Haven't blogged for a little while. I've now left the ambiguously and vaguely-named firm of corporate accountants at which I was previously temping, I have at last started work in a bike shop.

Said bike shop will doubtless be the source of many future blog entries - at least I hope so - so I won't bother trying to encompass everything just now. However, having worked there for only four days I have already realised I need to come up with a bike shop mechanic's version of the sound engineer's "DFA" function.

A chap brought his bike in to us today. I should have suspected something when everyone else in the workshop suddenly decided to look very busy, engrossed in whatever job they happened to be doing, thereby ensuring I was the one who went out to listen to his problem.

He explained that he'd brought the (fairly inexpensive hybrid) bike in to be serviced less than a week ago and ran through a brief list of parts of the bike that had been fixed or replaced. He went on to explain that he still wasn't happy because "the back wheel still has a bit of a wobble at speed," also taking care to tell me that it was very unlikely that I'd be able to spot the problem upon taking the bike for a quick spin round the block, presumably because I'm somehow unable to reach anything like the speed that his Competitive Commuter legs could achieve.

Fair enough, his bike _did_ feel a tiny bit sketchy at the back, but I think it was probably because his rear tyre had a couple of skid-induced flat spots and the rear mudguard wasn't very well attached. I rode back in to the shop and told him that I'd take the rear wheel off, put it in the stand and make sure it was running true.

Ten minutes later, after a couple of very minor (quarter turn) adjustments to about four spokes and returning some decent pressure to the tyre, I wheeled the bike back out and gave a rambling explanation about how I'd tightened some spoke tension, corrected the lateral truing and made sure the wheel was running straight (which, to be honest, it was anyway). He wheeled the bike out of the shop with some satisfaction and I was left wishing I could have provided a "DFA" explanation.

For those who have no idea what I'm on about, I learnt a valuable lesson while working the sound desk at a professional music venue. (I forget which gig, but I have a horrible feeling it was Chesney Hawkes, which may ruin the illusion of professionalism somewhat.) The rhythm guitarist was unhappy with his sound, which we had spent already too long tweaking, and we were starting to lose our tempers with his fussiness. The other sound engineer winked at me and shouted to the guitarist that we were going to tweak the DFA on his sound, reached across to a completely unrelated knob on a rack unit (on a CD deck, I think) and faffed for a bit.

The guitarist was apparently amazed with the difference in his sound, thanked us and we moved on to soundchecking another musician.

DFA, of course, stands for "does f*ck all."