Someone on the previous thread said Carlisle had its attractions. Citation needed.
Carlisle has one nice cocktail bar
A great railway Station and nice Castle
Shame they decided to build a four lane dual carriageway between the town and the castle.
and it - at least in 2016 - not open on a Sunday.
I got stranded in Carlisle one late Summer Sunday that year, the hostel didn't open until 1800, the pubs - bar some cavernous outfits on the outskirts - were all shut and in any case the football that day was West Brom vs Middlesboro ...
Absolute state of it.
At least you weren't in Barrow.
I was in Barrow later that week. It's really not that bad.
It's not even a good place to change trains.
Well, quite, it's a through line, unless you're going to Sellafield.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
The only problem we have with BT is that an incoming call on the landline seems to knock out broadband for 1-2 minutes. Can't be bothered to work out why as we've trained everyone we know to call our cell phones, thereby conceding the landline to spammers who can safely be ignored.
They have just moved my landline to digital
What's a landline?
It's the way most people's broadband works.
Nah, that's line rental.
I'm 30 in less than 2 months and have never had a landline phone!
We've got a landline but hardly use it. But since we'd still have to pay the line rental would there be any advantage in dropping it? None that I can see.
One less thing to dust
We've got one of these for nostalgia value. It's a bit of a curiosity for anyone under 30 - they all want to give it a try.
Still works fine - even in a power cut.
Can still remember how impressed me and my sisters were when our grandmother got a "Princess" phone, think it was pink.
I remember Trimphones, they cost more for some reason. You had to rent the handset off BT (or the GPO or whatever they were called at the time).
Dominic Raab photographed at Chelsea game without a mask Image shows justice secretary apparently ignoring club guidance to wear face covering while seated in stadium
That's carefully cropped image, i have a feeling wide shot might show very few wearing one.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Suspect they hit the wrong button - easy to miss 'like' and hit 'off topic'. Don't take it to heart Big_G, no one thinks of Aberfan without feeling very sad.
"Twixtmas" is certainly better than the "Chrimbo Limbo" I saw it referred to as in a BBC website article the other day.
Though the latter is a better description.
I rather like this time of year. Have always been off between Christmas and new year. After Jan 1st there is no excuse not to be at work, but the week between is perfect for dog walking, over eating etc. I seem to recall in previous times Christmas was much more stretched out than now. Perhaps we should revert?
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
That German curve is delta not omicron.
They are still below 40% of new cases being omicron, so we don't really know the impact of German measures on omicron.
1. Just because "Omicron accounted for about 17,000 out of Germany’s almost 43,000 new confirmed cases on Thursday" doesn't mean that Omicron is still below 40% of cases. If Omicron is much milder, and given the much reduced routine testing because of the holiday, there's probably a higher percentage of Omicron cases being missed than Delta.
2. You can still try and see how fast Omicron is increasing in Germany in the last weeks. This https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Omikron-Faelle/Omikron-Faelle.html?__blob=publicationFile seems to suggest that Omicron cases increased from 0.3 cases per 100,000 in calendar week 48, to 10.2 cases in calendar week 51. I'll leave it to someone else to compare that with the rate of increase at a similar stage of Omicron in a country without any restrictions, but I'm guessing it's going to be slower - and remember Germany has a higher percentage of people without immunity from previous infections.
The other problem with that Guardian article is that it says schools in Germany are due to go back on the 3rd of January. For most of Germany schools don't restart until the 10th.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
Better Call Saul - fantastic. Final series in 2022.
Dominic Raab photographed at Chelsea game without a mask Image shows justice secretary apparently ignoring club guidance to wear face covering while seated in stadium
That's carefully cropped image, i have a feeling wide shot might show very few wearing one.
"Twixtmas" is certainly better than the "Chrimbo Limbo" I saw it referred to as in a BBC website article the other day.
Though the latter is a better description.
I rather like this time of year. Have always been off between Christmas and new year. After Jan 1st there is no excuse not to be at work, but the week between is perfect for dog walking, over eating etc. I seem to recall in previous times Christmas was much more stretched out than now. Perhaps we should revert?
Tbf, I used to like it before I was retired - it was a good time to recharge the batteries.
Now it's just a bit pants compared to being retired through the rest of the year.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
That German curve is delta not omicron.
They are still below 40% of new cases being omicron, so we don't really know the impact of German measures on omicron.
1. Just because "Omicron accounted for about 17,000 out of Germany’s almost 43,000 new confirmed cases on Thursday" doesn't mean that Omicron is still below 40% of cases. If Omicron is much milder, and given the much reduced routine testing because of the holiday, there's probably a higher percentage of Omicron cases being missed than Delta.
