Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

zagubov

We're not putting the bins out either. It's mad out there. Had to take the dog out for his nocturnal perambulation and it wasn't very pleasant.

vivatifosi

SingleSue wrote: »

I live on top of a hill......

Me too:(

Hopefully if we are on top, this means neither of us are over the hill.

Still, whatever happens overnight, we won't be flooded.

Ah, the joys of the Chilterns.

vivatifosi

SingleSue wrote: »

Oh and a window is beggered, there was a bit of a gap, it was supposed to be on the list to be fixed by the HA (along with a multitude of other things under the decent homes scheme)...now there is a very large gap and it keeps opening, so think the window has been caught by the wind and the internal catch broken, anyone got any blu tac?

The silver duct tape is probably your best bet if you have any. If it is wood, you could screw it shut if it is being replaced anyway.

Generali

GDB2222 wrote: »

I am looking at a spreadsheet formula that says:

=IF($A72<=L$35,MAX(0,($B$10*M71+$B$11*M72)/EXP($B$6 * $B$3/$B$5),$G$2*(L30-$G$3)),"")

This came from a spreadsheet in financial mathematics, so it needs to be dead accurate. Yet, it looks like the worst sort of coding**, and it is almost impossible to check. There must be a better way of doing this, that is less error-prone.

If somebody wrote procedural code like that, they'd be shown the door.

I end up writing a lot of stuff like that. When I do I generally put it in a macro so at least I can include a comment describing what the output is meant to be.

The current thing I am working on probably has about a comment per each two-three lines of code.

I'm not a professional coder and really my company has two options:

1. Stump up a load of $$$$$$ for an IT bloke to help me do what I need. That's a pain in the butt because they don't understand the investment side and the internal charging structure is a joke.
2. Roughly hack together something that I need and explain it to a couple of other people for them to forget too. Frankly, given the cost of IT at our place, we could just rewrite everything annually and that would be cheaper than using IT.

SingleSue

vivatifosi wrote: »

The silver duct tape is probably your best bet if you have any. If it is wood, you could screw it shut if it is being replaced anyway.

Unfortunately it is one of the bedroom windows, so would require a ladder....don't quite think a ladder is sensible in this weather :rotfl:

Luckily, it is James and Josh's room so it can be closed off although I have managed to rig something up to keep it closed tonight with copious amounts of tape, cardboard, string and blu tack!

Generali

Spirit wrote: »

I live at the bottom of a hill, adjacent to a forest. When it is really windythe sound from the trees is something else.

Tonight we cooked a meal we have never done before, lots of different flavours and tasted of winter.

Red cabbage cooked with orange peel, redwie and sherry vinegar.
Partridge cooked in chinese 5 spice served with black pudding
Rosti
Sherry sauce made with a game stock.

I had never cooked partridge before.It was delicious but I had lots of problems with my hand whilst preparing dinner. At one point I could not get the top off the sherry, the top was stuck on the magimix with the grated potatoes stuck inside and a cooks knife wedged in another large potato. OH had to rescue me (& and dinner )when he got in from work. Worth it in the end, and I could see the funny side.

Oooh, I love game. I cooked partridge with juniper and apple red cabbage (you stew it in red wine vinegar and sugar) for the now in-laws first time I met them.

I really miss game, you just can't get it here except for 'roo which is alright but nothing special frankly.

Today is the first roasting hot day of the year. 36C. It's going to be getting up to 41C on Friday before cooling off at the weekend. The towels I hung out less than an hour ago are bone dry already as it's quite breezy too.

We found a new place to rent. It's got a swimming pool:j:j:j. Well under budget too because it's on a busy road. We're pretty set back though and the road is a bit weird as it's only really busy in rush hour. Nobody uses it in the day or at night.

ivyleaf

What good news Generali! When's moving day?

Sue I do hope the HA will get on with getting the window sorted now that it actually won't stay closed :mad:

Pleased to say the bin men found the small bins/boxes and put them back in the same place, so I think we shall put them there every time now. We'd been having to put them on top of a small raised flowerbed which forms part of the wall, which meant any flowers got squashed! If we put them inside the wall they simply didn't get emptied as the men were in a rush and didn't see them.

