Early Risers.

[iL Dottore]

15 hours ago, Tony_S said:

...The big chap said “Please can I see your dog and stroke him”. Robbie ran out of the kitchen and just threw himself upside-down at the mans feet. I honestly think Robbie would have gone off with him. The other chap said “this happens every time. “

That’s sweet.  Dogs can tell if someone is “dog friendly“ or not. Lucy, despite having been abused by humans in the past, has one or two favourite friends that she goes bonkers over. One of whom is our Portuguese cleaning lady, Ana-Maria, should AM arrive whilst I am out with the dogs, immediately as we get back home Lucy starts tugging at the leash and when the front door is opened and Lucy let off the lead, Lucy goes shooting through the house to find her friend.

14 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

I believe that is quite common in crush injuries poisons can build up and are released when the weight is removed. The weight can also prevent blood loss and when removed the victim csn bleed out rapidly.

Quite. Whilst paramedics can do a lot, they can’t do everything and in Germany and Switzerland there is the Notarzt, Basically the equivalent of an A&E physician (and a trauma specialist) trained to work at accident and disaster sites, doing things that paramedics are either not trained to do or not allowed to do. Sometimes they do operations at the site of the event, up to and including amputations.  And in these situations the modus operandi is to keep the patient alive and worry about infection later.... 

8 hours ago, BSW01 said:

...I’ve no idea how much a complete set weighed, but they were very heavy! ...I was among a handful who could get it over my head. 

Captain Cynical is looking for powerful minions like yourself, expect a p.m. in the next few days...

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

The other thing to bear in mind with printers is the ink cartridge cost - IIRC Lexmark sold one where the catrridges cost more than the printer, so when people needed new cartridges they'd buy a new printer just for the cartridges, with the printer going in the bin.  Mad....

 

. Buddy is tri-lingual as a result (English/Welsh/Italian) which is rather impressive in Bear's book.....

 

You don’t want to know how much my company spends on laser printer cartridges.  I’ve now started ignoring the “cartridge low – replace now“ warnings that appear on the computer screen when the cartridges start to run out of toner. I found, by happenstance - as shops were shut over Christmas - that I could safely ignore the warnings and get perfectly acceptable prints for quite some time after the warnings started flashing..

I think that it is not only mad, but totally immoral to deliberately set out to make money by creating a system whereby printer cartridges (whether laser or inkjet) cannot be refilled but that’s have to go into the landfill or (if we’re lucky) recycled.  
 

To make things even worse, the laser jet printer cartridges (at least with my model) each contain a chip that prevents them from being refilled and, in addition,, the presence of this chip in the printer cartridge means you can’t use a low-cost cartridge substitute. For whilst the substitute might be technically identical, without the chip (and through proprietary software loaded onto it) the printer refuses to recognise the cartridge and will not print!
 

Multilingualism seems to be much more common on the continent than in the UK or the US. Most of my friends are bilingual, many trilingual or even quadrilingual.  I can fluently speak three languages and get by in two more. I wish, however, I was linguistically like my father: he could speak eight languages fluently...

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

...When I was younger (and fitter) I could easily bear hug fridge freezers and move them around if required. Two of us lifted a TR6 body off its chassis once.. that was heavy!

 

Have a good day! Stay safe!

Baz

Captain Cynical will also be sending you a PM regarding employment prospects.

 

Enjoy the day

 

iD

[New Haven Neil]

Morning. Touch damp out, must have been a shower, doesn't look like it has been heavy.  Sunny and strong winds fore-guessed.  Tank due soon, intravenous tea on standby.

 

My day will be mostly making Tank's tea, and fitting the new screen to Debs bike, and hopefully the hugger rear mudguard if it arrives.  These are easy to hug and lift, being fibreglass and small.  NHN once did himself considerable damage lifting Sulzer fuel injectors when he should have used a chainblock, in an emergency situation at sea.  Can't find a picture of one on the interweb, but to give scale, this is a connecting rod and crank of one cylinder of the same type of engine.  I don't think he's trying to kickstart it.

