Profile for Ugi:
Did you know you are 200 times more likely to win the National Lottery than get a tube of all-black fruit pastels? Just thought I'd mention it.
My current favourite post is this:
Yay for Bagpuss!
This one also seems to have been popular:
I'll work on some more!
Recent front page messages:
none
Best answers to questions:
[read all their answers]
- a member for 9 months and 15 days
- has posted 124 messages on the main board
- has posted 3 messages on the talk board
- has posted 6 messages on the links board
- has posted 11 stories and 59 replies on question of the week
- They liked 121 pictures, 34 links, 0 talk posts, and 44 qotw answers.
- Ignore this user
- Add this user as a friend
- send me a message
Did you know you are 200 times more likely to win the National Lottery than get a tube of all-black fruit pastels? Just thought I'd mention it.
My current favourite post is this:
Yay for Bagpuss!
This one also seems to have been popular:
I'll work on some more!
Recent front page messages:
none
Best answers to questions:
» Impulse buys
Impulse Bargain
I don't buy too much on impulse, save a few small things on e-bay, but back about 10 years, before such methods of money-squandering were open to me, one impulse buy was perhaps my best bargain ever.
Mrs Ugi & I had just bought our first house, which was in quite a state. We needed no end of stuff and didn't have too much cash or much idea of where to get it all, so we ended up at Homebase on about their first ever 10%-off-everything night. Budget was spent and then some, but in wondering round we spotted a power-shower in it's box.
Now this house we had not yet moved into had a half-renovated bathroom with a bath but no shower, and with both of us working a decent shower would be time saved in the mornings. Better still, this £250 shower was end-of-line (I guess - don't think showers have use-by dates) and carried a little orange sticker reading "£199". OK, says we. It's not what we came for, but we'll need a decent shower and £50 off is handy, plus we get this extra £20 off tonight only. Sold.
When we came to pay, the bill was rather less than I had expected, but was a number of hundreds so I didn't think too much of it. In fact, I guess they don't get too many showers marked down because the £199 ticket had been rung through as £1.99 (or rather £1.97 allowing for 10% off), giving a discount of 99.2%. The shower was great and running fine 6 years later when we moved out. At perhaps a twentieth of a penny per shower that must be my best bargain yet.
(Thu 21st May 2009, 13:56, More)
Impulse Bargain
I don't buy too much on impulse, save a few small things on e-bay, but back about 10 years, before such methods of money-squandering were open to me, one impulse buy was perhaps my best bargain ever.
Mrs Ugi & I had just bought our first house, which was in quite a state. We needed no end of stuff and didn't have too much cash or much idea of where to get it all, so we ended up at Homebase on about their first ever 10%-off-everything night. Budget was spent and then some, but in wondering round we spotted a power-shower in it's box.
Now this house we had not yet moved into had a half-renovated bathroom with a bath but no shower, and with both of us working a decent shower would be time saved in the mornings. Better still, this £250 shower was end-of-line (I guess - don't think showers have use-by dates) and carried a little orange sticker reading "£199". OK, says we. It's not what we came for, but we'll need a decent shower and £50 off is handy, plus we get this extra £20 off tonight only. Sold.
When we came to pay, the bill was rather less than I had expected, but was a number of hundreds so I didn't think too much of it. In fact, I guess they don't get too many showers marked down because the £199 ticket had been rung through as £1.99 (or rather £1.97 allowing for 10% off), giving a discount of 99.2%. The shower was great and running fine 6 years later when we moved out. At perhaps a twentieth of a penny per shower that must be my best bargain yet.
(Thu 21st May 2009, 13:56, More)
» Top Tips
Want to book a delivery from Tesco more than two weeks ahead?
Simply edit the URL in their dumb-ass web-site.
Click a future date range and you get a page with a URL including "week=1" or "week=2".
There's no link to anything further ahead, but it works up to week=5 by simply editing the page address. So you can book your groceries to arrive the morning you get back from your 3-week holiday.
