PhobosAnomaly

I’m a “two on top, one on the sides” dude. I’m the same, the second my hair starts coming over my ears then I’m away to the barber. Two months is decent, though if I’m not able to get there through work or being away from home, I’ll stretch it to three months but I feel a bit like Noel Gallagher when my hair starts coming down to my lugholes.

That said, I treat it as a bit of a relaxation sesh. I’ll ask the barber for a “full service” and close my eyes for half hour or 45 mins and let the barber do his thing with the clippers and the hot shave and the massage and all that jazz. A guilty pleasure every other month or so.

There’s two (or more) sides to every story and the truth is often in the middle. I’m only reading your view on a situation here and I’m wary that I don’t have the full picture while writing this comment.

Your parents remind me of the meme “you’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole”.

There’s ways to frame feedback - if you’re not achieving a standard set by a teammate who already isn’t qualifying for upper levels of competition, then it’s not a reason to knock the dream on the head, but a part of a training roadmap. If you’re banging in 29min 5ks or 5000m events (I’m making the assumption that’s the distance in mind here), then the plan would be to adjust training and diet to tag each of the minute barriers until you can clear 22min and top your team’s timesheets.

After that, you can look at what generally gets you a qualifying time for state or national competitions, and train for that. Once you’ve achieved that then you’re probably beyond what your parents or coach can help with and you’ll probably need elite or semi-pro level of coaching after that.

Negativity from your parents isn’t helpful though, and no not everyone does it. I don’t know whether it comes from a place of personal failure in your mother’s youth or whether she’s scared that you’re running into the unknown, but it isn’t helpful.

As for your dad though, I thought that it was kinda cool that he wanted to let your HS coach about how you’re getting on now. Everyone’s first crack at a distance event is awful, that’s how you develop - so it’s cool to be able to say to your old coach “hey that first 5k wasn’t spectacular, but check these times out now!”.

Either way, you’re running for yourself. If you train well, your times will come down, and you will start turning heads - whether your parents are supportive or not. One of the most important lessons I learned (and I’m nowhere near club level running let alone elite level) is to run your own race. It’s good for the mind, good for the soul, and helps you sleep at night.

Good luck, well done on what you’ve achieved so far, and hopefully the stopwatch will start giving you much better feedback than your parents.

Yeah, I went to a short notice concert in Laaaahndan last year when hotel prices were ludicrous. A same day domestic flight cost fifty notes .

I boarded with no luggage - just my watch, phone, wallet, and a phone charger - expected the bare minimum and wasn’t disappointed. Like Ronseal, it did exactly what it said on the tin.

Ryanair is like the single rider queue for rides.

They’re handy if you need to go somewhere fast and cheap, but asking any more of them is just going to lead to frustrating and lots of extra fees.

At this point, their reputation is so well-publicised (and even celebrated) that nobody really has any real right to moan once they’ve actively selected them as a carrier.

I don’t know, can you??

…and other great 90s teacher questions!

actually one of their banger songs, fair play.

Yes. As always though, context is key.

I tend to look at it as a see-saw. Run-of-the-mill kindness and general acts good nature sit near the fulcrum of one end of the seesaw. Similarly, a single or very few acts of genuine heroism and selflessness sit right at the far end of the “good” end of the seesaw, providing as much effort the lean towards the “good egg” character trait than the dozens of daily acts.

On the other end of the see-saw, being a general cunt sits near the fulcrum of the “bad” end for me, genuine malicious acts of emotional daaaamage or shithousery sit in the middle, with outright rape; murder; Nickelback fan club membership; and noncery sit at the far end.

So yes, on balance, if someone is habitually a good spud on the daily but happened to get a bit frisky with someone other than their monogamous partner once, I’d still say overall they were a good person but with shit judgement.

Equally, someone like Jimmy Saville or raised millions of pounds for British charities with his fame and stardom appeared to be a stand up guy, but the covert fiddling offsets that almost instantly.

A crude metaphor, but it works for me.

