The grumpy thread

[Zelandeth]

15 minutes ago, mitsisigma01 said:

Upvc cover board fascia and hollow soffit, with shitloads of silicon. 

Leave all the old stuff insitu as long as you make sure it is securely attached 👍

Looks like it's sagging in quite a few places so how securely it's attached is questionable.

That vent grill in the middle of the last photo is the outlet for both of the bathroom extractor fans too (don't look at me, I didn't fit it!) so will need routing through any replacement.

A good 30% of it will probably need scaffolding erected to gain access because of awkward building design.  Equally there is cladding on a fair portion of our exterior walls and I suspect it last saw attention exactly the same time as the pictured soffits...

[MikeR]

Ear buds , ear phones , etc      why do they always fall out of my ears ?

[Agila]

Watching some nobber dressed as a car wash roller dancing about on itv. Then realised the boxing was on, Tommy Fury is on now, followed by Dubois comeback.

[Bren]

The vectra's rock hard seats are irritating my back - so painful I can barely straighten up after getting out. The SRi seats deserve a special place in hell. Come to think of it the only truly comfortable vauxhalls I have ever sat in were the royale and senator.

[Mrcento]

I quite liked the SRI seats tbh, the seats in the other models are slightly softer but way less supportive, so are actually worse IMO.

What i did find with the vectra was that 'something' always felt off when i got in/got out.

Whether it was just the angle of the seat, the height or the position in it relating to the door (it always weirdly felt like the door was in slightly the wrong place!) meaning to get in and out, you always needed to twist at a weird angle and fish your leg out a gap that you never have to in any other car. used to tweak my back and hip.

At first, i put it down to just having got so used to the Disco for nearly 4 years and having to sit down into the car rather than climb up into the Disco, but since getting the Civic, i realise it was the Vec all along that had some positional weirdness.

[Low Horatio gearbox]

The  trimmer  who has My Rover passenger seat failing again to keep a deadline again I am surprised.

 

7 hours ago, Fumbler said:

It's not nasty at all, it's realistic in this family! She does do this, yes, but she nearly put herself in cardiac arrest last night. Nobody knows how or why she forgot to take her meds and, while she could have done it out of spite, we're near certain it's down to her gradually losing it.

Her stubborness due to her want to remain in control has landed her in a pile of shit when it comes to medical stuff. She has refused physiotherapist advice with both knee and hip replacements, causing her to dislocate her hip twice because she refused to stop bending over at the waist. She didn't call for help or ask us to dial 999 immediately. We had to use our initiative as she wouldn't tell us exactly what happened. Instead, she made sure we hoisted her onto a chair instead of trained personnel. She ignored advice on her knee as well meaning she walks worse than before having it replaced.

Even if we did get an agent in to make sure she takes her medication, she'll pull every string to put on a facade of "it's alright, everyone else is making a mountain out of a molehill" or "it's everyone else's fault" which are both bald faced lies. I'm glad the paramedics yesterday had good bullshit detectors and managed to get the right info out of her.

She's incredibly manipulative, she loves to be at the centre of attention and managing people's doings. She's unfortunately not as fit as she once used to be and hates it.

Fortunately my mum was informed this morning and she along with my uncle (his wife's a nurse) are going to have a big discussion about that we should do to prevent this from happening again.

 Ouch, been there and  done that in a same but not same sitaution. It's a  awkward , difficult and draining place to be.

[MarvinsMom]

i think i'm just going to scrap the Metro and have done with it.

see, we have been down to the lockup today for a look, just to make sure everything is ok, and on opening the door, well it was pretty OBVIOUS that things are not ok.

the car is listing too one side like the Costa Concordia, 

those super regassed and refurbished suspension cans i had put on, at some expense a month ago have it seems no fluid in them as the driverside of the car is on the bump stops.

impressive when they aren't interlinked, the car been an Austin Metro.

that has been a monumental waste of time and money then, cos the car is now in an ever worse state than it was before hand.

Bloody marvellous.

 

 

[High Jetter]

Roffle?

[Pieman]

Banger it.

[Minimad5]

My back is fucked 😪 , sharp and sudden pain that takes your breath away sort of stuff.

Currently pissing about on a night shift as they've made too many folk redundant, and won't cover when folk are off, which leaves 2 Mech & 2 Elec' to run the whole plant... so if I piss off home, then it's one poor sod . Not good.

Looks like Monday I'll be ringing about for a Chiropractor to try help.

Edit:

And if I take any time off to rest / try sort it, I get these special points against me. So much for duty of care etc 'Take all the time you need off'.  NOT !!! , "Take any time off and we give you points for every day, then multiply it by all your occurrences" and it spits out a bullshit figure.