2. You can still try and see how fast Omicron is increasing in Germany in the last weeks. This https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Omikron-Faelle/Omikron-Faelle.html?__blob=publicationFile seems to suggest that Omicron cases increased from 0.3 cases per 100,000 in calendar week 48, to 10.2 cases in calendar week 51. I'll leave it to someone else to compare that with the rate of increase at a similar stage of Omicron in a country without any restrictions, but I'm guessing it's going to be slower - and remember Germany has a higher percentage of people without immunity from previous infections.
The other problem with that Guardian article is that it says schools in Germany are due to go back on the 3rd of January. For most of Germany schools don't restart until the 10th.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Suspect they hit the wrong button - easy to miss 'like' and hit 'off topic'. Don't take it to heart Big_G, no one thinks of Aberfan without feeling very sad.
I hope so
The birth of our son a few days later with all those grieving parents had an emotional effect on us and most new parents at the time
Yes, I'm with BT. Been absolutely fine for years.*
* so sod's law dictates it will crash tomorrow.
Same here. The availability of public wifi points is an important bonus, but anyway it's fine, and includes my mobile contract for a fiver extra.
Engineers have been to my house from BT maybe twice in ten or twelve years. Once to upgrade the line somehow or other (it is still good ole copper) and once when the wind damaged the line.
Both times, the engineers have been excellent.
My house flooded and an engineered popped round and redid my entire internal internet wiring. He wasn’t supposed to but I guess he felt helpful
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The first couple of series - where the writer presumably had to rely on research, rather than prejudice - were good - by the time he got to Thatcher his biases were obvious.
The bit where Queen Mary curtseys to the new queen then looks her straight in the eye is chilling.
Someone on the previous thread said Carlisle had its attractions. Citation needed.
Carlisle has one nice cocktail bar
A great railway Station and nice Castle
Shame they decided to build a four lane dual carriageway between the town and the castle.
and it - at least in 2016 - not open on a Sunday.
I got stranded in Carlisle one late Summer Sunday that year, the hostel didn't open until 1800, the pubs - bar some cavernous outfits on the outskirts - were all shut and in any case the football that day was West Brom vs Middlesboro ...
Absolute state of it.
At least you weren't in Barrow.
I was in Barrow later that week. It's really not that bad.
It's not even a good place to change trains.
Well, quite, it's a through line, unless you're going to Sellafield.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Dominic Raab photographed at Chelsea game without a mask Image shows justice secretary apparently ignoring club guidance to wear face covering while seated in stadium
That's carefully cropped image, i have a feeling wide shot might show very few wearing one.
That very picture shows four people to his left not wearing them,
?? The guidance at the football last night (Cov City match) was to wear in the concourses/buying drinks & the loo, but whilst seated you were free to take them off. Is the Prem different, did Cov City have it wrong - the team certainly did with their tactics but that was another story.
Talking of fast broadband and fibre and so on. A good old friend of my wife's has a property in rural France. Way off the beaten track. The little house is at the end of an unpaved lane that's at least 1/2 mile from a tiny road that leads to the nearest one bar village. Definite france profonde.
He's had super fast fibre broadband for at least a decade, probably more.
Presumably there is an important politician living one door down
"Twixtmas" is certainly better than the "Chrimbo Limbo" I saw it referred to as in a BBC website article the other day.
Though the latter is a better description.
I rather like this time of year. Have always been off between Christmas and new year. After Jan 1st there is no excuse not to be at work, but the week between is perfect for dog walking, over eating etc. I seem to recall in previous times Christmas was much more stretched out than now. Perhaps we should revert?
Tbf, I used to like it before I was retired - it was a good time to recharge the batteries.
Now it's just a bit pants compared to being retired through the rest of the year.
Ha. I (hopefully) have that disappointment to look forward to...
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
That German curve is delta not omicron.
They are still below 40% of new cases being omicron, so we don't really know the impact of German measures on omicron.
1. Just because "Omicron accounted for about 17,000 out of Germany’s almost 43,000 new confirmed cases on Thursday" doesn't mean that Omicron is still below 40% of cases. If Omicron is much milder, and given the much reduced routine testing because of the holiday, there's probably a higher percentage of Omicron cases being missed than Delta.
2. You can still try and see how fast Omicron is increasing in Germany in the last weeks. This https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Omikron-Faelle/Omikron-Faelle.html?__blob=publicationFile seems to suggest that Omicron cases increased from 0.3 cases per 100,000 in calendar week 48, to 10.2 cases in calendar week 51. I'll leave it to someone else to compare that with the rate of increase at a similar stage of Omicron in a country without any restrictions, but I'm guessing it's going to be slower - and remember Germany has a higher percentage of people without immunity from previous infections.
