The Good News / Bad News Thread

[ElyDave]

Hope they are not made of polyurethane foam, in which case they might not keep...

(Polyurethane foam soles can self-destruct by hydrolysis in your cupboard. DAMHIKT)

I did actually find this out a couple of weeks ago while I was googling to find out if I could have my safety boots resoled.

I had a pair of Clarke's Hikers; tried them then put them in a cupboard. About 10 years later wore them for a 3-mile test and they fell to pieces half way round. Not good value.

My brother was complaining of something similar a few weeks back. He is a tremendous hoarder.

My safety boots I had assumed probably fell to bits after being exposed to crude oil and other such nasties as you might find on the floor of an oil platform.
I know I said the Keens will keep but I'm hoping it's not going to be years... even if they do fall to bits it'll only be 15 quid down the drain.

Sulphuric acid makes the soles fall off as well, from my experience

[hellymedic]

That's predictable.
Frustrating thing about this hydrolysis lark is the disintegration when you think NOTHING has caused it.
It's a nasty surprise!

[hellymedic]

GN: as of today, my youngest child is more than half my age in competed years.
BN: as of today, my youngest child is more than half my age in competed years.

As a matter of comparison, my mother had to wait until she was 87 before that became true for her, and I reached my 44th birthday. I am a mere 66.

My mother was only 44...

I'm not sure about your arithmetic here...

Not sure which bit of my arithmetic is wrong.

I was 66 in June.

My daughter is 34 today.

My mother was born in May 1911 so was 43 years 1 month or so older than me. She would have already reached her 87th birthday (19th May 1998) when I reached my 44th, and therefore exceeded half her age in whole years on 26th June 1998.

Apologies! I somehow misread your post, idiot that I sometimes am!

<y mother recently attained this with Kid Brother, who turned 43 in October. Mum's 84.

[CAMRAMan]

GN: I am off work until 3/12
BN: It's because I'm self-isolating because my daughter's tested positive for Covid
GN: I can't work from home
BN: I've had a low-intensity headache for the last two days
GN: No classic Covid symptoms

[Auntie Helen]

Bad news: yesterday was the fifth scheduled appointment at the court for my partner Klaus's divorce to finally happen. The first scheduled appointment was a year and a half ago but the lawyers couldn't get things organised in time so the appointments kept getting cancelled. The whole divorce has been almost three years (he left his wife four years ago and had the separation year as required). Anyway, everything was set, it would be the equivalent of Decree Nisi and Decree Absolute all on the same day as everything was agreed.... but..... on Thursday we discover his lawyer has COVID, as do several in that practice, so it has to be delayed AGAIN. We think it unlikely to happen in 2020 which would at least have been one good thing this year.

Good news: today I phoned up the Ausländerbehörde to find out how progress was going with my dual citizenship application and I spoke to a lady who said that my contact there was off sick. But what was my surname? Oh, this was one of the cases that Frau Wittke had passed on to her as it was almost complete and she sent the certificate to Stadt Kempen last week. I have been awarded citizenship, but my local office now has to do a bit of paperwork (and get 255€ from me) and then all is complete. Before Brexit. Hurrah!!!!!

[ElyDave]

congrats Tante Helen!

[barakta]

Sorry to hear about the divorce shenanigans, I'd be spitting nails by now.

Congrats on pending citizenship, that is great news!

[Auntie Helen]

I cannot tell you what a load off my mind it is to know I will still have European citizenship.

Klaus is regularly being headhunted and most recently it was a company in Austria. But after Brexit I couldn't simply have moved there (Klaus and I are not yet married, see divorce rant above) so it would be mega paperwork if he did decide to move and would probably influence him to reject a good job offer. Now I will remain an EU citizen he can decide on any new job on its merits.

I have such a white-hot anger at people who voted to deprive me of my rights to live, work, retire and marry in lots of other countries - and for what? I am almost 50 and have lived my entire adult life knowing I could move within Europe if I wanted to - and I did indeed exercise that right, before Brexit was a thing. To lose it for stupid post-Empire xenophobia is just so petty.

[ElyDave]

agree entirely I have no current desire to move there myself, but it is having that effect on my daughter just as she's looking to move into serious choices about her future

[barakta]

Helen, I totally agree. I too am angry that people voted Brexit for a variety of shitty reasons like:
"Sovreignty"
"Deep philosophical chunter with EU but don't care if we rejoined (on worse terms)"
"Racism"

[Mrs Pingu]

Gosh it sounds tremendously difficult to get divorced in Germany.

