The grumpy thread

[Rustybullethole]

Bent down to slosh out the bucket at the end of garden after cleaning the trowls and get a little tickle in the ear from the bushes.

Stand up and cam feel and hear something mincing about in my lug hole. Its having a party in there and frankly its not pleasant. Tap other side of bounce is not helping. Calm down relax, what would a pro do?

Flush it out with hose pipe. This did not help. Probably blasted it in deeper cos numb nuts didn't check the hose and it was on super jet. 

Calm down relax, fuckers still tap dancing in there!

Twezers. I have some as pulling out foreign bodies at work is a fairly regular occurrence. Cant find them. 

Spaghetti. Snaps off in ear.

Henry. I out a fresh bag in this morning so full suck mode will surely sort it. No. Am not sure thats great for ear drum either. 

Concerted search yields tweezers. Pull out spaghetti and a load of ear hair but no incy wincy. He's still wriggling.

Back to where i started shall set hose on flood rather than jet. 

My lug hole is not thanking me though Incy has either drowned and is still there or has fell out the spout. Either way he's not wriggling this is good. 

[Markeh]

11 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Ok, done my bit for the grin thread, now for the grumps originating from the boot sale today. 

1) Selling a Sky Q remote. Honestly, no idea why I had it. I've never had Sky Q. Probably came with a bundle of electronics. Anyway, guy asked how much, I said £1.50? He umms, ahhs, puts it down. Then comes back and offers £1. I said "I think £1.50 is fair, surely? If you needed one NOW and had to go to Tesco or Argos they're about £30. He responds, "err, it's a bit of a risk, what if it doesn't work?" Well, I can't see why it wouldn't work. It's a remote control. But, I'm no gambling man, however I know which option I'd be going for! He reluctantly stumped up the £1.50 and muttered "it better work" as he walked off...

2) One of those replica KitchenAid stand mixer things which everyone has but never uses. A fiver must be fair? Delightful* gentleman offers £3. I'm all for a haggle, it's a car boot sale, so I said how about £4.. he said "I give £3" .. no, it's pretty much brand new. £4 is the lowest, sorry. 

A bit of ping pong 🏓 between "three" and "four" was had, when I reached the end of my tether, pointed to the offside rear wheel of my motor car and said, "four quid or I'm going to squish it under there in front of you, if you wish to stay and watch" 

£4 was duly paid, with a giggle, and the mixer was sold. 

3) A couple of pretty new blankets, £1 each, I said £1.50 for both if you want them. She absolutely insists on £1 for both. And then walks off because she can't have them both for £1... ok, no problem, I'd much rather be donating them to the local homeless collection who will appreciate them far more than you. If you go to a shop to buy some you'd easily be paying a tenner each. Twat. 

AMAZINGLY - I did not have one single punter pick up an item and ask "what is it". Usually the first thought that crosses my mind in that situation is "it'll be a fucking suppository in a minute you timewasting fool" but I will duly explain and they'll throw it back in the general direction they picked it up from without saying anything. But none of those today. Nice. 

An obligatory part of selling at a car boot sale is having a wander around at some point to see what useful* items you can buy. Today was no exception. I picked up a DVD, asked how much, he said £2, its a bit pricey but it's one I wanted, I said how about £1. His response in the snottiest attitude was "yeah if it's still here by the end, or £2 now"

Ok then delboy, £2 it is, but it's a fucking DVD which is as desirable as bum aids at a car boot sale, and it would definitely still be there at the end due to the fact it's been there for 3 hours already and some people have started packing up.. Because he was rude, instead of having over the £2 coin I had in my pocket, I decided to give him a tenner which seemed to wipe out their change pot and cause much upset to his equally miserable wife(?) who started giving him an earful about it for "fucking up her car boot sale by giving away their takings" 

Not sure how she got to that conclusion to be fair... 

Hahahaha! Childish, evil, call me whatever you like. I love messing with people in the most harmless or maliciously compliant way possible 🤣

My favourite was one who asked about a laptop I had on (at the time a 2 year old i5 HP) that was £150. I said "one fifty" and she assumed I meant £1.50.... and still asked if it had the charger and gave it a thorough inspection before trying to hand me some coins!

That's cheap for a stand mixer - I sold my cheapie one for £30 on Marketplace after inheriting an actual KitchenAid, and I had lots of enquiries. He should've snapped your hand off at a fiver!

