Steve Last

Nice to have become good friends with village neighbours who will look after the house for us when we're not here, and be able to put a bit of money into their pockets at the same time.

Thanks to all.  Yes I figured that the message I had was simply to say it had arrived in their system, what had concerned me was that after a week there had been no other information available on their website tracking system, and that it had no apparent means of communicatong with them by phone email or anything else. The only phone number (as kindly posted by clarksinfrance) is in the "legal information" page!!  Also no apparent entry in the phone book under their name for any obvious city. It's a major problem that you have to know what commune someone is to find a number in the french system (it turns out the  "Marseille " depot is at Aubagne). Anyway the head office number actually worked (unlike I suspect a typical  UK firm  head office), the very first person I spoke to found  my details and told me my stuff is now in Marseille and that office would  contact me. I said the problem was that I  needed to change the  contact information! She said she couldn't give the Marseille office number but they wouidl call me right away which they did about 10 minutes later!    Only down  side is that it won't be delivered till  the end of the week or early next  so our femme de manage  will have to deal with it. Anyway looks like problem sorted , thanks for the suggestions everyone. Steve   

No not yet, will do so shortly. Have emailed Alinea as well and will keep trying that phone number today. Weekends are hopeless! Thanks Steve

I'd be very grateful if anyone can tell me how to get in touch with "Mondial Relais", a package delivery outfit.  We've ordered some furniture from the website of Alinea for delivery to our house, thinking we have plenty of time before departing back to England. They sent an email last Monday saying it had been dispatched, and gave a package number and a link to Mondial Relais website, where it says it is "Livraison à domicile, 28/04/08 18:05, PRISE EN CHARGE EN AGENCE, DIJON". However there's been nothing since then, there is no phone number anywhere on their website that I can find, other than the head office which doesn't answer at weekends, and the local "pick up and delivery" point listed is a jewelers shop where they say they don't have any phone numbers either! Yellow Pages drew a blank as well as I don't know what town I shnould be looking for, Dijon doesn't find them as it's probably a suburb. As we are leaving on Wednesday next I'd like to leave our cleaning lady's number for them so she can accept it if necessary. Help! Steve

Many thanks, I tried disconnecting absolutely everything and powering right down, then reconnected everything - all back to normal !  Same signal characeterstics but picture and sound now normal. Thanks again guys Steve 

Well re-doing the connection at the dish has given a significant improvement in signal quality to about 40%, and 100% signal strength instead of 90%. There is now a "blocky" picture on most channels instead of none, but still no sound. The dish does not seem to have moved and waggling it about a bit seems to give a maximum of maybe 70% quality on an intermittent basis. I would in my ignorance have expected signal strength to be associated with it pointing in the right direction, and signal quality with problems between dish and box (or interference elsewhere).   Maybe replacing the coax cable will help? It's about 3 years old and sits in the sun all the time..... or maybe replace the LNB? Steve 

Thanks folks......  since I DO have a bit of slack and I DON'T exactly have a good adjustment feedback loop system (e.g. her indoors cannot be heard without a 60 second delay while she goes downsrtairs, outside and round the house until I can hear her!) I guess it will be remake the connection to start with! All the best Steve   

We've had a couple of years of pretty good reception which has only been lost in bad weather (heavy wind/rain) such as we experienced a couple of nights ago. (North edge of  84 Vaucluse).  However the weather is now back to near normal but we are still getting a broken picture and no sound. On the box setup we appear to have very good signal strength but marginal signal quality.  Any suggestions for action before I get out on the roof and start looking at it in a threatening manner (not having any other clues as to what to do!)?? Steve 

I find Marseille is a very good airport, full facilities though the new "Low Cost Airline" terminal for EZy and Ryanair etc is VERY basic.  BA operates from the main terminal. Rental cars are right outside the main terminal building and so very easy to get to. Free 30 min parking.  Close to the autoroute too - just watch out for the access to the autoroute, there is a nasty lane cross-over at the junction and if you don't watch out for the signs to A7 Lyon - Salon de Provence you can easily find yourself on the way to Aix by mistake. From there it is 2 hours / 210 km to Pezenas via  A7 A54 A9 (according to Google Maps). Autoroute is generally a lot better than any of the motorways round London to Stansted! Just check with Bison Fute for the heavy traffic summer weekends.     Steve          

I find it breaks even at about 2 weeks.....   14 days or more we drive, less than that fly and rent is cheaper. Also we have to figure in that driving occupies a full day in either direction whereas air is about 7 hours door to door. But it does depend very much on the time of year, week, day etc. We're lucky in that we can choose almost always to travel off-peak. Also depends if the cat decides she wouild like to come too! Steve   

