modern life is rubbish

[quixoticgeek]

You forgot that time I helped a judge sellotape an envelope over a PIR sensor, in the hope the lights might time out...

Argh the number of places that use PIR sensors to control their lights, and put the sensor somewhere bloody stupid. The worst culprit for this is in toilets, where they put the sensor in the main area with the sinks, such that when you're sat in the cubical, the lights turn out and you can't turn them back on...

I once worked in an office where the sensor didn't cover my desk, so when working late, the lights would all turn off and I'd have to get up, walk 2m, wave at the sensor, and then go back to work. Most infuriating. Similar setup screw ups include where the sensitivity is such that a geek sat typing doesn't create enough movement to trigger the sensor, cue waving arms at the ceiling every 10 minutes...

J

[Kim]

You forgot that time I helped a judge sellotape an envelope over a PIR sensor, in the hope the lights might time out...

Argh the number of places that use PIR sensors to control their lights, and put the sensor somewhere bloody stupid. The worst culprit for this is in toilets, where they put the sensor in the main area with the sinks, such that when you're sat in the cubical, the lights turn out and you can't turn them back on...

Bala C&CC site is my all-time favourite:  All the lights in the wash block have their own sensor.  Timeouts set to under a minute.  Keep your head torch on while you're on the loo and it's merely funny as you watch them trace your steps through from the outside door at bladder o'clock.

[Jakob W]

I once worked in an office where the sensor didn't cover my desk, so when working late, the lights would all turn off and I'd have to get up, walk 2m, wave at the sensor, and then go back to work. Most infuriating.

Retconned by the designers as 'providing a more ergonomic working environment, by promoting regular changes of position and posture'...?

[ian]

Many many years ago, when I was a fresh-faced young engineering geologist, the only one in a big multinational consulting engineers,  I walked into the Victoria St office one morning, and was intercepted by the travel lady, asking me for my passport.  Why?  You're going to Saudi tomorrow.  For a meeting.

Think I went out one day, back the next.  And that was in the days before free booze on BA.

I get out of Saudi by ticking the OH VEY, I'M REALLY VERY JEWISH box on the visa form. They may have relaxed things, but probably not.

I think the worst meeting I got sent to was early in this section of my career when my boss and I went to a meeting we had scheduled. We figured we could do it in a day if we got up sometime in the middle of the night (an idea that always seems progressive less good the close you get to the alarm going off) and schlepped over to Heathrow for the early flight.

The guy we were meeting forgot about it then made a big fuss about the 'imposition' and 'found fifteen minutes' from his schedule of sitting around and drinking coffee. So he went and got more coffee and cake, which he shared with everyone in the meeting other than us as our bellies growled around the remains of a BA croissant.

And because it was supposed to be a all day meeting, I'd book the last flight out and, of course, they couldn't squeeze me on a earlier plane. I should have taken the opportunity to see the sights, but I was mostly a bit a fucked off. My boss has another meeting so flew off elsewhere. Oh, and I fell asleep in the taxi to the airport and the driver tried to stiff me for an epic fare (he lost his previous ability to speak English during this heated discussion). I threw some money at him and stomped off. Then got double annoyed but it wasn't my money anyway.

Austria has made me grumbly ever since.

Oh, and the time senior management dispatched me to Chennai to 'sort something out' with some new Indian business we were outsourcing too. Sure, says I. It turned out that somewhere in the morass of communications they'd not really told the Indian company this was happening or that I was coming. But in the usual way, the Indian company was so keen to stay in our good books (and keep the contract) they didn't admit they had no clue why I was there. I'd keep asking for stuff that I assumed they'd have and they'd all nod and say 'yes' and that was that, it wouldn't appear. This act lasted about three days, until someone fessed up that really, they weren't sure who I was or why I was there.

[mrcharly-YHT]

As for a different modern life is rubbish story.

I went to look at a nearby flat that was for sale, just to see if it was worth it. Upon entering the estate agent mumble something about the lights, luckily we didn't need them as it was bright daylight, but I saw the instructions for them.

There were no light switches anywhere upstairs, it was all controlled by an smartphone app. So the instructions for the EA for turning on the lights meant that the EA would have to:
* Join the right wireless network
* Download the app
* Let the app 'discover' the lights on the wireless network
* Use the app to turn the lights on.

Somehow this is a form of progress...

Welcome to the bane of my life in many public places.

