The grumpy thread

[sdkrc]

Was out running in the park today and ran past a youngish family, mother, father, young child. Their dog came belting out of the woods and started to run at me, then around me whilst growling aggressively. It wasn't a big dog, more of a medium/small dog and I felt in zero danger.

It barked and growled and then chased after my feet, trying to bite my shoe. I caught him in the head slightly with a soft heel. 

I stopped and turned to the family, namely the fat lass with a long head and stared at her. She said "he's so annoying". No attempt to curb the behaviour or apologise. I shouted aggressively at her "put him on a fucking leash then" followed by "you fat retard". 

The rest of my run was spoiled but I got to thinking. What would happen if I just kicked the dog as hard as I could? Is that an appropriate reaction? Genuine question. My dad did that once to a jack Russell back in the 90s. Nothing annoys me more than shit dogs and room temperature IQ owners. 

[Bren]

Have the lurgy. Started sneezing a few days ago - this has developed into a nasty productive cough and a hoarse voice.

My peak flow is 300 - if it gets any lower it's hospital. Silly for going in work last night.

[Marina door handles]

4 hours ago, Westbay said:

While my original post was a bit 'tongue in cheek' there is a more annoying aspect nobody has mentioned ... the operating system changes and some of the apps no longer work as they should/used to - the company named after a fruit are 'good' at this ...😡

You still have a Banana phone? 🙃

[chaseracer]

1 hour ago, Marina door handles said:

You still have a Banana phone? 🙃

It's in Transit.

#sorry

[adw1977]

4 hours ago, sdkrc said:

What would happen if I just kicked the dog as hard as I could? Is that an appropriate reaction?

No, because it's not really the dog's fault.  Kicking the owner as hard as you could, though...

[sdkrc]

I disagree. Punching the owner doesn't neutralise a dog trying to bite me.

Don't get me wrong, I fully acknowledge the behaviour is the responsibility of the shit owner but that doesn't stop it being a shit dog trying to bite me. 

I guess if it properly went for me I'd have punted it into the lake. I'll save that kinda action for more extreme cases.

[maxxo]

night before last ended up only have an hours worth of sleep

yesterday was the most ill i have been in a long time

sickness, the shites, cold, flu etc

12 hours of kip last night

feeling a fait bit better today, ended up going out for food with my parents so chose to get pizza and bring what i couldn't eat home (dinner tomorrow looking forward to it)

but fuck me

i feel ruined, knocked out, not so much sick now just full of cold really and i'm sick of it

in other news

had a knock at the door this morning from the next door neighbour on the other side

sorry to bother you, but i noticed you left your keys in your car and handed me them, cue much thank you's

so i'd left the keys in the ignition of the XM for about 24 hours

no one took it thankfully

[Spiny Norman]

Once again, one of First Bus Glasgow's professional* bus drivers has attempted to turn his double decker into a cabriolet on a bridge with no warning signs on it whatsoever.

[Metal Guru]

5 hours ago, sdkrc said:

I disagree. Punching the owner doesn't neutralise a dog trying to bite me.

Don't get me wrong, I fully acknowledge the behaviour is the responsibility of the shit owner but that doesn't stop it being a shit dog trying to bite me. 

I guess if it properly went for me I'd have punted it into the lake. I'll save that kinda action for more extreme cases.

We used to have a very timid dog that wouldn’t really defend itself against other dogs. Once out for a walk, a terrier of some sort got it by the throat. Pretty sure it would have killed or at least seriously hurt our dog, so I intervened with my size 13s. 

Needless to say the owner wasn’t happy and I just said “I didn’t kick it that hard”, to which my brother added (helpfully *) “ well you’d have got 3 points if it was on a rugby pitch”.

[New POD]

20 hours ago, Marina door handles said:

I need a new  mobile phone, my old phone wont hold charge anymore. I hate phone shopping even more than I hate clothes shopping mostly because I find phones tedious... Wish me luck! 

Back market. 

