GRIPES

[Bruce Tuncks]

You are quite correct old k. It is silly to insure for risks you can afford to carry yourself, and that is what the excess is for. 

[pmccarthy]

Biopsy tomorrow, echocardiogram Thursday, stress echo Friday, my social calendar is filling up. 

[nomadpete]

Theres a direct co relation between the number of birthdays we accumulate, and the number of doctors appointments.

 

Tomorrow I visit my GP for her to cut out some bits of skin that she doesn't like. Then some more blood tests then my echo cardiograph. By then they will be filling up my calendar again with other stuff.

[octave]

Yep all too familiar.

[old man emu]

My cousin's a Harley Street surgeon,
With instruments long, sharp, and thin,
He only does one operation,
My God how the money rolls in.
 

 

[spacesailor]

Break the ' money grubers ' cycle. 

Miss an appointment or two , then your calender can have a few nice dates in it.

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

My cousin's a Harley Street surgeon,
With instruments long, sharp, and thin,
He only does one operation,
My God how the money rolls in.
 

 

My DAME is also a Harley Street "surgeon"...  And he has a rather nice Arrow, from memory...

[nomadpete]

Is it sharp, too?

[old man emu]

Clearly no Rugger Buggers here.

 

http://www.rugbysongs.net/073 My God How The Money Rolls In.htm

[Jerry_Atrick]

15 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Is it sharp, too?

If the meaning is, as in "looks sharp"... yes.. it is very sharp.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Today's grip - podcast and youtube videos... The ones that are "news" or something similar, and they carry on as if they are TV journos taking their time. I wish they would write the stuff down and put it in a blog. I could scan for what I want, read it, and discard the rest - like a newspaper (more and more these days scanning and discarding than reading)...

 

There was a podcast that made mention of a story I was interested in.. It was 16 minutes long - what they would have had to say of any use would have been two minutes... After about 30 seconds of drivel, I closed it and now have to search for what I am interested in.. The indigation!

 

Anyway, that is off my chest now.. feel much better.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Two gripes today!

1. Just when things start moving on the moving back home front,, Melbourne decides to get itself a community COVID case.. OK- it was imported from SA, but fair-dinkum...
2. Having worked in tech for a long time, I am thinking it has gone too far... I have an interview - with a website! They will throw me random or AI behavioural questions questions based on my CV, and I will answer them with the camera and mic recording me.  I like most tech like emails, instant messaging, etc, because it means I don't heave to deal with moron sales people. And taking that approach here wouldn't take a competent employment lawyer to sceam racism, feminism, ageism or man-boobism as part of the selection process (here, I only receive sanitised CVs.. no names, ages, addresses, or other information that one could discriminate against - except for employment and educational history). But, I do get it. In this case, the tables are turned - I am the sales guy pimping myself and the employers are the customer. They don't want to have to deal with snake oil salesmorons like me in this case..  But it still grates me...

[nomadpete]

Jerry!

Thank goodness you're still here.

It was getting too quiet.

Never thought you'd be knocking tech advancement. I hope you aren't getting as cynical as me.

 

Seriously, though, AI might bring an improvement to jobseeking. It ought to help clean up the process. Over the years I've been irritated by the continued degradation of honesty - the requirement of infinite BS that must be put in a job application, just to get to the interview stage. A couple of times, I was privy to the CV of a successful applicant for a hands on tech job. Ones where far better qualified applicants were rejected (maybe me). To read the successful application, made me incensed. Once I filtered the BS, it became obvious that this great bloke (err, person) had only got experience in a call centre. And then we had to train him up to have the skills that he had claimed.

 

If AI helps us get back to selecting applicants on their true merit, I welcome it.

[spacesailor]

Also ( in Australia   ) there,s a problem with your Address,  l tried living in a caravan park, while saving for my house deposit, but no one would give me a job,

Until 

I was told , Not to put 'caravan park ' as an address!.

So l put ' care off ' and the postal address of the parks manager.

Next thing, 4 jobs available .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Addresses also removed from CVs..

 

Of course, I work for larger corporations where they have the resources to do this.. The CVs are sent to HR, they sanitise them and send them to the hiring managers.

 

Small and even medium sized businesses don't have these resources, so I imagine the bias selection of appropriate interviewees has more of a chance to occur.

 

(Speaking for the UK, of course; not sure what they do in Australia TBH).

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Jerry, have you heard about Multiplex and the Wembly stadium and how the pommy workers try to stuff up the toffs?

I would like to hear your comments.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I don't know too much about it, except it was an Aussie company and they massively underestimated.

