The grumpy thread

[Timewaster]

6 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Oh, do fuck off Sainsburys - it's still August

See also B+M. Fucking advent calendars in August.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

In Oslo.  Put coat away in bag as light drizzle hadn’t come to much.

Zipping up bag and the heavens open.  Just like being at home.

[IronStar]

FR indicator conked out on CC. That’s just a bulb, let me change it real qui…oh, it’s not a bulb, bulb holder burned out. Apparently common and part is a tenner new, but what the fuck Peugeot? Why is this car so hellbent on driving me insane, one stupid fault at a time?

[sheffcortinacentre]

Because it's french.

[High Jetter]

PH cabs with shagged rear suspension.

[Metal Guru]

Spent much of the day on the East Lothian coastal trail, Edinburgh to North Berwick. Every “town” , 20 mph all the way through. 
20 mph zones? Good thing outside schools (when they are coming and going, what’s the point 24/7?) , town centres (9-5  ok but again why 24/7?) and housing areas  ( most of the time I concede).

But a mile or so as you approach and leave every place? Totally unnecessary. It doesn’t make anything safer because everyone’s staring at their speedo instead of watching what’s happening.

And then, and this is my main moan, because some people are shit scared of being caught doing 21 mph ( whether they’re got 11 points or just would die of embarrassment if they had to deal with the police), they drive at 10-15 mph. FFS!

Putting on my conspirators  hat, I might conclude it’s a plot to make driving such a pain that you choose public transport but this also makes bus travel worse ( if possible).

[myglaren]

Annual trip to Whitby for brother's birthday.  Several places where there is a 50 mph restriction.

Hardly any of us driving at fifty and many flying past at far more.

Then when it goes back to 70 I passed most of them driving at 60 and I was only doing 70.

 

Followed a Ford Focus for 10~12 miles out of Whitby with the brake lights on every ten seconds.  We were in a queue of six cars doing between 30 and 50.  Braking even uphill!

May have been a fault with the brake switch of course but something often seen but not in that degree.

No idea why it has underlined part of "Ford Focus"

[SunnySouth]

7 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

Spent much of the day on the East Lothian coastal trail, Edinburgh to North Berwick. Every “town” , 20 mph all the way through. 
20 mph zones? Good thing outside schools (when they are coming and going, what’s the point 24/7?) , town centres (9-5  ok but again why 24/7?) and housing areas  ( most of the time I concede).

But a mile or so as you approach and leave every place? Totally unnecessary. It doesn’t make anything safer because everyone’s staring at their speedo instead of watching what’s happening.

And then, and this is my main moan, because some people are shit scared of being caught doing 21 mph ( whether they’re got 11 points or just would die of embarrassment if they had to deal with the police), they drive at 10-15 mph. FFS!

Putting on my conspirators  hat, I might conclude it’s a plot to make driving such a pain that you choose public transport but this also makes bus travel worse ( if possible).

Yup, utterly brainless isn’t it.  And of course if you were to take even the safest overtaking opportunity, you’d feel like f’king Satan for breaching the holy limit momentarily in a 20, much moreso than you ever would at a higher speed (also applies in 30 limits, but then they tend to be in place because they’re justified and appropriate, not for inexplicable reasons of pure twattery).

[SunnySouth]

18 minutes ago, myglaren said:

Annual trip to Whitby for brother's birthday.  Several places where there is a 50 mph restriction.

Hardly any of us driving at fifty and many flying past at far more.

Then when it goes back to 70 I passed most of them driving at 60 and I was only doing 70.

 

Followed a Ford Focus for 10~12 miles out of Whitby with the brake lights on every ten seconds.  We were in a queue of six cars doing between 30 and 50.  Braking even uphill!

May have been a fault with the brake switch of course but something often seen but not in that degree.

No idea why it has underlined part of "Ford Focus"

I often wonder at just how exactly someone manages to drive inexplicably applying the brakes at random frequent intervals; of course it’s ultimately because they’re halfwits but surely that must be fucking exhausting?!

[New POD]

8 minutes ago, SunnySouth said:

I often wonder at just how exactly someone manages to drive inexplicably applying the brakes at random frequent intervals; of course it’s ultimately because they’re halfwits but surely that must be fucking exhausting?!

My mother used to drove like that 40 years ago. Brake or accelerator.  Almost like she shouldn't leave her foot not doing anything. Exhausting for the passengers.  She's 87 now and drives very smoothly so at some point she must have mellowed. 

There's also the point on EVs where if the setting for foot off regeneration is set too high, the brake lights come on automatically above a set G level.  Only aware of this because I saw a test report on a prototype EV truck and the setting they guessed in the first software version was way to high and it was almost undrivable in the wet. 

