The grumpy thread

[sierraman]

Why are DHL such a PITA to deal with. Waiting on a parcel from them, tried to deliver on Tuesday, if they knocked they obviously didn’t do it very loudly. Asked them upon redelivery today to leave with a neighbour, according to my neighbour they didn’t even attempt this. So they’re going to try again tomorrow, why are they so painfully thick? I’ve no doubt tomorrow despite my strict instructions to leave it by the gate they’ll not do that either. 
 

Everyone else knocks Evri etc but at least you actually receive the parcel. I’d love to see what the aptitude test for a DHL driver is… 

[sierraman]

On 05/08/2024 at 08:20, Split_Pin said:

Aye, so I'm done with car shows.

Took the A8 and went to the trouble of typing up a bit of its history  to put in the windscreen. Kept it short and did it in something like 36 point to aid digestion. To be fair, a lot of people did read that, well some of it.

I spent a few weeks tidying it up as best I could, I thought it turned out well.

As soon as I got there 2 older chaps pointed to the out-of-adjustment front bumper and commented on it. Nothing positive to say at all. One other knobhead with those big disc things inserted into a stretched ear lobe looked inside and said 'It's got the cheaper seats' and went on to explain to his friend how his was better. Deliberately within earshot of me. A few other people just laughed at it.

I mean, it's an awesome car at the top of its game at the time and folk think it's funny? 🤷‍♂️

The previous week I went to a Rover 75 meet in Gretna. If people care so much about preserving these cars then they need to treat the younger owners with a bit of respect. I started chatting to one older guy and he literally walked away. Really rude. Keep going like that and the cars will all be long gone withing a decade or so.

Anyway, I'm never going back.

Apart from on here, I don’t get into discussing cars with people. They wouldn’t get what I was on about, they’d mistakenly assume I was interested in Teslas it’s just best talking about something else. 
 

Completely understand you with car shows, full of people who don’t have any social skills or self awareness. 

[vulgalour]

@IronStar @captain_70s None of the video outputs on the graphics or motherboard are putting anything out at all.  I did consider the second-hand parts route but since I don't know exactly what's failed or how to find out, it might not solve the problem and I could end up spending as much trying to fix the problem cheaply with temporary solutions as I could getting a brand new more capable machine.  I need to replace the PC with a more powerful unit anyway, my current rig can't do 3D rendering, for example (or really anything else right now) and that's something that I've been having requests for and would like to get into, there might be money to be earned there.  I'll have to see if there's a pre-built machine that has the right specs I can get on finance or something, I couldn't do it when I looked last time, nobody was offering finance on the sort of set up I was looking at then but the market has likely shifted again now the cryptocurrency thing has died down a bit and the demand (and hopefully price) on certain components has dropped.

In better news, the connectors needed arrived today and that means the machine can be busy transferring stuff off my hard drives into storage so we can get them on to the temporary work set up and that will help a lot.  I've re-downloaded some of the software I use too and have been able to remember most things I need for work.  I'm glad the main hard drive doesn't appear to have any issues, that's where all the active work is and the most important thing to resolve.  I was planning to get a few more large external hard drives for back up purposes, things like video and raw scans of artwork do take up a lot of space and I have to archive a fair bit of work.  It's only money, it's there to be spent I guess.

At least I don't have to replace my monitors and whatnot, the drawing tablet especially is an expensive bit of kit (that has paid for itself, happily) that I know I'll have to replace in a few years just due to wear and tear so hopefully that'll hang in there a bit longer and continue being trouble-free.

[IronStar]

1 minute ago, vulgalour said:

@IronStar @captain_70s None of the video outputs on the graphics or motherboard are putting anything out at all.  I did consider the second-hand parts route but since I don't know exactly what's failed or how to find out, it might not solve the problem and I could end up spending as much trying to fix the problem cheaply with temporary solutions as I could getting a brand new more capable machine.  I need to replace the PC with a more powerful unit anyway, my current rig can't do 3D rendering, for example (or really anything else right now) and that's something that I've been having requests for and would like to get into, there might be money to be earned there.  I'll have to see if there's a pre-built machine that has the right specs I can get on finance or something, I couldn't do it when I looked last time, nobody was offering finance on the sort of set up I was looking at then but the market has likely shifted again now the cryptocurrency thing has died down a bit and the demand (and hopefully price) on certain components has dropped.

In better news, the connectors needed arrived today and that means the machine can be busy transferring stuff off my hard drives into storage so we can get them on to the temporary work set up and that will help a lot.  I've re-downloaded some of the software I use too and have been able to remember most things I need for work.  I'm glad the main hard drive doesn't appear to have any issues, that's where all the active work is and the most important thing to resolve.  I was planning to get a few more large external hard drives for back up purposes, things like video and raw scans of artwork do take up a lot of space and I have to archive a fair bit of work.  It's only money, it's there to be spent I guess.

