Degus meet Neko

I wonder what the Degus think when Nomi is wearing her cat ears? Obviously not scared of her though :)

Seriously... How Can You Not Notice?

Seeing this lorry on the motorway reminded me of this news article...

Suffice to say I gave it a wide berth!

Giant Turkey

Nomi's Mini is her pride and joy, so naturally no expense is spared in keeping it as near to mint condition as we can allow. So when she spotted a custom car cover she had to get one.

Problem was it was not as simple as that... as nothing is with us :-(

Nomi ordered the cover, and it arrived surprisingly fast. So at the first opportunity she tried it on for size (On her car, not herself). Only to find out that it was massive! On closer inspection I can only assume it was for a new Mini (Or Medium as we call it!) as it had BMWMIN on the label. So a quick email to the company saying can you change it please. Simple yeah? Of course, even managed to get it changed to a full size cover (Original was only for the windows). Postage however, not so simple.

The company decided that the ONLY way to send out the new cover and get the old one back was via courier... simple I suppose; courier arrives, hands over new cover, old cover given to courier, job done. No... courier is given such a massive timescale that he could even turn up at Nomi's work after she's gone home. Nomi told them this wasn't going to work, as she'd have to leave work possibly before he got there. Ensue email screaming match as to how unreasonable and costly this is to the company! (Customer is always right? Not in their book). So she brings the cover in, and waits for the courier. Only to be told the courier has been canceled (Presumably because the company had the hump)! So as a concession Nomi says she'll wait in for the courier tomorrow.

In the meantime the car cover... contained within it's silver bag (With no postage instructions) is sitting downstairs in her office, by the post ready for the courier that wouldn't be turning up until tomorrow... Problem is the post it's sitting with is all in post office bags... which are also silver!

dun dun dun!

Nomi goes to leave for the day and lock up, only to find the bag is gone... along with the post! Panic ensues and she goes to the sorting depot. Sorry it's already gone off in the truck says the postmaster... it'll be lost forever without any address on it.

Thankfully that was not the case, as a helpful colleague of Nomis had stopped the postman from taking it, and hidden the bag just before leaving (Long before Nomi left).

Much relieved she has the cover, the courier surprisingly turns up at a reasonable time and performs the switch.

So now Nomi's Mini is all warm and cozy on our drive... wrapped up like a Giant Turkey :-) And presumably the company in question is still being stubborn and grumpy to it's "valued" customers.

Gwiz

Saw my first Gwiz on my way into London... the picture doesn't do it justice... it is truly tiny!

Thery're a good concept, especially for London, given the premium on parking spaces; like their distant petrol cousins the smart cars they can park in inconceivably small spaces.

Only problem is they're Electric, and electric cars require charging which takes all night for not a lot of mileage.

However that's about to change with new technologies in Li-Po batteries allowing them to charge at speeds of x500. To put that in real terms a mobile phone battery (Roughly 1000 mAh) will charge from flat in 7.2 seconds. However this comes at a price... current loading... taking the same example the phone will draw 500 A whilst it's charging from the mains socket, nearly 17x more than your average house can output before blowing a fuse (Average ring main is 30A, average house total is 100A).

Suffice to say it's impossible to charge something like that from a regular house. However that's not the point, the point is to have a power cable at a garage that can hack a huge current so you can charge an electric car in several minutes, rather than several hours.

I'd love to see the cable that could handle that... It'd have to be a solid copper wire as thick as your arm!