The Vent and Rant Thread

[badgoodDeb]

We've got a guy who bikes to church (though not in the rain, preferably) ..... with his cello on the back of the bicycle. (That's why he avoids rainy days.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cromag

After the warm weather and rain we've been having lately, most of the snow has melted away.

But not the "gift" that the town's snow plow left us. The mailbox is still inaccessible to pedestrians and vehicles alike. And it's solid ice.

EDIT: No one else on our street seems to have gotten on the plow driver's bad side. Still don't know what I did to bother him.

Y'know, it was weird--when I saw the images, I did a double-take, because your house looks shockingly similar to the house my parents had when I was a teenager (so, just yesterday, eh???). Then I saw your location--and NJ is where my folks' home was, too.

Their place was on the first township census maps in 1600-something; the house turned 400 years old while we/they were living there (late 60s-early 80's). I have warm memories about that house. Hmph, not to ruin the zeitgeist of the thread, but...thanks for posting it!

Hitch

[cromag]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Y'know, it was weird--when I saw the images, I did a double-take, because your house looks shockingly similar to the house my parents had when I was a teenager (so, just yesterday, eh???). Then I saw your location--and NJ is where my folks' home was, too.

Their place was on the first township census maps in 1600-something; the house turned 400 years old while we/they were living there (late 60s-early 80's). I have warm memories about that house. Hmph, not to ruin the zeitgeist of the thread, but...thanks for posting it!

Hitch

Ours was built in 1963, but it's a classic split level colonial, and a very common design in this area. The development was built on an orchard-and-what-have-you plot that was subdivided. The original home dates to the mid 1700s and is listed as an historical building. It looks very similar to the "newer" homes.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cromag

Ours was built in 1963, but it's a classic split level colonial, and a very common design in this area. The development was built on an orchard-and-what-have-you plot that was subdivided. The original home dates to the mid 1700s and is listed as an historical building. It looks very similar to the "newer" homes.

Yup. Ours (obviously) started life as one-room'er, with a root cellar daylighted below (for those that don't know the term, that means that one side or more of a building is built into the side of a hill. The natural terrain slopes away, so that the opposing side is at ground level, on the opposite side of the front of the house. This is fungible, hence all my italics.) Then it was added onto..to the left, plus more root cellar. Then ditto to the right. Then a 2nd-3rd (depending upon how you look at it) was added above. Ooops, then it had another addition to the right, two floors. Sprawl!

Under the plaster in the main foyer (the original house)--yes, real plaster walls, mind you--was the original brick. The wood floors had original boards. Place was, like yours, on an apple orchard, but fortunately, it wasn't subdivided. Lovely old place. Hell on maintenance, though!

:-)

[covingtoncat73]

Living with my mother is really getting on my nerves. She has no respect for me as evidenced by the big fight at Christmas when she flipped out because I mildly objected to her saving crumpled wrapping paper. This is a really small house. It is MY house. I don't like clutter. The paper is currently where she put it in the screened room twomonths later.

Today she flipped out because I said I was thinking about buying a fresher bike and the local Wal Mart had a good price on a likely bike and my tax refund is in. She was angry I should think of such a thing and should just get the tire of my old bike fixed.

This does sound bad but, I have to admit, she does wonders in my yard and had helped out in.other ways. I just always feel judged, shamed, and childish around her.

[Katsunami]

Well, I've started a week's holiday (at home) today. So far so good. Everything breaks.

Two weeks ago, I've taken apart my espresso machine and gave it a full cleaning. It made coffee and espresso for two weeks, until tomorrow; I turned it on, and it just blinks four error lights at me. Manual says: "Contact manufacturer for repair." As the device is three years old, it's out of warranty, and thus not economical to have it repaired.

The Brother labelprinter I ordered (as stated above) arrived broken, four days ago. It has a clicky keyboard, but the G, H, B, N and M don't click. The G actually often hangs when pressed, and the device says "GGGGGGGGG". Sometimes it even activates when pressing keys near it. I've been calling the store, who wanted me to call the manufacturer first to confirm a defect, so I called Brother, who (after half an hour on hold because of 'contacting second line support') confirmed the keyboard was in fact broken, after which I've contacted the store who wanted an e-mail with the call reference to Brother so they can arrange a swap of the device, so I've send that to them and have been waiting for 2 days for an answer, which is not in yet, and that's why I'm not going to get one before (at least) Wednesday next week due to Carnival in the Netherlands. Capice? And if they (the store) wants to, they can even get bitchy and start telling me that I have had the device for more than 8 days after arrival, so they can't swap it. If they do, then all hell breaks loose.