The other problem with that Guardian article is that it says schools in Germany are due to go back on the 3rd of January. For most of Germany schools don't restart until the 10th.
It’s not known as the Grauniad for nothing...
Probably the usual capital city bias by the out of touch metropolitan elite - I think Berlin schools go back early, along with the rest of the former East Germany.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
The only problem we have with BT is that an incoming call on the landline seems to knock out broadband for 1-2 minutes. Can't be bothered to work out why as we've trained everyone we know to call our cell phones, thereby conceding the landline to spammers who can safely be ignored.
They have just moved my landline to digital
What's a landline?
It's the way most people's broadband works.
Nah, that's line rental.
I'm 30 in less than 2 months and have never had a landline phone!
We've got a landline but hardly use it. But since we'd still have to pay the line rental would there be any advantage in dropping it? None that I can see.
One less thing to dust
We've got one of these for nostalgia value. It's a bit of a curiosity for anyone under 30 - they all want to give it a try.
Still works fine - even in a power cut.
Can still remember how impressed me and my sisters were when our grandmother got a "Princess" phone, think it was pink.
I remember Trimphones, they cost more for some reason. You had to rent the handset off BT (or the GPO or whatever they were called at the time).
Kids would compete to see who could do the best impression of a Trimphone.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
The only problem we have with BT is that an incoming call on the landline seems to knock out broadband for 1-2 minutes. Can't be bothered to work out why as we've trained everyone we know to call our cell phones, thereby conceding the landline to spammers who can safely be ignored.
They have just moved my landline to digital
What's a landline?
It's the way most people's broadband works.
Nah, that's line rental.
I'm 30 in less than 2 months and have never had a landline phone!
We've got a landline but hardly use it. But since we'd still have to pay the line rental would there be any advantage in dropping it? None that I can see.
One less thing to dust
We've got one of these for nostalgia value. It's a bit of a curiosity for anyone under 30 - they all want to give it a try.
When I were a lad you had to be well-spoken and presentable to land a job with Auntie. I failed badly on the latter. Nowadays both attributes would be regarded as a fatal disqualification.
To be honest, this was in the dead zone between xmas and new year.
Somebody told me today the name for this period is now "twixtmas" which I quite like.
Indeed. It's a good time for a cheap citybreak, between the expense and annoyance of travelling at Christmas and New Year. Or used to be.
I find it a great time to get work done because colleagues and clients rarely interrupt you.
I have certainly done that, and gone into work to shift a backlog, do some of those "nice to do" things, or just plan for the New Year. But where I am now we are very quiet between Christmas and New Year and it is rather boring. In 2019 I went to Copenhagen for a few days and maybe in 2022 I'll be able to do something similar.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Last Kingdom is great.
I watched one episode of Witcher. Utterly confused. What a mess.
Dominic Raab photographed at Chelsea game without a mask Image shows justice secretary apparently ignoring club guidance to wear face covering while seated in stadium
That's carefully cropped image, i have a feeling wide shot might show very few wearing one.
That very picture shows four people to his left not wearing them,
?? The guidance at the football last night (Cov City match) was to wear in the concourses/buying drinks & the loo, but whilst seated you were free to take them off. Is the Prem different, did Cov City have it wrong - the team certainly did with their tactics but that was another story.
Only a couple of % at the Leicester/Liverpool match were wearing masks, but I was one of them.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Whenever I drive from Nelson to Merthyr I can see the churchyard across the dark valley with those dozens of enormous headstones. It never fails to create a sick pit in the stomach. It was probably a particularly dreary place before 1966, but since then an air of cold hard depressing sadness hangs over the place.
COVID-19 positivity rate soars near 50% at some Seattle-area testing sites, straining capacity
UW Medicine will soon start limiting its COVID-19 testing appointments to include only those with symptoms or known exposures because of an “astronomically high” positivity rate that’s slowing the testing process, the health care system announced Thursday.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Whenever I drive from Nelson to Merthyr I can see the churchyard across the dark valley with those dozens of enormous headstones. It never fails to create a sick pit in the stomach. It was probably a particularly dreary place before 1966, but since then an air of cold hard depressing sadness hangs over the place.
Words are hard to tell just how dreadful the disaster was
When I were a lad you had to be well-spoken and presentable to land a job with Auntie. I failed badly on the latter. Nowadays both attributes would be regarded as a fatal disqualification.
To be honest, this was in the dead zone between xmas and new year.
Somebody told me today the name for this period is now "twixtmas" which I quite like.
Indeed. It's a good time for a cheap citybreak, between the expense and annoyance of travelling at Christmas and New Year. Or used to be.
I find it a great time to get work done because colleagues and clients rarely interrupt you.
