The grumpy thread

[Bren]

I had a tooth extraction a couple of weeks ago - a molar. The socket took it's time to heal and I now have a bone spur in the socket.

I had a tooth on the other side filled - dentist spotted that it might be cracked. I can't bite down on it - hardly eaten anything for two weeks and for the first time in 52 years I am developing a set of abs....

[artdjones]

57 minutes ago, chaseracer said:

HFM??!  We used to pay 13quid for a 3-bed detached; nine windows plus conservatory.

Until the bloke subcontracted to his mate, who was a dick...

I would have thought a union man like you would have been all for the working man making a decent wage. And £13 for a three bed with conservatory wouldn't come near that.

[chaseracer]

2 hours ago, artdjones said:

I would have thought a union man like you would have been all for the working man making a decent wage. And £13 for a three bed with conservatory wouldn't come near that.

[chadders]

Ours is £22.50 for the roughly 25 windows on the ground and first floors plus the conservatory. It was £20 up to a couple of years ago.

It doesn’t add up to me but he regularly holidays in Turkey and often spends £1k on a new puppy. Anyway it's his business, literally.

[Metal Guru]

39 minutes ago, chadders said:

Ours is £22.50 for the roughly 25 windows on the ground and first floors plus the conservatory. It was £20 up to a couple of years ago.

It doesn’t add up to me but he regularly holidays in Turkey and often spends £1k on a new puppy. Anyway it's his business, literally.

Helps when your business is cash and you “only” turn over £12k a year.

[chadders]

35 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Helps when your business is cash and you “only” turn over £12k a year.

It does but if still doesn't seem enough.

He's got an assistant and they're here for about half an hour.

I can't be bothered with the numbers but he runs a fairly new van so his overheads won't be trivial.

[andy18s]

19 hours ago, richardmorris said:

Just cleaned the windows. Now the sun is on them, they look worse!

 

We use one of these little Karcher vacuums, brilliant bit of kit

[artdjones]

2 hours ago, chadders said:

It does but if still doesn't seem enough.

He's got an assistant and they're here for about half an hour.

I can't be bothered with the numbers but he runs a fairly new van so his overheads won't be trivial.

So one man hour for £22.50. I'd say he has another "sideline" in the back of his van. Or is money laundering. Even minimum wage is £11.40ph, put National Insurance  and a new van onto that, plus the fact that neither of them will be earning while they drive to the next job. You're right. That doesn't add up. It would only add up if the charge was £50.

 

[Remspoor]

On 19/10/2024 at 17:45, richardmorris said:

Just cleaned the windows. Now the sun is on them, they look worse!

 

Cleaning vinegar (do not use table vinegar) and newspaper.  We grab free newspapers when they are left around and save them up.

[myglaren]

3 a.m. a couple of nights ago it sounded like squirrels in hobnail boots in my attic, immediately above my bed.  Went on for about an hour then silence.  Began again at 05:20-ish.  Only for ten~fifteen minutes this time.

I should go and check but it is not in the main attic but an annex that is very difficult to access.  No one has been in there in at least twenty years, only the bees and starlings that nest in there.

Maybe next year.

And laid in the bath reading, sounded like the bloke next door was coming through the wall with an SDS drill.

I suspect it was the wind attempting to remove the solar panels though.  I hope they don't leave without saying bye-bye.

[maxxo]

No doubt going to end up being a grump from this

but the fact is I spend around £800 a month on tabs 

i can’t justify it, I can’t continue smoking 40 a day

i can’t be bothered

im sick of it

I’ve been recommended this so let’s just

im annoyed at myself for becoming such a chain smoker

i can’t afford it yet I literally sit there all day burning money

[High Jetter]

3 hours ago, myglaren said:

3 a.m. a couple of nights ago it sounded like squirrels in hobnail boots in my attic, immediately above my bed.  Went on for about an hour then silence.  Began again at 05:20-ish.  Only for ten~fifteen minutes this time.

I should go and check but it is not in the main attic but an annex that is very difficult to access.  No one has been in there in at least twenty years, only the bees and starlings that nest in there.

Maybe next year.

And laid in the bath reading, sounded like the bloke next door was coming through the wall with an SDS drill.

I suspect it was the wind attempting to remove the solar panels though.  I hope they don't leave without saying bye-bye.

Try an ultrasonic mouse repeller, scared our squirrels away.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

6 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Try an ultrasonic mouse repeller, scared our squirrels away.

The same as the ones that supposedly send cats away?

i) They don't work.  We had a cat shitting on our (shared) front lawn for a year after our next door neighbour put one in.
ii) They're fucking antisocial.  Some people (myself included) can hear them clear as a bell and it's just irritating.

