Survived the last food shopping before crimbo lockdown.
Everyone in the supermarket miserable, stressed and showing no excitement about all the expensive foodstuffs they're buying.
As usual, I was already thoroughly fed up with it all two weeks ago and can't wait for things to get back to whatever passes for normal these days.
Why is this inflicted on us every year? Why do people play along? Advertising power? Pressure to conform?
Once again, TransPennine's booking site amazes me with it's shonkiness.
I've used it quite a bit over the last few months, and there were quirks, but I just ignored them as I wanted to buy train tickets.
This morning I didn't ignore them.
This morning I tried to purchase a simple ticket from York to Leeds a couple of weeks in the future.
After an hour and a half of frustration, I managed it.
They have at least two different search engines, neither of which are consistent in respecting the "Leave At / Arrive By" option selected.
One of them refused to return dates for the day of travel!
I filled in the website's complaint feedback form, and had to run my text through sed to remove all the "special characters" from my description of the fault.
Special characters like, commas and quotes.
FFS
Sometimes my favorite pair of characters is 4Q. #grumbling
I miss the days of web forums. >20 years ago I frequented a couple for my specific interests, communicated with others who shared that interest, some I still remember as being cool people I'll never met in the meat space.
While I like Mastodon more than other similarly laid out social media sites, I'm not a fan of the "dumpster approach" to communications. I like discussions categorized and sorted into their own board.
Just some old man grumbling.
Gah, why does it take so long to write a thing?
This was intended as a far longer and more comprehensive piece, but in the course of writing it (and debugging the build system it's documenting part of) I realised that I could improve the next thing I was trying to write about, so I found a more or less sane stopping point.
Expect more when I've ironed out the wrinkles in the next bit. Maybe.
#emacs #webmentions #hugo #writing #grumbling
https://bofh.org.uk/2025/09/07/fetching-webmentions-again-with-emacs/
- How do you call an annoyed python coder?
- grum.py
That is what I am, as #PyCharm started to forget the test runner setting between sessions and resets the setting to "Autodetect". And if it was not annoying enough, it runs the tests with Unittest command even though Autodetect says, they are PyTest cases.
Either my installation is messed up pretty badly or I've just found another company that doesn't run enough regression tests. 😒
It's 2025. There is never a need to append "(Swagger)" every time you mention OpenAPI.
I'm judging you if you do. #grumbling
Today it is not that interesting which library to use in 2025. It is much more intriguing which library to use in 2015
Django tip: Before you waste unreasonable amount of time trying to fix a potential "race condition" 🏎️ 🧱 in your async code, check that you're not calling save() without update_fields which could undo all your hard work 🤦 💂 #django #python #grumbling #tip
One of the worst parts of grant based funding causing huge inefficiencies is that it keeps scientists busy with financial administration work: calculating personnel costs, projecting pay rises, applying for rebooking money from one account or one year to another... 💸 💰 None of us actually have training in this #academicChatter #grantFunding #grumbling
Why is the share icon on mobile apps an icon that isn't in any standard font sets? It makes it really difficult to include in text guides for helping non-techy people.
Also impossible to refer to it in a text post.
⋯ and ☰ are available in fonts but not the share icon.
People used to dance Conga lines in the 1940s and 1950s to tunes like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkwaWhOUpYk
...and it's derived from older traditional music from Cuba and ultimately Africa.
So why is it that when you try to find music for conga lines now, it is totally different 1980s pop tracks by Gloria Estefan or Black Lace? 🤔 They're not even suited to dancing in long lines, the Estefan version is way too fast, yet there are people trying to use Estefan's music for the older dance.
It's weird how revisionist pop culture can be, it's like the original music has been wiped from existence.
I'm salty that DMs are like impossible to figure out on the Tusky app? Like wtf. #Grumbling
Apparently, when you buy an EZ Pass transponder from NC, it's yours forever. They won't take them back and you can't transfer them. That seems like unnecessary #ewaste to me.
Never thought that Symphonic Metal would become this drab and routinized. Newer bands Youtube serves me with - I just can't tell one from another any longer, just like it used to be a case with nu metal back in a day.
When the genre exploded with Therion 'Theli' it felt like there was vast space for experiments. 27 years later It sounds like everyone uses the same 'building set' and dares not venture out...
#music #grumbling #heavymetal #symphonicmetal #therion
I can’t stand the overcast skies never ending it reminds me of bloody geelong when climate change was obviously kicking in many years ago. Never saw the autumn again. Same happening here. Miss the autumn and all it brought. It’s a long time two or three or longer years since we have had a proper autumn #grumbles #grumbling #grumblingon
Bleh. I forgot my mask at home and thus I'm wearing one of the disposable ones that they have available at work.
...My glasses keep fogging up. This sucks so hard!
*goes back to work
#random #grumbling
After 2.5 months of family stuff I finally get to try to recover from it.
I'm learning just how inelastic my ability to Do Stuff is, thanks to #MECFS. Like I can't just say "I'll add one thing" cuz I'll crash, I'm learning it has to be "I'll add one and drop one". Now at least I get some substantial rest time to crawl out of this crashy mess.
The inability to Quote Toot might reduce toxic pile-ons, but it also means that there isn't an easy way to distinguish Boosting one great post from Boosting a post that's part of a great thread. Even just a button that Boosts with the added signal "Read the Whole Thread" would do the trick. #mastadon #quotetoot #grumbling
⚅ ⚅ ⚅ ⚂ ⚂→#zap
⚂ ⚃ ⚁ ⚂ ⚁→#hungry
⚁ ⚂ ⚄ ⚁ ⚅→#distill
⚂ ⚂ ⚀ ⚃ ⚂→#grumbling
⚅ ⚁ ⚂ ⚄ ⚂→#tinsmith
⚅ ⚀ ⚄ ⚃ ⚁→#tables
zap-hungry-distill-grumbling-tinsmith-tables
Roll your own @ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-wordlists-random-passphrases
