The Department of Boneheadedness.

[jelgate]

I would think any adult let alone a cornor knows what happens when you combine water with electricity

[Ian-S]

Nope, there's a reason why most plugs are now sealed units, obviously they'll be mandating a maximum length of extension leads now thanks to these idiots.

Guess I better get ready to hand in my 50 meter one now

Another stupid thing these idiots fail to understand is that DC voltage is far more dangerous than AC even at low voltage, which is why he slowly cooked in the bath rather than the RCD tripping (presuming he had one, which tbh knowing his generation he probably removed it because it kept tripping out when he plugged in his phone while boiling the kettle and watching TV at the same time...).

[Annoyed]

They keep trying to idiot proof everything but the world just keeps coming up with better idiots.

[Ian-S]

indeed, they'd have a bloody fit if they went into my greenhouse and saw the arduino screwed to a plank of wood while propped across a bucket full of waste fish water mere inches from the battery and pipes, but hey it's fused

[garhkal]

There are layers of boneheadedness in this report. Layers and layers.

Yea. I nominate that dude for a darwin award..

Nope, there's a reason why most plugs are now sealed units, obviously they'll be mandating a maximum length of extension leads now thanks to these idiots.

Guess I better get ready to hand in my 50 meter one now

Another stupid thing these idiots fail to understand is that DC voltage is far more dangerous than AC even at low voltage, which is why he slowly cooked in the bath rather than the RCD tripping (presuming he had one, which tbh knowing his generation he probably removed it because it kept tripping out when he plugged in his phone while boiling the kettle and watching TV at the same time...).

And a small voltage with a lot of amps behind it is a LOT more deadly than a lot of voltage with only a small amount of current.

[Annoyed]

Even more important is the bath. Wet skin has very low resistance in comparison to dry skin.
Since I = V/R ( current equals Voltage / Resistance ), as the resistance drops, current rises.

Most people have accidentally juiced themselves with 110V at one time or another by accident, usually with dry skin. It will wake you up, but it won't usually kill you. Do that with wet skin, however, and... Can I have your stuff?

[garhkal]

Even more important is the bath. Wet skin has very low resistance in comparison to dry skin.
Since I = V/R ( current equals Voltage / Resistance ), as the resistance drops, current rises.

Most people have accidentally juiced themselves with 110V at one time or another by accident, usually with dry skin. It will wake you up, but it won't usually kill you. Do that with wet skin, however, and... Can I have your stuff?

That is why on ship, we were always told when working on power panels, wipe dry before hand!

[garhkal]

Not sure if this would count for this thread or for the one on general gripes (which i can't find right now). But i had a situation that royally irked me this week.

Was looking to do a yard sale, so did some online searching for if there are area rules/permits needed etc, and saw a site that, similar to backpage, allows one to post who's hosting when/where a yard sale (or garage sale as some prefer calling it)..
on that site, a nearby town (New Albany on the NE side of columbus, when i am down in Reynoldsburg), there was a church holding a "Community yard sale inside"..
SO i called up 2 different people (the communications director and the building manager) thinking if anyone, one of thsoe 2 would know about it). Left 4 different voice mails from Monday and Tues, (with Friday being the day of).

SO got NO response from either voicemails.. But decided that since the church's own site listed the sale as being friday and sat, i would go ahead and show up early on Fri, to see what was needed to go set up inside (since last time i went to one of these community yard sales, the place charged a 3 buck fee for people to sell their wares there).. doors were shut with a big sign on saying "Opens promptly at 9am".

Waited around, and saw some people going in/coming out (one even had a name tag on so thought they were likely church workers.. Started piling some of our stuff from the car OFF to the side (so was not blocking anything), and stood around waiting.
One of the ones coming out/going in, asked us if we would like to use a cart, and we politely declined, but he said "let me go inside and see if there's room".

