Be Excellent To Each Other

I work in Liverpool (albeit it not in the city centre) but last time I saw there markets there it was like four huts. I'm happy to be going to the Chester one tomorrow during the day. Hopefully not too busy.

Hmph!

So earlier this month my bank put a stop on some random unauthorised payment and cancelled my debit card. All good. But three payments to an energy company went through that were also nothing to do with me. 30+ mins with a nice but cotton-mouthed lady on the phone to get it sorted. All done.

But I started thinking about how someone could have got my card details. I rarely use my actual card. I use Google Wallet more often and PayPal for stuff online. But if I line up the dates and when I most likely used my card it was to buy things at the Chester Xmas market. I only used it twice but I think it must have been one of the stallholders. Bah!

Cheeky buggers. Did you hand it over at any point?

I don't think it ever left my hand. So it might have just been their scanner or they caught the underside on camera or something.

I mean it might be some sort of clever Hollywood hack or something else. But the timing is suspicious. As were the disgusting fake Walnut Whip style chocolate marshmallow things I bought.

The first year in ages I decide not to play Whamaggedon, it turns out I would have got my highest score ever (20). 'Twas ever thus.

I forgot to mention that before Christmas, Manchester City Council put out a warning for drivers not to drive into the city centre. New bike lanes, one of which causes traffic flows to seize up on Deansgate, one of the main routes in and out, along with other road works and various events in city centre venues will cause grid lock for hours. Days before they'd issued the warning, drivers were already complaining that they'd got stuck in jams for hours going into the city centre and even if they wanted to abandon their journeys, were stuck for hours trying to get out again.

The Register: Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand 'surges 1150%'

'Pulls out.'

It has come to my attention that segregation is sometimes fine.

Should my pyjama top which has a white front and back but has black arms be put in the white wash, or in the mixed wash?

Put it in the mixed. You don’t want those sleeves to potentially run dye into all the light clothes.

After getting my debit card details stolen earlier on this page, I had another thing happen. I was looking for cheap eShop credit and found a site who were doing £15 of credit for £12. Neat.

Went in, bought the credit, they emailed a code, it worked. Happy days as they say.

What I didn't realise is that they then signed me up for a monthly subscription. £49 a month to simply be able to buy the slightly discounted credit. The first take was around Christmas, so I missed it in the mess of Christmas buying. I spotted the next one in January. So, £98 down. Shite! I reported it to my bank (Halifax) who immediately reversed both transactions.

What's annoying is that I'm usually super scam aware. I've been down YouTube rabbitholes about popular scams and all that. The site in question giftcard-hub (dot com) were pretty slick with it though. If you go on their main page all the sub info is there, but if you land from Google onto the product page, it's harder to spot. Scammy cunts. I hope they die.

Anyway, from now on I've modified my shopping habits which is to say I will never click on a sponsored link in Google. I know a couple of people who got done with a Car Tax scam that way.

And now I'm currently doing the Virgin Media renewal dance. CHORE. I've actually cancelled now. I can't actually afford to not have Virgin Media as everything else in my area is like a fifth of the speed and me and Mrs Blucey work from home (me some of the time, her all of the time). So it's a battle of nerves.

No, NOT fucking OK, actually.

Now we just need to know what year Malcolm Jones was born in and we've got an identity theft toolkit!

He was born under a wandering star. That's all I'm prepared to disclose.

Looks like O2 are having a bad day. Trying to get on to their website a while ago I got this. I'm getting the home page now, but the support page is also showing a similar, as is support on their phone app.


I'm trying to sort out my granddaughter's phone. She exceeded her spending cap, so had no data. I paid her bill over 36 hours ago and the app shows that she's now in credit, but the phone shows 'no service.' Tried the chat page on the o2 app, but I'm getting that garbage as well. Also tried their chat page on Facebook and there's just no response.

Following on from my Virgin Media post above. I'm taking THE ULTIMATE CHANCE. I've cancelled and I've got my wife to apply as a new customer. Hoping their systems aren't smart enough to spot it. That'll take us from £91 a month down to £34.99. I hope this works!

We used to do that kind of thing quite regularly. We weren’t married though, so different surnames helped.

FFS. What kind of bullshit is this?

The new HP printer I bought two days ago is capable of double sided printing. I printed a couple of pages of a PDF doc yesterday and it did indeed have the option to print double-sided.

This morning I wanted a double-sided print of a letter I'd written in MS-Word. When I tried to print it from within the HP Smart app, I got "Preview unavailable. Print preview is not available for this file type. Check or change the file type or select Print to continue without a preview"

Searched on-line and found that "HP Smart does not print Word documents. The HP Smart Application can scan and print PDF files and images. Word printing depends on the printer software for the Operating System."

I can print from within Word without going through the HP Smart app, without a preview, but it doesn't have the option to print double sided.

Now that I know, I can save the Word doc in PDF format to enable double sided printing, but that means I've created two files and need to keep the Word file if I want to make amendments after printing. I'll just have to remember to delete the PDF copy after printing it.

That’s absolute bullshit.

I work on a Mac, so it might be different, but on my computer you can go into the native printers and scanners menu to match your printer to a number of selected presets. With that it might (should) open up the option of automatic duplex printing for you within all of the apps/programs on your computer, otherwise it might just be using a generic menu of options.

I'll be honest, when you said were getting a new HP Printer I knew there would be a "what is this bullshit?" post a few days later.

