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

[Pickled Onion]

Now it's On the Run. "So far away from home..."

They are definitely taking the piss.

[SoreTween]

This starts out as a first world problem but bear with me...

Garden waste collection cancelled due to Sno, it's only fortnightly so I already pay full whack for half a service.
Next collection due date is the 27th so that won't be happening either, they CBA hollibob season.

Phoned the council to have a grumble, 6 weeks between collections is a PITA even at this time of year.  I was hoping to get scheduled for a collection next week suspecting they will have caught up as they have cancelled all green collections and are using the vans to help catch up on refuse (got that from their web site). Plus they are working this Saturday.

13 minutes of listening to what amounted to tough shit buster later I was just about giving up when breakthrough.  It was let slip that they have 8 wagons and normally use them 5 refuse 3 green.  Quick mental arithmetic, they lost 3 days so 15 van days of refuse.  They catch up 6 yesterday and today and another 8 on Saturday so near as they are back on schedule come Monday.  I was just about to deliver that maths lesson when the person offered to send out some green waste bags, these being official bags can be filled and left out with the green bin to be collected in January.  That'll do nicely.

Why the hell could they have not done that as soon as I said 'green bin collection missed'?  Why waste 13 minutes of my time and theirs?

[woollypigs]

Now it's On the Run. "So far away from home..."

They are definitely taking the piss.

Still hanging on the telephone ?

[Polar Bear]

Now it's On the Run. "So far away from home..."

They are definitely taking the piss.

Have you got the Telephone Blues?

[TheLurker]

Woollypigs you are a bad person.  *tee hee*

My grumble.  To Gloucester Royal today, 40 or so miles each way,  for an appt.  Bird strike on the way so busted placky bit of bonnet - kiss goodbye to about 200 quid to get that fixed.   One hour after appt due medic says,  " Umm. Sorry. Umm because Sno and Path. people ill no test results.  Please come again."   Not terribly chuffed about this.  Am thinking that knowing that there had been disruption it would have been a bloody good idea, just this once, to scan the clinic list this morning and check that test results were available and telephone those affected.

[Pickled Onion]

Now it's On the Run. "So far away from home..."

They are definitely taking the piss.

Have you got the Telephone Blues?

That's rather good — not heard it before 

[Pickled Onion]

Now it's On the Run. "So far away from home..."

They are definitely taking the piss.

Still hanging on the telephone ?

Yeah very good, I wouldn't be surprised if that was up next. Anyway I got through after 1 hour 15 mins. Apparently they are quite busy... here's why (maybe this should be elevated from a grumble to a rant):

A couple of weeks ago I emailed Iresa, the utility company, to say their website was showing a double entry for October. No response. Today the quarterly bills come out so I check it, which isn't hard, there are four lines: (1) Electricity consumption; (2) Total consumption (gas + electric for those who have gas); (3) Standing charge; (4) VAT. Underneath: Grand total = (1) + (2) + (3) + (4) WTF?

So they have an obvious, glaring, schoolboy error in the new billing system, that was surely obvious to the most rudimentary testing, but they're not going to issue a general notice to all customers, or fix it, they are waiting for people to phone and question their bills. I imagine a lot of people won't notice and just wonder why they've used more than last quarter. It is winter, after all.

If anyone here is with Iresa, check your bill now.

[barakta]

Woollypigs you are a bad person.  *tee hee*

My grumble.  To Gloucester Royal today, 40 or so miles each way,  for an appt.  Bird strike on the way so busted placky bit of bonnet - kiss goodbye to about 200 quid to get that fixed.   One hour after appt due medic says,  " Umm. Sorry. Umm because Sno and Path. people ill no test results.  Please come again."   Not terribly chuffed about this.  Am thinking that knowing that there had been disruption it would have been a bloody good idea, just this once, to scan the clinic list this morning and check that test results were available and telephone those affected.

I'd complain about that to be honest. I would be livid if I'd paid out to attend a hospital appointment and for foreseeable reasons they couldn't do what they were supposed to. I have to attend quite a lot of them and had had hassle in the past from employers who don't understand how shambolic hospitals can be...

Which reminds me, I'm supposed to have a review 3 months ago and an MRI scan. I shall be chasing both of those in the new year.

[ElyDave]

I have a midday appointment on Monday for my annual diabetes checkup.  I have a conf call at 4:pm.  I have made contingency plans

I have been an hour late being seen for an 0930 appointment before now.