[outlaw118]

Took a bit of a tumble at work 11am  - down some stairs where the handrail came away in my fat hand. Block or poorly maintained council flats, in Basildon. Utter shitehole, knee swollen, back jarred.

Shit happens, that's not the grump. Spoke to the Boss, she says go home, fill in form etc.... Been home since 2.15 because stupidly tried to carry on while in fucking agony.

 

Having to call the company sickline (3rd party run - Swiftcare?) to report or I'll lose time. 

"Your call in important to us, please continue to hold, we'll be with you as soon as we can".

29 bastard minutes so far. I want to take some proper painkillers and have a nap.

[outlaw118]

1 houe 4 minutes all in, FFS

[Remspoor]

19 hours ago, purplebargeken said:

Haribo.... do they now contain fucking Sorbitol? Best anti-constipation thing ever. Fuck you Haribo bears, my arse hates you.

What? You put the bears in your ass?

[purplebargeken]

No, I ate them on this occasion. Same result either way I would imagine.

[dozeydustman]

This bloody cough has kept me up most of the night. Went to bed at half 7 as I was feeling rough. Been up roughly every hour and a half and I think my right lung is trying to eject itself from my body.

[New POD]

On 9/30/2023 at 9:22 AM, myglaren said:

My brother in law often had to remonstrate with Dame Edna Everidge for allowing her dog to piss on the doorstep of the restaurant he worked in.

Barry Humfries was known to be a bit of a twat wasn't he? 

[myglaren]

23 hours ago, Rustybullethole said:

Bent down to slosh out the bucket at the end of garden after cleaning the trowls and get a little tickle in the ear from the bushes.

Stand up and cam feel and hear something mincing about in my lug hole. Its having a party in there and frankly its not pleasant. Tap other side of bounce is not helping. Calm down relax, what would a pro do?

Flush it out with hose pipe. This did not help. Probably blasted it in deeper cos numb nuts didn't check the hose and it was on super jet. 

Calm down relax, fuckers still tap dancing in there!

Twezers. I have some as pulling out foreign bodies at work is a fairly regular occurrence. Cant find them. 

Spaghetti. Snaps off in ear.

Henry. I out a fresh bag in this morning so full suck mode will surely sort it. No. Am not sure thats great for ear drum either. 

Concerted search yields tweezers. Pull out spaghetti and a load of ear hair but no incy wincy. He's still wriggling.

Back to where i started shall set hose on flood rather than jet. 

My lug hole is not thanking me though Incy has either drowned and is still there or has fell out the spout. Either way he's not wriggling this is good. 

I went out to 'test' a new weed rake, got talking him next door so was a while.

About an hour after coming in I felt a tickle in my left lug, poked it and loads of soil fell out.

Can't imagine how it got there.

Not as bad as invading arachnids of course.

[Rustybullethole]

4 minutes ago, myglaren said:

I went out to 'test' a new weed rake, got talking him next door so was a while.

About an hour after coming in I felt a tickle in my left lug, poked it and loads of soil fell out.

Can't imagine how it got there.

Not as bad as invading arachnids of course.

So after research on my better halfs part the technique is to fill your lug with water or oil and they then float to the top. Ears fine today so got there in the end. 

[myglaren]

⇑

Used the shower head to sluice it out.

[goosey]

The simple things 

arrived on site this morning to fit this, got it out the box and found it doesn’t come with an o-ring fitted you have to order that separately ( should be in the recessed area) 

So now I have to piss about finding somewhere to get an a bloody o-ring from 🙄

[barefoot]

I've just been reminded about queuing up in pubs. What the actual fuck is that all about?

The last time I nipped in for a lunchtime pint, I followed a bloke through the door who stopped abruptly in what turned out to be a queue for the bar. Obviously, I pushed past him and went to sit down with my mate who was already there. We watched as the queue went down... I got up, walked to the bar and was served in the fashion to which a normal, mature gentleman has grown accustomed. Now, I've stopped drinking, as is customary for me until April (with a short break for xmas lunch, obviously), but when I resume drinking in the new year, I shall only visit the pub on one occasion if that is to become the new norm, and I shall drink exclusively in restaurants with table service, at home and of course, in my campity van.

What is the world coming to?