I have certainly done that, and gone into work to shift a backlog, do some of those "nice to do" things, or just plan for the New Year. But where I am now we are very quiet between Christmas and New Year and it is rather boring. In 2019 I went to Copenhagen for a few days and maybe in 2022 I'll be able to do something similar.
I find that these are the most productive working days of the year as there are no interruptions.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Last Kingdom is great.
I watched one episode of Witcher. Utterly confused. What a mess.
May have been missed here but Friedrich Merz has been elected the new leader of the CDU after Laschet resigned following September's CDU defeat. Merz is expected to shift the CDU to the right in opposition to new Chancellor Scholz's SPD led government and patch up relations with the CSU and Markus Soder
I see in an earlier post today @Dura_Ace was bemoaning the "fake polite English middle class civility" where we PBers all pretend to be nice to each other, to maintain decorum, and instead he urges us to be more open, Celtic (??), and rude, as befits the truth
Taking on board his very valid insights, I urge @Dura_Ace thus: get yourself fucking vaccinated you nasty, racist, lying, stupid, tiny-dicked Anglophobic c*nt, because you are literally killing my friends and family, and destroying my nation
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
The only problem we have with BT is that an incoming call on the landline seems to knock out broadband for 1-2 minutes. Can't be bothered to work out why as we've trained everyone we know to call our cell phones, thereby conceding the landline to spammers who can safely be ignored.
They have just moved my landline to digital
What's a landline?
It's the way most people's broadband works.
Nah, that's line rental.
I'm 30 in less than 2 months and have never had a landline phone!
We've got a landline but hardly use it. But since we'd still have to pay the line rental would there be any advantage in dropping it? None that I can see.
One less thing to dust
We've got one of these for nostalgia value. It's a bit of a curiosity for anyone under 30 - they all want to give it a try.
Still works fine - even in a power cut.
Can still remember how impressed me and my sisters were when our grandmother got a "Princess" phone, think it was pink.
I remember Trimphones, they cost more for some reason. You had to rent the handset off BT (or the GPO or whatever they were called at the time).
Kids would compete to see who could do the best impression of a Trimphone.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Last Kingdom is great.
I watched one episode of Witcher. Utterly confused. What a mess.
It helps (a lot) if you've read the books, or played the games and absorbed a decent amount of the in-universe lore.
Also, if you've realised that there are three separate timelines going on concurrently - a fact they did not publicise, and one that even many longtime fans did not pick up until several episodes in. I can definitely see how it would be frustrating for complete newcomers, though.
Other Netflix shows I recommend unequivocally (not already mentioned, in descending order): - The Good Place - Sex Education - House of Cards - The People vs OJ Simpson
I hear great things about Arcane, but not seen it yet.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
Right, I used to work on this stuff. There are a bunch of places where things could be going wrong:
1) Your usage. Have you got all the kids home at the same time, using their laptops? Does the problem go away when they go out? Have you got a bunch of other devices connected (tvs, etc) which are doing stuff in the background?
These systems are supposed to share the bandwidth equitably when maxed out, but sometimes that doesn't work and everything goes to shit. The symptom here is that everything things it is connected fine but is slow/crappy.
2) The wifi environment. Wifi is a shared medium and all devices (including your neighbours). In a densely populated area, it can get overused, and wifi isn't great at co-ordinating to split the bandwidth equally when it's maxed out, because each device in the area has to co-operate to do that. This is easy to test: plug your laptop into an ethernet port (you might need to buy an usb-ethernet adapter, if you don't have an ethernet port). What you're looking for is not, 'is ethernet better' - it will be better, apart from being tied to a cable. What you're looking for, is, does it occasionally drop out in the same way that the wifi did? If it does, then the problem wasn't the wifi. This is harder to solve. One thing that can help is changing your router to a different channel. Sometimes there are some overpopulated channels and others that are underutilised. Everything will drop off and have to reconnect when you tell your router to change its channel.
3) The router itself being shitty. They don't make a big story about this, but normally the router is under a different arrangement than the service. The service ends at the wall box and you are at liberty to get a different router and plug it in. You don't need to wait to the end of your contract to do this.
This does require some technical nous. You need to find the credentials your current router uses to log into the service (not the same as the ones used to connect to your router). BT won't help you set up a router they didn't sell you, but they should tell you these credentials, if you can't get them out of the router. You can also borrow a friends router to try (although you need to make sure you write down his credientials before substituting them).
Note, that applies to DSL (including 'fibre to the curb'). May be different for proper fibre and cable.
4) The RF environment. Both wifi and DSL can be interrupted by some other device stomping ove rthe RF environment. An improperly shielded fridge, motorbike going by with badly shielded spark plugs, etc. Difficult to figure out. For DSL BT should be able to tell if this is the problem by looking at their logs. Whether they will bother is another question...
