The grumpy thread

[New POD]

3 minutes ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Lost both mine by my mid 30's

Parents ?  

I think losing them that young must have a major impact of you. 

Bloke I once worked with lost his dad when he was 18 and his mum at 32.  He seemed to take it okay but I can't imagine that he wasn't hiding alot of pain. 

[dean36014]

Lost mine when I was 14, shit happens. Fucked up my schooling and most my teens. Been 41 years now and still wonder what if...

[myglaren]

My parents were both 92 wen they died.  Wife was only  63.

But worse, I have a funeral to attend on Monday.  Son of a mate, only 40,

Must be dreadful to lose a child.  I have five kids, between 40 and 49 and can't contemplate losing one of them.

[sheffcortinacentre]

11 minutes ago, New POD said:

Parents ?  

I think losing them that young must have a major impact of you. 

Bloke I once worked with lost his dad when he was 18 and his mum at 32.  He seemed to take it okay but I can't imagine that he wasn't hiding alot of pain. 

Yes, miss my mum still everyday. She died the day before my 30th birthday.

[Richard_FM]

I lost my Dad nearly 5 years ago, & my sister in law lost her Dad recently.

[Wibble]

I think losing my parents, within 14 months of each other, has properly fucked me to be honest. Then I lost my job and couldn’t call my Dad to talk about it, when I really wanted to. This has just been in the last couple of years, so I have great sympathy and empathy for folks in similar circumstances.

[comfortablynumb]

As I've said before, it's a couple of years since my dad went.

Meanwhile, my mum, at almost 91, is fitter than I am!

Now she's worried about my health, which isn't a good state of affairs..😕

[MikeR]

Doing some car work today which involved covering up some tin worm ... 

I have two tins of goo , one old empty one for the brush , and the new tin of goo ,I noticed a difference today  ..... 

[richardmorris]

9 minutes ago, MikeR said:

Doing some car work today which involved covering up some tin worm ... 

I have two tins of goo , one old empty one for the brush , and the new tin of goo ,I noticed a difference today  ..... 

Shrinkflation.

[uk_senator]

On 02/03/2025 at 22:23, uk_senator said:

As some of you know, I`ve done a lot of TV recording over the last 37 years or so, & I still do, I`ve transitioned from VHS, to DVD, & then Blu-Ray. I have 3 Panasonic Blu-ray recording PVR`s. These have a problem, their disc drives fail every few years, & have been unobtainable new for several years.

Earlier today, I decided to do some editing & burn off some Blu-rays to clear the hard drives a bit. Put a mostly used disc in my bedroom setup, & recorded the whole series of "Police Woman" onto it from the hard drive (a 70`s yank Police drama, with plenty of 70`s/80`s chod screaming round corners, which they`ve been showing on Rewind channel). It was almost enough to fill that disc up. Nice.

I then deleted the Police Woman folder off the PVR`s hard drive, freeing up several hours of space.

Took that disc into the living room, put it in the living room setup to see if I could squeeze anything onto the remaining space off the other recorder, & found the thumbnails on the last 4 episodes on the disc were heavily pixelated, so I went to play them.. They were no good, massively pixelated, barely able to play, & jumping/freezing up. Bollocks.. Looked at the disc surface, & there were like tiny 1/2 a mm micro-blisters in the outside edge of the silver side (pic below), like they`d been burnt into it.

So yeah, not in a good mood. I`ve had issues before, & repaired these recorders before (strip down, careful clean of the laser & cleaning the laser tracks/runners & re-white-greasing them), but the "burnt/blistered disc" thing is a new one on me. 😑

A little update on this.. the same things just happened again, only this time it wasn't on the bedroom recorder, it happened on the living room setup.. The common denominator? The discs.. seems like the TDK discs I switched to last time I ordered a tub (I usually get JVC or Panasonic, but have ot TDK before), are faulty in some way.. 

Looking at them, they`re different from the last TDK discs I got, because 1, theres nothing written on the face of them, & 2. the white printable face is glossy, rather than satin matt white.. So are there ones, which I got off Amazon, fake?

Thing is if they do have a fault, then how long are the 10-ish discs I've already filled gonna last? 

Fuxache.. 😡

[myglaren]

Borax!

A few years ago I had a lot of ants in the kitchen.  Not harmful but not especially welcome either.

They had excavated a tunnel through the mortar and left a pile of sand hear their workings.  There is a nest in the wall cavity.

Bought some Borax, mixed it with sugas and breadcrumbs and left it for the ants.  Soon, no ants.  Also filled their tunnel with silicone.

Yesterday I see the ants have returned.  All kitchen benches scoured with washing up liquid and white vinegar, all food items removed (bowls of fruit) and surfaces completely cleared.  No ants today.

But I had recently used the last of the borax, add it to washing soda, it is an excellent mild bleach and stain remover.

Went to buy more and some of the prices were staggering.  £67 for 100g.!   My last lot was around £6 for a kilo.

