Rick's b.log - entry 2024/11/01

Toussaint service

Plus, it comes with some interesting observations.

The first is that just as the woman running the service opened her mouth to begin the welcome speech, there was a brownout (I know that as my Livebox had rebooted). However in the church it tripped the breaker turning off the main lights and the video projector.
Funny how this wasn't interpreted as a sign from God.
Maybe it doesn't fit into their world view that God might be saying "most of you idiots only turn up once a year - get lost - I'm not listening".

Next is the personal amusement of "Prends pitié de tout homme pécheur". Pécheur, with an acute accent, is a sinner. Pêcheur, on the other hand, with a circumflex accent, is a fisherman.
Note that Google Translate gets this wrong. I would provide you with a link to La Larousse that notes that the two are not the same (or interchangable), but it's one of those crappy sites that wants you to either agree to being tracked by over eight hundred "partners" or pay them.

Then there's the line in the song "Puisque La Vie" (n'est qu'un passage) that reads:

Avec le blues ou cœur d'rocker, semons des fleurs

That means exactly what it looks: With a blues or rocker's heart, let's sow flowers.
Since the lady hosting the concert looks like the sort that would probably have the vapours if she met an actual rocker, she handled the situation by simply not singing that line.
She'd love the sort of stuff that I listen to. For example, as I write this, streaming radio is playing "The Phantom Agony" by Epica.

Companies are useless

I set up my new HP inkjet for its warranty. Imagine my surprise when I saw this.

My new printer's warranty is from when?

I sent a contestation on the 20^th of October including a scan of the receipt showing it to have been purchased on the 10^th of October, not the 20^th of June. I didn't bother to point out that, under EU rules, I have a statutory two year guarantee. To date no reply and the site still says that date in June.
Actually, this doesn't really bother me much. My actual contract is with the supermarket, so if there's a problem I'll be taking it back there. Not that I expect much of a problem, my dirt-cheap HP3630 has been going on seven years now, and it's being retired due to a tendency to reject the black ink - though that might be excessive paranoia on the part of HP's DRM. It's also filthy inside, ink splatter of mind-boggling proportions.

I don't expect to get seven years out of this new device. I rarely use borderless printing, but a gap of a centimetre and a quarter along the bottom seems a little excessive. If it was more like the 40mm space around the top and edges, then fine, things will have an old fashioned white border, but the bottom gap being so much larger throws off the balance and just looks lousy - remember, it's the same for 15×10 photo prints. So I can see replacing this printer sooner.

What I do appreciate is the sheet feeder to the scanner. I want to make copies of my payslips, which is something like sixteen years and twelve pieces of paper each year. I really didn't feel like messing with nearly two hundred sheets of paper. However with the app, I just tell it that the input source is the sheet feeder and tap the scan icon and it'll just get on with it sucking in page after page and then allowing me to save them as a PDF (or individual JPEGs) at the end.
That's the theory, at least. It remains to be seen how well it works in reality.

I recently got a welcome letter from Aixam Finance, being handled by a company called "CA Autobank". It was a bit of a surprise to see that my first deposit was given as €5,100. I had arranged for a first payment of €6,000. I would have accepted €5,900 because the salesman was not great at maths - the €1,500 cheque I wrote, plus €3,500 for my previous car, plus €900 ecological bonus doesn't actually add up to six thousand, even though that's what he wrote on the order form. The order form, that I note, says that it is a legally binding contract once I have signed it.
Giving them a possible out, I asked if I needed to apply for the ecological bonus myself. If so, they'd better get back to me quickly as I only have six months from purchase in which to do it.
To that end, I have also asked for them to send me a receipt itemising all of this as soon as possible. Yet something else not done.