And to top it of, I have been working on the raaaaiilllroad.... oh. No, I've been working on fixing my Calibre library, and I'm almost done. All 818 books are now perfect, after slogging 30 books a day for the last 2,5 weeks, and I only need to consolidate the tags, which I was doing, and Windows 10 decided to BSOD on me. Even though I've disliked many things about Windows, I haven't seen it BSOD in at least 15 years, if hardware and drivers are OK.

The laptop, a brand-new, 1 month old workstation class DELL 7510, didn't even reboot.

But then it did. To make sure everything is fine, I run "sfc /scannow", which reports errors in the Windows files. OK... "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" it is. Can't find sources. OK then. Provide source to intallation media. Still doesn't work. WTF...

*breaks out full hard disk image*

Fails to install.

OK... maybe the program used to create the image has problems with the latest BIOS, installed a week ago. I'll do a full re-install.

This also fails halfway through. Tried again: Can't even see an SSD anymore. Reboot to BIOS:

"PCIe SSD-0: (NONE)".

WTF, where is my SSD?

Reboot:

"PCIe SSD-0: <long serial number here>".

Fine. Try to reinstall again. Fail. SSD gone again.

So the SSD is blinking in and out of BIOS/UEFI recognition. This will probably be the source of that BSOD. Thinking that this might be a BIOS/UEFI problem (which is hardly likely, because this BIOS/UEFI was installed a week ago and working since then), I download the previous version and try to install it using the flash utility.

"BIOS Flash not possible. Downgrade not supported."

So I can't do anything, basically, and have to assume it's the SSD that is broken. This notebook has next business day warranty, which can, obviously, only be carried out on next Wednesday due to Carnival. Even if the SSD is replaced, it's not sure to resolve the problem, as it could be the mainboard/M.2 slot that is defective.

As I didn't yet create a new backup from the Calibre work I did yesterday and today (fixed almost 100 books), I opened the laptop, removed the hard disk, and copied the library off of it on my desktop. There you have an example of why I refuse to buy computers that prevent me from getting at the hard disks/SSD's. (And also, why I never use third party backup tools, so I can read the files back on any computer; even a Live Linux CD if need be.)

Broken Espresso machine.
Broken label printer.
Broken laptop SSD.

No way to fix or replace anything for 5 days. Have a nice holiday.

Sometimes I'm so fed up with technology.

[Cinisajoy]

Here is some virtual hugs to the last two posters.
At covingtoncat,
Just curious how old is your mother?
Now in the wise words of my grandmother, "If I talk to you like you are twelve, just say yes ma'am and do what you want anyway."
Good luck.

[Rumpelteazer]

When it comes to mysteries, crime and thriller books my mother and I have similar tastes. She was in the mood for something new and not too hard (she's got the flu) and asked me if I could find something cozy-ish for her to read. After a quick scroll through Calibre I made a list of possibilities and went over to Amazon.nl to see what's available in Dutch. Although my mother's English is very good, she prefers to read book in Dutch.

Almost nothing from my list is translated in Dutch! In the end I did find that most of the Donna Leon books are translated, so those will have to do for now.

It's also very annoying that on Amazon.nl you still can't create a wishlist (the reason why I'm still using Amazon.com, despite annoying banners telling me I should move my account to the Dutch website).

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

It's also very annoying that on Amazon.nl you still can't create a wishlist (the reason why I'm still using Amazon.com, despite annoying banners telling me I should move my account to the Dutch website).

Can you actually buy English books at the same price on the Dutch Amazon site? I've never checked, as I never moved my account. I never, ever read anything in Dutch, except if it is a Dutch book originally. If the book is in a language I don't read (such as some Japanese ones), I read the English translation.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can you actually buy English books at the same price on the Dutch Amazon site? I've never checked, as I never moved my account. I never, ever read anything in Dutch, except if it is a Dutch book originally. If the book is in a language I don't read (such as some Japanese ones), I read the English translation.

I only read books in English, unless it's originally in Dutch. You can get English books on Amazon.nl, I regularly get a banner telling me that the book I'm viewing on Amazon.com is also available on the Dutch website. I don't know if it's more expensive, the same price or cheaper on the Dutch website. I did notice that NL keeps the same release dates as the US; I wanted a book that was released in the UK a couple of weeks ahead of the US, I had hoped to be able to get it on the NL site, but alas.

The fact that there is no wishlist (which I use to wait for price drops) is the main reason I'm staying with the US store for now. It would also be nice if they sold Amazon giftcards in Dutch brick and mortar stores.

[Katsunami]

Well... the SSD-stuff seems to be arranged, but it took some doing.

