patham

Upgrade time upfront soon ? I hope the set-up goes well. My new Trance has the DPX2 (non Kashima) and for the love of me I can't seem to get a good set-up that minimises pedal bob, and the Trance platform is renowned for minimising pedal bob! The interwebs seem to be very silent on this issue - if you find the magic setting let me know ! Actually - I reckon we should set up a new thread titled "Latest purchase - one month after", in which we give feedback or installation tips on all the lemons or the hero purchases that appear in this thread. It could also be the confession thread - I am sure someone here has paid good money for an item that they boasted about, only for them only to totally wreck it when they install the widget backwards.

I just want to add that I only noticed this thread today. If it had been filed under "Off Topic discussions" I would have seen it develop in real time.

I can't speak highly enough about my Eco Drive. Just gone on 9 years of pretty much 24/7/365 wearing (I only take it off for showers) and both watch and strap are still near perfect (a few scratches on the face).

Lucky SOB. The Tornado has great lines, I am sad I will probably never see one in flight. One more model kit to be bought as the next best thing (although I do remember building a 1/72 version in my early teens, that memory does not do the subject justice).

I see the jacarandas are in bloom at the same time across the southern hemisphere.

An unseasonally cool day here today, so I took the chance to go out on a long (for me that is - 50 km) urban explore ride to see parts of town I have never gotten to before.

Not too sure my ears could ever hear electrical noise.... For my HDMI issue, I also need a surge protect on my incoming sat cable feed, and I reckon in the storm build-up and close strikes there is enough eddy currents induced (electro-static discharge) that I would need surge protects on all the individual HDMI cables as well. All gets kind of pricey and bulky PS. A hard reboot of all the gear seems to have cleared the gremlins in the amp. All circuits back on line now. No new amp shopping for me.

The Brisbane summer thunderstorms seem to have destroyed my Sony STR1050 HDMI out circuitry yesterday. I will do a bit more troubleshooting over the weekend, but its not looking good. The rest of the amp seems fine, but losing the pass through and having a work around of "video source linked directly to TV", and the "audio channel of same source going to the amp" will mean that all users will need a 30 minute briefing every night to get it to work (technophobes), and that might just drive me nuts. HDMI circuitry seems remarkably sensitive, when my Onkyo packed up the spike along the HDMI cable fried the TV HDMI circuits at the same time. Anyone else had that happen ?

New Bike Day +1, leaving my comfort zone and doing a ride south of the Brisbane River (north and south of the river are notorious here for "never the twain shall meet" vibes....).

New bike day. Trance Advanced 1 (2020 model on runout special). My couches are too dirty and worn to place this thing of beauty on them.

Back in SA, we had a beautiful looking bougainvillea next to the pool. Well, it looks good until all the flowers shed into the water. When they were digging the earthworks for my pool in Brissie, I got the digger operator to rip out the established bougainvillea that would have been right next to it. Life's too short for that. Otherwise, the salt water pools here do seem to be a lot more "fire and forget" than the chemically dosed ones I was used to in SA.

I think swimming pool distribution here follows suburb histories & demographics. The old houses and blocks of land in the inner city suburbs are generally too small for pools, so not as common there. Suburbs developed in the 70's to 2000's often hit the sweet spot in terms of size of available space, people having brought up their kids in them so have put in pools, and also people becoming wealthier and being able to afford them. Very new developments / suburbs are often starter homes, so people have not got the cash for a pool just yet. But yes, pools are reasonably common. The weather helps. Although on the really bad 40 degree C days, you only can swim early morning and late afternoon without turning crispy. In Auckland, when the swimming weather can probably be measured in minutes per one or two days a year, there would not be so many kids clamouring for a pool. Aren't hot-tubs more popular though ?

There goes the neighbourhood! I'll bring a beer on moving day. Luckily I now have a lifetime exemption of having to actually assist in helping to move people. PS. Bring snake repellent (this is not normally a statement you find on a NZ themed thread). I gather the local facebook pages are full of snake sightings and removals lately. We had our first carpet python of the season cruising across the driveway a few nights ago.

Congrats on taking the plunge. Whereabouts did you buy ?

