rabbitstew

And whats with people getting a perfectly good pair of trousers and ripping the knees etc on them? Some of the kids I see walking about atm look like they have tried to climb a barbed wire fence and failed badly!

Yep I do and don't forget about "Spliffy" branded clothes as well as "Dready" branded clothes. I remember my Dready trousers were huge with about 30 pockets! I remember those spliffy ones. It was law you had to wear them hanging down around your knees nearly and pretend to be a gangster. Ive never been one to rush out and try to be "in" with the latest fashions / craze. I just wear what i feel comfortable in so I avoided all that sort of thing.

I hate squats. Mainly because the doms kill any more than any other exercise i do. I had a heavy squat session on Sunday and couldnt walk Monday & Tuesday. Today im still struggling. Mind you, im full of cold atm. Appetite gone, ache all over and have no energy. Add to that, only getting 4 hours of very disrupted sleep each night this week due to baby who also has cold sleeping in same room as us. Its a wonder im even functioning atm.

Anything pink.

Indeed, sounds a bit like us. The 911 is a remarkably practical car. You can fit a buggy etc in the boot and theres enough room in the back for 2 kids up until they get maybe 5 ft tall. I took both of my kids to football practice the other week in my 911 without any problem. 3 year old in his car seat in the back and the baby in his baby seat also in the back. Certainly raised some eyebrows when all the other parents with their people carriers saw me getting the kids out of my car. Saying that, the wife thinks bigger is better and so she ran out and bought a new Ford Edge just so we have enough room for 2 little kids in the back. Sigh. I can see her point when we go on holiday etc and have to take travel cots, toys, clothes & kitchen sink etc... but I think its a bit of overkill for everyday. After all my mum used a classic 850cc mini as the "family" car for years when she had me & my brother without any problem.

If you can stretch to finance, id recommend the Ford Edge like we got before Xmas. Beast of a car, easily get 3 child seats in the back and not even notice them. Mega leg room & boot is massive. More tech in it than ive seen in any car. Practically drives itself. Not cheap though, but residuals are very high as they are pretty rare.

I paid £140 for my mega light weight lithium battery for my Ducati the other year vs £30 a standard one would have cost me. Weight saving was astounding though as the light weight one was made out of carbon etc.

ha! I was actually thinking the same about me the other day. Drives a Porsche 911 Turbo as his daily whilst wearing a £4 Primark shirt.

Says he`s listed it for £1800 elsewhere, which on the face of it doesnt seem a bad price in all fairness for a project. Had to laugh though that he said he bought it a couple of months ago and just hasnt had the time to do it up yet. Firstly, why buy a project car if you know you wont have time to work on it. Not only that, ive had my project car in my garage for 10 years and dont intend to sell that as hopefully I will find the time to work on it at some point, so to give up after just a couple of months seems a bit silly.

Personally ive never liked it when companies try and give you anything other than cash as a "bonus". Id much rather have cash in my hand then I can spend it on whatever I want. In general with all the previous companies ive worked for they spend the whole year raving about how well they are doing, then as soon as it starts to approach Christmas they suddenly change tune and say they arnt doing as well or havent met the totally unrealistic targets they set, in order to avoid paying any Christmas bonus. But then they will happily put on a works Christmas party costing thousands for the staff when most of them would rather the cash in their pocket at what is an expensive time of the year. I gave my team a Christmas bonus this year of a grand each. Of course, they had to tax on it. My boss on the other hand, decided not to give me any bonus, mainly because they are American and apparently dont believe in such things. Bit like how they have only given me one pay rise in 8 years and yet I give my team a yearly pay rise if they have performed well.

