The grumpy thread

[Rust Collector]

Topical, seeing as I’ve got my head buried in a W211 this morning! I dimly recall that someone mentioned cars fitted with SBC have the potential to lock on the anchors, although I think that may have been in relation to SLK’s??

[mercedade]

  On 27/10/2024 at 10:25, Rust Collector said:

Topical, seeing as I’ve got my head buried in a W211 this morning! I dimly recall that someone mentioned cars fitted with SBC have the potential to lock on the anchors, although I think that may have been in relation to SLK’s??

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Interesting. I was looking around for SBC info and most fails seem to be losing braking power. Will search for this! Ta

[Rust Collector]

  On 27/10/2024 at 10:41, mercedade said:

Interesting. I was looking around for SBC info and most fails seem to be losing braking power. Will search for this! Ta

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This is of course going by appalling memory! It maybe had something to do with brake hold models, but again take this with a pinch of salt as it has come from my sleep deprived brain!

[maxxo]

Fucksticks 

 

[mercedade]

  On 27/10/2024 at 10:50, Rust Collector said:

This is of course going by appalling memory! It maybe had something to do with brake hold models, but again take this with a pinch of salt as it has come from my sleep deprived brain!

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This is the max info I can get it seems, plus that the garage "didn't have a code". 

[goosey]

  On 25/10/2024 at 18:14, High Jetter said:

Did they get a police escort?

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No, I was awake downstairs at 3.30am with my 3 year old daughter as she was feeling unwell and I kept hearing noise outside. When I looked there was 3 blokes throwing bags of product into the back of a Transit Custom which sped away with 2 other cars. Yesterday morning the same Transit Custom came back and picked more stuff up. I guess they will probably default on the mortgage and the house will be up for sale again at some point 

[Dyslexic Viking]

Thanks to the stupid clock settings, it's now dark outside.

[Bfg]

^    Clocks don't make it go dark outside  

[Dyslexic Viking]

What I meant was that since the clock has now been set back, it's dark at 5.30 here now.

[myglaren]

Indeed, it gets late early these days.

[High Jetter]

Shirley now, on good old GMT here, it gets dark at the right time? It's early later during the summer.

[Spiny Norman]

What pisses me off about the clocks changing is that they go back (this year) 56 days before the shortest day, after December 21st the days start getting longer yet it takes nearly double that until the very end of March before they go forward again.
We're not at war, farmers are always telling us they get up at 4 in the morning and most people who do normal office type hours are getting up in the dark anyway during winter so why leave it so long when we could be having lighter evenings till 7-8pm in February?
 

[wuvvum]

Drove in to Norwich earlier this evening, and bugger me it was painful.  I shouldn't have been surprised, it's the same every bloody year - people who haven't driven in the dark since March and have completely forgotten how to do it, giffers who find that their eyesight has deteriorated even further since last winter and brake nearly to a stop every time a vehicle comes the other way, cars with multiple bulbs out, etc. etc.

Then traffic in the city was a nightmare because the bloody football had just finished.  

[Yoss]

  On 27/10/2024 at 23:49, wuvvum said:

Drove in to Norwich earlier this evening, and bugger me it was painful.  I shouldn't have been surprised, it's the same every bloody year - people who haven't driven in the dark since March and have completely forgotten how to do it, giffers who find that their eyesight has deteriorated even further since last winter and brake nearly to a stop every time a vehicle comes the other way, cars with multiple bulbs out, etc. etc.

Then traffic in the city was a nightmare because the bloody football had just finished.  

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We were once staying in Lowestoft and went in to Norwich for the evening on the train. When we went to come back the football had just kicked out and the train was still a single two car class 156 just it as would be any other day. Probably the most crowded train I've ever been on. And they would have had spare units as the evening peak had long finished. But no, that's too difficult. 

 

Anyway back to now and I've cut the end of my finger off with a Stanley knife. Such fun. 

It's only the very very tip but there's been a lot of blood. Who know a finger had so much blood in it. 

Worst thing is it happened in such a ridiculous way. I'd been crawling around under a car all morning and have any number of power tools and knives that I use regularly for jobs round the house, on the car or the railway in the loft that I could damage myself with. 

