The "I'm Such a Fecking Div" Thread

[Feanor]

Somehow, while hoovering, I managed to rip a double electric socket out of the wall. 

Aye, but you'll be an expert in these things by now...

I have a shaver sokkit in the bathroom which Mrs F. has used for her anbaric toothbrush.
So long as the thing is plugged in, the transformer is live.
And it hums. Loudly.
The backing-box is cut into the plasterboard in the normal way, but it acts as a sounding-board.

I need to find a way to dampen this.
Stiffening behind the PB would be best, with a dwang or two, but not easily accessible.
I might try some sorbothane or similar shim between the faceplate and the PB.

Hmm. mmmmmmm. mmmmmmm.

[Jurek]

Somehow, while hoovering, I managed to rip a double electric socket out of the wall. 

Please tell me the make and model of the vacuum cleaner. I could do with one with that much suction power.

It's a Brexit bastard Dy3on. Actually it's quite a good hoover but I won't buy another on principle. (I think I managed to catch the cable in the wheel arch and yank it).

Nilfisk is your friend.
It sucks my carpet  so hard (not a euphemism) that it takes a significant effort to push it along.

[TheLurker]

It's a Brexit bastard Dy3on. Actually it's quite a good hoover but I won't buy another on principle...

MrsL & I decided we never having another D***n hoover after the last one because the build and material quality was awful.  Made of purest cheese whizz, never mind cheese.

[Mrs Pingu]

Somehow, while hoovering, I managed to rip a double electric socket out of the wall. 

Aye, but you'll be an expert in these things by now...

It's a different sort of fitting to the one in the kitchen, and I've utterly borked it (I have a screw and a snapped plastic bit and a spring in my hand). Not confident in replacing such things so I shall be asking the kitchen sparky to pay another visit.

[Mr Larrington]

Could be.  Mine's only a plebeian standard model.

[Beardy]

While I was taking my medications this morning, Dr Beardy was nattering at me and I was a)attempting to follow her natterings and b) trying to respond in the appropriate places so as to be engaged in the process. In attempting to to three things at once, there was obviously a branes overload because as I swallowed the biggest of the tablets on my list I suddenly realised I’d already taken that one.  so a double dose of the mind altering drug!

Today promises to be somewhat surreal. I’ve been excused any tasks for the rest of the day by Dr Beardy on account of my stupidity.

[Kim]

Once I'd regained sensation in my hand, I confirmed everything now worked, and spent some quality time reverse-engineering the comms (with the benefit of an isolated power supply).  The fan is now reassembled, with all screws accounted for, and programming an ESP to man-in-the-middle the communications is now left as a project for Future Kim, when normal karma and divvery levels have been restored.

Project complete.  I can now control the fan from a web browser (or over MQTT) without needless beepery, BLUE LEDs^[1] lighting up or line-of-sight duvet issues with the feeble IR remote control.  And I didn't blow anything else up.  Added bonus of enabling a new lower speed setting^[2] in the process.

I also installed a sticker warning Future Kim of the non-isolatedness of the power supply.


_{[1] It's worse than just blinkenlights: It's little icons and a 7-segment display.  Which is impossible to focus on from across the room due to the BLUEness.
[2] The Fan's user interface provides 35 speed levels, which map in a not entirely consistent way to values between 0x03 and 0x3a in the serial communications.  Two are duplicates.  Sending other values seems to sometimes work, and sometimes result in hunting by the speed controller, so I assume these were chosen for a reason.  I've avoided sending values above 0x3a for magic smoke reasons.  0x01 seems to be okay though, so I've added that to my lookup table.}

[Mr Larrington]

Changed the tag settings on about half the music library yesterday, meaning the regular Backup of Such Things was going to take a Several of hours.  It was still running when I stopped doing other PC faffage last night so I shut down everything else and left the machine to get on with it, thinking I would then shut the box down on my way upstairs to Bedfordshire.

Except I forgot.  Estate Office will be like a bastard sauna now chiz.

Edit: 27.4 degrees and rising

[Beardy]

Do you not have a window you can open?

[Mr Larrington]

Yes, but it involves:

• Remembering where I put the key “for safekeeping”
• Climbing over the desk taking care not to tread on the keyboard
• Wrestling with the blinds
• Trying not to knock the optical lead out of the back of the amplifier, and
• Deciding it’s too noisy because of the traffic/pigeons/Small People shrieking in the playground of the skool opposite

Hit 31.2 just now before I put the virtual CAT out…

[Diver300]

Somehow, while hoovering, I managed to rip a double electric socket out of the wall. 

Aye, but you'll be an expert in these things by now...

I have a shaver sokkit in the bathroom which Mrs F. has used for her anbaric toothbrush.
So long as the thing is plugged in, the transformer is live.
And it hums. Loudly.
The backing-box is cut into the plasterboard in the normal way, but it acts as a sounding-board.

I need to find a way to dampen this.
Stiffening behind the PB would be best, with a dwang or two, but not easily accessible.
I might try some sorbothane or similar shim between the faceplate and the PB.

Hmm. mmmmmmm. mmmmmmm.

Many, many years ago I fixed a noisy transformer by immersing it in molten candle wax for a few minutes, taking it out and letting it cool.

The wax filled all the little gaps between the laminations and stopped any buzzing.

In manufacture, many transformers are dipped in varnish to achieve the same thing.

