h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My Mum often said that there was snow on her birthday (mid April) more often than Christmas Day. It's the swing of 10 degrees from one day to the next which is a bit disorientating.

PH: Having to choose a replacement for a long lasting household item. Just recently both my hair dryer & iron have died, after some 40 years service. Hard to get items with just basic functions these days.

I don't remember cricket being stopped by snow in August, but I do remember it in June 1975.
Mind you it was a match in Buxton, up in the hills, where you are always advised to add a vest and take an extra jumper, whatever time of year you go.
Lovely town though.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jun/01/weatherwatch-freak-snow-stopped-cricket-on-2-june-1975

More recently April 2016 at Old Trafford.
https://twitter.com/Gilo/status/724972047680557057

What happened to h2g2 - a big chunk of this convo seems to have gone missing?

Current PH: Companies that have very limited means of contacting them. Just had to negotiate with virgin media - they offer a phone number or live chat, but really you can only get any response via WhatsApp.

Looks like most things since April 2021 are hiding, entries, conversations and all....?

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I live in a council flat and I have been having lots of issues with my gas boiler for the past two years. Since I have had two new parts installed but still the problem has not been solved. Instead of getting the F1 fault code, I now get F13?thread="smiley - facepalm" title="facepalm" class="smiley" src="http://www.h2g2.com/h2g2/skins/Alabaster/images/Smilies/f_facepalm.gif"/>

Doing the Timewarp....

Warm fridges. Just replaced our 'old' one that had always had a really poor thermostat- temperature cycled between about -1 and about 10 degrees... so depending when the fridge was opened to remove something it was either frozen or close to room temperature..
Now I am revelling in the luxury of veg that stays fresh for a week or more
Anyway just from experience of raiding other people's fridges over the years it seems that bad fridges are more common than good ones or folk don't set them correctly. I mean these appliances have just one job to do ...

So true. A thermometer is your friend.

On a baking website I like to follow, even though I don't do much baking, the members compared the temperatures in their freezers. This was to perfect a recipe they were working on for cookies which are kept in the freezer and baked as required.

The differences in the temperatures of their home freezers was not inconsiderable. Ours has a display showing the temperature but I've never actually tested how accurate it is.

Here's the thing though- you can't even trust a 'made-for-purpose' fridge/freezer thermometer. At one point I had three and they all read differently in exactly the same place! Out by as much as 2 degrees against each other. I've no idea how it's possible to make something that poorly which isn't really fit for purpose at all. I guess I should go to a lab supplies store and hope that they actually calibrate the things

Refrigerators and freezers... Nothing quite displays the trends in appliances over the decades as refrigerators and freezers. The have evermore fancier features and they last less and less. Today, if you have a refrigerator over 5 years old, that's notable. My parents have a freezer they bought in the '80s that still working great. It doesn't defrost itself and it definitely doesn't have any microchips. It doesn't have a digital display and it doesn't ding-a-ling when you leave the door open too long. But it still does what it's supposed to do, keep frozen food frozen. It's a top opening model so even when you open it, it doesn't let out its cold air.

I think they've gone through 3 refrigerators in the last decade, each fancier than the one it replaced. The newest is so fancy they can't work it. When the display tells them they need to replace a filter, they get me to do it and more importantly they need me to reset the thing to tell it I replaced the filter so it doesn't keep reminding them.

They did get more energy efficient though. But I agree the new ones should last much longer. My freezer always gets the beeps half an hour after I loaded the weekly groceries (mostly bread). I can't pre-emptively disable the alarm.

PH: every two out of three trains between where I live and where I work have been canceled due to badger tunnels under the mainline tracks. This will last for at least a week, because badgers are protected, so they need a special license to relocate them.

Hmmm. That's a problem I've never heard of here. I can think of three reasons why I haven't. I don't know if there are any badgers in Texas, there are definitely none around the Gulf Coast. I also don't know if our badgers have extensive tunnels, or if they tunnel at all. And well, we just don't have nearly as many passenger trains and tracks in the US.

I Blame 2 legs for the Badgers...

"The 17.12 from Luton to Birmingham has been cancelled due to Badgers under the line. We apologise, on behalf of said badgers for any inconvenience"

Are they the Wrong Type of on the line?

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Latest update. Trains will be disrupted for five weeks. The badgers had been really efficient at tunneling. (We are talking about the major North-South line here, so at least 20 passenger trains per hour, not counting freight trains)

Today's PH: journalists who write about a woman & refer to her by surname through most of the piece. Slightly less irritated if they're writing about a man. Smacks of schooldays, seems rather impolite. Perhaps they feel that using the first name only is too informal? Depends a bit on the nature of the article.

Isn't it presumptive to use someone's given name if you aren't a close friend or relative, or you do not need to use their first name to distinguish them from someone else with the same surname?

I think people I don't know should address me by my surname, friends by my first name. Mind you, no-one used my surname at school, apart from the teachers it was first name basis only.

Magazines that refer to 'celebrities' by first names only would potentially be annoying, as I don't know who the 'Fred' and 'Jane' they are discussing are - but to be honest I don't care if Jim and Mike are back together or if Linda has had a haircut and had a big red circle drawn around a photo of her elbow for no readily apparent reason, so exactly who they are doesn't concern me.

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