Pierre ZFP

"Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world" (From 1984, George Orwell)

French police sniper shoots two in error at Hollande speechhttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39121997 Actually only one bullet that hit 2 people in the leg, could have been much worse What was the cop doing with the safety catch off??? To his credit Hollande didn't panic or was wrestled to the ground by a secret service agent, maybe the shot was quite some distance away or perhaps he's used to being shot at? [6]

I Luxembourg you can get €300 back from the state.  You claim it back through your tax return so I imagine it's same in France. I want an electric bike conversion kit but I don't know if these are covered under the scheme I tried one from these people http://www.electricbikeconversions.co.uk/ I was most impressed

Saw a tall bird with longs legs this morning [:D] I think it was a stork, but I can't tell the difference between one of those and butter [;-)]

I feel I may have misled you.  I was referring to the temperature in Luxembourg and not in Pas de Calais

Hmmm, -4 this morning driving to work.  Beautiful and sunny though. I'm hoping for a few days above zero so I can dig some leeks up out of the ice cube that I laughingly call a 'raised bed'

I was refering to the one at St Omer but I would think all the Big Auchan have the same stock

They do it in Auchan - also called 'Dunkel' In or near the Bio section

I've been stopped loads of times in France. Either late at night at the Peage of the autoroute or late afternoon on a Friday.  I think it's because my Luxembourg plates are a bit of a novelty. Been brethalysed loads of times too.  The best one was when I decided to cut across country as the autoroute was blocked due to an accident.  Down a little road everyone was being stopped ( papers, breathe into this etc) No issues, on your way. A few Kms further on, and there were no side roads, same again. After going through the rigmarole again, couldn't help mentioning that their colleagues were doing the same just up the road. Keystone cop moment when there was much shouting into radios etc and I went on my way [:)]

I've had a horrible hacking cough since before Christmas so I've been drinking a mixture of fresh ginger, lemon, honey and a little chilli in hot water.  Not sure if it does anything but I feel a bit better after it.  In the end I have given up with the cough and went to the Doc.  She was very good and explained that what probably started with a viral infection has been going on too long and I have probably got something bacterial as well.  She diagnosed it as 'Spastic bronchitis' Anyway I have pills to loosen mucus, huge antibiotic pills and an inhaler that sprays powder into your lungs. All a bit strange but it works!  After 4 days I feel nearly back to normal and the wretched cough has nearly gone!

LEGO BATMAN MOVIE and it's out today [:D][:D][:D]

Yes very true.  I do wonder about a revival of a type of McCarthyism. With the media control that Trumpton has, maybe you suddenly don't get any work if you don't agree with him? After all, we now know that the only good journalism is the stories that praise him.  Everything else is fake news.

Yes it would seem that just because the POTUS wants something then it doesn't necessarily make it so. The Founding Fathers seemed to have done a good job when they wrote the Consitution, providing for checks and balances to prevent dictatorships or rule by unstable persons.  Pity they didn't clarify the 'right to bear arms' clause but then they didn't have to deal with idiots carrying assault weapons as their 'right'.

That website refers to birds other than poultry. With the current outbreak of bird flu I would be surprised if any transportation of birds was allowed at all

They should grow tomatoes. They'd do well with all the potassium in the pee

I must disagree with you Cendrillon. Grima Wormtongue, I mean Steve Bannon, has his ear. The fact that Bannon is an even bigger nutter is another matter...

I had a new Renault 19 once.  Very pleased with it to start with but after the general euphoria of owning a new car had worn off I realised the performance was not great. Renault said 'It's just bedding in, it'll be fine after 5000 miles'.  Well it was a little better but was always disappointing and the fuel economy was rubbish.  Just before I traded it in (for a Ford) I noticed the front wheels were always hot after even a moderate run.  It was only later I discovered that there was a recall on that model of the 19 as the front brakes could stick on.  Explains a lot but what annoys me is that the car had been back to the dealer several times for servicing and they never cured a thing!

 just pass the sauce, would you? http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/730195/85239768.jpg

So I see that the practise of offering unlimited refills on soft drinks is now illegal. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38767941 Not that I am a fan of such drinks So perhaps you can have unlimited wine or beer instead? [B] I wonder how Ikea are going to cope in their restaurants?

Defrag is not really your answer as the OS takes care of this pretty efficiently for solid state drives. If you have a SD card that is mostly full and want to defrag the contents of the card, then you're better off doing as you said and  just making a folder on your PC desktop, then just copy the contents of the SD Card over to the folder.   Then delete everything on the SD Card,  copy the files you want back from the folder to the card.   This will have the same effect as defragging, except it will only take a fraction of the time, since you are not asking a 3rd party program to create thousands of temporary files during each file copy.

[quote user="Chancer"]By the way Pierre it sounds like your screenwash was not frozen if you were able to pump it on to the screen, it will often then freeze from the Wind chill or to be exact before someone corrects me, latent heat of vaporisation, I'm assuming that you were driving at the time, its a real pain when that happens. [/quote] Yes exactly so but I expected a 5 degree 'buffer' would be enough to get me through.  Apparently not [:(] 

Not diluted at all - not even with tonic. The washer bottle was completely empty when I refilled it so no 'summer' screenwash in there either. I may be wrong but I have an idea that the label was not exactly telling the truth - Heaven forfend!

Something I learnt this morning is that cheap screenwash, supposedly good to -15 deg C, freezes solid on the windscreen at -10 deg C Took me ages to scrape that lot off!

Our electricity used to be very fragile and would go off at the drop of a hat. Something (I forget what) was upgraded about 8 years ago and since then power cuts have been nearly non-existent. I think we would be OK for at least a few day except for water. The local water tower is not very big and is refilled overnight.  On the very rare occasions when this has failed, tap water runs out pretty quickly after the first day.  We keep a couple of 5 litre bottles of water just in case and can use rainwater for flushing the loo.

Is it possible to catch more that one virus at a time?  The reason I ask is that I caught bronchitis at the end of October, apart from having a cough hanging around for weeks, I actually didn't feel too bad , but no sign of the 'flu (or man-'flu) thank goodness