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

[perpetual dan]

Eyes have got slightly worse. Bank account has got more than slightly lower. And they had the cheek to give me a voucher for a hearing aid.

[Ham]

*For those that may be interested look up the Vintage Model Company.  I recommend them to anyone else, like me, fully embarked on his or her second childhood.

Not INTERESTED AT ALL. Go away.


Mind you....

[Basil]

A coal tit has nested in the lintel arch of my bedroom window.   The noisy little bugger starts his monotonous constant cheeping at 5am.  It's surprisingly loud but I can't sleep with the window closed.
Now, I'm not one to waste his entire Sunday morning in bed, but today chirpy chirpy cheep cheep began at 5.  Soon joined by Jeremy Corvid. At 6, the dog is flinging itself against the bedroom door desperate for the garden.  Then at 8, some git is chainsawing across the valley.

It's too late to do anything about the coal tit nest, but he won't be doing that next year.

[TheLurker]

*For those that may be interested look up the Vintage Model Company.  I recommend them to anyone else, like me, fully embarked on his or her second childhood.

Not INTERESTED AT ALL. Go away.


Mind you....

Ha ha. Gotcha!

[Kim]

A coal tit has nested in the lintel arch of my bedroom window.   The noisy little bugger starts his monotonous constant cheeping at 5am.  It's surprisingly loud but I can't sleep with the window closed.
Now, I'm not one to waste his entire Sunday morning in bed, but today chirpy chirpy cheep cheep began at 5.  Soon joined by Jeremy Corvid. At 6, the dog is flinging itself against the bedroom door desperate for the garden.  Then at 8, some git is chainsawing across the valley.

It's too late to do anything about the coal tit nest, but he won't be doing that next year.

I refer to Postman Piers's views on the subject:

Loads of [deaf people who get a Cochlear implant] are delighted to hear birdsong for the first time.  I say shoot the fuckers.

Having spent much of the morning with my head buried under a pillow (on account of builders rather than birdlife), I'm envying anyone whose hearing comes with an off switch.

[ElyDave]

You have my sympathy. I'd lend you one of mine but at 4ft by 2ft I can hardly lift them (old worktop plus a couple of layers of cork tiles) let alone send one to you!

But thanks for that link - didn't know of them.  Are you going to do  build diary?

Thanks for the thought, but for the small fry that I build 4'x2' is probably a wee bit on the big side.

Diary? Yeah, same as I did for VMC Osprey.  Here

I use an old chipboard shelf, with a pinboard and cork on top

[Morat]

Directline car insewerants renewal as almost exactly DOUBLE the cost of last year's policy at £750!!
Sod that. 5 minutes with the meerkats and I have a new policy for £200 which wasn't even the cheapest but had the bits I wanted. The only difference is the lack of Green Flag but that was over £60 from Directline so hardly discounted at all. I may as well buy the decent version under a separate policy instead of a stupid 10 mile recovery distance which is useless opp norf.

Ripoff artistes

[CAMRAMan]

Well, if I didn't know before, I now know what they think of me at work. I applied for a role I could do with my eyes shut and with a good word from someone I've worked with with for two years, and I didn't even get shortlisted. Time for an exit strategy, methinks.

[Basil]

Hanging baskets automatic watering systems.  Not great if you are having an fag while sitting on the window sill out the front of the pub.   

And there was me, trying to be a good boy, having sat well away from the door.    

[Kim]

Not great if you leave your pannier open either.  (DAHIKT)

[hellymedic]

Xdp express couriers: your delivery tracking and information was spot on but why oh why oh why do you send emails consisting of black text on 90% dark grey background?
I had to highlight the text to read it. Black on white is fine and white on black is OK if you must.
Black on dark grey is not smart and not clever.

[T42]

Cumquat of a Bricomarché** serf, what part of "grain running parallel to the long side" is so difficult to understand that you cut my plywood order with it running perpendicular to the aforesaid?  And why get shirty when I chuckle at the perversity of fate as personified by your theoretically good self, and tell you to have another go?

**chain of rather poor DIY shops in France, motto: we have everything you don't need.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Xdp express couriers: your delivery tracking and information was spot on but why oh why oh why do you send emails consisting of black text on 90% dark grey background?
I had to highlight the text to read it. Black on white is fine and white on black is OK if you must.
Black on dark grey is not smart and not clever.

A similar but opposite grumble is to be had at some of GWR's timetables, which have maps printed in white on pale grey. I have pretty good eyesight but even so I at first thought "why does this one not have a map like all the others?". It looked a blank, pale grey page. Apparently this was a genuine error by the printers – it was meant to be black on pale grey.

[Kim]

Xdp express couriers: your delivery tracking and information was spot on but why oh why oh why do you send emails consisting of black text on 90% dark grey background?
I had to highlight the text to read it. Black on white is fine and white on black is OK if you must.
Black on dark grey is not smart and not clever.

A similar but opposite grumble is to be had at some of GWR's timetables, which have maps printed in white on pale grey. I have pretty good eyesight but even so I at first thought "why does this one not have a map like all the others?". It looked a blank, pale grey page. Apparently this was a genuine error by the printers – it was meant to be black on pale grey.

