Rick's b.log - 2025/02/13
It is the 19th of February 2025 You are 18.216.52.58, pleased to meet you!

It's all doom and gloom

And, yes, that means the bastard scammer got away scot free. I'm actually not annoyed about that (more annoyed at myself) because I had already come to terms with having lost that money. But I am annoyed about the car. It's a signed contract, dammit, and I'm just a little bit pissed off with others helping themselves to my money.

Work? Well, let's just say that people have decided to find work elsewhere. The washing-up part where I work is losing two people tomorrow, so a stressful demonstration of chaos theory will become damn near insufferable.
Oh, and we're still being paid straight minimum wage, still no sign of any sort of aumentation, and even better we had some of our pay withheld (the variable part like meal coupons and such) because HR has decided that rather than running from "about the 24rd of the month to the 23rd of the following month" like they have done for the past sixteen years, they want to do it from the beginning to the end of each calendar month. Of course, the first we all find out about it is "why is my pay short?" because the most recent pay only counted for nine days (instead of about fifteen - it is usually 20-22 days per month but we'd lose a week for the winter holiday).
I have savings so it didn't hit me, but - you know - given how much the boss man likes to hold impromptu all-staff-here-now meetings to talk about stuff, you'd have thought that maybe just possibly mentioning this a couple of weeks beforehand might have helped people plan their finances ahead?
Anyway, you can probably understand why people are bailing. When we're being asked for more and more and more and any discussion about better pay (hell, even minimum plus 2% would be something) falls on deaf ears, it's hardly conducive to a happy work environment.
And, yes, I am at the stage of "thinking about it", but there's a lot of inertia and uncertainty to overcome. I'm not going to push or make any rash choices. There's safety in having a full time job, so I can take my time.

I'm also extremely concerned about the coup d'état that is playing out in the United States, plus given a mouthy pro-Russia possibly-Nazi the keys to the country's finances, where loads of things are being cancelled and loads of people losing their jobs under some guise of "government efficiency". Like it or not, the influence of the United States did help keep the wheels of civilisation turning, at least from a western perspective. Now that the country is acting like a beligerent arsehat being run by beligerent arsehats that don't seem to have a clue about what "soft power" actually is, I fear for what will step up to fill the void. Even worse if it descends into some sort of civil war...again...as we in the west will be too busy shitting ourselves to notice the chaos being unleashed around the rest of the world. But, really, the most powerful man on the planet (who is also quite possibly the least qualified man on the planet to do the job he's doing) responding to the Gaza situation by suggesting to kick 'em all out and consider the place to be some prime "real estate", alongside threats of taking Greenland possibly by force, these are wholly inappropriate and potentially destabilising comments. And how should the world react if the US does rock on up to Greenland and say "Mine"? If they do that, then there's nothing to stop Russia unleashing a torrent upon Kviv and then saying "Mine", China doing likewise with Taiwan...
If America wants to trash the American dream while shagging a flagpole, that's up to them. I feel sorry for the rational people caught in the middle of this, but it's their country and a majority of voters (about a third of the electorate narrowly voting for it - does that sound familiar?) put the orange lunatic in power...probably thinking "nah, he's not going to be as mental as he sounds" only to find out that he is exactly as mental as he sounded...
But most of all I'm worried about the effect that the United States punching itself in the face will have on the rest of planet earth.

The slogan of The Washington Post is "Democracy Dies in Darkness". Unfortunately they were wrong. Democracy gets murdered in the harsh light of day with a crowd of jeering MAGAists kicking the corpse.

And this long tedious miserable bloody winter, endless chilly fog following months of above-average rainfall...

Oh, and my comments. While it seems that some people are ticking the dumb little box anyway, you can clearly see that my engagement has gone down as other people are "fine, this UK resident won't comment". It's perfectly understandable. What isn't understandable is the need to do this sort of thing in the first place because the idiot Tories (yes, this is yet another thing they broke) don't seem to understand that one-man blogs isn't exactly the same as the likes of Facebook, and the fact that you can leave a comment to other yous seems to qualify this as a "user to user" social site, despite the fact that... it is a comments form at the bottom of self-written articles. It doesn't allow links to be posted. It doesn't accept photos. There are no "harms" here unless somebody chooses to break the law (and, remember, I have your IP and time). But, alas, people like me who don't even embed advertising have to... what is it... nominate a compliance officer or something, then evaluate my site's safety, then publish a report about it, then maintain that (with regular checks and reports) or risk suffering a potential fine that is more money than I will ever earn in my entire lifetime? Bloody cockwombles.

There's a dozen other whinges that I won't bore you (even more) with, but let's just say I'm fed up of just about everything right now.
I suspect this is the winter blues hitting a little harder this year.

Aside: You want a harm, Ofcom? I'll tell you what. You find a grown man who had sex with a little girl and you give me a cricket bat. My general feeling on paedophiles is that I'd like to believe in hell so I know there's a place they're going to spend the rest of eternity. But I'll settle for letting loose with a piece of wood on their gonads. There's your harm, right there, Ofcom. Line the bastards up and I'll happily join in helping the little girl's parents ensure those people are no longer capable of sex with themselves, never mind children. People like that embarrass pond scum.
So if you think you're going to find kiddie porn around here, Ofcom, think again. You might have noticed I have strong feelings on this issue. Maybe, just maybe, being raised by a single mother has helped to point out how females think, how often they are abused, how their mindset is to "know all the exits" - things that just don't occur to a bloke, and just exactly how shit my gender treats the other. And to do that to children. I wasn't joking when I mentioned live televised hangings. Some things are unforgivable. That's one of them.

