Bloody gas boiler died, four days after we moved in to our house.

Home insurance doesn't cover it and I've yet to set up an annual boiler cover /inspection policy. I was kinda hoping the [LIFTED] thing would run for more than a few days, and I'd be able to arrange cover.

It's gunna cost me £340 to put it right - just the kind of expense you don't need immediately after xmas.

Could be worse. We paid over £400 to fix ours last year.

I just paid £2.44 for a new thermocouple for mine. I got a spare, and including postage it came to £6.

However, shortly after I moved in the main blower went on the hot-air. I was in a hurry to replace it, and that was about £300 from RS who were the only people I could find with stock

I've spent just over £400 keeping it running over the last 15 years. It's over 30 years old and needs replacing sooner or later, but I'm planning an extension and the location I want to put the new boiler hasn't been built yet

Well that isn't going quite to plan!

I used Paragon to back up my HDD to a micro-SD card, which took a couple of hours.

I swapped out the HDD for the SSD which was relatively easy, although many tiny screws and alarmingly delicate membrane ribbons were involved.

I used Paragon to restore the backup... and it said "Backup; what backup? That's not a backup!"

Turns out my SD card is utter sh!te. Although it checkdisks just fine, any large file written to it just comes back as all zeros!

So, stuck the old HDD in another PC and I'm restoring it over the 100Meg lan... at about 1meg per second. It may be finally cooked by the time I get home from work tomorrow

With hindsite, I should have cloned the drive over using my desktop PC with direct SATA connections, which is unsurprisingly a lot faster than my netbook over the LAN.

Oh well, all I need to do is wait patiently. *twitch*

At least you didnt format it!

I'm glad I have a load of HDD caddy's all over the place, means I have a spare place to put a drive in for a direct drive to drive image

I have IDE caddies and USB adapters, at least 4 of them I can lay my hands on!

I don't even have an eSATA lead which would have done the trick very nicely. It's on my shopping list!

I really should bin a load of PC parts that have in the loft. I'll never use them again. Old IDE cables, sound cards, ISA network cards etc. They're all useless junk these days.

The second you throw something away you'll need it

How could I possibly need an ISA network card? CLICKY
Every PC I own or look after only uses SATA devices. All motherboard these days have built in sound cards etc etc etc.....

Because you'll need to go lo-tech when the machines take over. Obviously. Do you not watch sci-fi

I think I've mentioned previously that a former boss (John) died of cancer just before his 50th last year. He was a top bloke and a top boss and even today tales are still being told about him. One I was told today goes a little like this....

He phoned a lady at work called Julia. Only she pronounces her name like 'Who-lia'. John didnt know this though so naturally asked to speak to 'Julia'. She apparently got quite snotty about this and annoyed that he mispronounced her name. At the end of the conversation she barked at him "and who am I speaking to" to which he replied..... "hon".

Cheered me right up that did

Was this Julia Spanish?

BT are feckin useless.

I phoned them a couple of days before Xmas to tell them I was moving home, and the guy told me I had a substantial credit building up on my account - would I like to reduce my direct debit amount?

So I halved the monthly amount and thought nothing else of it.

The interim bill came today, as we've moved home, stating there is a £75 debit on the account and they're readjusting my direct debit to £64 a month!

WTF? I ring them and ask what the hell they are playing at, and all I get is sorry we have no record of the call to them in December and no notes on the system showing a reduction in the monthly payment.

I had to lead this woman by the bloody nose - getting her to confirm that they log all calls from your number, against your account, and that they record all their calls. So it should be fairly straightforward to investigate my claims.

Ar$eholes.

(Awesome editing skills, no?)

I moved house and asked BT to move the line. They said I had 14 days to cancel. After 3 days I told them not to bother as I was moving to Virgin (as I found there was no BT line to the house I'd be charged for that and didnt want to pay).

Then a bill came. I was told I;d have to pay 50% of the remaining contract I took out for the line rental. I told them I had 14 days to cancel and they said "ahhh, but when the line goes live at that point you cannot cancel". Well in that case I DONT HAVE 14 FECKING DAYS DO I!!

Anyway.....

They said if I could prove I was told I'd have 14 days AND was not told I cannot cancel when the line went live then I would not be charged. So BT listened to my conversation and came back to me and said in fact I was not told that. I asked it I could listen and they said no. I asked if I can get a transcript of the conversation and they said it would cost me! WTF. So now I'm just supposed to take their word for it?

I disputed this and they eventually they went back and listened to something or other and suprise suprise found something which meant they couldnt charge me blah blah..

Duh. Ask JJ, or anybody else who deals with comms. I've been there.