[New POD]

8 hours ago, maxxo said:

 

sorry to bother you, but i noticed you left your keys in your car and handed me them, cue much thank you's

so i'd left the keys in the ignition of the XM for about 24 hours

no one took it thankfully

Certain cars have their own anti theft properties which put all self respecting joyriders off. 

[New POD]

20 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Just a basic Samsung thing, I dont know the model number. 

For ages I had a Galaxy ACE.  Had 3 removable batteries because my daughter and wife had previously also had one each and had upgraded.  Which meant I always had a spare fully charged in the car. 

[Yoss]

2 hours ago, New POD said:

Certain cars have their own anti theft properties which put all self respecting joyriders off. 

I was going to say much the same thing as owner of two Škoda Favorits. And whilst the XM is several leagues above my cars it still has that Bertone look that would just confuse the fuck out of most people. 

I don't want to state the obvious but I keep the front door key on the same ring as the car key so you have to take it with you to be able to get back in the house. 

[Sunny Jim]

I do too for the same reason. Just don't do what I did recently and leave the house key on the key ring when you drop the car off at the garage - I only realised after the hours walk home in the pouring rain...

[Morris 63]

15 hours ago, maxxo said:

had a knock at the door this morning from the next door neighbour on the other side

sorry to bother you, but i noticed you left your keys in your car and handed me them, cue much thank you's

Sorry to hear about the sickness - and hope the pizza was good.

Sound neighbours though - that's a good thing when you read some of the stories on here.

[hairnet]

Ffs

 

We should be in it going the other way

Fuck it its ice cream time

[Yoss]

How can an apparently simple job go so catastrophically wrong? 

I shall put the full run down in my own thread at some point but at the moment I just can't sum up the enthusiasm. 

The exhaust manifold started blowing on blue (standard) Favorit. I wasn't sure if it was manifold to head or manifold to downpipe but it looked an easy enough job to take it off and do both. 

First thing that went wrong was two of the studs in the head snapped when I tried to undo them. So I thought I may as well get new studs for the whole head and while I'm at it I may as well get new nuts. 

Long story short, having new nuts meant I didn't notice one of the old ones was missing. Put it all back together, started it and there was a nasty mettalic rattle from inside the engine. 

I think we can see the problem. 

 

Do you want to look a little closer? 

 

As you can see here, the piston is near the top of its stroke so I thought I'd turn it over and see what state the bore was in. It still looked okay until I started cleaning it up. 

Well that's fucked then. 

 

The only good thing is our friends at Škoda Díly have complete brand new piston and liner sets available. 

Along with the brass sealing rings for the bottom of the liner in three different thicknesses. 

Okay so they are made in China but what choice do I have? It's good that they've had the foresight to make them at all, along with practically every other moving part for the Favorit engine. Only slight problem is they do two different types and I'm not sure which type I need. One set is €87 and the other €93 which is stupidly cheap. At close of play today I've just got the sump hanging off and can see that if I remove the oil pump pick up pipe I should be able to get to all four con rods with the engine still in place. 

All this from a blowing manifold. This is why I will never work on other people's cars even when they know I do all my own work. Because if I fuck up my own car I can just shut the garage door and walk away. 

I the meantime Triumph has been pressed in to daily service in all weathers and times of day or night. 

[cort1977]

2 hours ago, Yoss said:

How can an apparently simple job go so catastrophically wrong? 

 

 

I was about to post about the bother I had with a bottom arm on the berlingo today but i feel lucky now!

Hope you get it sorted soon.

[Yoss]

7 hours ago, cort1977 said:

 

Hope you get it sorted soon.

I will somehow but it might take a while. I'm not going to rush putting it back together. 

[scorchio69]

Continuing to endure the wife’s lease deal Nissan Ariya, aside from giving me chronic back pain the range hit in the cold is just a pain in the ring ( around 100 miles less and it’s not even sub zero today )especially when you have to visit the in-laws in the central belt, supposed “fast charging “ in the new Dundee hub that frankly isn’t whilst looking around seeing the other EV drivers sitting in their cars looking just as miserable.