I would like to say that I feel better for letting that out, but I don't. For two reasons. The most obvious is that it shouldn't be necessary. And the second is that I'm just some random twat with a website and, sadly, in the time it has taken me to write that there's probably a dozen more impressionable young men who clicked to follow the "manosphere" monsters.

It's not all doom and gloom

That benefit is not spending money on lots of essentially unnecessary crap. I have a very simple rule. I always keep a buffer of a thousand euros in my bank account. My pay goes in, I spend it on stuff (alarmingly: cat food and... have you seen the price of paper towels? it's paper FFS!). Just prior to pay day I look at what's in my account and the difference between what's there and my buffer is pushed over to savings. Luckily for me, my vices (Mars bars and tea) are way cheaper than alcohol, fags, and drugs. Bing tells me that a decent sort of "shit" (what the Frenchies call hashish!) is about €700 for a 100g bag (which is quite a markup given that the next link down says it's €500-1000 per kilo at the farm). Not that I'm interested, but just by way of comparison that €700 will buy my one and a half thousand Mars bars, or seventeen thousand tea bags. Your 100g of psychoactive greenery? Keep it. Trust me, I can screw with my mind much more effectively and for much much longer with 1,500 bars of chocolate.

Anyway, jeez, my point got rather spectactularly sidetracked, didn't it?

What I meant to say is that I'm on track for getting myself this thing.

A ProGreen PG 98 SD
(image from lamaison.fr website)

The shop quotes €1,799 and the website quotes €1,699. Obviously I'd be wanted to talk about that, especially given as how it looks like I can buy it online to get the one in the store and... pay a hundred less? ☺

Anyway, it's not great, it's a pretty basic model. It has an ST530 (Stiga) engine. It's a single cylinder (352cm³) providing 5.8kW at 2400rpm. I think that equates to around 7.7 horsepower, so somewhat less than my current mower; though I've not found any information about the engine online.
Electric starter, obviously. Mechanical gearbox (five forward speeds and a reverse). While the hydrostatic might be "nicer", I worry about maintenance. I don't have a trailer so I'd need to perform my own checks and oil changes.
It doesn't have a grass collector, it just chucks it out the side. I'm in two minds here. A grass collector would allow for much tidier results, but on the other hand it's a lot of grass which would rapidly become a big pile of grass. For the time being, maybe better to just toss it aside. After all, it's not been a big problem for the past four or five years.
The cutting deck can go from 25 to 80mm (that's about 1 inch to just over 3 inches), and the dual blades can cut a rather large 98cm (38 inches, or a yard). The next best mower only cuts 84cm. More cutting at once means it ought to take less time to do. It looks like there's some sort of electromagnetic clutch for the blades? And two LED headlights to aid in cutting in lower light conditions. Something I noticed when looking at the display model was there's a little moulding on the left for a can of coke.

The ProGreen PG 98 SD in the shop.

That would be the one I'd be buying - it's not so much "the display model" as "the only model" (though the man said if it is sold they can contact their distributor for another). They'll deliver for €30.
It's a bit plasticky, but then so were all the others. I don't think they make them in metal much any more (at least, in this price bracket). It is probably a more efficient engine, too, so won't run as hot (and hopefully not guzzle as much fuel) as Marte.
I think it'll be weird changing gears with the stick on the right back there, but I suspect the motion will be less troublesome than Marte's across-the-front gear selection. I'm used to it now, but it really messed my shoulder up in the beginning.

So, that's a sometime-in-the-spring plan.

I'm going to stop writing now because I feel dizzy. I haven't eaten or drunk anything (except a tea an hour ago) since 8am and that was 12 hours ago. I went to my five-yearly medical checkup and I didn't want any "oh my god I need the toilet" when I'm in somebody else's car and we have to be someplace by a certain time.
But, now, time to stop writing and prepare some pasta. I think it'll be fresh tagliatelle as that's quicker to cook. Might throw some garden peas in (got to use 'em up) for added je ne sais quoi.

Your comments:

Related content, 13th February 2025, 23:22

Reminds me of a time I was made to go to a client some ~120 miles away on what was supposed to be a day off because they had a problem with their payroll system and it's BACS payment system, and I was the only one who had a clue how to fix it. (This was long before remote access was commonplace.) They ran a number of care/nursing homes, the vast majority of staff on minimum wage, and said, basically, if there were ever any problems with paying the staff, a fairly significant proportion of them simply wouldn't turn up for work again!    America.. It's like a bloody soap opera. Each day has yet another stupid thing happening. It's only been a few weeks.. Will there be anything left intact by the end of his term?

John, 14th February 2025, 19:00

It's February. You may need light therapy for seasonal affective disorder. Won't do any harm to expose yourself. Look it up. I lied about the residency bit, but I did that for years!

Rick, 15th February 2025, 18:03

It was sunny this afternoon. I sat out while Anna grazed.  Shame about the wind, but the end of the house was a nice warm shelter.    You know, the art of lying is *not* admitting to it!