The grumpy thread

13,388 · October 20

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.

17,049 · October 21

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...

4,485 · October 21

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.

13,388 · October 21

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.

10,074 · October 21

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.

24,017 · October 21

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.

58,701 · October 21

Hairy Japanese bastards!

7,526 · October 21

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

14,271 · October 21

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.

10,074 · October 21

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

4,485 · October 21

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.

October 21

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

8,449 · October 21

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 ?

17,049 · October 21

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.

19,497 · October 21

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.

24,017 · October 21

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.

16,764 · October 21

That is pretty shite design.

19,497 · October 22

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. 😂

28,547 · October 22

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.

8,449 · October 22

Again a Pia of a drive into Liverpool city center this morning , not even the rush hour , just the anti car road changes , well we are reviewing our need to drive in , this will also affect our shopping habits as the trains are like moving sardines cans .. council wins , shops lose out ....

1,277 · October 22

Just replaced a corsa d strut top mount and bearing due to excessive play/clonking noise on one of my girls' cars, and it is a simple straightforward job. luckily, as I had to assemble it three times to work out what was wrong with it.
Someone had previously replaced the top mount before, and the middle nut as circled was too large and sitting proud in its cup, preventing the top washer and nut seating down correctly.
Smaller nut found and problem solved, but the mount, bearing, and all its hardware previously fitted were unbranded, so I have no one to blame for shoddy parts but previous owner/mechanic.

25,106 · October 22

Re rats, me and the ex had to move from our old flat thanks to them.

We rented cash in hand from the shop downstairs, they owned the flat and the shop. Got in well, all was good. Until they had work done to the shop, and opened the bloody sewers. We didn't notice at first, but the rats came.

We saw the first one in the upstairs room, and put a trap down. I then started finding chewed wires and rat shit in the loft.

Later that same week, I was sleeping on the sofa (not because of a row on that rare occasion, baby Eva couldn't sleep or something) and I could hear them in the walls at night. 8am sharp me and Amy were in serious discussions when one ran out from the fucking sofa. I flipped it over and we both screamed as the big fat rats nest rolled out from under it. We were at my mums within the hour, and I was back at the flat with the bloke who owned it an hour after that, who suddenly went very friendly when I asked if he had permits for his work...

Smarmy cunt he was. We were out of the mentally by that point. We got 2 months of 'free rent' which made moving very easy, and when I cleared the loft I counted 5 dead rats. I left them be. Rumors on the grapevine from the next tenants 8 months later was the place had an odd smell... 😂

I always remember him docking £50 from the deposit we got back. Specifically because when he got his tradeie to fit a new front door tradeie fitted the broken doorbell back. I then removed it and 'left some holes'. I ripped his arm out and signed the paper as he obvious missed the various damages there were, broken things which would have added up to more than the deposit 👌 Prick probably found more after that as I remember purposefully rounding the screws off well when fitting the removable bannister after clearing the (illegal) 2nd bedroom in the (badly converted) attic.

I dont like wild rats anymore. Pet ones not so bad as the owner makes the choice there

22,313 · October 22

On 20/10/2024 at 12:22, andy18s said:

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

Bought the one on the left ( discounted on karcher website at the moment ). Arrived, just charged and tried it and it’s fantastic. No streaks and clear. Expensive but certainly worth it as it will do the shower too.

26,123 · October 22

Good lord, the UK eVisa application system is possibly the most badly written, duct taped together piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Apparently both physical visas and biometric residence permits are both being phased out as of the end of this year - so if you've got one of those forming your documented right to be here and work, need to have an eVisa by then. However you can't just apply for it, you need to get a biometric residence permit first...oh, and that's all handled by a third party who don't know their arse from their elbow...

It is an utter and complete farce. Nearest office with availability for taking the biometrics (which needs to be done within 30 days of the application) is sodding Norwich. So 2 1/2 drive each way. Fun!

Plus the website only works in Edge as we found out after pissing about for an hour.

Oh, and just now when we thought we'd finally got everything organised...

"Sorry, this service is currently unavailable."

...So has anything we've just spent the last three hours going around in circles following your poorly worded and contradictory instructions saved? Find out tomorrow I guess!

2,411 · October 22

Why do garages always seem to overlook pollen filters?

1,928 · October 22

57 minutes ago, timolloyd said:

Why do garages always seem to overlook pollen filters?

And when they don’t it’s always cheapest one, never activated carbon or HEPA one. 🙄

10,074 · October 22

Had to spend ages with screenwipes cleaning my windscreen, a layer of something all over it, took bloody ages.

I wonder if it could be due to a clogged pollen filter.

I rarely use the car, my son uses it for work every night and of course the screen gets initial condensation until the aircon starts working. He wipes it off with the back of his hand by the look of it and makes a smeary mess.

Taking it for its MOT I thought they might fail it. It did need cleaning anyway, of course.

5,690 · October 22

5 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Good lord, the UK eVisa application system is possibly the most badly written, duct taped together piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Apparently both physical visas and biometric residence permits are both being phased out as of the end of this year - so if you've got one of those forming your documented right to be here and work, need to have an eVisa by then. However you can't just apply for it, you need to get a biometric residence permit first...oh, and that's all handled by a third party who don't know their arse from their elbow...

It is an utter and complete farce. Nearest office with availability for taking the biometrics (which needs to be done within 30 days of the application) is sodding Norwich. So 2 1/2 drive each way. Fun!

Plus the website only works in Edge as we found out after pissing about for an hour.

Oh, and just now when we thought we'd finally got everything organised...

"Sorry, this service is currently unavailable."

...So has anything we've just spent the last three hours going around in circles following your poorly worded and contradictory instructions saved? Find out tomorrow I guess!

Those in charge of the UK may as well just admit they don't actually want anyone living in the country at all and start tying people to concrete blocks and throwing them into the sea.

4,590 · October 23

13 hours ago, MikeR said:

Again a Pia of a drive into Liverpool city center this morning , not even the rush hour , just the anti car road changes , well we are reviewing our need to drive in , this will also affect our shopping habits as the trains are like moving sardines cans .. council wins , shops lose out ....

Yep but think of the environment, it'll be like Sheffield were the council can't understand why commerce is dead.

8,449 · October 23

11 hours ago, myglaren said:

Had to spend ages with screenwipes cleaning my windscreen, a layer of something all over it, took bloody ages.

I wonder if it could be due to a clogged pollen filter.

I rarely use the car, my son uses it for work every night and of course the screen gets initial condensation until the aircon starts working. He wipes it off with the back of his hand by the look of it and makes a smeary mess.

Taking it for its MOT I thought they might fail it. It did need cleaning anyway, of course.

try super strong vinegar , ie 9% , from Waitrose , Polish shops , it strips off dirt quite well

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