Sue

Crikey, well that must be the first time in decades!

Well at least it's better than leaving the poo on the pavement.

Substack is what many people are using these days. It was explained in the post above!

Too late now, but when I had a problem with a window which stuck open either my insurance or my rescue service (I think it must have been) put the car into a secure enclosure somewhere overnight prior to arranging for it to be fixed. However it might be different if it's due to vandalism.

Also the food is terrible, if someone was intending to eat there .......

Haven't tried yet, sorry, wasn't feeling on top form, going to look at it tomorrow morning (Saturday). AKA this afternoon (Saturday) , having got up late.

Maybe better not to encourage them. They might go away.

Thanks Vladi, I will try this. I was very unimpressed by the John Lewis tech attempts, but unfortunately not surprised. However whatever I do, the outcome is likely to be that whatever is wrong it will need repairing, and as the laptop is under guarantee I don't want to do anything which could invalidate the guarantee, as something else could go wrong once this is fixed (it's a two year guarantee). The thing that most annoys me about the way they go about things is just starting off with a factory reset. It's not just losing the data, it's having to reinstall everything that was on there, and reset all the settings etc 🤬 It just seems a lazy way forward to me. At least I have only lost recent data, all my historic data is backed up on Carbonite, albeit mostly duplicated. Carbonite say they have no way of accessing my laptop under the circumstances. Stable doors and bolting horses, but I am presently putting all the stuff from my old Dell laptop onto the external hard drive, just as a precaution in case I somehow lose the Carbonite backup. The Dell still works, just mostly very very slowly, but randomly speeds up 🤣

"The community" is all of us. Are you volunteering to take this task on?

The Oxfam shop refusal may be because they have very limited storage space at the back of their very small shop?

I have always taken mine to the main St Christopher's shop, in a bin bag clearly marked "Rags". They have always accepted them. Clean items only, obviously.

However I don't understand how I could check if the SSD is detected without being able to see anything on the screen? Or how I could run any diagnostic tools without being able to see anything on the screen?

Thanks Vladi, I will look into this.

Sorry, I don't understand? Whenever I take items to the shop I say I want gift aid added. The first time you do it, you get a card with a number on, but also they put your name, address and email address, plus the gift aid number, onto their computer records. So if you don't have the card or number with you, they can track the number from that. If you mean the notification of the amount for tax purposes, apparently you can opt how to be notified, which also goes onto that record, and which to the best of my knowledge I was never asked, hence the recent problem.

My phone doesn't show a URL for the forum at all!

OK, I have been extremely stupid. This is a long and sorry saga, so unless you are into schadenfreude, or know about laptops and might actually be able to help, you probably need to stop reading here. I got a new laptop last May, with a 2 year guarantee from John Lewis (that was my first mistake, but the laptop met all my requirements at a very good price). I hate OneDrive, and I had been using Carbonite for backing up files. When I got the new laptop, the files from my old laptop which had been backed up on Carbonite were downloaded onto it. For tedious reasons originally related to problems with my old laptop, files and folders were duplicated all over the place. Sorting this out wasn't top of my priorities. In an attempt to at least keep new files, and files edited since I bought the laptop, in one place and completely separate from all the old duplicated files, I saved them all into folders on the SSD. However, I didn't restart the Carbonite backup, because my intention was to sort out all the duplicate files first. About a fortnight ago, I bought an external hard drive. My intention was to copy everything on the new laptop onto it before I started deleting any of the duplicate files. I hadn't done that yet because I had to finish doing my accounts and then do my online tax return. So the copying was next on my To Do list. The inevitable happened. Out of the blue, my laptop went into complete meltdown. I was editing a spreadsheet and went into settings to turn the brightness up. I checked the brightness was ok on the spreadsheet, came out of settings, and suddenly everything went black. I did all the obvious things, then googled other possible fixes, including specific to my laptop model, but nothing worked. On starting the laptop, the Lenovo logo came up, the little white circle turned round, the red light for face recognition flashed, then zilch. But clearly it wasn't a problem with the physical screen, as it displayed the logo. It wouldn't start in safe mode either. I thought I might either have accidentally changed some setting, or else it might be connected with a recent update I couldn't try some of the tests suggested, eg removing RAM, because anything involving physically unscrewing my laptop would invalidate the guarantee I am a member of Which Tech, so I contacted them. Obviously their hands were rather tied as they couldn't connect remotely to the laptop as there was no display. They said I couldn't have clicked on some other setting by mistake, as the display section only related to the display. They said they thought it was probably an issue with either the operating system or the mother board, or a component of them. They said it should be possible to identify the fault without losing my data. Given the involvement of John Lewis, I said I thought this was unlikely, as they had once told me to do an unnecessary factory reset on my old laptop and told me this wouldn't lose my data, which I had queried at the time, and had to pay me compensation. So at this point I phoned John Lewis, to be told a repair would take "up to 28 working days" and no they wouldn't supply a replacement laptop during that time. I decided to take the laptop to John Lewis rather than have it collected, so their tech people could look at it first. So then the JL tech person said I must have clicked on Bitlocker by mistake and locked myself out out of the laptop. I thought this was highly unlikely. Anyway, pursuing this line of thought did not help, and she was still unable to get into it by putting in the Bitlocker code. So then we had the data saving conversation. She said the company the laptop would go to was approved by Lenovo. She said they would do a factory reset first regardless. I said could they not try to identify the fault first. She said no. I said could I not request that they did. She said no. She said I could pay £150 for data retrieval, which could be done first. She said it would require removing the hard drive. She said if anybody else did this it would invalidate the guarantee. So. I have brought the laptop home to think things over. But I'm not willing to pay £150, because the important files I can reconstruct by other means, and I have hard copies of most of them, it's just a time consuming pain. I have contacted Carbonite to see if they have any way of backing up the non backed up data even though I can't get into the laptop. If you have managed to reach the end of this post, congratulations 🤣 and do you have any bright ideas? I have typed all this on my mobile. It has taken a very very long time 🤣

