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

[ian]

Careful, you'll get him excited.

[Auntie Helen]

It must be deep and hot (steady there, hosses), plenty of bubbles, a glass of excellent beer or fine vino for hydration purposes, along with a good book and some top tunes.

My wife hates baths but she’s weird and comes from Southend. For me, it’s a Sunday night ritual.

I also come from Southend and have had less than 10 baths in the last 30 years.

[Pickled Onion]

I've had one bath in the last 30 years. It was in Ukraine. A couple of years after the fighting in Donbass started, so there were precious few tourists, which meant I could book the grand suite in a (Cossack-themed) hotel for £30 a night. The bathroom alone was the size of my first flat, and the bath was big enough to float in, if not quite swim. Amazingly for the area there was not only hot water but it was actually water coloured, so it seemed rude not to. Especially after the ~300 km ride to get there.

The novelty wore off fairly quickly.

[orienteer]

We use the Japanese style of bathing. One tub of hot water, used by all bathers in turn to soak after first rinsing off the naughty bits; then washing outside the bath (on a long adjacent shower tray in our case) with hot water and soap, which must be thoroughly rinsed off before returning to the bath tub for a final hot soak; the latter helps to heat the body for the night (Japanese homes traditionally didn't have any central heating).

[Pickled Onion]

I'm of ian's generation, and yes, Sunday night as bath night was a general thing. Fitted in well as the only thing on the telly was Songs of Praise. The immersion heater was switched on specially - "Sink" setting, so we got 15 cm or so of water in the bath, no chance of topping up - and shared, at the same time when small, one after the other when bigger.

And before anyone (young) asks, yes, everyone in those days did stink by the end of the week. But as everyone stank, you didn't really notice. Plus the stink of cigarette smoke on everyone and everywhere masked it.

[T42]

We haven't had baths for 30+ years either. When we had the bathroom done over 15 years ago we didn't want to put in a bath at all but the Inlaw Paw protested so we got one.  The irony is that he couldn't get into it so he switched to 100% showers as well.  We've used the bath just once, for the dogs when they rolled in something narsty.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Yesterday was one of those days.

Started with discovering that about 3 days worth of work had gone. Server hardware failure over weekend, I hadn't checked in work, so it wasn't on the backup server.

Then I started working on the oil boiler. Took some parts out of old boiler (they are in pristine condition). Took parts out of newer boiler. Discovered that they are different and not interchangeable.

Decided to try patching up knackered parts with some special grout/sealant. (They are too knackered to go back in, literally falling apart). Start gluing stuff together with sealant - it gets harder and harder - I realise that the grout gun is knackered. The handle has literally crumpled. That's ridiculous, my hands aren't that strong. No car, so difficult to go and buy replacement.

So now I have loads of work missing, a dismantled boiler, weather is getting cold. FML.

[Mrs Pingu]

Hooray, the plumber's been. We haz new shower! No more stinky baths! \o/

[Kim]

Today, I have been mostly playing whitegoods Sokoban, dismantling the washing machine / condensate drain pipework, cleaning all manner of schmoo from within and putting it all back together.  With more than a little help from barakta, who did battle with spiders and got covered in fungal ming.

As predicted, the condensate drain issue was washing machine water running up the horizontal run of 20mm pipe and drying into a layer of slime, rather than crap coming down the pipe from the boiler end.

Have also determined exactly how much space there isn't to the pipework behind the washing machine.  Might be able to gain another 30mm if I cap off the hot feed tap and re-route the condensate drain a bit, but I'd rather not.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The week improves a bit.

I managed to find the missing work, hidden in a text repo.

Boiler/stove reassembled, with bits glued together by high temp silicone.

Replacement parts ordered. Effing expensive, they've cost me £267.

[rogerzilla]

Before he died, my father did explain to me how he knew that prison inmates were only allowed a certain number of inches of water in the bath, a number he enforced on us when we were kids.  Apparently his work football team used to play Walton Prison inmates occasionally, and used the facilities afterwards.

[campagman]

I thought that libraries were quiet places where noise was kept to a minimum and talking a whisper. When did it become ok to shout into a mobile phone on speaker? If it was a youngster I could, maybe, understand but no, it was an older lady who should have known better. They had no books on homebrewing either.

[CAMRAMan]

My last bath was just under 3 years ago when I decided it would be soothing after breaking 3 ribs. It was, until it dawned on me that getting out of a bath with broken ribs was going to be extremely painful. In the end I sort of Fosbury flopped over the side of the bath, squashing my knackers in the process, which turned out to be extremely painful. It was one of those lose/lose situations.

