Quick rant thread.

[Driftit 2078]

13 hours ago, Choo said:

Budget accommodation prices don't seem so "budget" anymore.....  

Should've chosen another time to go on holiday.

And you need to be very careful where you stay.  Many of the cheaper Motels are still being used and abused as emergency housing.  And you do not want to be staying in or anywhere near them.

Especially in places like Rotorua.

[Choo 16]

9 hours ago, Driftit said:

And you need to be very careful where you stay.  Many of the cheaper Motels are still being used and abused as emergency housing.  And you do not want to be staying in or anywhere near them.

Especially in places like Rotorua.

Thanks for the advice. Even AirBNB isn't safe. I caught a user advertising a room at a commercial accommodation which he or she clearly didn't own. Didn't even bother to creatively use photos of the place to hide the fact and charged a higher price than what the legitimate business owner charges. I can't find that listing anymore which means it either got taken down or someone got suckered. 

[Driftit 2078]

15 hours ago, Choo said:

Thanks for the advice. Even AirBNB isn't safe. I caught a user advertising a room at a commercial accommodation which he or she clearly didn't own. Didn't even bother to creatively use photos of the place to hide the fact and charged a higher price than what the legitimate business owner charges. I can't find that listing anymore which means it either got taken down or someone got suckered. 

AirBNB is dead.  The Hotel industry beat it to near death.  Then scammers and ripoffs finished it off.
You just can't trust the platform.  That and I spent too much time on Reddit reading stories of people being robbed by people who have copied keys etc.

[lord_jagganath 421]

the french mo'er has major structural rust. i should have known. :sigh: 

[Choo 16]

My expression on approaching a passing lane on the way to Tauranga ...

My expression when I accelerate and Waze informs me just after I've accelerated there is a speed trap ahead...

Sneaky bastards...

[gjm 3258]

Why do so many people park a car up, and let the rego lapse?

Apparently they don't know that keeping rego live requires a zero-cost once-a-year activity.

But they do know it'll re-register without any issue!

[E30 325i Rag-Top 2956]

Over-loaded and under-serviced light commercial PoS imported from Japan clogging roads and belching black smoke in NZ.

[GorGasm 563]

Question on my listing, person can't figure out from my description if the clutch has been replaced.  They copied and pasted the description into their question.

Can you, Sherlock Holmes, deduce whether the clutch has been replaced?  Also I despise the use of a random number of dots to space out text.

[jon dee 500]

Went in my garage the other day looking for a polishing rag... WTF ??? Someone has stolen all my polishing rags !!! Had a look round and found them... rats had grabbed them to make a nest on top of my engine right at the back under the scuttle. Even left a dead one (I'd been poisoning them) in the nest just so I could enjoy the fragrance of rattus norvegicus mortuus for a few days.... blech 

[Choo 16]

58 minutes ago, jon dee said:

Went in my garage the other day looking for a polishing rag... 

WTF indeed though I have to applaud the rats' ingenuity and efficiency. Wanted to find out how fast they worked and found this. Hope it wasn't too much trouble getting rid of the corpse and stench. 

 

[Palazzo 477]

In our garage, they stole and ate the rat bait box, all of the contents and most of the box. 
And then ate through an ice cream container to get at the bird seed, before eating a box of snail bait.

Thankfully haven’t touched the cars.

[jon dee 500]

42 minutes ago, Palazzo said:

In our garage, they stole and ate the rat bait box, all of the contents and most of the box. 
And then ate through an ice cream container to get at the bird seed, before eating a box of snail bait.

Thankfully haven’t touched the cars.

Damn rats loving a three course meal !!!!!!

[Driftit 2078]

Has traffic now returned to the insane for our population levels?  Or is it especially bad?
The roadworks and speed limit changes in my region are so bad I am actually considering catching the train to Wellington for work.
NZTA is just choking the Wairarapa.  All the politicians current and future are against the changes yet NZTA is doing whatever they want.

[Bruski 34]

3 hours ago, Driftit said:

Has traffic now returned to the insane for our population levels?  Or is it especially bad?
The roadworks and speed limit changes in my region are so bad I am actually considering catching the train to Wellington for work.
NZTA is just choking the Wairarapa.  All the politicians current and future are against the changes yet NZTA is doing whatever they want.

This was a topic of conversation in the office the other day.  General consensus, yes, traffic is billy bonkers.

I think everyone recognises traffic spikes after schools go back but it does seem to me that traffic post school holidays has gone way beyond the 'normal' difference in traffic load.  Maybe if schools started later, finished later, there might be some load balancing.  Maybe.

Then again, the route cause is arguably the politicisation of induced demand stifling new road building and the spin put on it by vested interests or politically or maybe better put zealotry:

Why is induced demand still ignored? - Greater Auckland

New Findings in the Netherlands about Induced Demand and the Benefits of New Road Infrastructure - ScienceDirect

Skim to the conclusion......hmmmmmmm.

[Driftit 2078]

40 minutes ago, Bruski said:

This was a topic of conversation in the office the other day.  General consensus, yes, traffic is billy bonkers.

I think everyone recognises traffic spikes after schools go back but it does seem to me that traffic post school holidays has gone way beyond the 'normal' difference in traffic load.  Maybe if schools started later, finished later, there might be some load balancing.  Maybe.

Then again, the route cause is arguably the politicisation of induced demand stifling new road building and the spin put on it by vested interests or politically or maybe better put zealotry:

Why is induced demand still ignored? - Greater Auckland

New Findings in the Netherlands about Induced Demand and the Benefits of New Road Infrastructure - ScienceDirect

Skim to the conclusion......hmmmmmmm.

