Early Risers.

[81C]

Afternoon all,

 

Well that was an entertaining morning, occasionally.  sister Drac duly visited - a different one and by golly don't 50 year old nurses look young nowadays (she volunteered her age).  Then came the start of a saga of Icelandic proportions with a visit to Carphone Whoarehouse seeking a top-up for my PAYG 'phone - 'sorry you need a swipe card, try Sainsbury's over the road'.  So I tried Sainsbury's 0n;y to be told, after a mammoth button pushing session on the till, that I need a swipe card.  So i trudged home and in view of my total disaffection from the bl**dy thing herself duly endeavoured to get it topped-up - 1. the online tiop-up system still doesn't work, 2. Trying it via the 450 number you're advised to use on the 'phone doesn't work, 3. Doing it Trying to do it via the website including re-registering as a 'customer' still doesn't work and I still await a further txt 'which you will receive shortly' several hours after the previous one wait a reply to a txt.

 

Basically it appears that EE (whatever that means but it isn't stretching my inventiveness) who took over Orange appear to be totally incapable of adding some credit to a mobile 'phone so I sincerely hope they never invite me to a session of alcohol in a brewery because I'll probably die of thirst.  It also appears to be impossible to contact them unless you have a sign-in and account of some sort and the CEO information site shows an incorrect 'phone number so I don't know if their address is even correct or if the CEO - with a dodgy foreign sounding name - really exists.  All of which means I can neither go and smash their looms or dump a lorry load of manure on their doorstep although I'd be perfectly happy simply to deal 'very firmly' with the lack of customer service dept - if I could actually contact them.  

 

Orange have my card details, they have my name and address, they have never given me a card to swipe or indeed any other sort of card and Carphone Whoarehouse appears to lose all interest in their customers once you've bought something from them.  My 'phone will of course still receive calls but it seems they have little or no interest in continuing to receive my very occasional payments of the money I use to achieve calls - total bunch of incompetents who barely merit such a high accolade as cockwomble.

 

However to make up for this non-behaviour of this particular bunch of bottom feeding, commercially incompetent, scum we have today visited two garden centres having acquired plants, but no lunch (huge queue in the cafe) at Root One and lunch  - a toasted sarnie, very nice too - but no plants at the second.

Unfortunately Mike all the networks are as bad as one another, I dumped Vodashitefone for their inability to send me a code to access my account it turned up 3 weeks after terminating the contract, SWMBO has been with O2 for years so I joined up with them they are just as bad their call centre's are also staffed by total idiots who can speak a word of recognisable English but with the help of the Dorks/Guru's or whatever they call them in their store I've managed to get a useable phone but to cap it all with Vodacarp they sent me an airtime bill 2 months after finishing with them they have totally lost the plot perhaps the should go into selling saucepans or horse manure.  

[AndyID]

How time flies! It's 10 am. Better get up or I won't qualify as an ER.

[Donw]

I agree with other posters who have commented on barking dogs. Continuous barking is from an unhappy distressed dog.

Robbie is fairly quiet. He barks when going go out to the car. He is happy. He shuts up on command too, which is nice. He barks if he isn't allowed to go to the front door to greet visitors. Otherwise his vocalisations are fairly quiet. There is the woof that means "I would like to go in the garden". There is a slightly louder woof that means "Have you forgotten to let me back in". There is the deep growl which is "Garden please, intruder, intruder". He doesn't bark at anything (cats usually, sometimes squirrels ) he doesn't want on his lawn, he just runs straight at them. They escape, he piles into the fence.

 

Monty is like that with cats although if on a lead he will bark probably saying 'let me at it'. On the IoW he had two lady Lurcher friends (actually sisters but with different owners) despite his rather short legs he made a good showing of chasing them left the other dogs behind. However if it looked like he was about to catch one of them she would go up a gear as it were obviously kept something in reserve. I doubt he could catch a bike or car but he is quite prepared to have a go at anything including a double decker bus as it goes past. You have to hang on tight to his lead. He and and the bitch we had at the time did manage to trap a Landrover up on Exmoor. The raced ahead round a corner when we got there the driver was waiting as there was a dog at each end. Monty was trying to chew through the tyres. This was on a track not a highway so vehicles were not normally using the track.

Don 

[lightengine]

Chocolate is poisonous to dogs particularly strong chocolate.

Don

We used to have dog chocolate buttons back in the day. I don't know what they were made of but they tasted pretty chocolatey

Now days as you say its a no no.

But apparently that old thing of feeding bread to ducks is a no no. For hundreds of years that must have happened by generations of children. Incidentally I can't recall ever seeing a dead duck.

It is now apparently better to put chocolate in a mouse trap than cheese.

Strange thing food.

[Tony_S]

1.  Buy a phone.  Mine is a very basic Nokia which cost me £20.

 

2.  Buy credit in £10 or £20 lumps.

 

3.  Don't spend your whole life using it.

 

Works for me!

 

Chris

Too complicated. I have a phone, some nice people debit my bank each month.

[BSW01]

Basically it appears that EE (whatever that means)

 

.

EE = Excrement Everywhere

[The Stationmaster]

I am not clever enough to own a pay as you go phone. It all seems so complicated.

 

The theory is very simple, the practice seems to be on a par with sy-uccessfully designing a fully operational Mach 2 airliner using the back of an envelope and a blunt pencil.

[Tony_S]

I keep getting a message on the alert screen of my tablet suggesting that I Skype my Mum to let her know I am thinking of her. How does that work I wonder...

