prowla

I’ve just been cleaning my bath with Cillit Bang; stupid name, but it beats any of the other domestic cleaning products.

I've had good and bad at Kwik-Fit. I had the Bracknell one do my tracking; it took several hours and they didn't do a good job of it. I've been to the Reading one and there is one bloke there who really knows what he's doing, but he's been promoted so you have to make sure you get him and his full attention; the 2nd time I went there it took 3 attempts before I made sure it was him and he really did it.

Hewlett Packard - now there's a company that went from hero to zero. I used to work a lot with their kit and then the Carly Fiorino person took over and things got all wobbly. They then made the mistake of firing one of their execs for expensing a "good time" in Vegas, but unfortunately he was a pal of the Oracle boss man who said Oracle were no longer supporting HP so their customer base disappeared. They acquired one of the consultancy companies and made a stab at it, but I don't think people were buying. What was their offices in Bracknell has now been demolished and I think a warehouse or storage facility has been built in its place. Oracle then went on to buy Sun Microsystems and killed that product, then they restructured their pricing (again) to fleece their customers, so the customers stepped away. I don't know if the Sun brand still exists. Oh, and talking of database companies, Informix was one who got it completely wrong: they had a great product but then decided that they were going to tell all of their customers that they were doing fundamental changes which meant they had to completely re-think their strategy and architecture; well, the customers went elsewhere (ironically to Oracle!). IBM bought Informix at some point, but I think they just let it fade away into oblivion. ICL - I did some work for them, but the place was just full of grey people straightening paperclips. When my contract was approaching the end I said I was going to move on and they said "but we need you to stay"; I pointed out that I had done about 3 days work in the 6 months I had been there, so I didn't think they really did need me. They were later taken over by Fujitsu. And no, I wasn't on the Post Office side of things - I was working on a system pulling call records from telephony networks.

I saw Blackmore's Night a few years ago - they were quite good and Mrs Blackmore is a fine singer. Blackmore got bored towards the end and turned up and started playing songs the rest of the band didn't know, so that was a bit naff.

Parking companies: I was out and looking for a place to eat and pulled into a Miller's Steak House, but the car park was plastered with signs warning of fines, saying register by phone and so-on, but that it could be validated by the restaurant. That sounded like a proper faff - did I have to register by phone and then get the restaurant to validate it or what? So I just turned the car around and left. I'd been to another shopping precinct and its car park had a parking limit and I was worried if I ate there I might overstay, so i left too.

My local KFC was pretty grim, I reckon they didn't get the fryers up to temperature, but then I had one a few months ago and it was really good. I had another since and it was OK. I went to a TGI's last summer and the staff couldn't give a damn; there was some rubbish on the floor and they just kept walking around it or accidentally kicking it. Then one bloke came out from the kitchen, saw it and picked it up and pit it in the bin; I had a chat with him. The food was mediocre and arrived warm because the staff were too busy talking to bring it to my table. My son came over and wanted to go there last week and I said I don't think so.

That'll do nicely!

Ah yes - Apple for bricking 2nd hand iPhones & iPads. Apple for artificially reducing the lifespan of their batteries via software.

@TheGreek Have the photos gone awol?

Ah yes,I forgot them. Go to the shop and they say check online; well, I shouldn't have bothered coming to your stupid shop then! I did buy some things online, but they sent me a lesser model; I sent it back so they sent me the very same ones again; back they went again, then they had to do an "inspection" before refunding, and took months to finally return my money.

Ford - I had several and they all had some issue which was impossible to resolve and the garages lied about having fixed them. Vauxhall because one failed on me and the garage stonewalled me. Tech21/SansAmp and Panda Future Impact - there was an incompatibiity between their kit and they both said both tough. Brighton - the council pursued me over a parking fine despite acknowledging that I had a valid ticket; fortunately they messed up their procedures and had to accept failure, however their dishonesty was not to my liking so I steer clear of the place. My local Tory MP - I wrote regarding a parking issue at a shopping centre and he replied saying not his problem. I also wrote to my local Tory counciller and he responded similarly; when he knocked on my door coming up to the local elections I told him I wasn't voting for him and why, he lost his seat. Plus I don't go to that shopping centre anymore. Most soft drinks companies, because I disike the taste of artificial/substitute sweeteners, so there's no point in buying their products. As it stands, there's only Coke Original, Fever Tree, and some Romanian ones left for me to buy. On the plus side my meals out are usually cheaper, because I only have tap water to drink.

Prices are all over the place; this one looks like a rather nice but not quite top of the pile (eg. the tuners) thru-neck. It's a shame its logo has gone and Amusingly, they tended to put theTreble pickup surround on the wrong way round on these; real Rics have the wider flange toward the bridge and it always twinges my OCD. I'm thinking around the £600 mark; if it had the logo £650. Price is dependent upon binding (is it separating from the body), neck (neck lift), and tailpiece (tail-lift) condition; I can't tell those from the picture. If you're on Facebook, there is a thriving fakers community. @Bassassin may have comments to add. My black CMI cost me £150 in 2018; it had neck-lift, which needed work to sort out - I half-fixed it to mitigate the issue and sold it on for £250. FYI, neck-lift is due to a design issue: the Bass/neck pickup bay cuts out a significant chunk of wood which creates a weak point in the thru-neck and the pull of the strings can cause the neck to bend forward at that point; fixing it requires remedial work. The issue manifests itself as a high action which can't be adjusted by the bridge height.

Not so common, but £650 is a bit steep.

Dated June 2020 - it's almost vintage now!

It’s not a Chickenbacker.

Yep - I think they're a nice unit and may get them on a couple of my basses. The issue is with the bass itself - they've moved the end of the body out so there's a gap after the tailpiece.

I don't like that so much - it's like they've copied the Chickenbackers. I think they moved the position of the neck-body join.

Ebay aren’t interested in taking down counterfeits anymore; they’ve got AI with a deficiency in the I part.

I think so.

Not dissimilar in colour to my slightly customised 2013.

AI is going to take over the world!

That is in the true spirit of Rutherford's stuck-together Ric one.