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

[TheLurker]

Remote controls that don’t work until you've pressed every button half a dozen times and sworn most vilely at them..

Failure modes in order of probability

1 - The computer in the TV is so underpowered it takes a geological epoch to cotton on to the fact it is being prodded with IR by the magic wand.  Yes, Panasonic I *am* looking at you.

2 - The magic wand's battery is flat

3 - The thin conducting film of graphite/whatever they put on the back of the magic wand's cheap & nasty rubberised keypad to bridge the conductive fingers on the PCB has worn off.

In order of easiness, the following fixes may be applied.

A - Replace the battery

B - Use a butter knife (other tools are available) to prise the casing of the magic wand apart and either paint conductive silver paint (available from Maplins and all other good electronic component suppliers - whaddya mean Maplins is no more?) on the back of the cheap & nasty (did I mention that keypads these days are cheap & nasty rubberised rubbish?) keypad buttons.  At a pinch a 2B pencil may be used instead.

C - Build a time machine (See Hobby Electronics Dec. 2431).  Travel back in time.  Find the pillock who *will* invent Digital TV and kill him utterly to DETH.  Oh and while you're about it kick the father of the sod responsible for DAB as hard as you can in the goolies as well.

[orienteer]

Often find just opening the battery compartment and jiggling the batteries makes them work; probably corrosion on the contacts.

[Mr Larrington]

This is for a NAD amplifier, and requires an unbent paper clip or something to open the battery 'ole.  There may be such a thing – or even a bent one – somewhere in Schloß von Brandenburg but I have no idea where anything as esoteric as that lurks.

“We've got an app for that!” exclaimed NAD's webby SCIENCE.  Yes.  Yes, you have.  And neither the iOS nor Android versions even detect the amp at all.

Bah!

[rafletcher]

A minor grumble. I decided to put my "personalised" registration onto the new-to-me Mazda, seeing how it's a fine day.  All went well until I went to tell my insurer (Churchill) who like many is 90% online.  I tick the box to say I want to change the reg - and it tells me it's processing it, even though I've yet to tell it the new number.  Then I see a date-from box - except it only allows dates from the 24th April, the first day of my next years policy.  So I call up the nice man in South Africa, and it doesn't let him do it either! It was eventually sorted out, but really should be slicker.

[Kim]

My Wahoo devils-lesser-radio(s) cadence sensor appears to have droid rot.  A new flattery and some exploratory reflowing of the solder on the terminals brought the blinkenlight to life, and I can get the Android app to see it over Bluetooth intermittently, but it's failing to pair with the bike computer over Ant+.  Speed and HR sensors are working as expected.

I know, serves me right for not using proper wired computers, but there's a distinct lack of somewhere sensible to mount a cadence reed switch on the bike in question.

[robgul]

A minor grumble. I decided to put my "personalised" registration onto the new-to-me Mazda, seeing how it's a fine day.  All went well until I went to tell my insurer (Churchill) who like many is 90% online.  I tick the box to say I want to change the reg - and it tells me it's processing it, even though I've yet to tell it the new number.  Then I see a date-from box - except it only allows dates from the 24th April, the first day of my next years policy.  So I call up the nice man in South Africa, and it doesn't let him do it either! It was eventually sorted out, but really should be slicker.

. . .  and they presumably charged you a fee?  (and possibly upped the premium as theft of personalised plate vehicles is fraught) - as an aside I was more than pissed off to be charged a fee to change my registered address when I moved house - to an address in the same CV37 6--  level postcode.

[rafletcher]

No, no fee. They are pretty good like that.

[Basil]

The 'Florida Man Bible' thread.
I haven't a clue what any of you are talking about.
I'm aware of the bible.  Never read it.

[Kim]

I read it when I was about 16, to work out what all the fuss was about.  There's some pretty gruesome stuff in there, interspersed with lots of boring bits for which I've mostly recycled the neurons.  So I don't get half the Florida Man references either.

[Basil]

Oh good. I don't feel so alone now.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've read it all in novel form: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/965733.The_Book_of_God

Well, when I say "all", I think lots got left out to make it a novel; most obviously the long lists of genealogies, but quite a lot of other stuff too. Nevertheless, the novelization device is pretty good, makes it a lot more readable. The New Testament was more interesting to me, partly because it's focused on the same set of characters (yeah, more like a novel), partly because it's not full of battles, justifications for rape, torture and murder, and bizarre judgements, but also because it just seems more relevant.

