Posts by Emjay111 32 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2017
That reminds me of a friend of mine who ordered a water bed (don't ask). He lived in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.
On the day of the delivery, he got a call from the driver saying he couldn't find the street for the delivery. My friend asked him what he could see out of the front of the van, to which the reply was 'the harbour'.
Yep, wrong St Ives.
Yeah but I've worked nights in the past, and sleeping during the day isn't always that easy. Especially when the accommodation the company put you in has paper thin walls, and the cleaning staff / guests next door have no idea that you might be knackered and trying to get some rest. I remember driving back from work at 8am with my brain feeling like candy floss. Not a pleasant experience, but the hourly rate was fantastic for the late 90's.
Well, speaking as a left-pondian currently based in Canada - healthcare is generally free - but ambulance rides are not !
My partner tripped over a kerb and hit her head on a shop window, cutting it open. She bled profusely, so one of the people who had stopped to help her called an ambulance. She ended up in hospital and needed a few stiches. Discharged same day, nothing to pay.
Was surprised to receive a bill from the ambulance service (a public body) a few months later for $250. Paid it, and was able to claim back roughly half through our employment extended medical cover.
Total distance from incident to Emergency Room - 21Km (150,000 linguine according El Reg standards converter). Roughly 5 times the cost of the same journey in an Uber, but without the fascinating life stories.
Had a similar cardlock fsck up myself back in 1999 at a well known (4 letter) consumer modem and satellite TV manufacturers site in the North of England. Was asked to work a Saturday, when the place was empty. Between the engineering block and factory floor there was a long interconnecting corridor with swipe access on both ends. During the week, I used this route multiple times without issue, and thought it would be the same on a weekend.
Not so. Whilst I was able to swipe the door to enter the corridor, I couldn't release the exit door at the other end. Going back to where I came from, the card swipe wouldn't open the door I'd just walked through. I was now trapped in a windowless corridor, on a weekend when the place was deserted. I didn't have a phone on me, so there was no way to call for help. I resorted to banging loudly on the doors at both ends. After some considerable time, a cleaner set me free!
I did report this as a H&S concern, but I don't think anything was done about it. Presumably whomever programmed the access control system messed up?
Back in the days when TV sets were living room furniture (aka, large wooden boxes on legs), I lost one of my favourite long, flat bladed screwdrivers whilst on a field service call. Annoyed, I replaced it and thought nothing more of it. Until a year later, when I attended said TV set for another call, removed the back, and to my delight, found the lost screwdriver.
On another occasion, I was servicing the car, and must have put a 13mm socket down on a windscreen wiper arm. Didn't realise it was there until it started to rain on the subsequent test drive, and I turned the wipers on. I watched the socket fly off into a farmers field. Didn't get it back.
This has always been the problem with fusion. In comparison to other particle physics projects, it's been massively underfunded for decades. I attended a lecture by someone who was working on the ITER project, and the historical funding data presented explained why we are nowhere near where we should be.
The project itself has a huge amount of rework to do after stress corrosion cracks were discovered in the welds that fixed some of the cooling pipes to vacuum vessel sectors. There's around 23Km of pipe to remove and re-weld. This has set the project back nearly two years (a year to work out what to do, and a year to undertake the work).
Like others, I would be ecstatic to see any form of positive results during my lifetime, but I'm seriously doubting it now. That said, if I ever find myself in the south of France on the right weekend, I'd definitely sign up for the full tour.
Most IKEA stores I've visited (in different countries) have shortcuts between departments. Once you know where they are, it's possible to circumnavigate the whole 'experience' and get straight to the Market Hall or checkouts. In my local IKEA, I always enter through the checkout area, grab what I need before turning around to pay etc.
Let's not forget the sterling (pun intended) work that KPMG does in fleecing our local Councils for 'identi-kit' consultation work.
They made (still make) a fortune by using standard templates and simply making small changes to reflect which Council they are currently stealing from.
There was an investigation into this practice many years ago, but I can't find any links at present. Think it was an edition of BBC Panorama?
I don't soak ink jet print heads - I steam them. Boil the kettle then just as steam comes from the spout, carefully hold the print head nozzles in the steam path. Have some kitchen roll or tissue ready to catch the ink as it drips out. Repeat the process a couple more times.
I've can't remember where I got this technique from - but as a large part of my business back in the 2000s involved printer repair, I did hundreds (if not thousands) of printers, and for blocked nozzles, this was a relatively effective fix. I certainly never made a printhead any worse using this technique, that's for sure.
I had exactly the same issue in South Wales in the early days of Google Maps.
I was driving late at night, torrential rain, in a very unfamiliar area. I arrived at a T junction, to be instructed by the navigation prompts to turn right, which I duly did.
A minute later I spotted headlights coming towards me, on the same carriageway as myself. I had just turned right onto the wrong side of a dual carriageway. Immediately pulled over and got out of the car. Once the oncoming vehicle had passed, I checked the map again, thinking I had made a mistake.
Nope. Google was telling me to turn right at a regular junction, not knowing that the road had now been changed into a dual carriageway.
It was a scary moment.
I had dealings with the French approval authorities whilst working for a major consumer electronics manufacturer. They were unforgiving. If our products didn't meet the same specification as the pre-production sample, nothing was getting onto their market.
And don't get me started on their insistence that multi-lingual instruction manuals were unacceptable, ditto for box labelling. I think you get the picture here....
