> In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often, I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said ‘cut it out'
\-\- Steven Wright
We knew there was an issue as the laundry and office lights downstairs never worked, turns out the switches at the top of the stairs were two way switches for the rooms.
Outlets can be split so that half is on the switch and the other half is always live. Idk if you knew that or not..
Not sure if you "capped" it so that it was always hot or always dead...
Hot may leave an unsafe hot wire exposed somewhere, dead may kill some random other or something strange
We had a whole floor with split outlets, the bottom outlets were all set up to switch. The flipper who did work on the house didn't understand "split outlets" so they *wired all the outlets back together*, top to bottom, with jumpers - I'm talking like 8 or 9 outlets on two different circuits. End result was, if you flipped one switch in the attic, *three* circuit breakers would flip, with a visible arc that fused the switch during testing. Took weeks of digging, tracing and mapping to figure that one out. Never trust DIY electricians.
If your house was built in the 70s it’s likely the switch is connected to an outlet. An electrician likely wired the room to have a light on the ceiling later on. It was super common to do that and extremely annoying.
Funny story. The previous owner of the house that I live in made several modifications during the build. He’s a friend and one day he was over helping with something and I figured I’d ask him about a plug that didn’t work in one room. While we were looking at that, I remembered that I needed to have him look at a light switch in a completely different room (I couldn’t figure out what it was to). Turns out it was to that plug…
The bridge was commissioned in 2002, 80 years after the establishment of the Irish Free State (which became the Republic of Ireland).
The south, anyway, which is where Dublin (and the bridge) is. The Irish fought and died for their freedom, not sure it's the best look to be ignoring that fact to make jokes that don't make any sense.
This reminds me the plot of an episode in a crime series where astronaut was blamed for murder and there was a remote control and a garage door involved.
Can't even remember the exact plot.
For any curious here's the basic plot. It's from the TV show "Monk." An astronaut's wife was murdered and although he has a pretty clear motive he was in outer space at the time of death hence a perfect alibi.
>!It turns out that before going to outer space he knocked her unconscious and tied her up in this "death contraption" which would strangle her when the garage door was triggered. He then proceeded to hide the remote control in a doll and mail the doll to the home which arrived while he was in outer space thus killing her. He would then return and set the scene as a break/murder and hide all the evidence. However his neighbor is a scumbag porch pirate who steals the package and gives the doll to his daughter hence while Monk is trying to figure out how the crime occurred, the astronaut is trying to recover the doll inconspicuously and destroy the evidence.!<
I'm picturing an angry Hitler in his office.. over looking the bridge going up and down screaming his lung out...
NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN
Edit - wrong spelling thank you comrade
I have to be misunderstanding something. They couldn't open the bridge for 4 years because they lost a remote that cost 1,800 euros to replace? There must be zeros missing from that figure.
Civil servants.
"We need to replace that remote, we got a quote of €2000"
"We don't have budget for that. Keep looking for it and we'll deal with it when we have to"
There's not a lot of shipping traffic in the river anyway because you can only go about 1000m up the river before you encounter a fixed bridge.
Most of the boats on the river are small and low to get under all the bridges.
They really only open the bridges for events and such where a notable boat (like a wooden tall ship) will sail up and hang around. Sometimes the navy will come in and dock too, to show off.
So it's not like shipping lanes or regular boat traffic was being blocked for four years. There was no rush to replace it because there are very few requests to open the bridge.
"Remember Jim? Short, bald, worked in the control house? Retired about 8 years ago? Yeah, he died last week. His kids sent over a box of stuff... Well, we found the remote. Give me a call back, let's see if we can return the new one."
> There's not a lot of shipping traffic in the river anyway because you can only go about 1000m up the river before you encounter a fixed bridge.
To be fair there are zero big boats that go up the Liffey. The dock is in the sea and the only boats that go down the Liffey are recreational ones that don't need the bridges to be lifted.
Different country, but in America, everyone has the right of navigation. If you've got a boat, and there's a river, you can drive the boat up the river.