[Metal Guru]

1 hour ago, SunnySouth said:

I often wonder at just how exactly someone manages to drive inexplicably applying the brakes at random frequent intervals; of course it’s ultimately because they’re halfwits but surely that must be fucking exhausting?!

And of course they will have no inkling of the wear on the brakes so will probably continue with metal on metal until it all seizes up.

[cort1977]

1 hour ago, SunnySouth said:

I often wonder at just how exactly someone manages to drive inexplicably applying the brakes at random frequent intervals; of course it’s ultimately because they’re halfwits but surely that must be fucking exhausting?!

Sometimes it's an old people thing. My Dad gradually lost his driving confidence as his eyesight declined and at the end he would drive like that, putting the brake on for every new thing in case it became a hazard.

[SunnySouth]

57 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

Sometimes it's an old people thing. My Dad gradually lost his driving confidence as his eyesight declined and at the end he would drive like that, putting the brake on for every new thing in case it became a hazard.

Indeed. “Halfwit” was a twattish description; there was no need for that, I apologise. It‘s always a sad story to see a driver’s ability declining beyond where they‘re safe, and I guess we all dread getting there. We’ll still be f’king infuriating to be stuck behind, of course!

[cort1977]

Ha, no worries. It was mildly terrifying to be in the car with him, eventually managed to stop him driving but it's a sad business.

[Metal Guru]

38 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

Ha, no worries. It was mildly terrifying to be in the car with him, eventually managed to stop him driving but it's a sad business.

Luckily my parents gave up driving voluntarily although it did take a near miss that scared my Dad shitless before he decided he wasn’t safe. A big relief as their property exits onto a very fast and busy stretch of dual carriageway.

[Andyrew]

On 20/08/2024 at 19:02, Andyrew said:

For the past few years a local industrial estate i have customers on has had a lovely w123 always floating about, never seen the owner.  Always looked mint, It was always around. Now half the estate has been cleared and gated off. The w123 was parked in there, i assume the land owner owns it. 

Well its now windowless and had the roof caved in and smashed up by fuckwits. Such a shame.

 

And now its been torched. 

Arseholes. 

 

[Zelandeth]

It's been long enough that I had really forgotten how much of an utter pain it is moving to a new phone, especially when you've switched brands - which last happened for me in 2013.  

Taking bets how many weeks in before I stop having moments of wanting to hurl the thing into low earth orbit due to frustration with it doing things differently to what 11 years of habit has my brain used to...

[AnnoyingPentium]

Well that'll be a brake line burst.

Pedal hit the floor in traffic and it's pissing fluid out. AA to be here by 4pm allegedly.

[beko1987]

49 minutes ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

Well that'll be a brake line burst.

Pedal hit the floor in traffic and it's pissing fluid out. AA to be here by 4pm allegedly.

Hopefully just a flexy? 🤞🤞

[beko1987]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

It's been long enough that I had really forgotten how much of an utter pain it is moving to a new phone, especially when you've switched brands - which last happened for me in 2013.  

Taking bets how many weeks in before I stop having moments of wanting to hurl the thing into low earth orbit due to frustration with it doing things differently to what 11 years of habit has my brain used to...

It was doing just that job a few years ago that made me realise how much tech has plateaude... 

Was switching from my note 10 lite to my flip 3. I'd got a good* offer on the flip on early access and really hyped myself up. It came, I drooled over it then hit the Samsung sync thing on both. 

It was a lovely process tbh, went well and I picked the flip up and.... It was identical to my old phone. Took all the new shiny fun out of it 😢 Now Google does my contacts and Web passwords and I manually install and log into the apps again. Helps me keep on top of login details on my notebook. 

The flip broke my heart the fucking thing and ever since a good mate has chucked me his old handset when he upgrades yearly and every phone has been the same speed and features wise. My current oppo has a wicked microscope camera I have used about 6 times and otherwise? Perfectly fine android slab 🤷

Fuck phones are boring now. Here's a pic of the p910i I got from the car boot a few weeks ago. Back when phones were fun 

[Spiny Norman]

5 hours ago, SunnySouth said:

I often wonder at just how exactly someone manages to drive inexplicably applying the brakes at random frequent intervals; of course it’s ultimately because they’re halfwits but surely that must be fucking exhausting?!

I grumped about that very thing on here a few months back and was told it's what some  modern cars with their stupid radar-guided Bluetooth Magic Pixie Smart snooze control do to keep the speed set to whatever the GPS satnav tells them the speed limit is. This, combined with the lane assist guarantees that the blood clot behind the wheel need devote no more than 10% of their feeble brain power to safely guiding their 2 ton tank at 70mph down the motorway.

