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

[Beardy]

Open plan office: Good for collaboration, teamwork and bouncing ideas.

Open plan office with PEOPLE WHO TALK SO LOUDLY: Bad and makes me grumpy.

Hearing aid off switch for the win.

[PhilO]

Open plan office: Good for collaboration, teamwork and bouncing ideas.

Open plan office with PEOPLE WHO TALK SO LOUDLY: Bad and makes me grumpy.

But only for extroverts who don't get embarrassed at the sound of their own voices.  For those of us who are rather self-conscious, it inhibits communication. A small room with a couple of others is far more conducive to sharing ideas.

You can tell I've done a lot of thinking about this over the past 12 years, can't you?  :'(

[rogerzilla]

Bought a supposedly unmarked and unused Epiphone SG guitar from the Bay of Thieves, since I have time to play again.  I do have a Tele that I built myself from mainly Warmoth parts many years ago (it cost more to build than just buying a Fender USA one, when it was all done) but I fancied a cheap one for messing around on.

It would be beautiful except that it has a massive bash on the body    It wasn't very well wrapped but that's not my problem.

And...
eBay has generated a 2kg Royal Mail return label 

I am NOT posting it back at my own expense.  The last time I did that, I never got all the money back from the seller.  A retailer of vintage bikes in Oxfordshire, in case you were wondering, and they'd sent me a frame resprayed and decalled as something it wasn't.

[Feanor]

<sigh>
The central heating boiler has disgraced itself again, leaving a great wet puddle on the floor.

Got up this morning and thought it was a bit chilly.
Hmm, no heat.
Look at heating timeclock. No lights on, and no display.
Go to meter cupboard, look at consumer unit. Circuit RCBO tripped. Hmm.
Switch it back on. It stays on, and does not trip again. Good.
Still no heats.

Down to the garage where the boiler lives, to be met with a puddle on the floor.
That's not good.
Zero pressure on the gauge, so that's why the boiler is not firing up.
Experimentally open the fill loop to pressure it back up.
Water pisses everywhere out of the boiler.
Stop that right away.

I have a maintenance contract with BG for exactly this eventuality.
They have availability today!
And they turn up!

Primary fault is the main pressure sensor on the water loop has literally burst apart, spraying the entire inside of the boiler with water.
This is replaced, curing the water leak, but it won't power up.
New PCB installed.
Still won't power up.
Looks like something else has gotten wet, and is not happy.
So he's gone away and will come back tomorrow with some more PCBs, a fan, pump, and HV Spark Igniter.

Bah.

[T42]

Trying to enter the details of my career on a pensions site; modified one entry and the whole bloody lot disappeared.  Now I've got set-your-teeth-on-edge hold music quacking away for "at least 5 minutes" and making it impossible to do anything in the meantime.

ETA: Surprise, surprise, it's back again.  Except that it now only includes the periods of employment that this nest of miserable screw-ups already had before I started adding the missing ones ten days ago. Shit and damnation be upon their heads.  I have had 11 different jobs and they've only got 5, covering about 7 years out of 45 and two of theirs overlap so one or both are wrong.

And there's a note on their website saying that they'd be doing maintenance from 07:00 to 08:30 this morning.  I suppose that consisted of restoring their database from an out-of-date backup.

Think I'll bale out until tomorrow, when there's a slim chance their system will be stable.

ETAA: It's not all negative: I've found some hair long enough to tear out. Wish it was theirs.

[andyoxon]

R*yal Mail fail. 
Important docs arranged to be sent to me "Signed-For".  Postie just delivered envelope through our letter box.  I heard this, went outside and said 'erm, signature required?'.  Postie 'oops there was another letter blocking the signed for bit'...    So, docs received OK, but post does go astray to other streets on occasions.  Next time I'll insist on Special Delivery as probably a safer bet - you'd hope.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I thought signed for no longer meant a signature? At least IME it's always just been the amazon-type thing of a photo. Been like that since covid.

