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

[ian]

Yeah, we had to replace 22 fence panels when we moved in here (the whole lot came down during a wet and windy Christmas eve). At least on the neighbour's side, the posts were fine, so it was really just panels, everywhere else we had to have new concrete posts and the works. To be honest, it wasn't a surprise and we had budgeted for the replacement, but it would have been nicer had it waited till summer. The plans are vague as to who is responsible for the boundary but I suspect it probably is us, though it's arguable.

[SteveC]

About ten years ago, we came home from a weekend away to find that the fence was still there, but the posts had gone!
A previous owner had made his own reinforced concrete posts and the reinforcing bars had corroded, expanded, and cracked the concrete and the severe storm did the rest of the damage.
We are responsible for all of the fences round our garden, which has proved expensive over the years.

[L CC]

What is the stickiest 700 x 28-32C tyre? It is a front tyre on a commuter, so excessive wear life isn’t important but broken glass resistance and traction is. I can cope well enough with the back tyre wandering (so will probably stick with Voyager Hyper or similar) but not the front.

Michelin Power All Season

This is the current version of what used to be called Pro Grip. It is very grippy, even at cold temperatures where other so-called 4 season tyres tend to harden up and get slippy. They are very much slower than other tyres in the range (they really shouldn't be labelled "Competition Power") but that's inevitable, you can't have low rolling resistance and high grip. Puncture resistance and wear rate are surprisingly good.

Thanks. I don't need glass resistance but I do need inspires confidence on >10% descent on A road

[andrewc]

This is rather good.   https://spilleroftea.com/2020/02/08/this-article-isnt-about-phillip-schofield/

That says a lot of what I was failing to articulate properly above...

[Enters Wowbagger mode.] Until the broadcast with Johnson during the election campaign I'd no idea at all who this chap was....   [Exits Wowbagger mode]

He's Gordon The Gopher's^[1] sidekick and/or Sadiq Khan's evil twin.


_{[1] Teenagers: Ask your parents.}

Another piece in a similar vein.   https://politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2020/02/10/schofield-coming-out-revealed-a-generational-gulf-in-the-gay 


A friend of mine in his early 60's still won't come out to his family, after a bad experience coming out to a group of friends at work, the bloke he'd considered his best mate just dropped him completely.


See also  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51370820

[ian]

That's a good article, particularly

So allow me to administer a corrective. Phillip Schofield was six when the Stonewall Riots happened. He was seven when the first Pride rally took place in London, consisting of roughly 150 people marching. He was 19 when Dynasty caused an uproar by featuring a character struggling with his sexuality. He was 20 when Mary Whitehouse took the National Theatre to court over a simulated homosexual act. He was 21 when Elton John married a woman named Renate Blauer and Simon Hughes, who would later come out himself, ran a disgracefully homophobic campaign against Peter Tatchell in Bermondsey. He was 24 when Rock Hudson died, at the peak of the moral panic over HIV/AIDS. He was 26 when Clause 28 was passed. He was 27 when furious MPs demanded Eastenders be banned over two men kissing. He was 28 when the West London murders went largely uninvestigated. He was in his early 30s when Westminster Council targetted gay bars in Soho and plain-clothes vice cops were entrapping and arresting people in cruising areas. He was 38 when the Admiral Duncan pub was bombed. He was 40 when the age of consent was equalised. He was 41 when "gay panic" was finally rejected by the courts as a defence to murder. And he was 58 when same-sex marriage became legal in all parts of the United Kingdom, less than a month ago.

as a reminder of how much has changed for the better in my lifetime (and why I hate to feel things are slipping back). It's the case that a lot of younger people take this for granted and it's not something that should ever be taken for granted, people fought in little and big ways for these things. There's no natural and effortless progression towards a better, more accepting world. If anything, it's the opposite.

[hellymedic]

Getting my fence done a few years back cost £2.5k. The posts held well but the wood is crap.

