The Good News / Bad News Thread

[Mr Larrington]

Bah: Hi-vizzed heavies on the door at Mr Sainsbury’s House of Toothy Comestibles.  “Cash only except for $BANK”.  Had to go up the road to Mr Morrison's House of Toothy Comestibles for my supplies of Rugby-Watching Fluid instead

Hurrah: Neither raining nor beset with a Mighty Rushing Wind

[TheLurker]

Bad news.  Radiator leaking,well weeping, from top by bleed valve.  Radiator is 30+ years old.
Good news.  Radiator is 30+ years old so plumber able to remove, clean up and refit the affected part in under half an hour.

[Mr Larrington]

Bah: New-to-me Humax record-o-matic failed to record today’s F1 qualifying 

Hurrah: Old one did and even allowed me to watch it without any of the Green Screen ov DETH bobbins

[Kim]

BN: They've cancelled barakta's MRI
GN: And re-booked it on the same day at not bollocks-o-clock in the morning
BN: This means she won't be able to come to Hull
GN: This means she won't be able to come to Hull 

[perpetual dan]

Tapalk previews ignoring line breaks plus my internal word scrambling translated the above to
"They've cancelled barakta's migraine."
Which sounds like a solution someone should have thought of before.

Sent from my SM-S911B using Tapatalk

[Cudzoziemiec]

This is just Hullist prejudice!

If it had been Grimsby, of course, there would've been no downsides at all.

[Mr Larrington]

Hurrah: Our plague-delayed trip to ye Outer Hebrides is finally going ahead this year

Bah: Smack in the middle of the Tour de France  :'(

[ElyDave]

This is just Hullist prejudice!

If it had been Grimsby, of course, there would've been no downsides at all.

This functional unit has nothing against either Hull nor Grimsby, having inhabited NE lincs for four years

Both are very special places

[Kim]

Hull has a particular downside in this context, in that it's a ~600m round trip^[1] from the track to  a) the loos  and  b) the absence of a water tap.

My own prejudices against Hull are based in the 1990s BBS scene and assorted FNRttCs:  Fortunately the smug free-local-calls batards did eventually get their comeuppance once ADSL became a thing, with broadband deals so awful that the only reasonable course of action was to chuck the computer off the bridge and go drinking in Weatherspoons at 8am on a Saturday morning.


_{[1] Which in barakta's case she cannot walk.}

[Regulator]

This is just Hullist prejudice!

If it had been Grimsby, of course, there would've been no downsides at all.

This functional unit has nothing against either Hull nor Grimsby, having inhabited NE lincs for four years

Both are very special places

I think you need to put "special" into double quotes...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Hull has a particular downside in this context, in that it's a ~600m round trip^[1] from the track to  a) the loos  and  b) the absence of a water tap.

My own prejudices against Hull are based in the 1990s BBS scene and assorted FNRttCs:  Fortunately the smug free-local-calls batards did eventually get their comeuppance once ADSL became a thing, with broadband deals so awful that the only reasonable course of action was to chuck the computer off the bridge and go drinking in Weatherspoons at 8am on a Saturday morning.


_{[1] Which in barakta's case she cannot walk.}

I should declare my pro-Hull bias, which is pure nostalgia based on my cousins living there in the early 70s. Also, everyone from Hull I've met more recently has seemed a thoroughly decent sort (but that's only three people, and one of them now lives in Bristol). Agreed, the track facilities sound awful. More urgently, what on earth is "the 1990s BBS scene"? I'm imagining it's something intensely geeky.

[Kim]

Agreed, the track facilities sound awful.

This is unfortunate, because it's actually a rather good track.  And while it lacks a water supply, there is a little cabinet that dispenses voles, which makes for happy winky lights and Babbage-engines.

More urgently, what on earth is "the 1990s BBS scene"? I'm imagining it's something intensely geeky.

It's what we used to use before internet access became affordable:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

As Hull is in the unique position of being exempt from our-favourite-telco's last-mile monopoly, they had cream phone boxes and different tariffs.  The important part for these purposes being leftpondian-style free local calls.  Which makes it practical to get more involved in the community aspect of BBSes (think YACF, with more ASCII art), rather than firing up your FidoNet tosser^[1], hastily^[2] zmodem-ing^[3] a file or two and hanging up.  Hence the UK BBS scene was disproportionately Hull-centric.


_{[1] Roger will be along in a minute with some witty remark about ANSI pr0n
[2] For dial-up modem values of 'hasty'
[3] It's what we used to when geographical constraints made it impractical to copy that floppy.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

That's not quite as geeky as I was hoping for, but certainly acceptable. Incidentally, free local calls were a standard thing in many countries. In Poland, I'm told, it made up for the neighbours using your phone because you were the only household in the village with one.

[Kim]

I assume the logic is that local calls cost effectively nothing for the telco, and in the days before digital exchanges billing for them would have required extra infrastructure that wasn't deemed worth it.

And I suppose under the USAnian model, you'd get people installing additional lines for the teenagers (or indeed the BBS), which is a nice steady income.

[The Family Cyclist]

BN - due to not thinking ahead had to order book for wife's birthday from amazon as won't be able to get to my LBS and in this case B is book
GN having not used amazon for ages since got a work voucher from them got a 5 quid off voucher and eligible for free prime trial again
BN set a alarm for just under 30 days to cancel prime, as did it on clock not calendar shows an alarm icon at top of phone which is annoying as that normally means gotta get up for work

[mrcharly-YHT]

I assume the logic is that local calls cost effectively nothing for the telco, and in the days before digital exchanges billing for them would have required extra infrastructure that wasn't deemed worth it.

And I suppose under the USAnian model, you'd get people installing additional lines for the teenagers (or indeed the BBS), which is a nice steady income.

I think it dates back to the times of local manual exchanges.

Local calls just required someone to move plug from socket to new socket.