Other What's ruining your life right now?

@Byron C What a nightmare, I have similar problems at work with padlocks on waterfront properties. The salt air does them no good at all.
An angle grinder makes it a lot easier to cut jammed padlocks than even the big bolt croppers from the old days.
My locksmith recommended spraying them regularly with GT85 which is even better than WD40 as it contains PTFE.
A can of that may well ward off the worst of the water problems.

 

It’s been sticking for a while, but I’ve always been able to get it open with a bit of jiggling. I’ve been putting off replacing it for months because there’s always something else that needs the money first. Well now it has to be dealt with…

Also doesn’t help that I only slept about 4hrs at most last night. Other half was really restless again and I just couldn’t drop off, even after she got up for a while.

 

Muppet + angle grinder: 1
Padlock shackle: 0



Intellectually, I’ve always known that chains, locks, etc, won’t stop a determined motorbike thief. But it’s quite another thing to demonstrate to yourself just how easy it is to get through a lock. I’ve never picked up an angle grinder in my life and I cut through the shackle twice in a few minutes…

 

Letter received from GP surgery yesterday which stated that during their routine checking of patient records they have realised my blood work shows I now have Chronic Kidney Disease...

Judging by my results its only moderate (part way into stage 3 from the looks of it) so nothing to particularly worry about. Just more the "oh by the way" approach has really irked me.

 

We once owned a lockable wood filing cabinet equipped with a spare key. I kept one key on my key, I decided my partner should have one too for the occasions I wasn't home. .

One day, she frantically called me at work, "Where's the key to the filing cabinet? I need a bank statement for this application today!" I responded, "It's on my keys, use your one"

"I can't, I don't ****ing have it... you told me to keep it somewhere safe so I wouldn't lose it, Its in the filing cabinet!"

After a moan, I pointed her towards where In the house I'd kept a hammer and we no longer own a filing cabinet.

 

It's shocking how quickly you can get through all sorts of security with a cordless angle grinder, it'd just the noise....

Good work albeit frustrating to say the least

 

Could you try coughing really loudly to cover it up?

 

I realise the horse has already bolted, but no lockpick?

 

Round here the noise wouldn't be unusual, you'll often hear angle grinders or saws or similar noises throughout the day. Of course it's not usual in the middle of the night, but who's going to challenge a group of thieving scavvy gits wielding an angle grinder at 2am?

Not for this lock type unfortunately. It uses a "disc detainer" lock, and I don't have the tools - or skills! - to pick that kind of lock. Even the experts need specialist tools to pick these:



In fact I don't really have the skills to pick many kinds of locks TBH, only really tubular/axial locks and that's because they're usually trivially easy. Your average pin tumbler is also often pretty trivial - I can usually pop pin tumbler padlocks open in seconds, but that's with a low-skill raking attack rather than actually picking the pins.

Thieves often don't bother trying to pick locks - far quicker and easier just to cut through stuff.

 

My preferred method for padlocks that are considered disposable is the spanner attack, it's not failed me yet

 

Now that you've mentioned it, I recall it well - I've seen it demonstrated on video a couple of times. The thought didn't even occur to me TBH...

 

I was going to mention it, but you picked the one day this year where I've managed to have a lie in so didn't see the thread until many hours after you'd posted.

 

Ah well, I’ve got an angle grinder now anyway .

 

As an aside, how good is the Lock Picking Lawyer.

 

P1 at work yesterday. Live streaming (iPlayer/4OD equivalent) went down. Always fun times.

 

Or wave your wrench around...

 

Gold!

 

Another bus lane charge notice, think it was before I'd received the other and realised I was turning off the road too late but still ugh.

 

Dude is insanely good at that stuff. It can make you really paranoid when you watch his videos; you just have to bear in mind that most crooks probably won’t even know how to pick a lock, never mind being anywhere close to “good” at it. You might get a simple raking attack at best.