[Kim]

A friend of mine in his early 60's still won't come out to his family, after a bad experience coming out to a group of friends at work, the bloke he'd considered his best mate just dropped him completely.

I expect most people have those sorts of experiences with coming out.  It's just that, like with most forms of grief, if you did it long enough ago, you'll have moved on from the people you lost as a result and it's less of a day-to-day issue.

Families, of course, are much more difficult to move on from than friends.

Of course, you also tend to make friends (and even family) as a result.

[robgul]

e bloody bay and Chinese suppliers . . . what is it with them?     

I've been buying a few bits and pieces in the way of tools - like drill bits and similar.    I'm very careful to always select "UK only" [As an aside why can't you default your searches to UK only?] and showing despatch from a UK address.

Some items arrive within a day or two - some don't and you get a message written in pidgin English (usually calling me "my dear") saying various things like they haven't got stock or it's lost in the post and offering a refund. . . .  and they then delist the sale before you post negative feedback.

I realise these items are "drop shipped" - i.e. sent in bulk from China and then put in the mail here when they receive an order . . . . but why the massive failure rate?  ebay should be stamping on these people

I'm going to try buying direct from Aliexpress (allowing up to a month for delivery) to see what happens there.

Rob

[T42]

Bloody bank have "improved" their website to make it "faster and easier" to use.  This means that instead of a full menu down the side and a straight Debit/Credit/Balance display the menu has been split over different levels with a screen per level and the account view now has debit & credit in the same column with the current balance at the top.  The only way to get a side-by-side debit/credit listing is to download the history as an xlsx. In addition, over half of every screen is given over to a marketing-shit image with a couple of links floating in the middle.

Silly bloody buggers.

[T42]

I'm going to try buying direct from Aliexpress (allowing up to a month for delivery) to see what happens there.

I've had a couple of things from them, usually a few days in advance of the delivery date. Quality is OK.   But if a chum's cycling hat is anything to go by, you won't get a CE rating on the goods.

[spesh]

Bloody bank have "improved" their website to make it "faster and easier" to use.  This means that instead of a full menu down the side and a straight Debit/Credit/Balance display the menu has been split over different levels with a screen per level and the account view now has debit & credit in the same column with the current balance at the top.  The only way to get a side-by-side debit/credit listing is to download the history as an xlsx. In addition, over half of every screen is given over to a marketing-shit image with a couple of links floating in the middle.

Silly bloody buggers.

It seems to be standard operating procedure among website software bonobos that if it ain't broken, fix it until it is.

[Kim]

I'm going to try buying direct from Aliexpress (allowing up to a month for delivery) to see what happens there.

I've had a couple of things from them, usually a few days in advance of the delivery date. Quality is OK.   But if a chum's cycling hat is anything to go by, you won't get a CE rating on the goods.

I've used them many times.  They're fine when you either know that a specific product is decent (eg. the Ruideng power meters), or aren't fussed if it turns out to be pure chineseium.

(I've mostly bought hobbyist electronics - LED tat, prototyping boards, DuPont/JST connectors^[1] and such.  I wouldn't trust a mains power supply without a teardown, and anything purporting to be a given thickness of copper wire should be treated with a healthy degree of scepticism.  Mechanical tools like drill bits are probably fine, in that the likely worst case is that you get what you pay for.)


_{[1] Ready-made DuPoint jumper cables being so cheap that it's hardly worth crimping your own.}

[T42]

Bloody bank have "improved" their website to make it "faster and easier" to use.  This means that instead of a full menu down the side and a straight Debit/Credit/Balance display the menu has been split over different levels with a screen per level and the account view now has debit & credit in the same column with the current balance at the top.  The only way to get a side-by-side debit/credit listing is to download the history as an xlsx. In addition, over half of every screen is given over to a marketing-shit image with a couple of links floating in the middle.

Silly bloody buggers.

It seems to be standard operating procedure among website software bonobos that if it ain't broken, fix it until it is.