 

 

 

[Mike Bellamy]

1 hour ago, Barry O said:

 

 Two of us lifted a TR6 body off its chassis once.. that was heavy!

 

 

. . . . . . and even heavier if you missed removing the last bolt . . . . ! !

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

It has rained overnight but isn’t raining now. 
The bathroom floor had dried nicely. I will leave the carpets pulled up for a while to make sure all is dry underneath. I have sorted out all the accessories to convert our Vax vacuum cleaner into a carpet cleaner as I suspect that will be necessary. Fortunately none of these tasks required any great strength as I am not certain I have ever been particularly strong. I do have long arms though!

The doorbell should get some exercise today. Various items from Amazon (usb and hdmi leads) and a very small computer via Royal Mail. 
Tony

[New Haven Neil]

Tank has arrived and been charged with the necessary.

 

The overcast hasn't broken up yet, hopefully it will so he can get on as many of the tasks require the slabs to be dry-ish.

 

Our Chief Minister was a touch upset yesterday in his address to the nation about the fact that folk have been going to work knowing they had covid symptoms.  Too right, what morons.  They known chain of transmission seems to be coming under control but the sporadic outbreaks are being caused by these thoughtless idiots.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Damp and grey this morning  and Arthur Itis was banging on his drum this morning but paracetamol has been deployed and has quieted him down. 

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

The other thing to bear in mind with printers is the ink cartridge cost - IIRC Lexmark sold one where the cartridges cost more than the printer, so when people needed new cartridges they'd buy a new printer just for the cartridges, with the printer going in the bin.  Mad.

 

My printer is a Lexmark (X543 laser printer) and indeed the cartridges do cost a lot more than the others but they are a lot larger than other makes. They can cost twice as much or more than other makes of cartridge but they hold four to six times the amount of ink and are easily refillable. Also my printer is nearly ten years old and I have only had to have one cartridge (cyan) re-filled.

[Tony_S]

32 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I was linguistically like my father: he could speak eight languages fluently...

I am not sure of the exact number but Aditi’s Dad could understand quite a few and could  read them them too. I once gave him a print out from an Indian languages word processor with about eight scripts on it. His comment was that it was the same story in all of them. His family moved a lot and they learned the local scripts and language for something to do. He could read Farsi too as one of his fathers engineering projects was near what would be the Iranian border now. 
Aditi once went for a job in an inner London borough. She didn’t get the job but the debrief session said one reason was that she didn’t see bilingual children as being a major area of concern. She said monolingual children if that one language wasn’t English was a concern but they hadn’t asked her that. Aditi’s family claimed to only speak English but it really depended how cross their Mum was. She could switch from English, to Hindi and then Punjabi as she got more angry. 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Tony_S

[PhilJ W]

28 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

That’s sweet.  Dogs can tell if someone is “dog friendly“ or not. Lucy, despite having been abused by humans in the past, has one or two favourite friends that she goes bonkers over. One of whom is our Portuguese cleaning lady, Ana-Maria, should AM arrive whilst I am out with the dogs, immediately as we get back home Lucy starts tugging at the leash and when the front door is opened and Lucy let off the lead, Lucy goes shooting through the house to find her friend.

 

I seem to attract dogs and the bigger the dog the more they seem attracted to me. I would love to have a dog but I couldn't look after one properly now. If a strange dog comes rushing towards me I just stand still just in case but nothing untoward has happened indeed the last time it happened was a couple of months ago when I delivered some old towels to a dog rescue charity when this little black mongrel rushed out and proceeded to wrap herself around my feet and wasn't prepared to go back in until I'd made a fuss of her.

