GRIPES

[nomadpete]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

I've seen clouds forming throughout the day, and then watch them drift away in the late afternoon. After sunset I see lightning downwind where the clouds have gone.

Sounds like glider heaven. Every cumulus has lift under it.

[old man emu]

Central West NSW is inded glider heaven.

[facthunter]

Air Mass analysis is the key to Climate outcomes and they Move about.  Orographic features cause rain events or Frontal activity by Lifting  and cooling the Air Mass.  Adiabatic expansion. Nev

[facthunter]

Gliders need ridges or thermals. Nev

[facthunter]

Watch out for Hailstones near Cb.  Even in clear air. Nev

[old man emu]

Gripe: Because of my soft-touch keyboard I keep having to go back into posts to correct typos. I think that I might be being pressing the keys too softly. Also, I often type "the" as "teh". That's muscle memorty, I think. Also I keep hitting adjacent keys. These things are set to try us.

[pmccarthy]

Me too, all of that.

[facthunter]

Apparently My crook right and is inoperable.  Nerve damage. What's Muscle memory, Mark?. Remembering when you HAD Muscles?  Nev

[pmccarthy]

Muscles disappear. If you diet, fat around the shoulders disappears. But that big spare tyre around the gut is immovable.

[onetrack]

I have never ever developed a "big spare tyre" around my gut, and I really don't understand how people can let it happen, and do little about it. If I gain even a couple of kgs during a period of slacking, I feel a lot more restricted in my physical movements, so I make sure I lose it, with some energy expending work.

[facthunter]

There were no obese people in Changi. Losing weight too fast will reduce Muscle Mass.  The "Pinch test" tells where FAT is. Doesn't work with the Head though.   Nev

[willedoo]

50 minutes ago, onetrack said:

I have never ever developed a "big spare tyre" around my gut, and I really don't understand how people can let it happen, and do little about it.

It's fairly basic. onetrack, you're lucky enough to have a fast, fat burning metabolism like my dad had. You couldn't fatten him. A lot of people aren't as lucky and have slow metabolisms and a tendency to accumulate fat around the midrif. There are people who are vegetarians, don't drink or eat any fattening food and do heaps of exercise and can't shake the belly roll. And to diet it away doesnt work either as it's the last to go; the rest of the body will wither right away before the belly does.

[facthunter]

It's mostly crap FAST food with FAT, salt and sugar.  Sixty years ago hardly anyone was fat.  Look at old photos. WE are the same but Our lifestyle isn't. Cut out Highly Processed foods and sugary drinks Avoid High GI foods Eat whole fruits, not Juices. Cut out snacking, Cakes and cream and Icing sugar. Sugar is rocket fuel, Fried Chips soaked in Overheated FAT. The safe level of transfat intake is ZERO, Nev

[willedoo]

How's this one for an example Nev. I'm only about 77kg but can't shake the belly fat no matter what I do. While not huge, it's not ideal either. I don't drink alcohol, the only animal protein I eat is seafood, don't have dairy products, gluten, sugar or any sugary foods or drinks. I eat almost no processed, packaged food and never eat junk food. Diet consists mainly of grains, fruit and vegetables. I get quite a bit of exercise for someone my age, partly targeted, the rest from physical work. Every day I do heaps of gut related exercise, sit ups etc., yet still maintain belly fat. There hardly any fat on my body, just around the midriff. There's nothing left to cut out of my diet, zero saturated fat and zero sugar, only the natural sugar found in fruit. There's a lot of people around like that who have the same issue. Also too many who eat all that stuff you listed.

[red750]

3 hours ago, facthunter said:

Sixty years ago hardly anyone was fat. 

Seventy years ago, my father weighed 19 stone - 120.6 kg. We lived on a farm. He ate fresh food grown on the farm. Used horsedrawn machinery. Never drank alcohol, never had fizzy drinks or takeaway food (didn't exist). Worked from sunup till dark. I inherited the fat genes.

[onetrack]

My current gripe is around mobile phones. The Wednesday before Anzac Day, my u-beaut, 2-years-and-9-months-old Motorola Edge 30 Fusion locked up. Just wouldn't open the lock screen.

 

Tried shutting it down and it took some effort as even the shutdown menu wouldn't respond to touch pressure for about 5 mins. When I did get it to shut down, and then re-started it, nothing had changed, it was still frozen. I could take calls still (although they sounded a bit funny), but I could do absolutely nothing else with it.

 

Of course, part of the problem could've been the fact that I've dropped the phone numerous times in the period I've owned it. The screen cracked, the back cracked - in fact, it looked like a POS.

When I asked repairers if they could fix it, they all grimaced, and said "$250 is the starting repair price, and it could end up more". 😞 I only paid $499 for it!

 

The difference between the Motorola and the Samsungs I've owned previously, was that I could fix the Samsungs easily myself. I had a Samsung Note 4 for about 6 years, it was truly the best phone I've owned.

I smashed the screen on it twice, and replaced it myself both times. That was the entire LCD assembly. The battery was replaceable on that phone, I replaced the battery twice.

