Ok, inspired by a friends FB post, so this is a little rough:

Buying a house is not like anything else - nothing is confirmed until the ink is dry on the contract, and you've actually moved in.

I really recommend getting "The Which? Guide to Doing Your Own Conveyancing" :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/085202813X/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

You almost certainly DON'T want to do the conveyancing yourself - but you do:

• Want to know exactly what everyone else needs to do for you
• Want to know how long each of those steps would normally take.

From experience, the "professionals" are often massively incompetent in every way - though they may seem fine at first.  I've heard of solicitors that put in the 'searches' to the wrong authority - delaying the contract signing by 5 weeks, and requiring a mortgage offer renewal, and re-assessment.
 
It's up to YOU to make sure THEY don't make mistakes, which are always at YOUR expense (time+money).

This goes for the people you're paying directly (solicitors, bank/lender) and the people paid by the people you're buying/selling from (estate agents, surveyors, their solicitors).  I've seen exchange of contracts not happen on a Friday because (it turns out) the sellers solicitor goes golfing at 11am on Friday - but his clerks were still telling estate agents "it may be signed today" at 3pm.

I don't know anyone without a nightmare story, but I know the Which? Guide helped me massively with my last purchase, and every problem I've ever heard of would have been avoided using this book.  It does need a (minor, IMO) update to cover 'HIPs' etc.

My "nightmare" was the vendor's friendly estate agent saying "I spoke to the sellers, and sorry, they can't possibly move out early.", so we agreed a date, and my family lived in a holiday home for two weeks (which was ace, but not the point).  When we spoke to the sellers face-to-face just before moving in, it turns out the F*cking agent never bothered to ask them anything, and moving out early wouldn't have been any problem at all !  We could have even moved in over a few days, saving the cost to us of storage/removers!

So the agent prefering to lie to me, rather than bothering to pick up the phone to ask their own customer a single question - which would have speed up the sale by two weeks and got the agent their commission two weeks earlier as well - this lie cost me around £1,500 !

NEVER TRUST ANYONE INVOLVED IN BUYING A HOUSE - banks, solicitors, estate agents, surveyors, drain inspectors, sellers.  Basically these professions attract liars.  Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic people out there (Leighton's Solicitors of Bournemouth are great and my sister was once an 'Sales Negotiator', aka Estate Agent, )

Talk to the seller (and your buyer) directly and frequently - an 'update' once a week isn't unreasonable, and more often if you're working through niggly details, like building/drain surveys (I've had a surveyor say "the seller wasn't in", but the seller said the whole family was on the drive loading up a van all morning).  Look at it this way, if you were buying anything else for hundreds of thousands of pounds - you'd expect the seller to be very keen, helpful and answer questions willingly.  Also it's a two-way street - are they having problems getting a mortgage/removals/whatever? Can you give them any suggestions as someone in the same "boat" ?  I've had a solicitor say "the searches are delayed as council has a 3 week backlog", but my buyers got theirs back in 5 days, from the same council.  A quick call to the council showed they were turning them around in 3 days, plus posting time, but my solicotor was too busy to submit the form - prefering to lie to me!

Questions like "If the seller's purchase might not happen is this a problem for you? or is that more convienent for you?" are important.  I've been in the position where my buyers would have happily paid £1,000 cash up the chain to the people we were buying from, as long as we could all complete before the end of the month (they were renting and £1,000 was the cost of the rental extension).  So often the chain can "work things out" as a group and everyone else is just trying to minimise their 9-5 work.

Before you put in an offer, knock on the neighbours doors - they are going to be your neighbours soon, so are they friendly, or freaky? (or both!)
Check what the street is like late on a weekday and weekend night, is it all house-parties and kids with hoodies street racing stolen Citron Saxos?
I lived in a street where one person liked to double-park their lorry on the street every night, making it impossible to get larger vehicles past.  I'm sure someone affected could have complained, but doubt that would have changed much.

This is the worst code I've ever encountered.  It's fantastic - I can only fault it as an exercise in confusion in that it doesn't name it's variables after operators - but they are named in a way that's misleading, nonsensical, and prone to typo-error - so it's still awesome.

I should say that I've reformatted the code, because otherwise it makes my eyes bleed, and I'm lawsuit-adverse - just imagine the code with funky wrapping, inconsistent indenting and sneaky brace placement that infers the wrong code blocks, and you're at the right place in your mind.

