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

[essexian]

Virgin trains.... the comment that: "Oh we don't do cake anymore" is NOT acceptable.

A "cookie" is NOT an acceptable replacement!!!!!!


(The only reason this isn't a rant is that work were paying for my train ticket and not me......otherwise  )

[Kim]

Spinning rust. Bloody stupid idea.  The sooner we see the end of it the better.

(This grumble brought to you by the words "DegradedArray event" and "/dev/md/0")

[interzen]

Spinning rust. Bloody stupid idea.  The sooner we see the end of it the better.

(This grumble brought to you by the words "DegradedArray event" and "/dev/md/0")

Preaching to the choir.
Although I'd trust a consumer-grade SSD in a RAID array about as far as I could physically spit Scotland.

[Kim]

It's been downhill since the punched cards.  Those worked pretty well, as long as you didn't drop them.

[clarion]

Yesterday, I started work at 8am, which means getting out of bed at 5am.  So I was looking forward to getting home a bit early after I left work a bit after 4pm.  I was at London Bridge a little after 4.30pm, and all trains were cancelled.  Apparently there was a fire in a signal box 'at 4.45pm' according to reports from Southeastern and National Rail.  Bloody good thing they'd closed access to the station in anticipation, then

So I walked to Blackfriars, where trains were very delayed (and very, very full).  I walked over the platform bridge and down into a frighteningly overcrowded tube, where I got a train to Victoria.  I'd have got off sooner, had it been possible.

Anyway, the tube station was being closed because of an 'Emergency' - being overcrowding - just as I was exiting.

I waited ages for a very much delayed train home.  My journey took me three hours.  I got in, made a pot of tea, had some crackers and honey, then set off for bed, meeting Butterfly coming the other way, having just put The Little Duck down in his cot. 

I was up at 5am this morning, too.

Reports say that the fire didn't just stop trains arriving at and leaving LB, but caught some in the section of rail just outside.  After a long wait, some passengers forced open the doors and walked back to the station.  I can understand that, but the rail companies are all pissy about it.

The way the exit from LB was handled was very dangerous indeed, and it's a miracle if no one was badly hurt.

[interzen]

Those worked pretty well, as long as you didn't drop them.

Tell that to my PhD supervisor and he'd probably beat you to death with a paper tape punch¹ 

(it happened to him, y'see²)

¹ - my lab contained, amongst other things, a proper paper tape jig. Work of art, it was.
² - our 'main' office also contained a box containing the card deck for the FORTRAN66 code which formed part of his thesis dating from, I think, the early-mid 70s (possibly 1974)

[Polar Bear]

Virgin effing trains:   I lost paid work today because of your incompetence.   You are getting my invoice and I'll chase you in the small claims court if you don't pay.

[Vince]

Those worked pretty well, as long as you didn't drop them.

Tell that to my PhD supervisor and he'd probably beat you to death with a paper tape punch

FLOOR SORT!

Of course if you put numbers in cols 1-7 * you can put the card deck through the mechanical card sorter.

* For Cobol - other languages may vary

[Chris S]

Virgin effing trains:   I lost paid work today because of your incompetence.   You are getting my invoice and I'll chase you in the small claims court if you don't pay.

Ah - welcome to the New America.  .

[Basil]

Thanks for e-mailing the agenda for next week's meeting.

But why in the name of dog would anyone produce a one page document like that in bleein' PowerPointless? 

You muppet.

[interzen]

Why does lurgy choose to rear its head just before I have time off to go and do something fun?

I'm supposed to be heading over to the other side of the Pennines tomorrow for some off-road shenanigans and it turns out I may well have a dose of norovirus 

I don't have the energy to rant because I feel like I'm being turned inside out ...

[Chris S]

Ugh... exporting hyper-v virtual machines (that have shedloads of snapshots) takes bloody ages. It might be quicker just to copy them raw, and then recreate the VMs on the new machine. Except of course, the snapshots won't show.

Sigh. I may be here some time.

[barakta]

Why doesn't word have a mode to switch between accessible display hyperlinks and http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/creating-accessible-word-documents-HA101999993.aspx#_Toc275414991 version of links?

We have a (stupidly fucking huge written by technologically idiotic grammar pedants who are editing right up to the last minute) document we expect to be used electronically 90% of the time, but we want to provide a print version for display.

I've said fuckit, I'm not manually switching the hyperlinks from display to link mode and accessibility wins. Most users can go and get electronic version and click on the fucking things. It's not as if I don't expect the fucking links to start degrading the second we hit "publish".

Right, back to it, only 23,000 words and 80 pages of shite to piss off academics with!

[T42]

Webmeisters who only write for one browser.  Three days ago the air around my wife was purple for an entire morning as she attempted to upload a TMA to the OU site. Even with their help nothing worked until she switched from Firefox to IE, whereupon it went through immediately.

[CAMRAMan]

Potential employer: FFS, I have told you on at least three separate occasions, in writing, that I have no unspent convictions, cautions, impending prosecutions nor summat or other else. How many feckin' times do I have to tell you?

Oh, BTW, if you could drag out all the security checks until the New Year, that'd be great. Kthxbai

[Tim Hall]

Today we shall do the fitting of roller blinds.

Instructions on the packet are sketchy, so I resort to Teh Intarwebz for more clues.

Measure recess, cut roller to width less 38mm. OK.

Cut fabric 1.5mm less than roller. O rilly?  1.5mm?  Like 1/16 of an inch. I think not.

[Guy]

My brane thought it would be rilly rilly funny to wake me up at 1/4 past 3 on a Monday morning.

It's now 20 to 11 and I feel absolutley kernakkered.

[Bledlow]

Woman in red jacket & hard shell helmet in Watlington Street at 12.30: why the hell were you cycling on the pavement, right next to a perfectly good tarmac segregated bike lane, with nobody in it except me?

It can't even have been because you saw me coming, because you came round the corner already on the pavement.

[CommuteTooFar]

I lost my glasses on Friday. I thought I left them at work but they re not here 

[Basil]

Oh carp!
I think I've killed my lap top.
For some reason it hasn't seemed to have enjoyed an almost full pint of beer being tipped over the keyboard last night.

[Kim]

Wrong kind of IPA, innit.

[mcshroom]

Vogon trains - It's nice you decided to install heating on your wobbly trains but you are allowed to turn it off you know. By the time I make Carlisle I'll be somewhere between medium and well bloody done.

[Kim]

Pendolinos are also stunningly quiet when the aircon/heating isn't running full pelt.  It really ruins the effect.

[Chris S]

Pendolinos are also stunningly quiet when the aircon/heating isn't running full pelt.  It really ruins the effect.

I thought they always smell of poo. Which to my mind, would ruin any effect.

[Kim]

Pendolinos are also stunningly quiet when the aircon/heating isn't running full pelt.  It really ruins the effect.

I thought they always smell of poo. Which to my mind, would ruin any effect.

That's the ones, but the nose usually adjusts by Milton Keynes.  Sometimes the poo is overridden locally by the smell of McDonald's or wet dog.