Author Topic: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.  (Read 1576312 times)

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
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Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10750 on: 17 January, 2019, 08:31:28 pm »
Only male at the exercise class again.

And again.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10751 on: 22 January, 2019, 07:04:41 pm »
The water is off (burst water main). I've just got back from a spin class and am disgustingly sweaty, but I can't shower. :sick:

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10752 on: 22 January, 2019, 07:46:32 pm »
Water outages always pick the worst possible time...

That reminds me:  Regular readers will have seen me grumbling about a shortage of voles at KimBarakta HQ.  It appears that we are now additionally suffering from an intermittent case of Crappy BRITISH Water Pressure™.

I'm wondering if we should regard this as practice for brexit, or whether - like brexit - we should adopt a policy of ignoring the problem in the hope that it goes away.


Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10753 on: 23 January, 2019, 12:20:58 pm »
Tripped and threw tea all down my front this morning; just took the baselayer I was wearing out of the wash and it's stained it  >:(

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10754 on: 23 January, 2019, 01:38:09 pm »
Water outages always pick the worst possible time...

That reminds me:  Regular readers will have seen me grumbling about a shortage of voles at KimBarakta HQ.  It appears that we are now additionally suffering from an intermittent case of Crappy BRITISH Water Pressure™.

I'm wondering if we should regard this as practice for brexit, or whether - like brexit - we should adopt a policy of ignoring the problem in the hope that it goes away.

Kim, given both your various medical needs I would strongly advise contacting both your elec supplier and STW to get put on the priority / vulnerable  customer lists. Most of the sensitive electronics in your house are adaptations for those that have less than perfect hearing aren't they.

Loss of water pressure to vulnerable customers is a significant no no.

Kim

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Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10755 on: 23 January, 2019, 02:00:16 pm »
We're on the water company's list, on the basis that if I'm not here, barakta's ability to carry water home from the shop at the end of the road isn't something she can rely on.  So far this has resulted in one random delivery of bottled water before some works that didn't actually cause an outage.  The brief outages (including that caused by nextdoor's builders[1]) we have had haven't been long enough to be a problem.

The electricity supply has been pretty reliable, even during the Great Selly Oak Substation Meltdown of 2012 it was only off for a couple of hours.  The worst we normally get is a glitch that's enough to set off every burglar alarm in the area, but not long enough to cause computers to reboot.

But the voltage has been creeping down since Christmas.  Yesterday's stats (accumulated from 5-minutely readings of the not-especially-calibrated UPS) give: Average:230.79V Max:243.10V Min:206.18V.  I saw a minimum of 209V when I left a decent multimeter logging at 1-second intervals over the evening peak the other day.  I suppose that's out of spec enough to be worth reporting...

ETA: I plotted a graph.  Averages of averages, so don't read much into the actual figures.  I note a correlation with university term starting on the 14th, but the overall trend is longer-term than that...



I think I'll wait until next week though, in the interests of random engineers not turning up and confusing barakta while I'm away over the weekend.

(Which is what happened when I reported a water leak that I discovered on a country lane a while ago:  It seems that information submitted via the handy click-on-the-map and verbal description bits of Severn Trent's leak reporting web form doesn't actually make it to the engineers, so they turned up to my home address expecting to find a leak instead.)



[1] As soon as I spotted the water main in the hole they were digging I filled some water carriers.  That they broke the pipe was entirely consistent with their level of competence up to (and indeed after) that point.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10756 on: 24 January, 2019, 09:01:24 am »
The brief outages (including that caused by nextdoor's builders[1]) we have had haven't been long enough to be a problem.
We've had a couple of those recently with the bonus that the builders were actually plumbers, who had turned the mains off as needed for their work. Except they turned the wrong stop cock off. The bonus bonus being that the same plumbers had previously done some work on our place...  :facepalm:
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10757 on: 24 January, 2019, 10:51:02 am »
I keep reading outage as outrage. The one leads to the other, I suppose.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
  • Help me!
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10758 on: 24 January, 2019, 08:17:09 pm »
Only male at the exercise class again.

