The Wednesday Whinge - 2nd August 2023
The Wednesday Whinge - 2nd August 2023
Welcome to the Wednesday Whinge. A chance for us all get anything off our chest, no matter how small.
It’s cathartic!
What’s had you boiling over this week?
People talking on their phones like they're eating a pie, and then trying to slide the contents into their ear, I guess? The analogy broke down, but you get what I'm talking about!
I blame The Apprentice for making the young'uns think that it's the correct way to use a phone, but at least in the show they were doing it intentionally so that everyone could hear the call. Or perhaps they just think it's the cool way to use a phone?
Showing my age but it reminds me of the "side talking" meme from the Nokia N-Gage. It was stupid then and it's even more stupid now.
Hahaha, I was wondering where that came from! Nobody else seemed to notice or mention it, whereas I tend to burst out laughing when I see it.
What's actually the point in doing it? I have noticed it's mostly iPhones - do they have particularly bad or really breakable small speakers, and you have to put it on speakerphone or something?
My theory is that the people doing it are young enough to have never used a landline phone, so they were never "normalised" on how to hold one. Then they saw people on The Apprentice and similar shows holding it like a pie (because the call was on speaker for the rest of the group to hear), and assumed that's the correct way to do it.
Presumably either nobody's ever corrected them, or they consider the actual right way to be old fashioned/uncool, or they simply feel weird not doing it like that now that it's ingrained.
Whatever the reason, it winds me up a treat and I wish that I could tell them how stupid they look!
Related, is people holding handheld radios (walkie talkies) sideways, popularised by 'cool guys on tv doing it'.
It's actaully very bad to do this - transmissions on handhelds are supposed to be vertically polarised (base station antennas are always vertical) and holding the radio sideways will transmit a horizontally polarized signal. This actually really matters - it can reduce by as much as 30dB the received signal strength at the other end (and -30dB is 1/1000th)
It was my birthday this week. Not only was the weather shit on the day for the first time I can remember, but I also got food poisoning from celebrating my partners birthday, and had to do all of the driving.
Good otherwise, just not the simple, relaxing time I'd hoped for.
Happy birthday, sorry it was a bit shit (possibly in more ways than one).
Cheers!
The weather isn't very Augusty! I'm full of cold too, so it just feels like we've hit autumn early.
Yeah, it's getting to me. I bought myself some nice clothes for summer as I'm feeling more confident these days and I've had zero opportunities to try them out.
I just want a couple of sunny Sunday BBQs.
I feel that! We're away next week in Blackpool and if the sun isn't out it'll be a dire one!
Our water supply had been severely tainted with what we think is e.coli for 3 days before we found out by accident - and another 24 hours before the estate manager decided to let us know.
Fortunately my other half had been away on business and I don't drink water from the tap so we're okay but our neighbours are pretty poorly.
We're on a boil notice for at least another 4 days and the manager is bringing us bottled water which is nice but considering this is their fault in the first place it's the least they could do.
And no word whatsoever from the landlord, WHO ALSO LIVES HERE.
Fucking raging.
I would be raging too. How does that even happen?
We're not on mains water so it's pumped up from an aquifer and stored. My limited understanding is that tank has UV filters to get rid of the nasty bacteria and those filters had/have not been properly cleaned so coliform and enterococci (I think) were detected in last week's tests.
Further tests carried out by the council yesterday and we await results but don't necessarily trust what the management tells us so are going direct to the council as well. We have a right to know what's going on.
The weather throughout July has been godawful and August seems no better. I keep telling myself it's better than being slow cooked on the continent but still, let me see the sun!
Just because someone else has got it worse, doesn't mean we can't complain haha.
I'm wondering we'll even get a summer at this point. Feels like we skipped to Autumn.
I just feel over everything media. Media this, media that, everything is fucking political and I think it would be just fine that way but everybody gets soooo butthurt about every little thing. It's tiring, very tiring. A comedian says some stupid shit (he gets paid to do it) and the shows wouldn't even be over and they're already apologising for offending this or that. Fuck this! Offend and feel offended, it's part of life! It's like when we were kids and didn't know how to take a joke and cried to our parents but instead of getting a "don't cry, you know is not true, move on or tell them back the same thing" we got the "who said that about you? let's gang up and beat the shit out of that kid right now!".
Sounds like a fatigue. There's a lot to keep in mind these days and it's shoved in our face on the daily. It's exhausting.
Lorry driver decided I didn’t belong on the road anymore, so though he’d helpfully push me off it. Then proceeded to fuck off.
Luckily there was no contact or damage to my car that I could see, but I think this finally convinced me to get a dashcam. I’d love to report that prick to the company he drives for and the police.
Was the toad OK?
Hahaha, thanks for the laugh!