Off the top of my head, the tactical comment a) describes another function (or missed the '2'), b) makes no sense - in English at least, c) describes a looping/tree-walk process, when the code is entirely linear, d) makes no sense even applying the 'telephone test', e) uses terms 'step', 'parent', 'level' etc. that are either the same, or different, to each other, or common algorithmic terms, f) the term 'withoutany problem' means something, to someone, once.

I just love the effort put in to do a tactical comment (though the coding standard mandated it!) but then the lack of grammatical sense, programmatic sense, or good spelling just undermines the whole thing.  I can read code, but theis author sets a trap for the naive by in providing documentation that entirely throws you off course and messes with your initial perception of what going to happen in the code.

I really like that the last line (the 'punch-line') is entirely readible and makes complete sense, in isolation, leaving the reader dazed when they try to link it to the previous statements.  Brilliance.

The very best thing about this code is that it came from the place with incredibly high standards of software engineering - in every respect, the place really did do things 'right', without exception.  However this code was inherited, and came from another company division - and here, obviously, be dragons....

schedule_com2(step)
int *step;
/* *******************************************************************
   * Schedule_com schedules follows following algorithm to schedule  *
   * jobs :                                                          *
   * 1) At a particular level 1, say there are m steps ( m >= 1)     *
   *    -scheudle all he jobs in steps m-1 to the machines withoutany*
   *     problem.                                                    *
   *    -for the last step, schedule job if its parent has been done.*
   * 2) Once all the jobs have been done, move over to the next level*
   ******************************************************************* */
{
  if (*step != *stepsAtLevel) { /* Just submit as many jobs as
                                 * possible */

    (void) scheduleJobInMask(step);
  }
  else if (*step == *stepsAtLevel) {
    (void) scheduleJobInMask(step);
  }
}


A collegue of mine (Keith Robichaud, a great S/W Eng, and not the original author of this code!) first brought the code of build_set/build_server.c to my attention around June 29th 1994.  Keith noticed that the second 'if' test was redundant, and asked me to rubber-stamp review his check-in back to the source-code control system - however I spotted that this function, a testament to amazingly bad coding, was entirely redundant, and was in fact only called from one place in the entire codebase.  Consequently, the only call to schedule_com2()' was replaced with 'scheduleJobInMask()' and all the this code above was deleted.

We never confirmed the original author, and SCCS records were pruned at a major permanent fork some years before, but I have my suspicions.

....so though I went on to become a good and wise Software Engineer, this code lives now, only in my mind......[and here!]

From:  http://www.badmovies.org/movies/giantclaw/

• Seen from space, the nations really are different colors.
• The French Canadians are deathly afraid of Mexican food.
• Battleships are quite large and often the target of hyperbole.
• When is a pattern not a pattern? When it is a spiral.
• The Pentagon is located across the street from the Capitol building.
• Osmosis: os·mo·sis (oz-mo'sis, os-) n., 1. When a bird eats something.
• Residents of Montana must be crack shots. It's the law.
• Scientific instruments explode when they do not work.

IMDB has the inside track: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050432/

YouTube gets you most of the entire film but the French Canadian version, "La Garra Gigante", must be particularily awesome.

I've just done all my christmas girlie shopping for the ladies in my life at www.justkrissi.com - excellent choice, price and really good service.

If you're out of ideas for Christmas presents, surf over there and have a look around - the produce list is growing all the time, and it doesn't take a minute to find something for that difficult person(s) in your life.  The site has just had a major upgrade, so if you find anything wrong, email justkrissi and you might get something more than just a thanks back !

They also have a blog so not only do they sell you quality stuff, but they actually tell you how to make the most of their products - like how to get perfect nails, even for those who have always had problems.

All in all 10/10 in all respects!

Over the years I've had a few dogs, here are some of my top-tips that may be a use, especially if you have a Yorkshire Terrier.