After coming back out, and letting us know that unfortunately there was not, a woman standing to his left told us "Well in that case, why not just set up out here. Stick to the side you are on so you don't block the entrance.. Give people a good look as they head inside"..
This gentleman even nodded as she spoke..

So we did. Got our clothes rack setup, the bookshelf set up, and the table for the china/glass ware.. Then started waiting to see if we got anyone.. Had a few lookie looes while others were going in and some came out with bags full..

THEN 1 hr later, we had that same gentleman and another woman who asked us what we were doing, the sale was inside.. THEN promptly asked us to pack up and leave...?!?!??!

First off, if we were NOT authorized to have set up outside, WHY then did that male worker NOD in assent when the other lady said to? IF she Was not authorized to have said so, why didn;t that male worker correct her (Like she was not one of the boss people and was just another shopper)??

Secondly, since that guy SAW us starting to set up outside before going back in, if he KNEW we would have been asked to leave, WHY did it take 1 hr before he came back out to let us know??

And lastly, if you are advertizing a "community yard sale", and have contact info for people listed, WHY THE HELL Don't you return people's calls??!?!?!?!?!?


Just a big rant that irked me the hell off...

[Annoyed]

Just as an aside, I am a big garage sale hound in the summers. I have gotten some fantastic deals. But I tend to avoid the church and or community center sales; things are generally overpriced there, and you don't often find deals where the seller doesn't know the value of what they are selling as you do at the private sales. Those are the best deals. I once got a brand-new Sony 300 CD disc player, never out of the box, for $10 bucks because the seller was some mid-20's girl who had been given the player as a gift. Not knowing how to set it up or even having a component system to connect it to, she had stuffed it in her closet for 10 years before having a sale...

[mad_gater]

Thrift stores like Salvation Army or Goodwill can be good places to shop too. I've gotten some good deals there too...like the VCR I just bought for like $5 that seems to be in reasonably good working condition so far that I'm currently using in conjunction with the external USB video capture card (A Pinnacle DVC-100) on my computer to digitize some old VHS tapes. I might do some thrift store shopping tomorrow to see if they have any DVD version of these movies as I want to minimize how often I use the VCR/capture card set up as this method is very time consuming for one thing and generates large AVI files (like AVI files that are at least 60 GB's for just a 1 hour VHS video). I do use separate software to encode and convert the large AVI into a video file that has a much more reasonable size and delete those large AVI's but the software generating those with every tape I capture means that I can only do like maybe one movie at a time. Unless of course I can see if there's a way in my capture software to change the capture settings so that it captures the video into a more manageable file right off the bat (I use VirtualDub as the capturing software). But once digitized into manageable video files I can play them on my Blu-ray player via the USB port

[Ian-S]

Oh don't get me started over organizational incompetency....

But since you mention it we live in Social Housing (what used to be known as Council Housing), it's not quiet Assisted Housing as the USA has, think of it as a non-profit charity trust private letting their properties on long term lets. Anyway five years ago the gutters became blocked, as a result of this, three years ago the roof sprung a leak, both are strictly off limits to residence, we're not allowed in the loft and not allowed to touch the exterior, everything must be reported to be repaired by the trust, anyway last year I got so fedup waiting I cleaned the gutters out myself, they eventually turned up three weeks ago to do them, five years after it was first reported.

So fast forward to this week and two guys are standing in the community area looking up and taking photos, I think great, finally we might get the roof fixed.

Nope, Saturday we get a letter telling us that the community areas must be kept clear at all times and the empty flower pot outside our front door is a breach of the tenancy as it is 'a trip hazard that could actively prevent residents exiting the property in the event of a fire' and if it is not removed within seven days eviction proceedings will be started.


So they are going to get a letter back saying:
First off it says nothing in our tenancy about the community area, only that it must be kept tidy, regardless of what they may think, uk contract law does not permit the insertion of additional terms into written agreements at will, and certainly not without written agreement of both parties, so I look forward to them explaining exactly what term we are in breach of to a Judge.

