The Angry Thread.

[manuel]

I’m scraping parquet blocks for my shed and all my tools keep breaking. First it was scraper blades (at a fiver a go), then when I found cheap replacement blades, the b*****d tool itself broke. 
 

I’m two weeks behind and might have to delay my electrician again. And a new tool looks like it’s gonna cost 3 times as much as the old one. Gah. 

[forteh]

I would make a jig with a sliding blade made from 4-5mm thick stainless that you can grind to a decent edge.

Absolutely no idea if it would work but worth a try?  We're looking to possibly relay our parquet into the hallway (if levels allow) and that would be my first attempt

[aener]

Have you tried cabinet scrapers rather than blades?

Are you just cleaning them up?

Cabinet scrapers work more like a plane than a blade, and when they dull down you just scrub them on a whetstone or something to put a fresh burr on. It's just a small piece of relatively hard steel. You can make them out of an old saw-blade if you'd rather scrimp, like me
 

If you're doing a lot of it, which I imagine you are if it's for a floor, be warned that the scraper can get fairly warm to the touch. Pask has a great solution to that:

 

 

Edit: Basically as above, but thinner and convex gives better results than trying to keep it flat.

Edited May 7, 2021 by aener

[Davetrials]

I'm having to rely on an unreliable delivery company to not loose me ££££ and get some goods to a customer, tomorrows my day off, I don't think it's going to be very relaxing 

[Mark W]

10 minutes ago, Davetrials said:

I'm having to rely on an unreliable delivery company to not loose me ££££ and get some goods to a customer, tomorrows my day off, I don't think it's going to be very relaxing 

If it's your day off, a good time to start doing some of this: 

On 06/05/2021 at 11:29 AM, Mark W said:

So they don't appear to have that same video available any more, I think they've paywalled it. They do a similar-ish one that you have to do an email sign up for which seems to take you to this which is similar, but more recent (and bizarrely filmed like shit, considering the original one was just on a tripod and worked really well...). 

That's more of a follow-along type thing, but they also discuss the individual components of it here from around 1:25 onwards:

As I mentioned before, it's really basic, but I found that it gave me a surprising amount of benefit. Being simple also means it's easier to just get it done with/without the video.

I don't do it every day any more, but I do still do some of the individual bits during the day if I feel like I need them in particular. The "dancers circle" thing seems to work well for my back when I make sure I do it with proper form, although to be fair the cat/cow and "reach for the sky" thing do quite a bit too. As before, they're really basic but they just work. If you're not great at forming new habits/routines, it's a good place to start.

 

[manuel]

4 hours ago, aener said:

Have you tried cabinet scrapers rather than blades?

Are you just cleaning them up?

Cabinet scrapers work more like a plane than a blade, and when they dull down you just scrub them on a whetstone or something to put a fresh burr on. It's just a small piece of relatively hard steel. You can make them out of an old saw-blade if you'd rather scrimp, like me
 

If you're doing a lot of it, which I imagine you are if it's for a floor, be warned that the scraper can get fairly warm to the touch. Pask has a great solution to that:

 

 

Edit: Basically as above, but thinner and convex gives better results than trying to keep it flat.

Gut feeling is it’s going to be too gunky for a cabinet scraper to work. Without a powered tool you just end up with the tool sticking to the blocks after you’ve done a couple. there’s also an added complication that quite a few blocks have got some subfloor still on them too! 
 

in an ideal world I’d have a planer/thicknesser but I’m not sure how that would fair with gunk build up and heat melting it all together. Also too many$$$

[aener]

If you were any closer, I have one in the garage

Electric planer/belt sander?
Or to be fair, even just a nice, sharp hand plane might come out more effective than tools that keep breaking.

[Davetrials]

2 hours ago, Mark W said:

If it's your day off, a good time to start doing some of this: 

 

Thanks, man, I'll have a go tomorrow morning and see how I feel, I tend to feel much better after a stretch session, but I have no idea what I'm doing then tend to resort to swinging my arms around and calling it a day there

[manuel]

14 minutes ago, aener said:

If you were any closer, I have one in the garage

Electric planer/belt sander?
Or to be fair, even just a nice, sharp hand plane might come out more effective than tools that keep breaking.