[Saabnut]

Not sure whether this grin or a grump but overall I think that grump wins

Grin - nice curry, couple of beers and a bottle of cheap (for Norway) red

Grump - got completely soaked both ways and cost of a 10 min taxi ride each way and the above grin components a mere £247 at todays exchange rate

Gotta love Norway 😀

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Saabnut said:

Not sure whether this grin or a grump but overall I think that grump wins

Grin - nice curry, couple of beers and a bottle of cheap (for Norway) red

Grump - got completely soaked both ways and cost of a 10 min taxi ride each way and the above grin components a mere £247 at todays exchange rate

Gotta love Norway 😀

HFM? You get paid well tho, ISTR

[loserone]

2 hours ago, Saabnut said:

£247

If that includes a cheap* bottle of wine you have done well.  

[New POD]

20 hours ago, goosey said:

The simple things 

arrived on site this morning to fit this, got it out the box and found it doesn’t come with an o-ring fitted you have to order that separately ( should be in the recessed area) 

So now I have to piss about finding somewhere to get an a bloody o-ring from 🙄

Do you not have  Random sized O rings some of which are used that you've taken off other jobs loose at the bottom of your tool box.  What sort of maintenance tech are you ?  

Cental aisle of Aldi usually has a box. 

[Jazoli]

19 minutes ago, New POD said:

Do you not have  Random sized O rings some of which are used that you've taken off other jobs loose at the bottom of your tool box.  What sort of maintenance tech are you ?  

Cental aisle of Aldi usually has a box. 

 @goosey

Also screwfix

https://www.screwfix.com/search?search=O ring

 

 

[davehedgehog31]

Last Monday morning the woman next door reversed into the Fabia with her Audi Qsomething. She came to the door to let me know and was very apologetic. No ill feeling and I had a look at options for getting it fixed. Local body shops were only interested in insurance work. I couldn't really be bothered going to the insurance and declaring it for the next five years.

 

 

A painted wing was £177 from eBay. I bought this and will fit it myself. Let her know this and gave her the receipt with my bank details written on it. Have saved her a pretty penny and potentially a lot of hassle. You guessed it, the bint still hasn't paid me, they're not short a bob or two either. 

 

The moral of this story, fuck people. Just get things done properly. As it stands I'm £180 out of pocket, have a bashed car which will shortly have a poorly colour matched wing and I'll have to spend my own time fitting it. I bet the liberty taking bastard sends me the exact amount when I eventually get it too. 

 

I'll be asking for insurance details after work, I'm sure this will hasten the transfer of funds. 

[New POD]

Wankers.

You should have gone through insurance. 

And should threaten to now.  Its not too late. 

They would have attempted to write it off,  you'd have been forced to argue about its value, forced to argue about the cost to buy it back with an insurance marker on it, but you would end up with an extra £££££. In the bank. Probably. 

[reb]

I have to get the bus into town for an appointment, I usually get one at quarter past the hour on the main road outside the farm. I waited and waited and it didn't turn up. It got to 20 to and I decided to walk down to the village to get the one at 10 to. As soon as I've crossed the road to walk across the field what turns up but the bus I was waiting for in the first place. What an utter bastard the universe is.

[DavieW]

I have Microsft "news" page as my homepage on the PC. The number of "copy and paste" articles written by so called journalists is what makes my grumpy. Do modern journalists just sit and scroll through TikTok to get their stories? Get out there and do some proper journalistic research.

[vulgalour]

Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly common for there to be no journalist involved at all with the rise of AI generated content taking their place.  It's all part of the enshittification of the internet, you see.

[goosey]

16 hours ago, New POD said:

Do you not have  Random sized O rings some of which are used that you've taken off other jobs loose at the bottom of your tool box.  What sort of maintenance tech are you ?  

Cental aisle of Aldi usually has a box. 

I just transferred the clear bowl part onto the customers old water separator in the end so there was no need to dismantle anything

[High Jetter]

53 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

Unfortunately it's becoming increasingly common for there to be no journalist involved at all with the rise of AI generated content taking their place.  It's all part of the enshittification of the internet, you see.

Yea, ok. You AI'd that post, shirley?

[vulgalour]

I know, it sounds like proper conspiracy theorist stuff, but it's true.  Generative text programmes are being used to manufacture articles that seems legitimate but are in fact created using things like Chat GPT.  I suppose saying no journalist is involved is slightly misleading since these programmes rely on consuming vast quantities of content originally created by journalist, who are never credited, so that then an article can be generated.  People already use these programmes to create perfectly convincing job application letters and even essays with bogus content.