5) BT's actual network. it used to be quite common that the links further upstream were underprovisioned, and everyone's service in the area would get a bit shit at peak times. Ask your neighbours (with suitable covid precautions, I guess...)
The only ISP I know of who will properly go the extra mile to figure out this sort of issue is Andrews and Arnold. Unfortunately they do it by charging 2x the market rate. So they mostly serve businesses and those whose internet is crucial for work - although I guess that these days, that's everyone....
If that's not enough to be going on with, another thing to google is 'bufferbloat'....
If anybody is interested, my profile picture is a clipped part of a painting an AI created for me after being given the title "the dispatched child".....the machines are coming for all of us.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Suspect they hit the wrong button - easy to miss 'like' and hit 'off topic'. Don't take it to heart Big_G, no one thinks of Aberfan without feeling very sad.
I hope so
The birth of our son a few days later with all those grieving parents had an emotional effect on us and most new parents at the time
To be clear Big G, I was observing that the episode on Aberfan was very well done, and had the benefit of bringing it to the attention of my (younger) generation.
It always strikes me how many people died in heavy industry in the past, the Forth Bridge a local example.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
Better Call Saul - fantastic. Final series in 2022.
Better Call Saul is good as long as you don't expect it to be like Breaking Bad.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
I hope you don’t still bank there.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
I see in an earlier post today @Dura_Ace was bemoaning the "fake polite English middle class civility" where we PBers all pretend to be nice to each other, to maintain decorum, and instead he urges us to be more open, Celtic (??), and rude, as befits the truth
Taking on board his very valid insights, I urge @Dura_Ace thus: get yourself fucking vaccinated you nasty, racist, lying, stupid, tiny-dicked Anglophobic c*nt, because you are literally killing my friends and family, and destroying my nation
Thanks, and all best to you
I say old fruit, that's a bit off what, equating Celticity with rudeness and, erm, more rudeness.
Apparently Ron DeSantis has been MIA for 12 days now.
Just trying to confirm this.
Here in WA State, we had a state senator who caught COVID in El Salvador, doing some kind of (likely dirty) deal with the local jefes. He was flown to Florida for treatment, but died earlier this month.
Local GOP are getting ready to nominate a short-list of three, one of whom will be selected by the local county council (controlled by Dems) to fill the vacancy until the 2022 general election. (By state law, replacement must be of the same party.)
Note that this particular legislative district is quite marginal, and also that redistricting has NOT altered the partisan balance. In fact the late senator was reelected in 2018 only after a hand recount, and one of the two state house members for the district (both Ds) had already planned to run for the senate seat.
To go all CHB, I reckon their website team fainted at the sight of them.
Spain is reporting 160,000 cases, Greece 35,000, these are insane figures. The UK could be north of 300k.
But does it matter? No and yes. No, because we are all getting it now, Yes, because we have reached the endemic stage, where we live with a nasty new illness that kills around 0.4% or vulnerable whatever. Tis what tis
There must be no more lockdowns. We have reached the endstage
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
I hope you don’t still bank there.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
I don't have a chequebook anymore. No point, it is one those areas that is a cause of a lot of frauds and scams.
I'm with Lloyds Mayfair these days.
I know, I know, the shame, the shame, but I have to show my working class credentials somehow.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
I’ll add:
1.squid games 2. The Witcher 3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Last Kingdom is great.
I watched one episode of Witcher. Utterly confused. What a mess.
First series hard to follow - but mainly because the universe is so vast. And if you haven’t read the books or played the games (as someone else has mentioned) it is hard to follow.
However - game of thrones was similar in terms of universe. Made things easier by having that map at the beginning so at least you could get a sense of who was where etc. I’ll not mention the absolute bonfire of a last season
BT engineers are usually excellent once you can get them to turn up. The problem is getting through the brain-dead call centres.
My favourite was when I phoned them to tell them we'd severed the armoured cable with a JCB, and could they please send someone to put it together again (which I was quite happy to pay for, it being our contractor's fault). They still insisted on going through the idiotic script ('Have you rebooted the router? etc etc).
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
That bit in the first episode when Churchill arrives at Westminster Abbey and I Vow To Thee My Country is being sung, utterly brilliant.
The whole Hyde Park Corner sequence is superb. Good timing with the London Bridge article in the Guardian.
Aberfan was great, too.
Er?? Could be worded better tbh.
Aberfan was an utter disaster with 116 children losing their lives just 8 days before our eldest was born in Oct 1966
We will never forget
Why would anyone off topic my comment, Aberfan was a very upsetting moment in our lives
Suspect they hit the wrong button - easy to miss 'like' and hit 'off topic'. Don't take it to heart Big_G, no one thinks of Aberfan without feeling very sad.
