Every time I see Sainsburys comparing the value-for-money of different brands of toilet roll, the abbreviation they use catches me out and I think they’re telling me how much paper I should be “using”.
Kind: Notes
F-Day plus 214
It’s been 214 days since I had to evacuate my house following a flood, and repair work is (intermittently) underway. And there are so-many moving pieces to this dance that… it’s little wonder that people are getting confused.
Like:
Our insurance company appointed a relocations specialist to handle our temporary accommodation needs (moving van, sourcing and paying for rental properties, etc.).
Mostly what that means right now is that the relocations specialist pays our rent. They send money to our letting agent. Who send the money to our landlord. The relocations specialist reclaims this cost from our insurance company. And, I would assume, everybody takes a cut along the way.
The building contractors, also paid for by the insurance company, are confident they can have our house ready to move back into in November (this is hard to believe to look at it, but they assure us that once they can get the remaining materials, everything will pick up speed). The building contractors reported their timeline back to the insurance company.
Then the insurance company picked a date a little after that, and asked the relocations specialist to cut off our temporary accommodation from that date.
Then the relocations specialist emailed our letting agent, copying me in, to give notice that we’ll be moving out of our “Chicory House“.
This clearly confused the letting agent. The letting agent seem to have assumed that the relocations specialist is somehow representing the landlord, when in actual fact they represent us, the tenants. Per relatively new UK legislation, the landlord can’t simply give us notice and evict us without following certain complex legal processes and giving 4+ months notice. But we, the tenants, can just give two months notice and bounce. So the letting agent have told the relocations specialist that they can’t ask us to move out (of the house that they’re paying for, on our behalf). 🤣
The bottom line is that I’m now deep in the CCs of an email exchange between the company who pays my rent… and the company they pay it to… about whether they can stop paying my rent for me… when I move back into my own house. 🙄
One email from me would probably clear up the confusion. But I think that this time… I’ll let then work it out for themselves.
Pixel Area
Pixel Area (@pxlarea@mastodon.social) launched a couple of weeks ago, and DanQ.me was selected to be one of the initial “seed” blogs that were there at the outset (I’m at https://pxlarea.com/x38y34).
I’m… honestly not sure what to make of it. Organising personal websites spatially seems like a strange idea (although there’s a list view available too). And ‘pixel’ seems to be a strange name (at my desktop resolution, my ‘pixel’ comprises… 169 pixels). It’s got a little bit of a “million dollar homepage” (remember that) feel to it… though at least it’s not operating commercially. In fact, the best thing about it seems to be that it’s home-grown indie/smolweb content.
I guess it’s a bit like a webring? (Maybe it needs an embeddable component that lets a site show it’s “space” and hop to neighbours?)
So… yeah; I’m undecided on this one. But, as always, I love when people do cool, random and experimental stuff with the Web!
Sundog
That moment when you realise that you forgot your sunglasses but figure you’ll just squint.
Note #30138
Needed to renew my driving license. My new one doesn’t have an EU flag on it. The sad reminders of Brexit just keep coming. 🇪🇺💔
Descaled
I descaled the coffee machine yesterday. We live in an exceptionally hard-water area and this maintenance was long overdue.
This morning I turned the machine on and something felt unfamiliar and wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on what, until I realised…
…I’d gotten so-used to seeing the “descaling needed” light illuminated that I’d subconsciously forgotten that it wasn’t supposed to be always-lit! Turns out that a warning left long enough becomes not just invisible but normalised!
(Next, maybe I should do something about the ‘check engine’ light in the car. It’s been on for a while too…)
‘Simplified’
Well ‘thanks’ for the ‘simplified’ statement, I guess?
A Little Bit Straighter
The clasp on my ‘bi pride’ watch strap is failing because, in an ironic twist, part of it needs to be made a little bit more straight.
Fishsmith
I’m a little fishsmith,
Short and stout.
Here’s my anvil,
Here’s my trout.
I don’t work here!
I guess it’s the laptop and the pile of towels that cause the confusion, but people keep asking me questions (usually in Spanish) about where to get towels from and whether they can use the pool at this hotel.
And I have to keep explaining that nope, I don’t work here, I’m just watching my kids play while I catch up on my RSS reader!
Eclipse
Well that was pretty spectacular. 🤩
L’Aqüeducte Romà de les Ferreres
Of all the architecture with which the devil is (per legend) credited with the construction, L’Aqüeducte Romà de les Ferreres might be the most impressive.
Nice work, Satan.
No green wine gums
No green and only two black wine gums in this bag? Feeling robbed.
Sainsburys Grapes
Sainsburys grapes confuse me.
500g of white grapes are £2. 500g or red grapes are £2.20. So you’d expect 500g of half-red, half-white grapes to be… £2.10, right? But no, that’s £2 too.
So buying 500g of white grapes and 500g of red grapes is cheaper if you buy the mixed packs and then separate them. Why!?
Shipslasher
I want to write a successful YA fiction where all the characters are boats. Just ‘cos I want to see people ‘shipping ships.
Also, one of my characters will be called Slash.