One of our neighbours decided to do a land grab and claim a bunch of communal land as their own in a snicket that goes onto the main road.  They put three of them in a row in this narrow space that a lot of people walk through.  Within a week, somebody had taken golf clubs to them...

[chadders]

7 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Try an ultrasonic mouse repeller, scared our squirrels away.

They scared our mice away as well. I don't know about squirrels though as they're just in the old stables where the mice can get I and the squirrels don't bother.

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

The same as the ones that supposedly send cats away?

I think a different frequency, have experience of inneffectual and annoying cat repellers too.

[myglaren]

7 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Try an ultrasonic mouse repeller, scared our squirrels away.

Very awkward to install there. 

My neighbour has one but the cat ignores it.

No further incidents though.

[cobblers]

Speaking of loft based rodents, we've got rats in ours, I think someone on the allotments next-door has a compost heap that they put food waste on and we're pretty rural so the place is fucking teeming with rats.

Our loft is fucking disgusting - every bit of pipe insulation is chewed to pieces, layers and layers of fibreglass insulation riddled with paths, burrows and chewed up debris. A horrific place to be, an hour up there feels like a full day on planet earth!

I've had pest control bloke out and we've put plenty of poison about, and inevitably there's a couple of dead ones up there, causing a foul stench in the hallway.

I went up yesterday to try and locate the corpses. Masked up with half a pack of airwaves chewing gum in my gob to mask the stink. Predictably the dead ones are buried in insulation right in the eaves at the hardest to access place.

I crawled over towards it, getting snarled up in cobwebs and dead flies. As soon as I disturbed the area I unleashed about ten million flies all started swarming at me and my head torch. Totally grossed me out, my claustrophobia kicked in and I got out of there fucking sharpish, very nearly coming through the ceiling a couple of times

 

How long does it take for a dead rat to stop stinking if I just let nature do it's thing?

 

Plan is to have all the many layers of filthy loft insulation removed after winter - you can get a company that will come out and hoover the lot up through a 18 inch wide hose into their truck, then  once it's clean I can work out what I can do about it all and maybe replace it with something like kingspan that they're less likely to nest in.

 

 

[wuvvum]

Hairy Japanese bastards!

[EyesWeldedShut]

2 minutes ago, cobblers said:

How long does it take for a dead rat to stop stinking if I just let nature do it's thing?

Depends on your sniffability - we had one die under the floor of this room a few years back (8' by 8' box room used as an office) and it was either tear up all the wood flooring and floorboards or cut in through the kitchen ceiling. Decided just to sit it out - took about two months - not to mention the interesting* deviation in the kitchen ceiling plasterboard near the sink (so I will have to cut that out and re-plaster some day in any case). Their access route was under the bedroom floors then up the water pipe enclosure to the attic. Never saw them in the downstairs/kitchen but there are two dogs in there at night.

Never did think through the 'what if it snuffs it under the floor' but that's the problem with poison. We'd tried cage and snap traps in the attic to no avail - most of the other rats  did the decent thing and died on top of the loft insulation though (result!) There's still a few rats floating around outside around the stables but we did find that stopping bird seed* for the wild birds helped diminish the rat population greatly - we no longer spot them and only know they're around when the dog gets one.

*also chickens are a total magnet for rats - anytime I've kept them the place quickly gets inundated no matter how you sequester the feed

[reb]

Archive.org is still down. It's where the CC licenced footage I'm using for one of the shows I'm working on lives. I have a fair amount of it downloaded already, but I'm burning through it fast and have already run out of a couple of categories.

Bloody hackers.

[myglaren]

2 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

*also chickens are a total magnet for rats - anytime I've kept them the place quickly gets inundated no matter how you sequester the feed

My next door neighbour has also mentioned rats in his attic.  He keeps owls and a Harris Hawk, they are sort-of chickens aren't they?

And next door to him is a pigeon breeder

[chadders]

We have a rats that live in the roof void of the old stables who got in there when some of the fascia rotted. You can watch them going up and down the drainpipe which is right next to the hole.

Compared to the squirrels who stuff themselves at the nearest bird feeder the rats spend less than a minute there; I guess that they're more scared of predators especially as we have Peregrine Falcons locally who do tend to visit our front garden and leave bits of Wood Pigeon behind.

[24vdiamond]

3 hours ago, cobblers said:

Speaking of loft based rodents, we've got rats in ours, I think someone on the allotments next-door has a compost heap that they put food waste on and we're pretty rural so the place is fucking teeming with rats.