Correct. More people are killed or seriously injured by cattle then any other animal in the UK, according the figures released by the HSE in 2015.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160615082522/http://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/iacs/aiac/090615/aiac-paper-150601.pdf
The Japanese company I used to work for had a 'smoking canteen' and a 'non-smoking canteen'.
At times, you could barely see from one side of the 'smoking canteen' to the other, and it was a pretty small room. I left in the late 1990s, and as far as I know, this facility continued to exist until the ban kicked in during 2007.
Reminds me of that time I cut through a 16A spur, thinking I'd dropped the breaker a few hours previously. Wrong. The blinding flash of light and accompanying noise caused me to lose my balance, falling backwards off the step ladder. Both blades of the wire cutters evaporated into thin air.
Still not as bad as the time the back of my hand accidentally touched the metal can of a TO-3 line output transistor on a CRT TV back in the early 80's. Apart from the high voltage shock, I think it was the frequency (15625KHz) that made me physically sick. I had a nice round mark on the back of my hand for a few days after as well.
I now work with even higher voltages, but I'm exceedingly cautious having learned the hard way in my youth.
This can happen, especially with the AA.
It's not a direct debit, it's a continous payment authority, and it can roll over even when your card expires.
Happened to me, and it's a very real thing. More info here:
http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/individual/repeat-payments-on-your-card.asp
This line in particular explains it simply: "If your card expires during the course of your CPA, you should check with the retailer whether your new card details have been automatically updated with them, as this will not always be the case."
In other words, the bank informs the merchant of the new card details - without any action from the cardholder.
Two true anecdotes - mouse related of course.
First one is not so interesting. I used to have a trackball which on some days, would refuse to work correctly. The cursor was all over the place and moved in random directions compared to where I was scrolling the ball. Problem traced to excessive sunlight coming through the window and onto the trackball. Resolved by dismantling the thing and spraying the inside of the case with black paint from Halfords.
Second story - my own technophobe Dad went to his local library for some computer familiarisation lessons (much to my surprise). He took my step-mum along with him for support (also never used a computer in her life). Anyway, they were let loose on one of the library PCs after a basic explanation from the tutor.
My Dad relates that after a while, they had to call the tutor over, because they'd run out of desk surface with which to use the mouse. Not realising that in some situations, you might need to pick the mouse up and start moving it in the same direction (depending on various resolutions I guess), he'd got my step-mum to sit in front of the monitor and call out directions, so he could click on a particular part of the screen.
He was several feet away from the PC by now, when he ran out of desk.
Reminds me of The Golden Shot on ITV (I'm showing my age now).
Thats true of several TV broadcast relay stations.
The mast at Llanddona on Anglesey uses two sets of microwave dishes for the backhaul to the mainland, one for use during normal and low tides, the other for high tide.
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=763&pageid=2587
https://goo.gl/maps/PjM1NLGS2x22
Well yes, and no.
The dew sensor was a flat resistive element that did change it's value with moisture present. The lamp to which you refer was used to detect start and end of the tape. Subsequent end of tape detection was done with infra red LEDs - which were much more reliable.
A nice little earner was to be made in the 80's replacing those filament lamps though. I've still got some in storage ! :-)
In a former life, I was a production engineer for a major Japanese VCR manufacturer, and as part of finished goods QA, we used to remove the top cover and blast in some moisture from a modified humidifier, just to check that the dew detection circuitry was functioning correctly.
A few points in reply to some of the comments made on this story.
1) No - we don't use thermal paper. For the love of God, it's 2018 !
2) Many of the "fax" machines are indeed part of a multi-function copier which in it's default configuration under the OGC (Office of Government Commerce) contract, has the fax option installed as standard.
3) Many departments have an analogue line for fallback, in case the VOIP system fails (and it can), so even if you rid the NHS of fax machines, there will still be a large number of analogue phone lines in use.
4) Fax isn't used anywhere near as much as it used to be - it is on the decline, but it's taking some considerable time for each use case to be resolved with other technologies.
5) Fax as a protocol is far more capable than you'd think. Unfortunately, the full possibilities never really took off much outside of Japan. Colour fax was actually a thing there !
Virgin were using Actavo for ductwork around Wrexham, but the roll out was put on hold until areas previously covered were reinstated correctly. A lot of the defects have been incorrect depth of ducting, and insufficient distance between other utilities.
The re-work and future expansion in the area now seems to be underway again, but with Litespeed as the main ductwork contractor.
From what I can see, the latest contractor is doing a better job than the previous, despite being a smaller operation.
Was thinking of switching ISP to Virgin FTTH when it passes me. They can't be that bad, can they?
This is one underground "city" in the UK that I'd love to explore. It would make a great tourist attraction as well. Maintained until fairly recently I understand.
The place has over 60 miles of roads, deep under Corsham in Wiltshire:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/12/14/burlington_nuclear_bunker_feature.shtml
I can relate to Rabbit80 's experiences - to the letter.
Same role for myself some years back. One of our customers was a graphics design company, entirely Mac based of course, who insisted that they worked in a "managed colour space environment".
Spent many a visit calibrating the printer correctly (EFI Fiery controller) to try and match their non-calibrated displays. Waste of time really, but their Head of IT made the visit bearable (a good looking lass indeed). :-)
One place that colour matched workspaces is popular is environment consultants who work on wind generation projects. Often they have to produce impact visualisations for planning approval, so the images they generate (of a load of turbines in the distance, for example) has to accurately match what their client was hoping to build.
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