Food

Flaps and Free Roaming

Treats

Pack Order

Leads

Bottles
Get some 'Dr Browns' or equivalent 'anti-colic' bottles. These allow air to get to the back of the bottle while the baby is drinking, which prevents them gulping, and air getting into the teat. If they gulp or drink aerated milk, that will cause them to burp, be sick and also their stomach won't be full of milk, it'll be full of air and milk. So these bottles reduce sicking up, result in larger, quicker feeds, and ultimately, longer sleeps as their meal was bigger.
Sterilizing the bottles: Just get a microwave sterilizer, even though you can get fewer bottles in one microwave, it takes 5 minutes for 4-5 bottles, vs. 2 hours for 6-7 in a chemical sterilizer.  Chemical sterilizers require the bottles to be rinsed really well, and any residue at all won't be good for baby's stomach.  Putting bottles in the dishwater is fine, but remember to rinse the bottles under a hot tap before use, as the dishwasher will leave a slight salt residue, and too much salt is bad for babies. I recommend dishwashing it uses really hot water - hotter than you'd want to put your own hands into - but you need to check that every nook and cranny of the bottle is clean afterwards, or milk quickly becomes cheese which becomes mould when it's not washed properly.  This is not pretty.  Anti-colic bottles in particular have lots of nooks/pipes, and these need running through with a (usually supplied) pipe-cleaner.  I usually wash/rinse by hand with lots of soap (baby milk is very fatty), put them through the dishwasher to be sure, and rinse them with water from a boiled kettle just to finish.

Milk
Make up the bottles all at once, once a day, e.g. last thing at night.  Cool them quickly by plunging them into a sink of cold water, enough so that the bottles won't actually warm the water above 5degC - so the water is about the same temperature, all night, as a fridge. First thing in the morning, move the bottles from the sink to the fridge. This is because you can't put hot bottles straight into the fridge, but a sink of cold water will cool them quickly (giving germs minimal chance to grow) and still stay cold all night.
'Swirl' the bottle to mix the powder - never shake a bottle! That puts air into the milk, which will end up in the baby's stomach, causing sickness, longer and smaller feeds and shorter sleeping time. The idea is to get as much milk into the baby as you can at every feed !
Having all the bottles made well in advance avoids making them at 3am, when counting 3/4/5/6/7/8 or 9 scoops of powder and adding the right amount of water, is highly prone to error.  Making them all at once means it's easy to see if one has too much water (so not enough food to fill them up) or too little (leaving them thirsty) - balance is important, and it's easy to compare 6 bottles and be sure they all look 'the same'. Heat the bottle in a microwave, for 10 seconds.  Electric bottle warmers are impossible to get right - too much water in the 'pot' and the bottle takes ages to heat up, too little water and the bottle gets too hot, in either case, leaving the bottle in too long - e.g. 90 seconds, rather than 75, means the bottle is too hot, and is going to take 5 minutes to cool down. During all the mucking around, the baby is usually crying.....I hate electric bottle warmers.
Microwaving means the same amount of heat energy is put into every bottle, every time, and it's easy to 'swirl' the bottle to mix away hot/cold spots before testing the temperature on your wrist - perfect.
'Hungrier baby' milk is fine, for kids that need it - your midwife/nurse will advise if/when the baby seems to want to eat the world and is over 6 months old. Avoid 'follow-on' milk for 9-month old+ - this is marketing crap - I think it should be banned. Children at 9 months should be eating *food* - a balanced, normal, diet - maybe with a bit more yogurt/milk than adults (for the calcium) and food cut into very small pieces, but otherwise, normal food. Oh, and it's probably time to cut out any/all added salt you add to your own 'normal' meals, as this isn't 'balanced', and too much salt is bad for children, and adults :-)


Monitors
Technology keeps marching on, but the (version 1) Angel Care monitor we had was a godsend.  It has three settings:
a) Where it gives you a visual reading of movement, or noise from the baby. (via a 'stack' of led lights)
b) Where it does (a) but also lets you hear the sound, like a normal monitor.
c) Where it does (a) or (a) and (b) and also monitors a 'mat' put under the baby's mattress, and gives a loud alarm if there is no motion (e.g. breathing) for 30 seconds.

What's amazing is that (especially first parents) tend to worry that the baby isn't breathing - the periodic 'click'/LED-flash gives you a warm feeling that everything is ok.  Occasional forgetting to turn the 'transmitter' off before removing the baby for feeding/changing will test the monitor is working...and make you 200% awake :-)
At night, the LEDs give you at-a-glance visual knowledge that everything is ok, and in (c) mode, you get a 'click' every 10ish seconds for every movement, so you don't even need to look at the monitor to know everything is ok.  It's a real godsend.

Video monitors sound like a great idea, but do you really want to be staring at them, thinking 'are they breathing?', or do you just want to hear a click every few seconds. From experience, you can even watch TV with the monitor sat under the screen, clicking and flashing it's lights in a way that's comforting but not too distracting!
'Talkback' monitors - where you can speak to your baby, are pointless - if you baby is crying, it needs feeding, changing or winding - you can't discuss, negotiate or debate with it over an intercom.