Let's see where this goes. I would accept a first payment of €5,650 (that's subtracting the €250 for the car registration) but anything less is unacceptable. It's just a shame it took the creditors so bloody long to get back to me. I got the car at the end of June and their welcome letter is dated the end of September, and clearly sent by taping it to the back of a nearby sparrow.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I have two registration documents. The creditors had to send me a letter asking me to scan the thing and send it to them, I'm guessing the details they had were invalid. Why two? Well, I am not exactly impressed by the competence of the salesman. As it is, I told the creditors that the email address given on my contract was entirely imaginary (and what the correct one was) and that I absolutely do not give consent for my details to be shared for commercial reasons (he ticked the boxes, I was never asked). I asked them to make those corrections and then send me an updated copy of my contract. They... sent a copy of the contract with the incorrect details. Lovely. Everybody is a moron.
Well, any attempt to spam adverts to murrayrichard -at- gmail.com won't get to me as that isn't, and has never been, my email address. If I get spam by SMS, I'll fire off a GDPR request to the company to ask where they obtained my information and if it turns out to have been this, I'll report them to CNIL.

Speaking of which, after two spammy texts from Norauto, that I've never shopped at, I sent a GDPR request for what information they had on me and where it came from. A couple of days later I had a reply saying that they cannot fulfill my request as they have no information on me, it is possible that somebody gave my phone number by accident. Accordingly, it has been removed from their system.
A couple of months ago I received another spam. I'm due one soon as they seem to send out messages just prior to summer and winter holidays. When the next comes, I'll get back in touch - following such and such a message on such and such a date, I notice that you are continuing to send me unwanted advertising by text. Please remove my number from your advertising list and provide me with an assurance that my number will be blocked so that I receive no more from you. Any further publicity will be raised as a complaint to CNIL. It's a little harsh, but I don't give out my number willy-nilly and I don't appreciate companies benefiting by doing so on my behalf. I, personally, refuse to give my number or email address and ask for receipts to be printed.

Oh, and the reactions I get when salespeople helpfully take my debit card and wave it over the payment terminal. No, sorry, I deactivated that. Why? To stop people like you authorising a payment before I've even had a chance to see what amount is being shown.
Actually, that's not the reason. There are thefts from lockers at work - I think somebody is looking for ciggies - but whatever, my bank cards will be useless to them. Contactless has been disabled. The boring-looking everyday card has been blocked to not work outside of France (which has the interesting side effect of failing to work at Action because even though the shop is in France, their tills are connected to something in, I think, Holland, which is foreign and thus blocked). My fancier-looking card has an even harsher level of blocking that while it will work in other countries, it won't work unless I'm physically present. All internet purchases will fail. The reason for this is because that bank offers a way to create virtual one-off credit cards, I use that when I want to buy stuff.

Note for English readers - CNIL is like the ICO except they are neither useless nor incompetent.

I am getting robocalls (caught by the answering service) offering to sort me out with solar panels. Unfortunately these originate from a mobile number and do not identify the company behind them, so it's next to impossible to make a complaint about it - even though I'm on Bloctel. I cannot report the number on Bloctel because energy conversion calls fall under specific legislation and if I am filing a complaint I have to know who. I suspect the scammers know this, and since it's a mobile number they probably churn through a bunch of prepaid SIMs. I just delete that crap. I'm not particularly interested in solar panels, far too many cowboys and far too much imported crap. Enedis will do it, but the price is, accordingly, quite a bit higher and I don't have that kind of money to hand.

Marte's final days

With the flywheel now free and the engine able to turn, I cranked. And cranked. And cranked. But nothing. Not a peep.
As it was getting darker by now, I gave up and went to turn the fuel valve off and... it was already off. Yeah, facepalm. There was a part of me that would have sworn on science textbooks that I had opened the valve at the beginning, so maybe I went to turn it off twice?

