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Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Discussion in 'General' started by Brooxy, 28 Oct 2009.

  1. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    Oh, Gareth is on the warpath now. :worried:

    On topic: working from home is so much better than commuting one hour to work, sit around bored (stupid Easter week lull) and commute one hour back home.
     
  2. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    Ah. This seems to be a sportsball argument. I'll wait...
     
  3. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Had an electrician round to the new house (still a work in progress, but hey ho) to check a small leak in the power shower.

    We'll have to get a new one. Why is this good?

    Well, two reasons:
    1 - if the wiring is capable enough we can get a more powerful one
    2 - he noticed that there'e no isolator switch and the leak was dripping towards the mains so it's awesome that the few times we have used it we haven't killed ourselves to death.

    Seriosuly, the previous owner. I sould have realised. I found a plug plugged into the socket, followed the cable, through the wall to where he had had a computer desk. It appears that it was used to power another double wall socket... Yeah that got hoiked out.

    So yeah, we're alive. I prefer to think I'll go out in a blaze of glory rather than a during a morning shower.
     
  4. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    Rent is covered for the next 3-4 months. Takes a huge pressure off me, allows me to catch up with myself a bit and actually look forward to the rest of spring/summer!
     
  5. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Jesus, that's pretty scary stuff right there :jawdrop: At least you can get it redone in a safe fashion.

    Reminds me a bit of our house - the people who lived here before us did a lot of incredibly hashy DIY that we're still finding evidence of after almost ten years in the house. We've not found anything straight-up dangerous (yet) but it's mainly just really annoying lazy bodges and shortcuts that end up costing us time and money to fix. Simple things like the row of coat hooks in the hall - not only were they not actually level, but on closer inspection they were affixed to the wall not with a couple of screws into rawl plugs but with a generous helping of No More Nails, and to the lining paper rather than the wallpaper. Similarly, but even more annoyingly, in the living room they had a TV mounted on the wall. Looked fine on viewing, but of course when we got the keys we discovered that they'd mounted the TV and then wallpapered around it! And they had one of those cable conduits running down the wall from where the TV was mounted, and yet again it was stuck to the lining paper with glue rather than being screwed in. And then there's the old-school phone extensions running all around the house, clipped just above the skirting boards and going into every single room. And guess what? Yet again, they've wallpapered around these, so that when we removed them we had a nice gap around every skirting and door frame. That was fun!

    The house is just packed with things like that. We've dealt with all of the obvious ones but we're still coming across new ones every so often. Genuinely drives me nuts :wallbash:
     
    adidan likes this.
  6. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    My mother's house had issues that no one spotted also. Makes you wonder what the f you are paying for.

    Glad you're OK though and have spotted the issue.
     
    adidan likes this.
  7. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Cheers guys, luckily we had a good plumber in who spotted it and took it off the system until we get a sparky in.

    Should have known, we seem to be dealing with dodgy diy and bad builder work (had to have our builder hack off the bottom plaster in the kitchen extension - it was down to the floor and creating a nice bridge for damp).

    We are very lucky that we're not living there till it's all done though.
     
  8. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    We had that with our place. The previous owners had papered the walls, quite a nice job overall. However, they had not removed any sockets or light switches when doing it so when I came to replace the godawful gold-chrome light switches with something far more tasteful and proper sized, I get left with a small (2-3mm) gap all around them...

    However, that's all small fry when you start to look at the light fittings themselves. So far I have had 2 just fall out of the ceiling, having been "screwed" (I put that in quotes as it is a somewhat subjective term in this case) into the plasterboard... multiple times over the years with the fitting hiding numerous holes where they have come adrift over the years...
     
  9. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Ok here's one, above the stairs is the outside wall of the stairs going to the loft. That got replastered by us as they'd put skirting board on the bottom.

    So yeah, there was skirting board looking like it was floating in the air as you walked downstairs.
     
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  10. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Oh, here's another one: the laminate in our living room had been laid with a two-centimetre gap to the skirting along one section. That was fun!
     