I hope so
The birth of our son a few days later with all those grieving parents had an emotional effect on us and most new parents at the time
To be clear Big G, I was observing that the episode on Aberfan was very well done, and had the benefit of bringing it to the attention of my (younger) generation.
It always strikes me how many people died in heavy industry in the past, the Forth Bridge a local example.
The numbers of deaths in US industrial settings in the 1900-1910 period was truly astounding.
“No wonder the streets of Pittsburgh are sad,” Eastman wrote, noting that more than 500 people died and thousands—the actual numbers were impossible to count since many never went to hospitals—suffered injures each year in industrial accidents in a city of some 600,000 people. Nor could the injured or families of the deceased obtain compensation from their employers unless they could prove negligence—faulty equipment, orders to do unsafe work, or the like—in a court of law."
Crystal Eastman, Work-Accidents and the Law (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 1910.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
Better Call Saul - fantastic. Final series in 2022.
Better Call Saul is good as long as you don't expect it to be like Breaking Bad.
Better Call Saul is a slow-burning character study. Superb stuff if you have the patience early on.
Breaking Bad is perfect. I think the best series ever made.
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
I hope you don’t still bank there.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
I don't have a chequebook anymore. No point, it is one those areas that is a cause of a lot of frauds and scams.
I'm with Lloyds Mayfair these days.
I know, I know, the shame, the shame, but I have to show my working class credentials somehow.
How many cases is it finding today to be 2hrs longer than yesterday?
I've been imagining something like that scene in the Jurassic Park novel where the computer engineer is stunned to find there are more dinosaurs in the park than they expected because they told the computer to only look for the number of dinos they expected to find.
If anybody is interested, my profile picture is a clipped part of a painting an AI created for me after being given the title "the dispatched child".....the machines are coming for all of us.
Pretty much the only good thing of buying our new build is fibre to the premise. And now Hyperoptic have installed cabling down the street and we can get a second FttP provider!
We've had a leaflet from Cityfibre and the next street down is getting Hyperoptic. BT aren't scheduled to rollout full fibre until ~2026 for our exchange. BT are going to get buggered over the next 3-4 years, their full fibre is worse, more expansive and hardly available.
Cityfibre are not infallible. My leased line was out for 24 hrs last month,
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
I hope you don’t still bank there.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
Friend of mine was nearly turned down by the chairman of one of those twattish niche banks the other day because he was caught behind in the Eton Winchester match 1979 and didn't walk.
How many cases is it finding today to be 2hrs longer than yesterday?
I've been imagining something like that scene in the Jurassic Park novel where the computer engineer is stunned to find there are more dinosaurs in the park than they expected because they told the computer to only look for the number of dinos they expected to find.
Or the delay in finding the ozone hole because the data was too 'outlier' and hence dumped by the computer screening the data.
Finally caved and got Netflix and just now watched epi 1 of The Crown. Have a horrible feeling that's me for 50 hours. Help.
The Crown, The Dig and Queens Gambit are the only things we have enjoyed on Netflix. I assume there must be other things we should take a look at bit if we weren't getting Netflix courtesy of a family freebie I doubt if we'd pay for it.
Gosh. I disagree. I love Netflix. Knocks the spots off Amazon Prime.
A few random suggestions off the cuff:
Series:
Fargo S1, S2 and S3 (don't bother with S4) Top Boy Summerhouse Breaking Bad Better Call Saul Unbelievable Godless
Documentaries:
Making a Murderer Wild Wild Country The Confessions killer Losers
All free on Netflix now.
Better Call Saul - fantastic. Final series in 2022.
Better Call Saul is good as long as you don't expect it to be like Breaking Bad.
Better Call Saul is a slow-burning character study. Superb stuff if you have the patience early on.
Breaking Bad is perfect. I think the best series ever made.
Spartacus was the best. Of the Golden Age
They invented a whole new language. And their brilliant star actor (God bless him) died of cancer after the first season. Yet they still persisted, devised a prequel mid-drama, and then ended on a total high
It was and is a triumph. Close to perfection
Next, the usual list (of dramas):
Sopranos Breaking Bad Battlestar Galactica The first series of Gomorrah The Killing (Danish original, first season) Vikings
etc
We are blessed with great TV even as music hurtles to inanity
I wonder if this is how Edwardians felt as they saw poetry disappear in significance as the novel rose to dominance
(reposted from previous thread) Sorry for going off topic but I wondered if people still use BT for their broadband. I have stuck with them, on the assumption that they would be no better than anyone else. But I have found them to be hard work. I had a problem with my router which means that it cuts out continually, I kept being told that I was imagining it or it was my computer that was at fault, I proved otherwise to them and they eventually sent an engineer around and it seemed to be fixed, only now the problems are starting up again, and I am stuck with another 9 months on my contract. The current situation is really bad because the WIFI is now so unreliable that I can't use it for work, mobile broadband is more reliable. I fear that I will need to go in to some kind of energy sapping consumer rights battle with BT. Am I just unfortunate or do other people experience/hear of these problems with BT?
