The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[phantasmagoriana]

My Garmin is dead.

...and now, so is my Road Morph! Bah. Everything's breaking.

[T42]

Law of threes. Quick, someone break a sweat.

[Speshact]

Pah, having spent part of two evening fruitlessly playing around online with various permutations of number of bikes, seating locations and train choices, I resort to phoning First Great Western and it turns out the bike spaces have not all been booked on the dates we want to travel....

.... in fact, the seats aren't actually on sale yet for the return date.

The website doesn't tell you that crucial detail. Doh.

[jsabine]

The website doesn't tell you that crucial detail. Doh.

Point of information - in between the delights of Cheltenham station car park being closed and Swindon's impending improvement works, the rolling News banner on the home page does in fact tell you that Advance tickets are currently available until Tuesday May 26. 'Course, you have to i) spot this, and ii) realise that it also means that bike reservations etc are not yet available from May 27 on.

East Coast used to have the decency to put the date in a really obvious splash on the r/h side of the home page: now that Vermin has taken over, it's been moved to bottom left, where it's a lot easier to miss, especially if you've not maximised your browser window. At least it's still there and a static part of the page, unlike FGW.

More generally, the booking horizon is generally about 12 weeks: if you're trying to book tickets about that far ahead, the giveaway on booking sites is whether or not any Advance prices are quoted for your specific dates. I normally have a quick look at a random date a couple of months away, just to see what range of ticket types and prices I should be getting offered.

[Ashaman42]

Will whoever keeps pinching/borrowing/hiding my cutlery at work stop it please? I want to eat my lunch.

I shouldn't have to hide my stuff in my bloody locker.

[barakta]

I had TWO 'accessible to me' tin openers walk from a kitchen only used by ~40 people who should know better (being student supporty types)...  I emailed round asking people to not lose them and explained why but still lost the 2nd... So I stopped eating from tins because clearly people are too shitty not to steal my disability-stuff and I can't be arsed hoiking it around the building.... I blame the counsellors, they're the fuckers who think there's magic washing up fairies who pick up after their slobbiness.

In our new office I know we don't even have a kitchen, we may not even be able to have _^TEA facilities cos all the manglement assume cos they can afford £HOWMUCH? on horrible Costabucks tea and coffee that we mere peons can...  I may be investing in an under-desk kettle and fridge cos I don't function without _^TEA.  Not sure how I'll manage food as they seem to think we can all afford campus lunch prices too

[woollypigs]

You need a big chain and lock on thay tin opener. The same goes for the kettle/fridge option if you take that route.

[Kim]

You obviously need a tin opener with a greater spack-handle factor.  I'll see if they do them in NHS beige.  Or failing that, with a built-in LART.

[barakta]

Spacky looking stuff goes missing too - heat swell unit looked like a heap of metal and I think our ex boss binned it for looking untidy!

[woollypigs]

Or hook it up to the mains with a remote control off switch. I'm sure Kim could solder something up for you.

[Kim]

Spacky looking stuff goes missing too - heat swell unit looked like a heap of metal and I think our ex boss binned it for looking untidy!

Ah yes.  The old "this patch panel looks messy, let's unplug all the wires and coil them neatly and put them away" effect.


Chain it is, then.  It ought to work, as you're probably the person in the building who's most likely to be caught unbolting it, and anyone else wanting to try will come to you to borrow the tools.


I guarantee that kettles and fridges will be banned under the new regime.  The only question is whether the official reason will be  a) elfin safe tea  b) whoever specified the newly-installed electrical systems didn't allow for the power factor^[1]   or  c) having your own fridge simply isn't collegiate.


_{[1] I swear this is the new "architect forgot to allow for the weight of the books".}

[mrcharly-YHT]

I reckon there is a market for cutlery/utensils/pots coming with a kingston lock slot.

[clarion]

Ah yes.  The old "this patch panel looks messy, let's unplug all the wires and coil them neatly and put them away" effect.

That made me wince.

[Gus]

I have influenza  and abslutely no energy to find a more appropiate thread

[clarion]

GWS GUS!

[barakta]

Well I might have my own office and need to talk to my boss about the "plan not to have me in own office" cos it won't work - they'll have to make the IT accessible in 10+ rooms (what a shame)...  And if anyone says that isn't enough I'll dislocate joints at them till they squeamishly throw up!

[hellymedic]

Iam sitting in the semi-dark because these flippin' hotel lights automagically switch themselves off after two hours and I have not yet been a***d to get up and operate the bedside fan and light switch thingummyjig.

I DESPISE this hotel combination of the hefty with the flimsy/mean.

The coffee table has a heavy glass top but all the screws holding its legs are loose, so it's wobbly.
The bedside table top is a loose slab of glass, which rests on four studs. It is easy to displace the slab but more difficult to reposition correctly
The 900ml kettle is permanently plugged into its socket and is situated as far as possible from the bathroom, whose sink and tap only permit filling to 600ml.

The 'Room Service' button on the internal phone connects to Housekeeping, not Room Service.