Carriers/car-seats/Pushchairs
Get something that suits your lifestyle, but keep it as light, small and manoeuvrable as possible. Bear in mind that you'll be carrying it a lot, and putting it into your car, in the rain, when someone has parked too close.... Combined carriers/car-seats/pushchairs are good, but remember the carriers (which double as car-seats) tend to be very heavy (5kgs+) and this isn't something you want to be carrying far without a pushchair - unless you want to look like Popeye after a month.
So, it's probably worth just resigning yourself to the fact that you'll need another carseat once the baby is out of the carrier (6 months-ish), as a carrier big enough to be a carseat for a 6-month-old is probably heavier than you'd ever want to carry more than two yards.


Nappies
Get a few for when the baby is due, but as you don't know if it's going to be 5 or 10 pounds - hold off getting too many initially.  Avoid cheap ones - 'leaks' are not amusing, and make any previous plumbing disaster you've encountered seem trivial and enjoyable.  Be warned - boys, of all ages, wee when cold, and can shoot 45 cm in the air from birth.  Not such a problem with girls.  Speed and co-ordination is essential and will come with time - after 6 months of practice you'll be critical of the pit-crew for 'Team Ferrari' for taking more than 6 seconds to change 4 wheels.


Creams and Wipes
Sudocreme is amazing, IMO - we still use it for every/anything, but baby rashes were why we bought it originally. The right nappies can reduce the likelihood of rashes, but they are near impossible to avoid. Tesco 'Fragrance Free' baby wipes (light blue pack) are really cheap, and really good - our kids reacted to even the fragrance-free top-brand ones, but Tesco's own brand do the job perfectly - I guess it's just over-engineering by Johnson/Huggies etc., and my kids are over-sensitive.  Don't flush them down toilets though - they don't break down, they block up.  Buy thousands - you will need them, they also take makeup off pretty well too, says my Mrs.


Nappy bags
Fragranced nappy bags. This beats the computer as the invention of the century. Not so sure about the 'nappy-auto-bagger' devices you can get, as you still need to put wipes in the bags too, but if it helps shave 2-tenths of a second off the time it takes a change a nappy, it'll be worth the investment - though I've no personal experience.  2-tenths of a second not seem a lot? Imagine holding something that is *really*, *really* smelly, 10 times every day, for six months.  Those tenths add up.....
Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious by now, despite the jar of baby food being labelled 'Peach and Pear', this will bare absolutely no relation to the smell appearing in the nappies.  I am still at a technical loss to know how (and why) the human body can convert from one into the other.


Talc
Cover them - babies sweat a lot. As long as they get a bath every couple of days to wash it away, giving them a good dusting will help stop rashes.

Good Luck!

When a house is built the plumbers rarely come back to the finished house and 'balance' the system, so most, if not all, houses have 'hot rooms' and 'cold rooms'.  However, that's not how it's meant to work, and it's easily fixed.

Turn the house thermostat (usually in the hall) to a level representing 'kill me with heat'.

Turn the gas boiler thermostat (on the boiler) down to nearly-off, it clicks when it's fully off.  This will set the boiler to it's minimum output, but remember that the water (both warm tap water, and radiator water) may cycle through the boiler multiple times before the tap water or house is 'warm enough'.
Set the heating pump to it's slowest setting - it usually has low/medium/high settings, and determines how fast the radiator water cycles around the house.  The faster it flows, the faster the 'furthest' radiator from the boiler heats up, but the more knocks, 'water hammering' (a sound like someone hit a pipe with a hammer, typically when the pump starts) and air bubbles (due to 'cavitation') you get in the sytem, all not good things.  The air bubbles get caught in the tops of the radiators, making the radiators considerably less efficient, see below on how to detect and remove trapped air from radiators.

Turn on the heating, and let all the radiotors warm up.

Check the temperature of the top and the bottom of each radiator. the top should be hotter than the bottom (warm water rises to the top of the radiator).  If it's cooler there is air in top of the radiator, which can be removed by turning the bleed screw at the back or end of the radiator - you should hear a shhhhhh as th air comes out, when all the air is out, water comes out.  If the bottom of the radiator isn't warming up at all, or if the top/bottom difference is very different to other similar-sized radiators, their may be sludge(rust) in the bottom of that radiator, which can only be cleared by removal/flush of the radiator, or (harder) through flushing the entire system.