  11. ElThomsono

    ElThomsono Multimodder

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    When we moved into the house we're in now I found door hinges packed out with corrugated cardboard, air bricks covered up, the damp proof course bridged with dirt, the flow and return from the boiler plumbed in 15mm SpeedFit piping (feeding 14 radiators!) door handles that had been attached with PZ2 head self tapping screws and perhaps most worrying of all, no batteries in the smoke detectors.

    It's an Edwardian house that we knew needed work so it's of no consequence, but man, how can people do those things?

    No batteries in the smoke detectors, they had three kids living there :blah:
     
  12. Mr_Mistoffelees

    Mr_Mistoffelees The Bit-Tech Cat. New Improved Version.

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    They could also be tight-arses that took the batteries with them. Better to have wired in alarms.
     
  13. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Fixed that for you.
     
  14. ElThomsono

    ElThomsono Multimodder

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    I fitted the same 10 year lithium thermal / optical hybrid alarms I had at the old house, but due to the unique layout if the one in the utility area sounds you can't really hear it. So I need to get alarms that link up but they won't all be on the same lighting circuit so I'm not sure how to go about it. Radio, maybe?

    I looked into sprinkers as well but it's looking like too much effort for what I consider to be an unlikely scenario.
     
  15. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Depends what you're stroking.... :naughty:

    :grin:
     
  16. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Had a job offer through today, after the longest set of interviews I've ever been through: a telephone interview, which ended up lasting an hour; a "proper" interview, which also lasted about an hour; and an informal "meet and greet" interview, which also lasted an hour. Pay isn't a massive jump from where I am now but they were able to meet the minimum pay rise I was looking for - more importantly it seems like they're doing some really interesting stuff with technology. There will be a hell of a learning curve and I will likely have a big challenge on my hands, but that's my motivation for looking for new jobs in the first place.

    Just want to look over their offer in a bit more detail and sleep on it before I make a decision. It's the right move, but I don't want to rush into things like I did with the job I'm in now.
     
  17. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Did you have to go through any recruiters? I've recently be bombarded by them offering me senior developer positions when I've got 2 years experience. Makes no sense as I'm a junior and not actively looking to move
     
  18. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Yep, and they're a flipping nightmare. Unfortunately however they are a necessary evil: they do a lot of the donkey work on behalf of employers in terms of screening & filtering candidates, and shouldering the cost of advertising the roles in the first place.

    But it is frustrating as a candidate, at one point I was getting 10-15 calls a day with at least as many voicemails, emails, and LinkedIn messages. Very often I'd contact a recruiter about an advertised role and when they call me back they'd talk about every damn job advert they've got except the one I was actually interested in. I also had a lot of weirdly irrelevant job adverts come through; I had one just last week for a senior project manager contract - literally nothing on my CV or LinkedIn profile mentions "project manager".
     
  19. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    Recruiters are, on the whole, oxygen thieves.

    I have recently gone back freelancing after 10 years perm (I was 11 years freelance before that) and they are even worse than they were 10 years ago.

    As mentioned by Byron C, they don't read your CV. They simply run a keyword search through their DB of CV's and contact you if they get a partial word match - if they bother contacting you at all.

    I was contacted today by a recruiter seeing if I was interested in a senior programme manager role for a very sensitive public health programme around a certain high rise fire that killed a load of people in London, despite not having any public health experience at all, not even any work experience in anything like the NHS etc. All my experience is in IT ffs.

    I actually asked him "have you read my CV?" and he assured me he had.

    Apologies for the rant, maybe I need to do it in the "Whats ruining your life thread".
     
  20. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    Wait until you're 15 years down the line, they'll be offering you ground-floor roles as a fantastic opportunity to advance your career and a competitive salary of minimum wage.

    Basically anything that's vaguely IT related in or near Nottingham finds me - go go keywords. I had a recruiter contact me for a helpdesk role recently.
     

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