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

[matthew]

Are the bureaucrats so remote that they have never heard of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease?

Yes.

You'd be unsurprised at what non-medically knowledgeable people do not know.  Or indeed medics sometimes if ATOS stories of horror are to be believed!

I'm Sorry but to me PID is a Piping and Instumentation Diagram.

[tiermat]

To me it's Process ID...

[Basil]

PID.  Personal Identification Device.
It's the smartcard I log in with on any 'puter to bring up my profile and desktop.

[Jaded]

Mordor trains.

Why do you randomly turn round? Sometimes you go out the way you came in and sometimes you don't.

It means I never know if I have to play musical chairs until you start moving.

[clarion]

Are the bureaucrats so remote that they have never heard of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease?

Yes.

You'd be unsurprised at what non-medically knowledgeable people do not know.  Or indeed medics sometimes if ATOS stories of horror are to be believed!

I'm Sorry but to me PID is a Piping and Instumentation Diagram.

To me it's Process ID...

PID.  Personal Identification Device.
It's the smartcard I log in with on any 'puter to bring up my profile and desktop.

To be fair, none of you work in an environment where Pelvic Inflammatory Disease is a particular issue.

[Andrij]

Project Initiation Document.

[hellymedic]

I just don't *do* Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs).

I don't know if UPS means a computer works with no mains leckie or the men in brown are delivering a package. As my sister's English teacher wrote in red when marking her work: "Don't use abbrevs!"

[Oaky]

How about ETLAs?

[mcshroom]

Project Initiation Document.

Peoplesoft ID here

[Kim]

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/sdb, 2 Offline uncorrectable sectors

For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/syslog).

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.

Anyone not backed up their data in the last 24 hours?  You're all going to die!  The disk fairy's on the move...   

[Jacomus]

Project Initiation Document.

Peoplesoft ID here

Positive IDentificaiton (of Bad Guys before you are allowed to shoot at them)

[Wombat]

Personal Infotainment Device, to owners of new Skoda Citigos.  (in English, a box thingy wot is a satnav, MP3 player, additional instruments for the car, and a trip computer thingy.)

[Jacomus]

Pick the correct way to call a lift:

Option 1:
Press both up and down buttons, wait for a lift to arrive and if it is going in the incorrect direction to suit your wish, grumble that the lifts in this place are useless.

Option 2:
Press only the direction you wish to travel in. Get in the lift. Get out at your destination.

[Kim]

I'm convinced that there's also...

Option 3: Tap in the ^_SEEKRIT lift controller programmer's pass code.  Wait while the closest lift forgets what it's doing and moves straight to your floor to head in the direction of choice.

I mean, you would, wouldn't you?  Anyone looked at any lift controller firmware?

[rafletcher]

How on earth can a multi-national enginnering manufacturing company with a huge installed customer base of machines NOT have a plan to cope with one measly fibre-optic comms cable being trashed, and so be without email / IP phones for 36 hours, hmm?

[Kim]

Same way a Russell Group university can go without mains electricity for two and a half weeks, I expect.

[LindaG]

Gotta go work now. Don't wanna.

[barakta]

Pick the correct way to call a lift:

Option 1:
Press both up and down buttons, wait for a lift to arrive and if it is going in the incorrect direction to suit your wish, grumble that the lifts in this place are useless.

Option 2:
Press only the direction you wish to travel in. Get in the lift. Get out at your destination.

Correct way to design a lift:

1) The way normal lifts work.  Call lift, get in, press floor number for destination of choice.

2) Have a stupid destination pad OUTside the vestibule for the lift which visually shows which lift will take you to your floor.  Hope the user has no visual impairment or short term memory impairment (e.g 10% of people have these) as the user has to remember which lift while shoving through crowds and hope they get to their lift in time before it gets reallocated.  It's a HORRID feeling not having any control of where the lift goes from inside the damned lift.

I have minimal memory issues and I can only remember which lift I am allocated by holding the American Fingerspelling Alphabet letter for the correct lift on my right hand as I shove through the crowds.  My blind colleague can't use the building as there are no receptionists as per design spec.

It might be more efficient, but it's a fucking horrible user interface which usually makes me swear every time I use it.  The least they could do it put the pre-request floor destination thing in the lift vestibule!  Although if there is NO damned floor 0 then don't have a fucking zero button on the sodding thingers.

hate hate hate...

[CrinklyLion]

Now really, when you are on a cattle class service stopping at EM Parkway, and 90% of the seats have reserved tickets on them, and it is a connecting service to St Pancras, did you really think that piling your belongings on the unreserved seat next to you slightly obsessively tidily would mean you'd get a double seat to yourself? Seriously? If you did you are daft or dim. If you didn't it's no shock to be asked if someone was sitting there. So take the look of aggrieved affront off your face hinny.

[matthew]

Dear Sisters Cat,

I know you are a spoilt, pampered, pet. Evidence here I am staying at her house to keep you company whilst she is on holiday. however 5:30am alarm calls to feed you breakfast or you'll destroy the carpet is not on.

Go back to sleep you pest.

[reddo]

*seeth*
Ordered some stuff online and it was supposed to be delivered on Fri past. Checked online. Delivered delayed because it couldn't find the address. Really? You're UK Mail and you've successfully delivered here before! The house has only been here for 10 years on a road that's been here for probably hundreds more and the village has been here for 1,000 years. 

Ring the delivery people today, much tut tutting. He'll make some calls and see if he can sort it. No further info online. Grrrrrr wankerz.

[David Martin]

Same way a Russell Group university can go without mains electricity for two and a half weeks, I expect.

We had an interesting power outage when the campus power station and the national grid had a small contretemps, leading to mutual separation and expulsion of a considerable amount of MAGIC SMOKE. The knock on effects were 1/3 of Dundee going dark for about 5 hours and the power station being rendered off line due to a large HOLE where the interconnect used to be. The fact that said HOLE was between NG and Uni, and between Uni power station and Uni led to a bit of minor panic as the emergency generators are rated for 8 hours, which was about long enough to round up some serious generators to bring essential services back on line to run over the weekend. The hole was bridged by means of appropriate metalwork but it was 3 months before the interconnect was replaced with a shiny new bunker.

Yes it was a hell of a bang when it went.

[David Martin]

UK Fail? expecting an exchange for a bust parcel last tuesday. No show, but cards through the door on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

[Kim]

I know you are a spoilt, pampered, pet. Evidence here I am staying at her house to keep you company whilst she is on holiday. however 5:30am alarm calls to feed you breakfast or you'll destroy the carpet is not on.

I never understood why people feed their cats in the morning^[1].  Unless they're little or need medication, they're quite happy with one meal a day, and you're already out of bed in the evening.


_{[1] Though, TBH, I've never really understood why people do anything in the morning.  Stupid time of day.}

[reddo]

@David.  Bugga...