Category Archives: Thoughts

Hire Car 6

I thought with the Hire car collected, this incident would be closed. I guess not.

The insurance broker contacted me to ask me to complete a litigation questionnaire. From the sounds of it, the other side is resisting the costs, unsurprisingly.

Grief

I came across this article on FailBlog, but it was actually something that hit home quite hard. It’s a thread that talks about grief.

In case you didn’t know, I lost my uncle to cancer in 2017 and sat on a blog entry talking about dealing with loss for months, not wanting to publish it (it wasn’t this entry, mind you) — but I knew that writing about it helps deal with it.

The article on FailBlog links to an old thread by Lauren Herschel, an unrolled version is here:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/946887540732149760.html

It talks about grief as a “Ball in a box with a pain button” and the ball fills the box, hitting the button near-constantly right after the incident or loss.

The ball deflates over time, meaning it doesn’t hit the button as much, but when it does, it hurts just as bad, and damn, this is right on the button.

McDonalds & Tesco

So I went to the local McDonalds to pick up a coffee and light breakfast and they were doing takeaway only, and only providing seating for delivery partners, like Uber Eats and Deliveroo.

My normal local cafe has turned into a KFC-like chicken shop and now opens at 10am instead of the usual 6am. Disappointed, but I can understand why.

At McDs, I placed my order just as the manager was asking a customer to leave. As he was, I noticed he had a bottle in his hand. Originally I thought it was a Maker’s Mark bottle, but actually looked more like a Courvoisier 1L bottle, which retails for around £35-£40.

This guy was nearing the end of the bottle when I arrived. Had he finished an entire 1L, 40% ABV bottle of Cognac at 6am in the morning? No wonder the boss asked him to leave. The boss was then on the phone, not sure who to, though. I waited for my breakfast outside, monitoring the display screen.

I’ve decided to put the McDs app on my phone in case that helps for the next time I’m ordering.

After my breakfast, I went to Tesco for the weekly shop.

I parked up and then noticed nearby (like three spaces away) was another Yaris. It was a black Yaris Hybrid, like mine, with a 68 plate (mine is a 67 plate). I thought “that’s ironic”, and went to do my shopping.

Came back after shopping, loaded up my boot, then sat in the car and tried to get phone paired with my car’s Bluetooth so I can listen to my Spotify music on the journey back.

Just then I felt my car’s back shaking. Looked in the rear view mirror and found someone trying to get into the boot. I’d already central locked the car, which means the boot won’t open. So I opened the window and said “Wrong Car”. The guy realised immediately what had happened, and so did I. He’s the driver of the _other_ black Yaris Hybrid, parked but three spaces away!

Wreck 2

Got my first cheque in the post from Aviva the insurance company the other driver is part of. Now waiting for the second cheque from the Salvage agents.

Also got a refund from DVLA for the remainder of my road tax since the car is now written off.

Hire Car 4

So, it was finally confirmed. My car is written off after being assessed by the insurance engineers. Interestingly, they were also on lockdown so had to make the assessment using the photos I had taken from the accident.

They have valued my car at £3000. Which isn’t too bad I guess. It’s better than nothing.

The car next to me that was also involved was also written off, to the value of £2200. So that’s £5200 being claimed against the insurance of the other driver. The two cars other cars affected in the accident will probably claim the cost of their repairs, which I’m not sure how much that will be. Probably in the 1-2K region, so that’s at least £6200 in total.

Then there’s the driver’s own car’s damage. Assuming it’s not written off, the damage is probably another K at least. So £7200 of cost on the driver’s own insurance.

That drink he had is proving to be rather expensive…..

My car is going to be towed to disposal on Monday, with the other written off car to be towed tomorrow (Friday)

I’ve already started making enquiries to different dealerships in my area looking for hybrids with a size about the same as my Fabia, or possibly the size of an Octavia. Contacted Hyundai, Toyota and Skoda.

So far, only Toyota have come back and they’ve suggested the Corolla. But I’ll have to wait until they open up again so I can take a look at it closer.

No news yet from Hyundai or Skoda.

Hire Car 3

Got the hire car a few hours after approving the documents. Got a Vauxhall Corsa. Feels weird in a new car with different handling, but I guess it’s only temporary.

Used it to do some shopping.

Hire Car 2

Called the hire car company and they confirmed it would be no cost to me, even though the docs are worded really weirdly. Apparently, they are required to display the costs, even though they are going to be recovered from the third party.

We shall see if they try to screw me over.

Wreck

Friday is normally considered a drinking day due to no work the following day. But with the pubs closed, you would think people wouldn’t be drinking.

Nope.

Someone was, and managed to pretty much wreck my car, and three other cars in the laybay where I park my car.

Two Generals

It’s been a long while since I posted anything of interest other than fitness and running, so here’s something I found that isn’t fitness related.

Tom Scott (Twitter: @tomscott) posted this video about the Two Generals problem. Basically it centres around two generals and asks how they can synchronise communication to ensure they two something at the same time.

In multithreading computing, including back when I was learning Java, we had a synchronized keyword which ensure only one thread went through a block of text. But here, you want two threads to proceed at the same time. How do you ensure that? Turns out there’s no guaranteed way.

Even TCP requires a 3-way handshake aka the SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK (https://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/tcp/3-way_handshake.shtml), but if any of those messages drops, the connection never establishes.

Of course you could just use the UDP method of “fire-and-forget” and say “Hey, General B, we’re going to attack at 8pm, catch up if you have to”, and have dropped packets (or casualties in the two generals problem)

This is an interesting thought experiment and one I hadn’t considered during my time learning parallel and threaded programming.

Oh well, you learn something new every day, I guess.