Wow, that's incredible, how many was it by the way? I'm thrilled when I hit the default daily target of 6000!! I cant remember exactly now but it may have been about 18,000 steps a day average over the whole week. I know I was pretty impressed when you think how many people use the app. On an average day I tend to hit between 11,000 and 15,000 steps. Which isnt bad when you think I spend 3 hours a day in my car driving and 7 hours sitting in an office. When I used to go running id hit 10,000 steps before id even got to work on those days, but I havent had time to run for a long time. Its pretty accurate though as I used to have a fitness band, and also used to use just the S Health app on my phone prior to getting the S3 and the number of steps is all consistent with what id normally do. Out of interest I also compared it to my wife`s iPhone when we went for a day trip to London the other week, and the steps recorded on her iphone compared to my S3 was nearly identical.

There may well be a Strava app for the S3. I use runkeeper and I know there isnt an app for the S3 yet (there is for the S2 however), but S Health can be linked to runkeeper (and everything else) so it should be able to update it. S Health on the S3 is actually very good. It automatically knows what exercise you are doing. I go for a 3 mile walk most lunchtimes and the watch automatically knows when im walking, monitors my progress, tells me my speed etc then logs it in the S Health log. The same with cycling... you dont even have to tell it. It knows you going for a cycle ride, knows speed, how long, how many calories you have burnt, even your route via the gps. According to S Health, last week I was in the top 5% of all S Health users for my number of steps. I forget how many smart watches Samsung have done, but they have been making them for years, way before Apple jumped onto the band wagon and decided to try and get in on the action. So, The S3 may well already be version 6. I certainly held off buying one for a very long time, as the earlier ones were indeed clunky, had poor functionality, poor battery life and were of limited use, but the tech has developed so much now that, at least for me (and a lot of others) the S3 is a very polished highly developed device. Im a watch fan and have a reasonable sized collection of watches, and so for me to put them all in the cupboard and move onto wearing a S3 was no small move! Which I suppose is the biggest downside to having a smart watch. Once you start wearing it, you cant really suddenly leave it at home one day and wear a "normal" watch instead. Well you can, but it will throw all your tracking data out etc. and you`ll find yourself looking at the watch for notifications etc then realise that your wearing the wrong watch.

KITT? Yes Micheal....

My lad calls my 997 Sally Porsche. Simply cos of that 996 in the Cars film is called Sally.

To be honest, ive never seen the point in smart watches, however I did preorder a S3 Classic which arrived the day after it was released. Havent looked back. Lovely watch, must have saved me hours of fishing my phone out of my pocket to check what notification id just received etc. To top it up, I ordered a whole bunch of 22mm straps from ebay for hardly anything, and can personalise it however I want now. All in all cost half the lad at works iWatch cost him! Whilst some might think they are big bulky watches, my classic looks perfect on my average sized wrist, whether im wearing a suit or a t-shirt. The stainless body on it ooozes quality and with leather straps looks the part. You can get google maps on it and youtube. My lad thought it was hilarious that peppa pig was playing on daddies watch. Whilst my wife took great pleasure in changing my watch face to a moving aquarium watch face, complete with fishes swimming about etc.

Dont understand these people who lock their cars away over winter. Im using my 997 turbo as my daily. Sun, rain, snow, sleet, ice, you name it. At the moment ive not had time to wash it for 3 weeks and so it looks like ive been rallying it down muddy lanes its so mucky. But the grin on my face going to work & back is huge. Its about the only bit of pleasure I get these days now im married.

Yeah its all about location for buy to lets. Guy at work is focus`ing on Cambridge and close to it. From the figures he`s shown me he does seem to be doing very well. But when I last looked into it, unless you have a lot of money sitting in the bank doing nothing, the rent would just not cover the cost of a mortgage in Cambridge. For example, the street behind where I work, 4 bed terraced houses with no front garden, a small back garden you couldnt swing a cat in, and on street parking only, get snapped up within hours for £600 grand. Last time I looked the same sort of place rents out for £1200 a month for the whole house. Bare in mind all the tax you have to pay on the additional income, plus expenditure for any maintenance it doesnt seem viable to me. You can get more if you convert the dining & living rooms into additional bedrooms then turn it into a house of multiple occupation and rent each room out separately, but then a host of other things come into play like council regulations and being liable for all the utilities etc... My missus rents out her old flat in Coventry and has done for the last 7 years. I do her tax return each year. After she has paid tax on the income, paid the letting agent & paid for any repairs she makes precisely zero out of it. She bought it in 2007 at the peak property price and I think only now its gone back up in value to roughly what she paid for it. She needs to renew the leasehold on it which will cost a fortune (the owner of the land the flat is on can basically charge you whatever they want to extend it and is entitled to a share of any profits if it increases the value of the flat), and then if she was to sell the flat, she`d have to pay tax on any "profits". So if she sold it now she`d have made absolutely jack for a 7 year investment. Shes hoping that when she retires it will be worth more, or she will have paid the mortgage off and so any rental income will be "free".

