bad stuff thread.

[Happenstance]

I sleep with a fan on at night all year round. Doesn’t matter if it’s the coldest night of the year, that thing is going on and staying pointed at me.

[Will]

2 hours ago, Sheikah said:

Mine is a 9,000 BTU Amcor model, which is pretty old now since I got it about 8 years ago (so doubt the same one is being sold now). Amcor seem to be a pretty good brand from what I can gather, and I've never had any problems with it. We mostly use it to cool our living room, which is sort of a medium size. If you've got a large-ish room you'll probably want a 12,000 BTU. Generally speaking I'd say mine does one room but it does lower the temperature of the next room a little if I leave the door open. I imagine a 12,000 BTU will do more. They are portable though so you can use them to cool down multiple rooms before bed, which is very handy.

I'm guessing the prices might have gone up since we're currently in a heat wave, but generally speaking if you can find a 9,000 BTU for £200-250 or a 12,000 BTU for around £300 then you're looking at a very good deal. 

For instance, I think this a great price for a 12,000 BTU Amcor, but unfortunately it has just gone out of stock.

Never before have I spent so much time looking into the stats of my air conditioning. 

We have five 9,000 BTU units in our apartment and I’d say dependent on what we’re doing we have some combination of two of them running 24/7. What’s good about ours is most of the mechanics are outside of the apartment so they make basically no noise inside - I’m not sure what those all-in-ones are like for that.

9,000 is enough to give you a chill in a normal size room if you put it on the lowest setting, for sure. 12k and I imagine you could really make yourself uncomfortable in the opposite direction. 

[Sheikah]

Never before have I spent so much time looking into the stats of my air conditioning. 
We have five 9,000 BTU units in our apartment and I’d say dependent on what we’re doing we have some combination of two of them running 24/7. What’s good about ours is most of the mechanics are outside of the apartment so they make basically no noise inside - I’m not sure what those all-in-ones are like for that.
9,000 is enough to give you a chill in a normal size room if you put it on the lowest setting, for sure. 12k and I imagine you could really make yourself uncomfortable in the opposite direction. 

The split air con systems (i.e. non mobile units attached the wall with an outside extractor) are definitely better, and very quiet. Problem is that they are generally much more expensive and require expert installation/drilling, and here in the UK that kind of air con on domestic properties is unusual and this unfortunately drives the price up (in terms of the unit price and getting it installed).

Make no mistakes, the portable units are reasonably noisy but I don't mind it - it's kind of white noise, and far preferable to being hot.

[Happenstance]

I wonder if UK houses going forward might start to change window design to accommodate ac units as the summers get hotter.

[Will]

4 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

The split air con systems (i.e. non mobile units attached the wall with an outside extractor) are definitely better, and very quiet. Problem is that they are generally much more expensive and require expert installation/drilling, and here in the UK that kind of air con on domestic properties is unusual and this unfortunately drives the price up (in terms of the unit price and getting it installed).

Make no mistakes, the portable units are reasonably noisy but I don't mind it - it's kind of white noise, and far preferable to being hot.

Oh for sure, our whole apartment is built around the aircon, there’s no way you could put this setup into somewhere that wasn’t designed with it in mind.

4 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

I wonder if UK houses going forward might start to change window design to accommodate ac units as the summers get hotter.

I’m actually surprised new builds aren’t built with integrated air conditioning, not just window design. In Japan the winters were way colder than the UK and the summers way hotter, and we had the integrated aircon that could both heat and cool. The temperature inside was always perfect. If I could design my own place back home I’d 100% do it with this in mind.

[Mr_Odwin]

19 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

The split air con systems (i.e. non mobile units attached the wall with an outside extractor) are definitely better, and very quiet. Problem is that they are generally much more expensive and require expert installation/drilling, and here in the UK that kind of air con on domestic properties is unusual and this unfortunately drives the price up (in terms of the unit price and getting it installed).

Make no mistakes, the portable units are reasonably noisy but I don't mind it - it's kind of white noise, and far preferable to being hot.

