The Night Mail

[Canal Digger]

As I said, NSN is a acronym within an acronym NATO being the 1st 'N'. So what is the record for acronym within acronyms?  

[SM42]

2 hours ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

The railway periodically try’s to reinvent the wheel so to speak.  Every once in a while, some highly qualified individual with no knowledge!, tries to insist on placing a combined team of the S&T, P. Way and an Operations Manager in one van for incident response.  The title for this merry band of misfits, Fast Action Response Team!!!!

 

Ironically, when the vehicles first had Response Unit labelled on the sides, it was along the lower panels of the doors.  If the Hilux had four doors, you could open one door to leave the word Ponse in full view.  Very appropriate for some folk I used to work with!!!!! 🤣

 

Paul

 

F.A.R.T  was IIRC  used in the north east in the early 90s. Other areas used more sensible terms like Production Supervisor ( although what production they supervised is open to debate)

 

We certainly had a Response Unit, which, with the passenger door open, said ponse unit. 

 

Oh how we laughed. 

 

More recently a new form was invented for reporting bizarre acts of stupidity in a company motor vehicle, like driving into a lit lamppost that they didn't see. 

 

It's reference was WTF001. 

 

It was not an official form.

 

Andy

Edited July 8, 2023 by SM42

[AndyID]

24 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

F.A.R.T  was IIRC  used in the north east in the early 90s. Other areas used more sensible terms like Production Supervisor ( although what production they supervised is open to debate)

 

We certainly had a Response Unit, which, with the passenger door open, said ponse unit. 

 

Oh how we laughed. 

 

More recently a new form was invented for reporting bizarre acts of stupidity in a company motor vehicle, like driving into a lit lamppost that they didn't see. 

 

It's reference was WTF001. 

 

It was not an official form.

 

Andy

 

Well, as the old proverb goes:

 

"When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others.
The same applies when you are stupid.

 

😁

 

(Actually attributed to Ricky Gervais)

[AndyID]

A "spot of bother" down at the lake the other day. When I drove past a vehicle recovery truck was about to haul something out of the swampy end of the bay. I assumed someone was simply blind-drunk and had failed to negotiate the bend in the road.

 

But no. Turns out our local tribal chief had just refueled his PWC (Personal Water Craft) - AKA (Also Known As) a Jetski at the gas dock. When he started the engine there was a rather large explosion which blew the top of the PWC (with him on it) off the hull. He and it traveled some distance. He was hauled off to hospital but fortunately he was not seriously injured, probably because he landed in water. (The local paper made no mention of any sudden color changes in his swimming attire.)

 

Apparently you are supposed to wait for a good bit to allow any gasoline fumes to vent before you put the seat back down and restart. I'm fairly sure he will do that in future.

 

The best bit (depending on your point of view) was that these events were witnessed by the people at the marina bar and restaurant and it was packed that evening. 😄

 

 

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by AndyID

[Happy Hippo]

I so wanted to laugh at that last post: Especially because the greatest damage was to dignity.

[Dave Hunt]

4 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Q.  Why do Nato Standard C0ndoms have an arrow on them?

A.  "This Way Up".

 

We used to have condoms in survival packs - not in case we got lucky after banging out (although you could always dream) but because they take up little space but make good water carriers. Always used to generate sniggers during survival lectures though.

 

Dave 

[SM42]

18 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

We used to have condoms in survival packs - not in case we got lucky after banging out (although you could always dream) but because they take up little space but make good water carriers. Always used to generate sniggers during survival lectures though.

 

Dave 

 

Non lubricated I believe. 

 

The water capacity of one is quite impressive. 

 

Andy

[AndyID]

41 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

I so wanted to laugh at that last post: Especially because the greatest damage was to dignity.

 

It's the mental image it produces. Just like a Spike Milligan sketch. I imagine the reporter at the local paper must have found it difficult to write that one up 🤣

[Dave Hunt]

One of those mornings today when everything I tried to do turned to s**t so probably because I wormed my way into Jill's good books yesterday she suggested after lunch that I take myself off to the Supplementary House Extension Department and do something to the layout. So off I went. Before doing any more flooring to the loco shed I decided to check that what I had already done wasn't fouling the running rails in any way so on went the power and I tried to move a loco into the shed. Nothing except some groaning from about four of them and a bit of movement followed by the controller tripping out. Bu**er. I won't bore you with the number of things I tried in vain, nor with the naughty words that echoed around the place but I doubt that even HH could have bettered my cries of rage and frustration. Eventually the problem was found when I started trying each locomotive of the rolling road and lo and behold, the 0-4-4T had a piece of wire stuck underneath that was permanently shorting out. Where it came from Lord only knows but at least I was then able to check the shed flooring and all was OK. All this kerfuuffle had consumed much of my free time though and I was only able to achieve a fraction of the work I hoped. Still, at least my fears of a major wiring snag among the festoons underneath the baseboards were foundless and tomorrow is, after all, another day. 

