Early Risers.

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Power cut this morning so while I was an ER I had no chance of signing in.

 

Busy day today so a very late ER.

 

I have watched the  picker at some stores picking stuff for home deliveries... hence either her indoors or myself travel to a local moreasons at about 7am on a Thursday.

 

Time to get someone andctry to get a photo of next doors smelly smoke.

 

Baz

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I've had three 504s in the last half hour as well.

I haven’t had a 418 yet. 

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

When coming back from your neck of the woods I turn off via Madron and end up at Gulval round by the church and drop down via the old Heliport entrance. Learned that the hard way

As I do myself sometimes. But I have been caught in the narrows there when lines of traffic in opposing directions meet. And have often (not always) found that option to take longer. 

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, Tony_S said:

I haven’t had a 418 yet. 

Had to look that up. I wondered if there was a 420 as well - there isn't, officially.

 

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, The White Rabbit said:

Waitrose charge £4 irrespective of time/day

They offer a saver slot where if you are happy with a longer time slot you get it cheaper. Actual time confirmed well before delivery. 

[Gwiwer]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear's Rule

Normally I would agree and we shop locally 90% of the time. 
 

There are a few items not stocked by our local shops. And today we required several of them. 
 

Sainsbury’s is almost the closest source of car fuel (Tesco is marginally closer but often with a long queue) and the nearest automatic car wash. 
 

We can get stuff delivered but prefer to see for ourselves when it comes to the fresh produce. Given the other requirements and that everything was done in one trip I’ll take that on the chin and look forward to schools returning very soon. 
 

Probably before my next expedition. 

[The White Rabbit]

Just now, Tony_S said:

They offer a saver slot where if you are happy with a longer time slot you get it cheaper. Actual time confirmed well before delivery. 

 

Same with Tescos, maybe others. However about half the time - in my experience with Tescos - the delivery was actually outside the hour slot they give you on the day and if you protest, they say well it came within the four hour slot you booked Mr Rabbit...  except the times when it didn't! That's one reason I don't use them very much now. Hopefully other supermarkets are better. Some also offer you a deal where you can sign up for unlimited deliveries (of a minimum order value) for £x per month/quarter - that also saves people money but because I like to spread my custom around and get different items from different suppliers, I haven't subscribed to that option (yet?). 

[Coombe Barton]

14 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

But I have been caught in the narrows there when lines of traffic in opposing directions meet. And have often (not always) found that option to take longer. 

These past weeks, if there's a queue at Mount Misery it'll stretch down to the end, so that's where I make the choice.

[Hroth]

37 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I haven’t had a 418 yet. 

 

Perhaps you keep asking for tea?

 

At least you haven't had to explain the origin of the East India Company....

 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, The White Rabbit said:

Early visits were one way to avoid the crowds - I've been in when I was the only customer and 'caught' the shelf stackers playing skittles down the aisles and having trolley races as the only supervisor on duty was out the back.

 

....watching the CCTV Monitors.....

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

The icecream van is patrolling the area again...  Its jolly, distorted jingle is, of all things, the Harry Lime theme....

 

I had ice cream for afters this evening, the two are NOT connected!

 

Buddy at the W/H got his little girl a (not huge - she's only 4) 99 with a single Flake from an Ice Cream Van....£4.50.....

 

Meanwhile, Bear got sixteen shonky Cornetto's for the W/H Team from Lidl** for a fiver.....

 

**Available in four flavours.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Danes, Germans or someone else?

Like I said an awful lot of them and not necessarily exclusively from the Nordic countries.

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

....watching the CCTV Monitors.....

 

 

Buddy at the W/H got his little girl a (not huge - she's only 4) 99 with a single Flake from an Ice Cream Van....£4.50.....

 

Meanwhile, Bear got sixteen shonky Cornetto's for the W/H Team from Lidl** for a fiver.....

 

**Available in four flavours.

Do they have mint with Carmel rum and strawberry plus those little sprinkley thingys with lashings of raspberry sauce. Thought not.

[TheQ]

5 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

In the thick of it here. 
 

Outside it’s just a light breeze. 
 

Inside His Furship has just gone out to the porch and emitted the loudest, longest fart any cat has ever produced. 
 

It’s not like he’s prone to wind, either. I do need to open a few windows though. 

I don't think you are supposed to feed his furship semaglutide, looking at the weather radar  distant signal west is about to get very soggy...

We are not due to get soggy till around 04:00.

 

Evening Awl,

Radar museum went well except for a large outbreak of Little pink terrorists just after lunch time. Hordes of the things running around so I had to secure scalpels glues etc until they went away. Before that I had fixed 14 switch caps and partly repaired 4 switches. The switches needed some filling of broken sockets where the caps fit on. And the milliput doesn't set quickly.

 

Another 50 fence posts installed on the current diorama.

 

Then after a chippy tea, loaded the landrover with signs, if he weather's good they'll be put up tomorrow, if not Sunday morning..

Then muddling commenced on parallel bits of metal... Literally acting like a ganger. Cleaning, chopping off excess grey stoney stuff etc.

 

Muggachoccy gone goodnight Awl.

[Gwiwer]

6 minutes ago, TheQ said:

I don’t think you are supposed to feed his furship semaglutide, looking at the weather radar  distant signal west is about to get very soggy...

We are not due to get soggy till around 04:00.

 

We think it might be his fondness for lapping the pond-water. That’s fed by rainwater from the spouting, supports a healthy crop of pond-weed and snails but is it good for feline consumption? 
 

