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

[rafletcher]

Bah. Two out of three banks in our local town -Tring- have shut in the last year.  My wife got a letter today to say that the NatWest is closing next June. That means a 4 mile trip (Aylesbury  or Berkhamstead  ) to a bank branch.

[TheLurker]

Météo France does it again: 5°C & sunny forecast, 1°C and 10/10 misty overcast delivered. 5° I can ride in, 1° clobbers me. Haven't been out for a week, now.

Is this a getting older thing?  I've found that my limit for low temperature riding has crept slowly, but surely, upwards.  Half a dozen years ago I could cope with temps down to about -5C to -7C now I struggle at 0 to -2C.  I can ride in it but by gum do my muscles complain about it.  It really does put the kibosh on winter commuting.

[Beardy]

Could have been in the overheard today thread but :

"With us expanding to new office space in the new year we need to start urgently thinking about things like how many Christmas trees we'll need next year"

I can't cope, somebody shoot me.   

A training course I’ve been on this week included the sage advice ‘Don’t use Excel. Learn R and use that instead!’

[Basil]

Météo France does it again: 5°C & sunny forecast, 1°C and 10/10 misty overcast delivered. 5° I can ride in, 1° clobbers me. Haven't been out for a week, now.

Is this a getting older thing?  I've found that my limit for low temperature riding has crept slowly, but surely, upwards.  Half a dozen years ago I could cope with temps down to about -5C to -7C now I struggle at 0 to -2C.  I can ride in it but by gum do my muscles complain about it.  It really does put the kibosh on winter commuting.

Having a commute is great for keeping riding in SUB zero temperatures.   Now I don't commute, I find that i don't want to go out even if it's just a bit overcast.

[Mr Larrington]

As part of the new Residents's Parking Permit Scheme, The Man has been busy with paint down Larrington Gardens Road.  As a result, neither I nor Mr Patel next door can park in front of our respective properties lest we block access to, er, our own property.  But the bloke over the road, who very obviously keeps a Pikey Old Beemer^TM behind his side gate, or the people further down who have just built a large and expensive garage, can be blocked in with impunity.

Because there's no dropped kerb in front of their places

[T42]

Awakened at 3 am this morning by our UPSes going beep. Thought at first it was a power cut but the streetlights were still on and the neighbour's door-bell was lit up. Right enough, the main circuit-breaker in the cellar was out. Pushing it up restored power for an instant before it plonked down again, so we hadn't had a surge, but none of the breakers we use had popped. Went through the board toggling breakers and trying the main one each time, with no effect. Then one of those which I thought was unused - a 3-phase job marked chauffage, which I thought was provided for central-heating control, which we don't have - turned out to be the culprit. Curious.  I left it off and all was well - only it had taken an hour to find and then we had a cuppa, so we lost two hours' sleep and woke up zombified at 7.

No power in my workshop this morning.   That's what the chauffage breaker had been used for by the bloke who restored this place.

The shop has its own fuse-board, so once I've got my eyes aligned with the holes in my face the missus and I will be yodelling back & forth across 15 metres of garden as I push & pop fuses over there. Bugger. Or maybe I'll leave it until tomorrow - I'm too brain-dead just now.

[T42]

Météo France does it again: 5°C & sunny forecast, 1°C and 10/10 misty overcast delivered. 5° I can ride in, 1° clobbers me. Haven't been out for a week, now.

Is this a getting older thing?  I've found that my limit for low temperature riding has crept slowly, but surely, upwards.  Half a dozen years ago I could cope with temps down to about -5C to -7C now I struggle at 0 to -2C.  I can ride in it but by gum do my muscles complain about it.  It really does put the kibosh on winter commuting.

Nah, it's a coronary-artery-disease thing.  My heart muscle only gets 50% of the blood it's entitled to, and breathing cold air further constricts the arteries.  Once I'm properly warmed up, say about 10 km in, I'm more or less OK in 3° but not otherwise. I suppose I could set up a turbo, but I've never found them to help much.

[ian]

Organizations and entities that have peak and off-peak pricing. That's nice, I'm sure. But how about your fucking put the hours on your websites, ticket machines etc? Trains companies obvs, but also you, Crystal Palace swimming pool (phoned them, all day till 5 apparently, now would it be hard to put that information on your web site? Apparently.)

[T42]

No power in my workshop this morning.   That's what the chauffage breaker had been used for by the bloke who restored this place.

The shop has its own fuse-board, so once I've got my eyes aligned with the holes in my face the missus and I will be yodelling back & forth across 15 metres of garden as I push & pop fuses over there. Bugger. Or maybe I'll leave it until tomorrow - I'm too brain-dead just now.