The helpdesk guy wanted to know "how the computer reacted when the SSD had a dropout." Well, it crashes. "How does it crash, sir?" Grrrr. If I'm working in program X, then Program X crashes. If I'm working in Windows Explorer, then Explorer crashes. If I'm really unlucky, I get a BSOD.

"Does the computer also reboot when there is an error?" No. It shows a BSOD.
"That is very strange." No, it isn't. I configured it not to reboot on a BSOD so I can see the error.
"Hmmmmmmm"
"Can you re-install Windows?" No. I can't see an SSD. If I see it, it invariably drops out during installation.
"And what happens then?" The installation crashes. (At this point, I'm like: )
"Did you run a diagnostics on the SSD?" Can't. Most of the time, it sees no SSD. If there is, the diagnostics are OK, as they only take 2-3 seconds.
"When you run the diagnostic, do you get an error?" No. Everything checks out fine. Diagnostics doesn't see the SSD, so it doesn't check it either, obviously. All parts it can see check out, so there are no errors.
"So it runs as if there wasn't an SSD in the system at all?" Yes.

Now I'm like:

Then I remembered: I had a strange behavior on Januari 28. I ran the diagnostics, and got an error regarding the SSD. Thinking that the diagnostics might just not handle SSD's and and only do HDD's, I brushed it aside and rebooted.

Looking into the diagnostics log, I could tell the guy that the SSD had behaved strangely on januari 28, I did run a diagnostics on it, and because it dropped out for a few seconds (just at the right time, during the diagnostic), I did get an error which was logged.

He was finally happy, although it took him another 15 minutes to arrange a repair. Tomorrow, someone will come to replace the SSD. Hopefully, that'll be enough. I just hope I don't have to call again to have the mainboard replaced...

===

Oh, and regarding the Brother label printer? The store basically says: "You just call the manufacturer again and arrange a repair. Bye."

I've filed a complaint and given them another chance to handle this properly. If they don't, this will be my last purchase there, and I'll file an official complaint with the appropriate consumer authorities (for what good it'll do). I don't have the time to start a legal battle to get an €84 device repaired/replaced. Unfortunately, it's more economical to send it to the manufacturer.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Oh, and regarding the Brother label printer? The store basically says: "You just call the manufacturer again and arrange a repair. Bye."

I've filed a complaint and given them another change to handle this properly. If they don't, this will be my last purchase there

Quite right. The whole point of buying at a physical store is for good support if there's a problem. Otherwise you'd just buy from the cheapest box-shifter.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Quite right. The whole point of buying at a physical store is for good support if there's a problem. Otherwise you'd just buy from the cheapest box-shifter.

This isn't a physical store. It's a webshop, and there, I have even *MORE* rights than I would have had at a physical store.

It's not for nothing that the store has to handle stuff like this. What if the manufacturer would have been located in Zimbabwe, with no office in the Netherlands or even Europe?

I'm not really blaming Brother for the defective device; shit happens. I have two printers (an A3 inkjet, and an a4 laser) which I have been using without problems for years, and I'm sure they'll fix this label printer to work as it should.

Point is, I shouldn't have to deal with Brother at this point.

The retailer even states on its site that a product can be swapped if it breaks within the first 8 days of arrival after they confirm the defect with the manufacturer, but now they are telling me by e-mail that "Brother has denied a direct swap and I should send the device to their (Brother's) Technical Service"... even though I have given them the ticket number (per their own procedure) in which Brother states that the device is defective.

They are just hiding behind the manufacturer, trying to forgo their responsibility of having this problem resolved. If they don't resolve, I'll file a complaint with ACM (the Dutch consumer authority). I wonder if they'll do anything to companies as large as this one.

As said, I don't have the time to start a legal battle over this, and for the price the device costs, it's not worth it. Even if I win (which I would, without a doubt), the cost of winning is higher than even just trashing the device and buying another one. The only thing that irks me is that because of this, a store can get away with such lackluster customer service.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

This isn't a physical store. It's a webshop, and there, I have even *MORE* rights than I would have had at a physical store.

Ah - I misunderstood. Yes, for a DOA device (if your consumer laws are similar to UK) you have more rights in the first few days for distance purchases.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Ah - I misunderstood. Yes, for a DOA device (if your consumer laws are similar to UK) you have more rights in the first few days for distance purchases.

They are similar. They are both based on European regulations and guidelines.

The store has a convoluted procedure:
- Report the defect to us
- Call the manufacturer
- Get the ticket number of the call
- Report back to us with the ticket number
- If the manufacturer says the device is defective, we'll replace it.

Now the store states that they have followed up with Brother, and that Brother says that they are denying a direct replacement. I don't believe that. They keyboard doesn't work. Several keys either don't register, or hang (keep registering indefinitely). How much more defective do you want it to be?