Our loft is fucking disgusting - every bit of pipe insulation is chewed to pieces, layers and layers of fibreglass insulation riddled with paths, burrows and chewed up debris. A horrific place to be, an hour up there feels like a full day on planet earth!

I've had pest control bloke out and we've put plenty of poison about, and inevitably there's a couple of dead ones up there, causing a foul stench in the hallway.

I went up yesterday to try and locate the corpses. Masked up with half a pack of airwaves chewing gum in my gob to mask the stink. Predictably the dead ones are buried in insulation right in the eaves at the hardest to access place.

I crawled over towards it, getting snarled up in cobwebs and dead flies. As soon as I disturbed the area I unleashed about ten million flies all started swarming at me and my head torch. Totally grossed me out, my claustrophobia kicked in and I got out of there fucking sharpish, very nearly coming through the ceiling a couple of times

 

How long does it take for a dead rat to stop stinking if I just let nature do it's thing?

 

Plan is to have all the many layers of filthy loft insulation removed after winter - you can get a company that will come out and hoover the lot up through a 18 inch wide hose into their truck, then  once it's clean I can work out what I can do about it all and maybe replace it with something like kingspan that they're less likely to nest in.

 

 

Horrible things, in a previous life we lived in an end of terrace(we were posh) and we had no end of trouble, council/environmental health all came round but never got to the bottom of it

A mate a few doors down caught one in his kitchen stabbing it with a carving knife taped to a broom handle😁

Same mate rings up another time as he cornered one in his lounge! I goes round and we corner it and get it with a cricket bat, the thing was on its back legs hissing and ready to take us both on! 😨

The final score cricket bat 1, rat 0

When they do die after poisoning the stench is vile followed by a plague of flies, glad to be out of that place

[MikeR]

any one else seen this comet ... something or other Atlas ???

every time I look it's nowhere to be seen , 

 is it some big scam to improve the sale of telescopes ?

[GrumpiusMaximus]

1 minute ago, MikeR said:

any one else seen this comet ... something or other Atlas ???

every time I look it's nowhere to be seen , 

 is it some big scam to improve the sale of telescopes ?

No.  My Dad has photographed it.  It’s just very low on the horizon.  Plus a cheap pair of binoculars should make it pretty obvious.

I haven’t seen it but I don’t have an unobstructed horizon.

[captain_70s]

Fitted new £100 wire feed mech to welder. Pull trigger, nothing. No wire feed, no gas valve action.

Start dismantling and one of the connectors just falls off the PCB.

Hng.

[cobblers]

36 minutes ago, captain_70s said:

Fitted new £100 wire feed mech to welder. Pull trigger, nothing. No wire feed, no gas valve action.

Start dismantling and one of the connectors just falls off the PCB.

Hng.

Fuckin hell that's a poor design!!!! 1/4 spade terminals are absolute shits for getting dry solder joints even when they're proper through hole parts. Some bean counter / naive graduate has saved a few pence on that board and used surface mount ones, absolutely unforgivable for something under physical stress, especially when the board is mainly through hole stuff anyway!!

Easy enough to solder back on, thankfully, but I'm fuming that surface mount spade terminals even exist, let alone someone making a PCB for a welder actually used them!!! If you can weld you can probably solder them back on, but if not send me a PM and stick it in the post, I'll sort it.

I repair automotive electronics for a living and had to swear off doing any side jobs because I was so busy, but I'm fuming that they have made such a stupid choice here that I just want to fix it.

[somewhatfoolish]

That is pretty shite design.

[captain_70s]

11 hours ago, cobblers said:

!!! If you can weld you can probably solder them back on, but if not send me a PM and stick it in the post, I'll sort it.

I repair automotive electronics for a living and had to swear off doing any side jobs because I was so busy, but I'm fuming that they have made such a stupid choice here that I just want to fix it.

Cheers for the offer! @MrsJuular has offered to look at it as I have permanent jakey shakes and can't solder worth a shit and she lives 5 mins up the road. 

I was surprised it was surface mounted, but these units have a bit of a rep for dry joints so hey ho. It is 7 years old and has seen mega use, I think if it needs any more parts it'd be cheaper to buy a eBay inverter welder - Which I probably should have done in the first place.

It is French after all. 😂

[loserone]

On 21/10/2024 at 09:46, cobblers said:

How long does it take for a dead rat to stop stinking if I just let nature do it's thing?

I'm about to find out, cause I set up a training the garden for grey squirrels and last night caught another rat.  It's managed to get *halfway* through the holes in the cage before expiring (yes I did check the trap yesterday) and am I fuck cutting it in half to empty it.

Rats are both amazing and also equal parts utter cunts, so I've just reset the trap in the hopes that another one will come along and help free it's deceased relative.