Secondly, they themselves marked out a buggy park area, even though nobody has young kids, at the bottom of the stairs directly in front of the first step, if that's not an ill conceived trip hazard, then I don't know what is.

Thirdly, having been in a house fire as a kid, I can tell them with some certaintity that if I'm not able to see an empty 1 foot high plant pot due to the smoke that is located two feet to the left of my front door, then I've got bigger things to worry about than tripping over it.

And finally, since they now have their priorities in order, when exactly do they expect to fix the leaking roof which has been reported to them six times over the last three years?

and to think these are the kind of people who are running this Country... I sometimes think a hamster could do a better job.

[Womble]

Just as an aside, I am a big garage sale hound in the summers. I have gotten some fantastic deals. But I tend to avoid the church and or community center sales; things are generally overpriced there, and you don't often find deals where the seller doesn't know the value of what they are selling as you do at the private sales. Those are the best deals. I once got a brand-new Sony 300 CD disc player, never out of the box, for $10 bucks because the seller was some mid-20's girl who had been given the player as a gift. Not knowing how to set it up or even having a component system to connect it to, she had stuffed it in her closet for 10 years before having a sale...

Not knowing the value of what they are selling... Have I got a story!

15 years ago, my mom's upstairs neighbors were moving out. They asked for some help with moving furniture, taking stuff outside etc. and in the process they offered my mom- then a new immigrant who could use any help - to take whatever she wanted from the old stuff they intended to throw away. My mom took some od their old furniture and small items, and in the process found a drawer full of old cutlery and an old coin. She suspected that both the cutlery and the coin had some value and brought them to the neighbors. They told her it was useless old trash and she could keep it all. So she did.

Last year she came to visit me in Israel together with my sister, and brought the old spoons with her to show them to a jeweller. They turned out to have been a set of antique silver cutlery made in Russia just before the 1917 revolution. She sold them on the spot and made enough money to cover all of our expenses during her trip. including celebrating my birthday in a pricy restaurant. Didn't have to exchange a single Euro into shekels.

Two weeks ago, she gave me the old coin for my 40th birthday. It's a 10 franc gold coin issued in 1914. It's market worth is just under $300 - enough to pay for my next ticket to Germany in December if I can bring myself to sell it.

[garhkal]

Thrift stores like Salvation Army or Goodwill can be good places to shop too. I've gotten some good deals there too..

They are very good for clothing for my mother (she's 70+), especially since most of the tyrpe in the stores are aimed at only 40 and younger crowds (or in some cases mid 20s and younger!)
Though most of those types of stores you can't sell your stuff to.

Oh don't get me started over organizational incompetency....

But since you mention it we live in Social Housing (what used to be known as Council Housing), it's not quiet Assisted Housing as the USA has, think of it as a non-profit charity trust private letting their properties on long term lets.

Don't get me started on my rants on council buggering upidness..
28 years ago when i still lived there, we had this tree in our lawn. BY council rules we had to keep it trimmed, but cause it 'leaned into the pathway it was technically by THEIR OWN REGS their property, not ours". So we wrote, and wrote over a 17 mo period asking "WHEN is it gonna get cut down".
Always got a response of soon.
Eventually we said bugger it, and did as much of it as possible ourselves. THEN WE get a nasty gram from the, for cutting it down..

[Annoyed]

Don't get me started on my rants on council buggering upidness..
28 years ago when i still lived there, we had this tree in our lawn. BY council rules we had to keep it trimmed, but cause it 'leaned into the pathway it was technically by THEIR OWN REGS their property, not ours". So we wrote, and wrote over a 17 mo period asking "WHEN is it gonna get cut down".
Always got a response of soon.
Eventually we said bugger it, and did as much of it as possible ourselves. THEN WE get a nasty gram from the, for cutting it down..

Sounds sorta like an episode of "Last Man Standing". S1E16 "Tree of Strife"

[garhkal]

Its crapola like that, that makes me never want to live in a HoA area..