Content online is becoming more automated than ever as the tools to do so make it easier.  Rules against plagiarism are difficult to enforce, and the willingness to do so seems to be in short supply.  Everything from news articles that seem as though they're copy-pasted, to clip compilations on Youtube, and even deepfake videos on Tiktok... the examples are endless.  AI is being used primarily, it seems, for disinformation and a way to plagiarise and avoid paying actual journalists.

This comes from a place of experience too.  The rise of AI has directly impacted my own artwork.  I've seen fellow artists whose style is closer to the popular AI generated styles have to find alternative work.  Writers I know aren't getting commissions and in general the creative industries are struggling to find a way to compete with these level of plagiarism and lazy content creation.  Hopefully this craze will go the way of NFTs, hopefully it proves very difficult to make any money from and the people pushing it get bored of it so the real people doing the real work can get back on with earning a wage again.

Might be worth doing a little hunt for articles about how Google is altering search terms so whenever you put anything in on Google you get a lot of adverts instead of the thing you're looking for too, that's been something that's been getting reported on in the last week or so.  My work is based almost exclusively online, I have to keep as much of an eye as I can on these things to figure out why sales and interest are dropping, and they have been since the rise in the AI trend.  However, I've found that places like Autoshite, Mastodon, and other 'indie' sites haven't suffered the same as, say, Google, anything related to Chrome, or the bigger social media platforms.

I've never knowingly used an AI generator for content and that's a trend I intend to continue with until I can feel comfortable that it's an ethically sound option.

[AnnoyingPentium]

21 hours ago, davehedgehog31 said:

Last Monday morning the woman next door reversed into the Fabia with her Audi Qsomething. She came to the door to let me know and was very apologetic. No ill feeling and I had a look at options for getting it fixed. Local body shops were only interested in insurance work. I couldn't really be bothered going to the insurance and declaring it for the next five years.

 

 

A painted wing was £177 from eBay. I bought this and will fit it myself. Let her know this and gave her the receipt with my bank details written on it. Have saved her a pretty penny and potentially a lot of hassle. You guessed it, the bint still hasn't paid me, they're not short a bob or two either. 

 

The moral of this story, fuck people. Just get things done properly. As it stands I'm £180 out of pocket, have a bashed car which will shortly have a poorly colour matched wing and I'll have to spend my own time fitting it. I bet the liberty taking bastard sends me the exact amount when I eventually get it too. 

 

I'll be asking for insurance details after work, I'm sure this will hasten the transfer of funds. 

That's a bummer.

Happy to help with replacing the wing if you need a hand. It's not too bad to do, but there's a few bits where they're glued on too. 

[barefoot]

I used it to write an article about a heavily modified VW. As you can imagine, the info sheets sent in by the owners of such vehicles are just soulless lists of what they've upgraded so I asked ai to condense it from 8000 words to 2000. Then I did my usual editing / formatting with the much reduced piece. 

[artdjones]

23 hours ago, davehedgehog31 said:

Last Monday morning the woman next door reversed into the Fabia with her Audi Qsomething. She came to the door to let me know and was very apologetic. No ill feeling and I had a look at options for getting it fixed. Local body shops were only interested in insurance work. I couldn't really be bothered going to the insurance and declaring it for the next five years.

 

 

A painted wing was £177 from eBay. I bought this and will fit it myself. Let her know this and gave her the receipt with my bank details written on it. Have saved her a pretty penny and potentially a lot of hassle. You guessed it, the bint still hasn't paid me, they're not short a bob or two either. 

 

The moral of this story, fuck people. Just get things done properly. As it stands I'm £180 out of pocket, have a bashed car which will shortly have a poorly colour matched wing and I'll have to spend my own time fitting it. I bet the liberty taking bastard sends me the exact amount when I eventually get it too. 

 

I'll be asking for insurance details after work, I'm sure this will hasten the transfer of funds. 

When she talked to her old man:-

"He wants £180 for a scratch on that old banger?"

"That's a cheek, it's only worth £450 and he wants nearly half of that for tiny damage!"

"Stuff him".

[myglaren]

18 hours ago, reb said:

I have to get the bus into town for an appointment, I usually get one at quarter past the hour on the main road outside the farm. I waited and waited and it didn't turn up. It got to 20 to and I decided to walk down to the village to get the one at 10 to. As soon as I've crossed the road to walk across the field what turns up but the bus I was waiting for in the first place. What an utter bastard the universe is.

Around here at least there are QR codes at all the bus stops.  Use your phone to read it and it will give you live info on busses due in the next half hour or so.