Sauce > Printers

Right doozy of a first world problem for me. I’m getting a new Mac as I’ll be relegating my currently still perfectly fine base model Mac Mini M1 to a family phone backup / photo viewing on the TV machine.

Due to me flogging a load of stuff on eBay / FBM I’m in a position where I could pull the trigger now on the latest M4* or M4 Pro** model, or, save / sell for a bit longer and get a Mac Studio M4 Max.*** I won’t be in this position for some time to get the dogs bollocks of a computer, but I already know it’s overkill. There’s not even any resistance when I mentioned this possibility to Mrs Z.

*and loads of other shit (Maybe even a k11 micra )
** some other shit.
*** be pretty skint for a while.

I never knew until now that 'absolute' was a known type of bullshit.

Thanks

TBH I didn't have many problems with the old HP that I'd had for yonks, apart from that one firmware update a couple of years ago that sent it into a mental meltdown, and the new one met a number of specific criteria.

If I haven't snuffed it by the time it needs replacing, I'll consult the hive mind before I buy another printer.

To be fair, that feels like a bit of steal if it works, which it seems to suggest it does. Can always get a back cover off of one of the units that doesn’t work to complete it.

It’s good to see your back on your feet, Mimi.

Poor Warhead…

Thank you Z xxx

It's not a big problem, in the grand scheme of things.

And I have an update. While the 'print on both sides' box doesn't appear on the print options screen in MS Word on my MacBook (and I couldn't find the option Mimi suggested), it DOES appear on my Win11 laptop. Such is life in the 1st World.

I hate printers. It seems like they have progressively got fancier functions and yet are far worse, if not hateful, to use

Lady T was really struggling to get our Canon printer to print from the main tray. She was trying to print from her phone, which I have never ever found to be a good experience. It kept wanting to print from the rear feed. Why it needs two trays I don't know. Why Lady T wasn't happy with my suggestion of 'just load some paper in the rear feed then' I don't know.

Why at some point it asked me to put a blank CD into it to print onto, I really don't fucking know.

Whenever I print something from my phone, I always have to do it twice as the first one will always come out as a garbled mess... Every time.

Not had any issues with the two little Samsung laser printers I have, one mono, one colour.

They’re going to fuck up now I’ve typed that now.

Same with my samsung laser. Sits there doing nothing for a few months, but when I press print, it prints. No dramas, and this is with a wifi connection!

We have a wireless HP laser that works pretty solidly, though sometimes it loses the WiFi connection room so needs switching off and on again.

Generally not a fan of wireless printing, to the point where i bought wires for my two ecotank printers.

I bought the internet recommended Brother Mono Laser printer for this reason. It's there when I need it and costs pennies to run

The HL-L2400DWE if anyone is interested

That’s wot I got!

I have a Brother MFCL3740CDW whatever that means. Not had any issues with it.

I don't understand why you all need to print so much stuff!

Our printer broke about 4 years ago and hasn't been a problem; I only kept it for the scanner but now our phones do a better job of that so it's in the queue for taking to the tip.

How else do you read ebooks?

I have a daughter, still living at home. She buys a lot of stuff on-line and then needs return labels for things she doesn't want to keep. Companies used to send return labels with the items, but I guess it's a penny pinching policy to get customers to print them now. She's also doing an apprenticeship and needs docs printed for that.

Our granddaughter lives with us as well, and is doing GCSEs this year. She needs a variety of docs printing from time to time.

That's a strange name for a sibling. A bit futuristic.

Inspired by X Æ A-Xii, no doubt.

If HMRC ask, it's for business things.

I’ve got three home printers. An HP laser jet and two different Ecotank printers, and I use them all.

I do also have a zebra thermal label printer that I would LOVE to get working but have so far failed to get it to play nicely with my MacBook.

Ours is an inkjet. I had no part in the selection process, Lady T had some Officeworks vouchers to use, so just picked it up.

I tend to just use the printers at work when I need to do something.



We have a bunch of thermal label printers connected to our workstations at work (Over the 15 years I have been there, we've had Zebras, then Datamax/ONeill / Honeywell and now back to Zebras - the mighty and catchily named ZD421).

Getting the ZD421 to work with the in-house developed application, on our macbooks, was an absolute FAFF for us - a fabulous Senior Architect/developer/coding type person from our parent facility made a nice guide detailing all the steps for me to dimwittedly follow.

I had to do something in terminal to enable CUPS, then add the printer into CUPS and a whole bunch of settings, then install some fonts for the barcode, then do something in the printer preferences of Mac OS, then dick around with some settings in the app. What I'm saying is, it works but it was a faff and I couldn't have done it by myself.

So, I hope you have better luck

Mine is the equally catchily named GK420d, and has also been quite the faff. So much of a faff that it is currently stuck faffing around by itself in a box, waiting for another attempt at de-faffing it.

We have dozen of industrial sized Zebra label printers at work and I hate them. The user interface is medieval and they like losing static IPs on the regular

Young people in gyms. JESUS CHRIST, KIDS, PUT DOWN THE FUCKING PHONE.

Man, it's brutal. Today there was a girl (20ish) sat on the leg press machine checking her phone, which then turned into making/taking a phone call. And the boys there (late teens) just clogging up the flow of the place taking 3-5 minute rests between sets (again just looking at their phones).

Bovine youngsters. I'm trying to get shit done in a lunch hour. They're worse than pensioners going to the Post Office at lunchtimes.

Go with Bik and get him to push them away 2 feet at a 45° angle.