[librarian]

I thought that libraries were quiet places where noise was kept to a minimum and talking a whisper. When did it become ok to shout into a mobile phone on speaker? If it was a youngster I could, maybe, understand but no, it was an older lady who should have known better. They had no books on homebrewing either.

Complain to the management.  But quietly, mind.

[canny colin]

The fucking plaster won't go off  and I am bored stiff .Now the lady of the house has brought me round a cup of tea. The skimming plaster has decided to shoot off . I never get a hot cup ot tea.

[Kim]

I thought that libraries were quiet places where noise was kept to a minimum and talking a whisper. When did it become ok to shout into a mobile phone on speaker? If it was a youngster I could, maybe, understand but no, it was an older lady who should have known better. They had no books on homebrewing either.

Probably around the time that libraries became de-facto DWP access centres.  The librarians tend to have more important things to do than go round shushing people.

IME older people are far worse for obnoxiously loud mobile phone calls^[1] in public places.  I attribute this mostly to younger people eschewing voice calls, but also because anyone used to phones with sidetone being a bit discombobulated by the wretched things, even if they have perfect hearing.  And that's before you factor in the sound-coming-out-of-the-wrong-end-of-the-phone issues.  A lot of people seem to keep their phone permanently on speaker mode in an attempt to hear better.


_{[1] The youngsters make up for this by sodcasting.}

[phantasmagoriana]

On a related note, why do Young People hold their phones horizontally in front of their faces when making a phone call? Is it because they've never actually used a landline with a receiver?

[Kim]

On a related note, why do Young People hold their phones horizontally in front of their faces when making a phone call? Is it because they've never actually used a landline with a receiver?

I think it's because the speakers and microphone are on the bottom edge of the phone, so it does actually make sense, sort of.  And you can see the screen during the call, which is potentially useful.  It still looks daft.

(Loosely related: Some years ago, it was noted that sign-language-using smalls would use the flat-hand proform for <telephone> rather than the traditional y-hand.)

[JonBuoy]

I always assumed that they didn't want to get their brain fried by the radio waves...or something.

[Beardy]

Ah sidetone, how I miss thee. Sidetone, what it was, how to produce it, and which components need replacing if it isn’t there where all parts of my extensive telephone engineering education.

You would not believe the lengths BT and formally the Post Office went to, in ensuring that Sidetone was suitable for the majority of subscribers, and the testing that went on to ensure it played nicely with various compression algorithms used in analogue and then digital multiplying employed in the network. Every person who worked at the BT Labs had a duty to attend the testing sessions when they were randomly selected from the employment list, largely because the testing of Sidetone and detection of compression artefacts is a largely subjective issue and so random manual,testing had to be carried out.

[felstedrider]

Trying to get to a renewables conference in Amsterdam by train on Wednesday.   I need a lift into town because of the train strike.   Turns out there’s a strike in Belgium as well so my connection from Brussels has gone flaky.  Trying to do the right thing is hard sometimes.

[CAMRAMan]

Ladybird Insurance: Your system answered my initial call swiftly enough and I chose the correct option to amend my policy. However, without telling me, you then filtered the call through to another company and I was told it would be about a minute's wait. It turned out to be nearly 10. The ensuing call was then punctuated with being put on hold several times, basically because Right Choice (sic) Insurance Broker's systems are crap by the sound of things. A change of policy to include business use should not take nearly half an hour. (& cost £70)

[TheLurker]

Have a look at the NFU.  They're not the cheapest*, but they don't apply "admin" charges when you need to change insurance reqs.


*Nor the most expensive.

[Flite]

Fully endorse the NFU.
We have been with them for about 45 years.
We have had several very large claims, all settled quickly and fairly, and that is what is important to us rather than scratching round for the cheapest quote every year.
We just phone up a real person in a local office, they make any changes instantly, and a revised bill if applicable arrives in the post a few days later.

[cygnet]

On a related note, why do Young People hold their phones horizontally in front of their faces when making a phone call? Is it because they've never actually used a landline with a receiver?

I think it's because the speakers and microphone are on the bottom edge of the phone, so it does actually make sense, sort of.  And you can see the screen during the call, which is potentially useful.  It still looks daft.

(Loosely related: Some years ago, it was noted that sign-language-using smalls would use the flat-hand proform for <telephone> rather than the traditional y-hand.)

Isn't the speaker at the top of the phone mostly? I.e. where your ear would be if you held the mic at the btm end near your mouth.

I blame Alan Sugar, the Apprentice and Apple. (I've heard that in the the old days the screen shut off as you hold it as a conventional phone, you lose ability to sit in a taxi with your fellow sociopaths and show that you are actually having a conversation with the boss-man, and not lying out your arse. Which is temporarily refreshing for your fellow taxi inhabitants). And thus a trope was born.