Wife has already said they car stick their EV,s up their ring and it will be her last.

[Zelandeth]

I am continuing to be increasingly convinced that the best type of neighbour situation is where your nearest one is >5 miles away.

One of ours (rental, seems to change hands about every six months) has finally, after nearly three years finally trimmed a hedge which was sufficiently overgrown that you had to walk into the road to get around it.  Great!

Unfortunately, they've just dumped all the cuttings on the ground around our hedging rather than take it away.  Not so great.  So I'll be paying to get that cleared up then I guess.

[myglaren]

Shove it onto their drive.

[Metal Guru]

Just posted the Xmas cards. Only trouble is, there were about 12 without stamps sandwiched  between three in top with left over stamps from last year and some prepaid business envelopes on the bottom.

My wife wrote them, stacked them like that and just asked me to post them ffs!

Just emailed everyone to tell them not to pay. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, myglaren said:

Shove it onto their drive.

They don't have one.  I had considered piling it up in front of their door, but that would also entail blocking the footpath and require as much work as just getting rid of it.

[myglaren]

Dob them in for littering/fly tipping.

[vulgalour]

Okay, fine, I get it.  Instagram is all about thirst traps for desperate lonely boys with strong right arms.  I get that it assumes I'm one of them and the token Morgans are at least car related.  I'm a new user, fine, okay.

 

Give me strength though.  There's pages and pages and pages of this.  Just thirst posts and plastic surgery and Americans in sad beige rooms as far as the mouse can scroll.  It's fucking depressing.

That's okay, apparently all I need to do is engage with accounts to train the algorithm, get it to understand what I do as a small business, what my interests are, all that good stuff.  It can take a while.

Urgh.

 

I remain incredibly unconvinced by this social media platform.  At every step it puts effort in to making sure that for me, as a small business user, it's just a time sink.  Hyperlinks are just turned into text so you can't direct people to your stuff.  It regularly presents that message above so trying to get posts out on any sort of schedule is basically impossible.  There is no infinite timeline, only the most recent posts, unless you manually go to individual profiles to see their feed like it's 2004 or something.  I swear it's designed by the same people who hide the exit in department stores.  There is nothing appealing about it at all.  I've done it because of the number of other people yammering at me to use it (who, interestingly, aren't following my account or expressing any interest in it so wtf?) and the Job Centre wanting to make sure I'm showing willing and doing everything I can.

I've had genuinely better success in the same period of time using Mastodon than I have Instagram, and found more meaningful connections, and made sales, and been able to promote my work with a considerably smaller audience to access.  I shall persist with this garbage fire of a platform because I'm obligated to, not because I want to.  Apparently you need to give it three months where you feed it regular updates before it starts to work.  However, I can see why so many other small business and creatives I know have dropped it like a hot stone at the first opportunity.

[BorniteIdentity]

8 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

Okay, fine, I get it.  Instagram is all about thirst traps for desperate lonely boys with strong right arms.  I get that it assumes I'm one of them and the token Morgans are at least car related.  I'm a new user, fine, okay.

 

Give me strength though.  There's pages and pages and pages of this.  Just thirst posts and plastic surgery and Americans in sad beige rooms as far as the mouse can scroll.  It's fucking depressing.

That's okay, apparently all I need to do is engage with accounts to train the algorithm, get it to understand what I do as a small business, what my interests are, all that good stuff.  It can take a while.

Urgh.

 

I remain incredibly unconvinced by this social media platform.  At every step it puts effort in to making sure that for me, as a small business user, it's just a time sink.  Hyperlinks are just turned into text so you can't direct people to your stuff.  It regularly presents that message above so trying to get posts out on any sort of schedule is basically impossible.  There is no infinite timeline, only the most recent posts, unless you manually go to individual profiles to see their feed like it's 2004 or something.  I swear it's designed by the same people who hide the exit in department stores.  There is nothing appealing about it at all.  I've done it because of the number of other people yammering at me to use it (who, interestingly, aren't following my account or expressing any interest in it so wtf?) and the Job Centre wanting to make sure I'm showing willing and doing everything I can.

