Just to reiterate…

Insurance companies are c*nts. I took out a car policy. 6 days later I cancelled it, because the car blew up. I had paid £50 deposit. So for 6 days insurance (which normally has a “cooling off” period anyway), how much refund do you think I’d get? £40 quid? £30 quid? £20 quid?

Nope. £4. Yes, FOUR POUNDS.

OK, so they need to charge me a £12 admin fee, which I can just about make my peace with. Then they tell me they’ll do an 85% refund. This sounds reasonable. Depending on whether you deduct the £12 before or after the refund, I’m expecting £32-£36.

SO how the hell am I only getting £4? Because these arsebandits are calculating the refund on the full value of the policy. So the value of the policy was £220. So they’re deducting £34 odd quid from my remaining £38. £34 for 6 days car insurance (when the car never even left the driveway ‘cos it was nobbered).

That equates to £5.60 a day, instead of the 60p a day it should have been costing.

Let me say it again. C*NTS.

I am not a Geek.

geek Audio pronunciation of “geek” ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gk)
n. Slang

A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.

(from Dictionary.com.)

CBR600 FX Cam Chain Tension Lifter (CCTL)

I finally got around to sorting the annoying rattle from the Cam Chain Tension lifter on my ‘99 Honda CBR600 FX. It had been bugging the shit out of me for nearly as long as I’ve had the bike, and whilst doing a bit of hunting around got the problem diagnosed as the CCTL. The Hayne’s manual doesn’t cover this pesky little problem, but fortunately, I found an excellent guide to it over at Boss Turbo. It’s bloody fiddly, but essentially a piece of piss to do, but I just wanted to add a few notes to supplement the guide (I was going to write my own guide, but that’d be pointless).

1) Be *really* careful when removing the fuel tank bolts, especially the two at the front that attach beneath the handlebars. I know from painful experience (on my old Fazer) that it is bloody easy to thread the little sods, and then you need to get them tapped.

2) Don’t muck about with the CCTL unit… i.e. don’t remove the little eyelet thingy where the top cap goes before you’ve stuck it in the hole. If like me you got worried that the replacement part looked way smaller than the one you took out, don’t worry! That’s quite normal. The eyelet thing (key) holds in the tensioner in until you insert it, and then you release the key and it springs out inside the engine.

3) If you decide to take your fairing off, be really careful when reattaching. I found out the hard way that you don’t need to overtighten the screws, and they will snap. Where are those cable ties?

4) Make sure you put the fuel tank bracket back on the right way round.

5) When you remove the fuel tank, “off” is in the middle, not all the way over.

6) When you spill fuel all over the inside of the engine because you hadn’t observed point 5 above, make sure you mop it up (and don’t smoke with petrol all over your fingers).

7) While you’ve got the tank off, you might as well do your air filter.

The bolts holding the CCTL are bloody small and awkwardly located, so for starters, make sure you’ve taken off all watches/rings/bracelets etc. because I then found I could actually get my hand in under the frame from the nearside of the bike and access the bottom bolt, and secondly, be patient when undoing them – they will come. I only have a cheap ratchet set (came free with my subscription to Bike!), and it did the job fine. Likewise they don’t need to be supertight when done back up.

It’s well worth doing, and cost me about £50 for the part from a Honda dealer. Follow the guide and you can’t go wrong!

The Rule of Four webquest and others

I’ve put a guide to the Rule of Four webquest up on this site, here. That means I’ve got several complete guides now:

Da Vinci Code #1
Da Vinci Code #2
Deception Point
Digital Fortress
Rule of Four

Enjoy!

Burgers are bad for you.

Pah.

Well I be darned

If this isn’t just a handydandy little search box. I’m not advocating nothing (guv), but that seems to work pretty well.

Worst nightmare

You get into work on a Monday morning after a very relaxing weekend off. You’re refreshed, revitalised and raring to go. You’re all set. You sit down at your computer, which is left on all the time, and switch the screen on.

It’s black, with only 4 words displayed. 4 of the scariest most shit inducing words known to man.

Operating system not found.

You reboot. Nothing, apart from some very worring sounds from one of your hard drives. Same 4 words.

Operating system not found.

At this point shitting your pants is no longer an option. 3 years worth of work flash before your eyes, as you sit in amazement, wondering what the fuck has eaten your computer. You begin to face the prospect that it’s all gone. Fortunately, a WinXP system disk is close by, and booting from the CD, takes you to the OS. You check some things, verify your hard drives. Everything seems OK. Moment of truth time, you shut down the computer. You restart the computer, removing the boot disk. Click. Beep. Whirrrrr.

It boots, and it’s panic over. Never before have you been so glad to see a computer running Windows. It’s all there. The power outage over the weekend has only confused your computer, and not robbed it of its very soul. Time to go to the loo to clean yourself up. Replace your undies. Go for a fag.

Time to make some backups.