There was a very long thread following that first post I screenshotted (?) above. I have just re-read the thread. If anybody knows how I can link to it on this thread, please let me know. It's very interesting (but also pretty appalling).

Voluntary organisations are probably not making use of the boards any more because of the state they are in. To the best of my knowledge a small number of people had keys originally, but I have no idea who has them now. I imagine it is going to take a fair amount of time to get all this properly up and running again, and then properly maintained.

You can always check when they registered on the forum, if you are suspicious. But I recommended Aria, and it certainly wasn't my only post on here, and it was a genuine recommendation. ETA: And he didn't ask me to make it, to the best of my recollection. But even if he had, many local tradespeople ask people to post on here if they are happy with the work that has been done.

I am not a patient at this practice, but surely it is more sensible to have an initial phone discussion, as often the GP wouldn't need to see someone face to face unless they actually needed to physically examine them? This then leaves the available face to face appointments for patients who need them. And if during the phone call the GP felt you needed examining, then arrangements could be made for a face to face. If you feel your ailment is such that you will definitely need to be physically examined, can you not explain that to the receptionist?

Give Labour a chance, they've only been in government for a short time, and they inherited a mess! As regards the notice boards, to the best of my recollection they were originally intended as community notice boards, and certainly not for advertising local businesses (who would decide which businesses should have the limited space on the boards, anyway?) East Dulwich may have become more gentrified since the boards were first introduced, but that surely doesn't mean they should now be completely taken over for the benefit of the "middle classes", to the exclusion of everybody else? As NewWave says, surely these people have other ways to find out about groups and events of interest to them, which the "non middle classes" may not have access to, and even if they did may not be able to afford them. Several people including myself have complained to councillors about the state of the noticeboards in the past. I think one of the issues is that they were originally maintained by local volunteers, who may have either moved out of the area or lost interest - or given up in despair when the boards were flypostered and/or vandalised. I completely agree that the boards should be used for information about not for profit organisations in the area, but if regular maintenance can't be provided and/or they continue to be vandalised, then I think it would be better if they were removed altogether.

I'm not sure how to link to it, but there is actually another thread on here solely about Arapina, also negative but for a different reason. A search on Arapina will bring it up, but here's a screenshot. This is why I have never been there.

It's sorted now. When I asked in the shop, I found that someone had taken it upon themselves to put against my name and card number that I didn't want contacting by either post or email! ?!?!?! Anyway, I spoke to the fundraising department at their head office, and found I had donated over £500 worth of goods in 2023-4, which was news to me (good news, obviously!) and therefore made quite a lot of gift aid money for them (and a tiny bit of tax deduction for me 😀) Anyone who hasn't received an email or letter from them re gift aid, and was expecting one, maybe check that the same thing hasn't happened to you!

Thanks all, I will investigate!

The Japanese place in North Cross Road also does sushi (or did last time we were there!) ETA: Just remembered its name is Monkatsu! I don't like sushi, but the rest of its food is good, so I expect the sushi is too! Edited again to say oops, I posted the previous edit before I had seen Rockets' post below!