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

[L CC]

In a non-technical grumble a repeat of the "why when I find a product I like is it then almost immediately discontinued" grumble.

Today's iteration: Kit & Caboodle Leave In Conditioner. It worked, it got rid of the chlorine and it wasn't massively overpriced (Trihard toiletries, I'm looking at you, you gouging bastids).

Sigh.

[Feanor]

Playing games with times in Excel is one of the least fun things you can do this side of the Tory Party conference.

Yes. As timelord for our local club TT series, I have to wrangle times in a spreadsheet quite a lot.

For me, the biggest issue was that excel can't handle negative times by default.
And I need to.
I need to calculate veterans's times against a 'standard', and they can be plus(faster) or minus(slower) than the target time.

The underlying reason is that excel converts anything that looks vaguely like a time into a 'serial number' under the hood. This is I think an un-signed integer. This serial number is then displayed back to you in the format you select in the cell formatting. Due to the underlying data being un-signed, it can't go negative.

The solution is to set the spreadsheet to use the '1904' date system.
This applies an offset, or bias, to the serial numbers, allowing us to go negative by up to (I think) 4 years.

(You need to set the date system in the first instance, before entering any dates/times, otherwise it re-interprets the existing serial numbers and then displays them as 4 years out! A work-around is to export the column of dates/times as text, then re-import them once the date system has been changed.)

[Mr Larrington]

Also three times during the course of two hours Excel randomly decided to add sixty seconds to a lap.  Then realised its mistake or something and subtracted sixty seconds from the following one.  Giving lap times of 78 and -42 seconds, neither of which is entirely convincing on a 250 metre track.  Add to that the mystery four seconds on the stopwatch and on the whole I'm glad we’re relying on the velodrome system which just required paste, add lap times, convert sum to sensible format.

[Kim]

The underlying reason is that excel converts anything that looks vaguely like a time into a 'serial number' under the hood. This is I think an un-signed integer. This serial number is then displayed back to you in the format you select in the cell formatting. Due to the underlying data being un-signed, it can't go negative.

AIUI, it's days since 1900, and then fractions of a day.  Because god forbid anyone would want to do integer arithmetic on seconds.  Except when whatever created the spreadsheet decided to make the time fields strings, in which case you've got to parse them first.

There's a reason I forked CrossMgr and started learning Python...

[Beardy]

Isn’t the base date somewhere in 1970? What with Dos being based on CP/M and CP/M being unix based I thought they all used the same start date.

[Kim]

Isn’t the base date somewhere in 1970? What with Dos being based on CP/M and CP/M being unix based I thought they all used the same start date.

That's the Unix epoch, which all right-minded systems use.  Not because it's a particularly sensible date, but because it's the de-facto standard and counting seconds makes it relatively easy to work with.

Having just looked this up, it seems that Excel's special snowflake epoch was chosen for bug-for-bug compatibility^[-1] with Lotus 1-2-3^[1].  And, just to be different, Windows uses 1601.
There's a lovely Wikipedia page full of this shit:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(computing)


_{[-1] It gets the leap years wrong.
[1] Note for young people: The Betamax^[2] of spreadsheets.
[2] If you're a Young Person, you'll regard anything with a tape in it with the suspicion it deserves.}

[andyoxon]

Possibly should be FWPs, but bloke engrossed in his mobile, walking his dog past our place.  Dog wanders across our grass pees on the shrubbery next to house, joins it's master down the path...  If it had tried to cr*p on the lawn, I'd have been out there... 

[Mr Larrington]

Note to self: read the instructions on the back of the bottle of windscreen washer fluid before refilling the reservoir.  Still, if climate change means -70 C in the next year or so at least the Fast-Appreciating Future Classic will still have a sparkly windscreen.

[Jurek]

I bought a tree lopper online at the end of May.
At the beginning of this week I emailed them to ask when I'm likely to receive it.
They emailed back straight away, informing me that they were expecting it on June 30th and would send them out straight away.
Yesterday I had an email from someone who introduced themselves as an administrator and advised me that the lopper vendor had gone into liquidation and pending orders would not be completed.
Gah!

I've just had the replacement loppers delivered to my place of work.
They're too long to put on any of the three trains I use to get home 

[MattH]

The quality of BBC reporting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-66181262

 Lead photograph for the the article is of "The men's peloton race took place on Wednesday". Good to know that the reporter fully understands the sport they are talking about.

[ElyDave]

After the Faran rebuild I can't find my 4mm driver for my torque wrench, bugger.

Checked the bin as I emptied it, not there.

[andrewc]

Chewing a slightly over toasted crumpet this morning & managed to damage a filled molar.   Dentist can't fit me in until a week on Monday.  I'm hoping it can be repaired.

[rafletcher]

Chewing a slightly over toasted crumpet this morning & managed to damage a filled molar.   Dentist can't fit me in until a week on Monday.  I'm hoping it can be repaired.

If you can, opt for the “ceramic” white filling. It bonds to the enamel and holds the remaining tooth together better than amalgam.

[hellymedic]

Then the bloody binmen came round at 0500 and again at twenty past - H&S forbids doing both sides of a street in a single pass, doubtless because Mummy never taught them to cross a road. Yrs trly is p'd off and knackered.

What a ridiculous regulation.

That depends on the road. It’s possible a regulation that exists to protect the bin men on a dangerous road on the route, but the manager responsible for H&S has just applied the rule to the whole route for simplicity.

Our street is a bus route and emergency vehicle route, so such a rule would make sense here. T42's in Frane so they migh have different rules. Our bin men come after 7am anyway.

[ElyDave]

After the Faran rebuild I can't find my 4mm driver for my torque wrench, bugger.

Checked the bin as I emptied it, not there.

