Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you

surrey_commuter

Pross said:

I don’t get the point in laying carpet at all if you’re in the house flipping business. I would probably end up taking up the carpet and replacing it with a colour of my choice or laminate flooring. I would leave it uncarpeted and offer whatever I would have spent laying carpet to the purchaser towards the flooring of their choice.

House flipping is long dead around here, you pay the same per sq metre no matter the competition

Pross

Still loads up here. Plenty of run down terraces, either old miners houses up the Valleys or Victorian / Edwardian jobs in places like Newport. You can get places for well below £100k.

I saw a place I was tempted by a few weeks ago (mainly for the garden space which my main reason for looking) but I have zero DIY skills and we couldn’t have lived in it for a month or two whilst we got someone to rip it apart. It’s currently under offer so I’m hoping that will get flipped and put on the market ready to move in at a price within my budget. The inevitable grey decor and kitchen will nicely match the current grey exterior!

JimD666

Met office weather app on two different android pads giving two different forecasts for the same place/time. 🤯

First.Aspect

JimD666 said:

Met office weather app on two different android pads giving two different forecasts for the same place/time. 🤯

Two places with the same name?

JimD666

Nope. My iPhone met office app agrees with the wife's Android pad. It's just my pad that's gone off with the fairies 🙃

pinno

JimD666 said:

Nope. My iPhone met office app agrees with the wife's Android pad. It's just my pad that's gone off with the fairies 🙃

Ah but - which one has been more correct so far?

Pross

pinno said:

JimD666 said:

Nope. My iPhone met office app agrees with the wife's Android pad. It's just my pad that's gone off with the fairies 🙃

Ah but - which one has been more correct so far?

Isn’t the standard procedure to believe the one that says what you want?

JimD666

Pross said:

pinno said:

JimD666 said:

Nope. My iPhone met office app agrees with the wife's Android pad. It's just my pad that's gone off with the fairies 🙃

Ah but - which one has been more correct so far?

Isn’t the standard procedure to believe the one that says what you want?

For anywhere in Cornwall you just believe the one that has rain/fog forecast.

pinno

Pross said:

pinno said:

JimD666 said:

Nope. My iPhone met office app agrees with the wife's Android pad. It's just my pad that's gone off with the fairies 🙃

Ah but - which one has been more correct so far?

Isn’t the standard procedure to believe the one that says what you want?

Perhaps. Although, if one said 'sunny' and the other 'rain' and you went for a pedal and got soaked to the skin, caught Bronchial pneumonia and died outside Joe's café 'cos your fingers didn't work from frostbite 'cos you couldn't get your tenner put of your back pocket to pay for your steaming mug of Lapsang souchong* with sliced, links sausage bap (the chompiest bundy in that part of the clundy), Joe kicks your quivering slightly pale blue delirious self out into the street only to be squished on the road by a beautifully restored old English white 50's Seddon Atkinson bus which happens to be 2 mins late and is carrying the entire Devon branch of the Royal Women's Institute who are predominantly of sizeable, robust constitution thereby making this archaic mode of transport even more difficult to stop in a hurry than it already was, you should have erred on the side of caution.

*What?!

[Some poetic license may have been used to win this argument.]

briantrumpet

Truly trivial...

I've been blocked for the second time in a week from liking any posts or comments on FB because of 'anti-spam' algorithms... I can still post or comment. Annoying, when I just want to thank my mafffia with a single-click 👍 for a comment. Gotta keep the French femmes heureuses...

orraloon

^ yebbut as you iz Inglish in this Brexshit world u kant be accessing Euro stuff wivout da necessary paperwork innit. #takebackcontrol

TheBigBean

Brian will be kicking himself that he missed the obvious Brexit connection.

Stevo_666

TheBigBean said:

Brian will be kicking himself that he missed the obvious Brexit connection.

It does appear that Brexit is the new Wiggle for some.

Pross

Why, when we have been told for the past couple of decades to call the country The Netherlands, our resident person of Dutch heritage always calls it Holland.

rick_chasey

Pross said:

Why, when we have been told for the past couple of decades to call the country The Netherlands, our resident person of Dutch heritage always calls it Holland.

When it's football, it's Holland.

The fans sing Hup Holland Hup and that's what they have on the scarves etc.


https://youtu.be/VIkQGNq2qmU

Pross

Still don't get why that is the case though.

pinno

BT will be horrified with that trumpet playing.

briantrumpet

pinno said:

BT will be horrified with that trumpet playing.

I think Verdi might be even more upset. Though, to be fair, trumpets & bugles are instruments of war, and subtlety goes out of the window when used as a basic communication device. It's certainly not Bach.

For comparison, here's the piece I was playing on Saturday, but these guys are playing it on baroque trumpets, pretty much the hardest instrument to play at this standard in this repertoire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUWG2axB3w

rick_chasey

Pross said:

Still don't get why that is the case though.

Same reason people use Britain and UK interchangeably even though one includes NI and the other doesn't.