Does anyome know where we can find an indication of what actual amounts of water are needed for typical plants in our region (Vaucluse/Provence). We have been having a problem this year with a significant number of plants dying. Sometimes we will have 4 do fine but then two suddently die from a bos of six apparently identical ones. We suspect that we have either not given them enough or alternatively too much! Also want to set up an automatic system and need to figure out how much to give them on that - watering systems give you litres per hour and so on but we don't know how to set it up so that plants with different needs actually get the right amount to start with. Steve L  

To add to this question, I've been thinking of using one of these under the sink because although we have a good size tank, we have a very long run to the tap and have to run off a huge amount of water to get some hot through to the sink. What's wrtong with supplying the instant heater with this HOT supply? Presumably hte heater turns off on a thermostat? Must be some reason why something so simple can't be done! Steve L 

I think the airlines are also taking the opportunity to remind us just how much taxes we are paying for the privilege of flying. my emphasis added!  However, of course if there was tax on avialion fuel the balance between the taxes paid for other travel and that for air travel would be a bit clearer. I figured that to drive from Marlow to here in 84 Vaucluse and back, it's about £170 in fuel tax and VAT on the fuel alone. That makes it £85 per journey for one person, £42.50 each if there are 2.......  etc. Steve  

BA's method does give you a quick overview of more dates than anyone else, but as you say you then need to check the specific flights for the day...........  I think in designing these things you end up with a choice of fewer steps but a much more detailed and potentially confusing (cluttered) screen which will take longer to load, or more steps but faster to load and read. Overall I think the BA one comes out ahead, especially as you don't need the second step on a day or route with only one flight a day. I fly LGW-MRS and do exactly the same process as you with EZ and BA, the big plus being that now you get one way tickets you can go one way on BA and one on EZ and still end up at the same airport (LGW) so you have more choice of timing as well as price on the same route Steve L 

Thanks for the help, yes we have been trying to do it bit by bit in a logical order, but the first problem was to get in touch with FT's fault reporting - didn't appear to be anywhere in any of our phone books! Anyway the 1013 is now noted in big letters on the cover, and they have confirmed that there is a fault on the line and will come out tomorrow Thursday to look at it.  I susepct the wifi is a separate internal fault as suggested, we did a system restore on my friend's laptop and that now communicates happily wiht MY router while my laptop doesn't see any signal from his. regards Steve   

Can anybody give any suggestions as  to what is happening with my neighbour's communications? The symptoms we have isolated so far are: 1) With all equipment in the house disonnected, ringing their number on the FT line produces the engaged tone.   2) In the house, we disconnected ALL their equipment and I plugged in a "known to be good" phone to what we think is the primary point - dead line, no dial tone. I've been unable to figure out what number to call to get FT to test it. 3) Plug in Teleconnect broadband router with Skype and filter a) the SKYPE function works (so they can call out). b) the router does not seem to be transmitting - 2 "known to be good" wireless laptops do not detect any wireless network, c) plugged in via a cable, the router shows its ADSL light, but there is no internet connection. Apart from anything else, how can Skype work if the internet doesn't????  I know little about Skype having never used it./ "Puzzled from Puymeras" Steve      

thank you very much for that! Steve

I suspect I have a similar problem that the soil pipe is not vented as I am getting  a lot of gurgling in the system. There is cetainly no pipe up into the roof spaces.  We modified the system recently but essentially only changed the plumbed units going into the down pipe, and putting in a shower instead of  a bath so I didn't think to add any vents to the old system which seemed to work OK before. My builder who did the basic realignment of the drainage didn't say anything about it either. Is there a picture of one of these air admittance valves anywhere,  and what are they called in French so I can ask in my neighbourhood hardware store ? Thank Steve    

We suffer occasional problems of power failures, and will for example come home to find that the main circuit breaker on our board (but NOT the main EDF supply) is tripped, but none of the individual circuits. Just resetting the breaker restores everything. It is a 3-phase system, which very badly done originally - we have had some major improvements made, but from the comments recieved from electricians so far it looks as if we may just have to live with some of the problems. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to trouble-shoot what is causing these failures? Also, is there any type of mains protection device which will automatically RESTORE power after a transient fault? That would be really useful as we are concerned that we lose power to the freezer when away. At present our protection when away is to have a low power lamp outside the house on continuously, and a neighbour who comes in and resets it if the light goes out!   Steve L

Thanks Clair, the "places" answer didn't work but the answer I got in the other forum for layers did. Merci! Steve  

Thank you very much! I never found that to start with as there was nothting checked originally, which is my default setting. Merci...! Steve 

Is anyone familiar enough with Google Earth to tell me how to get rid of the election results displayed as "Towers" of either red or blue? I just started it for the first time for several weeks and was astonished to find it came up with this immediately. I've unchecked all the data layers but that seems to make no difference. Steve