[hellymedic]

Should be OK because clinician might well have afternoon commitments elsewhere for which they have to make a prompt start. Chances are, you'll escape before 2pm.
Don't know if you'll be seen though...

[ElyDave]

This is an annual appointment, I make it a year in advance, knowing my schedule this time of year, I'd better be seen otherwise it'll be two years

[Beardy]

PIR controlled flood lights that are not only set to detect a person walking along the road on the opposite side to the light, but also pointed in such a way to render any semblance of night vision history!

[hellymedic]

I believe these have been nicknamed 'Rottweilers'  by some in the Campaign/Commission for Dark Skies.

[Basil]

That was a particular grumble of mine too.  Also the previous neighbours' rear garden searchlight which was apparently for their dog.  A real downer when you're sitting out watching meteors or just the sky in general.
I may have grumbled this before.  If dogs have been peeing in the dark for tens of thousands of years, how come in the last 20 years they've developed a need for the light on.

Now for my grumble.  I think it might be easier if I wore a sign saying, "Yes, I'm ready for Christmas, thank you.".
It would save absolutely everyone I meet from asking.

[Kim]

PIR floodlights are better than the alternative, which is likely to be permanently-on floodlights rather than no floodlights.

It's the way they always seem set up to trigger if a badger farts on the other side of the road, while failing to activate when you approach the front door that baffles me.  Do people not test the things?  [No, of course they don't - Ed.]

[Zipperhead]

My father has one by the front door (well, just above the corner of the door), aimed at my face height. Every time I visit at night I expect the door to be answered by someone demanding to see my papers.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Get home - family are out, they've been all day at ik-ee-ya.

Open lounge door and cat runs out. Oh shit.

Oh shit indeed. Cat has been locked in there all day and there is stench of catshit. It is now my job to search the room, find the pile of catshit (on cushions), take it to the gardens, scrub and wash cushions and handwash throw.

Thanks, family, for not checking before leaving the house.

[Beardy]

SharePoint Forums! What a crock of shite. I'm following more than one forum on one of the instances of SharePoint and in doing so am reading more than a few threads. Of course I want to 'dip in' now and then, as you do, but it doesn't 1) mark the threads that have new messages, 2) mark the messages in a thread that you've already read, 3) offer any way to get to the first unread message, 4) offer any way to get to the last page of messages in a thread. I realise that these are all manifestations of the same missing functionality, but for dogs sake M$, it says SharePoint 2016 on the tin not SharePoint 1916!

[SoreTween]

SharePoint Forums! What a crock of shite.

FTFY

Though to be fair SharePoint has one massive redeeming feature, it isn't Lotus Bloats.

[andrewc]

Both elderly parents & my sister are lurgified as well.  I went to the local shop for some food earlier & returned covered in stinking sweat.  I now appear to have a dodgy tum as well.  Ho, ho, f****** ho 

[T42]

Christmas letters, Christmas letters, Christmas bloody letters. Twats who think that because they put your name on their card list a generation ago and you had all but forgotten their existence you'd give a tinker's damn that their progeny's progeny are farting round the globe on their break years or doing ever so splendidly at Coddlearse College, or that they really enjoyed their last camel expedition to Bhutan. They can choke on their bonhomie, the lot of them.

[PeteB99]

EBAY

Why on earth would you think I would be interested in a 12 piece Kabuki make up set as featured in the Email you just sent me???

[Beardy]

I think I’ve had enough Christmas now, please can I leave.

[David Martin]

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.

You have a table. You want a summary function run by groups on that table. classical R would be tapply(values, groups, function) which gives you the aggregate of running function by groups.

More recently one should be wickhamed[1] and use tidyr and the split, apply, combine methodology which lets you leverage more complex partitioning, subsetting etc.

Try the R Cookbook for guidance, once you get into it you will discover you become a data whisperer, discussing the analyses with the data and gently persuading it in the direction you wish it to go, rather than swearing at it with Excel.


[1] Hadley Wickham, author of many data processing things and the ggplot libraries).

[essexian]

The sizing of clothes...... 

Right now, I am wearing a large tee shirt and a XL jumper on my top half.  They fit with some space so are comfortable. All good eh.

No, not really as yesterday I received a new jacket that being Christmas day sized at XXL.... so of course it will fit....like hull does it! It must be smaller than a normal size for an L but then again...what is the normal size for an L?

Is it just me that gets all moany about sizes? There is not a standard so basically you have to guess if you buy something in a pack like a tee shirt or pants and then often the sizing is wrong.

And, as the jacket was brought for me by my Mum In Law, I will have to wear it despite it being too tight.