dave21478

Post deleted for offensive language.

Most of the DIY places have Mastic Vitrage in tubes for a normal sealant gun. https://www.leroymerlin.fr/v3/p/produits/mastic-de-vitrier-blanc-300-ml-e1500204237 Im not convinced it isnt just silicone sealant.

Total cluster-fck as usual. Currently standing in a carpark in the pishing rain waiting as the seller waves his phone around in the air trying to get a good enough signal to do whatever needs done. Aye, this is tons better than a bit of paper and a ballpoint pen...well fcking done, France.

One year.

Really? Im not very careful about consumption, and my sums make that to be 1.80 or so per day not including the service charges....I thought that not unreasonable.

what is that? a photograph for ants? try this. https://s14.postimg.org/voembccpt/Untitled.jpg

If its any help this is my last bill.... living alone in a house with terrible insulation, wood and electric heating, electric water heater and lots of garage use...welding, grinding etc. [img]https://s14.postimg.org/voembccpt/Untitled.jpg[/img]

Within an hour or so drive of me every single brocante and troc shop has gone to the wall. Every now and then someone tries to open a new one, lasts for a few months and closes. I guess there just isnt a market for piles of manky old plates, incomplete sets of Ricard promotional glasses, massively heavy imposing old furniture that doesnt fit in modern houses, CRT tvs, piles of foosty old books and the occasional filth-encrusted kitchen appliance. Given the outrageous price of running a business here....rent, utilities, wages and the crazy taxes, I guess its hard to make the books balance for a couple running a brocante out of an industrial unit and having an average turnover of maybe a few quid a day. On the other hand, glossy Cash Converters type pawn shops seem to be doing well selling obsolete laptops for the price of a new one from Conforama, flatscreen tellys and countless numbers of mobile phones. Probably because they make it their business to buy them for a fraction of their worth from people hard up financially and make then believe its a good deal, then convince people slightly better off financially but maybe not well off enough to buy new stuff that its a good deal to buy used for almost new prices.....its a marketing dream. I just dont see charity shops being economically feasible in any way at all.

Fibre is apparently online in the nearby town. Slower than the old ADSL. You couldnt make this sh1t up.

I seem to have got this working reliably now too. Back on page 1 I was using an old smartphone sellotaped to the lounge window as a mobile hotspot with my sosh contract. while this worked fine, the phone was getting alarmingly hot and starting to get unreliable so I bit the bullet and bought a 3G/4G modem from amazon. its a TPLink brand and cost a hundred sheckels. The sosh card went straight in (there are sim card size adaptors included with the modem - it uses a full size sim and mine was a small one for the old phone) and once the pin number was entered it started working pretty much straight away. In the lounge it was giving similar speeds to the old phone....4-5mb down, approx 1 up. I spent an afternoon wandering around the house with it on an extension lead to find the best signal. This is a minor gripe....it has 4 leds that light up to show signal strength and even logging into the modem and checking the signal strength it only gives 4 divisions of 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent signal, but internet speed can vary greatly depending on the modem location even with "full" signal indicated. Best result was unsurprisingly in the loft next the the wee gable window that faces towards the nearest orange tower. I now get a consistant 8-10mb down and 2-3 up, the variance I assume depends on network load. It has been as high as 12 down in the small hours of the night. I ran a cable to it for power and fitted it into an old ice-cream tub with the two aerials poking out so keep the dust and spider out and stop loires pi55ing on it. I have a 40gb limit per month for 24 euros from Sosh, and so far its a little touch-and-go. I currently have 4gb left and it wont reset for another 6 days. I am waiting to see what is happening with the landline/adsl here. Frankly I think I will cancel it and buy a second Sosh card and swap over half-way through the month. This will give 80gb, which should be more than enough for under 50 sheets a month, which is what I am paying now. No more landline though but that doesnt bother me. The fart-sniffers at Orange have been digging around the area putting in patches on their already patched lines after several complaints from the commune but to no avail, its still 0.8mb down for me at best. Fibre is supposedly coming to the next village....well, it was supposed to be here at the start of last summer, then at the end of summer, then at the end of the year, now....who knows. Anyway, I will hang onto the ADSL line until fibre happens and see if it makes a difference. I think I might be too far from the exchange for a real improvement, as its just fibre to the exchange then their janky old copper to everyones houses. Looking at various websites giving mast location, they seem to be split about half and half as to whether my nearest is 4G or not. Its not, but I wonder if it will be upgraded soon - that should give me really fast speeds.