[andyoxon]

RM Special delivery required a signature of me last week. Rang bell, gave me handheld device to scribble on.  Have seen 'delivery photos' of mysterious unknown doorsteps.  Post pandemic no signature / actual confirmation of delivery to correct addresssee - is pretty useless.

the name and signature we capture will be the person who accepted the parcel. It might not match the name on the address label, and could be a neighbour or other person at the delivery address.

*We take a 'signature on delivery' for these services. However, we don’t provide a copy of the signature to you as part of the service and it’s not available to view online.

 
What if there’s no-one available to accept a delivery?

We’ll leave a Something for you card. This will explain that we tried to make a delivery.

The recipient can then collect the item from their local Customer Service Point or arrange a Redelivery.

[grams]

Paying for signature/ special delivery /etc doesn’t give your letter any more chance of arriving (and probably never did). It just gives you either reassurance that it did or slightly more recourse if it didn’t.

[andyoxon]

Paying for signature/ special delivery /etc doesn’t give your letter any more chance of arriving (and probably never did). It just gives you either reassurance that it did or slightly more recourse if it didn’t.

Especially if they don't check if anyone's in, & simply post it through the/any letterbox without requiring a signature

[Kim]

Postman Piers once told me that Special Delivery was worthwhile, as it was processed separately.  Signed-for is just a sticker.

[andyoxon]

Postman Piers once told me that Special Delivery was worthwhile, as it was processed separately.  Signed-for is just a sticker.

Yes.  Not even a sticker for this - just a small direct print "signed-for" with barcode, at top of the envelope.   I'll def use/ask for Special Delivery in future.

[barakta]

On the subject of Royal Fail. Their online buy postage system is full of dark pattern badness.

I tried 3 separate times to get "postage without collection" and it kept adding collection. Eventually Kim had to help me and said you have to let it add collection and then remove it when it is a separate item in the basket.

I did eventually get my "Kim walks it to postbox and we don't get morning doorbells" postage.

In the time it took the postage to print. I banged off a complaint to Royal Fucking Fail to say "STOP the adding collection automatically as that is clearly a breach of many many consumer rights rules and disablist" I've said I'll report them to OfCom if they don't fix it. I wouldn't have been able to get my postage if Kim hadn't told me the collect was removable.

No online trader should be shoving shit that affects your purchase or costs money in your checkout basket that you didn't explicitly add I'll die on this hill.

[perpetual dan]

Open plan office: Good for collaboration, teamwork and bouncing ideas.

Open plan office with PEOPLE WHO TALK SO LOUDLY: Bad and makes me grumpy.

Open plan quiet office, so no chatting, no calls. Splendid. Except for the extra noisy eating of lunch. I'd rather have a background chatter than him.

Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

[T42]

Open plan office: Good for collaboration, teamwork and bouncing ideas.

Open plan office with PEOPLE WHO TALK SO LOUDLY: Bad and makes me grumpy.

Open plan quiet office, so no chatting, no calls. Splendid. Except for the extra noisy eating of lunch. I'd rather have a background chatter than him.

Yeah. Try it with desperate computer salesmen doing due diligence on the phone and running their number-plate businesses on the company's time while you're trying to figure out a Univac 1100 Series config on the other side of a divider.  I got out of there ASAP.

[readingjohn]

Paying for signature/ special delivery /etc doesn’t give your letter any more chance of arriving (and probably never did). It just gives you either reassurance that it did or slightly more recourse if it didn’t.

No idea if it's the case today, but years (decades) ago I was told that if you wanted to be sure a letter would be delivered, send it without a stamp, and it would be processed separately through the system. Cheaper than special delivery, though (a) no actual proof of delivery (b) recipient had to pay double the standard postage rate as penalty

[Kim]

Open plan office: Good for collaboration, teamwork and bouncing ideas.

Open plan office with PEOPLE WHO TALK SO LOUDLY: Bad and makes me grumpy.

Open plan quiet office, so no chatting, no calls. Splendid. Except for the extra noisy eating of lunch. I'd rather have a background chatter than him.

Yeah. Try it with desperate computer salesmen doing due diligence on the phone and running their number-plate businesses on the company's time while you're trying to figure out a Univac 1100 Series config on the other side of a divider.  I got out of there ASAP.

Open plan works almost as well for handling confidential data as it does for herding computers...