And again.

Nuvver bloke!

Ratio reduced from 15/1 to 7/1.
(Nothing wrong with my maths. Mrs B  didn't go tonight)
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10759 on: 24 January, 2019, 10:44:55 pm »
Only male at the exercise class again.

And again.

Nuvver bloke!

Ratio reduced from 15/1 to 7/1.
(Nothing wrong with my maths. Mrs B  didn't go tonight)

Given my cycling group version of the Bechdel-Wallace test[1], I have to ask:  Was he called John?   ;D


[1] "Are there more women than people called John?"

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
  • Help me!
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10760 on: 24 January, 2019, 11:12:31 pm »
He wasn't.  I had that covered.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10761 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:22:55 pm »
Subtitles on streaming services. AGAIN.

ITV player continues to be crap because they don’t update the native TV apps to support subtitles.

But I’ve come across another annoyance, this time with Netflix.This is a surprise because they have consistently been in the lead with subtitle provision. As a consequence of having to widen our search for stuff that we both want to watch, we’ve started watching shows recorded in languages from various foreign that are subtitled rather than dubbed, for the none foreign speaking engelesh. This doesn’t bother me because I rely on the subtitles in any case. BUT but. Netflix (for it must be them or their specs because this is on ‘Netflix original content’)have decided in their infinite wisdom that when subtitling a foreign language film for the none foreign speaking engelesh they don’t need to provide subtitles to replace those in foreign when the characters are speaking English.
The bastards.
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10762 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:27:10 pm »
Bonus points for using the hearing impaired closed captions stream to superimpose "[SPEAKING $LANGUAGE]" over the open caption translation, so you can't read it.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10763 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:32:09 pm »
Subtitles on streaming services. AGAIN.

ITV player continues to be crap because they don’t update the native TV apps to support subtitles.

But I’ve come across another annoyance, this time with Netflix.This is a surprise because they have consistently been in the lead with subtitle provision. As a consequence of having to widen our search for stuff that we both want to watch, we’ve started watching shows recorded in languages from various foreign that are subtitled rather than dubbed, for the none foreign speaking engelesh. This doesn’t bother me because I rely on the subtitles in any case. BUT but. Netflix (for it must be them or their specs because this is on ‘Netflix original content’)have decided in their infinite wisdom that when subtitling a foreign language film for the none foreign speaking engelesh they don’t need to provide subtitles to replace those in foreign when the characters are speaking English.
The bastards.
Sounds like you've got plain translation captions there.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10764 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:35:21 pm »
Subtitles on streaming services. AGAIN.

ITV player continues to be crap because they don’t update the native TV apps to support subtitles.

But I’ve come across another annoyance, this time with Netflix.This is a surprise because they have consistently been in the lead with subtitle provision. As a consequence of having to widen our search for stuff that we both want to watch, we’ve started watching shows recorded in languages from various foreign that are subtitled rather than dubbed, for the none foreign speaking engelesh. This doesn’t bother me because I rely on the subtitles in any case. BUT but. Netflix (for it must be them or their specs because this is on ‘Netflix original content’)have decided in their infinite wisdom that when subtitling a foreign language film for the none foreign speaking engelesh they don’t need to provide subtitles to replace those in foreign when the characters are speaking English.
The bastards.
Sounds like you've got plain translation captions there.
I believe so, but it would seem that having provided those, Netflix didn’t deem it necessary to revisit the programmes to provide hard of hearing subtitles. I looked!
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Kim

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Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10765 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:40:03 pm »
Always seems daft that you'd provide one but not the other.  It can't be that much extra work to stick in the odd [phone rings] and [car approaches].

