baypond

Hi Chris Yes, I will see if I can find some. Will post this weekend. Giles

Welcome to the forum LodeveLibrarian, scams are created and morphed because they work occassionally. You were right to post it I think, (even though it looks fairly obvious) . Over time you will see which subjects get covered constantly, and you will get plenty of disapproving or barbed comments. I think it's part of the fun.

Grimaud dreamer, I think you are missing the point..... Dave instigated this thread as an amusing anecdotal look at the trials and tribulations of running a gite, a place to let of steam if you like. I have been permanently amused from start to finish, and it keeps pushing me to hold off letting my place out next year! Giles

Sarkosy "I was scandalized to see the lessons of the crisis being forgotten so quickly by some people at a time when the page has not even been turned on the crisis," Mr. Sarkozy said banks would henceforth be required to defer two-thirds of bonuses paid to traders over three years and make a third of the payout in bank stock. At the risk of courting controversy, politicians are doing what they have done since the begining of time. Making it look like they are doing things that the populous want to see happening. In truth, bonus payments in banks generally consist of about 30/50% stock defered for a period of time - usually 3 or 4 years. There is usually a cash component which is paid out at the time. For all this talk about clawing back past bonuses for poor performance, it effectively happens through the stock price. The bank I work for saw its share price fall 98% before rebounding a little, but is still down 90%. That means that annual bonuses were effectively written down for the past 3 years to 60% of the initial level. I am not trying to show an opinion on the subject of bonuses, just to make people aware that for all the rhetoric, much of it is hot air.

Yeh, I absolutely believe that we should all feel free to talk about the subject. What is the difference between talking about a current/ex-member and say Sarkosy or someone's next door neighbour. I find the whole subject quite fascinating and intriguing about anyone leaving a forum.

I love mushrooms etc, but have a fear of eating something that I have mis-identified. It always seems a bit like russian roulette to me. If someone could create a simple toxicity test they would make millions!

All you ever need to know about olive tree cultivation http://www.biomatnet.org/publications/1859cu.pdf    

"Be a little Gay" how words change their meanings.

Yesterday my sweet little children managed to buy some fake goods from the internet, providing my account details etc in the process. Apart from the hassle of cancelling cards and changing bank account details, it was also suggested I look at doing a credit enquiry on myself. This would highlight any checks made and perhaps flag any fraudulent activity using my name. I would regard my credit history to be pretty faultless, apart from the odd late payment on a credit card etc but to my surprise I only managed 1 star out of a possible 5 ! At this level it is considered that I would be a concern to any lender and certainly likely to have to pay a higher rate of interest on any borrowings. Having looked at the reasons it seems these things are the culprits: My mortgage increased ( It is a Northern Rock mortgage that allows me to borrow and pay down balances, the latest drawdown relating to renovation in France) I paid off in full my RBS and AMEX cards because annual renewal fees were increased to silly levels and I deemed it stupid to continue them. The fact that this was at a similar time as the mortgage increase seems to have counted against me. In addition AMEX marked me as missing a month' repayment, even though I had cancelled the card 3 months earlier, and the missing repayment related to a later annual renewal fee which they (even) later realised I didn't need to pay and refunded the card back to zero. Beware buying from NEXT online. It seems to me that rather than debiting my credit card, they set up an account in my name instead and charged the goods to that new account. I ignored the Next account letter not realising I had an account ( I thought it was my wife's account paid by direct debit), and so missed a payment. This is now on the list of negatives. Finally, I sold a house 18 months ago to scale down (kids finishing uni and moving away), given the market we decided to rent for a while, and finally moved to our own house last year. These two moves in 18 months make us a bad risk as well. So, in the last 5 years or so, we have missed two payments, prudently repaid cards and shut the accounts down, scaled down the house we have, and for my efforts recieved a bad credit rating.  

ah that sounds likely - and now you know what it is, you WILL remember to turn it on [:D]

I am told that it will be a 'scheduled' program running something like a computer scan. It will usually be a program that has an icon sitting in the bottom RHS of your START bar. Have you downloaded any new or updated software recently ?

When I ask my wife if she loves me, she always replies "sometimes"

something in your outlook calendar?

Brazil and China have a trade agreement to be based in Renminbi announced recently. On the US$, seigniorage is a big earner for the FED which would be lost as US$ notes in circulation throughout the world reduced. Seigniorage explanation 'Today the Federal Reserve controls the money supply. And one of the ways it does this is by buying or selling treasury bills. If the Fed wants to increase the money supply, it buys some treasury bills (government bonds) from banks. So a treasury bill is taken out of circulation and replaced, basically, with dollars. Presto. More dollars in the world. Here's the key part: more dollars in circulation means more treasury bills at the Fed. And unlike dollars, the treasury bills earn interest. So the Fed profits. It's holding onto those treasury bills, which pay off with interest. Basically, when you hold onto U.S. cash, you're giving the Federal Reserve an interest-free loan'

possibly a virus ?

Hi, This year we have seen an enourmous amount of common tree frogs around our house. They have been becoming more frequent for the last two years but this year they have exploded. During the day they sleep on shutters and window frames, and we could frequently count 20 of them in a fairly small patio area outside the kitchen. They seem to take great advantage of the insects around the lights, scooping up everything that moves. They have been jumping on us as we sit outside in the evening, and even jumping on to wine glasses and plates! We are wondering what happens next? What is the normal predation given that these frogs spend most of their time off the ground. Also, Chris you might be able to answer, these are definitely common tree frogs and not the stripeless variety, but on your map it suggests the Gers is not normally frequented.

Back from France and it is now dark when I leave for work at 5:20 am. We have already booked another weekend in September to try and catch some late summer sunshine.

I have no idea about these things. However, I have just had installed 50 spots in our gite and they are mains. The advice I was given is that transformers eventually break down, and can also be dangerous if loaded incorrectly. If the wattage for replacement 12v lights fitted is greater than those orginally fitted, then you can get an overload on the transformer.

does anyone know if they should all bear fruit? we have a sizeable tree at our house(2.5 metres), which looks great but doesn't have any olives. Am I being dumb?

Where is the 3 bar measured? You may find you have a faulty restricter valve (probably not the correct plombier speak) after the meter. We have the same problem between Gite and house, where the house has a faulty restricter and the Gite does not. Obviously we are in the process of getting that sorted.

I have had similar problems in France. I find it is almost always a firewall issue. I find attaching to the internet with the firewall off, and then immediately turning the firewall back on sually solves the problem. The only other time I have this problem is when I have had the incorrect password for the WiFi.

I have a dell 16inch, which was a trade off between screen size and wieght. I would take a careful look at the wieght if you are lugging it around a lot. The difference between 13inch and 17 inch dell laptops is that the larger screen is about twice the wieght. I find this lightish 16inch plenty heavy enough. As with all the higher spec machines, expect the laptops to run quite hot. A few people I know have cooked their laptops by sitting them on a carpet, or cushions on their laps. Expensive mistake. The other observation from my recent foray into laptop ownership is that the amount of memory you buy is at least as important as the speed of the processor. My PC and laptops are both about 2.5 GHz, but my laptop has 4GB of RAM and the PC only 1, and the laptop is generally super quick on the internet.

You could save them for your next trip to Bunol in Spain for la tomatina festival! It seems so much more sensible than the Pampolina bull run.

Once on the roof, they can be a real Biche to remove.

I guess it is no worse than the spears used on bulls in the bullfights, but it really is not for me. If something is to be killed through neccesity or pleasure, then I prefer for it to be humane and quick.