[Floatylight]

5 hours ago, Minimad5 said:

My back is fucked 😪 , sharp and sudden pain that takes your breath away sort of stuff.

Currently pissing about on a night shift as they've made too many folk redundant, and won't cover when folk are off, which leaves 2 Mech & 2 Elec' to run the whole plant... so if I piss off home, then it's one poor sod . Not good.

Looks like Monday I'll be ringing about for a Chiropractor to try help.

Edit:

And if I take any time off to rest / try sort it, I get these special points against me. So much for duty of care etc 'Take all the time you need off'.  NOT !!! , "Take any time off and we give you points for every day, then multiply it by all your occurrences" and it spits out a bullshit figure.

The old Bradford factor... sadly used by employers across the nation originally to stop workers manipulating the system by taking "duvet days" you'll also hear "It's not about the genuineness of your absence its about the impact on the business" - So much so that when negotiating one such policy I asked for an automatic removal of points if someone had been hospitalised without success..

It is worth knowing what the trigger points are numerically but it's also worth knowing what should be discounted which are things to do with the equality act, so if the problem with your back is ongoing and has an "impact on your everyday life" then it should be classed (in terms of the policy) as discountable.

- If there is a union join it if you haven't already, a rep who knows these policies inside out is worth their weight in gold.

Get well soon chap! 

[New POD]

In a points based system, I lost points for having to take a child to A&E at silly o'clock in the morning, and then needing to stay until mid afternoon. 

When I phoned up my manager, it was all, "that's fine, don't need to take it as holiday, there's a special sick category day for family illness" 

I would have had the same number of points for 5 days as for 1 day. 

And adding up my points gave me redundancy. 2 days off sick and an attitude. 

[cobblers]

Ignoring all the points stuff for a minute, you've only got one back, but you can get another job. Fuck em. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, cobblers said:

Ignoring all the points stuff for a minute, you've only got one back, but you can get another job. Fuck em. 

Aye, though the job market at the moment is rather shit!  My other half has been actively looking for another job since September 2019 and is still looking.  Another of our housemates is on the interview panel for several roles in their company and they've seen an increase of something like 200 times in the numbers of applications for jobs (one which sticks in my mind was a post that would normally have seen 150-200 applications at most attracting 35,000 at the start of this year).  Apparently it's like that across the business from janitor to senior management roles.

We've just had a phone call from the landscaper who was meant to be visiting today to give us a quote for the work in our garden (an hour and a half after they were due to show up).  That's two out of the three who bothered to respond to us at all now failed to show up. 

Oh the joys of home ownership.

[plasticvandan]

Wierdly in the skilled/hands on job market it seems quite boyant,tho slow to respond,after accepting my job offer I then got about 6 other interview offers and one wanting me to do a trial,I'm sure different industries are having different circumstances

[Talbot]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Another of our housemates is on the interview panel for several roles in their company and they've seen an increase of something like 200 times in the numbers of applications for jobs (one which sticks in my mind was a post that would normally have seen 150-200 applications at most attracting 35,000 at the start of this year)

Is that because there are actually that many people out of work, or just because everyone is looking to change job as lockdown is "easing".  I suspect there's a lot of the latter going on at the moment.

[Zelandeth]

Nothing like waiting months for a part to arrive then to discover it's completely the wrong thing.  Yay.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Is that because there are actually that many people out of work, or just because everyone is looking to change job as lockdown is "easing".  I suspect there's a lot of the latter going on at the moment.

From the feedback my husband has been getting during his job search it's a decent chunk of both.  Especially in the academic and research sectors.

[MikeR]

Shit , checked levels then left the oil cap off , 70 miles later i have rust proofed the car .......

 

[Minimad5]

7 hours ago, Floatylight said:

The old Bradford factor... sadly used by employers across the nation originally to stop workers manipulating the system by taking "duvet days" you'll also hear "It's not about the genuineness of your absence its about the impact on the business" - So much so that when negotiating one such policy I asked for an automatic removal of points if someone had been hospitalised without success..

It is worth knowing what the trigger points are numerically but it's also worth knowing what should be discounted which are things to do with the equality act, so if the problem with your back is ongoing and has an "impact on your everyday life" then it should be classed (in terms of the policy) as discountable.

- If there is a union join it if you haven't already, a rep who knows these policies inside out is worth their weight in gold.

Get well soon chap! 

Discount able? - We don't have a system that takes points off. One of the lads needs an operation, has produced paperwork saying so and given them 3 months notice of his time off, yet he'll still get points. Produce a doctors sick note - You still get points. 