It had a stylus for writing notes on the screen with, and it had excellent performance all round. I think I paid about $360 for it off an eBay seller about 2016.

 

The Note 4 was released in 2014 and became obsolete around 2020 as LTE technology appeared, and LTE technology made a lot of phones obsolete overnight. LTE is the current "backbone" of our phone services, bandwiths and "groups", being the latest evolution of 4G, and a still a support system behind 5G - although 5G actually uses advanced, scalable Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) framework for its technology.

 

I have several "working" phones here - a Samsung S4, the Note 4, SWMBO's old Note 4 - and they are all useless, because they do not have LTE technology built in to them. You can install a SIM card in them, and they won't connect.

 

I bought the Motorola as a mid-range replacement for the Note 4, and I must admit, it did work reasonably well in the 2 yrs and 9 mths before it simply locked up.

So, when I had time, I set to and downloaded Motorolas "Repair Fix", the programme designed to cure Motorola software issues.

But - despite loading the Repair Fix onto the Motorola, it changed absolutely nothing. I was greatly concerned that all my photos and contact information and messages were on that Motorola, and there was absolutely zero I could do to access them. 😞 

 

In desperation, I carried out a factory reset and lost everything on the phone - and I tried the Repair Fix programme again - and still zero result. The phone was "bricked" as the young 'uns like to say.

 

So, I decided to buy a top-of-the-wozza Samsung S26 Ultra - which comes with the stylus and some decent photographic ability. I started doing the rounds of the local stores - JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Retravision, the Good Guys, even Officeworks! Guess what? The phone is $2000 (well, ($1999 actually) at EVERY STORE -  take it or leave it, was the message. Not a single discount of any kind.

 

Asking about online "price matches" brought about general answers where they stated "they don't compete with the grey market". Yeah right. The "grey market" sellers simply buy the phones off Samsung outside Australia, and sell them for much less than the local "bricks and mortar" ripoff merchants. Knowing just how much profit there is in mobile phones, I was determined to not pay "the going rate".

 

Of course, the S26 Ultra has only been out since late February and is the latest technology and latest processors, and the latest Android operating system (they're up to Android 16 now, and 6.2 standard for Bluetooth) - so discounts are "simply not done" on the latest phones, according to the local floggers. Even on the Samsung sales website, the phone was $1999.

 

As a result, I went looking for an online supplier of an S26 Ultra. Bingo, I found "Nostech", based in Adelaide and Melbourne. Run by Indians of course - but they have 8 people working in the company, the two here in Adelaide and Melbourne have commerce degrees, and the other operatives are scattered through Asia - Singapore, HK, etc.

They were selling on eBay and had highly satisfactory feedback. They buy the phones directly out of Vietnam (where they're manufactured), they go to HK and are then sent to buyers in Australia.

Best of all - their S26 Ultra price was $1749. And for $100 extra, I could upgrade to 512GB memory, over the standard 256GB. So I bought a 512Kb - and paid $10 extra for Express Delivery via AustPost.

 

Then the fun started. It was Anzac Day holiday on the Monday, and I thought that would slow things up for a day. However, I got notified the phone had been ordered on the Monday (27th May), and they said "2 to 4 days" delivery. I got an AP tracking number. I watched as the tracking said it had been processed at Toongabbie on the next day, Tues 28th.

 

THEN, I watched in dismay, as the journey showed the phone going through no less than SEVENTEEN processing points within AP - and I watched it go from Sydney - to Perth - then back to Sydney again!! Jesus wept.

 

https://auspost.com.au/mypost/track/details/34HFP509107801000964506

 

After 7 days and an "expected delivery date of May 5th", I gave up (because I really, really, NEEDED a working phone! - and went over to Costco and bought a new A37 5G Samsung - a mid-range phone - on special, for just $487. Normally selling for around $540 or more, it looked like a good fill-in phone, until I actually received my S26 Ultra I was still waiting for!

 

The A37 turned out to be just an average phone, I was quite surprised that the camera on it wasn't anywhere near as good as I expected (and Samsung brag about their cameras).

I tried some close up shots of a problem part I was seeking compensation on, and I couldn't get it to focus clearly at close range - despite using Macro (which is limited at .6, whereas the Motorola went down to .5 on Macro).

 

Finally, the S26 Ultra arrived (on Tues May 5th, as AP promised (so much for "2 to 4 days" on Express Delivery) - and it is remarkable the difference in performance another $1363 makes.

 

The S26 Ultra uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, as compared to Samsungs own Exynos 1480 processor used in the A37. Supposedly around 20% faster than the previous Exynos processor, the Snapdragon 8 blows it out of the water. Plus, the cameras on the S26 Ultra are incredible.

 

All in all, a stressful 2 weeks that has left me feeling a bit ragged, but with the new S26 Ultra phone up and running, and still being fine-tuned, hopefully the worst of my phone hassles are behind me.

 

However - GUESS WHAT. Yep, today Samsung sent me a "special discount deal" from their online store - and the S26 Ultra is now available from their store for - $1750!! 🤦‍♂️

 

Edited 5 hours ago by onetrack