Next door have finally got their big garden waste bin (delays in supplying them as a lot more people signed up for the scheme than the council was expecting) and haven't used it yet, but I always put their bins away for them and am not looking forward to fighting to get the huge bin back into place. They are in the alley between the houses so it will mean pulling the other wheelie bin along the alley and onto the pavement in order to put the other one away as there's only room to put them one behind the other and they get emptied on alternate weeks. There's gravel in the alley, making it harder to move the big bins.

Anyway, enough moaning, sorry I put their bins away because they are physically unable to do it themselves, but sometimes I worry about whether there will be anyone to put ours away for us when we're in that situation.

Generali

ivyleaf wrote: »

What good news Generali! When's moving day?

Sue I do hope the HA will get on with getting the window sorted now that it actually won't stay closed :mad:

The new lease starts on Friday week. I'm looking forward to having a swim every morning.

ivyleaf wrote: »

Pleased to say the bin men found the small bins/boxes and put them back in the same place, so I think we shall put them there every time now. We'd been having to put them on top of a small raised flowerbed which forms part of the wall, which meant any flowers got squashed! If we put them inside the wall they simply didn't get emptied as the men were in a rush and didn't see them.

Next door have finally got their big garden waste bin (delays in supplying them as a lot more people signed up for the scheme than the council was expecting) and haven't used it yet, but I always put their bins away for them and am not looking forward to fighting to get the huge bin back into place. They are in the alley between the houses so it will mean pulling the other wheelie bin along the alley and onto the pavement in order to put the other one away as there's only room to put them one behind the other and they get emptied on alternate weeks. There's gravel in the alley, making it harder to move the big bins.

Anyway, enough moaning, sorry I put their bins away because they are physically unable to do it themselves, but sometimes I worry about whether there will be anyone to put ours away for us when we're in that situation.

Bloody council. I was once told that my bins hadn't been collected because the council only collects 'clean rubbish'.

A couple of weeks ago a couple of council workers to where I am currently locked me and the Generalissimos in the park for a laugh as far as I could tell.

SingleSue

ivyleaf wrote: »

What good news Generali! When's moving day?

Sue I do hope the HA will get on with getting the window sorted now that it actually won't stay closed :mad:

I won't hold my breath...last December I reported that the downpipe had come away from the side of the house and was creating a lake around the house every time it rained. They said they would be out in August to repair it!

It was a surveyor who finally did a quick fix on it....last month.

Or the god knows how many years having to deal with beggered central heating, reporting it numerous times and in the end, resorting to having my heating via plug in oil filled radiators. When it finally broke completely last winter, they said they had no record of any issues so it wasn't a priority, despite it being reported every gas check and apparently several times direct from the housing manager and of course, by me copious amounts of times.

I've had two surveyors here, one August 2014 and one last month. The first visit was with the housing manager and was very in depth, listing several things that were HA responsibility (including the boiler and central heating)...apart from the central heating and boiler (which was not because of the survey), nothing on the list has been done.

Apparently I need to be ringing up and shouting the odds at them, not my style as they have provided me a home to live in but the advice from those in the know (HA employees), it is who shouts the loudest who get results but that just seems so ungrateful to me.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

My gate to my front door jams .... so every time the wind rattles it I leap up and dash to the kitchen in case it's the postman trying to get in ..... because if it is and he's walking away/giving up I can open the kitchen window and he can pass the post through the window.

Each morning I unlock the kitchen window to enable this.....

The postman doesn't come every morning - and can arrive any time between 9am and 12pm. It's usually junk mail, unaddressed/delivered by the Post Office stuff.

I'm doing a LOT of leaping up and dashing about this morning! No post yet.

If I had skills/tools I could fix this myself, so I just looked up woodwork/carpentry courses and there are NONE. None whatsoever. It seems there are no courses you can go on that are useful skills around the house. All courses are for dumbed down craft-stuff. e.g. there's one Saturday course for upcycling photo frames using cut out pictures and craft glue .... but nothing involving tools where you can learn to put a shelf up or cut a bit of wood....

I don't think that you need to go on a course to learn to ease a garden gate. What you need is some confidence and some coarse sandpaper.