David S

Today I started my @ThamesPathNT walk properly, postponed from 2020 due to ‘the thing’. Warmed-up with a stroll from Woolwich, courtesy of the Lizzie Line 🙂

@MCCCANM 🤣👍

New thing: “Poorly Explained Aircraft Systems”. Let’s do electrical… The engine has a special shaft it uses to connect to a generator if you “flip the right switches”. It’s unclear if this is enjoyable for the generator, but soon lots of electrons are born. The electrons are very excited & wish to explore, but there are paths they should stay on. Occasionally, some stray a**hole electrons decide to go on an adventure like Hobbits. “Let’s check out the fuel tanks!” the Pippin Hobbit electrons say, and the movies would have like 75% fewer problems for everyone if Pippin had stayed home. The jet doesn’t like this. It wants to keep the Pippin Hobbits in the Shire, so it closes the gate. We call the gate “Circuit Breakers”. The engineers have put them on the back wall of the cockpit. And on the ceiling. Sometimes on the side. Also, some at your feet. There might be some outside, but I don’t go out there. This is very clear to Engineers, who write a map of them in the flight manual which requires a Rosetta Stone every time you open it. To make it very clear to pilots which breakers have “popped”, they tell you the body is white, so when it sticks out it’s easily visible among the all black array. This is a lie Engineers tell pilots to make them feel stupid when they can’t find a popped breaker. That’s OK; when we find a popped breaker & are bored, it’s sometimes a fun challenge to see who can hold it in the longest before it gets too hot. I’m pretty good at this, but it took years of burning my hands to desensitize. Some breakers are fake; Engineers call them “Remote Breakers” because the real breakers are in a place called the “Avionics Bay”. This is a mythical place where computers & lots more circuit breakers are said to exist, but it’s not really that. It’s an empty space Maintenance stores beer & goes to screw off when I ask them to fix something. I haven’t confirmed that because it’s accessed from outside on the ground & it can be hot or cold or rainy or windy outside, but I have high confidence in this theory. Maintenance doesn’t like to be seen doing their work. I have to give this one to them, because pilots will see a malfunction, then say “I saw Maintenance fix this once like five years ago, they pushed this button, then I think this one” and now the flight is cancelled. The jet senses when electrons stop being born fast enough & “sheds” loads to keep things it likes running. It does this in an order designed to piss off Flight Attendants, like shutting off the seat-back TVs & the Galley (the WiFi doesn’t actually run on electricity, it runs on fairy dust, anger & profane language). The Flight Attendants immediately call me to report this, and while we’re at it the wing looks like it’s on fire. Other than me, the battery is the laziest piece of the puzzle. It does next to nothing until there is nobody left. Then it acts like a teenager, complaining it will only do like 6 things, and only for 30 minutes, tops. After that, it screams “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE A BATTERY THESE DAYS!” and quits. I don’t want to give a false impression, though…there is always Airbus. It’s built by the French, so you KNOW it’s lazy, thinks it knows better than you & wont do what you ask it to. Anyway, some jets have a little windmill you can lower into the wind, called a RAT. The RAT exists to exacerbate electrical fires caused when you flipped the wrong switches, but the jet fixed it automatically & you undid that with some more switches & buttons because you passed that systems test 3 years ago that you had the answers to. The electrons for your seat’s phone charger are an unknowable mystery, wrapped in an enigma. I assume solar powered, but haven’t found the panels yet & you are being punished for your sins when it doesn’t work. (It’s Twitter, so I have to put a disclaimer here that this is SATIRE & I respect my colleagues – I made fun of myself. I hope you had a laugh!)

@JaneFranklin99 @ed800m @prouddevonian Several lifetimes ago, this was my weekly commute. I never tired of the view nor took it for granted 🙂

Britain's Most Luxurious Train Journeys - Series 1: Episode 1 | Channel 4 - featuring the stunning scenery of the English Riviera including Kingswear and Paignton ⁦@ed800m⁩ ⁦@prouddevonian⁩ 🚂 🏖️ channel4.com/programmes/bri…

@CryErniCryErni @JackRhysider TOTP and Message-push apps are immune to SIM-swapping, which is why they are preferred to SMS.

@JackRhysider 2FA apps are a waste of time. If someone wants your account they'll just pay some teenager at the mall $50 to do a sim swap (or SS7). But good point Jack, whenever you open the app it always wastes a couple seconds of your time as 90% of the time it's about to expire.

Do you think one day we'll get 2FA apps that when you open it, it's not immediately expiring, and instead will give you a fresh minute upon opening it up?

@airmainengineer 💯

Probably this is the best aircraft to cheer you up if you are having a bad day

@scottiebateman @jonhutch @fly276 @OnDisasters I’d love to have seen this one IRL 🙂

@jonhutch @fly276 @OnDisasters During peak periods they use both for landing.