 

The British builder (at least for residential building) has a very poor reputation and most people would take Eastern Europeans - not only because they were cheaper, but the quality of work is better and if they messed up something or it wasn;t to the required standard, they fixed it no questions asked. Twice I used British builders and it was a ball ache. Once I used NZ and Aussie builders and it was also of quality, although they were slow with snagging.  We got in one Polish builder and he quoted about 10% more than the British builder; we went the with British and it ended up costing us a lot more. When I spoke to the Polish builder he knew he was charging more, but his order book was full and was continually importing more Polish builders to meet demand.

 

So, my guess is, as with Bunnings, it was poor management and a lack of understanding of the local environment/market before going head-first in and stuffing it up (they weren't the first and probably won't be the last). If they understood the British tradie and how they are different in how they work than the Aussie tradie; and if they understood the options available to them, they may have had a better chance - would be my guess (or they would have walked away before committing and then going belly-up).  In addition, while the Fair Work Act provides some onerous obligations on employers compared to the UK/Europe, in general, there are (or were) many onerous employment and worker obligations such as maximum hours worked, minimum coverage for holiday, sick, etc. If the workers ere temp workers rather than limted company contractors (self-employed come under the workers regs), then it is almost impossible to fire someone without a very structured approach.

 

Another consideration may be simple logistics. As an example, much of London is based on old Roman roads, so they are narrow and often clogged with traffic. So estimating in terms of cost and time for delivering and removing stuff from the site could be a lot different than Australia.

 

Maybe British commercial builders are better than residential, but the bottom line is someone with local knowledge would know what to expect and manage accordingly, or decide it's not worth it. Or they would have FIFO'ed in an Eastern European mob (can't simply do that now)

[pmccarthy]

An Aussie company bought an underground mine in France years ago, thought it could reduce costs greatly based on Aussie methods. The French were happy to keep their work practices unchanged!

[Jerry_Atrick]

That is where the French are a bit smarter than the Aussies in that when Aussie wines were a real threat, they bought a lot of the larger Aussie wine companies and just let them keep on doing what they did best while importing the tech into France (as much as the Appelletian system allowed them to). Get the then profits of the Aussies and learn how to compete with them.

[onetrack]

The greatest corporate failure in recent times (by people who are acclaimed as financial whizz-kids in Australia, was the foray into the British DIY and hardware market by Bunnings.

The Bunnings people thought it was a piece of cake to transfer the Australian Bunnings format into Britain, where it would operate exactly the same, and provide a vast level of profits once more for the Wesfarmers/Bunnings group.

 

But these corporate whizz-kids failed completely to understand the subtle differences between the Australian approach to hardware and DIY, and the British approach to hardware and DIY.

The failure of Bunnings to make any profits in their British foray (in fact, they lost AU$1.7B before they abandoned their attempt to introduce the Bunnings format into Britain) was a simple failure to understand where their customer base, and customer likes and dislikes, and wants and needs, was coming from.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/going-off-script-how-the-1-7b-bunnings-uk-disaster-unfolded-20180528-p4zhvw.html

[Jerry_Atrick]

Gripe of the day.. Knowing it's coming to the end of POETS day in Aus (well easstern seaboard) and it is just starting for me!

[spacesailor]

AND A HAPPY NOTE ,.

My granddaughter has been given a TIF flight, with Curtis Aviation Camden  NSW. ( by Red Ballon )

AND is suitably rapt, with it.

30th bithday, and the only child with an interest in flying.

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

At 30, hardly a child 😉

 

Good on her.. Glad she enjoyed it. Hope she continues with it..

 

Bet you're over the moon, too...

[Marty_d]

Ok, my gripe for the day - bloody power tools!

 

Not long ago my De Walt 18v hammer drill started stopping intermittently, which quickly progressed to permanently.  I thought it might be a loose wire or something so pulled it apart today, cleaned everything up, put it back together and it worked.  Once.  Second pull of the trigger and nothing.  I must say I've had it over 12 years and used the absolute hell out of it on everything from old hardwood to concrete, so probably about time.

 

So then I give up on drills and start building the 2 retractable clothes airers my wife wants (so much damp weather down here this winter, stuff stays on the line for a week).  This involves putting a rounded edge on 18 lengths of 42x19 DAR pine, so of course it's over to the trusty router table which has held my old Ryobi router for the past, er, 20 years or so.

4 lengths in, all of a sudden there's a weird vibration, then sparks and smoke start coming out.  Probably a bearing as the bit was definitely not spinning in place any more!

 

Off to Bunnings and a new $150 Ryobi, which of course doesn't have the same screw pattern in the base plate as the old one, so had to drill new holes through the router table attachment.  Luckily the bench drill still works.

 

Anyway went back down after tea and ran the pine pieces through the new router.   All good now.

 

Still need to get a drill though.

 

My gripe is not so much about them finally failing - but did they have to time it so they did it together??

[onetrack]

When you have more than one tool, they burn out almost together in sympathy. I've proved this over and over again.