I dumped a lot of my savings into premium bonds this year and the return ive got is miles more than the interest I could have got in any bank account. How long that will remain like that I dont know but we shall see. I also bought my 997 turbo, not only as my daily driver, but as a kind of investment. I am hoping that if/when I come to sell it in the future I wont loose as much money on it as I usually do in vehicle depreciation. Lad at work has turned into some sort of property tycoon atm and is investing his cash in the buy-to-let market. I personally thought that had all died a death now, but he seems to think he will be a millionaire before long.

I managed to get a few good workouts in over the Christmas period. Not as many as I wanted but better than nothing. Was able to up the weights on a lot of the exercises and really pushed it hard. Watching "100% nasty" a few times over the Xmas period helped with the motivation. Really made the most of all the Christmas grub & drink etc. although I think I actually probably ate less than I normally do when im at work. Normally I dont notice any improvements when I look in the mirror, but this morning I happened to notice that I was looking pretty hench so weighed myself and ive put on 3lb, so pretty pleased with that. Means over 2016 I put on a total of 7lb. A lot less than I was aiming for, but still a step in the right direction.

signed by Zakk Wylde! Very I know, it was a bit of a result to be honest. A mate of mine used to be a prison warden and he happened to mention to me that Zakk was going to visit his prison and did I want him to see if he could get him to sign my guitar. I was like derrrrr let me think about it.... Anyway, he got it signed for me. Pure luck really!

Ive got a couple of Fender Strat replica`s which ive stripped and repainted and a Zakk Wylde bullseye Epiphone which I actually had signed by him. Playing the guitar was something id always wanted to do since I was a kid, so about 10 years back I actually sat down and started to learn it. A couple of my mates are exceptionally good guitar players so they helped me out a bit. One of the best things I got was a pocket pod. Cracking gadget. I used to get up early and spent an hour every day practicing before work. Unfortunately then like all my other hobbies & interests they all got scrapped when I met the wife and so ive not had the spare time to practice since. Its on the list to do when I retire.

Take it for a spin and see what you think. Personally I preferred the looks of my 350z, and mine was the HR so very little in it performance wise, but if yours is a 2003 model then you`ll notice a difference. The interior was one area which I felt was a massive improvement on the 370z. It really made even my face lifted 350z look very dated. The auto box was great if you used it as a manual, but as an auto it annoyed me. For example, if you were cruising at 60 the booted it, rather than drop it to 3rd, it would drop it to 2nd then change up to 3rd at 62mph or something which to me seemed madness. (it was a while ago, so my memory of the gears/speeds is probably wrong but you get the idea). 14k is a lot of money, but its more about the depreciation rather than the cost. What will it be worth in 2 years time? I paid 16k for my 350z and after 18 months it was only worth 10k

My best pressies this year were 5 bottles of whisky and a micro scaletrix! Hours of fun.

Cant beat friends and family. We ended up getting 4k off the Edge and 0% finance through that and a desperate dealer who needed to hit end of year targets.

We just bought a new Ford Edge, collect it tomorrow. Not actually seen any driving around on the roads so it will be cool to be driving something a bit different again. Absolutely massive inside and the amount of tech they give you as standard is pretty mad compared to bmw etc.