But no, Mrs Yoss asked me to put a couple of eggs on to boil. So far so good. Some minutes later I could smell burning. I'd left a tea towel touching the edge of the hob and it was just starting to smoulder (an electric hob not gas that would have gone up immediately). So I grab it and run the smouldering bit under the tap. 

It's an old tea towel, most people would have just thrown it away. But I looked at it and one edge was a bit crispy so I though if I cut that bit off it'll be as good as new. I tried some crappy scissors but they didn't want to know. There are some decent scissors in the garage about ten paces away but that would involve opening two doors so I thought I'd use the nearby Stanley knife. I'm still not really sure how it happened but it did. Mrs Yoss tried putting one of those special end of finger plasters on but there was so much blood it didn't really take so I just wrapped the a towel round it (a different one), tied an elastic band and held it aloft for a while. This was about lunchtime. It definitely stopped bleeding because I moved the tea towel around to a non blood soaked bit and no more came through. 

So about 7 o'clock I thought I'd take it off and as soon as I tried peeling the plaster off it just started gushing again. So now I've wrapped it in surgical dressing cloth, so it's not actually sticking to the skin, then a bit more tea towel and elastic band again and it has stopped again so I'm not going to disturb it again tonight. If I take it off tomorrow and it starts bleeding again I might have to take it somewhere. 

I've just added the bit of rubber glove as I'm off to bed and I don't want to get blood on the bedding if it starts again. 

It's not the same tea towel I set fire to so we've now lost two tea towels. And ironically those are the good scissors I couldn't be bothered to go and get from the garage in the first place. 

Why didn't I just throw the bloody thing away. The whole chain of events is frankly ludicrous. If you wrote it in to a sitcom it would be dismissed as totally unfeasible. Who knew boiling eggs could be so dangerous. 

[Zelandeth]

  On 27/10/2024 at 18:10, Spiny Norman said:

What pisses me off about the clocks changing is that they go back (this year) 56 days before the shortest day, after December 21st the days start getting longer yet it takes nearly double that until the very end of March before they go forward again.
We're not at war, farmers are always telling us they get up at 4 in the morning and most people who do normal office type hours are getting up in the dark anyway during winter so why leave it so long when we could be having lighter evenings till 7-8pm in February?
 

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The "but think of the farmers" line always hacks me off.  I asked one of them who used to frequent our local pub from time to time what their thoughts on it were.  Their answer was, and I quote: "Couldnae give a flying fuck fit the clock says." 

Long and short of it is that they start work at roughly the same time every day, largely tied into the routine of the livestock if it's a dairy/sheep farm, and you work till the work's done.  What time the clock on the wall is pointing at doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

It might have been different 50+ years ago when electricity wasn't a given in really rural areas, lighting in and around farm buildings was almost universally awful or non existent, and lighting on tractors was similarly crap.  That's really not the case any more though.

Sure mileage may vary, but that's what I got told when I asked a cranky farmer in the pub in Aberdeenshire about 15 years back.

[myglaren]

Pretty indefensible these days, no need for it at all and just disrupts everything twice a year.

[juular]

The majority of November after the clock change is a nightmare at morning rush hour, since both the M9 and M8 run east-west,  all of the Eastbound traffic is suddenly completely blinded by the sun being right on the horizon.  Then on the evening rush the opposite is true, all westbound traffic can't see fuck all.

There's often reports on Traffic Scotland about slow moving traffic due to low sun. Combine that with the salt starting to go down and it's not uncommon to see people on the hard shoulder trying to scrape their windscreens with random clothing items or trying to pour a can of coke down their windscreen.

Honestly would rather just drive in the dark.

[Yoss]

I took my home made dressing off. The bandage had embedded itself in the wound so I had to soak it to get it off. Looked like this. 

 

Still looks bad but not as bad as yesterday. I've applied clean bandage and it is still mostly white 15 minutes later. Yesterday it turned red before I could even tape it down. And I've left the end as open as possible and I'm not using the elastic band tourniquet so it shouldn't get worse than this hopefully. 