Just casually flying your Cessna and this "heavy" pops on for a parallel approach... Filmed at John Wayne Airport, California

@RslewisSally 🙂

It's all a bit depressing. Please send me fluffy animals, music and nature.

@RslewisSally @CallMeMoNow Replied to the wrong post, but you get the drift.

@david__s @CallMeMoNow Yep

This tweet illustrates 2 things: 1. It hints (clumsily) that massive transformational change is required to support patients in the community. 2. That many senior leaders in the NHS have not the faintest idea about the structural changes needed to allow that.

I suppose I should have guessed that the moment the discussion went in a direction that didn’t accord with his prejudices, he’d go straight to verbal abuse…

@Gypsypup13 When they were too busy just trying to pay the bills, I guess 🤷🏻‍♂️

Im hearing my local corner shop has had an armed robbery this afternoon. I saw a load of police crawling around the streets but that happens here. Its bad around Aberavon. It was fantastic when I was a kid. Everyone took care of their homes and area. When did peolle stop caring?

@ShivaniM_KC I asked my mate NoRM — he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about every genre of modern music 🙂

Do you remember life before Shazam? How did you find out the names of songs you liked?

@maisiethetortie @ShivaniM_KC 🤷🏻‍♂️

@ShivaniM_KC Designed to infuriate- no other purpose for it

Whoever designed this, I need a word with them. Of all the 2-factor authentication apps, it’s the worst

@Azeem_Majeed It varies in inverse proportion to the seniority of the politician… 🙄

Are politicians the only people in the UK whose mobile phones don’t automatically back up their messages?

@HKW1981 @Azeem_Majeed Too many. In many organisations if you are “senior enough”, you get to make your own rules… it’s not right, but it’s the reality 🙄

@Azeem_Majeed How many businesses allow senior staff to manage their roles on WhatsApp? Johnson did, Sunak did. We knew and derided them. Obviously crooked, no trace. How come a Labour official went on to do it too?

@MacleodMikey 🙄

@david__s @sophiemeaden Well u have a special dentist whilst the rest of us including the op are bounced back and forth like tennis balls. U decided to have your pointless 2p and i stupidly responded. Good day

My toothache got so bad to the point it hurts to even swallow water, the left side of my face has ballooned to the point where I look like I’m morbidly obese and I was up all night with a temperature that I have needed to get medical intervention. > Rang the emergency dentist many times and couldn’t even get through > called 111 and was met with “I’m not medically trained enough other than to give you a text message of what you COULD do” > called the doctors and had to say that I have a learning disability in order to even be able to speak with someone. Then was met with “we don’t deal with teeth” despite explaining that I only needed some antibiotics currently as a dentist wouldn’t touch my teeth anyway until the infection cleared and I can’t get help from them. > pharmacy won’t touch me given it’s not classed as a minor infection > ended up going to A&E to then be told I’m better off at another building on site > they have said they MAY be able to prescribe me antibiotics given the severity of the situation but they don’t generally do it due to the same rules as the doctors and now I have to wait to see if I can get them All of these steps could have been avoided if I was already registered under an NHS dentist. Neglecting dentistry services is damaging the entire NHS ecosystem and partly causing wait times to soar. The government seriously needs to address this. There are also people who are not as pushy as myself who would have just given up and likely developed a very serious infection if not treated. The thought that people could be potentially dying of a tooth infection in a first world country is absolutely appalling.

@MacleodMikey @sophiemeaden There are a range of pharmaceuticals that dentists are authorised to prescribe, antibiotics being one of them. I cannot comment on why she doesn’t need a pad, but clearly she doesn’t, because the process in use obviously works…

@david__s @sophiemeaden Well no dentist of mine has ever prescribed anything to me. If you are swollen they send you to a doctor who says it's dental. Surely the charade of writing it on headed paper shows it's not a regular occurrence, or they would have a prescription pad no?

@DrSdeG << Having had to deal with the aftermath of a data breach as a result of an email account with a weak password and no MFA, I can assure you it’s not a pleasant experience for anyone involved (and that didn’t involve medical data)…

@DrSdeG Glad to hear it’s sorted. It’s a real challenge to find the right balance between security and user-friction (but some implementations are less awful than others)😬 >>

I am back in my email. That was a very very long and painful process, has heightened my hatred of most things techy and made me need a nap.

@MacleodMikey @sophiemeaden Nope. But my dentist just writes it on her practice headed notepaper, and I wander around the corner to Boots to get it fulfilled. No forms or pads required.

@sophiemeaden Had this issue several times and it really needs addressed. Ever see a dentist with a prescription pad? Having to beg doctors for anti-biotics and they say it's dental yet the dentist won't touch it whilst swollen. Once had to buy AB off some dodgy guy.