[PeterBB]

il Dottore To make things even worse, the laser jet printer cartridges (at least with my model) each contain a chip that prevents them from being refilled and, in addition,, the presence of this chip in the printer cartridge means you can’t use a low-cost cartridge substitute. For whilst the substitute might be technically identical, without the chip (and through proprietary software loaded onto it) the printer refuses to recognise the cartridge and will not print!

 

Totally agree that printer/toner ink is a rip-off.  To me profit is essential for a company to keep going but excessive profit e.g. as some have made during the pandemic is criminal.  There can be problems with some 'compatible' toners e.g. the red but £400 plus for a set is truly excessive.

 

'Summer time' - yes, there were more child accidents noted in the morning when Summer time came in but far far less in the after school time so it can be argued either way.  To start school an hour later but adults still working their 'normal hours' would be a recipe for disaster.

 

PhiljW it seems may not often use his printer if it has taken 10 years to go through one cartridge.

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by PeterBB
typo

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

A dull wet start to the day, it isn’t raining at the moment, but it was a short while ago. 

 

Today sees me once again in the cellar (scaring) scraping paint from the wall, hopefully by the end of the day this last section of wall will be done, leaving just the area surrounding the fireplace to do, but as that doesn’t need tanking it can wait a while. 

 

I also seem to attract dogs, they all seem to want be to make a fuss. In my last employment, I recall working in a hedgerow on a remote CP (cathodic protection) panel. These are similar to look at but are a little smaller than telecoms cubicles seen on pavements. They are used to protect underground pipework against rusting. They are dotted around the country, usually in out of the way places, hedgerows, farm land but sometimes in park lands etc, where this one was. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the head of a Rottweiler. The dog  wasn’t aggressive at all and was very interested in what I was doing and in particular my test equipment, it may have smelt of farm. I was surprised when it appeared, but I spoke calmly to the dog, a few seconds later the owner appeared from around the corner and apologised profusely. We chatted a few moments and then they were gone and I continued with my work. This didn’t happen often, but often enough to make it not completely unexpected. Cows were the worst, as thy crowd round you and breath and dribble down your neck!

 

Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. 

 

Brian

[The Lurker]

13 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I'm with Neil on keeping summer time all year for the reasons stated. The objection about it being dark in the mornings in the more northerly and/or westerly parts of the country is in my opinion facetious. As said before people used to rise with the sun and go to bed when it was dark. It would be a simple act to avoid dark mornings by opening schools and businesses later in the morning during the winter months. The reason DST was introduced was to aid production of munitions during WW1 and it has now become an anachronism.

Although if the reasons for adopting DST have become an anachronism, doesn't that imply we should move back to GMT?

 

Personally I quite like BST.

 

I have also read that Spain's adoption of CET (which was at first inspired by Germany in the war and then by the EU) has exacerbated the Spanish habit of eating very late, and has led to diminished productivity over the years. Spain should be on GMT if one were to base its timezone on the meridians that run through it and up until sometime in Franco's rule it was. Now the only parts that are on the same time as the UK are the Canary Islands, which should probably be on a later timezone

 

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where the earlier threatened drizzle is largely holding off.

 

I managed to buy a printer and a laptop on the day before Boris formalised lockdown. We could see it coming and knew we'd more than the one very slow laptop we had. Since then I have had to a third laptop and work have provided me with one, such has been the advent of home working and home schooling.

 

The printer has been pretty good - I opted to pay a little more (£30 - £40 more IIRC) for one that had the ink capacity for 2500 sheets. We are still on the first lot of ink, although the black is now about halfway down.

 

Dogs may know a dog person but cats also seem to zero in on those who don't like them. Mrs Lurker, a definite dog person, is allergic to some cats and they always make a beeline for her! The rest of us like cats but don't like dogs. As a result we have no pets!

[polybear]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

Good moaning. It's sunny and dry here this morning.  However the TV news says that I was over optimistic about the vaccine. France has suspended use of the AZ, Pah and double Pah.  

