Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

Hospital messed up...



Someone brainfarted big time and used CC instead of BCC. Oops. Plonked a polite email back advising staff of the kinda big mistake there, I didn't need my email address leaked or having addresses of others leaked to me

 

Hope you mentioned the nice fat GDPR violation there. Gotta put the fear of lawyers into people who do that.

 

A red weather warning, supposedly the strongest winds since 1998, shops closing for the day, emergency protocols, warnings to have devices charged to make emergency contact. What will most likely happen? A typical February day in many parts of the world that have less means of dealing with it. It really irks me the amount of bluster put out with these named storms these days, should we be concerned about the drastic changes in weather? Absolutely we should. Don't go OTT though, last year alone there were 3 weather warnings that turned out to be some of the nicest days of the year!

 

Red weather warnings aren't issued for fun...

 

No that's true and I wouldn't ever suggest anyone ignore advice given, just seems in the last year or so here there's been a rise in the warnings issued and an equal amount of downgrades the evening before. I'd be just as worried that people might stop heeding the advice.

 

UK weather is inherently difficult to predict, just because of where we are on this planet. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes worse. Remember October 1987?

 

An HMRC letter arrived, which the Mrs opened (I’m fine with that, I asked her to do so), but she rang me with the vaguest details while on the school run.

She says, “It just said like £12k loads of times on it and owing something about tax or whatever...” So naturally, I start to panic. I remember putting down a figure around £12k, which covered eBay fees and postage labels, and I figure they probably want more clarity on what that expense actually was. But I wanted to be sure, so I asked her to send me a picture of the letter as soon as she got home. In the meantime I start printing off the breakdown for that £12k from an eBay report so I can get it in the post and clarify every penny should they need it.

Anyway, time passes, and still no picture. I end up ringing HMRC to get to the bottom of it without knowing full details, asking her again to send me a picture of the letter so I can figure it out. Halfway through my conversation with the (very helpful) tax officer, she finally sends me a message with the picture.

It’s my tax code. £12,570 personal allowance. That’s what she’s been reading this whole time. My 25/26 tax codes!!

The good news: I don’t owe them £12k.
The bad news: I now know what I do owe in tax (it’s on the steeper side of my prediction, I might add), plus my first balancing payment for the upcoming tax year (a first for me). Which ultimately means I need to pay twice what I'd put aside come the 31st of Jan. Oh, bother. I'm sure I'll feel better about it come the 24/25 self assessment.

 

God dammit that government warning on my phone about the winds nearly gave me a heart attack

 

Ah, yes.
The night Sevenoaks became Oneoak, and Michael Fish almost got fired.

 

It feels like I might be coming down with a dose of the grots again. Got a headache, didn't sleep too well last night - kept waking up every 30-45 minutes with an extremely dry mouth, got some aches and pains although I am not sure if that is anything new or an extension of the horrible amount of lower back pain that I am current in (yay for getting hit by cars...). I did seem to be running very hot in bed last night, but then again that is not new, I tend to get hot when I sleep.

Meh, we shall see what happens, at least it shall be the weekend in an hour and a half AND it is payday today. Of course it doesn't help that my wife is not well either, as I shall be working extra hard as nurse/carer for her over the normal amount.

 

So... 39.5 to 40.7 fever depending where you measure

I smell a hospital trip in the very, very immediate future

 

Welp fever's gone down, continue to be ill tho

 

Some of the little darlings around here have been playing "Knock Down Ginger" with my Ring doorbell the last couple of days.
I guess no-one told them that a Ring doorbell begins recording when it sees people walking towards it, before they press the button and sprint off.
They're going to get a shock when I start hanging their portraits next to my door.

 

Two places I lived back in finland had door intercoms. First place had a mute ringer option, second didn't but somehow that option appeared after a few days... Simple SPST switch guaranteed silent nights

Drunken "adults" ringing all the flats because **** your sleep

 

Barely any signal and the fibre is down.

A fat old red LOS and no PON since yesterday.

Never experienced such hefty winds, the chunk of a BBQ ended up on it's side at the end of the garden.

At least the electricity came back this morning.

Pfft.

 

At least you’re ok.

Here a 10 > 12m pine tree on the golf course, about 100m away, snapped-off about a metre from the ground…

 

I just love sitting on HGV Highway, crawling along at barely 10mph in almost solid traffic, it really brightens my life. What makes it even better is being graced with the simply undescribable aroma from nearby industrial facilities: there's nothing quite like the mingled smells of recycling plant furnaces (plus their slag deposits) and the collective fecal output of Cardiff's residents. It truly is something to behold.

I drive that journey twice a day, 3-4 times a week, and I get to spend at least half of the 40 minute trip enjoying the life-altering delights of HGV Highway.

I truly am #blessed.

If you know Cardiff then you might have already guessed that I'm talking about Rover Way. You also might have guessed that I'm absolutely not being sarcastic about the smell: it really is hard to put into words, it has to be smelled to be believed.

Oh, and, also: they've put a cycle lane on it. A cycle lane... on Rover Way... The most filthy, most disgusting, most debris-strewn, and smelliest road that I can think of in Cardiff... and they put a ****ing cycle lane on it...! Mate, no one's gonna cycle down there! The white plastic barriers they put out when they started work a few weeks ago are already utterly minging! Christ, what a jobsworth effort at a 'green initiative' that was!

 

Sounds like some of the cycle lane initiatives around here... putting the lanes where no-one cycles and/or no-one is ever likely to...

Cars struggle with some of the hills/inclines around here even in moderately wet weather, never mind snow/ice... Some MAMIL on a bicycle has no chance...

 

But if all those HGV drivers took a bike think how clean it would be ....

 

Sure would be!

Bit of a problem in the ol' "weight differential" and "power to weight ratio" departments though. Roughly 100-120kg of bicycle+rider is just a tad lighter than a 3-axle rigid box trailer that weighs roughly 8,600kg to 31,400kg (depending on the load) .

It's unavoidable really. This road links up to the major road routes coming in & out of Cardiff (specifically, A4232, A48, and M4), and it's the only road link to a lot of heavy industrial areas and the various sea ports. It also happens to be the most sensible and sane route between my office and my home. There are alternatives, but they either take twice as long or go twice the distance.

It's smelly, it's dirty, and gross, and I hate driving/riding it. But while I work where I do, it's the only realistic option.

But that doesn't preclude me from having a whinge on the forum