Who gives a flying one what colour it is? Most sit in a drawer for 50 weeks of the year and the other two are spent in a cheap digital safe in the bottom of a hotel room wardrobe. I doubt if the guy at Luton checking you onto the easyjet to Malaga gives a chuff what colour the cover is. Im glad that half-way through the transition period to severing links with Europe and bringing about the biggest geopolitical shakeup since God knows when, the important stuff like passport colour is decided....just all those tedious niggles like reciprocal healthcare, employment rights etc to decide now....they should be able to bash all that out in a morning and knock off for Pimms oclock. "look at these wonderful BRITISH BLUE passports..." "yeah, thats pretty. Does it give me the right to easily travel to, live and work in dozens of nearby countries?" "No." "What does it do, then?" "uh...its BLUE. British Blue." Cretins.

[quote user="andyh4"]My experience is more in line with Dave's and more often than not I get an email that following my absence they have delivered to the point relais - 11m away, but at least it is near the supermarket. Of course I have not been absent, they have just not bothered to even try. However having worked in logistics I can at least understand why this happens. 11km off the main drag means that they have a 22km round trip and at 90kph with say a 30 second drop off means that their traffic office will reckon on a 15 - 16 minute delivery off that main drag. on a good day with no hold ups I can do a one way trip in just under that time. The time pressures the drivers are put under makes it near impossible for them to maintain the traffic office schedules, so if they have a chance to gain a quarter of an hour by delivering to the point relais they take it. Only if they have an accumulation of packages (and especially if they are COD) for the village do they make the detour and actually deliver.[/quote] I totally understand why it happens. Maybe they could do something utterly crazy like...perhaps....employ more drivers? Madness, I know, but it might just work.

[quote user="richard51"]Dave - given your previous experiences why did you not use the relay service straight away? Frustrations can occur in the UK as well.[/quote] I wasnt given the option. Relay points only became available on the later message.

In further rants...courier companies. Every time...EVERY SINGLE TIME i order something, there is a problem with delivery. Got a text message on Monday asking me what day I would like my delivery. Since I live somewhere remote they couldnt be more specific than "between 9am and 8pm". I chose delivery for the following day and sacked off work, opting to do some jobs round the house while waiting. No show the next day and I got a text message about 4pm...Sorry, we cant deliver it, please choose another day. There is no way to phone up and speak to someone...by God, I looked long and hard, but then thought, whats the point? they wont give a 5hit, they will just feed me whatever they think i want to hear and carry on as before. I have reselected to have it delivered to a relay point tomorrow.....we will see. I get it...its Christmas, they are probably busy, but Jesus, its not rocket science and yet I still get screwed around by every single courier company out there. When I become ruler, every employee of every courier company, from directors down to the cleaners will be executed in a horribly grisly manner, probably involving chainsaws. This will be shown live on all channels over a week or so and be mandatory viewing for all. The sudden availability of thousands of jobs will solve the employment problems and hopefully having seen what happened to their predecessors, the new employees should be suitably motivated to not screw up one of the oldest and simplest professions in the history of civilisation.

Someone I know told me about their mortgage and how is would be paid off this year.....if their bank had not screwed up and "lost" five years worth of payments at the start of the mortgage term. The monthly amount was taken without problem, but where that money went....literally nobody knows. Certainly not towards paying down their mortgage. Their branch couldnt do anything. Their personal adviser in the branch retired during this time and the replacement couldnt figure out what was going on....mortgage from previous property, bridging loan, some kind of deal for VAT reduction on rennovation on the new place....apparently it was "complicated". Head office couldnt do anything. Some kind of banking ombudsman got nowhere....it just faded away and they gave up with it all a long time ago and just accept that they have a further five years to slog. If that were me i would have been onto the cozzers at least and more likely would have ended up making the news and then not having to worry about mortgage, or any other expenses, for the next six years or whatever murder gets you these days. Caisse D'epargne, if you need to know.

I still do most of my banking in UK and having gone through a few french banks, am currently with Credit Agricole. I do the absolute bare minimum through them that I possibly can and never leave more than about a thousand euros in the account. They have done their "short count" bull5hit with me too the one and only time I used the drop-off point. Now, the cash stays at home....no point it being in the bank anyway, they dont apply interest to the account.... and on the very rare occasions I have to pay in cash I do so over the counter and count the notes one at a time onto the table with pedantic slowness. I trust them as far as I could throw them, and they have now realised this and leave me alone, having given up trying to sell me all their pointless services. After a serious assault that occured in their doorway on the evening of a summer fete one year it came to light that all their cameras were fake. The outcry from the village was what pushed them to fit real ones.

You will still need to undo the main hub nut, split the bottom balljoint and pull the suspension outwards off the end of the driveshaft. It is much easier to remove the whole shaft from the gearbox (oil will come out when you remove it) and change the CV on the workbench than on the car. You will likely need heavy circlip pliers to remove the old joint. This guy shows the procedure to remove and replace the whole driveshaft.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jydxpsh13WQ This is one of those jobs where if you have to ask, you maybe better not, because if you get half-way through and get stuck you need to car picked up and towed to a garage.