 

I've bought one of those fingerbobs to protect it though I'm leaving it open at the mo. Also what look suspiciously like condoms but they must be better than the finger of a rubber glove i used last night. 

[High Jetter]

  On 28/10/2024 at 00:39, Yoss said:

Who knew boiling eggs could be so dangerous. 

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That would have been a great plot for Victor Meldrew! Glad it's improving today though.

[myglaren]

Would this be any better?

 

[Yoss]

  On 28/10/2024 at 11:27, myglaren said:

Would this be any better?

 

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It might be, I've not seen that before, but I'm not going back out now. I have successfully walked the dog with my fingerbob (it is tempting to paint a face and stick ears on it but that might involve use of Stanley knife again. 

Chieveley is interested. 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

I love it when the clocks change in the autumn as darker evenings means I'm more likely to get my telescope out and do some astronomy...

[Rocket88]

  On 28/10/2024 at 11:27, myglaren said:

Would this be any better?

 

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Basically, Superglue 

[comfortablynumb]

  On 28/10/2024 at 12:58, Rocket88 said:

Basically, Superglue 

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That's what my mum has been using for years.

That or nail varnish, which stings a bit......

[AnnoyingPentium]

  On 26/10/2024 at 20:15, Spiny Norman said:

When I got my 2001 CRV I went and checked to see whether or not it was exempt from Glasgow's ULEZ zone and was quite surprised to see that it was.

Checked it again the other day and now presumably because I've put a private plate on it, it's coming up as not allowed.
Not that I'm ever in the ULEZ zone but since they're doing major fuckage with both the M8 and M73 motorways just now it's quite possible that I may have to divert through the city centre coming back from my mate's place in the east end.

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From my experience of the fuckery around M8/77/74 etc, they disable the ULEZ cameras on diversion routes. But they'll book you if you stray outside of the posted diversion within the ULEZ. YMMV and aw that.

[somewhatfoolish]

I think they're trying to annoy motorists enough that they all converge on George Square and set fire to the city chambers, then it can be demolished and a statue of Alec Salmond erected instead*.

 

Probably not, just sell it to some developer to put up more student halls of residence.*

[reb]

I'm browsing houses and land for sale, daydreaming about the unlikely possibility of winning a million on the premium bonds.

By fuck is it grim.

I'd want something more or less like what I rent at the moment, but maybe with a bigger garden and kitchen and an extra bedroom.

Nothing doing anywhere I've looked so far. Unless I want to blow the whole million on some minor mansion and have nothing left over to rennovate and maintain the place.

Everything seems to just be generic shit with tiny rooms and tiny gardens. Land suitable for building on seems to only come in small plots that would leave fuck all space for a decent garden.

 

It's all academic though since it's not going to happen.

[Dyslexic Viking]

  On 28/10/2024 at 17:54, reb said:

I'm browsing houses and land for sale, daydreaming about the unlikely possibility of winning a million on the premium bonds.

By fuck is it grim.

I'd want something more or less like what I rent at the moment, but maybe with a bigger garden and kitchen and an extra bedroom.

Nothing doing anywhere I've looked so far. Unless I want to blow the whole million on some minor mansion and have nothing left over to rennovate and maintain the place.

Everything seems to just be generic shit with tiny rooms and tiny gardens. Land suitable for building on seems to only come in small plots that would leave fuck all space for a decent garden.

 

It's all academic though since it's not going to happen.

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Marry a Norwegian and move to Norway, lots of cheap rural properties here.

Alternatively, Sweden and Finland.

[reb]

  On 28/10/2024 at 18:00, Dyslexic Viking said:

Marry

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This might prove an issue as I'm terribly offputting.

 

What's the best site to window shop such cheap properties?

[Dyslexic Viking]

  On 28/10/2024 at 18:02, reb said:

What's the best site to window shop such cheap properties?

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292 properties under 70,000 pounds in Norway cheapest to most expensive

https://www.finn.no/realestate/homes/search.html?property_type=1&property_type=11&property_type=18&property_type=9&sort=PRICE_ASKING_ASC&is_new_property=false&price_from=50000&price_to=1000000