There are five houses on our road and the middle one has an aircon device installed on the outside of her house - so I guess she has corresponding internal units. Last night I noticed that all the houses on our road had their windows all flung open. All except for smug Sue. I was feeling some serious envy, so your post on portable units was timely, after I was looking into them a bit in bed last night.

[Sheikah]

There are five houses on our road and the middle one has an aircon device installed on the outside of her house - so I guess she has corresponding internal units. Last night I noticed that all the houses on our road had their windows all flung open. All except for smug Sue. I was feeling some serious envy, so your post on portable units was timely, after I was looking into them a bit in bed last night.

I know of one house about 5 min walk from ours that has a fixed outdoor extractor for air con too - bet they are loving it. I think for the UK a mobile one is probably good enough just because we don't get that many hot days, and my understanding is that the split systems need maintenance (and are limited to the rooms you install the fans in).

 

All I'll say is that you won't regret it, it's a fairly modest investment that will pay for itself and last you for years.

[Mr_Odwin]

6 hours ago, Sheikah said:

I know of one house about 5 min walk from ours that has a fixed outdoor extractor for air con too - bet they are loving it. I think for the UK a mobile one is probably good enough just because we don't get that many hot days, and my understanding is that the split systems need maintenance (and are limited to the rooms you install the fans in).

 

All I'll say is that you won't regret it, it's a fairly modest investment that will pay for itself and last you for years.

I think I'm going to bear it for the few days that it's hot now, and buy one when stock levels are back to normal later in the year. I get the feeling I'd be getting a bit ripped off.

This is the only thing that's made me miss the office so far. 🙂

[Iun]

Oh, having a heatwave are we? 30 degrees is it?

 

It's 38 degrees in Shanghai right now.

[bob]

Some fucker put empty beer cans in our (plastic and cardboard) recycling, and so it didn't get collected because it contained 'mixed' recycling. I already missed two weeks ago, so we're going to end up with 6 weeks worth of recycling built up. Arse.

[Cube]

12 minutes ago, bob said:

Some fucker put empty beer cans in our (plastic and cardboard) recycling, and so it didn't get collected because it contained 'mixed' recycling. I already missed two weeks ago, so we're going to end up with 6 weeks worth of recycling built up. Arse.

I had a letter though my door telling us off for improper recycling, turned out our downstairs neighbour was chucking loads of rubbish into our recycling bin. 

Pouring it all into their empty general waste bin right after it had been emptied and taping my recycling bin ended up stopping that.

[Raining_again]

36 minutes ago, Cube said:

I had a letter though my door telling us off for improper recycling, turned out our downstairs neighbour was chucking loads of rubbish into our recycling bin. 

Pouring it all into their empty general waste bin right after it had been emptied and taping my recycling bin ended up stopping that.

daaaaaaaaannnng you hit them hard !!!!  Its a pet peeve of mine when people use my bin.  I had my garden waste bin half filled with what looked like soil.  It made me so angry. The council had to come out specially to get it since it was too heavy for me to move or use.  I can't contemplate how people (even a large family) can overfill a typical wheelie bin in 2 weeks.  They're either not recycling AT ALL or downright wasteful/lazy.

I am downsizing how much plastic I buy (with the mind of completely stopping).  Its a momentous task.  When I need something on the shopping list I am looking for alternatives.  There are things i maaaay have to give up or seriously reduce consumption of.  Its also really really tough on a budget to completely remove all your plastic consumption since there's a huge markup on zero waste stores.  I put my bin out last fortnight with nothing bar some cat poop and one single bag from my kitchen.

[bob]

Yeah, since I started putting all my food waste in my green wheelie bin, the only thing in my black bin is cellophane and other wrappers. Barely fill a bin bag every two weeks.

[Goafer]

1 hour ago, bob said:

Some fucker put empty beer cans in our (plastic and cardboard) recycling, and so it didn't get collected because it contained 'mixed' recycling. I already missed two weeks ago, so we're going to end up with 6 weeks worth of recycling built up. Arse.

