The most frustrating thing you have encountered lately

[D_W]

People running around over the easter vacation screaming about washing hands and variants demanding that entire groups of vaccinated individuals (including them) must wear a mask if they're present, even though they're not hosting said events.

 

[MikeJhn]

An E-bay purchase that has not been delivered, the sender managed to get hold of a Royal Mail delivery notification that was GB registered but the item was coming from the EU, no Customs documentation or import duty, or proof of postage, but Paypal dismissed all of that and closed the case in favour of the sender, this is now with the Financial Ombudsman for resolution, can't even begin to estimate how many hours I have spent on this.

As someone has put a like on this post today I thought an update was needed.

The Financial Ombudsman found in my favour and wrote to PayPal, they in turn "said on this occasion" and re-funded the monies, but meanwhile I had been in touch with Visa who also re-funded the monies, being of a basically honest nature I contacted Visa and explained what had happened, they graciously told me to put the extra into a savings account which I have done, goes to show being tenacious does pay.

 

[Jacob]

Ok, whats the most frustrating thing you have encountered lately that has consumed more time than you could have imagined but initially you thought it will be simple, I don't mean partners, pets or the like but task, projects and manmade items?

For me it is a so called smart phone that has become a real PITA, more so because I do not use mobile phones on a regular basis and only carry a very basic one for emergencies, but I needed a device for navigation when out walking and looking for specific locations when in out of the way places, all it has to do is basically receive data from a Ublox GNSS receiver and display it on a map so not asking for too much or so I thought. My current device is 14 years old and and very usable so you imagine things have progressed since it came onto the market, but no what benefits they now offer are offset in other areas . So my first problem is that I struggled with the tappy, tappy - swipe swipe thing needed for touch screens on these devices, not having thin pointy fingers does not help but after many hours of painstaking trying progress was sort of made. But this was just the start of a string of issues that would need resolving, loading the program I needed seemed relatively simple but soon I realised that was just Google giving me false hopes, I could not locate where my files were within the device and so could not copy the ones I needed to use, but they were there somewhere. Got some further info from a guy in the states who knew the Android OS inside out and he explained that the smart phone is great for those into social media, making phone calls, texting and sharing pictures which is what the majority use it for but if you fall outside of these groups then you will meet the restrictions imposed by Google who only allow it to do what they deem it should, talk about big brother and this stuff is being integrated into new cars! For me copying and moving files is a basic requirement in any field of IT so whats the problem with Android?

I was directed to another site that explained the solution, I needed to root my device and that did not mean putting it into potting compost. Has anyone heard of rooting their phone because it is not a term I had heard of before but then I am not a mobile phone user and being of the baby boom generation I avoid much of this social interaction technology found on these devices. Well after more hours of digging around I found that rooting is what a lot of people do to Android devices to free them from the restrictions imposed by google and give you full access, files will no longer be hidden and there is a lot more you could do, so why why make life so difficult at all, it is like buying a new car but you cannot open the bonnet, sealed by the OEM and only they have access. Well this process has taken hours to perform and was like going back to the days of DOS in the eighties with a command line interface. I have over forty years working in electrical, electronics and software in many fields including R&D but have never come across such a stubborn, unfreindly and uncooperative device like this thing, it just fights you all the way and loves to throw obstacles in your way, so how do so many people become addicted to such a device, perhaps it's just my age but you can teach old dogs new tricks but with age comes wisdom so it is more a case of we don't always want or need new tricks. So when I though woodworking was going to be a major challenge and give me some hard times little did I realise something as small and insignificant as this mobile device would be many magnitudes greater.

Me too. I hate the bloody thing and wish I hadn't bothered.
I've still got my Doro 618 which is designed for "elderly" people and the simple minded . https://www.cnet.com/reviews/doro-phoneeasy-618-consumer-cellular-review/
Simple and neat, folds in two so it keeps clean and is accident proof etc. No prob in your pocket when gardening, woodworking etc.
PS oops old thread! I still hate the bloody thing!

 

[HappyHacker]

How long have you got?
Microsoft and their push to gather everything about us while making every version of their products difficult to use. Having used miainframe, Mini computers and PCs of various complexions since I wrote my first computer program in 1968 I blame Microsoft for increasingly more complexity and less usability. While I am capable of editing the registry why should I as a user be expected to do this to make thier product do as advertised. Never mind the time it ignored my do not update flag and updated my operating system without telling me leaving me with a not very effective boat anchor.

Google as above- don't get me started on mobile phones. Having large hands and fingers I can usually press most of the keys on the keyboard at the same time. Assuming of course that the touch sensitive screen is working, I usually have to wet my finger to get it to work. The number of photos I have not taken while furiously stabbing the screen until the moment has gone.Never mind the number of messages and emails I have not sent having thought I had managed to press the send button.

