Complain! Complain! Complain!

Posted on by inkbiotic
IMG_20190611_124321
An allium

Any of you keeping track might know that I bought a new laptop a few days ago. And in many ways it is great – it doesn’t take half an hour to open Word, it doesn’t crash at the sight of WordPress and it’s not held together by elastic bands and bulldog clips.

However, there’s one small problem. When I was looking at the website, the size of the hard drive was listed as two different amounts: 1 terabyte (huge!) and 250 gigabytes (foolishly small). After reading the reviews and asking Hamoudi what he thought, we came to the conclusion that it had two hard drives and one was 250GB and the other was 1TB. We were both wrong.

So what turned up was a laptop that has only 250 GB of space, once I put photos and music on it, it was half full. So I wrote to the dealers, and said very sweetly, ‘YOU LIED TO ME’.

A nice woman wrote back asking for proof of the misleading website, which I sent, she said ‘Urrr, ok I’ll get back to you in a bit.’ I said ‘cool, btw I don’t want to return the laptop, I just want to be compensated for the external hard drive I’ll have to buy.’

Yesterday afternoon I checked my email, nothing. Then late last night the doorbell rang with a parcel for me. It was an external hard drive for 1 terabyte. No note, still no email, but exactly what I wanted. That they didn’t contact me to tell me it was coming made this an obvious shut up and go away gesture, which is fine by me, I love being paid off.

Complaining can work, my friends. Just don’t abuse it.

Word of the day: Gudgeon  – a person easily cheated

“there’s no defense except all the errors made”

― Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Aspiration and reality

Posted on by inkbiotic

a8

AI has a simple piece of advice for life here. Something almost all can aim for. But not me, for I am a woubit. See below.

Word of the day: woubit – a small and shabby person, not suited for the royal family, too scruffy and liable to laugh loudly at the wrong time.

Oh! And I’ve got a new laptop, finally. I’m only half using it so far and I’ve already had to write and ask the seller why it’s not the same as the description, buuuuut otherwise it looks good. It doesn’t keep coming to a wheezy stop where it does nothing but stare like this one (currently held together by three bulldog clips, an elastic band and some electrical tape) does. Anyway, I’ll leave you with some even wiser words from The Curious Dog…

“Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won’t go to prison.”

― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Wise words for a sorry world

Posted on by inkbiotic

NBP5n0V761

Well here’s some inspiration I actually agree with!

Then today the scaffolding was down and the painters had gone. I was wondering yesterday how they would paint underneath where the scaffolding was against the wall/step. The answer is: they wouldn’t, they’d leave it unpainted. UWnpainted squares all over the walls and ground.

 

 

At least there’s no way the landlady can pin this on us.

A wise aspiration for us ALL

Posted on by inkbiotic

NBP5nDMr61

Quite a few politicians at the moment seem to be making the leap from self-interested-and-incompetent to fucking-despotic. So AI has come up with a great ambition to aim for.

Word of the day: Barbarocracy – government by barbarians

I’ve been a bit confused about how our painters have been painting the house. They’ve got scaffolding up which is attached to the wall, covering small sections of it. It also rests on the steps that they’re painting a nice cheery red. But how can they paint under/behind the scaffolding? Will they do those bits after?

No sign of Brennan, the sad walking man. It’s been days now.

AI has become kind of threatening

Posted on by inkbiotic

hammer3

I don’t think the Artificial Inspiration likes me very much anymore. I’ve been watching Jessica Jones recently, and this has a Kilgrave vibe to it.

HAL 9000: Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?

Word of the day: theologaster – petty or shallow theologian

Angry strangers

Posted on by inkbiotic

womn

A woman on the tube today had a high vis vest on, she wasn’t acting oddly at all, just standing by the window at the end of the carriage looking out so that her back was turned towards me. Written in huge letters across the back of the high vis was

I’m straight, get it? Yes, I’m a woman and an engineer so keep your prejudices to yourself. Even in a high vis I’m straight.

Then on the front

Straight hetero engineer

I’m undecided what I think of this. On the one hand I’m sympathetic to the hassle women get for working in what are traditionally men’s roles, because I’ve had plenty over the years. It isn’t upsetting, but it’s irritating and it wears you down. On the other, writing it in huge letters on your clothes is somewhat stroppy and attention seeking, since 99% of people wouldn’t give a crap either way, and the only reason people were staring at her was because they were trying to work out what her high-vis said. On the other hand (I have three hands now) what’s the stress about being gay or straight? Does it matter if someone assumes she’s gay? On the other hand (now I have four hands, I’m a mutant!) I don’t know the circumstances surrounding this, maybe she didn’t even write the words herself.

Any other hands people can help me with?

Word of the day: paralipsis – fixing attention subject by pretending to neglect it

More AI rules for life

Posted on by inkbiotic

wGJgqyv46Q

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Word of the day: Galeanthropy – belief that one is a cat

Today I saw a kestrel. That’s it.

Walk never-ending

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

je51e3v3yb831
Wise words

“Well you know what they say, put five hundred monkeys in a room and they’ll come up with Shakespeare”

The guy chatting to his friend on the train, I don’t think he thought this one through

There’s a young man who lives down my road. I often see him on my way into work and one my walk home. On the odd occasion I’ve been walking that bit of road in the middle of the day, I’ve seen him then too. He walks with his head hung low, slowly plodding one foot then the other, up and down towards the station and back again. I figure he must live in the halfway house on my road and they kick him out during the day. I always want to talk to him because it seems like a lonely life, but since he’s staring down at the floor I can’t catch his eye.

Anyway, today he was sitting in front of a house, in the driveway, on his knees, facing the building. His head hung low as always. Just kneeling there, long enough for me to walk up the road and past him without moving. It was worrying.

Word of the day – Eremiomania – abnormal interest in stillness

Nature is odd

Posted on by inkbiotic

a25

I’m not sure this is a good idea. Where would I put it all?

Was reducing a twenty-five foot bay tree to about twelve foot high today. I didn’t have a ladder, so mostly I was cutting huge chunks out by sawing through thick stems lower down, doing a bit of climbing so I could reach. I could see there were two nests near the top of the tree, it’s past nesting season and there was no tetchy birds around, so I was sure they were empty. After a few hours of cutting and clambering I finally sawed through the branch with one of the nests on and those whole thing came crashing down and landed on the ground. But the nest had vanished.

There was the branch with a bundle of dead leaves next to it. No nest.

But then I thought having a bundle of dead leaves in a tree was weird, not like they’d been pruned and left there, they must have been put there. I was working with Ezekiel (don’t think I’ve mentioned him, he’s very mellow and knows a lot about nature) and asked him what he thought.

IMG_20190807_113422
See? It just looks like a pile of dead leaves

‘Well that,’ he said ‘looks like a squirrel’s nest, he’d have built it for the winter to hibernate in. Looks like he never properly used it though, there’s no poo.’

IMG_20190807_113506
When we broke it open you could see the leaves were rolled up.

Ezekiel even found a nut in it. So there you are, a squirrel’s nest is made up of dead leaves rolled up.

IMG_20190807_113540
Ez finding the nut

The other nest was just a bird’s nest and was only used by woodlice.