Be Excellent To Each Other

Thirteen years. Christ-o.

Time flies

Bananas are a recent 1st world problem.

Since we've been in lockdown and having our Big Shop delivered each week, we had to stop putting bananas on the order because they were almost always bruised when we received them.

I don't think we'll ever go back to doing the Big Shop in store, so this will be an ongoing problem. Luckily, as I work in Co Op and M&S stores 5 days per week, I can buy bananas when I need them.

The other one, which is more difficult, is Jordan's Rolled Oats (the only oats with a low GI, they claim) , which is the breakfast stodge I prefer. But they don't sell it at Morrison's (Morrisons?). The only supermarket where I found them was Asda, where we used to do the Big Shop in person, but we swapped to Morrison's a few weeks into lockdown because it was harder to get Asda delivery bookings and we weren't happy with the quality of some of the stuff they delivered, or the ridiculous swaps they sometimes made when something we ordered wasn't available. So I've had to make special trips to Asda during lockdown to be able to get it.

I have a similar one in that Ocado stopped their partnership with Waitrose and got into business with M&S which means I can no longer get my favourite tofu

This is a tricky one. Do we renew our British Gas Tariff or let it lapse. There's a 3p annual saving at stake if we let it lapse.

Wait, is that how much you spend per year on gas? You running a pool off it?!

Dual fuel, gas and electric, with two adults at home all the time during the pandemic, one working at home, so logged on for 8 hours a day and boiling the kettle at least once per hour.

Something, something , something submarine?

You know who you are and what you posted.

Oh I see that now, it does mention electric too - I completely missed that, too in shock thinking that was your heating bill!

Death by meetings... I don't know if anyone else is the same boat, but I just seem to be having meetings for meetings sake. People crashing diaries, why can't we just message or call each other...

FFS.... * rant over *

100%. Six hours a day. Frantic need to be connected and in the loop.

Maybe you need Slack (TM).

I have Slack. It's a needy pain-in-the-hole, an endless litany of emojis essentially repeating the content of the previous message. So if someone says "here's the new edit of the TV promo", someone responds with a fucking TV emoji, rather than an emoji communicating a meaningful response (i.e. thanks, or OK, or smiley face etc.)

Maybe you DON'T need Slack.

To be fair to Slack, that's not the fault of the platform.

Indeed, errors are probably :

1. The nut behind the keyboard

2. Lack of decent (or any) user training.

We have a global town hall where all the staff are invited. The last hour has just been folks replying all co accept or cancel the meeting. I have had to turn the bluetooth off on my phone as my watch was going mental.

Stop me if I've told you this already, but when my employer recently moved us all from MSOffice 2013 to 365, and from Skype to MS Teams, all engineers in the company, in every country, was auto enrolled in the Global Engineering group in Teams.

On the day after migration, my mailbox was full of messages from engineers asking to be removed from the group, and other engineers asking people to stop mailing these requests "to all," but they were mailing their "stop" requests "to all" as well.

How we larfed.

It took a few days for folk to find out they had to unsubscribe from the group themselves and that no one, except all members of the group, were receiving the messages. I'm surprised the whole mail system didn't crash under the onslaught.

Engineers really hate being contactable.

There IS that, but as it was Global Group it wasn't much use to anyone e.g. I only need a Co Op / M&S engineer group, because those are the only contracts I work on. Other engineers wouldn't be interested in our little domain. "All staff" messages are posted by email, so we don't really need a Teams group for those. Some wazzock thought a global group would be a good thing, but they were wrong.

I'm having to go through my annual-ish security training today. They've made the video "quirky" and "fun". It is making my teeth itch.

I hope it has some pop music sound track. It's great when trainers force you to listen to music in an attempt to get the blood pumping

Friday Pub lets me order beer over WhatsApp. For some reason, this feels more patronising to the staff than using a custom app, with the added unease of creating a burgeoning personal history of my previous orders.

Is it as open as that sounds? So people can just type in what they want? That would be very entertaining.

Depends if you want to become a repeat customer or not.

Ah yes, could get yourself barred. But I wonder if people can help it, several drinks in. "More!" "55 beeeeersh for table 8082 pls"

And then realise it's gone to the family group by mistake.

This bullshit annoys me.

Yep. You and me both. How on earth is that justified?

I believe that their answer is that additional equipment has to be provided at the venue to validate the printed tickets. Don't shoot the messenger.

My wife bought a big fridge-freezer (with the double side-by-side doors, a water dispenser and an ice maker) second-hand but it's too big to get through the doors into the house, so it looks like I'm going to have to take the fridge doors off. Looks like there is some wiring in there too, so it probably won't be much fun.

My work from home desk got a bit dusty and now the wireless mouse has dirt on the smooth slidey pads underneath so it's not quite as nice a gliding motion to use the mouse. Conversely the wireless keyboard seems to have lost some of the grip on the little rubber feet and is now sliding about too much

Won’t cleaning them help? (Not the fridge doors, the other two things).

Yes, the magical cleaning power of baby wipes did just the job.

Even though we are wll out of that awful nappy stage, we maintain a supply of baby wipes in the house. This is probably due to bulk-buying in the past.

The clock adjust buttons on my car radio aren't working, which I just found out after changing out the old, dead, battery.

So I'm going to have to wait until exactly 12 noon (or midnight, I guess, as it's only a 12hr clock display) to disconnect and then reconnect the battery if I want the time to be displayed properly.

I always keep baby wipes in. They are awesome for cleaning.

Switching them out for washable cloths (not jay cloths, something more robust and long-lasting) would be another great way to reduce single use plastics as per your request for suggestions in the other thread

That is a good idea.

Ikea face cloths are super cheap and last forever and can be used to wipe everything (even faces)

I use these. Bamboo wipes for clean my bike, in places and for where oil is involved.

As getting oil out of cloths is a pain

Today's the day I will be forced to begin using Windows 10, as my work laptop is being replaced.

To me, this IS a first world problem.

just in time to get used to it before windows 11 comes out

I'm hoping I'll be retired before my employer rolls it out.

Laptop was supposed to be at my local parts depot today, but as it's not coming from our repair centre, but from London, I don't know what time it may arrive. It certainly wasn't there at 8am

Typically, we haven't been given much in the way of instructions for moving from the old to the new, other than "back up your data, preferably to iCloud," but we've had little instruction on using that, either. They're probably assuming all users can manage, which will very likely prove not to be the case.

I logged into iCloud late last night, and got a message that data from c:\users\<your username>\<company name> \ would be synchronised, but didn't say I'd need to create that folder and copy everything I wanted to transfer into it. Anyroadup, it appears to have copied everything up overnight, so I'm ready to roll.

When I left my workplace early (Friday, innit?) I forgot the free box of cakes and had to go back

My right arm has been sticking to my desk all day in this heat. It's really annoying.

Does your desk have metal bits in it? If so, it may be your magnetic vaccine!

We have a new kettle. It's very good at boiling water, heating it to specific temperatures (don't want to scold the coffee!), and everything else a kettle should do. Unfortunately, as with every other modern appliance, it has blue LEDs that never, ever turn off.

Giphy "why?!!":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/z1GQ9t8FxipnG/giphy-loop.mp4

i know the feeling, don't need a light on in the dining room at night, because the LEDs are bright enough to see where you are going!

On a side note is that giphy from Darkman?

Giphy "darkman":
https://media0.giphy.com/media/ePeHKwWSed0Ag/giphy-loop.mp4

Naile dit!

Electrical tape is your friend.