Me: "Hi, your lights are flickering/bastard-bright, can you turn them off/down in this room/anywhere? There seem to be no light switches."

Them: "ERRR... Everything is centrally controlled. We can try and find out."

*time passes*

If I am lucky, someone comes back to say "We can turn the lights off in one place" and I have to wrangle special permission to go to that place.

More commonly I get: "Sorry, no, we can't change any lighting anywhere. Can't you just manage?"

And I have to either risk severe migraines, visual distortions and sometimes becoming ill enough that my vision starts cutting out and I fall over. Or I have to leave.

I will one day end up taking a disability discrimination legal case on this issue because lighting should be locally controllable and it's inexcusable for it not to be.

I can't understand why anyone would do this to a residential place. All my friends who have smart lights (which are often horrid flickery messes) also have actual light switches and can TURN THEM OFF.

See also rants x many about modern fucking building design, sensorily hostile and hideous.

Oh this happened in our new very swanky offices. We were promised the ability to dim the lights in each room.

Cue us arriving in the new office and discovering 'daylight' bulbs above every desk. No screening over the bulbs, so looking across the room was like staring into the headlights of a modern Audi.

I stuck post-its over the lights above my desk.

A month or two later, some electricians noticed the post-its and offered to disconnect the power to those lights. Didn't have any bottles of whisky on hand to give them, so made do with heartfelt gratitude.

[Ham]

I have 'smart' lights throughout my flat, but for all of them, there is both a 'smart' switch, that I can use, and cos the original switches are on the wall, I can flip them off then back on again. I have tape over the wall switches, as I got fed up with guests using the wrong switch...

J

It saves on tape to avoid having guests.

[barakta]

Oh this happened in our new very swanky offices. We were promised the ability to dim the lights in each room.

Cue us arriving in the new office and discovering 'daylight' bulbs above every desk. No screening over the bulbs, so looking across the room was like staring into the headlights of a modern Audi.

I stuck post-its over the lights above my desk.

A month or two later, some electricians noticed the post-its and offered to disconnect the power to those lights. Didn't have any bottles of whisky on hand to give them, so made do with heartfelt gratitude.

I tried to cover the evil lights at ex work but instead of talking to us, someone grassed us up to Boss3 who came down and demanded they were removed "fire risk".

I wish I'd said "lights off, or I'm going home until they're off" cos that is what wrecked my vision/brain. The visual stress of that office is horrid and several people left who were less affected by me but got headaches and eye issues.

And to piss me off even further, I had put in my access needs for new office "controllable/dimmable lights" but because X didn't pass it to Y and to Z, I was literally treated like I hadn't disclosed. I almost wish I'd pursued them to tribunal to answer that and every other failing in detailed legal record.

Even current work the small rooms we're in do have dimmable lighting after boss fought for it, but dimmable = PWM so they flicker instead. Bastard bright or flickering is your choice. Excellent for me and the neurodiverse light sensitive students I see in there. The plug in uplighter also flickers.

[quixoticgeek]

On the subject of evil lighting, how bad are the IKEA Tradfri lights ? in terms of flicker, etc...

J

[ian]

Like seriously, Hive is down. Dead. Doomed. Degraded. The fury that envelops me is like a splenetic hurricane. But a cold one. Now I have to walk all the way to the hallway to turn up the heating 0.5 degrees. Or remain here, cold.

They never said modern life would be so hard.

[Cudzoziemiec]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/12/modern-life-is-rubbish-the-people-whose-homes-are-portals-to-the-past

[Cudzoziemiec]

I imagine some YACFers have a bar like this in their home!

And if we had a thread for "skip gadget and bodge it" we'd definitely have people doing this:

I have a Decca TV from the 70s that I found on Facebook Marketplace, three miles down the road. It’s ridiculous. The same model is on display in the Science Museum. It does turn on, but unfortunately the analogue signal was switched off in 2012, so I’m sending it to someone who specialises in making old appliances work on new systems. He’s going to make it compatible with Netflix and digital TV.

[Kim]

And if we had a thread for "skip gadget and bodge it" we'd definitely have people doing this:

I have a Decca TV from the 70s that I found on Facebook Marketplace, three miles down the road. It’s ridiculous. The same model is on display in the Science Museum. It does turn on, but unfortunately the analogue signal was switched off in 2012, so I’m sending it to someone who specialises in making old appliances work on new systems. He’s going to make it compatible with Netflix and digital TV.