 

Dave  

[Happy Hippo]

50 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

We used to have condoms in survival packs - not in case we got lucky after banging out (although you could always dream) but because they take up little space but make good water carriers. Always used to generate sniggers during survival lectures though.

 

Dave 

Also used over the end of small arms barrels to prevent the ingress of water and mud.  Just don't get the pink ones!

[Dave Hunt]

There's a story, probably apocryphal but never mind, that at the height of the cold war Durex received an order from the Russian army for a large amount of condoms so they sent a consignment of the largest ones they made, all labelled 'small'.

 

Dave

[SM42]

Today did involve cake and a very wet M5, but no connection between those two facts. 

 

On getting in the car to come home, I set the satnav, released the handbrake, depressed the accelerator and the car seemed very reluctant to move. 

 

I pressed the brake pedal ( it's an auto) to ensure i hadn't missed a step. 

 

I checked it was in gear. It was. I took it out of gear and, pressed the brake ( it  felt a bit  odd underfoot) put it back into gear and tried again 

 

Again the car was reluctant to move.

 

After womdering what on earth was going on for a few seconds  I saw the problem. 

 

It worked a lot better with the engine running. 

 

On getting home, I found a letter from our energy supplier. 

 

In June they put up our DD by £40  to "keep us on track"

 

Today they announced they would reduce it by £100. 

 

Not quite sure they know what they are doing. 

 

Still,  not complaining. 

 

Andy

[Dave Hunt]

Our energy supplier keeps badgering me to get a so-called smart meter, which so far I have ignored but today they sent an email saying that they are obliged by the government to install them in their customers' homes. This is a lie as all they are obliged by the government to do is offer each of their customers a smart meter by 2024. Just in case I am in the habit of wearing a tinfoil hat they included a 'scientific' paper refuting claims that smart meters are injurious to health. Sheesh!

 

Dave

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[newbryford]

Golf was played (singles matchplay knockout QF)

Golf was won - just - on the 18th hole - mentally knackered from the concentration after being two down with four to play and giving my opponent a shot on two of the final four holes.

 

Bathroom was measured with a view to a refit.

Bathroom showroom was visited with a view to a refit.

Appointment was booked for next Thurs afternoon with "design assistant" for bathroom refit.

 

The above was the easy bit.

 

Sat down with Mrs NB to watch more of the "Black Mirror" Netflix series.

One of tonight's episodes was "Bandersnatch" - that was it for my head today.

 

A large V&C has eased the pain..........

 

More golf tomorrow, but not quite the same pressure as today as it's an invitation event - with the best man from our wedding over 31 years ago as my guest.

Should be fun.

 

Have a good Sunday folks.

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by newbryford

[Darlington_Shed]

6 hours ago, Hroth said:

Was there ever a fully working GNU kernel?

 

If I ever knew I don't remember now. But I always enjoyed the name.

 

Some time in the mid-80s I had a small wager with a colleague who insisted that Unix would become the pre-eminent operating system for PCs. He's probably dead now but he owes me a fiver.

[AndyID]

I think I've finally found an arc welding rod that will work fairly easily for the deck railings I'm supposed to be building. Lorna and I drove into town in IDSPIDY with the roof down to buy more. It was quite warm - as in 36C. I thought we were back in Arizona. (Lorna once described Arizona as "living with a hair dryer up your nose".)

[BR60103]

I'm still using Windoze because our company did. They did it because they needed to be compatible with their clients who mostly used W.

We had a time where H.O. declared that we weren't going to move to the next version because there were no improvements that we needed.  Then they sent out an important memo that couldn't be read in the old version.

 

[polybear]

4 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Nothing except some groaning from about four of them and a bit of movement followed by the controller tripping out. Bu**er. I won't bore you with the number of things I tried in vain, nor with the naughty words that echoed around the place but I doubt that even HH could have bettered my cries of rage and frustration. Eventually the problem was found when I started trying each locomotive of the rolling road and lo and behold, the 0-4-4T had a piece of wire stuck underneath that was permanently shorting out. Where it came from Lord only knows

 

Big H was wondering where he'd left that.........