 

[IronStar]

The new bulb holder is fitted to 307CC, just for one of the mounts on the tray covering the expansion tank and washer bottle to snap. Arsebisquits. 

[Zelandeth]

37 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

It was doing just that job a few years ago that made me realise how much tech has plateaude... 

Was switching from my note 10 lite to my flip 3. I'd got a good* offer on the flip on early access and really hyped myself up. It came, I drooled over it then hit the Samsung sync thing on both. 

It was a lovely process tbh, went well and I picked the flip up and.... It was identical to my old phone. Took all the new shiny fun out of it 😢 Now Google does my contacts and Web passwords and I manually install and log into the apps again. Helps me keep on top of login details on my notebook. 

The flip broke my heart the fucking thing and ever since a good mate has chucked me his old handset when he upgrades yearly and every phone has been the same speed and features wise. My current oppo has a wicked microscope camera I have used about 6 times and otherwise? Perfectly fine android slab 🤷

Fuck phones are boring now. Here's a pic of the p910i I got from the car boot a few weeks ago. Back when phones were fun 

Aye, there really was absolutely zero incentive for me to "upgrade" to be honest.  The only reason I've done it was that the Android version on my old handset was sufficiently outdated that a couple of things I actually use were starting to have issues.  Given the spat between Huawei and the US, that's obviously not going to change.  Which is a shame as there's bugger all wrong with the P30 Pro aside from the battery starting to get a little tired, but after five years you expect that.

Still reckon this was the phone I had with the greatest "cool" factor though.

Especially once you'd mastered the wrist flick action to open and close it.  You do wonder how much R&D went into just designing that hinge mechanism so it was just perfectly weighted.

[beko1987]

I had one too! Yea it was beautiful. However I've zero interest at all in the modern version as it'll just be dogshit physically 😢 My friends got the original rebirth flip they did in excellent condition fully boxed he's keeping until it's worth flinging on ebay (the screens fucked up on them alot) 

Your doing it right, hopefully you'll go on 4/5 years now and I bet the handset won't be that far outdated. It won't say AI and that's about it 🤮🤷 

I think I've got a pixel 9 coming my way soon and I don't know what to feel about it. Doesn't help that my work phone is a pixel 6 and I don't like it! That's mostly due to it being very locked down though and me never using it bar for 2fa on everything I do 😭

[beko1987]

My p20 pro is still going strong* too. I used to use it for filming my videos but the camera on this oppo is much better. Charlie dropped it and cracked the corner of the screen so it's got a protector on it now and it's used for YouTube/I take it to the car when photographing/frantically googling things

That was probably the last phone I got properly excited about I think. It was genuinely groundbreaking when it came out and reminded me of the leap HTC took with the m7, and I got a £25/m deal on launch (which turned into about £60 at the end of the term, I'm so glad I'm sim only now). 

If I dropped this tomorrow I'd put my sim into the p20 and carry on as if nothing happened. 

The poor p30? Again from my friend, but I never found a case that fitted it. Cos of the curved screen the sexy bastard. I had to park very naughtily at the John Radcliffe when my mum had to go there after passing out infront of Chris once and as I climbed over to the passenger side to get out it slipped from my trousers and smashed front and back on the car park. 

Bought a cheap screen and back from ebay and did the transplant but that was such shit quality Eva dropped it on a pillow and it cracked, and now the screen and back are held on with sellotape and Eva uses it as she can't be trusted with anything nicer. It's currently sat on the side in the bathroom blaring music whilst she has a shower, if it falls into the toilet I won't be sad

[Zelandeth]

3 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

I had one too! Yea it was beautiful. However I've zero interest at all in the modern version as it'll just be dogshit physically 😢 My friends got the original rebirth flip they did in excellent condition fully boxed he's keeping until it's worth flinging on ebay (the screens fucked up on them alot) 

Your doing it right, hopefully you'll go on 4/5 years now and I bet the handset won't be that far outdated. It won't say AI and that's about it 🤮🤷 

I think I've got a pixel 9 coming my way soon and I don't know what to feel about it. Doesn't help that my work phone is a pixel 6 and I don't like it! That's mostly due to it being very locked down though and me never using it bar for 2fa on everything I do 😭

Pixel 9 Pro XL here.  Have to say that after far as the initial out of the box experience goes, Huawei was leagues ahead.  

I've also come to the co conclusion that Google's launcher is going to have to go soon or this handset is going to itself get launched through the nearest window.  It is so dumbed down and locked down that it's unreal.  Home screen I can effectively use maybe 2/3rds of.  Rest is covered in a search box I'll never use and a giant pointless notification area that covers the top inch and change of the screen.  I can remove data from said area...but I can't actually remove IT and just stick the icons and the weather widget that live up there there.