Makes a change from the pale-grey-on-white that people with high-spec iMacs in sensibly-lit offices insist on inflicting on the rest of the world wide web...

[L CC]

I just had to order my (corporate) calendars for 2018.

[hellymedic]

Xdp express couriers: your delivery tracking and information was spot on but why oh why oh why do you send emails consisting of black text on 90% dark grey background?
I had to highlight the text to read it. Black on white is fine and white on black is OK if you must.
Black on dark grey is not smart and not clever.

A similar but opposite grumble is to be had at some of GWR's timetables, which have maps printed in white on pale grey. I have pretty good eyesight but even so I at first thought "why does this one not have a map like all the others?". It looked a blank, pale grey page. Apparently this was a genuine error by the printers – it was meant to be black on pale grey.

Makes a change from the pale-grey-on-white that people with high-spec iMacs in sensibly-lit offices insist on inflicting on the rest of the world wide web...

  If you say so...

Poor contrast and colour choice makes me ANGRY & FRUSTRATED whatever hue is selected. Legibiilty is not rocket science.

[Poacher]

Cumquat of a Bricomarché** serf, what part of "grain running parallel to the long side" is so difficult to understand that you cut my plywood order with it running perpendicular to the aforesaid?  And why get shirty when I chuckle at the perversity of fate as personified by your theoretically good self, and tell you to have another go?

**chain of rather poor DIY shops in France, motto: we have everything you don't need.

But shirley some of the grain would be running parallel to the long side, it being plywood after all? 

[Tim Hall]

Cumquat of a Bricomarché** serf, what part of "grain running parallel to the long side" is so difficult to understand that you cut my plywood order with it running perpendicular to the aforesaid?  And why get shirty when I chuckle at the perversity of fate as personified by your theoretically good self, and tell you to have another go?

**chain of rather poor DIY shops in France, motto: we have everything you don't need.

But shirley some of the grain would be running parallel to the long side, it being plywood after all? 

I thought that. Turn it over, you might be surprised.

[jsabine]

Cumquat of a Bricomarché** serf, what part of "grain running parallel to the long side" is so difficult to understand that you cut my plywood order with it running perpendicular to the aforesaid?  And why get shirty when I chuckle at the perversity of fate as personified by your theoretically good self, and tell you to have another go?

**chain of rather poor DIY shops in France, motto: we have everything you don't need.

But shirley some of the grain would be running parallel to the long side, it being plywood after all? 

I thought that. Turn it over, you might be surprised.

Depending on how thick the ply is, I'd certainly expect something like 3/7 or 4/9 of the grain to be running parallel to the long side.

[Pedaldog.]

Grumble about name calling insults on YACF.  I have variable Hemiplaegia on my right side. this includes my face muscles and means I can't often keep my nostrils open to breathe. When it's like that, I breathe in through my open mouth as I like to get that nice air stuff to keep me alive.
When I see phrases like "Sun reading Mouth Breathers", obviously meant as an insult, I get upset and quite angry.

[Mrs Pingu]

YMMV, I am a mouth breather (nothing medically diagnosed, just an inadequate/snotty beak) and I read the phrase above to mean more like a slack jawed yokel... But that's just my interpretation.

[barakta]

I'm with Pedaldog on this one, mouthbreather is a disablist insult and like "Retard", "Lame" and similar is a term I'd prefer not to see becoming acceptable in YACF. At best it's unexcellent.

I also largely breathe through my mouth due to extensive malformation of my nose/sinus anatomy. I had breathing through my mouth held against me by childhood bullies and it still hurts, cos I had no choice.

[Kim]

YMMV, I am a mouth breather (nothing medically diagnosed, just an inadequate/snotty beak) and I read the phrase above to mean more like a slack jawed yokel... But that's just my interpretation.

I always took 'slack-jawed' to refer to a specific facial expression, whereas 'mouth-breather' was a general trait, with strong implications of stupidity outside medical contexts.

(Also a chronic sufferer of snot, I had more than my fair share of being told off for breathing through my mouth as a child.  I don't think I came across the prejudicial use of the term until much later, though.)

[jsabine]

I think I'd probably have put mouth-breather in the same category as window-licker: clearly insulting, intended to convey a disdain if not contempt for the target's lack of intelligence (no, stupidity), but probably intended as an insult to that individual rather than as a blanket condemnation or categorisation.

That said, it's a bit lacking in excellence, I wouldn't use it anyway, and if People Who Know regard it as disablist then I'm happy to go along with that.

Funnily enough, I don't have a problem with terms like moron, cretin or idiot, probably because I think they're now so far removed from their very specific historic definitions that they're now a mere insult.

Retard is, I think, far more offensive, while mong is clearly disablist (and derivatives like monging/monged out are too close not to be offensive, even though there is almost certainly no such intent from their users).

It is probable that I am sensitised to this last because my brother has Down's syndrome. Hey ho.

[T42]

Gormenghast syndrome: when every day of the year becomes the anniversary of one or more events requiring tiresome commemoration.  In the linguistic form, every noun and adjective in the language becomes offensive to some minority group so we all have to keep our traps shut.