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

[hellymedic]

I have just received an email regarding tomorrow's LCC AGM which states cycle parking at the meeting venue is limited.
 

I know *I* can't cycle but!

[pcolbeck]

Two hours going round in loops trying to get a phone number for my car insurance company !

[rafletcher]

Two hours going round in loops trying to get a phone number for my car insurance company !

Quotemehappy by any chance?

[Cudzoziemiec]

This is a grumble on behalf of my son. Well not really on his behalf of course, as he doesn't care about imaginary people inside a keyboard. So it's a grumble for my own sake but relaying to you, dear imaginary people who I do care about, what he was grumbling about to me. Which is the dominance of late Victorian literature in the school syllabus. They've just been told what book they'll be studying for GCSE and it's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He doesn't mind that per se, but so far over the four years of secondary school they've looked at books by Dickens, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells. He's simply a bit over-Victorianed. Okay, the other book they're studying for GCSE is some anthology of "poetry for the modern century". Published 2002, so in fact pretty much written in the old century. "There's nothing written after I was born" he complains.

[hellymedic]

We did very little literature that had been written in our lifetimes 50 years ago.

Granted, some of the writers were still alive but most had been written long before we were born.
Joseph Priestley
Arnold Wesker
Dannie Abse
JRR Tolkien
Dylan Thomas
George Orwell were 'modern' but were writing about a past era.

Then there were Brontës, Dickens, Chaucer and Shakespeare....

[Kim]

We had a reasonable selection of literature, but made up for it by being the yeargroup who, through repeated re-writes of the History curriculum, had studied the Norman conquests over and over.

[Pickled Onion]

I should be getting culturalised in Valletta right now.

Because broken ribs and punctured lung I am watching South East English rain.

Arse

If it’s any consolation it’s been pissing it down and howling a gale across the med today. And the forecast for Valletta over the next week is more of the same.

I came here to have a moan about the various crap Storm Callum has shat on my current trip but having seen Basil’s pictures I’ll STFU.

Ok I’ve had enough I’m going to have a grumble.

I’ve come to the South of Spain for a bit of relaxing cycling thinking it would be warm, sunny and unstressful. So far I’ve had:

Bumped off the flight, rerouted 24 hours later with a multi hop flight from a different airport
Consequent late booking somewhere to stay
Torrential downpour and gales near hypothermia
Some idiots playing kickball in Sevilla so all hotels booked solid
Arrested by the Guardia Civil for being on the carretera sin cosco
Fog
More rain I’ve never been so wet in my life
There are probably other things but my mind is blocking them out for the sake of my sanity

[TheLurker]

We did very little literature that had been written in our lifetimes

Then There were Brontës, Dickens, was Chaucer and Shakespeare....

Oh what larks.  Listening to Chaucer as he was wrote. 

And the concession to "modernity"?  E.M. Forster, "Where Angels Fear To Tread". Over 70 years "young" by the time we had to endure it. I tried re-reading it ten or so years back because, I reasoned, there must have been some merit in a book chosen for something as important as O level lit. that my teenage self would not have appreciated.  Aye, right.  I got that wrong as well.

[CAMRAMan]

Ok I’ve had enough I’m going to have a grumble.

I’ve come to the South of Spain for a bit of relaxing cycling thinking it would be warm, sunny and unstressful. So far I’ve had:

Bumped off the flight, rerouted 24 hours later with a multi hop flight from a different airport
Consequent late booking somewhere to stay
Torrential downpour and gales near hypothermia
Some idiots playing kickball in Sevilla so all hotels booked solid
Arrested by the Guardia Civil for being on the carretera sin cosco
Fog
More rain I’ve never been so wet in my life
There are probably other things but my mind is blocking them out for the sake of my sanity

Christmas '96 I travelled to Andalucia to visit my then Spanish girlfriend. They had endured four years of drought.

I arrive for 2 weeks and there then proceeds to be 275mm of rain over the next 5 days.

To top it all, we split up on New Year's Day.

[SoreTween]

Thanks so much to the random drunk or yoof who opened our gate sometime yesterday evening / night. I'd taken a bag out to the bin at about 18:00, it was shut then. Chasing 30+ sheep out at 03:30 this morning was such a great way to start the day 

[essexian]

Sigh.... this grumble is about me.

