The grumpy thread

[Tetleysmooth]

To be fair, radio and TV is another industry where bank holidays don't exist - so they'll have to work anyway.

 

This is the Grumpy thread.

Please allow me to have my Grump in peace.

Fankyoo.

[EssDeeWon]

A minor grump but anyway here goes...

 

Me the GF popped up to Chelmsford in the 75 this morning, I parked in the big Meadows multi story and drove up to level 2 that was nice and empty (it literally was empty), lovely loads of room for parking   so I picked one of the 100 or so empty spaces......as my GF tries getting out the passenger side two silly bints in some modern Proton thing pull up and reverse in the very adjacent parking bay, ffs Why? They had a whole empty level to pick from? But they needed to park up beside my car as we were trying to get out with bags? Fuckin dimwits.

[tooSavvy]

.... that'll B manny fagnet effect at full on

 

 

TS

[wuvvum]

Just been checking paperwork and realised that the Rover of Doom ran out of MOT two weeks ago.  I could have sworn it ran until August...  So that's now six MOTs I need to pay for next month.

[purplebargeken]

Oh crap^

[strangeangel]

It seems like but five minutes since I replaced the radiator in Our Lass' Panda, and now she's reversed it off a MAHOOSIVE kerb, grounding it and snapping the cat in half.

 

It seems that my work is never done

[Bren]

A dear aunt of mine was taken into hospital on Friday.

 

She had emergency surgery yesterday - her bowel was removed, however her kidneys were being poisoned by the infection from the dieseased bowel.

 

I got a call in work this morning - she passed away at 10.30 am.

 

20 minutes later I got a text message from an old work colleague - a lad we used to work with was found dead at home. He was only in his late 30's and had young children.

 

My god, it's been a fucking shit day today......

[coalnotdole]

Thats shit, my grump seems minor in comparison....

 

I had a neighbour come to the front door today complained to my mother that I had too many cars parked in the street. She claimed all the locals were fed up with me and my cars and that there was nowhere to park, At the time of her complaint there were 3 of my vehicles in sight and none were anywhere near her house... It's true there have been a lot of cars about recently but they don't all belong to me! I get the impression I'm being singled out an an easy target because my cars are old, plastic and somewhat offensive looking however they are all Taxed and Tested. I generally go out of my way to keep on good terms with the immediate neighbours but there has been a recent spate of petty notes curtain twitching and general fuckwittery, That suggest that my efforts are going to waste...

 

These are the same people that will happily bang on the garage door to borrow a spanner or ask for advice about a fan belt or help to unload a wooden fishing boat onto a driveway. Requests that up until now had always been met with patient good humor on my part. Not anymore.

 

HOME OWNERS OF BRITAIN YOU DO NOT OWN THE ROAD OUTSIDE YOUR FUCKING HOUSE, YOU DO NOT GET TO CHOOSE WHO PARKS THERE.

 

Grump over.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Has anyone else noticed Flickr's latest brilliant* idea - using image recognition to automatically generate 'relevant' tags for every photo. Great in theory but there is no opt-out and it isn't very accurate. It seems unable to identify buses and coaches and variously tags them as 'truck', 'car' or 'train' - most of my photos are of them so I now have almost 6000 photos that are tagged wrongly and there is no way to batch remove these tags, which is just GR0.

 

I work in a university department that specialises in image recognition research and the consensus from experts there is that the technology is not yet anywhere near accurate enough for uses like this so why are they imposing such a poor system on all their users? Yet another nail in the coffin of what was once a great photo sharing site before Yahoo ruined it with their 'improvements'.

 

I've just been going through my photos to see what tags Flickr dreamt up for them, and I'm actually quite impressed with its accuracy. It correctly identified photos as containing dashboards, engines and tyres. 

 

Where it went wrong was tagging the Knob Van gear knob as "food". I also have a photo of my cat titled "Cat" which it has tagged "dog". 

[Ghosty]

It's tagged my mum's Bini as 'race car'.

[maxpower]

just buried another cat.... 3mths after his brother died.... this is the part of having pets that i hate

[purplebargeken]

Sorry to hear Bren. Dying... not much we can do to avoid it but we hope that we pass peacefully. I can only hope that your aunt and former colleague went that way. Condolences fella.

 

 

Maybe not the right time now but there are hundreds of moggies that are in need of a bloody good home, especially black/black and white cats. Maybe at some point you might consider having more fur around the home. They are great company.

 

 

Neighbours. Funny fuckers. Mrs PBK say that they complain to her about my cars but not one has ever approached me about it. I am much of the same opinion tbh. FRO!