I've had genuinely better success in the same period of time using Mastodon than I have Instagram, and found more meaningful connections, and made sales, and been able to promote my work with a considerably smaller audience to access.  I shall persist with this garbage fire of a platform because I'm obligated to, not because I want to.  Apparently you need to give it three months where you feed it regular updates before it starts to work.  However, I can see why so many other small business and creatives I know have dropped it like a hot stone at the first opportunity.

Sorry to be a pump, but anyone who thinks organic posting on Instagram equates to a successful marketing campaign is going to have the same, grimly predictable results.

IG/Meta is a business.  They have been steadily strangling the reach of organic posting over the last few years because they want and need revenue.  You sticking links into the slug of your posts takes people away from their walled garden and away from their revenue streams.  So it doesn't happen.

Digital Marketing is supremely effective, very efficient and absolutely transforms businesses.  But you need to mean it.  Mean business.  Otherwise you're going to get 4 likes a time from your friends and no sales.  

Obvs I wish you every success, but I've seen hundreds of businesses over the last 10 years struggle because they think posting on Facebook each day will bring the customers in.  The reality is, it doesn't.  (Remember - they're customers at the point of purchase, not point of being a fan)

Good luck man.

[barefoot]

I agree, I used to post my stuff on utube, but it all fell flat. Posted something very targeted, got 13000 hits in about an hour and an award for some fastest whatsit bollocks

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f1q23RvLVaM

and barely used it again.

[vulgalour]

14 minutes ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Sorry to be a pump, but anyone who thinks organic posting on Instagram equates to a successful marketing campaign is going to have the same, grimly predictable results.

IG/Meta is a business.  They have been steadily strangling the reach of organic posting over the last few years because they want and need revenue. 

Digital Marketing is supremely effective, very efficient and absolutely transforms businesses.  But you need to mean it.  Mean business.  Otherwise you're going to get 4 likes a time from your friends and no sales.  

 

Getting to grips with digital marketing has been a real challenge for me. When I'm told 'you have to mean it' I do mean it... I just don't communicate it well, mainly because I don't know what I'm doing wrong so I can learn how to do it right.  I have found Mastodon and Youtube to be surprisingly good for generating commissions and print sales which is why I persist with those, there is actually a reward for the effort sunk in.  I'm still struggling to see how IG even fits in with my business, I'm not very good at selling me and IG seems geared towards the cult of self rather than the promotion of business.  I can dump my product on there all I want but how do I get people to then follow up?

Digital marketing is really hard to do.  Any marketing is.  Especially so when you have no training in it.  I'm a bit stuck too in general.  I want to get some professional training so I can understand and enact some better strategies.  Unfortunately my health is still fragile and the Job Centre, for all their talk, are totally unwilling to help assist with getting on a training course.  Extra annoying is that I risk being sanctioned if I do undertake a course because it would be taking time away from my employment and right now I'm having to rely on the benefits support because I ended up signed off sick and some days I'm still struggling to do enough work to earn (today is one of those days, hooray for chronic pain).  It's a rotten situation to be in really.

I just want to succeed over here.  I'm putting the work in and doing the things I'm supposed to and I'm just not getting it right because there's only one of me and I'm a bit broken at the moment.

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, myglaren said:

Dob them in for littering/fly tipping.

To whom?  Council won't be interested as it's been dumped on private land?  Police?  Given their total and utter disinterest when I've tried to inform them of actual meaningful crimes in progress, yeah not even going to bother thinking about talking to them.

Did go round to knock on the door and ask politely if it could be dealt with in case it was a genuine mistake by whoever they had in to do the work (they had someone in to do it as I saw the van parked there and remembered thinking "Finally!" when I saw it - can't remember the bloody company though!).  Was met with a wall of "Sorry no speak English!" And the door literally slammed in my face, after I'd got precisely as far as saying "Hi, sorry to bo..."

Yeah, I could hear them nattering among themselves while on the way to open the door.  In English.