[AndyID]

The dreaded "check engine" light on my truck came on the other day. I bought an ODB interface a while ago, but I'd never used it before yesterday. It successfully connected with my cheapo phone and told me the error code. The code says that a solenoid that disables four of the cylinders while cruising has a problem. A bit of googling indicates that low oil pressure might be the actual cause. I checked the oil level and it was a bit low, so I topped it up. The ODB thingy would not clear the truck's fault log, but I was able to do that by removing a fuse.

 

Today I will road test the truck. I reckon there is a 50/50 chance the fault will reappear.

[AndyID]

I keep getting a message on the alert screen of my tablet suggesting that I Skype my Mum to let her know I am thinking of her. How does that work I wonder...

 

Doubt if it would work too well for me. My mum was born five days after the Titanic went down.

[New Haven Neil]

I think that was Tony's point!  They must be well connected.....

[PhilJ W]

1.  Buy a phone.  Mine is a very basic Nokia which cost me £20.

 

2.  Buy credit in £10 or £20 lumps.

 

3.  Don't spend your whole life using it.

 

Works for me!

 

Chris

As long as you remember to recharge it, guess how I know.

[Tony_S]

I think that was Tony's point!  They must be well connected.....

It was.

[grandadbob]

I keep getting emails with suggestions for what my Mum would like for Mother's Day. If they know her well enough to know what she likes I'm a bit surprised that they don't know she's been dead since 1982.  

Edited March 24, 2017 by grandadbob

[Donw]

We used to have dog chocolate buttons back in the day. I don't know what they were made of but they tasted pretty chocolatey

Now days as you say its a no no.

But apparently that old thing of feeding bread to ducks is a no no. For hundreds of years that must have happened by generations of children. Incidentally I can't recall ever seeing a dead duck.

It is now apparently better to put chocolate in a mouse trap than cheese.

Strange thing food.

 

The Dog Chocs either had the poisonous bit removed or were an artificial flavour. I think the sort of chocolate we Brits had as kids wasn't such strong chocolate but the continental style with higher cocoa solids has become more popular and our chocolate may contain more. 

I doubt feeding a bit of white bread to a duck is going to hurt although it can form a gelatinous lump in the crop, but ducks being greedy lazy devils can in a park pond get so much white bread they are missing important nutrients. If you want to feed bread wholemeal bread is much better. Corn is best for ducks and they do like worms and the like. I did have to rescue one of our ducks. Doing some clearing in the garden I exposed a lot of slugs she ate so many the slime sort of blocked her throat I had to poke my finger down to clear an airway.

 

Wholemeal bread is much better for garden birds too (and for people as well).  We needed to remove some mice and found that Oats attracted them into the traps.

Don

[Donw]

Too complicated. I have a phone, some nice people debit my bank each month.

 

It does usually have the advantage you never run out of credit although you may go onto a higher rate depending on your contract.

Don

[AndyID]

I think that was Tony's point!  They must be well connected.....

 

I suspected that was the case, but I played in safe just in case he was trying to avoid her.

[BSW01]

I also keep getting messages about what my mother would like for Mother's Day, but as she's been dead for over 10 years I don't think it matters.

[emt_911]

An easy day but unfortunately it was in the office. I did manage to POE but the journey home put paid to that.

 

A quick trawl through the rest of RM and charge the camera battery for tomorrow.

 

Back later

[lightengine]

Some pathetic twa*s on FB.

A photo of a muslim female walking past one of the injured bridge pedestrians in Westminster. The injured person was being attended to by at least 5 people. This Muslim female walked past without apparently acknowledging the injured and without looking away from her mobile.

This apparently signifies she is in someway complicit.

Hopefully it gets taken down soon.

[NGT6 1315]

I missed Dom's "experience" when I was reading though this morning.  Glad to hear that you are Ok and that an accident didn't happen.

 

Sounding the bell definitely does work - but with one caveat.  The modern curse of the headphones.

 

On my way between offices yesterday, a woman nearly walked straight into me.  Obviously, of minor consequence and nothing more than an annoyance - but if she hadn't had headphones in, and gawking at her phone she would probably have seen me and walked around me.  I had already stopped walking, and she just carried on, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings.

 

These sort of accidents are increasing alarmingly year-on-year.

 

 

This reminds me of that video…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though I do have a bad feeling we're really headed this way…

[Coombe Barton]

POETS didn't happen. Last out more bl00dy like!

 

The Sainsbury's - so home about 8. Fortunately a Sains Chinese was suggested and I agreed

Edited March 24, 2017 by Coombe Barton

[Tony_S]

Some pathetic twa*s on FB.

A photo of a muslim female walking past one of the injured bridge pedestrians in Westminster. The injured person was being attended to by at least 5 people. This Muslim female walked past without apparently acknowledging the injured and without looking away from her mobile.

This apparently signifies she is in someway complicit.

Hopefully it gets taken down soon.

The original photographer is very cross about its misuse. The woman appears in a number of shots looking quite distraught.

[NGT6 1315]

 

2137-2056-937 in the Exhibition Turnaround on Windmühlenstraße…

 

 

 

 

…and 1151 "Kaiser Maximilian I." on Max-Planck-Straße in the Stadium Loop, due to Line 4 currently being reduced to a rump route as a result of engineering works. The Gohlis branch is closed for PW repairs till the end of 31 March, while the Stötteritz branch south of Weißestraße will remain closed till early June for an extensive rebuild of the Holzhäuser Straße loop.

[Legend]

Good afternoon from the Regal Princess heading back to Fort Lauderdale after two weeks round the Caribbean. Heavy seas . Rock n Roll great stuff !