Can't say I know of this make, but rule of thumb is often that the less flashy the amp exterior, the better the internals are. I like the heat sink detailing. About your Jamos - A good set of speakers should never die if they are not mistreated. My current set-up is mis-matched, as I found my 20 year old Tannoy bookshelves still are better surrounds than the Polk bookshelves that match my floorstanders. My last amp shopping was before 4k was a thing, so can't help too much on that either. I used to be a fan of Onkyo and their gear is normally cutting edge, but their use of cheap capacitors back in 2012 turned me off them. I replaced my failed unit with a Sony (STR1050, now is the 1080), as I don't actually listen or watch enough to justify the good stuff, and did not have time to do research. Even with the subwoofer packed away, the amp and Polks crank out some good sounds, and movie soundtracks / explosions still sound impressive. So if you are ok with mass-market AV receiver stuff, the 1080 has 4k passthrough. Probably is a downgrade for quality and "useable" power though. Paper specs say 100W / channel at 0.09%, so might be worth checking out.

I did a double take at the name at first glance, wondering how come one of my real mails had gotten embedded into the hubstuff? Anyway, nice name.

Zigackly ! Although after the 70% rise I wan't giving them a second chance. I had lost the faith.

You forgot to mention the other algorithm that is embedded in most insurers programming. IF CUSTOMER LOYALTY > 2 YEARS, SNEAK PREMIUMS UP UNTIL COMPLAINTS = POSITIVE Literally, nearly all the companies I have been with on both sides of the pond will try and see if their loyal, non-claiming customers can be nudged into paying higher premiums, i.e. see if they check their mails and debit orders. For my house cover the increases went like 5%, 4%, 5% and then a year ago 72%. What chancers. Went to the same company who covered my cars and had better cover underwritten at the previous years price. What is really strange here is that you cannot bundle assets together under an umbrella policy to get the benefit of a single admin fee. But agreed, best insurance company is the one who pays up. When my car went rolling down the hill after a handbrake failure, and through the house at the bottom of the street, Allianz paid up everything including the repairs for the third party without me needing to put pen to paper. Literally one phone call was all I ever made. And the assessor gave me more than a fair market value for my car seeing as it was in pristine, low mileage condition. So will stick with them for a while...they didn't even penalise me much for losing my no-claim status.

Good philosophy,and I share it in general, but believe you can make allowances for life stages. You can buy your first car or two on HP whilst on starting salaries, but you need to claw yourself up into the cash is king model. I used my credit card as a true credit card for the first six months of my working life as having to set up furniture, kitchen gear, reliable car to get me to work, presentable clothes etc. were all needed on day 1 of working. The trick is to not get accustomed to it. My first little townhouse I paid cash for, (noting that I did extract some cash out my company pension fund to top it up). Tinned food suppers for the next year whilst I paid myself back..... House price inflation in both SA and Au has since stripped me of that ability to self-fund to that degree ever again...

Things are always different up here in QLD. But must be pretty good quality hardwood floors in the bathrooms then to avoid warping ? As NZ and AU share a lot of standards I wonder if we too are moving into a more enlightened era with indoor DB's.

Do you NZer's also have the little 20 to 30 mm high step into the bathrooms, caused by laying tiles onto the timber floor ? At least that I can understand, But I have been in quite a few houses here with fully tiled floors on concrete slab, and there still is a raised level to the bathroom floor. The only other reason I can think of is to try and create drainage to central waste that is normally put in the bathroom floor. It only takes a few toe stubs to learn how to enter !

I think so. I always understood SA building code was to avoid switches and plugs at 240 V within a bathroom. You could still run power to your shaver powerpoints, but with circuit breakers set at lower amperage. On a similar note, when we first moved into a house here we looked high and low inside for the circuit breaker / DB board. Admitted defeat and phoned a fellow immigrant who had been here for some time. "It's where - on the the outside of the house ? No kidding?" So if the power trips, its a walk in the elements braving the snakes and cane toads. Far more convenient having it inside as per SA.

Sorry about the COVID issue, my mother-in-law in Jhb was in isolation for the last 2 weeks due to a COVID contact with one of her relatives, test came back negative in the end. As you mention, and probably the other Zimbos here can also attest to, my family is scattered everywhere, so the issue of family bonds was not something I had to process in the pro's and con's of migration.

Our local supermarket fish counter often stocks smoked snoek from S.A. I never liked it back there either....

Only an armchair expert! You have never experienced the disappointment of hauling your catch above water and being greeted by the slimy ugliness of a squeeker that can now mortally impale you with toxic spines. Its enough to make you open another beer.