But it can now not be sold to the public, they have decided that it is harmful now.

[castros_bro]

Checked the Citroen spare for upcoming MOT only to discover there's no wheel brace so ordered one for it's 17mm wheel nuts and this arrived

not even long enough to get the spare carrier  bolt undone. 

[MikeR]

16 hours ago, uk_senator said:

A little update on this.. the same things just happened again, only this time it wasn't on the bedroom recorder, it happened on the living room setup.. The common denominator? The discs.. seems like the TDK discs I switched to last time I ordered a tub (I usually get JVC or Panasonic, but have ot TDK before), are faulty in some way.. 

Looking at them, they`re different from the last TDK discs I got, because 1, theres nothing written on the face of them, & 2. the white printable face is glossy, rather than satin matt white.. So are there ones, which I got off Amazon, fake?

Thing is if they do have a fault, then how long are the 10-ish discs I've already filled gonna last? 

Fuxache.. 😡

I had heard of dvd rot some 20 years ago and some makes got hit worse than others , so a few years ago I moved all my shite onto hdds with main and backups , then a few years back I built my first servers to dump files onto ,nothing fancy , just file storage  and DLNA for streaming ,  which turned out to be quite usefull for acccess and a place for the many pc's to share work ,  2 servers at home with one being the main worker and another for bups , with a 3rd at our caravan as a extra disaster cover .  I must have a scan of my old bup dvds to see it any are affected ...

[MikeR]

on another note , I was cleaning some old HDDs using Gpart ,

and some right Rodney pressed the wrong button

and cleared the OS on my laptop I had just built .......   

[Zelandeth]

I've done that...This was back pretty soon after I'd started using Ubuntu.  Think it was just a few USB sticks I was wiping.  I completely failed to notice that every time the disk management tool completed an operation, it jumped back to the top of the device list on the left...So when I went to format the partition I'd just wiped...Yep, wiped the boot drive on my computer.  Oops.

On the plus side, even back then getting Ubuntu back up and running was about 30 minutes work, and all of my data was on a physically separate drive, so there was no harm done.  I did feel a right idiot though.  Was probably 15 years ago now, and touch wood I've only done that once!

[paulplom]

I've just shaved both my eyebrows off. I fitted the guard on my trimmer too far back and didn't notice because I didn't have my glasses on in preperation. 

[Rustyrotavator]

Looks fine- and if youre still worried, as my haidresser friend always said

' the difference between a good and a bad haircut is about 6 weeks '

you'll be right for Easter!

[Surface Rust]

2 hours ago, paulplom said:

I've just shaved both my eyebrows off. I fitted the guard on my trimmer too far back and didn't notice because I didn't have my glasses on in preperation. 

Draw some Ming the Merciless eyebrows on and see if anyone comments.

[paulplom]

Luckily for some reason they're blonde and not really noticable anyway. 

[DavieW]

Facebook is full of folk celebrating St Patrick's Day - parties, drinks, seas of green t shirts etc., but not a peep from them when it's their national saints day - St Andrew. 

[Remspoor]

10 hours ago, myglaren said:

Borax!

A few years ago I had a lot of ants in the kitchen.  Not harmful but not especially welcome either.

They had excavated a tunnel through the mortar and left a pile of sand hear their workings.  There is a nest in the wall cavity.

Bought some Borax, mixed it with sugas and breadcrumbs and left it for the ants.  Soon, no ants.  Also filled their tunnel with silicone.

Yesterday I see the ants have returned.  All kitchen benches scoured with washing up liquid and white vinegar, all food items removed (bowls of fruit) and surfaces completely cleared.  No ants today.

But I had recently used the last of the borax, add it to washing soda, it is an excellent mild bleach and stain remover.

Went to buy more and some of the prices were staggering.  £67 for 100g.!   My last lot was around £6 for a kilo.

But it can now not be sold to the public, they have decided that it is harmful now.

Borax can be purchased from Spain.

https://www.alquera.com/en/borax/

or on flea bay

https://www.ebay.es/itm/356233781012

[myglaren]

13 minutes ago, Remspoor said:

Borax can be purchased from Spain.

https://www.alquera.com/en/borax/

or on flea bay

https://www.ebay.es/itm/356233781012

Thanks, a bit more than last time but at least available it seems.   I only looked for UK suppliers.

[Remspoor]

36 minutes ago, myglaren said:

a bit more than last time but at least available it seems

Fuck inflation

[High Jetter]

4 hours ago, DavieW said:

Facebook is full of folk celebrating St Patrick's Day - parties, drinks, seas of green t shirts etc., but not a peep from them when it's their national saints day - St Andrew. 

