Yak Shaving

Found this link earlier today on the 'Yak shaving overhead' in day to day life and thought how relevant it is.

Recently, I needed to organise the garage to prevent a fatal accident happening when I fell over a bicycle and impaled myself on the pick axe I hadn't been able to put away because of all the bicycles in the way.

To organise the garage, I needed some shelves. Once the shelves were up, there was no room for the lawn mower. I needed a shed to house the lawn mower, but the shed wouldn't fit between the wall and the fence because of a rail. To get the shed to fit, I had to lower the base, which meant that I found myself shifting 1/2 a ton of shingle to tidy my garage...

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 – Disk boot order changing

I’ve been struggling since I built the new machine in March 2009 to resolve an issue where connecting/disconnecting a USB drive would change the Disk boot order giving a BOOTMGR not found error.

The machine is a reasonably standard Core i7 built around the P6T motherboard. The only significant difference is the organisation of the disk drives.

I bought 2 off Samsung HD753LJ and 2 off Samsung HD103UJ for the machine and these are arranged with the 2 HD753LJ as a RAID 0 set for Swap and one of the HD103UJs as C: (System) and the other HD103UJ disk as D: (Data)

Despite running the latest BIOS, patches, drivers, etc… if I plugged a USB drive in and then later rebooted the machine, or unplugged a USB drive and rebooted the machine, it would always look at place the ‘Second’ HD103UJ drive (D: Data) first in the list of Hard Drives and would fail to boot.

If I then booted in to BIOS setup; set the ‘First’ HD103UJ (C: System) as the first drive and rebooted, the machine would boot in to the OS correctly.

I did log a call with ASUS, but they couldn’t understand the problem and wanted screen-shots (quite tricky to achieve from a POST screen).

Today (so it’s taken me a long time to figure this out!), I noticed that the ‘First’ drive was in SATA port 4 and the ‘Second’ drive was in SATA port 3… So, I physically swapped the order of the disks and put the System disk in port 3 (the lower number of the two).

Machine now boots fine! I can now add/remove USB drives without affecting the disk boot order.

Skype & Netgear DG834v4

If you have a Netgear DG834v4 running at the latest firmware release - v5.01.14, and are experiencing Skype sound quality problems, then the suggested fix is to roll back to v5.01.09 (DG834G-Skype sounds like Stephen Hawking).

I tested the change, and it has made a significant difference to the quality.

Disproportionate Taxation

I'm sure this is handled more clearly elsewhere, but it strikes me that the one of the ways the government could stimulate the economy is to look at the way that we're taxed.

In a recent discussion with someone that works 37.5 hours a week @ £7/hour (£260/week; ~£14,000/year), which places them in the bottom 10% of the earning population and represents about 1.8M people, revealed that £70 goes on Tax and National Insurance - 27%. This seemed to be an extraordinary amount.

On the one hand, the picture doesn't seem too bad if you look at the results from a percentage perspective - 27% is less than the 38% that higher earners typically lose. However, what gets missed when percentages are discussed is how significant each £1 reduction is in such a modest amount. 

I think that the issue that's missed is that the normal day to day costs that have to be met by the net amount are a significant percentage of the total. For example, the costs of going to work  - £45 on fuel & maintenance (100 miles/week @ 45p/mile from AA costs) plus childcare costs of £69, represents 60% of the net earnings. This leaves about £80/week for everything else...

For someone on the median earnings - £479/year (Table 1 - All Employees) giving £350 net (0.27 x £479) the same costs represents 33% - though losing over 30% of your income just getting to work still seems excessive. 

I think this could be addressed in two ways. Firstly, it seems to me that high earners (top 10% say) could wear a 1% increase in taxation that could translate in to a significant reduction in the lower rates paid. The logic being that if the top 10% of the population - who earn ~£1,000 week, pay an extra 1%, it could be passed on to the bottom 10% of the earning population as a reduction of 4% without any change in the Revenue's tax income.

Secondly, there needs to be a significant increase in the zero band threshold for lower earners - 10% tax band anyone?

Top Gear Challenge

Most of the challenges completed by Mssrs. Clarkson, Hammond & May over the years have been hugely entertaining, though I've often wondered why they've not competed in the Soap Box Challenge under a 'Green Initiative' (!)

In my mind, I can see Hammond and May working diligently and enthusiatically to build a traditional cart only to have Clarkson show up with a Street Luge board. Then, looking like a python who'd swallowed a medicine ball in his leathers, he'd win easily.

Though, there is the potential for a few disasters along the way..., which could add to the entertainment value :-)

The Damage

After a few days delay due to parts availability and the requirement for a new starter motor - the existing one had (developed...) an internal fault that meant another £178.41, I collected the car on Saturday, with a few interesting incidents...

• The invoice showed all the main parts as "RMFD." (e.g. RMFD. TRANS., RMFD Startermotor (sic)). When I queried what this meant, there was some dithering from the Service Advisor who tried to bluff for a few minutes, then went to get the Service Manager. He bluffed his way for a bit too - even to the point of saying "no parts are re-used", without ever clearly explaining what happened, though he did reassure me that the part was covered for 2 years and unlimited mileage, which is the same as a new part. I've since found a (slightly) fuller explanation from BMW here.
• The invoice also showed a number of "Surcharge on above" items (e.g. £591.30 for the transmission) that are refunded on the line below. This (apparently) is an 'internal' charge from BMW for the retrieval and inspection of the part. It's refunded if the part is returned to BMW. However, BMW will levy the full charge if the part is kept for independent inspection.
• Sytner had the car for 2 weeks but had only given it a cursory wash & vac, which was disappointing... Though the Service Manager did offer a full valet next time I visit as compensation. I hope that it's not before the next service is due!
• I mentioned the recommendation from Honest John about replacing the transmission fluid at every Service II to the Service Manager at Sytner. He didn't seem at all surprised and also said that "... a number of our customers ask for this to be carried out on gearboxes and diffs...". He also confirmed that it wouldn't affect the warranty on the parts/car. When I asked him why they (Sytner) didn't suggest it as good practice, he said that they "were very tightly controlled by the manufacturer" and that "BMW's position is that the parts are sealed for life and don't need the fluid to be changed". This seemed to be an area where Sytner could really add some value, but are not allowed to because of BMW's rules & regulations...

Total bill £2880.57 (yikes!).

BMW E46 Gearboxes

I found the following on Honest John's site here when I was doing some post-failure research on BMW gearboxes;

General Warning about Automatic Transmissions: Many BMWs have "sealed for life" automatic transmissions. Regardless of whether you have a full BMW service history, the dealer will never change the auto fluid. Many of these boxes are failing around the 120-150k mark - often well outside of warranty and to a cost of £3.5k plus VAT. A good independent or automatic transmission specialist www.fedauto.co.uk can and will change the fluid for you (and any good BMW independents will recommend this anyway). This is commonplace in the US and means the 'box should last the life of the car rather than being the cause of it being written off. General advice is ensure the fluid is flushed out every 60k or more preferably at each Inspection II.

Certainly something I'll have done on any future BMWs.