We recently applied for a loan through Sainsbury’s Bank. The only reason we picked them over our own bank was because according to some loan comparison websites, they were in the top three for offering the best APR (as the image to the left suggests 7.8%APR). Obviously this depends on your circumstances but still, it was worth a try out.

FairInvestment.co.uk said the following about Sainsbury’s Bank.

Advantages of a Sainsbury’s Bank loan include:

• Easy to apply and you’ll get a decision in minutes.
• Choose a repayment period to suit you.
• Protect your personal loans against the things that worry you.
• Apply for an instant personal loan online today.

It might be easy to apply for a loan, but you most certainly DO NOT get a decision in minutes.

There are over 7 pages of forms to be filled in and each form is on a timer, so if one takes to long filling in the information, the page times out and you have to close down the browser window and start again.

You DO NOT get a confirmation email letting you know the application is complete, nor do you know when the decision will be made.

After 3 days I decided to call Sainsbury’s Bank to find out if they had received our loan application, having heard nothing, received no emails, or had any left messages for us. After 12 minutes of hanging around on the phone I finally got through, only be asked a whole bunch of similar questions as the original application. Once I got through those I was told the loan application had been denied. The gentleman on the phone could NOT give any explanation as to why the loan application had been denied and that was that!

What a waste of time?

Further more I got an annoying email today from Home Shopping Personal Finance who got my details from Sainsbury’s Bank, even though I opted out of Sainsbury’s Bank passing on my details to a 3rd party company. They had the cheek to tell me Sainsbury’s had denied my application for a loan. No sh*t Shurlock.

Suffice to say I logged into my online bank at Lloyds TSB and applied for the same loan amount, didn’t have to fill in forms etc and within 5 minutes had the loan approved and the money in my bank account and at a better APR than Sainsbury’s Bank was offering it.

The moral of the story – Stick with the banks you know, give your own bank a chance before looking for cheap alternatives. Cheap is often expensive in the long run. There are advantages to using your own bank namely;

• Your bank should know you and your credit history,
• Your bank has all your information already,
• Your credit history is already known,
• If your loan application is accepted, payment into your account can be instant.

The Internet is an amazing place for fixes and solutions and this post will explain why?

Gone are the days when something happens and you have to trudge down to the store where you bought something to find out how to fix it or waste time sending  the item back because it broke unexpectedly, and electronics can be a bitch sometimes. One minute they can be working and the next thing they are dead.But not all electronics are stupid like that, normally there is a back door or secret pass code that allows you in.

I have had my Nokia BH-905 headphones for little over 7 months now and I cannot fault them, in fact whenever I can emails or comments from people asking what I think of them, I can only praise them. They have been fantastic.

Today the unexpected happened. They just stopped working. I was listening to music via Bluetooth on my Nokia N900 and received a phone call through Skype. The music stopped like it should and the headphones picked up the call. I could hear the other person talking, but they couldn’t hear me back. I switched between headphones and phone and could hear fine, but still the other person couldn’t hear me because the microphone in the headphones had control. I switched off the headphones after the call was lost and then attempted to switch it back on – nothing. No green or red or orange or blue lights, just nothing. You know that sicking feeling!!!

Strangely though the noise cancelling light (orange), which is on the left headphone came on when I switched on the ANC button. Aaah, I thought, so the battery is not dead and the noise cancelling was working in both headphones so that was a good sign that all was not lost.

I decided to recharge the headphones before attempting any fixes. Once charged, I did a search on Google using the following keywords – “nokia bh-905 not switching on” and found a Nokia Support Discussion from the 14th of October 2009, where someone had a similar problem. Reading through the forum, I noticed some folk had the exact problem I was experiencing. One smart person (mseln) even wrote what he had tried to fix the problem, followed up by another post stating he had fixed the problem and gave the solution. It’s people like this that make the Internet work.

So here is the solution or fix as I have tried it and it worked just fine:

Hold down “pause + rewind + volume down” on the right headphone for about 15 to 20 seconds and you will see an orange light then a fast flashing blue light appear.  The headphones are now in search mode looking for a pairing. I was able to connect immediately on my Nokia N900 and everything is working again.

Nothing like buying something and following the installation instructions to the letter, only to discover that the diagram showing the wiring is totally wrong. Yes in this day and age we still have companies supplying instructions that are completely wrong or they have not taken into account the multiple wiring options on offer, not that British Telecom (BT) have many wiring standards.

Here is the diagram Philex offer in the instructions and on the back of the box for their DIY Telephone Extension Kit:

The correct wiring is below (the diagram in the middle):

One thing to note:

The Philex kit has a Black, Red, Yellow and Green Cable combination, and I didn’t need to use the Green cable in position 4. It worked fine without it!

Pin 1 = blank

Pin 2 = black

Pin 3 = red

Pin 4 = green or blank

Pin 5 = yellow

Pin 6 = blank

I found the above diagram and wiring information on WPP Ltd. They have got some very useful information on their website regarding UK Telephone Extension Wiring.

Someone (no names mentioned) recently put bottled water into the car window washer instead of the 50/50 windscreen wiper mix. Of course all was fine until this cold snap hit the South East of England and we have been having sub zero temperatures and rain and snow which froze the water in the pipes and in turn burned out the front window wiper fuse.