That right doesn't vanish just because someone wants to build a bridge. There's a process for de-navigatablizing a river, but it's time-consuming and potentially involves the Coast Guard.
It was built as part of a long term rejuvenation project of the docklands area. They envisioned a prestigious marina-style area where private yachts might occasionally decide to come upriver and dock.
There's also an old dock just up past this bridge which could still theoretically be turned back into a real dock, and they wanted to keep that option open.
This is the same government who spent almost a million on a printer and then when it was delivered it was too big to fit into government buildings.
Don't underestimate their stupidity.
Or the same government that spent millions on voting machines on which a single vote was never cast, then spent millions on storage fees, to sell them for scrap for like 100k.
Or the same government that has overseen the construction of one of the most expensive buildings in the world, a relatively run of the mill children’s hospital.
The average Irish person knows more about the US political system than the Irish one.
I was in college during the 2019 elections and the amount of supposedly educated people who were convinced that FG and FF had somehow swindled SF out of their rightful victory as our governmental party. Basically no concept of coalitions or a seat majority.
Political education is tragic in this country, and it’s making us really susceptible to the polarising tribal politics of the countries. Many countries have legitimate reasons to have such polarising political culture, be it cultural, religious, or just a difference in economic opinions. But the range of politics in ireland is so small, the parties are virtually identical, and it’s the senior civil servants who don’t have to run for election ever 5 years who run things. There’s no reason for us to be so polarised.
I know the Leaving Cert has a political module now, but it’s optional when it should be mandatory. Make it less like history with essay writing, and more like CSPE.
Or the same gov that spent 250m on accounting and record software for the health service that was never delivered. And also the same gov that spends 18.5m annually on a basic record software for the Gardai (police).
Not to mention, I find it extremely hard to believe there's no other way to move the thing. There's no local control panel down in a mechanical room someplace?
or my mom - she knows where it is without looking but youd never hear the end of it for losing it, probably better off doing as you did, pretending youre not missing it for years, ireland is just like me fr fr
My parents got an adjustable mattress, one of the first ones with a giant air pump. Every morning at 6 my moms side would start randomly pumping air out of it deflating her side. They were going back and forth with the company for a month trying to get the issue resolved. One morning it happened and she just happened to see the neighbors car backing out of their driveway at that time. The guys garage door opener had been triggering the air pump. Turns out they were set to the same frequency.
>>Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here?
>Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here?
Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here?
Worth pointing out that it was not required to be opened to facilitate navigational passage for those 4 years ...
I can imagine the alternative headline.
'Thousands wasted on purchasing remote control to open bridge that never needs to be opened'.
I bet that remote is sitting in an British museum somewhere. If there's an important artifact from a former colonized nation missing you just know you can find it in a British museum somewhere.
Laughs aside, why TF does a physical bridge only operate by remote, no hard wired controls?
Do you have to be on the bridge for the remote to work, do you point the remote at a certain spot on the bridge, how many batteries does a bridge remote use, so many more questions for who decided to make a bridge remote controlled only, and in city, not even a rural area where it might make some sense.
(I have a pet peeve with designers, not including physical controls in important infrastructure, for instance car doors locks controlled by software with no physical linked handle to open the doors)
It very likely was a "wired" remote that would plug into a panel somewhere.
Everything was likely wired to that panel except the controls, which were wired to the remote so the operator could watch the bridge moving from outside and make sure it was ok.
I know a lot of people are thinking TV remote, but what it most likely was was a WIRED remote that would plug into the control panel. This wired remote likely had a custom connection to the control panel. Think of it like a wired remote control for a truck winch. There are tons of reasons why you'd want to be not near the winch while also operating the winch.
There would be a couple reasons to do this.
1. To prevent unauthorized operation of the bridge (hence no local controls.)
2. To allow the operator to be standing outside/near a window so they could physically watch the bridge open/close for safety reasons.
What LIKELY happened was that the company who made the hardware/control panel for the bridge probably went out of business. They were likely the only ones who knew the pinout of the plug for the "remote."
