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

[hellymedic]

Evans in Hendon is closing and has a Closing-Down Sale. 20% off everything!

D found some nice winter gloves. They are slightly marked but hey, gloves never stay clean!

D gets home & proudly shows me latest purchase

with fucking security tag still in place…

GGGGRRR!!!

This isn't the first time he's brought tagged gloves home. Last time was Halfraud's

[Cudzoziemiec]

Well those security tags clearly aren't doing their job! D is a master shoplifter! I hope he's got the receipt!

[hellymedic]

I don't know if they somehow get inactivated on the counter, even if not removed.
Certainly no alarms will have sounded...

[Mr Larrington]

Had that with a n ≥ 3 pack of boxers once.  Airport security didn’t pick it up either

[ian]

Came home to find the front living room window broken (the sealed unit is still in place, the outer pane is now crazypaved). No idea. I don’t think I’m engaged in any neighbourhood feud. Could have been a low flying bird. People tend to knock on it rather than the door as it’s by the path to that door. Nothing on the security cam. No brick with a ransom note rubberbanded around it. I took the trebuchet off the cats. Now it’s making a odd crinchycrinchy noise as I lounge by it on the sofa. A mystery for the ages.

[Mr Larrington]

Was once minding my own business at Fort Larrington when there was an almighty "THUMP" as a wood pigeon flew full-tilt into a (double-glazed) window.  It left a sort of greasy vaguely pigeon-shaped smear on the glass but didn't break it.  Went outside to look for a concussed pigeon to have for dinner but it had stumbled off.

If there's any honey in the Asbestos Palace, ian, it was probably BEARS.

[rafletcher]

Came home to find the front living room window broken (the sealed unit is still in place, the outer pane is now crazypaved). No idea. I don’t think I’m engaged in any neighbourhood feud. Could have been a low flying bird. People tend to knock on it rather than the door as it’s by the path to that door. Nothing on the security cam. No brick with a ransom note rubberbanded around it. I took the trebuchet off the cats. Now it’s making a odd crinchycrinchy noise as I lounge by it on the sofa. A mystery for the ages.

Has there been any grass mowing in the vicinity? We’ve had small stones through the greenhouse courtesy of a neighbours mower. And then there’s always random air rifle shots.

[ian]

No, the gardeners weren't around (they did the same to the patio door with some overenthusiastic strimming some time back) and there's really no vicinity to any other gardens. I doubt it's an air rifle as we're not really overlooked and the only angle you could do it from is from down the hill (as we have big fir trees to the front). Someone could have lobbed a stone from the bottom of the drive – we do get very occasional random bits of vandalism, but that's always drunks late at night or the school kids, as we're on a path from one place to another – but daytime Saturday seems a bit unlikely.

We have errant bird strikes before and indeed they usually just a bird-shaped smear, plus it would have been flying very low to hit the bottom of a downstairs window.

It might have been an overzealous rap by Mr Post Office (not that sort of rap), who had attended earlier to leave a parcel, though I don't remember noticing a broken window (and the camera wasn't on) when I headed out, though it's feasible I didn't look back as I scooted down the driveway as it's quite steep and I don't want to fall off before I've left the property. Or some old chip or crack that has been there for a while and the heating cycles of this week did for it. There's no clear sign of anything sharp having it hit the origin point and it at the height where someone would knock on it. I may be fitting the evidence to my theory.

I'd do CSI: Surrey, but the cats are staying shtum under interrogation. They didn't see nuthin. No bears at all. A tad annoying as we're on holiday next week (though not going anywhere far) and now we'll have to mess about getting a glazier in to replace it. Plus it's a bit disconcerting.

[Feanor]

Came home to find the front living room window broken (the sealed unit is still in place, the outer pane is now crazypaved). No idea. I don’t think I’m engaged in any neighbourhood feud. Could have been a low flying bird. People tend to knock on it rather than the door as it’s by the path to that door. Nothing on the security cam. No brick with a ransom note rubberbanded around it. I took the trebuchet off the cats. Now it’s making a odd crinchycrinchy noise as I lounge by it on the sofa. A mystery for the ages.

