dave21478

My Landline has been unplugged for months. By far the best (only) solution. Unfortunately it has moved to my mobile number, and I know why. LeBonCoin - I guarantee it. After posting an advert, scam calls and sales bullshit increases exponentially. Email only from now on, and only with a disposable Hotmail address.

Remember that just because there is one on LBC, it doesnt mean its properly registered or legal, despite what the advert may say. Having a beetle (or any other) chassis and running gear doesnt necessarily mean a kit will pass CT or go through the Prefecture on the Beetle chassis and papers. Yes, there are some kits made by certain manufacturers where this is allowed, but there are plenty that are not.

They dont want kit cars, buggys and radically modified vehicles on the road because they dont fit into handy little tick-boxes on a form or computer screen. When you take your hatchback in for CT, the tester enters the Type Mines from the carte gris and the computer spews out the info relevant to that model.....where to find the stamped chassis number and VIN plate, what engine it should have fitted, what emissions standards it needs to meet, what size tyres are homologated, whether it has all wheel drive that needs supplemental idler rollers for the brake test machine and on and on and on..... There is no way to integrate some home made chassis with a Zetec engine, type 9 box, Megajolt engine management etc into this system, there is too much variation between these sorts of cars and apparently CT testers have to have everything laid out clearly with no oppertunity for using common sense or discretion. If your particular car is from a small production run that has been registered in France in the past, you should in theory be able to register another one as the data should be on their system and it will have a Type Mines. I say "in theory" though as its very different in practice. Some time back I registered a van version of a normal car. Apparently never homologated in France, I had to jump through several hoops with Drire and Prefecture, spend a lot of time and a fair bit of money for the French equivelent of Single Vehicle Approval, which was only poassible because I had a letter from the manufacturer stating the vehicle was mechanically the same as the car version, the only difference being the number of seats and rear windows. With all that done, I finally got my Carte Gris and was happy. Until I bumped into someone some time later with exactly the same car that he had bought in France a few years previously and had no trouble at all with - typical example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing at the Prefecture. I browse LeBonCoin a lot, looking for interesting vehicles and I see various cars that should in theory not be possible to register here. I have seen a few home built Locost style kits, various US stuff and other modified cars that do not have type approval, Certificate of Conformity etc.... Probably a case of knowing the right people....ie being drinking buddies with someone high enough up at a Prefecture or DRIRE somewhere.

It must be possible, this guy has a Renault service franchise in his dining room! [img]http://s11.postimg.org/lpi2wz4oj/Sans_titre.jpg[/img]

It was a screw-up on my part. This house had no bathroom when I moved in, so one of the first tasks was to build one. I partitioned off a room and started. Behind this room, through a thick stone wall is an empty space where I could run pipes from the kitchen. I fitted the usual T-pieces etc inside the bathroom for bath, sink and toilet connections. I somehow convinced myself that France had the hot and cold taps the "wrong" way round, so piped accordingly. I tested for leaks and once done, plastered, tiled, fitted furniture etc. My thermostatic bath tap appeared to be faulty out of the box, but some fiddling revealed I had plumbed it the wrong way round. I then realised my mistake. Unwilling to give up a thermostatic tap I cut the feeds to the bathroom on the empty space behind and swapped over the pipes so the thermo tap worked. The sink was now the "wrong" way again, but easily solved by swapping the hose tails on the tap round, but the toilet now flushed with hot and would require removing tiles and cutting through the plaster to get at the relevant connections to swap it back to cold so I left it. It has its ups and downs. Its a long pipe run from the kitchen so using the toilet before a shower draws the hot water through, saving some waste instead of just running the tap. I seem to get a bit more limescale in the bowl than I would expect, but I dont know for certain if thats related to the hot flush. I never get condensation on the cistern now. Its a waste of energy, I suppose; but in winter time the hot cistern will add its warmth to the bathroom, reducing the need for heating slightly so its not completely wasted.

Mine is on a timer for three hours a night, which gives me plenty for my shower, dishwashing and my luxury hot-flush toilet. (...its a long story) I am on a flat rate power tarif and the only reason I have it on at night is to stagger its power draw - I dont want it on during the day when I could have the oven, washing machine etc on, then pop out to the garage for a spot of welding and trip the power out by pulling too much juice at the same time.