[Bledlow]

Spacky looking stuff goes missing too - heat swell unit looked like a heap of metal and I think our ex boss binned it for looking untidy!

At a firm I worked for in the early 1990s, a director once visited our office. According to witnesses, he ranted about untidy paperwork on an unattended desk, gathered it all up, & threw it in a bin.

Luckily someone carefully put the bin aside (locked in a cupboard, IIRC) so that the absent person could retrieve all the documents about technical details of the firms biggest contract, which had been delivered to his desk just after he went off for a meeting with the senior technical people the firm was working with at its biggest client.

When I resigned from that firm, my boss took me aside with a very worried expression, which changed to relief when I told him I'd got another job. He feared that I was so pissed off (which he'd understand) that I'd quit before finding one. That was the place where a customer complained when I refused to do something illegal for him. My boss (who made sure I didn't suffer for it) let slip that somebody more senior took the complaint seriously. 

The first syllable of this firm's name sometimes has an 'r' inserted.

[Polar Bear]

Grumble, grumble:  Effing Scotrail.

Grumble, grumble:  Stupid pricing policy on Rail and Sail.

Grumble, grumble:  Ever heard of the babbage engine?   It could very easily work out the railcard discount portion for a Rail and Sail.

Grumble, grumble:  Effing halfwits!!!

[barakta]

The thing our ex manager probably threw away was worth about £750 at a time when we couldn't get any money to buy needed disability tech so that was a year's budget if that. I found out on the morning of a day someone was coming to visit to see how it worked with me being asked to demonstrate (I'd taught myself).  I spent 2 hours running round madly trying to find the flipping thing (I thought it was in the cupboard with the rest of the tech) and had to ask someone to phone the visitor to cancel...  I still don't quite know how exboss managed to dispose of it unless she put it in the bin outside herself (not implausible) as I have 2 boxes of WEEE disposal I have to jump through 40 hoops to get taken away now...

I was so embarrassed and just lucky that the visitor didn't take it personally.  I was quite junior then and hadn't been allowed to network in our field so didn't know that this sort of thing probably happens fairly often and it's maddening but is a university and I did the right thing in letting person know...

[Wombat]

Spacky looking stuff goes missing too - heat swell unit looked like a heap of metal and I think our ex boss binned it for looking untidy!

At a firm I worked for in the early 1990s, a director once visited our office. According to witnesses, he ranted about untidy paperwork on an unattended desk, gathered it all up, & threw it in a bin.

Luckily someone carefully put the bin aside (locked in a cupboard, IIRC) so that the absent person could retrieve all the documents about technical details of the firms biggest contract, which had been delivered to his desk just after he went off for a meeting with the senior technical people the firm was working with at its biggest client.

When I resigned from that firm, my boss took me aside with a very worried expression, which changed to relief when I told him I'd got another job. He feared that I was so pissed off (which he'd understand) that I'd quit before finding one. That was the place where a customer complained when I refused to do something illegal for him. My boss (who made sure I didn't suffer for it) let slip that somebody more senior took the complaint seriously. 

The first syllable of this firm's name sometimes has an 'r' inserted.

Ah, them.... congratulations on youer escape!

[Bledlow]

You must have had dealings with them. 

Many perfectly decent people work for them, but I think the rot at the top came from the founders & AFAIK has never been got rid of.

[Guy]

General Register Office, your system is this: SLOW.

I need two copies of the wifes' death certificate. To order them took 25 bloody minutes. And £9.25 each! WTF? Are they going to be hand-engraved on platinum plates by Ethiopian princesses or summat?

SHEESH!

[barakta]

I have just typed out manually 2x 20 page forms for a blind student of mine needing to RENEW their access to disabled students' allowances...  A shorter renewal form is NOT available for postgrads and the only legal difference is some minor "declaration" wording.  This form could be 5 pages in renewal...  I had decided to do 15-16 at the same time as 14-15 so I know it's DONE!

This is a form to ACCESS disability support at university.  My student in common with many blind people has either no or minimal "admin" social care support.  This is the 4th one I have had to do of these for this student alone.  I tried arguing the toss (expecting to lose) because it's this kind of barrier that is inexcusable...   

That's 20 mins of my life I won't get back. I suspect stude had to cash in favours to get help to sign the 2 pages I needed them to sign, scan and return to me...  I have blind friends so I know just how inaccessible this kind of paperwork is.

Reminds me, it's now 2015 and when I'm in a mood I need to go and SMACK the DWP about their inaccessible forms for PIP which aren't even electronically typable in.   Utter fuckers the lot of them. I want to make all MPs do paperwork for a year with no vision at all and no handwriting ability either! Bastards!

[Mr Larrington]

Bands who put long periods of silence into the CD versions of their albums to fill up the space and/or annoy.  Well, Kyuss, I have Audacity and I'm not afraid to use it, so the version of "Spaceship Landing" on the Babbage-Engine is about twenty-five minutes shorter than you intended.

Why can't I find a v-sign smiley with the hand the right way round?