BT have been great for me.
Avoid Virgin like the plague.
I have never met someone with a good word to say about Virgin fibre/broadband.
Virgin when it is great is utterly brilliant but far too often it is terrible and their customer services are even worse.
One of the reasons I'm migrating from O2 is I know they'll infect O2's brilliant customer services.
All companies are the same. Every service is great when things go well and appalling as soon as there is a problem. Not just ISPs but shops, banks, delivery services, everyone. The suppliers probably do not use their own service, and certainly not their own complaints procedure. Nothing is tested. Customer services consists of a badly-programmed chatbot and two bored housewives in a far-off country of which we know little.
Nah, I had a few issues with O2 and BT in the past, they were magnificent.
Ditto Lloyds and Coutts.
Also big shoutout to Sky when I had a faulty box or two.
Do you really bank with NatWest?
I used to bank with RBS and was upgraded to Coutts.
I hope you don’t still bank there.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
I don't have a chequebook anymore. No point, it is one those areas that is a cause of a lot of frauds and scams.
I'm with Lloyds Mayfair these days.
I know, I know, the shame, the shame, but I have to show my working class credentials somehow.
I banked with Lloyds when I was a teenager 😂
That's the sickest and cruellest burn of my life.
I keep on getting headhunted by BNP Paribas, so I might end up banking with them.
I'm sure I'll get quite the looks when my debit and credit cards have the initials BNP on them.
If anybody is interested, my profile picture is a clipped part of a painting an AI created for me after being given the title "the dispatched child".....the machines are coming for all of us.
Seems to be borrowing a lot from Rembrandt
You can ask it to "borrow" the style from lots of different artists across a wide range of styles. In this case I didn't ask any more than a painting that matches the title.
The zoomed out view is this young person sitting in a dim room with small amount of natural light coming from an unseen window bouncing off one of the walls.
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Now it's just a bit pants compared to being retired through the rest of the year.
So, a quarter of the latest modelling then?
The birth of our son a few days later with all those grieving parents had an emotional effect on us and most new parents at the time
The bit where Queen Mary curtseys to the new queen then looks her straight in the eye is chilling.
If they're not careful they'll be having to include tomorrow's numbers!
1.squid games
2. The Witcher
3. The last kingdom
To that, with the last kingdom being my personal favourite
Is the Prem different, did Cov City have it wrong - the team certainly did with their tactics but that was another story.
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1476616293822390280?s=20
This is simple stuff, and we are nearly two years into this pandemic. The FT (usually good with data) graph was a disgrace.
COVID-19 positivity rate soars near 50% at some Seattle-area testing sites, straining capacity
UW Medicine will soon start limiting its COVID-19 testing appointments to include only those with symptoms or known exposures because of an “astronomically high” positivity rate that’s slowing the testing process, the health care system announced Thursday.
Just trying to confirm this.
Merz is expected to shift the CDU to the right in opposition to new Chancellor Scholz's SPD led government and patch up relations with the CSU and Markus Soder
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/friedrich-merz-german-rightwinger-cdu-leader-members-vote
Taking on board his very valid insights, I urge @Dura_Ace thus: get yourself fucking vaccinated you nasty, racist, lying, stupid, tiny-dicked Anglophobic c*nt, because you are literally killing my friends and family, and destroying my nation
Thanks, and all best to you
Also, if you've realised that there are three separate timelines going on concurrently - a fact they did not publicise, and one that even many longtime fans did not pick up until several episodes in. I can definitely see how it would be frustrating for complete newcomers, though.
Other Netflix shows I recommend unequivocally (not already mentioned, in descending order):
- The Good Place
- Sex Education
- House of Cards
- The People vs OJ Simpson
I hear great things about Arcane, but not seen it yet.
1) Your usage. Have you got all the kids home at the same time, using their laptops? Does the problem go away when they go out? Have you got a bunch of other devices connected (tvs, etc) which are doing stuff in the background?
These systems are supposed to share the bandwidth equitably when maxed out, but sometimes that doesn't work and everything goes to shit.
The symptom here is that everything things it is connected fine but is slow/crappy.