Electric planer lasted about 20 blocks before death, and the hand planer was pretty much 1 and belt sander is almost 1 

tbf the tool that broke did the whole first batch of around 1500 a load of work over the years then 600 of these blocks - it’s just I had not intended to ever get a new one as all the major jobs in the house are near enough done! It just all seems to be going wrong and costing time and dollar at just the wrong moment.

[aener]

Hunting down a bug in a hobby project for about 40 minutes before I finally realised I was trying to concatenate two strings in JS with a "."

 

[Davetrials]

On 07/05/2021 at 11:53 AM, Davetrials said:

I'm having to rely on an unreliable delivery company to not loose me ££££ and get some goods to a customer, tomorrows my day off, I don't think it's going to be very relaxing 

Life not ruined, Delivery companies reputation is now+1

[Stephen Morris]

My cat keeps bringing live mice into my bedroom at 3am. I’ve got very good at catching them in a Pringles can, but ideally I’d stay asleep.

[CC12345678910]

On 02/05/2021 at 9:07 PM, CC12345678910 said:

"The ideal candidates will be willing and strive to go the extra mile... "

 

 

Yeah? Well I went [pedalled] the extra mile 44 times over just for the feckin interview and you still didn't give me the job because it was evident that you wanted two 16-18 year old's so you can pay them f*** all an hour. Or as you put it:

"The other candidates made a nearer fit to our requirements"

 

Feck orrf...

 

So the job's just come back up again with a different, newly worded, seemingly more professional advert [The original interviewer, and to a point the process, was bewilderingly inept).

Seems the mythical grommets that could be bitched around for <=£6.70/hr either didn't fancy it (I trolled the indeed HTML for info and, quote, "<10 applicants") or the flaky college age messiah they did take on for the rush start was about as reliable as Northern rail.

Still, as I must be a glutton for punishment/totally f***ing daft I've put in for it again, essentially to see what if any response I get.

Edited May 15, 2021 by CC12345678910

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

22 hours ago, Stephen Morris said:

My cat keeps bringing live mice into my bedroom at 3am. I’ve got very good at catching them in a Pringles can, but ideally I’d stay asleep.

One for the 'things I don't get' but why do people have cats? They're basically just dickheads who would sooner watch with utter disinterest than piss on you if you were on fire and show zero affection... 

[Stephen Morris]

They show plenty of affection, in fact just the right amount for us. I’d just rather they didn’t bring home injured/dead animals.

[forteh]

100% affection, all the time (on their time) especially if you're the one that regularly feeds them

Taj would always curl up on my lap, as soon as I would get into bed he would then curl up on my pillow and snuggle my head, since he pegged it over the rainbow bridge a couple of years back, marmalade has now taken on the mantle because she's the only cat now and will reliably come and lie down purring on my chest as soon as I get into bed.

We don't get a huge volume of livestock* anymore, typically a mouse a month if it's the season and she can be bothered to hunt (12 years old now), taj in his heyday would regularly bring a baby rabbit in a night and eat it all barring the back legs and tail.  Rarely did he let it go alive in the house, apart from the time it was a full grown adult rat, had to be 14" long and dumped it under the bed (typically crammed with boxes of stuff) at 3am

*shrews/mice/frogs/rats/rabbits/blackbirds/starlings/pigeons and an attempt at a crow!

edit: oh and mans best friend, the doting loyal labrador is just a f**king doofus nutcase whose sense of affection is charginfg 38kg of flesh into the front of your knees at high velocity

Edited May 15, 2021 by forteh

[Davetrials]

On 06/05/2021 at 11:29 AM, Mark W said:

So they don't appear to have that same video available any more, I think they've paywalled it. They do a similar-ish one that you have to do an email sign up for which seems to take you to this which is similar, but more recent (and bizarrely filmed like shit, considering the original one was just on a tripod and worked really well...). 

That's more of a follow-along type thing, but they also discuss the individual components of it here from around 1:25 onwards:

As I mentioned before, it's really basic, but I found that it gave me a surprising amount of benefit. Being simple also means it's easier to just get it done with/without the video.

I don't do it every day any more, but I do still do some of the individual bits during the day if I feel like I need them in particular. The "dancers circle" thing seems to work well for my back when I make sure I do it with proper form, although to be fair the cat/cow and "reach for the sky" thing do quite a bit too. As before, they're really basic but they just work. If you're not great at forming new habits/routines, it's a good place to start.