So, on Monday I noted that a large online retailer was having a sale on bikes. Well, with N=N+1 and with the fact that I don't really like my winter bike (it gives me neck ache) I discussed with CBH whether I should be able to spend some of my own money to buy it. CBH agreed I could although I know whatever I spend on myself, she will spend on herself out of our "shared" account (I am the only one who puts any money into it!) Hence, the bike officially was only £250..... 

So, come to this morning I head to the site to make the purchase: I had been busy yesterday so didn't get the chance to do so then, added all the little bits I wanted and was about to press the "buy" button when I noted that the bike was no longer in the sale and would cost me £200 more than I had budgeted for. 

Purchased cancelled and myself blamed for putting work ahead of pleasure. That should NEVER happen.

[Tim Hall]

Having mislaid my RED Spokey spoke key, I did the wheel build mentioned elsewhere with one of those Evans multi size keys. It did a good ish job, but the Spokey ones grip the nippul on three sides, giving less chance of rounding.

Thusly I went to town this lunchtime. First bike shop didn't have one, second one, very much a "proper" LBS, had a similar thing, made by Torque. Yes, it grips on three sides, yes it's RED. No, the manufacturers don't use a common colour code, so it's too big. Arse.

(The nice man in the shop did warn me I should measure the nippul first, but I ignored him) 

[SoreTween]

I noted on my way to work today two pelican crossings with failed lollipop lights so I decided to report them. Surrey highways has an a-z list of problems so I clicked on pelican crossing fault and it took me to the traffic signal fault reporting page. On there is a list and a map of all signals in the county to choose from..... that doesn't include pelicans.  Back to the a-z to o for 'other', nope. W for 'Web site', nope.  Found a phone no right next to the helpful advice that reporting online is faster. Phoned the number anyway and listened to two long recorded messages that included the advice that reporting online is faster.
On the plus side the wait to speak to a human once the interminable recordings ended was nil and she was very helpful.
I have my doubts both will be fixed as they went on one report. I have no doubt at all she'll not  be able to get the web site sorted.

[ian]

Yeah, that was my experience of Surrey CC with the Great Double Yellow Line saga (now headed for year 3, but they're scheduling the work honest, at some point they'll notice the pothole that needs to be filled before they can paint the lines – or given contractors, they'll just pain around it).

When I finally talked to a human in the highways department, he actually came around a couple of days later to have a look and chat. Of course, despite agreeing, that entailed waiting for the annual TRO meeting, putting it out for pointless consultation, responding to equally pointless objections, and then finally arranging for the work... if you want to know how a couple of hundred quid of actual work costs the council and you the taxpayer several thousand, there's a good example.

[Beardy]

Unless I’ve misunderstood, then searching for pelican will take you to traffic signals. If it’s got a ‘lollypop’ Then it’s a zebra crossing isn’t it?

[T42]

Do they still call those Belisha Beacons? We don't have them here, nor do we have a menagerie of crossing-types.

Anyway, my grumble is that the one surviving battery for my Leroy Merlin cordless drill has swollen like a dead goldfish and will hold a charge sufficient for one and a half 2mm holes 2 cm deep.  Nice & warm, though.  And bloody Leroy Merlin don't sell them any more.

[Kim]

Do they still call those Belisha Beacons? We don't have them here, nor do we have a menagerie of crossing-types.

I certainly do.

I note that about 20% of my driving theory test was on the various species of pedestrian crossing.  Because that's really important for a driver to know, obviously.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Do they still call those Belisha Beacons? We don't have them here, nor do we have a menagerie of crossing-types.

I certainly do.

I note that about 20% of my driving theory test was on the various species of pedestrian crossing.  Because that's really important for a driver to know, obviously.

Did they ask you about the Pegasus crossing?

On a related non-grumble, I noticed a new Zebra crossing on my way home last night. I didn't think they were still installing those.

[Kim]

I honestly can't remember.  Pelicans, Puffins and Toucans certainly featured.