The part you have linked to is a steering rack gaiter. The CV joint is part of the driveshaft that links gearbox to wheel hub.....very different, and also a messy hassle to replace. I suggest you get the guy to have a look first so you get the right parts and can order anything else that might be needed at the same time. The problem is that no matter where you buy these parts from, chances are they are all churned out from Peoples Glorious Rubber Components and Baby Food Manufacturing Facility Number Seven, somewhere in China. There is apparently a global shortage of natural rubber so most things are now a synthetic blend containing little actual rubber and lots of recycled vibrators and other miscellaneous junk. As such its rare for new parts to last more than a few months, maybe a year if you are lucky. Last year I finished a full bare-shell strip down and restoration of a car. Its old rubber parts were all badly worn so with little choice I replaced everything. Its done a few hundred miles since then and they are all falling to bits and need replaced again. Try to get a proper Saab part if possible, or repair the old one. Any kind of superglue will do the job, the important part is getting the edges of the split perfectly clean and free from grease.

[quote user="BritinBretagne"]Oh sorry oh perfect one.. Your clients are perfect but the world you live in so flawed. Too unreal to believe.[/quote] I hope that you read what I wrote about you before it got deleted. I stand by it fully.

What did you order? Have a look on Google images for "track rod end" which is a balljoint that has a small rubber cover. Then check "Steering rack gaiter" which is a much larger bellows to accomodate movement of the steering rod. Changing either of these will likely require you to separate the track rod end from the hub, which is a single nut and an incredibly tight conical fit....a balljoint splitter is required or if you hold the head of a sledge-hammer against one side of the steering arm as an anvil and smack the other side HARD with a hammer it will likely pop out. With the balljoint split apart, you can refit its rubber shield or if its the steering rack gaiter you can now unscrew the whole balljoint and slide the gaiter onto the rack in place of the old one. None of it is rocket science, but you need to know what you are doing and have the right equipment. Its messy and replacing the boot on a balljoint is a massive pain in the harris....generally just easier to change the whole part as the joint is likely worn anyway. Any dismantling here will require the front wheel alignment to be re-set at a garage after it goes back together. Alternatively, clean the crack on the existing part with a solvent and then super-glue the crack back together. No, really, this will hold for a long time to come.

I thought you werent supposed to mix the grape and the grain? either way, for reasons I cant quite remember I actually gave up alcohol a while back.....beginning to regret that decision now.

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]LOL Dave. BTW, our Carrefour is really good. Well apart from the birds. I think the number of birds in supermarkets have got worse this year. I have Tippi Hedren moments when buying pasta ? What is it with birds and French supermarkets ? They flock and follow you about when shopping. Chirping and fluttering their wings. It is all very scary. I bet they don't mention that on 'a place in the sun'.[/quote] Nothing like a bit of birdsh1t on the produce to improve your shopping experience. When I worked in retail in the UK a bird got in the store once and caused full on panic stations for the manager until one of the mechanics frisbeed an old brake disc and scored a direct and fatal hit on the bird while it was perched on a shelf.

[quote user="woolybanana"]There was an ostrich in the supermrket the other day! Big bird it was, scrawny, big erse, tiny head, long neck with jewelled collar...... spoke with a hiss from a great height, could see right up its nose.[/quote] Sounds like the normal help desk staff to me. "help" desk - total misnomer.