Only there's no recent sectarian beef related to it, so the whole discussion isn't politically charged.

pangolin

Is Revoult the bad guy here?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63796738

Deborah Wright was left devastated when she lost £8,000 of savings from her Revolut accounts to fraud in October.

She expected the electronic money firm to refund her but it refused.

...

Deborah, a dog groomer in North Yorkshire, had given her Virgin Money bank details to a fraudulent website that she thought was legitimate while online shopping.

A few weeks later, the 55-year-old got a phone call from a man claiming to be from the Virgin Money fraud department.

The fraudster said her bank account was under attack, and persuaded her to download some software that allowed him to take control of her computer.

The fraudster, who kept reassuring her that she was safe, asked her about her other accounts, and got her to transfer money out of her 12 Revolut "vaults".

...

She lost more than £8,000 from Revolut alone, along with funds from her Virgin Money account.

While this was happening, she got warnings from Revolut, but the fraudster did not give her time to read them. He knew they were coming, and told her he was sending them.

"I was allowing everything to go through, just thinking it was safe," she said.

Pross

No, it really annoys me when people don't take responsibility for their own actions. I know there are some sophisticated frauds out there but most are pretty easy to avoid. The victim usually starts their explanation with "I'm not stupid...".

rick_chasey

Pross said:

No, it really annoys me when people don't take responsibility for their own actions. I know there are some sophisticated frauds out there but most are pretty easy to avoid. The victim usually starts their explanation with "I'm not stupid...".

I’ve worked with some pretty smart, have their life together people who fall for these.

morstar

Thing is I think anybody can get back footed.

Most of the time I am on the ball and cynical. But I’ve made mistakes in my life and / or not necessarily given something the attention it deserves.

You’ve got to bear in mind, these people tackle you on their timescale. The call is out the blue and quite possibly when you’re not at your sharpest or able to treat something with the cynicism it deserves.

briantrumpet

morstar said:

Thing is I think anybody can get back footed.

Most of the time I am on the ball and cynical. But I’ve made mistakes in my life and / or not necessarily given something the attention it deserves.

You’ve got to bear in mind, these people tackle you on their timescale. The call is out the blue and quite possibly when you’re not at your sharpest or able to treat something with the cynicism it deserves.

And the cleverest ones play on things we've got used to doing without much thought... clicking on helpful links, stuff that appears to come from trusted sources (friends or businesses), things that are addressed personally, etc., things that appear to be looking after our security etc. Some of them really are clever.

First.Aspect

The issue here is that the consequences don't match the mistake. And the banking system is capable of reversing the transactions with minimal cost to anyone but the fraudster. The fact they don't simply rewards them for participating in a system that allows fraud to thrive, and insultingly provides the banks customers with no protection in exchange for the banks getting to play with your money.

It is similar in a way to the early days of mobile phones, where you could find yourself on a vastly expensive rate call just by answering an unknown number.

monkimark

I am entirely baffled by the thought process that led to this set of traffic lights.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4808674,-0.1386915,3a,75y,23.82h,75.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ss9hV6U3Z_toXZo6sfhMfEw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
The left hand lane is ahead only but you can turn left from the right lane.
Also, the left lane barely ever has a green light, I'm not sure what triggers it turning green as it doesn't seem to be on a cycle with the other light (I've probably only seen it turn green a couple of times in the last month or so). As a result, cyclists in the left lane have to jump the red light or mount the island to get across into the green light lane.
When I last worked down that way a few years back, the island wasn't there and you could turn left from the left hand lane so presumably someone made a conscious decision to spend money making it worse?

Munsford0

monkimark said:

I am entirely baffled by the thought process that led to this set of traffic lights.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4808674,-0.1386915,3a,75y,23.82h,75.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ss9hV6U3Z_toXZo6sfhMfEw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
The left hand lane is ahead only but you can turn left from the right lane.
Also, the left lane barely ever has a green light, I'm not sure what triggers it turning green as it doesn't seem to be on a cycle with the other light (I've probably only seen it turn green a couple of times in the last month or so). As a result, cyclists in the left lane have to jump the red light or mount the island to get across into the green light lane.
When I last worked down that way a few years back, the island wasn't there and you could turn left from the left hand lane so presumably someone made a conscious decision to spend money making it worse?

The left hand lane is a bus lane. Guessing the lights triggered by a bus / taxi using that lane? There's similar going into Cambridge

Pross

Yeah, it will be to give those using the bus lane a chance to rejoin where it becomes single lane and also allows those not using the bus lane to safely turn left whilst buses are held. The bus lane green will only get triggered when a bus crosses the loop.

kingstongraham

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4805283,-0.1391996,3a,75y,51.6h,84.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxphBrgIpCPa4FQgdOZq89A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

It does seem a bit over engineered for a 50 metre long bus lane, but anything that keeps buses moving at the expense of cars is a good thing.

Stevo_666

kingstongraham said:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4805283,-0.1391996,3a,75y,51.6h,84.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxphBrgIpCPa4FQgdOZq89A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

It does seem a bit over engineered for a 50 metre long bus lane, but anything that keeps buses moving at the expense of cars is a good thing.

Jeremy Clarkson is similarly intrigued.