Car insurance web sites. I have my car insured with LV and have had no problem with them. I thought I would try to add my wife's car with their multi car insurance policy. After much fafing about I find a link from my online account to get a quote for a multi car policy, I have to enter all the car details, my details, remember I am logged onto their website as me and they have all my details for my car, enter the three additional drivers with birthdates, license details etc that are the same as my car and then it wants details of my car and the additional drivers etc which it already has. At that point I gave up and renewed with my wife's existing policy as I could not face the prospect of repeating all this on the web comparison sites. I then tried to email LV, there is no email address on their web site. I reply to one of their emails to me and tell them my tale of woe, it does not say it is an unmonitored address. I get an email back saying this is an unmonitored address and emails will not be read.

 

[spiritburner]

Heres mine, took me 4 days to trace this fault, over 100 wires to go through, single phase and 3 phase power in my fuse boards, radial wiring as it is in Spain , in each room we have small boxes in the walls that are incorporated into the plaster and all the conduit and cables from each room's lights and sockets go into these boxes and then the main cables go on to other rooms and so on, the cables start at the main fuse and went through around 30 of these boxes and when you have a large dead short like I did you have to do a process of elimination to trace said fault, there really isnt an easy way to do this another way .

Finally traced it this way to the back wall of the house where the kitchen is and on this wall at the ceiling level there's a large box about 12 in.² and there must be over 30 cables in it. One piece of conjuring going out of this box had six cables and I traced it to this one piece of conduit, but I couldn't find the end of this conduit , there was no open box or sealed box anywhere on this wall although the kitchen units did cover this, but I couldn't find anything because the conduit that these six wives went into showed me the type of wires and colour of the cables yet the next nearest box was 3 1/2 m away at ground level that has six wires coming out of it but they were all different colours and different thicknesses to the ones going in so I naturally assume that there was perhaps another box in between these two where there was something going on the problem was kitchen units covered everything.

I purchased a cheap inspection camera off Amazon around €50 stuffed it as far as I could down the conduit but that didn't really help because the cables were still the same colour going in at the top couldn't get it the other way because conjure was slightly thinner internally which prevented the 8 mm diameter triple lens camera from checking that side as a conduit so the next best thing was to do a couple of holes through the back of the box at ground level because a lot of the time here wise go into the actual cavities especially in an older house like mine from the 1980s I managed to find the conduit quite quickly and managed to trace it all the way back to where it went in the wall and that was visible on the camera but I happened to notice why the conduits were different because it appeared. There was a break in the conduit and they have been joined together, which is highly unusual here..

That started ringing alarm bells and the problem I had was that there are five kitchens units with the oven microwave electric induction hob, gas hob, sink all along this wall and the fault lay just below the level of the Sillistone 3cms thick worktop and that weighs about 300 kg over a 4 m run and bang in the middle is a bloody great hole waiting to snap if I'd moved that out called the double sink.

I managed to get the distance of where this break in the conduit was from the amount of inspection camera that had gone in the hole I then transferred that measurement to the outside wall and banged a hole in it, entered the cavity and discovered what? Where the break was, I pulled the two conduits apart found the six wires still a different colour pulled the conduit a little bit more and discovered that the original Sparky who wired up this house has run out of cable and had joined two or three cables together manually twisted them and then covered them with a bit of insulation tape.

These cables were 2 1/2 mil square and where they had been joined they had literally burned out. There is evidence that there is some wire rot there as well. You can see the green muck and the horrible paste it creates like you would find on some lead acid battery terminals and I'm not sure if, the house may have been wired up with the type of cable that was around in the late 70s that contained a plasticizer that made the cable flexible back then because these cables that were made around that time have a known problem that causes something in the cable insulation to actually breakdown and leach into the copper of the cable that then creates a chemical reaction which becomes very corrosive and when the cable is heated by current which it will be because it's carrying 20 plus amps as there is a small two burner Domino induction hob on the end of it.

The fuse did its job more or less as it kept tripping for no reason and then failed miserably and wouldn't reset untilI traced the fault. The trouble is this fuse runs approximately 18/21 sockets and various table floor lights that run off lower 6 amperage light sockets which are very common in Spain and operated by wall switches.

Trouble is there is nothing to suggest that this was where the problem was because so many sockets didn't work and so many lights wouldn't work. We had no idea and then to discover that the one fuse that keeps tripping has several wives coming out of it you don't have to isolate absolutely everything.

Photos show the damage and what to look for if you have wire rot rot and it's absolutely imperative that if you ever find this that you remove all the cables that are contaminated and the conduit because once this sets in and if it's caused by the original installation being damaged then you have no option but to remove the cables and replace them because this wire rot will contaminate other cables.