The prices....oh my God, the prices! Im not the only one am I? Surely other people are seeing the upwards spiral of prices in the supermarket? Week on week, a few cents here, a few cents there, then at random something or other will have had a whole euro slapped on. Quality is as bad as ever....piles of fruit and veg rotting on the shelves, having to rummage to the back of the shelf to find expiry dates more than a couple of days away. The butter "shortage" was hilarious. Sad wee apologetic signs on the shelves blaming it on lack of stock, but strangely the milk, cream and other dairy products were as full as ever and suddenly the crisis was over and literally from one day to the next every different brand making every different type in all those different factories, using all those different supply routes managed to get stock onto the shelves on exactly the same day. Coincidence, I am sure. I have given up totally on a nearby Carefour as the quantity of rat sh1t on the floor was getting just a little too high for my liking. If the bloody shop floor is like that, I wonder what state the warehouse is in? Driving standards are getting worse and worse on a weekly basis too. Despite allegedly higher penalties I am seeing phone use INCREASING...seriously, drive though town and watch the oncoming drivers.... at least one in four will be on the phone. Why though? Then I realised that I honestly cant remember the last time I saw cops anywhere....not patrolling, not manning a roadside check, not even just driving around getting somewhere.....I genuinely have not seen a police car or officer for months. This ties in with what I heard from someone who is married to a cozzer....apparently staffing levels are "critical" and if I knew the number of officers on shift overnight in a nearby city I would be frightened....When pressed, the answer is two. All night, for the whole city. Two. Ah, Sunday....the day of rest, a relaxing day to catch up on a few things round the house, punctuated by the melodic sounds of braying dogs, shouting men and gunfire. I know hunting is a forum favourite, but things seem to have changed here. It used to be mostly older giffers....you would see a selection of C15 vans, maybe the odd R4 parked up at the roadside and the "hunting" seemed to consist more of standing around chatting. Now though....I dunno if there is a new club or something, but every Wednesday and Sunday there is a large number of guys in their twenties and thirties, all driving 4x4 pickups...you know the kind with the aggressive, macho model names like Trojan, Barbarian and Thunder, all kitted out with big knobbly tyres, lift kits, winches and too many spotlights. They tear along the middle of the road in a convoy and expect everyone else to get out their way on the narrow roads, spread out into the forest and start blasting away....not the pop pop pop of the old guys....God knows what kind of artillery they have but its deafening. I dont know why they bother (aside from playing Rambo, obviously) as with the noise they make there is likely nothing bigger than a mouse for 5 miles. I will be surprised if a person isnt shot by the end of the season. I havent been to a dentist since....well, put it this way, last time I went I got a couple of hours off school and chained my bicycle to the railings outside the dental practice. All has been fine in the intervening decades but lately I have a tooth at the rear that is moving. Not loose, it just seems to move slightly every now and then, causing my "bite" to not fit together properly...its a very strange sensation. Obviously, having left it so long, I cant admit defeat and go to a dentist now....I wouldnt even know how to for a start, and secondly, it would likely precipitate much tutting and a huge amount of "vital" other work. Might be a job for vodka and pliers in the bathroom mirror. Its raining? snowing, even? Well, isnt that a MASSIVE surprise in December? Better spend endless days talking about it on the streets, on the telly, all over the internet....Newsflash...wintry weather occurs in winter. Get over it and shut up. The little hamlet I live in has had a population cull with two guys dying of heart attacks and one suffering some kind of episode thats landed him in the old folks home. Its funny...the two that died were the two least liked by everybody else....always being badmouthed by the other residents and silly feuds occasionally spilling over into shouting in the street and occasional push-me-shove-you fisticuffs. After each death the outpouring of faux grief in public was interesting as I am absolutely certain that behind closed doors the sentiments were more likely "good riddance." The mental case at the end of the village (no, not me) dismantled his car months ago after it broke down. It probably needed new spark plugs or something, but his solution was to strip it literally to a bare shell on his driveway. I guess he has finally admitted defeat as he spent a few evenings last week using a wee angle grinder to cut it up into four quarters which are now piled by the side of the road. Apparently the scrappy wont come to collect it as its not enough metal to be worth the journey and the nutter has no money to pay them. He removed the stairs from his house recently and burned them in the driveway. He now accesses the second floor via a ladder. Well, when i say "his" house, he rents it.....thats going to be a fun one for the landlord as he has previously ripped out and burned all the kitchen units and has ripped out most of the electrical wiring too. The guy needs help....a carer...something, but nothing ever comes of inquiries. My printer died. The new one is wifi enabled. Fantastic. Except that the eighteen inches between it, the computer and the modem seem to be insurmountable. wires it is, then. Technology can FRO. Speaking of technology, the next town over was supposed to have fibre internet installed for the start of summer. Obviously, that deadline is blown, but last month they got a sudden hurry on and for a week the road out of the town was clogged by Orange or Sedtel or whatever they call themselves this month putting up poles. Apparently its too expensive to bury the cable...fibre...whatever. Anyway, no traffic control, they would just block the road as they saw fit as they put in the poles, leaving you waiting for up to fifteen minutes at a time. they then strung the cable....and gave up half way. Literally. The cable is done for a mile or two, then just droops down to the ground and the big spool is lying in the ditch. Been like that ever since. Great job, guys. whether a speed improvement would reach this hamlet, I dont know. It wasnt/isnt full fibre they are installing, just fibre to the exchange then copper to each house as before, but even this gives a reasonable increase, but I think I am too far away to feel a benefit. Oh and speaking of failed public works, EDF or Engie or whatever they are calling themselves this month decided that a nearby transformer needed moved by a few hundred meters. They turned up and spent a week digging up the road, laying trunking and causing chaos and....have given up too. Just stopped all works, leaving open holes now filled with water with some plastic barriers scattered around. If i wanted to watch people badly half-assing their job, I would fit a mirror in my own garage.

[quote user="BritinBretagne"]Has anyone tried Orange as a bank?[/quote] Yeah, yeah, different branch of the corporation etc, but Orange manage to completely fork up my phone bill every couple of months. I wouldnt trust them with a childs piggybank, just on principal.