Nah, don't blame the mechanics. It's the marketing lizards that want to destabilize the customers.  Although in the olden days I once read of a comment in operating system code that said "This bit is to confuse the operator", that was just innocent sadism, whereas the lizards are looking for prey.

[Kim]

Nah, don't blame the mechanics. It's the marketing lizards that want to destabilize the customers.  Although in the olden days I once read of a comment in operating system code that said "This bit is to confuse the operator", that was just innocent sadism, whereas the lizards are looking for prey.

There's also the one where some third-party library or whatever forces a forklift upgrade on the systems monkeys who'd like nothing better than for it to remain a legacy system^[1].


_{[1] In the "stuff that works" sense.}

[T42]

Old story: if it's running bug-free and bullet-proof nobody will want to upgrade so keep adding cruft until it breaks.

[matthew]

Nah, don't blame the mechanics. It's the marketing lizards that want to destabilize the customers.  Although in the olden days I once read of a comment in operating system code that said "This bit is to confuse the operator", that was just innocent sadism, whereas the lizards are looking for prey.

There's also the one where some third-party library or whatever forces a forklift upgrade on the systems monkeys who'd like nothing better than for it to remain a legacy system^[1].


_{[1] In the "stuff that works" sense.}

There was a really useful tool in the water industry that was a substantial Excel '97 spreadsheet, macros, custom tool bar etc. all built in as was the shut down of clippy. It modelled the impact of blending waters and chemical dosing them on the stability of the water (scale forming or agressive) by calculating various indices. Then came Office 2007, Clippy died a death and a number of other features used within the macros became defunct such that the sheet could no longer run. For many years there was the one windows box running an old version of office to use this spreadsheet. Till finally XP was no longer supported and the software died a death. There has just been a joint industry investment to get everything updated and operable in current Excel.

[Kim]

The BHPC runs on one of those.  Untangling as much of the timing and scoring workflow from it as possible (so that those tasks may be offloaded onto more functional and efficient open source software maintained by Someone Else) is one of my winter projects.  I now know a couple of orders of magnitude more VBA than I wanted to, and have waded through many strata of Interesting Decisions™.   

These things are best approached with a "KEEP CALM AND TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT BANKING" mentality.

[Mr Larrington]

I may bear some measure of responsibility for some of that, having volunteered to run the Babbage-Engine at the '96 Euros in Leicester.  Though the Stuffs used then was heavily based on characters created by some unknown h@XX0r in the Dutch HPV club.

[hellymedic]

The water inlet for my washing machine seems to have developed a major leak during my towel wash, flooding the kitchen floor.

[Mrs Pingu]

Oops

[hellymedic]

That's life!
Have drained and spun washing, with no further flooding.
Will hang towels out and give them an extra rinse if they seem to need this after I've had things fixed.

I HATE musty washing! I don't knowhow much rinsing this stuff had before I stopped the machine: there's been some rinsing.

I'll get things fixed in the cool, clear light of day...

[andrewc]

I took some washing out of the machine earlier & found a packet of Strepsils in one trouser pocket.  My clothes now smell of menthol   

[Guy]

I'm pretty sure we have a thread for cars that do things without any human involvement, but I'm beggered if I can find it. Anyway, the quality of reporting is worthy of a grumble>

Car crashes into Bishop's Stortford flats leading to evacuation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-b ... s-51441769

Readers would be forgiven for thinking the car ignored the driver and decided to do its' own thing. The only mention of human involvement is:

...A man was treated at the scene before being taken to hospital for further assessment...

which doesn't make clear whether the man was the driver of the car, a passenger, or an occupant of the damaged property.


No, BBC. Cars don't just crash into things, they are* driven* into things, often as a result of human error or sheer bloody stupidity.

[T42]

They're just ever-so-carefully avoiding assumptions.  Even during their appeals for witnesses back in the 1950s the Beeb would speak of "a car that mounted the pavement" rather than someone driving onto it.

[Edd]

That journal article looks like it could be intersting, yes, I don't mind reviewing it. [Opens PDF] Oh no, what have I done? Goodbye morning...