I was given that by a friend who is, not surprisingly, a Catholic – I'm not sure it would work well with Evangelicals.

[Basil]

Interesting.

[rafletcher]

It’s Easter, my first holiday of the year, and I have what has developed (since a slight cough on Wednesday) into a full on snottageddon 

[perpetual dan]

I got a free Easter egg* from work. Some rotter has scoffed it without me getting a look in. And the “super” market has none left**

* Small Cadbury’s one, nothing fancy.
** They sell out of eggs amongst other things every weekend lately. I suppose this is at least consistent.

[rafletcher]

So Gigaclear want to put in place (well, have had granted already) a TTRO daytime (08:00-18:30) road closure on our no-through road village main road. Won't affect the commuters/home workers, of whiuch there are a few, but there are many retired folk in the village who will ne inconvenienced.  There is a suggested diversion, and that on paper looks good. Unfortunately some 100m of it are along an unmade unadopted, massivley potholed private road. One that most of us (save residents, deliveries and those following sat-navs) avoid driving at all costs unless we have 4x4's, the damage is so great, for fear of damaging our cars. 

So I've had a grumble (behave..) to my local councillor, as the last time that route was tried it got recinded as the unadopted status means no automatic right of way it doesn't belong to the council, so it couldn't (at that time at least) can't be used as part of a diversion.

[SoreTween]

Labels, sigh.

1. Mr Range Ltd, sticking the label to your non-stick kitchen products with STAB¹ glue is unhelpful and calls into question the non-stick qualities of your product.  5 days I've been carefully peeling small areas of label off my new baking tray each time I await the kettle and I guesstimate 3 to go. Also, printing unknown instructions on the reverse of the label, of which I have naturally only seen tiny fragments, is fantastic optimism.

2. Mr Producer of Princes reduced fat corned beef. Nice product. Apart from the label which appears to be printed on adamantium sheet. I quickly have up with nails trying to find the key tab.  After bending two knives, one of which I liked, I left the tin in water for two hours for the label to soften. Missing lunch time entirely. It was barely sufficient time.

#simpleThingsMadeNeedlesslyHard

¹ like S#1t to a blanket

[L CC]

reduced fat corned beef. Nice product.

What? WHAT?

[Kim]

I ate my lifetime's quota of corned beef before the age of 5 (living in ABROAD, where refrigeration was not to be relied on), so the very thought of the stuff generally makes me want to boke, but reducing the fat doesn't seem like a terrible idea?  Might be less slimy bits...

[T42]

I once met a bloke who had fond memories of UK forces and their copious supplies of le cornèd boeuf.  I suppose it was heaven after rutabagas. I occasionally think I'd like some then, having got it, try a slice and nearly throw up.  Makes me wish we still had dogs.

[Mrs Pingu]

What has happened to C4News these days? If it's not wall to wall vox pops, today it was more like BBC News24 rolling nothing happening waiting for Biden to appear.

[ian]

I love corned beef. With all the fat. I don't know what it is though and I figure I'm better off not asking. I'm still recovering from learning, at age twelve, that tongue was actual tongue, a great lolling thing that slithered across the butcher's block.

[Pingu]

Dangerous stuff

[robgul]

Light in the fridge-freezer packed up last week - emailed Siemens to get part number and replacement (LED thing) - they said has to be fixed by a technician but FOC as it's less than 3 years old and five year warranty - man will come on Weds 11.   Excellent news.

Man turns up - looks at light . .  "It's not working, I'll have to order one"  WTF?  . ..  worse still it's on back-order from Germany and takes 2 weeks  - slight upside is that he did make another appointment.
 

[T42]

Light in the fridge-freezer packed up last week - emailed Siemens to get part number and replacement (LED thing) - they said has to be fixed by a technician but FOC as it's less than 3 years old and five year warranty - man will come on Weds 11.   Excellent news.

Man turns up - looks at light . .  "It's not working, I'll have to order one"  WTF?  . ..  worse still it's on back-order from Germany and takes 2 weeks  - slight upside is that he did make another appointment.

Reminds me of old Trident disc drives, things that weighed over a hundred kilos and held 25 Mb of data.  The company I worked for, who i.a. sold the things, once provided one for a tech course run by one of our dealers.  The instructor told his class, correctly, that "you never remove this bit here because if you do it'll break, and it takes months to get a new one".  So he did, and it did, and it did.

[Giraffe]

The technical term is Provocative Maintenance - working well, serviced, breaks down. Usually takes longer, so that the techie has time to get a long way away.