Interesting articles.  They reference the Katy Highway in TX.  Been on that Highway a number of times.  What a total nightmare of a road.  Though I do love the Buc Ee's gas station there with its 120 odd gas pumps.
I do wonder how new roading in developing rural areas is effected by induced demand though.  The population here already is near totally reliant on vehicles.  As the public transport is virtually non existent.
Many of the schools are poorly placed.  Either on SH2 or it's bypasses.  Meaning kids are transported to school via car/bus.  The school traffic here is horrendous.

Really the conclusion is this will continue and we will forever be chasing our tail.

[Palazzo 477]

6 hours ago, Driftit said:

Has traffic now returned to the insane for our population levels?  Or is it especially bad?
The roadworks and speed limit changes in my region are so bad I am actually considering catching the train to Wellington for work.
NZTA is just choking the Wairarapa.  All the politicians current and future are against the changes yet NZTA is doing whatever they want.

17 min to work in school holidays and 39 min the first week back. Ridiculous. Public transport is 53 min though.

[jon dee 500]

The author/s of the first of the two articles referenced above seem intent only in espousing the wonderful imported concept of "induced demand". The second article takes a rather more thoughtful approach, and within the opening paragraph mentions several relevant factors affecting the apparent phenomena. 

Just jumping on the "Nature abhors a vacuum" wagon and damning all new roading as bad, is unhelpful. There are many factors that need to be considered, not the least of which would be the movement to remote working for many office employees. Conditions that exist in other more populous and mobile countries cannot simply be interpolated and assumed to apply to conditions in NZ. 

I have recently made several trips out of Wellington using the new Transmission Gully expressway as far as Levin and further. There is absolutely no doubt that the money was well spent. And why ? Because the new route bypasses all the small towns and the congestion they caused. Plus a great deal of the local traffic between those towns has now been removed from SH1. 

This same "miracle" improvement could easily be implemented in the Wairarapa, but apparently there are not enough important people living there. So cheap out and don't solve the problem as lifestylers and urban refugees boost the local commuting population. A road tunnel has been mooted for 50 years or more, but never seriously considered even when the machinery has been sitting idle in NZ. Thus the Rimutakas will continue to be a commuter nightmare in perpetuity.  

Of course, inner city traffic and suburban traffic in the major cities is a different issue, and can be treated as such. With population growth, an abundant supply of cheap vehicles, and the distance between industrial areas and residential areas, it may be possible to make a case for induced demand. But the cure does not lie in stopping improvements to the roading network. 

Cheers... 

[M3AN 4016]

BMW engineering... 😭

 

 

[arktis 58]

This has probably been mentioned a hundred times, but - people who market their car as M Sport package because they had three of the kidney grill fins painted red/blue/white and bought an M steering wheel. 

[Olaf 3317]

On 3/28/2023 at 5:31 PM, Palazzo said:

Sky tv. Jumped ship from them to Vodafone TV a few years back (somewhat better), had to go back to the dark side. 
Have heard nothing, 15 minutes waiting for a “live” chat slot, to be told we can’t help. 
51 minutes on the phone to be told they have no record of my order although they agree that my dish has been upgraded as per their work order, so in fact, they must have received it, but it hasn’t been processed.

”Should” be there by Friday.

Finishing line, “We’ve had heaps of these calls today.”

I thought only boomers pay money for Sky.  Zero customer focus, outrageous pricing.  I cut the cable years ago, completely refreshing not to spend money with them.  

[Palazzo 477]

19 minutes ago, Olaf said:

I thought only boomers pay money for Sky.  Zero customer focus, outrageous pricing.  I cut the cable years ago, completely refreshing not to spend money with them.  

I like rugby and (most) of Turbo, plus a few other sports. What’s the alternative?

[Driftit 2078]

31 minutes ago, Palazzo said:

I like rugby and (most) of Turbo, plus a few other sports. What’s the alternative?

Kodi and the Sky plugin for it with a shared account.

Sky can't tell how many people are using the account.  So the cost can be shared between however many people you feel is fair.

The laugh is that Kodi running this plugin is far faster than any Sky hardware and has far more features for recording, ability to auto remove ads etc.
 

Takes a little know how but can be a cheap option and it is all well documented.  I have it running on a small old Intel NUC that lives behind my LG TV.  It also runs Plex and a few other UI's as the LG software is utter crap.

[M3AN 4016]

53 minutes ago, Driftit said:

Kodi and the Sky plugin for it with a shared account.

Sky can't tell how many people are using the account.  So the cost can be shared between however many people you feel is fair.

The Kodi plugin must be using the Sky Go or Sky Sport Now API's so yes, they can tell how many concurrent streams per account and where the traffic is going, they just might not care.

[Palazzo 477]

2 hours ago, Driftit said:

Kodi and the Sky plugin for it with a shared account.

Sky can't tell how many people are using the account.  So the cost can be shared between however many people you feel is fair.

The laugh is that Kodi running this plugin is far faster than any Sky hardware and has far more features for recording, ability to auto remove ads etc.
 

Takes a little know how but can be a cheap option and it is all well documented.  I have it running on a small old Intel NUC that lives behind my LG TV.  It also runs Plex and a few other UI's as the LG software is utter crap.

So, being semi tech ignorant and after reading this and the kodi site, I could run this on an old laptop? And remote through my phone somehow? Or just use Sky Go?

[Olaf 3317]

For Rugby?  I expect there are many online streaming services you can subscribe to with help of a VPN. I accepted that I’d lose ‘sport’ by cutting Sky, given they had little in the way of Yachting, Skiing, WSBK it didn’t seem like a big loss, especially when the win was not giving Sky any more coin.  I tried Spark Sport for a while, found they’ve not successfully expanded their sporting lineup sufficiently.

YMMV