Be Excellent To Each Other

I think as long as the corners are covered and the screen has a bit of a lip around it, cases can be pretty minimalistic

FFS.

I don't know if this is a 1st world problem, but I live in the 1st world and it's a problem, so here goes.

I've been going through last term's maths papers with my granddaughter to see if I can help her with questions she either got wrong or couldn't even make a stab at. There are quite a few that I can't even begin to look at because I've never done some of the things she's covered in the last year. However, there's one that looks quite simple, but for the life of me I can't work it out, in fact I'm tempted to say that the answer is 'It can't be done,' but I suspect that they wouldn't be so sneaky as to do that in an exam, so I'm asking if any Beexers can solve it.

Here is the question. Insert one pair of brackets to make this calculation correct. 2 + 7 - 3 X 8 = 34

After the + and the 8?

I'm guessing they want

2 + ( 7 - 3 ) * 8 = 34

Oh yeah, bodmas and all that crap

It comes round quicker every year.

I don't subscribe to BODMAS, or is it BIDMAS now? Fuck that shit.

Everyone should do it my way, L2R.

Thank you.

(I still think BODMAS is rubbish.)

This is why everyone should use Reverse Polish Notation.

2, 7, 3, -, 8, x, +

Easy.

I thought you were just making shit up, but it seems that what you're saying is that Reverse Polish Notation, also known as reverse Łukasiewicz notation, Polish postfix notation or simply postfix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators follow their operands, in contrast to prefix or Polish notation (PN), in which operators precede their operands and that the notation does not need any parentheses for as long as each operator has a fixed number of operands.

TBH, this just muddies the water for me.

I prefer MWN (Moronic Warhead Notation).

However, I'm tempted to tell my granddaughter to ask her teacher why they don't use RPN, but that's probably fraught with danger.

RPN is great in that there isn't any ambiiguity regarding the order of operations. It sucks in that it isn't really how human's brains work.

I feel I am paying for two decades of household repairs and maintenance previous occupiers didn't bother with.

This month is "fix the flashing they just glued to the house next door".

Next month is "waste water disposal disaster", and 'fuckity electrics".

I feel your pain. Our house was built in 1910 and the owner before us just bodged stuff to say the least. Every job done has revealed another layer of wtf.

I’ve bought a vintage Casio keyboard (non working MT-70*) as it was cheap £25 (go for £100-150 working) because the seller of the mint MT-45 that I bought last weekend on eBay hadn’t shipped it and was ignoring my messages. I thought they’d realised it was worth more so was going to cancel or give some other BS. They’ve just messaged to say it will be posted tomorrow.

I don’t really have room for either of them.

*or know if it’s completely fucked.

Oh god,yes. All of this.

There was a defunct electric socket in one of our rooms that somebody had removed before wallpapering. They didn’t plaster over it. Just sellotaped a bit of a fish finger box over it and then wallpapered on top.

Nice.

As I was explaning to Russell on saturday, when I bought my last house, the previous owners had wallpapered over an entire door!

Omg. Could you ‘see’ it through the paper or did you only find it when you came to redecorate?

Between the two large bedrooms there had originally been some built in wardrobes, back to back with a partition between them. They'd obviously decided that they wanted one deep wardrobe instead, so had taken the partition out, and then on the side they weren't going to use, removed the door handle and architrave and papered over it.

When I moved in I spotted the outline, but it had been hidden behind furniture when I'd done the viewing and had no idea that it was there. It wasn't too hard to put the partition back in and fit a new door and frame but it was a definite "WTF" moment.

As a kid I remember looking at a house with my mum and dad that had the wallpaper in the lounge put up with drawing pins.

I can’t find my needle-nose OR my round nose pliers, despite being pretty certain I own two pairs of each. I usually can lay my hands on every one of my tools and these have vanished into thin air.

And now I can’t bend this specially purchased bit of wire to say ‘Hallewujah’, which was my project for this evening.

Bastard mouse in the living room.