Ah yes. Wet. We are accustomed to being wet. I don’t much care how wet it is - within reason - overnight as ours is due to ease by 04.00 and stop altogether before we are due to take the cakes up to the WI hall 

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

But it's not, as you know full well. What is the evidence of the beneficial genetic adaptation exactly?

 

Unless they were mutating extra limbs to replace those torn off by crocodiles, it's not in any way related to evolution.

 

This lazy trope of conflating the pseudo science of (so-called) "social Darwinism" with genetic evolution perpetuates ignorance.

 

Jeez, Oz, whatever happened to your sense of humour?

 

A cynically humorous throw away comment doesn’t equate to a frenzied belief in Social Darwinism.

[Ozexpatriate]

18 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Oz, whatever happened to your sense of humour?

I am particularly triggered by that conflation. Not only is there is a staggering amount of ignorance around Darwin's theory on this side of the pond but there were intentional efforts to eradicate (or at least seriously undermine) it in high school science curricula. Admittedly those efforts are on the back-burner while the culture wars have moved on to other shiny objects, but the willful ignorance remains.

 

The whole "Darwin Award" notion kind of sets me off. I get the joke about removing 'stupidity' from the gene pool, but does it?

 

I don't think so.

 

And Darwin didn't even coin the term "survival of the fittest". That was Herbert Spencer. (He did later adopt it.) Sadly the term is greatly misunderstood.

 

 

Edited August 23 by Ozexpatriate

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

It's difficult to imagine that printing pamphlets (irrespective of the topic) is preventing the NHS from offering hip replacements.

 

Not directly, but it is indicative of wasted manpower and resources, manpower and resources that could be used for, say, making sure that letters confirming an appointment for a scan are posted early enough to actually arrive before the date of the scan (and so on).

 

You won’t believe the pointless bureaucracy the NHS generates. I once reviewed a NHS trust SOP for administering a chemotherapeutic. Of the 10 pages of the SOP just two were dedicated to the administration of the drug*, the rest were concerned with various bureaucratic “boxes to check” about “impact”, “awareness” and so om. Of these 8 pages, I would say about two were actually devoted to GCP (good clinical practice) and good medical record keeping. The rest I would regard as ********

 

Was this NHS Trust an outlier? Possibly, but my ex-NHS colleagues say this sort of thing is certainly not atypical.

 

*written in such a simplistic cat-sat-on-the-mat way that an 8-year old might say “that’s kinda infantile”

[Ozexpatriate]

5 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Of the 10 pages of the SOP just two were dedicated to the administration of the drug

Was there a page on sustainability or carbon footprint?

 

These are very worthwhile things but I understand what you say. They don't have to show up in every procedure. One hopes the focus of chemotherapeutics procedures would efficacy, interactions, allergens, contra-indications, shelf-life, and storage, with some contents on supply chain and alternatives.

 

Edited August 23 by Ozexpatriate

[PhilJ W]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

And whilst on the topic of drugs and medicines (well, sort of), you may find the following of mild amusement:

• “Placebo employee*“: looks identical to a real employee; it looks like it works, but actually doesn’t provide any meaningful benefit.
• “Homeopathic employee*“: an employee whose actual work is so heavily diluted as to be essentially only present in trace amounts, if not actually non-existent.

NB * “employee” and “colleague” are essentially interchangeable in this context

I've worked with plenty of them, the “Placebo employee"  is usually found in the HR department.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Dunno why I parked here this morning...

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I went shopping at Tess Coes this afternoon forgetting it was a bank holiday weekend. The place was heaving but I had to get some essentials such as bread and milk but while I was about it I stocked up until the middle of next week. Thats why I'm late on parade, also I've been getting the service not available message a couple of times.

[iL Dottore]

10 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I am particularly triggered by that conflation. Not only is there is a staggering amount of ignorance around Darwin's theory on this side of the pond but there were intentional efforts to eradicate (or at least seriously undermine) it in high school science curricula. Admittedly those efforts are on the back-burner while the culture wars have moved on to other shiny objects, but the willful ignorance remains.

 

I was in the US when all that was going on (late 70s - early 80s), as someone of a Scientific mien (and solidly European in outlook), I almost found it amusing, though the widespread impact of such ignorance and denial is no laughing matter.

 

What I find particularly galling is how you have physicians and biologists who spout/support such nonsense, they of all people should know better.

 

I read somewhere that humans share about 33% of our genes with cabbages and I look at these anti-evolution types and think “where the **** have the remaining 67% gone”

[Tony_S]

22 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

GCP (good clinical practice) and good medical record keeping.

I had an NHS appointment yesterday. I was very satisfied by how it went. The results of the bloodtests were available  to me by the time I was home. A transcript of the discussion was available  this morning. I was also phoned this morning to further  discuss an issue that  had arisen . I don’t think the NHS is alone in having to l kinds of social statements in its documents. It seems to be common everywhere. And if  as you stated an eight year old could understand it, that is rather good writing to explain the issues of awareness and impact. 

Edited August 23 by Tony_S

[Ozexpatriate]

2 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I was in the US when all that was going on (late 70s - early 80s)

There was another attempt in the 2000s with a different twist intended to get it through legal challenges.

 

It did lead to Pastafariansim. May you be touched by his noodly appendage - Ramen!

[BSW01]

15 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

Dunno why I parked here this morning...

It’s obvious, you just love the smell of freshly cut grass!