There's a middle ground in the fan-generated subtitling world where they subtitle all speech (and sometimes onscreen text) in the original language to serve as a basis for volunteer translation.  The result can be remarkably thorough, while completely omitting captions for non-speech sounds.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10766 on: 28 January, 2019, 09:58:11 pm »
I don't know what Netflix policy is, but many studios/channels will have English and English (SDH) as separate options.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10767 on: 29 January, 2019, 08:36:24 am »
Watched a thing last week where every bit of recent music was given its full title & performer credits in the SDH subtitles, but classical music just got [classical music].

Watching Netflix in France is a bit weird. Foreign films often have French subtitles only, so we find ourselves watching films with English audio and French subtitles.  MrsT needs them but I can usually get along without; but I find them impossible to ignore so I'm always comparing the translation with what was said.  It's amazing how much shorter the text can get when fuck and fucking are left out.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10768 on: 29 January, 2019, 06:34:03 pm »
Fairly standard in translation though; 'Go fuck yourself and die, you shit-sucking motherfucker' becomes the local equivalent of 'go away, you cad' in the subtitles. This occasionally leads to people who learned colloquial English from film captions massively underestimating how strong a particular epithet actually is...

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10769 on: 29 January, 2019, 07:26:37 pm »
This occasionally leads to people who learned colloquial English from film captions massively underestimating how strong a particular epithet actually is...

I don't think it's just captioning that's responsible for this phenomenon, but it's certainly an endearing feature of FOREIGNS and other non-native English speakers.

ian

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10770 on: 30 January, 2019, 07:46:49 pm »
So, on the way back from the pool, I do my civic duty and sprinkle a few buckets of grit on the hill because it's getting slippery. Did any of the drivers of the several cars that passed, whose safe passage up and down that hill I'm facilitating, even acknowledge me, maybe a brief appreciative nod at my efforts?

I think you know the answer.

I've given up expecting any of the fiftyish houses back there for taking a few minutes themselves, it's mostly me or the local councillors who live up the road.

On the plus side, the two pedestrians said 'thank you.'

Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
  • Help me!
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10771 on: 31 January, 2019, 07:08:03 am »
Bugger me.  It's cold.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10772 on: 31 January, 2019, 07:38:56 am »
No. Not even to keep you warm.

andytheflyer

  • Andytheex-flyer.....
Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10773 on: 31 January, 2019, 08:33:24 am »
So, on the way back from the pool, I do my civic duty and sprinkle a few buckets of grit on the hill because it's getting slippery. Did any of the drivers of the several cars that passed, whose safe passage up and down that hill I'm facilitating, even acknowledge me, maybe a brief appreciative nod at my efforts?

I think you know the answer.

I've given up expecting any of the fiftyish houses back there for taking a few minutes themselves, it's mostly me or the local councillors who live up the road.

On the plus side, the two pedestrians said 'thank you.'

Not just me then.  I live on a close of  10 houses - all the residents are getting on, with hip replacements etc, except three.  Me and 2 others.  The close is on a slight slope, not much, but more than enough to stop you getting up it in a car once some irresponsible s*d has driven over it and packed the snow down into the brick paviours. 

In the 28 years we've been here, it's only ever been me that clears the snow sufficient to have an un-iced strip to get up the slope.  And in all that time, I can't recall anyone saying thanks as they drive past on a newly-cleared strip whilst I'm clearing the stuff.  Bastards.

ian

Re: The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.
« Reply #10774 on: 31 January, 2019, 08:42:26 am »
Well, it's a 25% hill, so pretty much unnavigable in snow/ice unless it's gritted. There are around fifty houses back there and I'd guess the majority of them reliant on their cars to get anywhere. I've never seen anyone grit the hill except me and our two local councillors. Possibly they don't want to go work and we're spoiling it for them.

Same in our last place, a private street, we (as management company directors) would do the snow clearing and gritting. At least we'd get the occasional thanks for that. One of the residents asked why we didn't just hire someone. Because snow faeries are readily available. Same person, mind, who used to complain about the management fees.

It's society really, in my experience, of every ten people: two do, seven watch, and one complains.