Finally got on to this @Mark W and surprisingly struggled with quite a lot of it, did some digging and found this video that worked quite well.
and you're right after only two days I do feel much better after doing it. 
 

 

[Mark W]

Whatever works for you @Davetrials! Something is better than nothing, whatever format it may end up in. If you do some experimenting and find the things that work best for you, it's pretty easy to put together a routine or just have some 'tools' you can come back to to use if you can feel certain tight spots creeping in. Once you get them dialed in and you know how they should feel, they become second nature. I find when I'm in the kitchen making my breakfast in the morning or in there to make a coffee, I'll just do a stretch or two while I'm waiting. There's quite a lot you can do holding onto a counter or similar to get into different positions, so if it's my hamstrings/quads/hip flexors that are tight or maybe my lower back, it's easy enough to do a quick stretch while I'm killing time.

EDIT: Forgot to say but I'm still kind of shit at really doing it as a proper routine. I know I need to, but quite often I'll have days where I get wrapped up doing other stuff and even though I can feel I need to do some stretching I'll not get round to it. Knowing about it/awareness of it and knowing how to solve it is half the battle though, so if you've got that then even if you're not doing it consistently you've still got things you can do to help when you really need it.

[forteh]

Sort of along the same lines of getting old (42 on friday) and keeping mobility with stretches and the like, for the last couple of decades I've really struggled to touch my toes and always put it down to tight hamstrings or calves...

As a result 20 years of sitting at work (causing short hip flexors, anterior tipped pelvis and dippy lower spine) resulting in a repeated lower back sprain I went to a chiro to see what they recommend, about half way through treatment now and it's all infinitely looser and no pain but I've been making a conscious effort to keep stretching the hips, strengening the glutes and keep it all aligned.  Tweaked one of my hamstrings coaching u6s rugby on sunday so looked to get some decent stretches on them, cue lots of pain in the back of the knees and nothing in the actual muscle.  5 minutes of googling later and I realise that I've spent the last half of my life trying to stretch my sciatic nerve instead of the hamstring

Found some different stretches that isolated the muscles, got a stretch on them, flossed the nerves a few times and I can now get fingers to the floor with straight legs, I don't recall when I could last do that.  Hopefully it will help sort out the ankle impingement I've had for the last 5 years as well

[JT!]

There's a point to point route that leads through my city called the Duluth Traverse. It's 40 miles and about 85% of it are mountain bike / gravel trails. I've booked a day off work to ride it, and today I thought I'd ride the half of it I've never ridden before so I can familiarize myself with it and get some training in. The plan was to take the bus down to the start, ride half of it, and bus back. Our busses have bike racks on the front, but guess what? My 27.5"+ bike doesn't fit. So there goes my plans for the 6th. Now I'll have to find someone to drive me down there.

[J.KYDD]

Wrong thread

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by J.KYDD
Wrong thread

[MadManMike]

British Gas messed up our bills, so issued us a £600-ish bill when we moved... we set up a payment plan to clear it over a few months.

They took it all today, in one hit. Cheers then.

Energy companies really are assholes, I've never had a good experience with any of them.

[Mark W]

They could be the cheapest by a mile but I'd never sign up with those f**kers ever again. The amount of faff we had in the first place Nic and I rented together with British Gas - snakes on a plane. We changed to Bulb almost immediately so I think we used British Gas for a couple of days, but they just couldn't wrap their heads around the meter readings we submitted when we changed. The first person who took them down took them down wrong (really wrong), and they refused to accept what the real readings were. This went on for 6-7 months or so at which point they gave us a final bill, which involved them having to refund us some from the other "final bills" they'd wanted us to pay. Months later we then got another "final bill" through for more. Jokers.

[J.KYDD]

Jumping aboard the 'British Gas Shithousery-Wagon' 

They're pricks. When we first moved into our first place 4 years ago we were with them for a while and were getting charged over double what we now pay with Bulb. Useless customer service too and a nightmare over the phone. Bulb have been great

[Mark W]

Yeah, Bulb have been good for us but the constant price increases mean that we could probably get a better deal elsewhere. If/when we move to a new place we'll probably be making a change, but we'll see...