Found it, when I got off the bike today, I noticed it dangling out of the rear break mount, must have detatched from the handle when I finished centring and tightening the brake.  How it stayed there for the subsequent 300km or so of riding I have no idea.

[T42]

Then the bloody binmen came round at 0500 and again at twenty past - H&S forbids doing both sides of a street in a single pass, doubtless because Mummy never taught them to cross a road. Yrs trly is p'd off and knackered.

What a ridiculous regulation.

That depends on the road. It’s possible a regulation that exists to protect the bin men on a dangerous road on the route, but the manager responsible for H&S has just applied the rule to the whole route for simplicity.

Our street is a bus route and emergency vehicle route, so such a rule would make sense here. T42's in Frane so they migh have different rules. Our bin men come after 7am anyway.

That's a rule we could do with.

[Mr Larrington]

Then the bloody binmen came round at 0500 and again at twenty past - H&S forbids doing both sides of a street in a single pass, doubtless because Mummy never taught them to cross a road. Yrs trly is p'd off and knackered.

What a ridiculous regulation.

That depends on the road. It’s possible a regulation that exists to protect the bin men on a dangerous road on the route, but the manager responsible for H&S has just applied the rule to the whole route for simplicity.

Our street is a bus route and emergency vehicle route, so such a rule would make sense here. T42's in Frane so they migh have different rules. Our bin men come after 7am anyway.

That's a rule we could do with.

Pre-plague ours used to come at about 05:30 but now it’s more likely to be mid-afternoon.  I think their second jobs driving minicabs dried up during lockdown.

[Beardy]

In an unusual turn of events, Dr Beardy wants me to go to the pub this evening to represent her at an event being run by my local for MIND in honour of our friends son. I went to the pub last night with my buddy and really don’t feel like going out this evening. I even left a fiver with the bar staff last night for the collection, but the bosss lady still wants me to go.

Grumbles.

[Polar Bear]

Travel by public transport they say because it is blah, blah, blah, blah, good for the environment.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, reduces congestion.  Blah, blah, blah, blah ...

We'll, I do tend to agree but it has become incredibly unreliable.  We took the train to Northampton today to visit 78 Derngate.  It was an interesting 2 hours followed by a very acceptable lunch at Nuovo.

And then we went for the train to return home.  It should run at half hourly intervals but 3 had already been cancelled due to a derailment in the tunnel between Northampton and Rugby.  Quickly reassessing the lack of rail replacement buses I check and discover an ordinary bus making the journey due in about 10 minutes.  30 minutes later it turned up ...   

How do we ever expect people to stop using their cars with such appalling levels of service? 

[Pingu]

After the Faran rebuild I can't find my 4mm driver for my torque wrench, bugger.

Checked the bin as I emptied it, not there.

Found it, when I got off the bike today, I noticed it dangling out of the rear break mount, must have detatched from the handle when I finished centring and tightening the brake.  How it stayed there for the subsequent 300km or so of riding I have no idea.

Good effort 

[davelodwig]

Travel by public transport they say because it is blah, blah, blah, blah, good for the environment.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, reduces congestion.  Blah, blah, blah, blah ...

We'll, I do tend to agree but it has become incredibly unreliable.  We took the train to Northampton today to visit 78 Derngate.  It was an interesting 2 hours followed by a very acceptable lunch at Nuovo.

And then we went for the train to return home.  It should run at half hourly intervals but 3 had already been cancelled due to a derailment in the tunnel between Northampton and Rugby.  Quickly reassessing the lack of rail replacement buses I check and discover an ordinary bus making the journey due in about 10 minutes.  30 minutes later it turned up ...   

How do we ever expect people to stop using their cars with such appalling levels of service?

The bus was probably delayed by all the cars.

[cycleman]

A week after I reported the sun ez 3 recumbent tricycle stolen I received a phone call from the police asking for a picture and details of the trike. Just makes me wonder if they have been looking out for it at all since it was stolen Saturday week 

[Polar Bear]

Travel by public transport they say because it is blah, blah, blah, blah, good for the environment.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, reduces congestion.  Blah, blah, blah, blah ...

We'll, I do tend to agree but it has become incredibly unreliable.  We took the train to Northampton today to visit 78 Derngate.  It was an interesting 2 hours followed by a very acceptable lunch at Nuovo.

And then we went for the train to return home.  It should run at half hourly intervals but 3 had already been cancelled due to a derailment in the tunnel between Northampton and Rugby.  Quickly reassessing the lack of rail replacement buses I check and discover an ordinary bus making the journey due in about 10 minutes.  30 minutes later it turned up ...   

How do we ever expect people to stop using their cars with such appalling levels of service?

The bus was probably delayed by all the cars.

A perfectly reasonable deduction imo. 

[ian]

Living close to the start of a bus route ought to alleviate any hassles, but it doesn't, because the marvellous London Transport bus tracking technology only knows when the bus leaves its starting point, otherwise it defaults to the confabulation of the timetable. Sadly, there's a 30-second gap between the time it takes for me to briskly walk to the stop than for the bus to get there. It's not 30 seconds in my favour when the bus leaves and starts the clock.

It would be good if it followed the timetable, as there's a bus every 10 minutes, but reality can mean a 30-minute wait. Given the halving of the train service to a 2 trains a hour, and the general fact that no one gives a shit about the behaviour of people on public transport any more, it didn't ought to be a surprise that most people opt for the car. Getting the train or bus these days feels more of a duty than an option.

[PhilO]

A week after I reported the sun ez 3 recumbent tricycle stolen I received a phone call from the police asking for a picture and details of the trike. Just makes me wonder if they have been looking out for it at all since it was stolen Saturday week 

With luck it might mean that they've recovered something that they think might be it?

Although if that was the case I assume that they'd have said so and/or you'd have been back to say by now...