Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

I'm getting super tired of seeing this:

 

It's a regular feature lately.

 

[AY Mod]

12 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'm getting super tired of seeing this:

 

It's a regular feature lately.

 

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

[Ozexpatriate]

7 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

Andy, thanks for popping in. 

 

I see a lot of slow page loads (greyed out page with the little spinning circle over the tab - taking perhaps 30 seconds, particularly when posting to a different page on the end of a thread) and the 504 "Temporarily Unavailable" message quite often in the past few days.

 

On the other hand performance can be very snappy - almost instantaneous. Quite hit or miss. Nothing "deterministic" that I would report - intermittent but frequent is how I would characterize it.

 

Nothing heavy duty going on with my computer - a couple of static, but open tabs in Chrome. That's usually about it.

 

Edited March 30 by Ozexpatriate

[Hroth]

Slumping on the sofa with a muggatea and a couple of toasted hot X buns, listening to the Classic FM "Hall of Fame" countdown, reading a book and occasionally dipping into RMweb.

 

Who says I can't multitask!

 

Edited March 30 by Hroth
but I don't proofread... :-)

[Erichill16]

10 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

Just for your information I’ve had it as well but it’s not stopping me enjoying the thread.

[Gwiwer]

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Et tu  Singapore 😢 I never thought to see such blasphemy

 

Try this for size. 
 

[New Haven Neil]

26 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

 

I've had it a couple of times too, and very slow page loading.  win 10, Edge.

 

Turned out a pleasant day, had a nice ride out on the bikes and then foolishly decided to split some firewood - ended up clearing out a couple of the firewood stores and doing far, far too much.  I am now officially broken.

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

8 hours ago, Tony_S said:

 I was always fascinated by the Colorado Beetle poster outside the headmaster’s office. Aditi said she used to daydream about what she would buy with the reward if ever she found such a beetle. The posters must have been in every school, just like the cabbage smell. 

 

Here in the 60's and '70's it was Argentine ants. The council would supply little plastic tubes to trap any in and a certificate to say you were an ant inspector or something.

 

I remember there was a reward which I think was $20 or so by the 1970's, or about a  years pocket money, untold riches which would mean I wouldn't have to make my bed or do the wiping up for ages. I carried my tube around with me  for a few weeks just in case but I never spotted any so gave up.

 

https://aso.gov.au/titles/ads/argentine-ants-advertisement/clip1/

Edited March 30 by monkeysarefun

[New Haven Neil]

@Andy Y20.59 hrs, community unavailable.

 

 

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

 

Not had the unavailable message but it has just taken 3 minutes or more to load this page from the previous one.  Sorry I am sure this is spoiling the holiday weekend.

[Captain Cuttle]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

It's a regular feature lately.

i have had it regulary so there..................twice!

[Gwiwer]

56 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

 

I've had it a couple of times too, and very slow page loading.  win 10, Edge.

Seen on an increasing number of occasions across the past week or so along with ever-slower loading times.  MacOS / Safari or on the iPhone - slower if anything on the phone.  

[New Haven Neil]

4 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Seen on an increasing number of occasions across the past week or so along with ever-slower loading times.  MacOS / Safari or on the iPhone - slower if anything on the phone.  

 

Just took ages to load this page!

[Andy Hayter]

Ditto.  To the extent that I loaded the site in parallel and opened the page from there, which triggered the original page to open.

 

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

In the end no dinner or tea, went straight to supper.pah!

Spent most of the day visiting fil and mil and taking Hovis and Sydney for walks. 
Another day closer to retirement even though I don’t have a date yet. Can’t come soon enough.

goodnight.

[PupCam]

Evening

 

13 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Morning, from an undecided rock, was raining but now sunny, 8c.

 

@polybear The family have spread far and wide, they're a bit like rabbits in some practices....

 

 

MrsD, aka Dronk, is a bit too keen on booze, as may show in the photo.  The first kid, Dink, now lives near Swansea, and looks after nephew and great-niece and nephew.

 

The familial likeness can be recognised by the smile, other miserable non-Donk related versions should be discounted as impostors from overseas.

 

 

Bonk was so pleased to see the (extended) family photos he got up, scurried off muttering something about finding a photo album.

 

5 hours ago, polybear said:

ION......

A Courier called at Bear Towers and presented me with an unexpected parcel, asking "Is this for you?"  Well let's see now......

• The Parcel address starts with No.7; the number on the front wall of Bear Towers isn't No. 7.....
• The road name ends with "Close";  Bear Avenue is, well, an Avenue.....

I think he got the message.  F.Wit.

 

But at least he knocked on the door and didn't just dump it like they usually do .....  Small acorns and all that.

 

 

2 hours ago, polybear said:

ION.....

I decided that changing the vast majority of clocks in Bear Towers this evening was a good plan - so that's now been done; the only ones I haven't done are those that I think may change themselves automatically, as well as the ceiling projection clock above the Bear Pit.

 

A very good friend has quite a lot of trouble sleeping.   He has ceiling projection clock and recounts stories of laying there watching it for hour after hour.     Bit of a theme developing here?  

 

Dump the projection clock!   It's just a gadget and it's one that  exacerbates a problem.

 

ION

 

I had a very pleasant thrash over to Pure Triumph in Woburn this morning for a coffee.     Not with the usual bunch of OFs this time but with a couple of ex-colleagues.   Both of whom still have the misfortune of being employed.   On the way home I stopped off and bought a new tin of black Smoothite paint for the weather vane.   Funny enough, the topic of this paint turned up at the last ex-colleagues Pie & Pint night discussions.   Someone mentioned that he thought it now has a new formulation (environmentally more friendly no doubt).