In another department, a bloke was going through Chemotherapy.... he still got points.

Ooh and the union isn't worth joining, let's just say we now no longer have a canteen. No vote or nothing, and all you get is "Well legally they can do this" ... so 🤷‍♂️

[Wack]

On 6/4/2021 at 7:49 AM, Wack said:

People like this really boil my piss , if that were me I'd be making a claim on her insurance , what a cunt of a woman 

 

It gets worse 

[Pieman]

Websites that insist on texting a code to your phone in order for you to log in.  Pretty fucking difficult when your useless piece of shit phone will not receive calls or texts when inside your house despite showing it has a signal.

(I've tried different phones and different networks, and the same thing happens no matter what.  Am I being covertly blacklisted from the world's phone networks?)

[High Jetter]

2FA is a useful precaution. Are you in a poor signal area?

[Talbot]

2 hours ago, Pieman said:

Pretty fucking difficult when your useless piece of shit phone will not receive calls or texts when inside your house despite showing it has a signal.

Since the advent of 4G this has become more of a problem.  The reason is that 4G is a data-only protocol.  Unfortunately, that means that for Voice or Text service, the phone has to use 3G or 2G service, which might well be absolutely awful indoors, but the phone still shows good service, as it can only show signal level for one technology, so it show it for 4G, as that's the preferential network.

If you're in a deadspot, it would be well worth looking into a service that can offer GAN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_Access_Network) service, which allows voice and text over a data network.  These used to be not that common, but I believe are more popular now, sometimes even using the 4G network to do so (where previously they used a wifi network to extend service indoors)

I think some providers also offer VOIP service for voice over 4G, baked into the phone hardware.  Not so sure about that one.

[New POD]

7 hours ago, Pieman said:

Websites that insist on texting a code to your phone in order for you to log in.  Pretty fucking difficult when your useless piece of shit phone will not receive calls or texts when inside your house despite showing it has a signal.

(I've tried different phones and different networks, and the same thing happens no matter what.  Am I being covertly blacklisted from the world's phone networks?)

HMRC is the only organisation that I've experienced. 

.....

 

Oh any maybe Lloyds bank

[artdjones]

7 hours ago, High Jetter said:

2FA is a useful precaution. Are you in a poor signal area?

Yes, a useful precaution, until the banks tell us that to be secure we need 3FA, then 4FA, for our own protection of course, not theirs. Oh,no. In the end logging in to your bank will be a multi stage process taking 15minutes. 

We are heading for a future as lab rats, pushing buttons to get what we need.

[loserone]

Not sure where that comes from.  Banks are a long way behind in security and usability generally.  Many banks used to have appalling online authentication processes, but generally they're getting better - faster and easier - not worse.  SMS is dated crap as a second factor though.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

Yes, a useful precaution, until the banks tell us that to be secure we need 3FA, then 4FA, for our own protection of course, not theirs. Oh,no. In the end logging in to your bank will be a multi stage process taking 15minutes. 

We are heading for a future as lab rats, pushing buttons to get what we need.

Well-implemented 2FA significantly increases security to the point where a third factor wouldn't practically increase the security you have on the account.  The main security tweak is the authentication token expiry.  At work we have it set for 31 days on standard accounts (on that device, obviously) and no retention for IT Admin accounts (i.e. we have to authenticate every time we log in to that account) which seems reasonable to me.

I mean, if you're ok with the password 'crackers2' and no second factor then please don't complain when your data is stolen.

The main problem with 2FA is people failing to read the instructions properly and then blaming the process when they've failed to actually set it up properly.

 

[New POD]

My current grump is about trying to organise 2 workmen in 2 locations this week and going into the office on at least one day. 

The cast of boys from the blackstuff, have been due to do my pointing. Promised they'd come Tuesday last week. Fucking radio silence all week. Eventually tells me it's going to be Monday this week. Or maybe Tuesday..

In the meantime I'm waiting for a gas repairman to track down spares to fix a boiler leak in Staffordshire.  He might be able to fit it in this Tuesday.  But he will get back to me with a time.  

Obviously I've updated  him and said either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday please.  That means I could go into the office on Thursday and get back here to see the pointing progress on Friday.  

I get a text late last night saying the pointing is going to start Tuesday or Wednesday.  

My guess is Thursday? 

Anyway, I'm trying not to to piss any of these people off because you know, they actually need both doing. 

 

[MarvinsMom]

i fuckin' hate this car.

so much for getting the suspension regassed. 

definitely £740 well spent........