[mattc]

This is a grumble on behalf of my son. Well not really on his behalf of course, as he doesn't care about imaginary people inside a keyboard. So it's a grumble for my own sake but relaying to you, dear imaginary people who I do care about, what he was grumbling about to me. Which is the dominance of late Victorian literature in the school syllabus. They've just been told what book they'll be studying for GCSE and it's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He doesn't mind that per se, but so far over the four years of secondary school they've looked at books by Dickens, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells. He's simply a bit over-Victorianed. Okay, the other book they're studying for GCSE is some anthology of "poetry for the modern century". Published 2002, so in fact pretty much written in the old century. "There's nothing written after I was born" he complains.

Surely if you're only 15, then most books were written before you were born. Occupational hazard.

[my theory on this - and I'm no Eng Lit scholar, let alone "well read" - is that the distribution of suitable books over time is patchy. The Victorian era might be when fiction publishing started to get really going, and in the last 30 years-or-so most "modern classics" are either not ideal for the full range of 15yos, or they're higly political/controversial. Or they're Trainspotting.

[I think I was pretty lucky that our exam board offered To Kill a Mockingbird as an option. Our teacher didn't choose it, but when I heard about it, I read it, loved it, and remembered it so vividly that the exam* was made a lot easier! ]

*remember those?

[Cudzoziemiec]

This is a grumble on behalf of my son. Well not really on his behalf of course, as he doesn't care about imaginary people inside a keyboard. So it's a grumble for my own sake but relaying to you, dear imaginary people who I do care about, what he was grumbling about to me. Which is the dominance of late Victorian literature in the school syllabus. They've just been told what book they'll be studying for GCSE and it's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He doesn't mind that per se, but so far over the four years of secondary school they've looked at books by Dickens, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells. He's simply a bit over-Victorianed. Okay, the other book they're studying for GCSE is some anthology of "poetry for the modern century". Published 2002, so in fact pretty much written in the old century. "There's nothing written after I was born" he complains.

Surely if you're only 15, then most books were written before you were born. Occupational hazard.

[my theory on this - and I'm no Eng Lit scholar, let alone "well read" - is that the distribution of suitable books over time is patchy. The Victorian era might be when fiction publishing started to get really going, and in the last 30 years-or-so most "modern classics" are either not ideal for the full range of 15yos, or they're higly political/controversial. Or they're Trainspotting.

[I think I was pretty lucky that our exam board offered To Kill a Mockingbird as an option. Our teacher didn't choose it, but when I heard about it, I read it, loved it, and remembered it so vividly that the exam* was made a lot easier! ]

*remember those?

Incomplete brackets, must try harder!

Yes, wanting to study books written in your young lifetime might be asking a bit much, though I'm sure something suitable could be found.

[Beardy]

When I did my English A level (as a mature student) nearly all our books were by Irish authors!
Oh, and exams. They’re making a comeback in schools, mainly AIUI to stop the little scrotes buying their essays on the interwebs.

[SteveC]

We did a slightly weird Eng. Lit. O level where we studied nine books (obviously not it very great depth) in our pre-exam year. At the end of each month we had one lesson where we did a test under formal exam conditions. These were marked by our teachers (with some sort of moderation) and counted towards the result at the end of the following year.
The nine were three autobiographies, three plays, and three novels. I can remember most of them.

My Childhood, Maxim Gorky (translated from the Russian)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dylan Thomas
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell

Playboy of the Western World, Synge
Roots, Wesker
?

Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
?, Hemingway (may have been short stories)
?

So rather more modern than most, but some of them were still a bit of a grind for a 14 year old

[rafletcher]

Customer help lines. Every single one I have called in the last couple of years has ALWAYS prefaced anything with some version of "We're very busy but you can use the internet to save time". If I could use the internet I would have done so. Yesterday it was the turn of Royal Mail. A very nice woman called Nicky helped me out, then said "if you need to call back it's best in the morning, and after 4pm means a very long wait". "Longer than the 20 minutes I waited this morning?" says I. "Oh, I had gaps in my calls, I'll let "them" know"" says she.  So what's the betting that such organisations are deliberately delaying putting "customers" through to dissuade them from using the phone lines?

[Beardy]

No need to bet, pushing 'customers' to the interwebs is a design feature of all call centre call handling strategies. It’s also a thing to keep you on the interwebs once you’ve found the right page, usually. Y hiding or omitting any help desk number. As a provider of such interfaces I’ve advocated for years that the customers needs are paramout in the delivery of customer service. This has made me unpopular with those that are bonused on their speending of money.