Bastard mouse da-ding-da-ding-da-ding-da-ding Bastard mouse da-ding-da-ding-da-ding-da-ding, BASTARD MOUSE PA PAH PA PA PAH PA PA PAH PAH PAHHHHH

Apparently I need MS Office updates on my MacBook Air, but they require a Mac OS update to function correctly. Regrettably, the required update can't be installed on my MacBook so now because it's too old. So now I'll be stuck in and endless loop of messages from MS about these updates.

As far as I can tell, the only thing affected by not updating is that I can't print out from any MS Office apps, but I can work around that. It's just an inconvenience.

"Have you considered buying a new Mac?" - Apple Support 2024

I took my iPhone to an Apple Store in London over the weekend, for a battery replacement (it's a two year old iPhone 14 Pro, battery health was at 84%, and the battery life was getting so poor as to be difficult)

They replaced it, for the princely sum of £95. Battery is now back to 100% health, and battery life is excellent again.

BUT! They've somehow stuffed it up, and it won't charge through a cable now. The charging icon comes on, but the battery percentage never increases, it just steadily decreases.

Luckily wireless charging still works.

Only when it's raining.

Where's the nearest alternative store? Birmingham city centre I suppose

Well, I'm in Spain at the moment but I'll be travelling back through London on my way through, so I'll make an appointment there and get the same people to take another look.

Both Casios turned up yesterday and the non working one was just a loose wire in the plug!



I still have a first world problem of putting them somewhere and justifying them to Mrs Z.

Huh, weirdly, with a different cable my phone charges up fine through the charging port.

Never had problems with the cable I was using before... more experimentation required when I get back home I think.

Result!



Result x2!

If you sell the one that youve fixed, the other is basically now free, so there should be no objections.

And also, as that one is free, you've essentially only bought one, so she can't really complain if you keep both.

Been there, done that.

Schoolboy error. Never assume a cable that's working now will work when you next use it. Always have a spare that you know works with another device, etc.etc.

Apart from CLUTTERING UP THE HOUSE WITH MORE BITS OF KIT THAT ARE NOT LIFE'S ESSENTIALS.

FTFZ

Zaphod > Warhead

I've had similar on a few different occasions (USB-C for my phone, lightning on the kids ipads) and it turned out there was stuff in the port that needed hooking out.

Couple of times it's been lint, on one occasion there was a bit of metal (looked a bit like a piece of a staple. In the kids ipad ports I have found food, dust, sand, dog fur, and also once a bit that had broken off from another cable.

Those Casios don't have a 'Demo' button, therefore I do not understand them and I don't like them

I hope at least some of the buttons make the 'clap' or the 'yeah' sound when you press them.

Been offered some firewood (yay) but it will mean another day of collecting and chopping up. There’s too much to go in the space left in my new wood store so I’ll have to keep some in the old store which will delay the dismantling.

However, I'm not Mrs Zardoz, so ner and good luck with that.

Just burn the wood that you don't have space for.

Burn it? It doesn’t bloody well grow on trees!

Trade some of the excess wood for some new synths.

Most of the computers at work are shared devices / workstations but some of the office-bound staff have their 'own', which are not shared by multiple users.

Touching these 'single user' keyboards and laptops is increasingly giving me the ick, I keep mine nice and clean but no one else seems to.

It was even worse when mice still had balls. We used to get loads of calls about mice not responding correctly and 99% of them needed the gunge scraped off the rollers. Even now, they often have gunge on the underside, as well as on the mat. Theoretically we could have made it a chargeable call to scrape it off in the last two companies I worked for.

I read this without the context

I went through a trackball stage in the early 2000s. The visibility of the gunk was not pleasant.

One of the great pleasures in life was defluffing my Amiga mouse ball rollers.

So I work with this guy, Tony, and he won't SHUT THE FUCK UP AT ALL.

Today he was waffling on about some shit and I put my headphones on and played some music on my laptop.

Thing is, the music started coming out of my laptop and not my headphones. And because the office keyboard I was using doesn't have volume hotkeys (unlike the one at home that I'm on right now) I spent like 15 seconds fannying about trying to stop it.

It was this song.



I was sat next to my boss.