COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[PanBiker]

Not heard of that one Tiz but it sounds like a general switch cleaner lubricant. We always had two versions of cleaner on the bench, Electrolube which has a light lubricant and would be used for cleaning the internals of push button banks and anywhere else that would need both cleaning and a lubricant film. Other stuff on the bench would be a basic carbon tetra chloride based cleaner which was a contact cleaner but left no residue. This was used on the contacts in the old rotary mechanical tuners where any residue left behind may induce de-tuning to the unit. Horses for courses with lots of different cleaners depending on the job in hand. We used bog standard isopropyl alcohol for cleaning up pcb's and stripping off board lacquer as it left no residue behind. Meths always leaves a sticky residue which is the purple dye used to colour it.

[Wendyf]

Col reckons he will mean this WD40 product from Screwfix. http://www.screwfix.com/p/wd-40-special ... 00ml/92716
You have to be over 18 though Tiz!

[plaques]

WD40 product from Screwfix.
You have to be over 18 though Tiz!

Sounds like something not to be sniffed at.
Question, will it remove green eyebrows?

[Wendyf]

I think it works better on dayglo pink.

[Stanley]

If I want something clean and degreased I use the cleaner you get with dye penetrate crack detector fluids. Leaves surfaces clean and grease free.
I log on click that I have read the conditions, tick all three boxes and apply and it says the code is invalid. I try it every day.... My Account on Talktalk site still AWOL.
i DECIDED TO WASTE TWENTYU MINUTES ON A CALL TO TALKTALK. (bugger caps lock). The nice lady told me to go back to the page before the payment page and instead of doing the obvious (go to alerts) to click on fraud protection at the top of the page and then on Alerts. It worked. It would have been a lot easier if I had been told to go into the payments page via Fraud Protection and not alerts!!! Anyway, problem solved.....

[Tizer]

Thanks for the suggestions about the lubricants.
Wendy, does the `special' WD-40 smell as bad as ordinary WD-40? Or is it a citrus smell, which would mean it's based on citrus oil instead of petroleum oil? I think my friend had said the important thing was the oil wasn't electrically conducting.

[Wendyf]

No idea Tiz, he's never bought any! I love the smell of WD40! (But then I like the smell of creosote....)

[Stanley]

So do I Wendy.... That's why I like Jeye's Fluid.
My Account on Talk Talk still AWOL.

[Wendyf]

Tiz, I just remembered the smell of citrus from the ultrasonic cleaning bath we used to use for printed circuit boards. There was a time we used a carbon tetrachloride based cleaner, then changed to the citrus oil one.

[Tizer]

Ian and Wendy have both mentioned carbon tetrachloride. It's amazing that it got used for so many things in everyday life - I was never allowed to use it in science labs due to its ability to damage liver and kidneys.

The BT man came this morning and switched us to fibre broadband. Line cut off at 09.45 at the box in the village, he came to the house about 10.00 and had finished by 11.00. All went well except for a duff phone extension line which was causing some kind of `loop problem'. When he disconnected the extension the problem went away. We don't really need it, especially if we get another handset for the main cordless system. The speed is bang on 40Mbps, quite a step up from our 6Mbps ADSL connection, and amazing for a house out in the sticks! I can now access the image-rich OG topics such as Shed Matters in an acceptable time.

[PanBiker]

Police have arrested a second teenager (this time from London) in respect to the Talk Talk hack last week. Talk Talk now know the number of accounts and the types of data affected and will write to all customers who's data has been accessed.

[Stanley]

Tiz, that sounds like the same problem I had when I switched to fibre. It's evidently more sensitive to extension lines in the house. So, advice for anyone doing it is just have one master socket, no extension lines and use a cordless phone for other rooms. Funny they don't mention that....
The old Pyrene automotive fire extinguishers were filled with carbon tet....

[Tizer]

Because our house is so long and split up into many rooms we need 4 phones. We had a triple cordless with the base on the phone extension and an old-fashioned phone on my desk linked to the main phone box (we keep an old phone in case of power cuts which are relatively common here). Now we've had to put the old phone away for use only in emergencies and put the cordless base on the main socket. So need another handset. The cordless we have is BT4500 triple plus answerphone and - guess what - it's almost impossible to buy a single handset. The only singles are bases with an answerphone so I think we'll have to buy that and use it with the answerphone switched off so it doesn't interfere with the main base set's answerphone. I think they've given up selling the plain singles because buyers found they didn't sync fully with the original base set - you didn't get all the funcionality such as synchronisation of phone books etc. A badly designed product!

[Stanley]

I only have one phone connected and it's an old bog standard BT handset. This dates back to the days when BT were my provider and if you had a BT phone inside the house call outs to faults were free because it was their equipment. I suppose that's all gone now.... It still does the job!
Apart from that, how are you settling into the brave new world of Fibre?

[Tizer]

Fibre and unlimited downloads are making browsing and email download faster - and I might even start looking at some videos! Mrs Tiz likes it too because she always claimed I would whinge if she downloaded anything big (not true of course ).

But I'll have to contact Plusnet because the details of my account on their web page are now garbled. The prices don't match what I agreed with them and amount to about £10 a month too much!

[Stanley]

I'm afraid they have a habit of doing that....
Now you have fibre, if you have a smart TV you can use viewing programmes on the catch up channels without the annoying buffering signals. I can access Youtube as well!

[Stanley]

Full retread of Linux and Firefox this morning. 125mb worth. Amazing how quickly it loads and how trouble free. Thanks Lads!

[Stanley]

Pity our regulators aren't as on the ball as the Manhattan Public Prosecutor and the FBI. Have a look at LINK

[PanBiker]

My Account at TalkTalk is back online, not a full service but functional in the main. Had a look at my account and I think I am paying too much for my package. It said on the news this morning that TalkTalk would be offering all its customers free upgrades in an effort to retain their custom. I don't need TV but I feel a nice fibre package coming on.

[Tizer]

I must admit when I heard Baroness Dido on the radio this morning saying she would give free upgrades my first thought was `upgrade to what? A secure account?' (Have a look at Plusnet, Ian, just in case you feel like changing.)

[Tripps]

" I heard Baroness Dido on the radio this morning"

She was very good wasn't she. Makes you feel it's almost a privilege to be attacked. She obviously paid attention during the McKinsey spin training. World class spinning.

PS I've just seen that her total salary package is £6,842,000. Good grief - that's more than the Prime Minister gets.

[Stanley]

I too am wondering what my 'free upgrade' could be. Have you noticed that the other providers are bombarding us with offers to take advantage of Talktalk's woes? My own view at the moment is do nothing because I believe that all the providers have the same security problems, too much chance of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire....I'm paying about £1 a day for everything including free international calls, this seems reasonable to me so I shall keep quiet.

[Tizer]

At least when a scammer phones me or Tripps to say our broadband account needs attention we know to ignore him if he seems to be speaking from India!

[PanBiker]

Had a look at Plusnet, some very interesting deals. I know I can get a fibre deal from them at less than I am paying at the moment for 17mbps broadband. Up to 55mbps deal comes in a tenner cheaper, less if don't take a phone deal. We both have mobiles with free monthly minutes so I may just go for a line only deal for incomings. Will see what TalkTalk have to say, it's a reasonable stick for leverage.

[Stanley]

Don't be too quick to laugh Tiz, they were so plausible, hit all the buttons. There are some devious people out there.....