 

 

 

Bear is down for the jab next week, and getting mildly twitchy that it'll get suspended here too before that happens.  Fortunately the smart money seems to be saying that there is no firm evidence of a problem though, at least in the UK.

 

1 hour ago, Erichill16 said:

I was under the impression that the ones that came with the printers weren’t fully charged with ink.

 

 

I believe that is the case, but IIRC it depends on the brand - I'll check in a little while, as I have time to burn whilst the Tiler (hopefully) works his magic....

 

23 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Quite. Whilst paramedics can do a lot, they can’t do everything and in Germany and Switzerland there is the Notarzt, Basically the equivalent of an A&E physician (and a trauma specialist) trained to work at accident and disaster sites, doing things that paramedics are either not trained to do or not allowed to do. Sometimes they do operations at the site of the event, up to and including amputations.  And in these situations the modus operandi is to keep the patient alive and worry about infection later.... 

 

The UK runs a similar system I believe - a guy at work had an unexplained car accident one Saturday morning where he went off the A1M near Stevenage and hit a tree; no other vehicles involved, good weather, car was fine, not a guy you'd suspect of being a nutter etc etc.  Unfortunately he had to lose one leg below the knee to get him out in a sensible timescale - I'd assume that the leg was considered too badly damaged to be saved in any event.

 

23 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

You don’t want to know how much my company spends on laser printer cartridges.  I’ve now started ignoring the “cartridge low – replace now“ warnings that appear on the computer screen when the cartridges start to run out of toner. I found, by happenstance - as shops were shut over Christmas - that I could safely ignore the warnings and get perfectly acceptable prints for quite some time after the warnings started flashing..

 

 

I asked the Print Room at work how much the printers cost - they must've been 15ft long, and they had two of them.

"We don't buy them -  we hire them.  Two Hundred and fifty grand a year, including cartridges...."

 

3 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

Our Chief Minister was a touch upset yesterday in his address to the nation about the fact that folk have been going to work knowing they had covid symptoms.  Too right, what morons.

 

Understandably so:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-56374154

[polybear]

1 hour ago, BSW01 said:

.....on a remote CP (cathodic protection) panel.

 

Did anyone else read this as "Catholic Protection Panel" and have to go back and do a double-take....

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, The Lurker said:

Although if the reasons for adopting DST have become an anachronism, doesn't that imply we should move back to GMT?

 

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, I think that we should keep to BST all year. I even thought up a name for a pressure group to promote the issue, STAY Summer Time All Year.

[BSW01]

27 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Did anyone else read this as "Catholic Protection Panel" and have to go back and do a double-take....

I had to change it, auto spell checker changed it to Catholic 

[Erichill16]

The problem at work is that the one that was supplied as part of a complete package including software license is suitable for “a busy office”. The original supplyer quoted £400 for a replacement but got one retail for less than £200. This last about 18 months. I decide to contact Brother to enquire whether they produced an alternate that was more durable. They did but at £2500 its better value just to buy a new “light wieght” one every year or so. Not keen on the waste aspect but better quality one would have to last 15years to pay for itself.

Out with Syd, swmbo and mil at Fox Valley doing a bit of shopping and just sat out with a coffee in the sunshine. Pleasant.

Back later,

Robert

 

[simontaylor484]

Me and a colleague were emptying bins near a popular dog walking area in Castleford we heard a mans voice the other side of the hedge shouting Rocky Rocky get back here. We were expecting a Rottweiler a Staffie or similar dog so we hurried up shoved the bags onthe van and got in the cab. Tears of laughter ensued when's Rocky came out he was a little black Chihuahua.

Although we did once cone accross a staffie called Doris

[jonny777]

I'm a bit late here, but my excuse is that I have been changing some of the water in the fish tank which is quite a lengthy process. 

 

It was cloudy here in North Somerset when I started, but the sun is coming out now and it feels quite warm outside. 