At least I don't have to replace my monitors and whatnot, the drawing tablet especially is an expensive bit of kit (that has paid for itself, happily) that I know I'll have to replace in a few years just due to wear and tear so hopefully that'll hang in there a bit longer and continue being trouble-free.

You probably need to disconnect the gfx card to get the on-board video to work. As for why it failed, it’s either gfx card itself that failed, which is not unusual, or if it’s some more power hungry model PSU might be on the way out. Try the gfx card removed method first. Testing it is easy as well if you have access to another working PC - just chuck it in. If it works it’s PSU, if not it’s the GFX card.

You can also try a last-ditch resort if it’s dead GFX card - remove the fans and throw gfx card in the oven. Plenty of howtos availible on that. Got last huzzah out of many cards over the years, including 4650HD that’s miraculously working in an office PC couple for a few years.

[MikeR]

2 minutes ago, IronStar said:

You probably need to disconnect the gfx card to get the on-board video to work. As for why it failed, it’s either gfx card itself that failed, which is not unusual, or if it’s some more power hungry model PSU might be on the way out. Try the gfx card removed method first. Testing it is easy as well if you have access to another working PC - just chuck it in. If it works it’s PSU, if not it’s the GFX card.

You can also try a last-ditch resort if it’s dead GFX card - remove the fans and throw gfx card in the oven. Plenty of howtos availible on that. Got last huzzah out of many cards over the years, including 4650HD that’s miraculously working in an office PC couple for a few years.

if the on board video is not working , is it worth swapping the ram around to see if that is the problem , sometimes the vid shares the ram ???

[vulgalour]

For now I'm just concentrating on saving important data and getting a functional work station, that's more important than figuring out what's gone wrong with the pc.  I still absolutely need a brand new PC and have for about four years, so it's going to happen regardless.

[artdjones]

22 hours ago, comfortablynumb said:

Exactly this. A few years ago on the blue forum I started a thread called ' You've ruined that!' just because of these idiots.

I was at a local autojumble and show, Thurton for anyone who is in the Norwich area, and went to talk to a bloke about his MK1 cortina, 2 litre pinto, type 9 box etc etc.

I said 'nice car,' he looked at me glumly and said 'they don't think so ' indicating a couple of blokes walking away.

Turns out they'd been berating him for modifying it!

I got pretty annoyed, and said ' well who did you build it for,?!'

When he said himself, I said so screw anyone else, it's your car to do what you like with.

I hope I left him a bit happier.

I'm not a concourse restoration bloke, that's not my bag, but I'm glad there are people out there who are rivet counters.

Alternatively there are a few cars out there that I don't like, but I can still appreciate the work that's gone into them, and I wouldn't dream of telling the owner/builder that they'd ruined it

TL:DR it's your car to do what you want with

If the owner of AX201 decided to spray it metalflake purple I might get annoyed. But not about a Cortina, especially as it's  made it a better car to put in a 2.0 + 5speed.

[beko1987]

6 hours ago, vulgalour said:

For now I'm just concentrating on saving important data and getting a functional work station, that's more important than figuring out what's gone wrong with the pc.  I still absolutely need a brand new PC and have for about four years, so it's going to happen regardless.

Assuming it's a mechanical hard drive it should pop up fine in windows via a caddy. 

But copy files off, don't drag and drop or cut and paste. If something glitches halfway through a file transfer you can start that file again rather than it corrupting the only copy

[MikeR]

14 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Assuming it's a mechanical hard drive it should pop up fine in windows via a caddy. 

But copy files off, don't drag and drop or cut and paste. If something glitches halfway through a file transfer you can start that file again rather than it corrupting the only copy

It should do , but I have had windows block a windows drive .. security reasons , plugging the drive into a Linux machine got around the issue .

[vulgalour]

It is a mechanical hard drive.  Begun the task of transferring files to the laptop today, then I've got to filter out what actually needs to be archived to free up space on the laptop, might as well do that now while I have the opportunity.  There's a couple of work things I can at least do again now, so that's good, hopefully I won't lose more than a fortnight of work time to this and thankfully I have that new job at the NHS to tide me over financially.

[beko1987]

2 hours ago, vulgalour said:

It is a mechanical hard drive.  Begun the task of transferring files to the laptop today, then I've got to filter out what actually needs to be archived to free up space on the laptop, might as well do that now while I have the opportunity.  There's a couple of work things I can at least do again now, so that's good, hopefully I won't lose more than a fortnight of work time to this and thankfully I have that new job at the NHS to tide me over financially.

Assuming your not needing the drive your copying all the files off from afterwards, once your triple super safety sure you've got everything off it format the entire drive and use it as a cold, long term backup drive? It's not the ideal way but better than nothing. 