Good news on getting citizenship! As I said to QG, not jealous at all....

[woollypigs]

Well feck you too 2020.

Just got an email from my old man, mum have fallen an broke her leg just below the hip joint and then they found that she had an infection in the small intestine but at a point where no camera could see so they have do an operation to find out what was going on. She fell on the 2. dec and the was in for the op last night.

Sods law is that I can't go there with the risk of bringing covid to her and I can't come back home either with the risk of bringing it to the lass or better yet stuck somewhere because a further lockdown upgrade

So beers will be had and some swear word said.

[ElyDave]

I'm with you Wooly, bollocks to 2020. Wishing your mam well.

[Wowbagger]

Wishing you well, Woolly. Go easy on the booze.

[Regulator]

NHS England has extended the IS contract provisions until end of March 2021...

...which means that much of the work I have done over the last month or so it out the window... 

...but it means I can have two weeks off over Christmas and New Year, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. 

[CommuteTooFar]

GN: I have rearranged my SIPP. I no longer have  a growth portfolio. It is now an income portfolio. Should yield around £25,000.
BN: It cost me £3,000 to do it. It hurt to sell Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust which was my best purchase for years.

[Mr Larrington]

15:29 Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.) takes delivery of a sizeable quantity of Christmas Toothy Comestibles 
16:21 Bloody Stupid Johnson cancels Christmas

[rafletcher]

GN: Everyone in the company got a £50 pre-paid Visa card
BN: Despite the accompanying leaflet mentioning Laithwates, the website doesn’t mention the
Result: No Chateauneuf de Pape and Chablis for Christmas

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Good: Have received an email today from Amazon telling me they have just got my return and given me a refund.
Bad:  The item, a tv bracket, was returned early in June. 

I'd forgotten all about it .  I don't remember why I returned it or know where they have credited it to.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Went to Tesco yesterday.
GN: Queue not as long as before Christmas.
BN: No couscous or green lentils.
GN: Rice available at conventional price.
BN: Autotill claims to allow you to pack straight into your own bag but it wouldn't recognize my pannier.
BN: So I had to put it on the floor and it got dirty.
GN: That doesn't matter, it's a cycle pannier.
BN: It was heavy and cycling was quite lopsided.
GN: As you know, that doesn't matter either as soon as you're above slow walking speed.
GN: Good that I went yesterday because today the roads locally are covered in ice.

[woollypigs]

BN: Autotill claims to allow you to pack straight into your own bag but it wouldn't recognize my pannier.

Yeah always had a fight with these machines, use with pannier NO, use without NO etc etc

That's why I gone back to human service. Cause it will always moan because something it didn't like and then you have to wait for a human to come and beep the machine to be able to finish your shopping. So therefore they aren't that fast compared to full human service.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Also, someone who spends all week scanning items is inevitably quicker at that than someone who does it once a week.

(Though I'm kinda surprised that you, being Covid-cautious, opt for the human service at this time.)

[woollypigs]

I was talking in the past. Haven't been to a shop/pub/etc since early January. I don't think the super markets have updated thier non human beeper since then

[Kim]

Also, someone who spends all week scanning items is inevitably quicker at that than someone who does it once a week.

There's a fair bit of that (I seem to waste a surprising amount of time trying to find barcodes on things, and a skilled operator will be much faster at entering non-barcode items), but I think it's also the way they're programmed.  Even when it doesn't cause problems, faffing about re-weighing the packing area each time slows it right down, and even the tills that don't bother with that (eg. Waitrose) seem to be overzealous in their use of timeouts, presumably to prevent accidental duplicate scans.  The proper tills let the operator whizz items through with impunity, and give them the tools to deal with adding or removing duplicates as needed.

There's an element of parallelism too, in that at a self-humiliation checkout you're scanning *and* packing (or at least tetrising items onto the packing scales), where the regular till operators can mostly just shove items to the side and let the customer sort them out.

[Davef]

I always do the scan as you shop thing. Doing your scanning and packing as you walk to the next item is very time efficient and avoids the whole unexpected item in the bagging area. I also like the looks of horror from other shoppers if you put an item in your pocket.