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

PH: Dead rodents. I think something must have died in the utility room, because there is the unmistakable smell of mushy peas mixed with urea and sweaty feet.

Tomorrow morning I'll need to haul all the units out and find the cause, and give the place a damn good clean. It's a lethal smell.

Aye! I can remember the smell of a dead rat, as when I bought our first house, there was a sickly smell, which was so strong, you couldn't stay in the area for long.

When I lifted the floor boards, I found a massive dead rat, that had got stuck behind a cross beam, as it was heading for the damp patch at the front door.

The damp patch was there due a leaking guttering, and the rat had been poisoned in the bakery behind the house. Apparently the poison makes them very thirsty.

Once I had removed it, the house smelled a lot better.

Smudger.

I just posted this in the wrong place. Whoops

Going back a few pages - I keep getting e-mails from facebook (and LInkd in) and various other SM sites I've never even looked at, let alone registered with.

Well, I tell a (little) lie. Once there was a link to facebook from here which I followed - this must be some years ago now. Before I could even read what I was sent there for, it asked me if I knew "these people" - and there were pictures of 10-12 people, about two-thirds of whom I DID know. That scared me off for life, and I closed the window immediately.

Passing a demolition site and not being able to remember what used to stand there.

This also qualifies as petty pedantry. I was reminded of it when I re-fueled my car earlier today and noticed instructions for using the pay at the pump facility.

PIN stands for Personal Identification Number.

So it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to say PIN number. That is just saying 'personal identification number number'.

PP.

Like PAT testing.

>>So it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to say PIN number. That is just saying 'personal identification number number'.

Just because it's a tautology? Repetition doesn't make it wrong, otherwise WRONG, WRONG, WRONG would also be ...wrong.

We have to pre-pay for gas here, unless you use a card. At one of the local stations the pump delivers the exact amount and the asks if you would like a receipt. If you press no, it says 'please wait a moment'

I do NOT have to wait for it to do nothing. Is it trying to decide if I am allowed to not get a receipt?



F S

'Just because it's a tautology? Repetition doesn't make it wrong, otherwise WRONG, WRONG, WRONG would also be ...wrong.'

See? It drove me mad!

PP.

You know when you sit down to watch something you've been looking forward to on the telly? You know, remote in hand, cup of tea at your side, you point the remote then realise the telly's been turned off at the set! Never mind saving the planet, leave the darn thing on, what did God give us remotes for? Just to wind me up that's why! And you know when you're collecting your medication from the chemist, and they ask you 'is it convenient to have a word with our pharmacist for a couple of minutes?' I mean what could they want it's only painkillers for my dodgy knees for goodness sake! I'd already spent half an hour queueing at the surgery to get the prescription, honestly you have to stand behind a rope till a receptionist becomes available, and then you're lucky if our 'overworked GP' has managed to find 3 seconds to sign the repeat script, they're only on £130 grand a year, my heart bleeds, I'm on tablets for that as well.

PH, related to the above: people moaning about the NHS without any apparent grasp of the facts. GPs ARE overworked, due to staff cuts and budget cuts and the people who book an appointment for every single twinge and sniffle. And they do NOT earn £130k a year (not that how much they earn has anything to do with their workload); "Salaried GPs have a
salary range between £55,412 and £83,617" (source: NHS Careers) and as I work in Civil Service HR I can tell you that it's likely the majority will be at the lower end of that.

Sure, the NHS is clunky and needs an overhaul and none of this is being helped by Ca-Moron's determination to sell it to the highest bidder, but if you're going to moan about it at least moan about the right things instead of the lies fed by the right-wing media.

Rant over.

Hammondorgan...there's one thing worse. When you're cosy with your cup of tea AND you've got a cat on you lap who's just got nicely settled in. Prepare for the "absolute look of disgust"

It's when the NHS has to use agencies that the costs spiral out of control. Agency consultants cost £fortunes. What's more, the so-called "efficiency savings" brought about by this government means the chronically understaffed NHS increasingly has to turn to agencies to provide an adequate service.

MR D, GP's are that overworked and underpaid that a good proportion of them work part-time these days and still manage well over £50 grand, and if they are full time they will earn well over £100 grand, many take on locum jobs on top of their normal week, that's how tired they are, they've got away with murder for years, because they never did sign on to the NHS payroll like the rest of us, and have held the service to ransom since it's inception. Incidentally I've worked in the NHS all my working life, I wouldn't touch a penny of agency money, I despise those who do, I don't know everything but I've worked with GP's on a daily basis for 30 years plus, they've never been better off, consultants in the NHS have told me several times that they wished they'd never specialised, all the extra training and responsibility and they're getting less than the pill pushers down the local surgery. Almost all GP's are self-employed and their salary bears no relationship whatever to NHS pay scales. This should be a link to a graph showing current GP earnings average £134,000 a year.
http://www.salarytrack.co.uk/average-gps-salary

Today's PH - software that insists you choose from a list of options when filling in data, when none of them are appropriate.

Aye! That's true, it gives you every choice except the one you want, the. it won't let you go any further until you have selected one!

Smudger.

And then subsequent questions/fields are affected by the inappropriate option you've been forced to pick.

This Petty Hate could run and run!

Groob, my much-lamented old tabby used to sit on the arm of my chair and push down with one front leg on my lap and dig his claws in if I even moved, I went around with light scratches on my upper thigh for years, I still possess a couple of pairs of trousers with click marks on the right leg, they bring a lump to my throat every time I see them. What is it with cats that brings us to absolute servitude? If it was our dog it would get a gentle toe prod be and told to behave.

Yeah, stuff like the software thing annoy me so much, and similar, easily remedied problems that in fact become unsolveable because of "the way things are".

My mobile, for example. It does some pretty stupid things. It has some pretty stupid defaults. It has some pretty stupid instructions with it. It's obvious that the people who do the technical stuff with the phone are clever to get it all working but, beyond that, not much thought goes into anything. It's obvious they haven't sat a normal person down to see the problems they experience when using the phone and made notes on this and thought about how to make improvements. If I hadn't known someone with the same phone I would've had to go back to the shop about six times to clarify how to use the bloody thing. It shouldn't be like that. It is. And it won't change.

I phoned the helpline. I wanted to go into a bit more depth about what annoyed me about the phone. Maybe give some feedback on how they could improve their product and service in the long term. However, as soon as I went "off script" the guy on the phone (who didn't have the command of the English language to deal with any problems that were off-script) presumably panicked, and put the phone down.

I contacted the company and was offered a phone call, but this is what I expect to happen: The person calling me will have an "appeasement" mindset rather than the kind of mindset that will actually listen and consider my feedback in any depth. They'll have someone standing over them with the "you have to do so many calls an hour" look on their face. The call will be rushed because of a quota because "do as many calls as you can" will be more important that thinking things through in any detail. It's all "rush rush rush", "sloppy sloppy sloppy" and "make as much money as you can" before a proper, well thought out service and product.

Maybe I should be more like my dear old gran. The moment my gran had a problem with a product she'd find out the address of the company's head office and march in, demanding to speak to the chairman. It worked.

With the software stuff, it's rarely that the people programming or doing other technical stuff have a say in how it actually works, what's in the menus etc.

From experience what usually happens is the marketing and designer people get together and decide, and then refuse to listen to the tech people when the idiocy is pointed out.