Yeah, its not a Tom and Jerry cartoon, man. although - I do have a rather beautiful old device that takes six shotgun cartridges and is fired by a tripwire, intended as a bird scarer originally. I guess it would be frowned upon now.

An afternoon of clicking around has left me none the wiser. There are an awful lot of multi camera wireless systems on the market which look like you would get reasonable coverage of a 2up 2down mid terrace house, but the sort of thing I need would appear to be well beyond their scope. The main stumbling point is the wireless transmission, which they all seem to use your home wifi network. Obviously no use for the distances I need, but I wonder if those wifi extender plug and socket things which send the signal through your mains wiring would work? Thats starting to get a bit complicated with a repeater pair for each camera and I would guess introduce a lot of chances for things to go wrong. There is surprisingly little information available about more professional level products. Something interesting, but kinda expensive was a thing I saw from Australia which is a completely stand-alone unit with battery and solar panel, which records a loop onto several SD cards and has a built in 3G phone doodah, so with a sim card inserted will allow remote viewing and update you on movement, number of flagged events, memory and battery status etc. Its designed for monitoring of isolated farm stuff. But that means a SIM card and the minimum monthly top up is needed for each camera....expensive and way more faff than I want. Its starting to look like a wired system is going to be needed, which is going to mean digging a lot of trenches! Alternatively a single-camera stand alone recorder at each location. Since there is mains power available, I could have a camera wired locally to its own recorder (hd or memory card based) running say a 5 day loop. While real time monitoring wouldnt be possible I would be able to review footage later by collecting the memory card and viewing on a computer. Apparently the local hardware store got turned over recently too. Its obvious that the newly resident group of gypp.....are we allowed to say gyppos or is that ethnically insensitive? ... anyway, obviously they have nothing to do with any of this and its purely coincidence, right?

Its a horse and stable door scenario, but unwanted visitors who think ramming the gates is ok.

I would like a CCTV system. I need a central unit in the building where there is power and internet, with up to 8 cameras mounted outside. The furthest away would be maybe 100 meters or so. running cables to each camera could be very difficult, so some kind of wireless system. Mains power would be available at most of the camera locations, except one which would need to be......I dunno....battery and solar? It will need to have storage for a rolling 5 days at least from all the cameras and maybe be remotely viewable via internet. Good image quality is a must....no point if its just some blurry 1980's crimewatch sh1t. Decent night capability too. Is that asking too much? I dont like the phrase "money is no object" but I would be happy to invest quite a lot into this. Also; what administrative hoops would I have to jump through? Just warning signs or is it harder?

If they can be switched on and off by remote then there must be a receiver that is always powered up even when the lights are off.

Read the post yourself, he is asking how to heat his house.

[quote user="JohnM"]..... My comments about Gas came from stories like this http://www.dailymail.co.u....[/quote] You would be better off reading the Beano. Its certainly more factually accurate than the Mail.

[quote user="grumpyaudeman"]Hi You cannot get much greener than Hydroelectricity[/quote] Brilliant contribution. Now all he needs to do is build a mountain, a lake, a turbine plant and then pray for rain.

Eh, 66 million is small change. The American powerball has currently rolled over to an estimated 1.3 Billion. yes, BILLION. They get taxed to hell and back on the winnings though, so probably more like 700 million in the pocket.

Oh, its exactly what they hope for and preventing people calling out their scam is a useful by-product of their terrible service. Whilst I detest being ripped off, I value my time and sanity over a few euros on the shopping bill. Me having to put up with either some smugly arrogant jobsworth or disinterested freewheeler who both know that once they have signed a CDI they are pretty much un-fireable is likely to end in violence.

Life is too short for that sort of thing. Last time I noticed a price discrepency was at Auchan and I only noticed it because it was the only item I was buying. The difference was about 4 or 5 euros I think. I queried the cashier and the false cheery attitude they have vanished and I was told either leave it or buy it at the till price and query it at the service desk. At the service desk I had to wait several minutes while the two staff there finished their conversation. I explained the situation and was told I was wrong. Apparently it is impossible for there to be a difference between shelf price ticket and till. After insistaing a while they changed tack and accused me of being stupid - I must have been looking at the wrong ticket. After further insistance they changed tack again and accused me of theft - trying to scam the lower price by swapping tickets. Eventually they agreed to check the price so one of them stomped across the shop with much huffing and tutting to find that I was right after all. More stomping huffing and tutting back to the service desk where I couldnt just be given the difference, they had to refund the whole sale and re-sell it at the lower price. Well, debits are immediate, but refunds take two weeks - funny how even that is in their favour too! Thge whole situation took a long time and while I was "right", being treated like dirt for half an hour for the sake of a fiver is frankly a poor use of my time. So now I dont bother any more. I am far from wealthy, but its a balance I am willing to accept. Same goes for warranty issues. Having had the runnaround from a few different places for replacement of electrical stuff under the years guarantee, sometimes dragging on for months leaving me without the item during that time I now either fix it myself or bin it an buy a new one.