Worked things out a bit better today. The chauffage breaker is simply for a central-heating control unit (which in our case we have not got) and the 4-gang breaker beside it is the 3-phase supply to the workshop.

This morning I reset the 3-phase breaker then went over there and restored power to the circuits I usually use - single-phase power, lighting and one extra socket beside the box. The power and light circuits have switches above the door and these had been off all the time anyway, so it was none of these. Then I restored power progressively to the others to see what would happen.

Nothing.

Two possibilities remain: either the fault is in one of two spurs that go out from the shop to power-points in the garden, or it's in the line from the house to the shop.  These are all via heavy armoured cable running underground (and under concrete) in PVC pipes. I'm hoping that the culprit is one of the garden sockets since we don't use them anyway.  We had heavy rain at the time the power went, so they are the most suspect.  I've cut power to them now, so we'll see what happens next time it rains. If it goes out again then it's the main connection from house to shop, and that I am dreading.

[ElyDave]

Dropped my daughter off at had ballet class yesterday, and went for a run while I waited for her.

All ok on the off road bits with the head torch, then came back onto a tarmacked path, missed pothole, twisted my ankle and foot.

Iced it yesterday and it's walkable, but sore. Hopefully ok for a ride later.

[essexian]

Spent three hours this morning in my freezing shed getting my MTB ready for snow by fitting spike tyres, a new rear derailleur and replacing the rusted up chain....good work I thought until I went out to test it..... I managed a total of 238 feet before the chain snapped.....sigh.

I really am crap at this bike fixing lark! 

[Ruthie]

Aww no you’re not. It’s just your bike throwing war tantrum cos you got it rusty.

[Beardy]

There was something that vexed me on the drive into work this morning, but I can't remember what it was 

[mrcharly-YHT]

There was something that vexed me on the drive into work this morning, but I can't remember what it was 

The middle-aged thread is thataway ==>

[Beardy]

There was something that vexed me on the drive into work this morning, but I can't remember what it was 

The middle-aged thread is thataway ==>

but, but but, I was grumbling about not being able to remember about what it was I wanted to grumble about. Honest.

[T42]

Story of my life.

[TheLurker]

Nah, it's a coronary-artery-disease thing.  My heart muscle only gets 50% of the blood it's entitled to....

That sounds like no fun at all.  Does the cycling help?

Today's grumble is really tomorrow's grumble.  Tomorrow is to be my last day in the office this year (cheers!) and I was looking forward to the ride there and back.  However... I have just seen the local weather forecast and there's a better than good chance of frost/ice first thing (0530) and as there are still large patches of ice on the road outside the house I'm going to have* to drive there. Chiz, chiz, chiz, chiz, _chiz_!

*700x23s sans studs + icy patches doth not a relaxing nor safe cycling experience make.

[David Martin]

Could have been in the overheard today thread but :

"With us expanding to new office space in the new year we need to start urgently thinking about things like how many Christmas trees we'll need next year"

I can't cope, somebody shoot me.   

A training course I’ve been on this week included the sage advice ‘Don’t use Excel. Learn R and use that instead!’

And if you can't use R, those who can will do your work faster for you with a little consideration. Just saying...

We teach our students data analysis with R instead of Excel because it is easier (past a certain point in terms of scale, complexity and reproducibility)

[ian]

I have yet to make R do quick and dirty pivot tables, which is my main use of Excel/Powerpivot, those sort of what-happens analyses. This might be stupid on my part, that and I'm not a programmer, as I am looking for an alternative to pivot bigger datasets. Otherwise, I'm learning patience.

[ElyDave]

R?

[Vernon]

R?

The statistical programming language of pirates.
That it be!

[fimm]

Text message exchange with my mother on the subject of presents for my sister's children:
Mum: <Sister> is suggesting <these> rucksacks, but they are all black we don't like black, any thoughts?
Me: Why is black a problem?
Mum: Kids not visible in black does not stand out
Me: They'll stand out fine in the hills they're not planning on going walking along the road in the dark....

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH Honestly! She's got a thing about black stuff. (Just as well she doesn't see me riding my bike (which has good lights).)

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Talking about programming languages, I am a big fan of Julia.
If you are interested, here is a piece on pivot tables in Julia  https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-spreadsheet-like-pivot-function/2701

[Pickled Onion]

You are currently caller number ... one ... hundred ... five waiting to speak with a representative. Thank you for your patience

WTF?

[Pickled Onion]

They are now playing "across a crowded room"

not funny