 

The Ocado delivery arrived mid- water change which slowed things down even more, but I managed to get SWMBO's Easter egg into a quiet cupboard before she saw it - because she will only moan that it will make her fat.  (Edit... I should have added 'and then she will scoff the lot in record time, blaming me subsequently for making her feel sick' ).

 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by jonny777

[polybear]

Tiler has been and gone - the floor is pretty uneven and sloped, so after discussions we agreed that the best scheme is to lay an initial coat of self-leveller today, come back tomorrow and re-check the levels and probably do a top-up of SL before starting tiling on Thursday.  Works for Bear.

[Dave Hunt]

A busy day today as tomorrow it is my Dad's 98th birthday so I am doing such things as cake baking ( for the Bear and Hippo it is, by request, a Victoria sponge with jam and cream filling ) with the necessity of first checking and strengthening the UPDS*.

 

As far as clock setting is concerned, having spent all my working life operating on GMT (for obvious reasons, any military operation involving participants from different time zones has to have a common setting to work from) l never bother altering the clocks in the cars but leave them on GMT all year round. Similarly, if I go to that part of Europe where the time difference is only one hour from UK time I don't bother resetting my watch as it doesn't seem worth the fiddling involved. The clocks in the house, however, have to be reset or Jill complains that they are confusing and things like the TV, digital radios etc. reset themselves anyway. Since we as a nation are no longer trying to maximise the output of munitions workers I can't see the point of BST and in my opinion we should stick to GMT all year round.

 

The actions of the EU regarding the AZ vaccine seem quite ridiculous, not to mention verging on the criminal by denying people the opportunity for protection - especially when they have been trying to hoard shipments for themselves that were meant for other countries. To suggest that an incidence of one case of blood clotting for every half a million of those who have been vaccinated is possibly linked to the vaccine makes about as much sense statistically as linking it to hair colour or cake consumption. In fact, it is probably even less likely. 

 

Cheers for now.

 

Dave 

 

*Ursine and Pachyderm Defence System

Edited March 16, 2021 by Dave Hunt

[Gwiwer]

14 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

I am sure that that made for some really interesting printed schedules.

The Sydney - Brisbane train would arrive in the Queensland capital at around 5am except during NSW Daylight-saving (which Qld does not adopt) when it would arrive at 4am having taken exactly the same amount of time from A to B.  At that hour there were few onward connections to worry about.  But in the other direction it departed southbound around an hour after arrival so at 6am (5am NSW daylight-saving time) with the overnight service from Cairns and the north coast having arrived at 5.15am.  That still arrived at 5.15am when the Sydney train had departed at 5am meaning anyone hoping to transfer would enjoy a 23 hour 45 minute wait.   And that was just one example.  

 

That train also had to be pathed through the various freights which use the single track main line southwards from Brisbane and around the early-morning suburban trains.  The former (along with the Sydney XPT train) run on standard gauge and the latter on Qld narrow gauge with a section of shared dual-gauge track across the river in South Brisbane.  

 

So not only were you dealing with different times zones but also with the needs of different gauges on a shared section of track!  

[Andrew P]

Goodness me, is that the time already.

 

Usual things done but a speed read on here later will tell me if I've missed anything, I hope not.

 

In the meantime, have a good day one and all, stay safe and well.

[PhilJ W]

39 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Me and a colleague were emptying bins near a popular dog walking area in Castleford we heard a mans voice the other side of the hedge shouting Rocky Rocky get back here. We were expecting a Rottweiler a Staffie or similar dog so we hurried up shoved the bags onthe van and got in the cab. Tears of laughter ensued when's Rocky came out he was a little black Chihuahua.

Although we did once cone accross a staffie called Doris

My friends daughters boy friend has a chihuahua called rocky. He's a normal brown/tan colour and after a trip to the vets he's missing a couple of items.

[PhilJ W]

This should interest Gwiwer.

https://www.facebook.com/ourstorylines/videos/2454710371473683