exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Sorry to hear about the redundancy Stephen. I've been there myself a few times.

Best advice is you only live once, so make the most of it. Take your time and find an interesting job to keep you active, or retire early if you can afford to :D

Having Cancer for me put everything in to perspective. And now that I'm on the way to recovery am starting to work out how to make the most of life.

PhilC wrote: 10 Oct 2024 15:00 Sorry to hear about the redundancy Stephen. I've been there myself a few times.

Best advice is you only live once, so make the most of it. Take your time and find an interesting job to keep you active, or retire early if you can afford to :D

Having Cancer for me put everything in to perspective. And now that I'm on the way to recovery am starting to work out how to make the most of life.

Well said, I have to agree with you.

Thanks all.

I'll take 3 months off then I can apply for another job in the University, maybe a college with free lunches, as I'm taking voluntary severance and hence getting a decent pay-out, though not as good as it would have been if the previous government hadn't had limited it to 20 years and put the tax-free cap at £30K. (I'll put the rest directly into the USS Pension pot tax free.)

stephen_usher wrote: 10 Oct 2024 15:41 Thanks all.

I'll take 3 months off then I can apply for another job in the University, maybe a college with free lunches, as I'm taking voluntary severance and hence getting a decent pay-out, though not as good as it would have been if the previous government hadn't had limited it to 20 years and put the tax-free cap at £30K. (I'll put the rest directly into the USS Pension pot tax free.)

Sounds like a good plan :)

:awwww:
Sorry to hear that news @stephen_usher but it may give you more opportunities for the future (looking for the silver lining).

Maybe a blitz on some of your hobbies is in order?

JezC wrote: 10 Oct 2024 16:49 :awwww:
Sorry to hear that news @stephen_usher but it may give you more opportunities for the future (looking for the silver lining).

Maybe a blitz on some of your hobbies is in order?

Indeed. I have options and I'm financially in a good position. With the money from my Dad's house I can run "on batteries" with my current expenditure for about 10 years if I wanted to use the capital. With retirement age 8 years away that would be sort of enough the "retire early", but I'd prefer not to do that.

Good to have several options to choose between...and enough time to make it a considered choice!
:thumbup:

Looks like they want to require us to work a month of our three month notice period. So the "negotiation" over the notice was more a diktat.

So, the letter we sign says termination of contract on the 15th November... They say though that they may want to extend the period... Oplocks to that, if I sign the letter stating 15th November then I consider that a legal contract. No ifs, buts or maybes.

At home today getting solar panel installation quotes.

Had an "on-line" one from OVO Energy at 10am. Not impressed.

At midday I have another company visiting. The final one isn't until Saturday morning.

P.S. The second company was far better and actually listened to what I wanted.

Brought back a Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT laptop which was being thrown away in the department.

Seemingly dead I've taken it apart and I've traced the power as far as a component labelled as a "A1712". It's a SOP-8 package and has the charger power on one side and basically nothing on the other. The closest I can find on Google that's a SOP-8 is a MOSFET with pins 1-3 being the input, pin 4 the gate and pins 5-8 being the output. I'm wondering if I should risk bridging this for testing. If it *IS* the MOSFET then it would either be to stop the battery charging and make the laptop run from the battery until the voltage decreases or it's to do with "power good" switching.