ttj - Tom Jones

This bill includes 16.68 GBP gratuity at 12.5%, which by definition is optional. I paid with the exact amount, 150. If they had not added gratuity charge, probably would have been same result. Fine. Waiter came back and said “I hate to be a stickler, but it’s a hundred and fifty AND THIRTEEN PENCE”. The optional gratuity was 16.68 GBP, so he is “being a stickler” about less than 1% of the optional GRATUITY. Without this precious 13p, the total amount of the optional gratuity is 16.55 GBP instead of 16.68 GBP on a base bill of 133.45 GBP. Have people really become this fucking retarded? I can not function in the brit tard sphere.

 barclays branches now close at 15:00 (and open at 9:30)

I can’t really claim that British trains are getting dirtier, but they remain dirty, much like british hotels, british streets, etc. Maybe this is what the other ones are converging to.

PDFs, the file format for a humanity not ready for computers.  Instead of going from papery to computery ways of doing things, we have used computers to make a much more cumbersome, schleppy and annoying version of paper, which is the PDF file.  It's a bit like some shit-chucking apes discovering a fax machine. Well, most of life consists of compliance (lots of PDFs) or having to somehow process PDFs that one is being sent, complete forms that are sent by PDF, print and sign a PDF, or do the equivalent but without printing.  Like it or not, it's difficult to get anyone to do anything without having the capability to "sign a PDF". The best way to "sign a PDF" is to ask the other party to print out two copies of it and send them to you.  You then sign one and return it, keeping the other with a record that you signed the other copy. If time doesn't permit, and you have a printer and scanner handy, another way is to do their printing for them and print it o...

Let's say, for the sake of the illustration, that the most unpleasant part of the visit to the dentist is the drilling into one's teeth.  Imagine, then, if, just before the drilling was about to start, your dentist put on some clown music, and went out for a cigarette break.  In comes a complete stranger, wielding a drill, wearing a tee-shirt saying "outsourced-drillingz-R-US", with the rest of their outfit being a clown costume.  They then set about clumsily trying to drill into your face, while your dentist, with whom you thought you had the relationship, is nowhere to be seen. Some time in the current compliance era, during which no real economic growth has taken place in the West, estate agents in various jurisdictions (including Guernsey and the UK apparently) had to start compliancing buyers of real estate objects.  Although there are several very unpleasant parts of the buying procedure, getting complianced is arguably the most unpleasant part.  How does ...

There is a prevalence on Amazon of "vintage style" stereos.  These are cargo cult items; nothing about the ergonomics is "vintage". Some differences between actual vintage stereo and "vintage style" stereo off Amazon or from today shop: The vintage stereo has one button for each source.  To select the source, you press the button, and it probably stays depressed.  The "vintage style" stereo has a single button that one must press repeatedly to toggle through the sources. The vintage stereo has a continuous volume knob, heavy to turn, with a physical stop at the minimum and a physical stop at the maximum (which you don't use when it's powered up), preventing it turning further.  The "vintage style" stereo has a lightweight wheel, that can be turned either way indefinitely round and round without stopping.  Each click clockwise asks a control system to turn the volume up a discrete notch, and each click anticlockwise asks a contro...

Yesterday, for the first time since around 2002, I had to dial 999, the UK emergency number.  My life was in danger due to idiots deliberately launching rocks down a mountain-side. In the end I made around five calls to 999, with Dyfed-Powys police ultimately failing to turn up. I then received an SMS from Sure, the Guernsey mobile network, saying I'd used 25 GBP of my 50 GBP roaming allowance.  So, are they charging 999 emergency calls at full rates?  When the limit is reached, does the customer then lose the capability to engage in futile attempts to summon Dyfed-Powys police? (The calls variously went to South Wales, Gwent, and Dyfed-Powys constabularies, but I think I was in Dyfed-Powys, and no one bothered showing up).

 more to come soon, but just a placeholder to say, this guy is a piece pf shit:

Today is sunny, so it’s hot in people’s cars. Checkin, for the voyage Condor yesterday brought forward by two hours, was supposed to have closed 20 minutes ago, but there is a big vehicle queue for checkin, and I'm still in it. What’s the best way for everyone to deal with this? (a) switch engines off when stationary; get out of vehicle and wait; or (b) everyone run their engines, most of them diesel, including the motor home guys, so that they can breathe nice air-conditioned air thick with exhaust fumes In some ways it’s a typical tragedy-of-the-commons situation, but with immediate, and obvious consequences.  You can feel how unhealthy it is when you breathe it in.  And it has an obvious and easy solution. Humans, eh. Then I spotted two cyclists. In the same lane as the motor vehicles with all their engines running. I spoke to them, and found out they had come from Poole. Going to St Malo. Not stopping off to see Guernsey, just had to disembark to change boat. I said people...

After finding how to log in to a Condor Ferries account (it's a tiny "my account" as a footnote of the web page, along with the other footers), I was amazed to find I could modify an existing booking.  For a pretty-ropey Guernsey state-backed enterprise, this is impressive stuff. It had my booking on there, and I clicked on it.  I only changed the return date, and it went straight to giving me a choice of picking the return voyage (with voyages for the outward date, just one, also shown above).  This was amazing.  Usually, by now, on a web site, things would have just stopped working, or perhaps given a useless error message.  This was giving all the signs of actually going to work.  Whereas the probability of main happy journey succeeding on a web site is around 50%, it drops to around 5% for an exceptional flow. "An error occurred.  Value cannot be null.  Parameter name: source".  Phew, that's more like it.

The rubbish collection folk at my new place seem pickier than at other places on Guernsey. Last week, they removed some card packaging that I'd included in the card and paper (plastic) clear bag, and left it on the lane.  This week, they have attached a rejection label entitled "Polite Notice".  Just like modern software-engineered error messages (see attached tag "extremely_general_error_handling"), this does not give a specific reason why the bag was rejected, but instead lists miscellaneous possible "reasons", leaving the victim guessing, or perhaps trying to follow a process of elimination. In this case, some possible reasons, which the label does not claim to be exhaustive ("was most likely because ..."), and of which none apply, are: (i) "did not have the required payment sticker" -- no, I applied to 90 litre sticker; or  (ii) (a) "too heavy" -- no, I estimate it was 3kg, and I easily supported the bag's weight o...

One of the most basic aspects of user-programmability in real-world computing is being able to say "open this file type with that application". In Windows 95, in the file manager application, which I think was called Windows Explorer, this was easy.  There was "open", and "open with".  "open" used the default application for the file type, and was also the action performed by just clicking or double-clicking on the file.  Other applications, capable of opening that file type, were under "open with".  The right applications tended to end up in the list.  I'm pretty sure there was a way to choose a different one, anyway.  The default application for the type could be changed easily enough; I don't remember the details. Fast forward three decades, and change OS to GNOME/Lunix. Well, "Videos" (bad name for application) just failed to open it, giving a big error message about codecs.  I know mplayer is installed, so I'l...