network adaptor that is in the PC, so that's probably why it has the disconnecting problem with USB. Never had the problem with XP though,. Just since I moved to Win 7.

What you were saying earlier about the weather forecasts not being reliable is very true. They were first of all saying a dry day for me, then they said I would get some snow, then they changed that to rain.
They were right the first time. It's been a dry day.

DS seems to be back now thank goodness.

Looking forward to the live episode of Eastenders later, when we find out who killed Archie.
My money is on suicide. Not that I've put any money on, you understand.

Hope Mollie has a great time at her son's concert, and that he puts on a good performance.

Oh well. I wouldn't have won any money on Eastenders.

I did put curry powder in the stew, and it improved it greatly.

Oh and by the way, just after I told you that we had a dry day, I looked out the window, only to find it had been snowing.  

Hi Emptybox.

Hope Mollie has a good night out, and her Lad is great.

I thought you might put a bit of curry powder in the stew, it makes it a lot more tasty.

Had the remains of the curry I made on some chips, wow, that was good.
Took what I had out away for my lad to him anyway, he should enjoy that.

Glad DS is back on, I'm lost without that.

Will have to see what the Sky man says tomorrow.
He rang and said he'd be here between 1 and 3pm.

Well done to Amy Williams for winning gold in the skeleton.   I've watched every bit of the skeleton and she was fantastic.