Other What's ruining your life right now?

I just remembered that the equivalent to Excel for the Acorn Archimedes & RiscPC concealed an entire flight simulator as an easter egg.

 

I think you're right. My ancient & hole-ridden memory thought a demo of the Acorn game "Zarch" was hidden in the spreadsheet, when it actually came on a demo disk.

 

Nooooooooooooooo!

 

Man, that brings back memories

 

Windows 11.

Stupidly figured it was probably stable enough to upgrade.
PC was fine before upgrading. Fine at win11 desktop, but every game is full of graphical artifacts or plain crashes, irrelevant if driver version.

Roll back to win10, and that's now the same.

Time for a fresh install.

 

Sold a drill on eBay, buyer claimed nothing worked. Gears broken, batteries broke apparently… which is odd considering it worked perfectly last time I used it. Ahhh well.

In a rush to pack it back up for return the forgetful devil forgot to pack the charger…

Two choices, putting up a fight will likely result in a negative feedback out of spite and cost me
In the long run. Or just accept I’ve been scammed and let them have it…

Probably have to take this on the chin…. The depths people will go ey?

 

One of many reasons I refuse to use eBay anymore.

 

Y'see, I've been stung a couple of times and now I'm too bloody-minded to let something like this go.

I still use ebay but I photograph everything. If I sell tech, I'll mark the edge of the PCB with a permanent marker, ideally in close proximity to a serial number, and take a close up.

 

Trouble is, when you use eBay as a source of income, is it worth risking your reputation and seller status over just taking the occasional loss? EBay almost always sides with the buyer in a dispute, and even if some protracted dispute process did eventually find in favour of the seller, how much damage will it do to your reputation and ratings as a seller?

 

I never said it was a rational approach, but most of the scummers are counting on you to nurse your reputation in order to get away with it.

That's a red rag to a bull for me, and there's ****all chance I'm gonna leave it alone.

 

Its a cost of doing business if its your job.

Bit like being stuck in traffic as a courier, working crazy crunch as a software dev or catching a communicable disease as a man whore.

Scratch it up (certainly when a man whore) to one of them things. If its a private sale then go full "David"

 

Now that part I will disagree with (and go off on a massive tangent about one inconsequential point on a subject we weren't even really talking about (what even is bit-tech without its off-topic meanderings?!))

Crunch might be common, but it absolutely should not be accepted as being just another part of the job. I've been there and done that, when it's been both explicitly mandated and implied (I.e. "Well you don't HAVE to work overtime, but we need to get this shipped ASAP and we need the whole team pulling together"). In every case it leads to poor outcomes: bad quality work, bugs galore, missing functionality, more crunch to fix things, etc, to say nothing of the negative physical and mental impact on people.

Voluntarily putting in extra time when things are busy or deadlines are looming is fine, as long as it's your choice to do so and as long as you are shown flexibility in return. Sometimes I'll work on for a couple of hours each day because I've been stuck on something, or its just easier to carry on and finish something than to stop and pick it up again in the morning. But in return I have the flexibility to start a little later, finish earlier, book holidays at short notice, or take a slightly longer lunch.

But when it becomes expected... Nope. Sorry. You want me to work longer hours then we can renegotiate my contract so that you pay me for it. Software people have a highly transferable skill set, I can always find another employer who will respect me.

 

This.

I've shot myself in the foot being confrontational for the sake of a few quid. It only ever goes one way which is a shame but that's the way I suppose.

Sometimes it's better just to pity that behaviour and move on...

 

Old saying, Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Send them a turd-in-a-box, months later when it's too late to edit feedback.

 

Small Parcel Weight Limit: 2kg... no, this will not do.

Medium Parcel Weight Limit: 20kg... much better.

 

Perhap less crunch would be needed if we arent going down tangential scope creep and concentrated instead on delivering MVP

(Note - Post made in jest, I completly agree with you viewpoint and sentiment.)

 

Argh, scope creep!! Something we all know far too well!!

 

The weather next week looks lovely considering I’m doing my direct access on a bike outside all day all week, ordered some Oxford Rainseal trousers and they were too darn big. Bah.