Other What's ruining your life right now?

Snap. Must be the summer solstice.

 

Just managed to snap the end off one of my 2TB SSDs. FFS.


Oh, it's my Steam drive...

 

If it's any consolation I've done that about three times.

Ninja ed - not on 2 giggers though

 

Plumbing.

I hate plumbing.

Toilet flush in the downstairs crappiér stopped working a while ago. A couple of plumbers videos on YouTube and, OK, yeah I can do this... No need for a plumber or waiting for landlord/agency to get someone round...

Bugger, it's a syphon flush, so the whole damn thing has to come out to repair it, may as well replace the whole thing. Bugger, it's a close-coupled cistern meaning the whole damn cistern has to come off. Bugger, there's no shut-off valve for the toilet so the water supply to the entire house has to be shut off...

But, OK, fine, I can do this... Water's off, water is manually syphoned out of the cistern, one cup at a time (can't flush it all out... busted flush, innit...), let's start undoing the pipes. Before I've even picked up a tool, one look at the overflow fitting tells me I'm going to need pipe pliers/wrench... No bother, there's a screwfix nearby - let's jump on the bike and go grab one.

I get back 20-30 minutes later and.... the cistern had filled half-way with water. It was later I realised that it was just the residual water in the pipes that hadn't drained, because I didn't think to leave any taps open to fully drain everything. At this point I ragequit because it took me flipping ages to get the water out of the cistern with a damn cup...

Fast forward... er... "some" months to today... The OH wants to get le downstairs crappiér sorted before we do anything else around the house I want to do, like re-arranging the lounge. Right, I am an intelligent and educated adult, I can damn well do this, I will not be defeated by a defecation station!



Progress! At last! The damn thing is off and I can finally get the flush mechanism out! That fixing plate and washer looks a little... manky... but I'm sure it'll be fine. Finally go to fit the new syphon flush, aaaaaaand...... <drumroll>..... it's too ****ing big to fit in the cistern.

One grumpy and begrudging trip to B&Q later and I now have a narrower syphon flush and I picked up a close coupled fitting kit while I was there to renew the manky one.

OK, let's FINALLY sort this thing. ****in' YAS, the flush mechanism fits! Let's put this MF'er back to-****in'-gether!

Except... wait... hang on... that's not right...

This is the fixing kit I got, which was the only one that B&Q stocked:



When this is what I actually needed...



And I can't find one of those damn things (an Ideal Standard donut washer & fixing kit) in B&Q, Screwfix, Toolstation, or Wickes - they all only have the same style that I got from B&Q.

This means I'm going to have to re-fit the manky corroded one because I can't get the part I need and I can't leave it like this. Put everything back to gether and... sure enough, it leaks water when you flush it.

I was about to admit defeat when I found the fixing kit I need. On ****in' ebay. So now I'm going to have to pay £8 express shipping on a £5 part so I can make sure my toilet downstairs doesn't piss water everywhere. We don't use it anyway but clearly I can't leave it like that for long. If I want to get someone in to fix then I have to either: pay a fortune out of my own pocket; or, wait ages for the letting agent to get someone out. Both of which are not acceptable when it's a bloody £5 part.

So I'm going to have to do all of this all over again in a couple of days.

Did I mention I hate plumbing? Yeah, I hate plumbing. When this damn thing is finally fixed I'm going to do a really big* and really smelly revenge poo in this toilet.

*But not too big because it's a small cistern so when you flush you just don't get the "oomph" that the upstairs bog is capable of...

The money isn't always worth the cost to your health.

Granted I am mostly just being pissy about being woken up at 0220... but the point still stands.

 

The secret is do already have **** health. I think.


I have neither the money or the health so i think i'm doing it wrong in any case.

 

I once had the house to myself for a weekend as I replumbed half of it, the water had been off for a while as I worked, washing machine dragged out in a narrow kitchen blocking the whole thing up. I was soldering pipe and as I wiped the joint I somehow brushed a knuckle against it and burnt it quite badly. I jumped up and turned on the tap and nothing came out, I thought I could ram my hand into the toilet to cool it off but them I remembered I'd pissed in it and wasn't able to flush it away. Thought I'd grab some ice from the freezer but the washing machine ws blocking it, I ended up jumping over it, running outside and ramming my hand into the water butt, relief!

Later on I tried to thread the incoming mains pipe and the threading tool snapped and ruined the workpiece, on a Sunday night with no option to buy a new tool or anything, whole house now was without water and it wasn't coming back on any time soon.

It was at that point that I realised civilisation was nothing but indoor plumbing.

 

Got a hacksaw/dremel? Cut the tabs off. Worked for me in a pinch

 

The tabs aren't the problem, it's the size of the seal. The sealing ring physically doesn't fit the recesses in the pan, it's a completely different design.

 

That sounds like the beginning of a chorus of a country song.

 

Oh man, I do not miss having an on-prem datacentre. I was in there overnight and weekends once or twice a month at one point with CRAC failure when building management had water works they didn't warn us about.

All I have to worry about with on-call these days is vendors (which is basically just providing comms till they sort it out) or our poor unloved "legacy" CMS crapping out (legacy but still prod)

 

CV/Resume writing.

Might as well just hand over a blank piece of paper bc that's what it reads like anyway.

 

haha

 

"The tabs aren't the problem, it's the size of the seal."
more like a british notherner singing about trying to give up cigs and going to the sealife centre?

 

Printer decided to eat a lanyard [that one of the 'rents stupidly decided to leave on top of the printer] and now it's permaborked...

...ah well... not like i needed to print anything :|

 

Little lively sparrow flew into the window.

Little sparrow is now dead on the floor.

 

Rats under the garden decking.

 

I've always thought the space under decking, would be a perfect place for rats to take up residence.

 

Yeah our neighbours have the same issue and because of that we had to stop feeding the birds as the OH didn't like them jumping out of the compost.

 

Think it's the bird food that's attracted them in the first place. That and the lack of cat now. Got traps out though, hopefully they like peanut butter as much as the internet suggests.