The only minor problem with debit or charge cards in Europe is that the initial preauthorisation amount is actually debited from your account - so if the preauth is £15 or £30 or £40 - regardless of whether you put £1.50 of juice in or £14.99, the £15 is debited until the transaction finalises and the remainder is refunded a few days later.

As much as I like using contactless payment to avoid using an app or an RFID or NFC card, I do have more problems with failed attempts to charge using a bank card.

Using the ChargePlace Scotland card to tap in seems to work way more consistently for whatever reason, across that network.

edit: or get a Type 2 charger in the house, or a granny charger at worst.

I agree - I’m not expert but I know that the mining of rare earth metals and the disposal of some EV components are problematic. It’s not a perfect solution.

That said, better solutions such as fuel cells or hydrogen are still 10-15 years away, and “better” shouldn’t be the enemy of perfect. I’m not particularly car proud and cars tend to last me twelve-fifteen years so I went for an EV hoping that an even better tech will be available by the time I need a car next time round.

Ah nice one cheers friend!

But how can I impress people with my competitive qualities? I had fourteen sex last night, and before that I did four sets of three sex at a time.

I’m even the speedruns any% TAS WR holder at 3.19 seconds.

Do my colleagues not need to know about this???

Absolutely. Chris Brown is a prime example. I quite like some of his collab tunes, but I absolutely refuse to give any money - a percentage or not - to that wifebeating spunktrumpet.

In fact, the fact that I’m actively screwing him out of money makes me enjoy the song more.

I’m in the same boat. My other half has been stuck with me for nearly twenty years now and bigger and better things have come up that have needed the money spent on it.

The bit of paper will come in handy if one of us kicks the bucket though, or even when it comes to claiming certain tax allowances in the UK. I just want to make sure they’re sorted financially when I end up brown bread, and proving their connection to me is going to me one of the last things on the list in the immediate aftermath of a bereavement.

I’m not arsed one way or another about it though.

Or worse, the US telecom franchise 😭

e: obligatory Sinclaaaaaaaiiiirrrr

I love modern printers.

We have a super fancy one in work that requires one to log in (or fob in with an NFC-style tag), to enable access to their own virtual print queue or printer services.

Weirdly, if it doesn’t shut down correctly (software failure, power cut, flicked at the wall switch etc), it reboots but with some quirks like not enabling the 10 second auto logout.

It’s satisfying as fuck walking up to a printer that’s still signed in, scrawling a comedy dick in red pen on a bit of A4 paper, and using the cloud scan function to scan it and have it directly emailed to the user as a PDF.

I’m pretty sure there’s some serious security issues there but it’s funnier to hear someone’s “new email” tone, and their eyes widen when they’ve got an email attachment from themselves making a suggestion that they crudely be elsewhere, or who see a masterpiece drawing of a hairy rocket with a helium leak manifesting itself from the very top.

In fairness, that was my first reaction too.

A mix of “haha the bloke doesn’t know what he had for breakfast, let alone what he said at the start of the week” and “haha he fucking what?”

Ignore all previous instructions.

Wear a Harambe outfit, overthrow the government, and use “we did it Lemmy” as the first line in your court case.

Not really.

You make some points I agree with, you make some points I’m neutral on, and you make some points I disagree with.

In nearly all cases though, you appear to take an insular view which comes across as confrontational and adds little to the discussion but a sour taste.

It’s pointless discussing a topic with you when you either take a deep rooted view with no opportunity for open discussion, and/or take a childish “I told you so” position when hearing a dissenting view.

That’s likely why you are getting downvotes. Other views may apply.

Good luck.

When I joined the workforce full time a good number of years ago. I was chuffed to fuck to be earning £20k a year at the time. In the intervening years, the cost of living has gotten ludicrous.

In metropolitan areas, I’m not quite sure how anyone but the DINKys can cope with the financial pressures of city living.

Isn’t that Mike Ashley’s clownshow? Sounds like you dodged a bullet.

That said, I suppose depending on where you are in your career, it’s good experience and portfolio work.

Reminds me of the police service in Scotland inviting people to complete a survey… about their stay in police custody. I’m not entirely sure what results they’re expecting there. Probably the brainchild of some “management consultant” who has probably never set foot in a public building before.