2) The wifi environment. Wifi is a shared medium and all devices (including your neighbours). In a densely populated area, it can get overused, and wifi isn't great at co-ordinating to split the bandwidth equally when it's maxed out, because each device in the area has to co-operate to do that. This is easy to test: plug your laptop into an ethernet port (you might need to buy an usb-ethernet adapter, if you don't have an ethernet port). What you're looking for is not, 'is ethernet better' - it will be better, apart from being tied to a cable. What you're looking for, is, does it occasionally drop out in the same way that the wifi did? If it does, then the problem wasn't the wifi. This is harder to solve. One thing that can help is changing your router to a different channel. Sometimes there are some overpopulated channels and others that are underutilised. Everything will drop off and have to reconnect when you tell your router to change its channel.
3) The router itself being shitty. They don't make a big story about this, but normally the router is under a different arrangement than the service. The service ends at the wall box and you are at liberty to get a different router and plug it in. You don't need to wait to the end of your contract to do this.
This does require some technical nous. You need to find the credentials your current router uses to log into the service (not the same as the ones used to connect to your router). BT won't help you set up a router they didn't sell you, but they should tell you these credentials, if you can't get them out of the router. You can also borrow a friends router to try (although you need to make sure you write down his credientials before substituting them).
Note, that applies to DSL (including 'fibre to the curb'). May be different for proper fibre and cable.
(too long, next comment)
5) BT's actual network. it used to be quite common that the links further upstream were underprovisioned, and everyone's service in the area would get a bit shit at peak times. Ask your neighbours (with suitable covid precautions, I guess...)
The only ISP I know of who will properly go the extra mile to figure out this sort of issue is Andrews and Arnold. Unfortunately they do it by charging 2x the market rate. So they mostly serve businesses and those whose internet is crucial for work - although I guess that these days, that's everyone....
If that's not enough to be going on with, another thing to google is 'bufferbloat'....
It always strikes me how many people died in heavy industry in the past, the Forth Bridge a local example.
If you are going for a vanity chequebook at least be classy and work with Childs or Drummonds
I went to Aberfan in Lockdown 1, on a glorious spring day. Despite the weather, the whole place BROODS
How many cases is it finding today to be 2hrs longer than yesterday?
Local GOP are getting ready to nominate a short-list of three, one of whom will be selected by the local county council (controlled by Dems) to fill the vacancy until the 2022 general election. (By state law, replacement must be of the same party.)
Note that this particular legislative district is quite marginal, and also that redistricting has NOT altered the partisan balance. In fact the late senator was reelected in 2018 only after a hand recount, and one of the two state house members for the district (both Ds) had already planned to run for the senate seat.
But does it matter? No and yes. No, because we are all getting it now, Yes, because we have reached the endemic stage, where we live with a nasty new illness that kills around 0.4% or vulnerable whatever. Tis what tis
There must be no more lockdowns. We have reached the endstage
I'm with Lloyds Mayfair these days.
I know, I know, the shame, the shame, but I have to show my working class credentials somehow.
However - game of thrones was similar in terms of universe. Made things easier by having that map at the beginning so at least you could get a sense of who was where etc. I’ll not mention the absolute bonfire of a last season
Is publication subject to ministerial sign off?
“No wonder the streets of Pittsburgh are sad,” Eastman wrote, noting that more than 500 people died and thousands—the actual numbers were impossible to count since many never went to hospitals—suffered injures each year in industrial accidents in a city of some 600,000 people. Nor could the injured or families of the deceased obtain compensation from their employers unless they could prove negligence—faulty equipment, orders to do unsafe work, or the like—in a court of law."
Crystal Eastman, Work-Accidents and the Law (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 1910.
27th now record with 167,000 cases.
meh
Breaking Bad is perfect. I think the best series ever made.
Figures going to be all over the place with Christmas reporting.
Boosters reported today: 435,293
Highest Boosters to date: 968,665 (22/12)
Nearest estimate: @Northern_Al 963,451
Next nearest: @MattW (986,000)
My leased line was out for 24 hrs last month,
They are good value, but not 100% reliable.
https://youtu.be/8EDBJBmlvXY
They invented a whole new language. And their brilliant star actor (God bless him) died of cancer after the first season. Yet they still persisted, devised a prequel mid-drama, and then ended on a total high
It was and is a triumph. Close to perfection
Next, the usual list (of dramas):
Sopranos
Breaking Bad
Battlestar Galactica
The first series of Gomorrah
The Killing (Danish original, first season)
Vikings
etc
We are blessed with great TV even as music hurtles to inanity
I wonder if this is how Edwardians felt as they saw poetry disappear in significance as the novel rose to dominance
I keep on getting headhunted by BNP Paribas, so I might end up banking with them.
I'm sure I'll get quite the looks when my debit and credit cards have the initials BNP on them.
The zoomed out view is this young person sitting in a dim room with small amount of natural light coming from an unseen window bouncing off one of the walls.