 

This afternoon I started painting the weather vane.    Can't get on with the nice shiny new tin of paint at all!     The only good thing that can be said about it is that it seems to dry a lot quicker than I recall.    As for ease of application and finish on wire-brushed but rusty, dry and clean surfaces - Hopeless!       Actually, it went on best on the new galvanised steel support pole.   It says to use a special primer on galvanised surfaces which I didn't have and so I made a mental note that if the paint should flake off in-service that would no doubt be the reason why.     Anyway it's only a weather vane, it's out in all weathers, it's halfway down the garden and you can't even see it during the hours of darkness so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

 

Time for bed!

 

Night All.

 

 

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

Occasionally the page takes longer, and I saw "the message" once, but then it loaded. MacBook and Safari.

 

Other pages are sometimes slow, anyway. 

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I'm getting super tired of seeing this:

 

It's a regular feature lately.

 

 

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I've only had one other report in 48 hours and not seen it at this end.

It mostly lasts for a couple of minutes but on one occasion recently it lasted for about five minutes.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Spent a couple of hours catching up on some newspaper crosswords. The hayfever wasn't so bad today so I might do a bit of the G word tomorrow.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[jjb1970]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

It does seem that of all the various UK departments of state, the DfT is second only to the DWP for sheer incompetence and an appalling reputation.
 

Regardless of the political arguments around privatisation, a competent DfT would not have allowed the privatised railways to basically self-destruct and leave Britain with the dysfunctional system. It now has. The Japanese managed it with their privatised railway network (privatised before the UK’s). If the Railway Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Tokyo could do it, why couldn’t the DfT in Whitehall?

 

The thing that has always annoyed me about DfT is less the ineptitude (though that does annoy me) than the arrogance.

 

They are notoriously dismissive of the world outside DfT, that might be acceptable if it was a highly competent organisation doing its job well but it isn't. When I was based in London I  attended their sacred halls regularly and had to repeatedly point out I wasn't their lackey (I was slightly more diplomatic with wording). When I worked in class I was tasked with attending a lot of policy workshops and drafting responses to consultation outreach and it was painful. I remember one brainwave about marine fuel and Britain, I asked whether the policy idea concerned fuel supplied in UK ports/waters, fuel loaded by British flag ships in UK ports waters or globally or fuel used by international shipping in British waters. The answer to that question is critical, including for legal restraints under various Conventions the UK is a party to yet I was told no they hadn't considered that and it wouldn't make any difference anyway. The MCA people in the room had their heads in their hands at that answer.

 

MCA policy and legal people freely admit in private a big part of their job is trying to keep DfT from doing anything too ridiculous.

[BR60103]

Our Fire Department recommend changing the batteries in smoke detectors twice a year. The original suggestion was to do it when the clocks changed but then someone fiddled that so it's no longer near 6 months on, 6 months off.  I do it no on the equinox.

 

However, our smoke detectors are hard-wired into the mains with a 9V battery backup.  I have a large collection of used batteries charged to just over 9V. I need to find some 9V devices.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

32 minutes ago, BR60103 said:

However, our smoke detectors are hard-wired into the mains with a 9V battery backup.  I have a large collection of used batteries charged to just over 9V. I need to find some 9V devices.

I let them wake me up at 3:00am when they randomly run out of juice. As back-ups they last a lot longer than six months - more like six years.

 

Edited March 31 by Ozexpatriate

[iL Dottore]

19 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Morning, from an undecided rock, was raining but now sunny, 8c.

 

@polybear The family have spread far and wide, they're a bit like rabbits in some practices....

 

 

MrsD, aka Dronk, is a bit too keen on booze, as may show in the photo.  The first kid, Dink, now lives near Swansea, and looks after nephew and great-niece and nephew.

 

 

One of the many hats I wear (it’s a hectic life) is Visiting Emeritus Professor of Donk Medicine at UCL. As such, MrsD aka Dronk piques my professional interest. Although a full workup would be necessary to confirm my impression that she may be suffering from the early stages of polybearism.

 

Polybearism (or to give it its formal name Morbus PB) is a genetic illness caused by a mutation of the EMP4S4 gene. This illness (or more accurately syndrome) causes the sufferer to become addicted to perception altering substances (alcohol, marijuana, baked beans, curly fries, etc.). There are a number of categories of Morbus PB which depend on the addictive substance that is abused.

 

In the heterozygous form (one wild type gene, one mutated), this syndrome is relatively mild, with “social control” of addictions present (although there is much debate about the long-term health of patients with this form) Homozygous Morbus PB (both EMP4S4 genes mutated) is much more debilitating with early loss of “social control”, “bing or purge” behaviours and significant short-term memory loss following binges. Mood swings become progressively severe as the condition progresses. Individuals who get to end stage Morbus PB (and few do, due to the often fatal consequences of altered perception in dangerous situations) will frequently need to be institutionalised.

 

Why do I mention this?  Well I’m currently working with a team of brilliant scientists and physicians at UCL developing better treatments for the Ebrius version of Morbus PB. Our work so far has shown that our approach to managing the Ebrius variant is extremely successful and the 5 Donk patients treated so far are doing extremely well: happy in themselves and with near normal social function.

 

I’d like to invite Dronk to London to be seen by the team, as - if my impression is confirmed - she would benefit from being treated by the team. Accommodation will be provided and travel expenses reimbursed. She may also bring her partner or other relative (or guardian) for emotional support (I guess that would be you, Neil). If suitable for the programme, there’ll be no charge for treatment (which is not available on the NHS).