[Cavcraft]

Thats shit, my grump seems minor in comparison....

 

I had a neighbour come to the front door today complained to my mother that I had too many cars parked in the street. She claimed all the locals were fed up with me and my cars and that there was nowhere to park, At the time of her complaint there were 3 of my vehicles in sight and none were anywhere near her house... It's true there have been a lot of cars about recently but they don't all belong to me! I get the impression I'm being singled out an an easy target because my cars are old, plastic and somewhat offensive looking however they are all Taxed and Tested.

 

 

I used to love it when that happened, as I told a couple of my neighbours to report me if they saw anything that wasn't 'legal.'  On two separate occasions condemming notices were stuck on cars (which both got towed away) and both times some nosey old wanker asked me if I was bothered. 

I told him (without lying) that I couldn't give a flying one as neither of them were mine, so it made no odds and he could carry on being a snitch.

[panhard65]

A minor grump but some people shouldn't be allowed to repair cars. My latest purchase 1007 had a few knocks and rattles when I picked it up from a trader. He moaned about how much he was losing on the car because he had been up until 4 in the morning fitting new front springs. I got it into the workshop yesterday. One front strut wasn't located properly in the hub and both the top mountings were fitted the wrong way round making the springs foul on the inner wings. It really annoys me that I have to compete for work with twats like this as the customer just wants the cheapest job and doesn't seem to care if it is done properly. It is no wonder the motor trade gets a bad name.

[fordperv]

Coalnotdole I once had an old neighbour complain that I had too many cars outside the house, i only had 2 in the drive and 2 outside which were legal, i never parked encroaching on to their side either, they didn't even drive or have a car, so to be Childish I borrowed 2 cheap cars from a mate round the corner who was a trader parked them outside, i told another neighbour who asked about the extra cars who I knew would tell them what I said "well I realised when someone moaned that I had too many cars that are legal and doing no harm, that I just needed to buy more to show them I could get more if I chose to" I left them there for a week and after they were gone nothing else was ever mentioned to me while I lived there

[stephen01]

ebay

[EssDeeWon]

ebay

 

Saab related by any chance?

[saucedoctor]

Your bumper bar will probably be bent. The plazzer bumpers always bounce but but if it's bent his grill you can bet it's bent your bumper bar.

 

Bang on the money, Cort. I had the car looked at this morning, and the chap has just been in touch to say that the bar is bent. He also said that X Types are "very strong cars, and you'd need to hit one pretty damned hard to damage the shell". Subject to the insurance, fixxoration will be about £450 all in. Bonus: the body shop has a wanked-out Chevrolet thing as an courtesy car. I'd like that for a day or two!

[Slappy]

CND, you'll be surprised how much of the general populace don't know the difference between what the Local Authority "owns" and what it maintains. Funnily enough I work for your Local Highway Authority and sit next to the lady who deals with Highway Boundary queries, she gets many people on the phone who are confused about this fact.

 

Yes, title deeds (especially on defined housing estates) may say that you own the land up to the centreline of the carriageway, but the area that the Highway Authority maintains legally over-rules that. Truth be told, the Local Authority owns very little land upon which the roads are laid out, and most of that ownership relates to areas which have been specifically improved for safety or capacity reasons, or for strategic reasons like the proposed route of a bypass for instance.

 

And you're quite correct, area designated as highway is to be kept available for all users to pass and re-pass (and hence there is no defined right to park outside your house). There's one guy in Ford who created a bit of a headache about 5 years ago by legally Stopping Up the Highway (removing the general public's legal rights to cross the land) in a turning area outside his house. Surprisingly our Legal Services didn't object to that, and it was allowed, but now there is an island of nothing surrounded by footway and carriageway. A few grand would have been spent on that too...

 

Oh, and the way to define the Highway generally (there are of course exceptions) is from a feature on 1 side of the road to a feature on the other side, whether it's a wall, hedge, tree, ditch bank or other. The responsibility of the Highway starts where the feature ends, but we will trim back your bush and then charge you for it if it becomes an obstruction

[plasticvandan]

Seriously fed up.after bills etc go out I have the square root of fuck all left,due to drop in what my Mrs gets from the government (young child and full time carer) I no longer get a little back each week,which was spent on petrol,solely going to work and back.as a result I have to sell my polo,as I've worked out that excluding any parts or servicing,it costs £135 a month to run,which is more than I have left each month,effectively making it cost me to go to work 40 hours a week.