[Zelandeth]

25 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

My p20 pro is still going strong* too. I used to use it for filming my videos but the camera on this oppo is much better. Charlie dropped it and cracked the corner of the screen so it's got a protector on it now and it's used for YouTube/I take it to the car when photographing/frantically googling things

That was probably the last phone I got properly excited about I think. It was genuinely groundbreaking when it came out and reminded me of the leap HTC took with the m7, and I got a £25/m deal on launch (which turned into about £60 at the end of the term, I'm so glad I'm sim only now). 

If I dropped this tomorrow I'd put my sim into the p20 and carry on as if nothing happened 

Only reason I upgraded from the P20 Pro (I started out on the P9 when I ran out of patience with Samsung's inability to produce even vaguely stable software) was because...I accidentally left it sitting on the bumper of the car and drove off with it still there.  It stayed there for a good 3/4 of a mile... unfortunately when it fell off it landed in the middle of a dual carriageway.

Have to admit I'm personally not that impressed with this thing so far.  It's noticeably heavier, way more bulky than the Huawei (especially the way the camera sticks out the back), and - I feel a bit like a posh tech reviewer saying this - doesn't *feel* like anywhere near as premium a product.

Plus it's just a matt black cuboid...it just looks like an oversized TV remote, compared to...

I know it doesn't add to the functionality...but c'mon, if I'm seeing for the first time or picking up a bit of tech that's worth more than several cars I've owned, I want there to be a bit of wow factor. 

Can't say I'm that impressed with the camera based on a bit of just random snapping of things around the house today...no there's nothing wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't seem any sharper than the one from the P30 Pro.  Despite seemingly taking up a hell of a lot more space.  Admittedly I've not done any real testing there beyond randomly pointing it at a few things round the house.

The fingerprint reader is orders of magnitude more flaky than the one on any of my Huawei handsets.  Which is already getting old.

I guess the biggest things I've seen that it has going for it so far are that it should be supported for a good while, and it's not an iPhone.

[IronStar]

Not being excited about new phones is a good thing in my book - we got to a point where they just work and get out of the way. Hardware refresh doesn’t net you anything groundbreaking, but you get a bump in speed, a nice feature or five and a better battery life. Going back two or three personal hardware refreshes backwards (to the phone you replaced  5 years or so) deffo shows that the tech has progressed.

I remember when I was in high school and new Android gen was  groundbreaking, amount of time wasted faffing with ROMs, kernels and overclocking those to squeeze every last bit of (inadequate) performance they had is not something I’d like to see a return of.

I’m currently on iPhone 13, absolutely the best and most stable device I ever had. Locked down? Sure, but I really CBA to tinker with any of it, I just want it to work and it excels at that. Probably to be traded in for 15 when 16 comes out because USB-C and fresh battery. 

[beko1987]

I was just thinking about custom rooms when you said it yourself 😂 That's when it was exciting! 

I started with my galaxy s2 which felt really amazing at the time, although I was coming from an LG slide thing iirc which was goppingly shit. I also got an original nexus tablet and fell into the xda developers forum! Kept both going for years and the nexus tablet worked fine (albeit uselessly) until 4ish years ago when Eva dropped it and it just wasn't worth fixing. 

But keeping that s2 going years after it should have been led me to lightweight custom rooms, and the (I forget what their called) root packages you could add to get amazing things line a torch, always on display, making the shortcut keys do different things and so on. My m7 I dropped too before I got nodding it (didn't mind the stock ui iirc) but my m8 I kept for years and years with a beautiful slim rom and minimal gapps and many hacks. 

Was barclays fucking it up in the end, it wouldn't run on a rooted phone and it was just as banking apps started to be useful. And by then alot of the things I rooted and modded for were being baked into android anyway. Got the p20 pro and Huawei had done such a good job with the software it was perfect as it was, and alot of the apps I used by then wouldn't work anyway. 

Now I'm happy just taking a friend's cast offs, although we do have flipping loads of bloody phones now, but they all have a purpose/too fucked to be any use otherwise. 

My IBM thinkpad x60 tablet has all the adb drivers installed though, I last used it many years ago to remove via the terminal all thebloatware from the ex's dad's Samsung a_whatever. Made it into a beautiful device and was all he needed as he was a complete technophobe. He nearly passed out as I did it infront of him on his dining table (following a guide 😂). I bet he's had to get another phone now and I bet he hates it! 

[AnnoyingPentium]

2 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Hopefully just a flexy? 🤞🤞

That it was! AA man has fitted a new one and bled the system up. Car now has brakes! 😂