Don't want to rub it in (I totally do), but I have the opposite problem. Council delivered a new recycling bin to us by mistake. Asked the neighbours, but no one is expecting one. Contacted the council and they didn't know who it was supposed to go to, so they said we can keep it.

Now we have an extra brand new recycling bin that we're not using. It just sits empty. I am truly living the luxurious lifestyle.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Goafer

[bob]

Don't want to rub it in (I totally do), but I have the opposite problem. Council delivered a new recycling bin to us by mistake. Asked the neighbours, but no one is expecting one. Contacted the council and they didn't know who it was supposed to go to, so they said we can keep it.
Now we have an extra brand new recycling bin that we're not using. It just sits empty. I am truly living the luxurious lifestyle.

Pfff, you're not truly living that lifestyle until you have two compartments in your bin.

[Fierce_LiNk]

Unpopular opinion: It all probably goes to landfill anyway. (or most of it, at least)

[Sheikah]

I had a letter though my door telling us off for improper recycling, turned out our downstairs neighbour was chucking loads of rubbish into our recycling bin.

Pouring it all into their empty general waste bin right after it had been emptied and taping my recycling bin ended up stopping that.

That's kind of you. Bet you were tempted to empty it in front of their house.

 

I remember a while back when my mum witnessed someone dumping a bin bag of stuff in the parking space for my grandma's house. She opened up the bin bag, pieced together a very ripped up couple of letters and tracked them down. Left the bin bags outside their front door along with a note. How British is that.

[Fierce_LiNk]

39 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

That's kind of you. Bet you were tempted to empty it in front of their house.

 

I remember a while back when my mum witnessed someone dumping a bin bag of stuff in the parking space for my grandma's house. She opened up the bin bag, pieced together a very ripped up couple of letters and tracked them down. Left the bin bags outside their front door along with a note. How British is that.

That's savage. I love it. That's a great revenge story. 

[nightwolf]

12 hours ago, Iun said:

Oh, having a heatwave are we? 30 degrees is it?

 

It's 38 degrees in Shanghai right now.

In Cambridgeshire this past week it's been 34c and "felt" like 39c.

This is to say you have my deepest sympathies because fuck that noise. 

[Raining_again]

4 hours ago, Fierce_LiNk said:

Unpopular opinion: It all probably goes to landfill anyway. (or most of it, at least)

It varies from council to council, but with in house recycling i would tend to agree!  Most of NI is outsourced to a private company which i suspect do recycle since they want the money back.  They actually sort the stuff at the source and fire back things they cant recycle.  Cardboard, glass & tin are very easy to recycle so I try to stick to buying as much stuff in those as possible.  Plastic can be recycled but only a few times before it degrades and has to be binned.   

Its really disgusting how much food is unnecessarily in plastic  

Edited August 13, 2020 by Raining_again

[Happenstance]

On 12/08/2020 at 1:17 PM, Happenstance said:

I left a fan on my Amazon wish list which was around £50. I already own it but it’s really quiet so I wanted a second one but as I only paid £29.99 I decided to wait for it to go back down in price. Checked today and it’s now £193.99. That’s from Amazon themselves as well, not a seller.

I just checked and that fan I was talking about is now £1283.83. Wondering if I should sell mine on eBay! 😆

[MindFreak]

On 30.7.2020 at 11:14 PM, MindFreak said:

My wife is pregnant. Now, why am I posting this here?

Some might recall that three years ago, I got a son with a disease that he got from me, without me knowing about my having it. It's called Hirschsprung's disorder and affects the colon, making it unable to pass through shit to speak bluntly. He was operated thrice and is now a happy toddler, three years old and doing very well. He will live a life with a bit more visits to the loo than a usual human but we're speaking 5-6 times a day if today's standard is something to go by. 