I spent all of Tuesday at work going through diagnostics in my head. Tuesday evening, I put a little bit of air into the tyres and cranked the engine. With a full battery and the valve definitely open. It spluttered, so I moved the choke from start to run and cranked again and the engine fired right up (so, yes, very much facepalm time). Of course, with something having fallen out of the flywheel, it was out of balance and shook something terrible - almost as much as the dinky diesel in my previous cars. However, it did function and it functioned for an hour and a quarter which is what I needed to get most of the grass cut. I had to abandom afterwards because it was getting hard to see. I couldn't turn on the lights as, yes, the generator no longer works. There's no power output from the engine.

I think I'll need to try to poke some sort of mirror or camera up underneath to see what's going on, and if I can break the opposite side to regain some sort of balance. It would be easier to take the flywheel off, but I think I need a really big - possibly imperial - socket for that, and to work out what way to turn it - the flywheel spins clockwise, so I think that's how I have to turn it to undo the bolt.

Either way, Marte has done amazingly for a heap of junk that's needed all sorts of patches, but I think she's telling me that I really ought to sort out something else for next springtime.

I cannot mow today, not even with the little mower or the strimmer. Partly because it's a religious holiday, but mostly because as of yesterday afternoon it's been a layer of mid-range fog and stillness and everything dripping wet.

I didn't take photos, but it was fun putting flowers on mom's grave yesterday evening. We're an hour ahead now, plus I went shopping, then I stopped by at some people I know in the village. By the time that was all over, it was rather dark. Night time, in the fog, in a graveyard, on Halloween. What more could I have asked for? Oh, yes, a ghost or two, but nobody wanted to venture out. It was such an appropriately spooky looking night that I didn't even see the local children knocking on doors for free sweets.

The F in Fog.

Anyway, here's a photo across the fields this afternoon. It's times like this that it's easy to forget that the rest of the world exists. It is now dark, and like last night it's absolutely pitch black. And guess who needs to now go and walk the recycling bags up the top of the lane? I hope the owl is around to keep me company this time. Actually, I think I might put on my headphones and listen to... probably Caprice Symphonic Gothic. I mean, it's pitch black and foggy and the day of dead people so it needs an appropriate soundtrack. Actually, right now I'm listening to Pangea (sic) and they're playing "Amnesia" by Tristania. A nice violin lead-out there.

Then I'll make the Fray Bentos that I had planned to do for my Samhain meal, but since I felt too damn tired yesterday I just did one of the ready meals that I take to work and went to bed.
I think I'll do it with a sachet of Uncle Ben's. Oh, I'm sorry. Modern snowflake sensibilities mean that they've removed the smiley black bloke and now call it "Ben's Original".

This is a rather sad example, as unlike the gollywog on jam jars when I was young, the man featured on the pack was not a racist thing. It's apparently based upon a hotel manager from Chigaco, and was a story about an African-American rice grower known for the quality of his rice. In 2007, the fictional character was promoted to be the chairman of the board.

Unfortunately things went a bit gonzo after the murder of George Floyd and in response to that, the Uncle Ben character was removed and the product renamed Ben's Original.
Answering racism by wiping out a fictional black character, one that actually had a good story behind him - this is progress?

Just taken the recycling up. I don't have a bin this time as I barely filled the swing bin in the kitchen. Now that "wrappings" go in the recycling, most stuff goes in there and not the black bag. Anyway, I didn't listen to anything. I couldn't find my torch so I used my ears to help sense where I was going until my eyes dark-adapted. The only thing visible was the neighbour up the top of the access lane (a half kilometre away). I don't know if he's deathly afraid of burglars or if he's trying to signal the mothership but the dinky little house is well illuminated from all the floodlights. That was the only light visible in the mire. The town across the way? Nope. The village? Nope. I could barely see anything more than three phone poles away.

I'm wearing black, it just looks light grey in IR.

On the way up a deer growled at me. I glanced over to make sure it was a deer and then said "eff off, I'm just passing through" (not the exact words). Then I walked on as the deer stayed silent.
By the time I came back, it had gone. Probably just as well, as I decided to walk back as a zombie because, well, there is no because.

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