Now that's quality site security.
(Tue 19th May 2009, 13:49, More)
Want to book a delivery from Tesco more than two weeks ahead?
Simply edit the URL in their dumb-ass web-site.
Click a future date range and you get a page with a URL including "week=1" or "week=2".
There's no link to anything further ahead, but it works up to week=5 by simply editing the page address. So you can book your groceries to arrive the morning you get back from your 3-week holiday.
Now that's quality site security.
(Tue 19th May 2009, 13:49, More)
» Darwin Awards
Under Pressure
Not my story but my brother's. Sadly, he's not here to tell (unrelated) and so I feel duty bound to do the honours....
Picture a GCSE CDT workshop a few weeks before practical projects need to be completed and Pencil (for such is sort-of his name) is staying after school to work on his electric golf-trolley. This will require various lengths of metal tubing to be bent, cut and brazed together. And tonight is to be bending night.
"You can't just bend it, it'll kink" he is informed by thoughtful CDT teacher. "Fill it tight with sand and that will support it from the inside while you heat it and bend it" quoth he. Pencil being relatively trustworthy, the teacher then sods off and leaves him to it.
The following half-hour sees Pencil fill his tubes with sand and ram wooden plugs hard into both ends with a club-hammer, little considering that the sand is just a shade damp. He then begins to attack the first with a lighted blow-lamp. Now, if my rather rusty physics serves, a liquid upon vaporising expands to 42000 times it's original volume, and so a 500 degree blow-lamp applied to damp sand trapped tight inside a metal tube develops quite a pressure.
Had he been standing at the end of the tube when the wooden bung finally shot out, it would surely have passed straight through him. Fortunately, however, he is standing just to one side as a monstrous bang sees this cellulose bullet issue forth at about Mach 4.
Roused by the noise, teacher re-enters the workshop to see Pencil in a state of shock and a thick layer of red dust gently settling over the entire room. The collateral damage resulting from this unintended WMD having been the instant annihilation of a huge tub of powdered flux. Teacher then proceeds to practically piss himself laughing, and Pencil spends the next hour wiping flux from every imaginable surface. We lost him early, but it could so easily have been 15 years sooner.
(Fri 13th Feb 2009, 18:06, More)
Under Pressure
Not my story but my brother's. Sadly, he's not here to tell (unrelated) and so I feel duty bound to do the honours....
Picture a GCSE CDT workshop a few weeks before practical projects need to be completed and Pencil (for such is sort-of his name) is staying after school to work on his electric golf-trolley. This will require various lengths of metal tubing to be bent, cut and brazed together. And tonight is to be bending night.
"You can't just bend it, it'll kink" he is informed by thoughtful CDT teacher. "Fill it tight with sand and that will support it from the inside while you heat it and bend it" quoth he. Pencil being relatively trustworthy, the teacher then sods off and leaves him to it.
The following half-hour sees Pencil fill his tubes with sand and ram wooden plugs hard into both ends with a club-hammer, little considering that the sand is just a shade damp. He then begins to attack the first with a lighted blow-lamp. Now, if my rather rusty physics serves, a liquid upon vaporising expands to 42000 times it's original volume, and so a 500 degree blow-lamp applied to damp sand trapped tight inside a metal tube develops quite a pressure.
Had he been standing at the end of the tube when the wooden bung finally shot out, it would surely have passed straight through him. Fortunately, however, he is standing just to one side as a monstrous bang sees this cellulose bullet issue forth at about Mach 4.
Roused by the noise, teacher re-enters the workshop to see Pencil in a state of shock and a thick layer of red dust gently settling over the entire room. The collateral damage resulting from this unintended WMD having been the instant annihilation of a huge tub of powdered flux. Teacher then proceeds to practically piss himself laughing, and Pencil spends the next hour wiping flux from every imaginable surface. We lost him early, but it could so easily have been 15 years sooner.
(Fri 13th Feb 2009, 18:06, More)