I've had a double glazed unit fail like that.
Our upstairs balcony is recessed into the house, and it has some large DG units.
One day, one just let out an almighty BANG and the outer pane was crazy-paved like an old fashioned windscreen.

Nothing hit it.  I think it was just internal stresses. I can't remember if it was hot that day or not.
The glazier dude said it was quite a regular occurrence.

[ian]

I'm also suspecting a more innocent failure, the window does sit in the sun in the afternoon, and the silver aluminium blinds behind it were partly closed to keep the temperature in the house down (and it was warm and sunny yesterday afternoon) – this would have reflected some of the sunlight and heat back into the window unit. Plus the temperatures have been fairly extreme in recent days.

[ElyDave]

One of my greenhouse panes broke a few years back, toughened glass, I suspect the frame twisting due to hot and dry condition shrinking the soil differentially

[ian]

I still think there are fair odds that it was the bears firing squirrels at the window with a trebuchet.

[ElyDave]

My trebuchet is in the shed, I checked earlier

[ian]

The bears have their own. And a siege engine made out of wheelie bins.

[chrisbainbridge]

We had a conservatory roof fail like that. Came down to find a whole conservatory roof panel in pieces on the floor.

[ian]

That's the problem, once the bears get on top of the conservatory via their wheelie bin siege engine, the glass won't support them. #MoreMoats.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Your broken window glass might be from something else.
https://www.wintech-group.com/news/2020/04/the-glass-butterfly-effect/

[T42]

We’ve had small stones through the greenhouse courtesy of a neighbours mower.

I got strimmer-shot on my last ride but one. Nice whack on the ankle, great fun.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't know if they somehow get inactivated on the counter, even if not removed.
Certainly no alarms will have sounded...

This is the puzzling bit. Are the tags deactivated by proximity to something in the till? Or are they perhaps more for show, with only a few being active? Or perhaps they're not aimed at shoplifting but warehouse theft and there are no sensors in the shop? Or just that some of them are duds?

[ian]

The usual tradesman palaver – working through the list to get 'we only do entire windows...' Lordy, we can't be the only people in the SE who've needed just the bloody unit replaced. Finally found someone to come around and 'take a look.'

I remember the time we had a new sealed unit with a catflap hole in it, quite a big job as it was for a single pane french door. The glazier made and fitted it and we both looked down upon his work. 'Isn't that a small crack?' says I. Off he goes to make a new one. After pausing to emit some Very Bad Words.

In other grumble news, forms on that internet website. Really, how hard is it to indicate something is missing or incorrect, I appreciate turning the field a faint shade of pastel green is really, erm, useful, but why is it wrong? A hint! A clue! For some reason, it just didn't like autofill (seems to be a thing), typing the exact same data works the same.

Still, the internet website will be great once they've finished it.

[Beardy]

Auto fill often inserts a space in after the data, and bad coding or lack of comprehensive testing often leads to online forms that don’t accept ANYTHING beyond it’s permitted data. Postcode fields are the worst offenders for this.

[Mr Larrington]

Whatever that statue of Paddington BEAR in Norfolk Square Gardens is made from, TV lady, it is most assuredly not “Legos”

[MattH]

Autofill seems to be a problem on some websites now, where they won't believe you've entered something in to a required field if Chrome has done it itself. So you have to click into each field, and type then delete a character so it realises there's something there to check.

I think web designers actively look for innovative usability fails, in an arms race against browser coders.

[TheLurker]

I think web designers actively look for innovative usability fails...

Like the fucking morons who "coded" Oxfam's gift aid ticket printer UI. You (or rather the staff) have to type in leading zeroes to make it up to 8 digits.  It's a fucking number, you don't need leading zeroes and if it's held as a string (despite the fact that it's a *number*) pad it with zeroes when it has been entered.  Sweet suffering baby cheeses, it. is. not. sodding. difficult!  Hmm, sorry, that probably should have been in the rant thread.  As you were.

[mrcharly-YHT]

We have a fancy wifi camera doorbell. Blink, cheap version of Ring from Amazon.

Amazon, that massive rich company. The sort of company, you'd think, capable of paying for and designing software.

The connection system is utter crap. Only one account permitted, so for multiple members of a household to access the doorbell, they have to share a login.

FFS.