I can't (even if I could run it) have a Reliant again (my life long love affair) as my Mrs won't let me after I binned my last one with her in it,and the only friends I ever had were those I had got to become very close to in the Reliant club,and I'd see regularly through the year at rallies etc.This weekend marks the third national Reliant rally I haven't been to,after years and years of religiously driving round the country and camping over weekends.I don't have any other friends,and those I did have I'm unlikely to see again.

I feel very isolated and don't really see what the point of anything is,I'm just working to survive,nothing to show for it,and no prospect of anything ever changing.

10 yrs ago I had a worn out Honda c90 which I could just about keep going on my just above main wage.today I'm back on a very worn out Honda c90 which I can just about keep going on just above min wage.Just seems like the last 10 years have been a complete waste of time.Don't really know what I'm going to do,but might see if I can borrow a Reliant to have a go in for one last time

[tooSavvy]

...I can't (even if I could run it) have a Reliant again (my life long love affair) as my Mrs won't let me after I binned my last one with her in it,and the only friends I ever had were those I had got to become very close to in the Reliant club,and I'd see regularly through the year at rallies etc.

 

Hmmm.....

 

A little clarity on things...

 

You probably have the right WIFE and need to re-appraise your LIFE.

 

 

TS

[wuvvum]

It really is not turning out to be a very good weekend on the car front.  This morning's task was to check over the cars that are due for MOT (i.e. most of them) for any obvious fails. 

 

I put my screwdriver through both outer sills of the Rover of Doom (nearside about a 30cm section, but right under the front seatbelt mounts; offside at various points all the way along).  The red Rover wasn't so bad - a few weak sections on one side - but still a fail.  The blue Mondeo has broken a front spring.  The Forester's exhaust has started blowing again, and it needs a front tyre (legal tread, but perished to feck).  The Kia has a badly misted headlight lens.  I didn't find anything obvious on the Perodua, but doubtless MOT man will spot something.

 

There will probably be lots of "for sale" posts from me over the next few weeks and months.  The only cars that are safe at the moment are the Toyota, Innocenti and R6 - the others can all fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

[Bucketeer]

Thanks a bloody lot Tim Berners-Lee.

Now I can enjoy* clothes and shoe shopping with Lady_Bucket without even having to leave the sofa.

THEY ALL LOOK GOOD, JUST FLIPPING CHOOSE SOMETHING.

[hairnet]

shopping in a funny upside down language??

 

wcpgw

 

trabant update??

[Cavcraft]

I've just spent over an hour making my pushbike better* by fucking the seat stem up completely. The twatting thing had pretty much welded itself into the frame and I've made a total and utter hash of trying to remove it.

[bub2006]

Car battery flat as fuck yesterday when I fetched it back after holiday. Took it a run and it was ok. Went to filey today and noticed a bad vibration/judder at low speeds but no eml. Left car for a few hours and when I started it it sounded like it was running on 3 and exhaust sounded raspy. Picked up after a few seconds but still lumpy at low rpm. Stopped for some fags in Howden and the bloody starter motor failed. Got it bump started and back home. Car up on ramps and I crawl underneath while wife turns ignition on so I can twat the starter motor. She didn't apply brakes so car rolls back nearly crushing me In the process. Amazing what strength you find when nearly a ton bears down on you. Noticed the front downpipe has split around the catalytic converter flange. That would explain exhaust blow,possibly explain misfire if the post cat sensor is getting wrong info? So I now need a starter,downpipe and some new ribs. Fucking great day.

[STUNO]

 Car up on ramps and I crawl underneath while wife turns ignition on so I can twat the starter motor. She didn't apply brakes so car rolls back nearly crushing me In the process. Fucking great day.

 

Who put the car up on the ramps ?

[bub2006]

Me but obviously not handbrake on hard enough. put car in gear and handbrake on. She puts foot on clutch but not the footbrake like I asked!and car fucks off. Yes I realised I should have chocked wheels but the thought crossed my mind only as the sump brushed my face.

[Ghosty]

eBay reserves, just put a higher starting bid...

[HillmanImp]

I have removed the GT6 from sale until I MOT it. I stayed in touch with one chap as he said he wanted to come and see it. However, today I was checking the suspension and a bolt keeping the radius arm attached at the back where it meets the hub was missing. 

 

I can't see a reason that I would have removed that but I also don't see how it would have stayed there for so long if the bolt wasn't there. 

 

Odd. 

 

Couldn't find a replacement nut so have ordered one online as couldn't remove the one on the other side as access is terrible (again, why would I remove it for no reason if its that difficult to get at) and will get it sorted. 

 

So I rang the chap up and he is coming another time. Don't think he will buy it anyhow, its a lot of work for someone cosmetically and I don't think he is the chap.