I've got an old 4tb drive I retired a few years ago that once a year I plug it into my pc, copy my entire photos folder and copy it over, wait an hour for it to work out what's new and what's not then hit copy! Keeps all my really important things with another backup bar my unraid server (which I use more as a yt file dump than anything else) 

[reb]

I'm very hungover and haven't had anything to eat because apparently I ate all of my sandwich ingredients in a drunken haze last night. So of course I am doing the sensible thing and venturing into town. I might have enough money to acquire a Greggs baguette but I'm not sure.

[IronStar]

Hungary border staff can eat an assorted bag of dicks. Serbia is jot part of the EU. We have borders on all sides. It’s never a fucking jam, especially not on non-primary crossings, other than with Hungary. They are intentionally making it as slow and as annoying as possible every single day, the fucking sadistic idiots. Looking around me, it’s not even Serbs whoa are affected the most. Virtually all cars around me are EU plated. 
Hour and a half so far, with no end in sight. Can they be tossed out of EU or at least told off for this bullshit any time soon, please?

It’s not even weekend or Friday after hours, wtf, seriously?

[Popsicle]

1 hour ago, IronStar said:

Hungary border staff can eat an assorted bag of dicks. Serbia is jot part of the EU. We have borders on all sides. It’s never a fucking jam, especially not on non-primary crossings, other than with Hungary. They are intentionally making it as slow and as annoying as possible every single day, the fucking sadistic idiots. Looking around me, it’s not even Serbs whoa are affected the most. Virtually all cars around me are EU plated. 
Hour and a half so far, with no end in sight. Can they be tossed out of EU or at least told off for this bullshit any time soon, please?

It’s not even weekend or Friday after hours, wtf, seriously?

They've been like it everytime I've driven to Hungary. I've spent upto 6 bloody hours at the Austria/Hungary border at Hegyeshalom.

[Dyslexic Viking]

Someone locally here has transported a canoe without securing it properly. Well, it came loose and hit the car behind it and serious injuries have been reported and the air ambulance etc has been called. So I guess that the canoe went through the windshield of the car behind it.

I really hope this is not a fatal accident.

[wuvvum]

On 08/08/2024 at 17:47, artdjones said:

If the owner of AX201 decided to spray it metalflake purple I might get annoyed.

Isn't that still owned by Rolls Royce?

[artdjones]

3 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Isn't that still owned by Rolls Royce?

Bentley (VAG) got it as part of the Crewe takeover, but it got sold off to a private owner in 2020.

[IronStar]

4 hours ago, Popsicle said:

They've been like it everytime I've driven to Hungary. I've spent upto 6 bloody hours at the Austria/Hungary border at Hegyeshalom.

I really don’t understand the logic behind it. We have 2 days to spend here. If you ruin our day on the border, we’re not going to have time to spend any money in your country that day, so what’s the point? It’s literally a net minus for Hungarian economy. 

[somewhatfoolish]

Maybe if they stopped re-electing Victor Orban.

[Lord Sterling]

7 hours ago, IronStar said:

I really don’t understand the logic behind it. We have 2 days to spend here. If you ruin our day on the border, we’re not going to have time to spend any money in your country that day, so what’s the point? It’s literally a net minus for Hungarian economy. 

 

2 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Maybe if they stopped re-electing Victor Orban.

This is the problem. For no reason that I could ever understand sometimes politicians act like vandals and ruin their own countries, this bad attitude trickles down the line too that those government services will act quite nastily towards others they see as lesser than them, even if that means tourists etc...

[Yoss]

16 hours ago, IronStar said:

Hungary border staff can eat an assorted bag of dicks. Serbia is jot part of the EU. We have borders on all sides. It’s never a fucking jam, especially not on non-primary crossings, other than with Hungary. They are intentionally making it as slow and as annoying as possible every single day, the fucking sadistic idiots. Looking around me, it’s not even Serbs whoa are affected the most. Virtually all cars around me are EU plated. 
Hour and a half so far, with no end in sight. Can they be tossed out of EU or at least told off for this bullshit any time soon, please?

It’s not even weekend or Friday after hours, wtf, seriously?

 

15 hours ago, Popsicle said:

They've been like it everytime I've driven to Hungary. I've spent upto 6 bloody hours at the Austria/Hungary border at Hegyeshalom.

It is particularly strange here it's a Schengen border and you should be able to come and go as you please. Certainly the trains just cross the border as if it isn't there. It seems odd to have one system for cars and another for the trains. 

6 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Maybe if they stopped re-electing Victor Orban.

Several MEPs have put in a complaint about him as he has decided to allow Russian and Belarusian workers in without visas. Which means they can then come and go as they please across Europe. As long as they use the train it seems from your experience. 

And just generally Victor Orban seems to like annoying the rest of the EU just because he can. 