I just started Google Earth for the first time for a few weeks and was astonished to see the election results displayed on a commune by commune basis, as "Towers" of either red or blue with the height representing the votes.  Very intriguing - but how can I get rid of it? It's obscurimg what I want to see! Steve

Probably a bit too late for you but if anyone else has the same problem...... In Elements 5, in the Editor  window: !) select the Crop tool (the "overlapping angles" symbol)  or just type C which selects it for you 2) on the new set of boxes across the top go to the "Aspect ratio" window, and select  one of the standard sizes if that is what you want, OR 3) in the Width and Height boxes type the numbers you want. You now have a box with the right proportions to crop to, and the image will always be resized to fit the dimensions. 4) use the "back and forth" arrows between the dimensions boxes to switch between landscape and portait mode. Incidentally the quickest place to find answers to any Elements issue is at http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.eeb4f8b/     (if that doesn't work just start at Adobe.com and work your way into their user forums system. I have found that people are very responsive there. Steve      

I thought this general explanation of what I have found about this problem with MS OUtlook and Outlook Express might be useful to anyone with several different email accounts (as I have).  I was plagued by this problem going back and forth to France and was going nuts with the incomprehensible explanations and solutions provided by various technical sites.  After having found a "local" solution thanks to BJSLIV and others on this forum, it still didn't stop us having problems elsewhere.  I hope this will help others in the same situation. What your own ISP will usually tell you (a) does not address your actual problem, for the reasons stated in para 4, and (b) is usually so techie-oriented as to be impossible for the average person with a real life away from the internet to understand ! In my case the problem is that my wife and I take our laptops to different countries, mainly England and France, but sometimes elsewhere. I have a BT account in England and a Free.Fr one in France, and use other people's systems from time to time. In SOME places everything works fine, but in SOME places everything appears normal while using the web or receiving mail, but then up comes this error when you try to SEND. It is particularly puzzling if, as I do, you have for example a separate business account and several personal accounts, and you find that the business one works fine but the personal ones sometimes don't. If this is what happens to you, read on. The problem is basically caused by the ****s responsible for junk email. The Internet Service Provider you are actually using when the problem occurrs is (quite rightly) doing its best to prevent spam being passed through its system. It will not accept your outgoing emails because it does not recognise the email account you are sending from as genuinely entitled to send out mail through its system. It has been organised to pass on mail from "people it knows", principally those with an email account with that particular provider, and block everything else. A lot of the technical advice you see about changing the settings etc. in Outlook and Outlook Express is based on the assumption that (1) the mail you want to send will have its address as [email protected], AND (2) that you will be sending it through "supplier.com". For example, after all it's tech advice BT says "Please note - if you connect to the internet via another Internet Service Provider (ISP): For your non-BT email addresses, you won't be able to send mail using our mail server, (mail.btinternet.com), and for BT email addresses, you won't be able to use our mail server to send mail except with BT Yahoo! Premium Mail. Please refer to your ISP for further advice about sending mail,"   In other words, "it's your problem not ours".   If you are using your own "home" ISP their advice will work, but If you aren't, e.g. away from home, your ISP's advice will probably not get you anywhere, depending on what "defences" the local ISP has set up.  If the connection you are using is for example "myforeignISP.com", you might find that just changing the outgoing mail server to smtp.myforeignISP.com will work. However it seems increasingly less likely that it will, as more ISPs protect themselves, and require outgoing mail to be "authenticated", i.e. to prove that it comes from someone "known" to it. If the connection you are actually using is one that you actually set up and pay for, e.g. www.myforeignISP.com, you should have received an email address and a password from them such as [email protected], even if you never actually use it. You should then be able to use that username and password in the account's outgoing mail server authentication settings. If you don't "own" an account with the "away" supplier, then you appear to have only 2 other options. The simplest is to forget about using Outlook Express or Outlook at all until you can get back onto your own supplier. However this can be a real pain if you use it for business or have lots of messages etc to organise. The other appears to be to use a relay service of some kind. These are connections already recognised by other ISPs, so they can pass mail through them. Essentially, the outgoing mail is diverted via the web to the relay company BEFORE it gets to the ISP's mail system, and is sent on by the relay service instead. If some of your email comes through your own business or employer's systems, that is a form of relay. That is why you sometimes find that your business mail account will send OK but your personal ones won't - the business ones are relayed but the personal ones are blocked because they aren't going through the business address. The other type of relay service such as www.Net2Roam.com is intended for frequent travellers, . These provide local internet access in a huge range of places. You usually have to pay for time when using one of their links but costs are not excessive for email as your online time is usually very short. With Net2roam there's no registration fee but you have to purchase some units to be used whenever you need connect via their network. They give you a username and password for THEIR outgoing mail server, which is used instead of the ISP's own. It appears to be transparent to most "home" suppliers so you don't need to change it back, and aren't paying for it, when you are at home. Steve