That's less "skip and bodge" than "101 uses for a Raspberry Pi", on which we've had several threads.  Earlier models have a composite video^[1] output that should be directly compatible with a 70s telly.


_{[1] Slightly disappointed that the examples stop at the 1970s, although it makes perfect sense, because that's how old you have to be to afford a house.  Nevertheless, I expect in years to come there will be nostalgic reproductions of 80s and 90s houses, complete with lovingly-restored SCART cables.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

It also makes sense to stop with the 70s because the median age of the UK population is 41, meaning that's the last decade which is "history" for most people. But I'm looking forward to, or at least expecting, 1980s repro: lots of matt black gadgets with bright red or acid yellow buttons, floppy lopsided haircuts and moody synths. So cool. For a while.

[Kim]

Oh yes.  Pass me my DX7.

[TheLurker]

...I expect in years to come there will be nostalgic reproductions of 80s and 90s houses, complete with lovingly-restored SCART cables.

Alas no, as nothing made after 1980* is repairable.



*Pick your own arbitrary date.

[nicknack]

I imagine some YACFers have a bar like this in their home!

I note he hasn't got the shit selection of booze that was available in the 60s.
We once had a 70s evening with some friends. All food and wine from a typical 70s menu. The food was fine but the wine (Black Tower, Blue Nun, Mateus Rose - all still available  ) ended up being poured down the sink.

[ian]

Black Tower, Matteus Rose, and Blue Nun are the three wines that distinguish the posher parts of my childhood. They're also, I realise now, how my parents kept me quiet on Sunday afternoons.

[Feanor]

Bulgarian Cab Sauv was the lubricant of choice amongst the PSOs around these parts back when we were PSOs.

Cheap reds always seemed less offensive than cheap whites back then.
(And actually, I think that's still true. Ski chalet free bulk-grade wine is generally more drinkable in red form than in white.)

[The Family Cyclist]

I'm pretty sure that when I saw Bruce Springstein at Hyde Park around 11 years ago the wine being served from a back pack was then black towef

[ian]

Bulgarian Cab Sauv was the lubricant of choice amongst the PSOs around these parts back when we were PSOs.

Cheap reds always seemed less offensive than cheap whites back then.

That stuff was the social lubricant of my student years. Tasted like battery acid cut with creosote but at £3.99 a bottle was cheaper than buying either.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I imagine some YACFers have a bar like this in their home!

I note he hasn't got the shit selection of booze that was available in the 60s.
We once had a 70s evening with some friends. All food and wine from a typical 70s menu. The food was fine but the wine (Black Tower, Blue Nun, Mateus Rose - all still available  ) ended up being poured down the sink.

You're telling me that rum with a pirate on the label and Mount Gay gin (or whatever it is in that bottle) aren't genuine 1960s brands? I'd like to think he's actually printed the labels up himself and arranged them prominently for the photographer.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't think I like the 1930s house; too dark.

[rogerzilla]

Argh the number of places that use PIR sensors to control their lights, and put the sensor somewhere bloody stupid. The worst culprit for this is in toilets, where they put the sensor in the main area with the sinks, such that when you're sat in the cubical, the lights turn out and you can't turn them back on...

As all "Viz" fans know, the Office of Bottom Inspection considers reading on the toilet to be a hanging offence, so consider yourself lucky.

[ian]

It's a fact of modern life for those of us in the meetings manufacture business that if you rush to do your daily exercise at a frantic pace because you have a solid afternoon of meetings, that during that rush, many of those meetings will get rescheduled so you all that frantic pedalling could have done at a more leisurely pace.

On the plus side, I have the impossible probability of two entire hours in the afternoon that aren't polluted by meetings.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Modern life is trying to get rid of rubbish, a.k.a. 'stuff'. 

That's why I try not to buy anything that is not directly life-supporting.  (It's getting easier to buy less stuff anyway thanks to brexit.)

There is a war going on over our local 'tip' recycling centre.  A few years back York had two so they closed one down and moved the other somewhere smaller and less accessible.

Coronavirus has made a visit to the tip into a main leisure activity and people form long queues waiting to be allowed in so they can 'recycle' half a dozen cardboard boxes caused by e-shopping, the other booming lockdown activity.  The queue causes major traffic jams because in this version of lockdown people are not actually staying home after all.  Receiving abuse for visiting the tip is the new normal.