I did a search online and found a solution on the official skoda forum (Briskoda.net). There were to 2 areas discussing ‘front wipers not working’ and which fuse to look at in order to fix the problem. The manual that I have is all back to front, so the forum was really useful. It also seems that many people are experiencing this problem.

blown fuse

The fuse panel is on the right hand side of the dashboard and is easy to open. There is a small gap, which you can put a screw driver in to lift it up.

The fix is to check fuse number 15 – headlight cleaning system, window wiper (a red 10 Amp fuse) first as it’s usually the fuse that has blown. I made the mistake of checking number 41 (yellow 20 Amp fuse, which is aptly named “Front Window Wiper”, and of course it was fine. Apparently the fuse box is arranged in a strange way. So as you can see in the photo, the fuse number 15 was indeed blown or broken.

If you are interested in advice or want to ask a question, then look in the forums. I have included the two message areas where I found all my answers and I have also included the fuse box layout and key, which I found at Fabia-vrs.com.

Message group 1 – Wipers not working

Message group 2 – Wiper possible electrical failure

Images above of fuse box and fuse key are from Fabia-vrs.com

NB NOTICE: Don’t take a fuse from another section of the fuse box and think you’ll replace it at a later date. This will cause immediate problems. In my case I took the fuse out from  number 4 (Interior lighting also a 10Amp fuse) and used it in number 15, but all this did was cause my car to not start (very weird but true). In fact the RAC man (Doh! I had to call them because I couldn’t figure out why the engine would not turn and I didn’t have a spare fuse to fill the gap) and it turns out that a simple fuse or no fuse in a postion where there should be a fuse can prevent the car from starting….

After downloading XboxMCE05Lite-enu.exe from the Microsoft Media Extender website, I came across a small problem. The bloody program wouldn’t load. (See Image). The annoying part is when you go into the Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel, you will not find the “Update to Media Center Edition 2005″ listed, so that message is a waste of time.

The actual problem is that when Microsoft made this media extender, Windows Service Pack 2 was current. I have Windows Service Pack 3 loaded and they have not made instructions for this change of service pack.

Anyway I found the solution on Jason Tsang’s Blog and he has kindly included instructions for everyone. They are pretty simple to follow if you know how to use your command prompt (You would be surprised how many people don’t even know what the command line or command prompt is!). So open the command prompt and type the following or cut and paste this line:

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\HotFix\KB895961″ /v Installed /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Once you are done, you will see “The operation completed successfully”. Now try running XboxMCE05Lite-enu.exe again.

Note: There is a New Media Center Extender update (KB956148) available from Microsoft.

So we’ve played Guitar Hero World Tour a couple time now since I bought the game 6 days ago. A really awesome experience once everyone in the band knows their roles and plays properly.

Jo and I and Whiskey (pictured) tried out Rock Band last night and think it’s actually better than Guitar Hero World Tour. The music choice is better and the game play is a lot more exciting and rewarding, but hey, that is our opinion.

Anyway, this morning the bloody red drum refused to work from the start. Just like that it stopped working. I went online and surprise surprise, quite a few people all around the world are experiencing exactly the same problem. (Bugger!). I called GAME at Bluewater, the shop where I bought it from and they confirmed this as well. Apparently loads of people have called up with the same problem. Great I thought, so they can fix it… Alas, they don’t have any in stock. The shop representive gave me a number to call and said “Don’t worry, just call them up, explain the problem, and they will tell you where you can get a replacement”. I gave the number a ring and gave up after listening to the same repeated message “we are busy, please stay on the line“.

In that time I found a brilliant website called Good Input and they explained ‘How to fix the drums for Guitar Hero World Tour‘. Nothing ventured nothing gained I thought and decided to open my drum kit up. There are quite a bit of screws on the back, but fear not, it comes apart really easily. I found the exact problem as described on the web site. In a little under 15 minutes, we had the problem solved and the red drum is working better than ever.

Simple solution: Use an Allen Key or Hex Socket or small Phillips (crosshead) screwdriver or Torx driver bit to unscrew all the screws on the back of the drum kit. There are at least 16 screws. It’s best to remember the location of each screw because some are different lengths. Remove the cover gently watching out for the control panel, as it comes away from the kit. It’s attached by a bus cable, so be careful. Underneath the read drum, the wire that is meant to connect to the inner sensor is probably loose or just making a connection and no more, in fact for me it came off the second I touched it. I exposed abot 4mm of the wire from the sheath and used plastic tape to stick it directly onto the sensor. It’s as good as new now and there will be no need to send it back to the supplier only to wait weeks for a replacement.

Thanks to Pat and all the other people on Good Input.

[late edit] – Here is another site called Instructables detailing a fix for the drumkit problem.

Hex or Allen Key

Phillips Screw or Crosshead

Torx Screws

Torx Driver bits common in all screw driver sets.

One of our kind commentators mentioned that their drumkit had Torx screws securing the back cover.  A Torx screw has a 6-point star-shaped pattern and in that case you would need a torx driver bit to unscrew it. Below right are some examples.

Drink beer heavily and recycle is the best investment advice you can get at the moment, well that is according to an excellent article in the Evening Standard.

The clear winner is beer, always has been, always will be.

Cheers!

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine or a pint of beer… and those who don’t.

As Ben Franklin once said: “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there are bacteria“.

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 litre of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) – bacteria  found in faeces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop     Wine = Health

Therefore, it’s better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information:  I’m doing this as a public service.

Thanks Mom for the email. I’ll remember this when drinking my beer.