Remove any electrical sockets or switches in the affected walls to give access behind the platerboard and tip in the poison of your choice. I prefer the little sachets of stuff that smells like marzipan as apparently they dry out the body, preventing smells.

You can drive for a month on a barred carte gris. The document you have (also called certificate de non gage) simply states there is no reason the car can not be sold....finance, insurance write off or destruction order etc. You need the certificate de cession as ANother states, but this MUST be filled out with the sellers name and your daughter as the buyer. If there is a previous version of this certificate where the seller has sold it to someone else - private buyer or the dealership - and they have sent their copy of this prior document to the prefecture, you are pretty well screwed. The car must be registered to this mystery person first and then re-sold to your daughter. If you can find this person and trust them, then it is possible: if not, enjoy your new garden ornament.

Card and pin will be reserved for larger transactions. For everything else we will be obliged to use some "Oyster Card" type of thing which will require topping up - quite possibly built into Smartphones. The day this comes into force is the day I move to another country. Assuming I havent left already for any of the dozens of other potential reasons for me to go.

As to the decorations themselves.... Most of them are made in the factory city of Yiwu, China. They are churned out night and day hundreds of tons at a time. They are transported to the port where they are loaded into hundreds of thousands of containers, loaded aboard thousands of cargo ships, which sail literally half way round the planet each burning several hundred tons of fuel oil every day until they arrive in Europe where they are transferred into various distribution hubs, by road. Tens of thousands of lorries travelling God knows how many kilometers through various depots and hubs until they end up on the shelves in Gifi or Auchan or Tesco and so on. [img]http://s1.postimg.org/ky8agbilr/image.jpg[/img] [img]http://s30.postimg.org/6y0fdlekh/image.jpg[/img] [img]http://s22.postimg.org/60vfeguc1/image.jpg[/img] [img]http://s21.postimg.org/gfryc9o0n/image.jpg[/img] [img]http://s3.postimg.org/415grk27n/image.jpg[/img] [img]http://s7.postimg.org/60usekiyz/image.jpg[/img] aparently, conditions there are "pretty good" by Chinese factory standards. Come January, some get kept until next year, the rest go into landfill. Yet I cant buy a hoover over 1400 watts because "the environment".

Nothing at all going on here. I send no cards and receive none - an arrangement that suits me fine. No tree, no decorations. I did a little extra shopping last week so hopefully will not have to venture into town again until 2016. The local village appear to have changed their street decorations this year away from the bulbs and got blue LED affairs strung up between the lamp posts. Looks very trashy, IMO. Speaking of trashy there are more and more houses going for American style (oi, careful now, no USA bashing!) decorations with illuminated reindeer on the lawn and lights everywhere. Actually, I do have one - I got a 1€ battery operated string of 10 white LEDS and wired it up to an old solar garden light a few years ago. Like a puppy, its not just for Christmas as it hangs by the back door all year round as its pitch black there after about 5;30pm. Its enough to see the key hole by and prevent me banging shins on the garden table.

"]Where is Dave with-all-the-numbers? I hope he was not banned arbitrarily." I am still here. I guess that's that, then.

So if I understand the rambling correctly, a two page hate-filled assasination of an entire nation starting with "I wont have one in the house", via "should all be castrated" and beyond that was definatly "not racist" was actually some kind of ploy to provoke a response from the forum owners? I.....I'm honestly not sure if thats better or worse.

Surprise surprise, he deleted the whole thing. Well Mr "Americans are scum", have fun MODERATING a forum that generates three posts every two days or whatever the current average is. Assuming you find the time between demanding all Amercians be castrated and moaning about the bloody fuzzywuzzies getting uppity.