 

3 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Our energy supplier keeps badgering me to get a so-called smart meter, which so far I have ignored but today they sent an email saying that they are obliged by the government to install them in their customers' homes. This is a lie as all they are obliged by the government to do is offer each of their customers a smart meter by 2024. Just in case I am in the habit of wearing a tinfoil hat they included a 'scientific' paper refuting claims that smart meters are injurious to health. Sheesh!

 

Dave

 

And the very best of British luck, if Bear's exploits in receiving a Smart Meter are anything to go by........when they first started (Dec 2016 apparently) I discovered that the Fridge Freezer no longer worked when turned on again.  In fairness the guy did say to unplug all "delicate" electrical items (PC's, TV etc. - basically those fitted with Processors) and I forgot that the F/F was a frost free jobbie - with a Processor.  Of course it could all be a total coincidence.....

And now?  Well they've never worked from Day One - and they still don't, despite numerous visits.  At the last attempt the guy discovered he couldn't remove the main fuse in the meter so couldn't isolate the supply in order to fit a new meter.....

[zarniwhoop]

9 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Was there ever a fully working GNU kernel?  There are plenty of GNU shells and utilities...

 

It was called Hurd

A recursive name too, a bit too hardline for the average user.

Supposedly it is still  ongoing. But since it is limited to i686 (32-bit intel/AMD) CPUs with their 4GB address limitation, it seems unlikely it will ever go anywhere. I found a mirror on github which says it is updated daily, but very little has changed in recent times. There is another site, apparently running on hurd, which claims there was a 2023 update - but I could not get the 'details' link to work.

 

There are many obscure almost-personal computer projects, the hurd is now in that category. It lost its niche when linux took mindset. Most of the GNU tools are doing well, apart from with the subset of rustaceans [1] who want to use "totally free" (non-copyleft[2]) licenses and are convinced their new tools will be inherently more secure.

 

Footnotes for those who don't know what the terms mean -

 

1. rustacean, n.: Advocate of the rust programming language, often used pejoratively.

 

2. non-copyleft, adj: Take freely, adapt without any requirement to make changes available to anyone to whom you provide a product.

[AndyID]

55 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

Supposedly it is still  ongoing. But since it is limited to i686 (32-bit intel/AMD) CPUs with their 4GB address limitation, it seems unlikely it will ever go anywhere. I found a mirror on github which says it is updated daily, but very little has changed in recent times. There is another site, apparently running on hurd, which claims there was a 2023 update - but I could not get the 'details' link to work.

 

There are many obscure almost-personal computer projects, the hurd is now in that category. It lost its niche when linux took mindset. Most of the GNU tools are doing well, apart from with the subset of rustaceans [1] who want to use "totally free" (non-copyleft[2]) licenses and are convinced their new tools will be inherently more secure.

 

Footnotes for those who don't know what the terms mean -

 

1. rustacean, n.: Advocate of the rust programming language, often used pejoratively.

 

2. non-copyleft, adj: Take freely, adapt without any requirement to make changes available to anyone to whom you provide a product.

 

My only experience with anything "open" is my TrueNAS server that lives in the garage. Seems to work really well too. Prior to that I tried a couple of proprietary file servers that turned out to unsupported junk.

 

My programming skills never really advanced beyond assembly language. To give you some idea of how long ago that was I pointed out to Intel that interrupts didn't actually work on the 8080. The blighters never fixed it. They added a  workaround nand gate in the datasheet. 😁

 

[AndyID]

Temperature now down to 23C and it will go down a good bit lower overnight, then shoot back up to 36C tomorrow. We don't have air conditioning in the house but we can manage the temperature if we cool it down over night and close the blinds and windows as soon as it starts to warm up outside the next day. Downstairs is semi-basement and it never gets too warm there.

 

We are fortunate to live 2200 feet ASL and there are so many trees that the ground surfaces don't absorb too much heat.

[polybear]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

My programming skills never really advanced beyond assembly language. To give you some idea of how long ago that was I pointed out to Intel that interrupts didn't actually work on the 8080. The blighters never fixed it. They added a  workaround nand gate in the datasheet. 😁

 

 

Bear's programming skills are actually quite advanced.

BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4........

 

 

 

[SM42]

Today, we are bracing ourselves for a day out on the  SVR with two toddlers in tow.

 

Fortunately, their parents are coming too. 

 

The eldest lad is so exited he voluntarily went to bed early so he wouldn't miss anything today. 

 

Andy

[polybear]

5 minutes ago, SM42 said:

Today, we are bracing ourselves for a day out on the  SVR with two toddlers in tow.

 

Fortunately, their parents are coming too. 

 

The eldest lad is so exited he voluntarily went to bed early so he wouldn't miss anything today. 

 

Andy

 

Be scared.  Be very, very scared.......