Yeabbut he didn't have Guinness and green hats 😀

[GagaStan]

Was servicing a friends Getz the other day and this was the state of the auxiliary belt

 

this on a car that supposedly had the cambelt down within the last year. Who the hell put that in hung back on! (Or did they even do the cambelt at all 🤨)

[Dyslexic Viking]

3 hours ago, GagaStan said:

this on a car that supposedly had the cambelt down within the last year. Who the hell put that in hung back on! (Or did they even do the cambelt at all 🤨)

I would have considered taking off the timing belt cover to check if they actually changed the timing belt as this does not give much confidence in them.

[warch]

Current irritation. Bloody fucking perpetual railway works taking place in the middle of the night. 

Now, before anyone says, well you should expect that living next to a railway line, we have lived in our house, next to the Heart of Wales Line for 12 years now. Normally you might expect one night time works party raising and cleaning out the level crossing, which fills up with soil, plus one or two checks on the electrics for the crossing gates/lights/bleepers. Because this is a sleepy single track light railway, most works could in fact reasonably be done in broad daylight, assuming they don't need to access the actual track or work near it. 

But it seems to be endless at the moment, new crossing in, new tactile edges for the platform over the road (Stihl saw all night), multiple checks on the crossing electrics. The worst is lineside clearance though which has been going on for ages. They were there at two in the morning last night trimming a small dilapidated hedge over the road from our house that runs adjacent to the roadside and about 6m back from the trackside. 

It does seem really unreasonable to be doing chainsaw work in the middle of the night (you can hear it miles away where I live) plus they were working on the exact same stretch about a month or so ago so its not as if its grown back or anything. I suspect the contractor has essentially been given an open contract to do these works and is really taking the piss/rinsing Network Rail or whoever is in charge of the line.   

[bunglebus]

Is it just me or has customer service done a complete 180 at some point? I was in a customer service role for a long time, and we had to go out of our way to ensure everyone was happy, or get a proper bollocking.

Now it seems like I'm often fighting to get large companies to acknowledge a problem, let alone actually resolve whatever's gone wrong. They just don't seem to give a fuck once they have your money. Current and recent opponents include McDonald's, Tesco mobile, eBay and Royal Mail, all massive businesses that you would hope could fix a problem easily without a fight.

Is it the rise of compensation culture, so companies think everyone's just after money for nothing? All I've asked for is the problem to be resolved, and a refund of any money lost

[Metal Guru]

3 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Is it just me or has customer service done a complete 180 at some point? I was in a customer service role for a long time, and we had to go out of our way to ensure everyone was happy, or get a proper bollocking.

Now it seems like I'm often fighting to get large companies to acknowledge a problem, let alone actually resolve whatever's gone wrong. They just don't seem to give a fuck once they have your money. Current and recent opponents include McDonald's, Tesco mobile, eBay and Royal Mail, all massive businesses that you would hope could fix a problem easily without a fight.

Is it the rise of compensation culture, so companies think everyone's just after money for nothing? All I've asked for is the problem to be resolved, and a refund of any money lost

Use ceoemail.com.  Usually gets results. 

 

[uk_senator]

20 hours ago, MikeR said:

I had heard of dvd rot some 20 years ago and some makes got hit worse than others , so a few years ago I moved all my shite onto hdds with main and backups , then a few years back I built my first servers to dump files onto ,nothing fancy , just file storage  and DLNA for streaming ,  which turned out to be quite usefull for acccess and a place for the many pc's to share work ,  2 servers at home with one being the main worker and another for bups , with a 3rd at our caravan as a extra disaster cover .  I must have a scan of my old bup dvds to see it any are affected ...

DVD rot was pushed as a thing, but in reality I`ve not seen that happen (that said, I`ve not checked all the DVD`s I recorded 10-20 years ago, I should really), thing is, these are new discs, & are seemingly pickling the surface of the disc during recording, I assume from the heat of the process? The problem as, that when digital media goes wrong, it goes completely wrong & becomes unusable, whereas with analogue, like VHS etc, it tends to slowly deteriorate, so although the quality drops off, its still usable/recoverable to some degree.

About 5 years ago, I got a 5tb external hard drive, cost a fortune at the time, & I got it to merge all my old hard drives data (dozens of drives dating back to the late 90`s) onto one unit.. It took a lot of time, dragging & dropping, but I was getting on with it slowly, then, one day I was hoovering, tapped that 5tb drive with the pipe, which was mid transfer, which immediately started graunching.. & sure enough, it had f*ked the drive.. I opened it up, to find grooves round the platters from the pickup arm. Totally f*ked basically.. Thing is, I`d been formatting the old drives as I went.. Brilliant.. Yes, I know I can recover some of it, but I just gave up at that point, & still have piles of drives that need archiving & recovering. I could do a server setup, but its the same tech at the end of the day, & is fallible. I could put it all on a cloud server, which would cost a fair bit to keep, but should be safe, in theory. 

Another problem I`ve noticed recently, is that random photo`s on my computer are inexplicably destroying themselves, as in slicing themselves in half or compressing themselves, like this (that isnt the door glass there, the computer has sliced the picture in half & lightened the bottom half, & moved it a few pixels across like that):