Once all the radiators are 'bled' of any air, check top, bottom, left and right of every radiator.  Top/Bottom confirms their is no air.  Left/right tells you which end is nearest the boiler, and is called the the incoming valve, this is normally NOT the one 'used every day' - but it may be for poorly fitted systems.
All the incoming and outgoing valves should now be set to fully open/on.

Go around the house and record the temperature of the left/right of each radiator. 

The radiator closest to the output of the boiler will be very hot, the one furthest, and nearest the boiler 'input', will be the coldest.  Radiator order rarely makes much sense, as the shortest pipe pathway is the cheapest for the plumber who installed the system.

The 'end' or coolest radiator can be used as a 'sink' for excessive heat in the pipe, before it goes back into the boiler.  Just leave both it's valves permanently fully open.  As the boiler uses roughly the same amount of gas to heat 10degC water up to 60degC as it does 30C water up to 70degC, using this 'sink' radiator can mean the house heats up quicker, and the system shuts off sooner.

Now you have temperature readings for in/out each radiator, you can see roughly what the midrange *maximum* temperature you should be aiming for.  Some radiators, e.g. larger rooms, or those that are on the cold side of the house, or those with large windows, or those where the doors are always open, you may want 5-10degC hotter, smaller rooms, or ones with small windows, you may want to make 5degC cooler. (these smaller rooms tend to have smaller radiators anyway, so 5degC less is probably enough).

Now starting with the hottest radiator, limit the input (hot side) valve - say if 7 turns is fully-on to fully-off, close it by 2 turns, continue this for all the 'hottest' 50% of radiators.  The hot water now bypassing these radiators will go into the cooler radiators in the chain, balancing them all to similar temperatures.  Aiming for them all to be within 15decC is about reasonable.

Don't worry if they are all now too hot, this is only adjusting the maximum temperature, once all the radiators are balanced, as per normal daily routine, the output (cooler side) value can adjusted provide the 'right' heat output for the weather - however once the radiators are balanced, altering these will be much less frequent that usual, as no single room will be significantly different (and therefore needing 'local adjustment') to the other rooms.

Repeat going around the house, recording the left/right temperatures and adjusting until you're comfortable that no radiator is too cold at the expense of another being too hot. Always remember the order of the radiators, and that altering one 'upstream' will affect the temperature of all those 'downstream'. 

Once finished replace any value-caps on the input/hot valves, and return the tap-knobs to the output/cold valves, so that it's clear which side should be adjusted for daily requirements.

The whole house should now warm up together, without particular rooms being really hot or or really cold.

If the 'furthest' radiator take significantly longer for the radiators to warm up, try increasing the speed of the pump one setting.
If all the radiators just aren't warm enough, increase the thermostat on the boiler, and re-check the radiator balancing.
If one radiator is unnecessarily a little (5degC) warmer and cooler than the others, carefully reduce the input to the radiators closer to the boiler ('upstream'), until they are all balanced again.

Enjoy a correctly working heating system, using less gas, less electricity (remember, the pump really eat electricity), but yet warming all the rooms up together, and quickly!

Extra things to do.....
The water in the heating 'header tank' (usually in the attic, next to the cold water store) should contain enough inhibitor that a jam-jar of it won't rust a normal iron nail even after two weeks.  Radiators are made of steel, so inhibitor prevents them rusting internally, keeping the system running effeciently, and prevents rust clogging up the radiators, and radiator taps. It's absolutely not something to skimp on !

The water pump can capture an air pocket (especially if it is/was set too fast), which prevents it being efficient, and makes it work harder to do the same job.  At worst, these air pockets can result in early demise of the pump. They typically have a bleed screw to let out this air, so for thoroughness, it's worth bleeding after you've messed with the system, it just to be sure.  The water pump uses a significant amount of electricity when it's running, so making it efficient - and using the slowest speed setting directly saves you money.

Don't forget to re-adjust your electronic timer - you'll probably need the system on for much shorter times, starting later as it will warm up quicker.

Be aware of the placement of the whole-house thermostat (usually in the hallway), as this determines if the system comes on, if the whole house seems to get too hot, it may be that the hallway radiator isn't hot enough.  You really shouldn't mess with the 'daily adjustment' tap of the radiator in the room with the thermostat, as that will obviously affect the whole house in odd ways.

Good luck!