However, I didn't wish for this kind of situation for another child, so my wife and I went through genetic diagnostics to find the genes responsible for the disease. It went well - albeit a bit slow - and in May, my wife was declared pregnant. We were offered a genetic screening of the fetus to check that the gene was not there and we accepted that. The day after, we got went for a scan (in Denmark, pregnant women are offered a scan of the fetus at week 12 and again at week 20 to check that everything is alright) and here we were told that there was a relatively high risk of Down syndrome - 1:163. So they would check for that as well with the sample they got from the screening the day before.

As it turns out, the fetus does not have Down syndrome. However, it has an X chromosome too much. That's not good. If it's a girl it is called Triple X and for boys it's called Klinefelter syndrome. It's worse for boys, making them infertile or completely sterile, giving them boobs, and generally feminine looks because of a lack of testosterone - and lower than average IQ. For girls, it's better but they may also have a lower than average IQ and some other, less clear problems.

On paper, it doesn't sound that bad but well, reading up on it it's really not without problems and it's just... frustrating. Here we are, trying to rid the world of one disease only to get another? Why can't we just like.. have a normal pregnancy without all those worries? We got worried with out son because he lacks one of his kidneys which we found out during the pregnancy. This time, we just wanted everything to be OK but no... 

Now, we need to wait for another analysis - there is the possibility that the genetic samples have been contaninated with some of my wife's tissue (https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-catalog/Clinical+and+Interpretive/35479) and thus, nothing to worry about, the baby is fine. But I just don't believe in it as it's just the less likely scenario, I've been hit so many times and have been trying to be optimistic about all of this. If I weren't an atheist, I would have sworn that we were being bullied by some higher powers.

So - an update is due. They finally finished analysing on Wednesday and they found three things: One line of cells with totally normal chromosomes (for a boy, XY). One with another X chromosome (Klinefelter, XXY). And one line with another Y chromosome (XYY). When they see this combination of cells, they know from research that 87 % of the fetuses that have this are completely normal. So the case was that the placenta has some chromosomes and cells different from the fetus itself (and the mother, which is seen in 1-2 % of the cases they analyse). On Wednesday, the doctors will take a sample directly from the fetus (or rather, the amniotic fluid it swims in) and hopefully, we are in the 87 % with a normal baby. 

While this wasn't quite the answer we hoped or expected, it was a relief. 87 % is quite a lot so our hopes are rather high. It will hurt if we fall into the 13 % and we shall see to what extent the condition amounts to (i.e. Klinefelter or double Y syndrome or just a small mosaic which doesn't mean much).

We'll get the final answer to that in about 3 weeks - meaning that my wife will be halfway through her pregnancy at that point.

Edited August 15, 2020 by MindFreak

[Will]

Fingers crossed for you that it goes in the right direction, glad to know there is a high chance that it will.

[Raining_again]

19 hours ago, MindFreak said:

So - an update is due. They finally finished analysing on Wednesday and they found three things: One line of cells with totally normal chromosomes (for a boy, XY). One with another X chromosome (Klinefelter, XXY). And one line with another Y chromosome (XYY). When they see this combination of cells, they know from research that 87 % of the fetuses that have this are completely normal. So the case was that the placenta has some chromosomes and cells different from the fetus itself (and the mother, which is seen in 1-2 % of the cases they analyse). On Wednesday, the doctors will take a sample directly from the fetus (or rather, the amniotic fluid it swims in) and hopefully, we are in the 87 % with a normal baby. 

While this wasn't quite the answer we hoped or expected, it was a relief. 87 % is quite a lot so our hopes are rather high. It will hurt if we fall into the 13 % and we shall see to what extent the condition amounts to (i.e. Klinefelter or double Y syndrome or just a small mosaic which doesn't mean much).

We'll get the final answer to that in about 3 weeks - meaning that my wife will be halfway through her pregnancy at that point.

I am crossing my fingers for you Mindfreak.  

[drahkon]

One of my friend's cats had to be put to sleep  

I've taken care of their cats a few times in the last few years so they have a place in my heart. Gonna miss that cute little furball.