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).