[Remspoor]

Internal border controls within Schengen.

https://www.fragomen.com/insights/european-unionschengen-area-internal-schengen-border-checks-further-extended.html

[Remspoor]

Oh FFS--------Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns

https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/09/excess-memes-photos-and-reply-all-emails-are-bad-for-climate-finds-study

[IronStar]

Total wait time at Hungarian border yesterday - 3 hours. Well, ok, is that a huge line of cars then? No! Absolutely not! The same number of cars would be processed in 30 minutes, tops, anywhere else! Hungarians are making it as slow and as inefficient as possible. There’s a bunch of them at the checkpoint, but most of them are busy talking to each other and smoking. Police officer took literally 5 minutes to check and stamp 2 passports. Customs guy, when he finished laughing with a mate and smoking vape did a full search of the car, spending additional 5-6-7 minutes, admittedly some of it overlapping with the useless police officer checking the passports. Total stop time ~8 minutes. And they’re doing this with every. single. car. Average processing time literally everywhere else I’ve ever ben is under 1 minute, and no one ever checks every single car, especially not when there’s kilometers of cars waiting. Cunts. Absolute cunts. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

2 hours ago, Remspoor said:

Oh FFS--------Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns

https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/09/excess-memes-photos-and-reply-all-emails-are-bad-for-climate-finds-study

I'm pretty sure his latest conference (Florida) was attended on Zoom  ?

[Spiny Norman]

Some filthy cunt shat in our toilets at work today. And I don't mean in the bowl.  Shite all over the floor and the walls.
There's nothing like working in retail to make you hate the general public.





 

[Jazoli]

1 hour ago, Spiny Norman said:

Some filthy cunt shat in our toilets at work today. And I don't mean in the bowl.  Shite all over the floor and the walls.
There's nothing like working in retail to make you hate the general public.





 

I manage quite a few public buildings and nothing surprises me these days, not a week goes by without someone doing this in one of them, my poor staff have to clean shit like this up regularly, mind you it also happens in our non public buildings too occasionally, there’s some dirty bastards out there.

[BorniteIdentity]

I work in Central London (W1).

On Saturday - not a single train went into the capital from St Neots due to overhead wire problems.

No problem, thinks I.  I'll drive all the way in.  It's the weekend, and the fuel vs train cost is similar.... I can park for free overnight... and I don't mind swallowing the ULEZ.

It was only when I passed the first camera did I remember that I'm on a night shift... and it'll be tomorrow by the time I come home... and my stupid brain hadn't realised that I'll be paying the fee twice, as tomorrow is a new day.

 

 

Fucking idiot. 

I'll go from St Albans next time, the same as I usually do when it's broken.

Knob.

[Lord Sterling]

On 28/07/2024 at 00:58, Lord Sterling said:

The air-con saga goes on. We're now in almost in the middle of summer and yet the Vectra still doesn't have working air-conditioning.

So this rare unobtainable pipe has now actually been found and was supposed to be fitted, but of course, no. One pipe couldn't be fitted properly due to some broken faster, so now again, I have to wait. At this point I'll never have working air-conditioning in this car. 

Waiting for several hours I almost fell ill there, breaking out in a cold sweat and then couldn't stay at my Mum's due to feeling unwell, despite that, I went home, had a sleep for a few hours and felt much better. 

I still cannot believe that something that should be so simple has turned into a farce that's dragging on and on and on....

So, the farce continues. I've given up. Despite the fact I've spent nigh-on £300 for a new condenser and various pipes I still am no nearer to having air-con in the Vectra.

Because of some "various" modifications the condenser or whatever it has somehow picked up some damage so another new condenser is required. I told the garage to leave it and I'll be taking my business elsewhere from now on, I'm sad and pissed off at the same time as I've been regular customer and even worked there for a time too way back when.

So I'm on the lookout for a new condenser and a garage to fit it plus regas. I know there is one on the outskirts of Stourport that @red5 uses. 

I have a guy in Birmingham who can do simple jobs like brake pads/servicing etc... 

So that's where we are now. Because of upcoming holidays, saving for that etc... I certainly won't be enjoying air-con in the Vectra until next year now. 😡 😤

[Lord Sterling]

6 hours ago, Spiny Norman said:

Some filthy cunt shat in our toilets at work today. And I don't mean in the bowl.  Shite all over the floor and the walls.
There's nothing like working in retail to make you hate the general public.

 

4 hours ago, Jazoli said:

I manage quite a few public buildings and nothing surprises me these days, not a week goes by without someone doing this in one of them, my poor staff have to clean shit like this up regularly, mind you it also happens in our non public buildings too occasionally, there’s some dirty bastards out there.

It does make you wonder how these people get through life with a habit like that. 

I mean, how difficult is it to sit on a toilet whilst internally squeezing out yesterdays dinner?