As the assembly will have a switch operated by plugging something in, it wouldn't be a good idea to treat the whole socket as you would probably stop the switch from working.

[hatler]

Bollocks. Have had my finger hovering over the buy button on a set of Wera Joker ratchet combi spanners for months and months.

Finally succumbed last week.

Package arrived.

Contents extracted, packaging dismantled and dumped into the recycling.

Went to use them today. I didn't get the ratcheting version. Thought it was a good deal.

Verily bollocks.

[Diver300]

I've owned a 2009 car for about 3 years. I'm about to sell it, so photographing everything. Built-in Sat Nav had never worked. I ejected the disk and tried again, and it works!

The car has had a Garmin on a Brodit mount for the last 2 1/2 years.

I really should have tried the disk a couple of times when I bought the car.

[citoyen]

My phone started misbehaving yesterday - started giving me messages warning that the battery was not a genuine item of fruit, showing 0% even though it was fully charged, and then resetting itself every couple of minutes.

Luckily, I'm working in Stratford today so was able to book an appointment at the Westfield fruit emporium during my lunch break.

The friendly, helpful Genius ran her diagnostics and found that the whole innards need replacing. "Of course, if you'd bought it from us, we could do that under warranty, but since you tell us you bought it from your phone service provider, it will cost you £275."

OK, maybe I'll go back to giffgaff and see if they'll sort it for me before spending that much money!

Just been rooting through my giffgaff account and they have no record of me buying the phone... Eh? You what?

A bit of further rooting through my emails shows that in fact I did buy it direct from the Cupertino greengrocers after all. 

In fact, I now remember that one of the reasons I bought it direct was precisely so that I would be ensured of better/cheaper service if/when something went wrong. Of course!

Oh well! Fortunately, I can go back there after work, so hopefully they will be able to sort it. They'd better - they tried a factory reset while I was in there and that has completely bricked the phone, so if they can't do anything with it, I'm totally scuppered. Not coming into the office again for nearly two weeks and don't have a local greengrocer...

[Jurek]

Bluewater or Bromley are your nearest, I guess.

[citoyen]

Bluewater or Bromley are your nearest, I guess.

Indeed. Neither of which are particularly easy for me to get to.

There is an approved fruit reseller in Canterbury though - I thought it had closed down but apparently it has just rebranded. That'll be why I couldn't find it before. If I can't get it done today in Stratford, I shall go there - I *presume* that being an official fruit outlet means they'll do warranty repairs...

[ian]

The Fruity people normally just know if you bought the phone from them (plus what you had breakfast and where you were last Tuesday etc.)

[citoyen]

The Fruity people normally just know if you bought the phone from them (plus what you had breakfast and where you were last Tuesday etc.)

Yes, and on reflection, I was slightly surprised they didn't know that already (doubly so given that I made the appointment via my fruit account). But the Genius asked me and I told her... 

Surely they should know better than to rely on customers being armed with accurate information!

[ian]

I thought they just scanned the serial number – that's all they did with my iPad (that had a minor but annoying scratch) – and then fetched me a new one.

[Mrs Pingu]

Weekend here in Muscat. Not much to do. I decided to venture down to the tiny hotel beach for a look. Took my footwear off for a paddle in the sea, said 'hello fishies'.
Got out, the sand was like lava. My feets are a bit tender now.

[andytheflyer]

Weekend here in Muscat. Not much to do. I decided to venture down to the tiny hotel beach for a look. Took my footwear off for a paddle in the sea, said 'hello fishies'.
Got out, the sand was like lava. My feets are a bit tender now.

In the event that you get a chance to have a 'shoof', the mountains about 50km S of Muscat are geologically very unusual.  The rocks are greenish in colour and were once part of the earth's mantle.  They were thrust up above what is now sea level as part of an obduction process - the reverse of subduction, where the sea flor is pushed down below a land mass.  In Oman, the reverse happened, the sea floor was pushed up above the land mass.  V unusual.  You can see a section through the sea floor crust which is never normally seen.

[matthew]

Weekend here in Muscat. Not much to do.

That's an experience I remember. A full week in Muscat but it was the last week of Ramadan so everything was closed except the hotel breakfast and room service until sundown when the Iftar buffet diner was available in the hotel restaurant. Though when I went onto the beach at sunset I kept my shoes on.

[Mr Larrington]

This Unit endorses gypsum-based sand for all your “barefoot walking in high temperatures” needs:


P9190309 by Mr Larrington, on Flickr.  Forty-odd degrees in the shade, which in my case I had not got.

[Ham]

My fast access bikes are (1) the hack bike, currently with a flat tyre (2) A perfectly sensible single speed folder with flat pedals so why oh why oh why, when it came to going out for a "bike ride" with mini Ham (3, who has lost the stabilisers but not yet got brakes) which consists of riding round in circles on the Wanstead Flats (an open space by my home), trying to avoid him and letting him win the "race" did I chose option (3) my titanium commuter with SPD, and THEN compound the issue by putting on those old shoes where I KNEW that there was a cleat/pedal interface issue. Other cleated shoes would have been fine, any other trainer would have been fine.

Two (count 'em, two) clipless moments, much to the hilarity of all (actually Mini Ham was quite concerned: "Grandad's fallen off his bike")

[citoyen]

"Grandad's fallen off his bike"

Sorry, I know I shouldn't laugh. But I did.