It's all repaired now with brand-new cables and conduit but I'm now in two minds because there is still some of that cable left in the mains radial circuit that runs around this house and I'm beginning to wonder whether I need to start stripping out even more and replacing or just monitor luckily all the other sockets that have this type of cable on it don't actually have any real load on them other than a small TV or lights so fingers crossed it should be ok.

The new Sparky didn't half curse the old one who luckily I didn't meet as this new guy was on a fixed price to do the job and he wasn't best pleased but in the end was fine about it, I always tip my workers over here, they come back and do a good job then!

There are some photos below to show you the length I went to to get this damn thing repaired and to give you an idea what wire rot looks like in a 220 V AC cable in a house. It reminds me of the look on the old battery terminals of cars and boats from 40 years ago where you had all the verdigris buildup, which apparently is to do with this problem type of plasticizer.

Tracing electrical faults in any wiring is normally a nightmare and sometimes its easier to bypass and install new wiring but in this case I was worried about leaving any unterminated live wires with no idea of where they were so I felt a need to continue until I found the fault and last Friday I did just that....All repaired now plus some additional work my other half decided I should do for her in the kitchen.....


By the way these little cheap inspection cameras are brilliant, used them before but connected to my phone via a wifi dongle ,a right PITA, these newer ones with their own monitor are much better !

brown dots in this photo are from some water damage a couple of years ago that wasnt found until it was too late and stained the backboard of the 5 drawer unit !

 

[Jameshow]

Our men's shed built 8x4 chicken coop which I delivered and started to erect. It was a pain as it was to fit tightly inside a chicken run which was already there with a 6x2" door. Later that night chicken lady msg saying it's too deep can you reduce its height by 1ft because she cannot see the chikens under it! ok if needs be! well what a pain taking the whole thing apart into panels cutting the studs, and reassembling it, 3hrs later I was back where I was when I started.
With my personal issues I felt like the prodigal son!!

 

[Cabinetman]

I wasn’t going to extend this old thread BUT @Jameshow that was beyond the call of (duty) anything! So well done for going the extra mile for someone who really didn’t know what she was asking.
Ian

 

[TRITON]

 

[Adam W.]

There's a lot of it about nowadays.

 

[MikeJhn]

, but I couldn't find anything because the conduit that these six wives went into showed me the type of wires and colour of the cables yet the next nearest box was 3 1/2 m away at ground level that has six wires coming out of it but they were all different colours and different thicknesses to the ones going in so I naturally assume that there was perhaps another box in between these two where there was something going on the problem was kitchen units covered everything.

I did not know that bigamy was OK in Spain.

As and aside, EU wiring regulations for radials only allow for up twelve sockets on 2.5mm cable or eight on 1.5mm if you have cables going through 30 box's you have a main wiring issue that needs addressing.

And I also dislike very long posts.

 

[Cobbs]

I did not know that bigamy was OK in Spain.

As and aside, EU wiring regulations for radials only allow for up twelve sockets on 2.5mm cable or eight on 1.5mm if you have cables going through 30 box's you have a main wiring issue that needs addressing.

And I also dislike very long posts.

6 wives at once - polygamy...

Brief enough?

 

[trvlr]

Booking a train ticket online via Anglian trains... and then contacting phone support; the line I got (presumably an all singing/dancing vunderbar VOIP system) was appalling...

 

[Ollie78]

The government.

 

[Stuart Moffat]

The idea that the best place to put light switches in a house …. Is on a mobile phone, which may or may not be in the room, or even the house. They might be away and ask you to feed their dog/cat, and you can’t work the lights. Maybe some bright young thing will come up with the idea that putting them where you enter and leave the room would be a good idea!

 

[paulrbarnard]

J

The idea that the best place to put light switches in a house …. Is on a mobile phone, which may or may not be in the room, or even the house. They might be away and ask you to feed their dog/cat, and you can’t work the lights. Maybe some bright young thing will come up with the idea that putting them where you enter and leave the room would be a good idea!

Just shout “Siri turn the lights on”. If that doesn’t work shout “Alexa turn the lights on”. If they have the lights controlled by their phone you can guarantee they have a home hub set up. Works in our house .

 

[Cabinetman]

There's a lot of it about nowadays.

View attachment 179643

You’re correct, I think it’s the click bait at the bottom of each page that’s leading particularly new members off on history tours.

 

[MikeJhn]

6 wives at once - polygamy...

Brief enough?

Ahh he did not say if they where all his own, he could just be very athletic, so it could be adultery.

 

[Crazy Dave]

Social services and over the last 3 days.