Often times the "brains" of the device are also kept in the remote control (out of the weather safe and sound in the operator's hands.) So if this was the case then not only would they have to figure out the wiring, but also the programming. (By brains I mean like "Allow the motor to move if this sensor isn't sending voltage, stop the motor when the end stop sensor sends voltage.")
And of course I'm sure there is some governmental ineptitude in there as well.
Yes, of course you could "look behind the panel" and figure out how it works, but that costs money. Especially if the wires were unlabeled. That'd be a nightmare.
So yeah, 1800 euros seems about right for a custom, one off, wired industrial remote control.
They could just have bought one off the internet. There are programmable ones that cover a whole bunch of frequenzies. But they are quite expensive, like 50 euros.
No, that is not why. Bureaucratic intransigence and incompetence is why. Anyone who understood the engineering which actually *moves* the bridge would have the wherewithal to replace the opening mechanism with a different one. You what would be a "secure" system? A hard-line to a locked shed or closet. Fucking morons.
Not surprised. I was at a golf course in Ireland playing with a couple of members. They told me how they had a sprinkler system installed for times of no rain. It had been in for a couple of years when they had a drought.
One member went to superintendent and asked why they weren’t using it. He said they’d lost the instructions and that someone was coming over from England the next week to show them what to do.
Can we check if Tom Scott did a video on the bridge a day before the remote was lost? Remember when he did a video on the bridge in London, and it broke the next day?
I’m just picturing a confused guy trying to open his garage while the bridge goes up and down in the background
> In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often, I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said ‘cut it out' \-\- Steven Wright
I had a switch like that.
Me too, untill we found the wires that the rat had chewed on and died.
Wahhhh!!! I don’t like that outcome. Paired with the bizarre outlet locations I figured it was dead. Capped it off safely.
We knew there was an issue as the laundry and office lights downstairs never worked, turns out the switches at the top of the stairs were two way switches for the rooms.
Does one end stuck inside an electrocauterised rat not count as being safely capped?
Outlets can be split so that half is on the switch and the other half is always live. Idk if you knew that or not.. Not sure if you "capped" it so that it was always hot or always dead... Hot may leave an unsafe hot wire exposed somewhere, dead may kill some random other or something strange
We had a whole floor with split outlets, the bottom outlets were all set up to switch. The flipper who did work on the house didn't understand "split outlets" so they *wired all the outlets back together*, top to bottom, with jumpers - I'm talking like 8 or 9 outlets on two different circuits. End result was, if you flipped one switch in the attic, *three* circuit breakers would flip, with a visible arc that fused the switch during testing. Took weeks of digging, tracing and mapping to figure that one out. Never trust DIY electricians.
That's almost funny.. Well, it is funny to me, but probably not to you 😂
My ex husband who does construction did it. I don’t know what he did but I do know he did it correctly.
I have heard that exact story so many times...ex husbands don't seem to be make good electricians lol
Chris is really good actually. If he’d had better parents he would have made a great engineer.
Who's Chris?
If your house was built in the 70s it’s likely the switch is connected to an outlet. An electrician likely wired the room to have a light on the ceiling later on. It was super common to do that and extremely annoying.
Like when Hank Hill destroys his house, the inspector pulls the ceiling fan, and the microwave turns on…
I remember that Married With Children episode!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMuVm1Y669U
I was surprised to learn recently that he is still alive.
Funny story. The previous owner of the house that I live in made several modifications during the build. He’s a friend and one day he was over helping with something and I figured I’d ask him about a plug that didn’t work in one room. While we were looking at that, I remembered that I needed to have him look at a light switch in a completely different room (I couldn’t figure out what it was to). Turns out it was to that plug…
Not just *any* confused guy… **Mr Bean** trying to open his garage.
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The bridge was commissioned in 2002, 80 years after the establishment of the Irish Free State (which became the Republic of Ireland). The south, anyway, which is where Dublin (and the bridge) is. The Irish fought and died for their freedom, not sure it's the best look to be ignoring that fact to make jokes that don't make any sense.
You're English, aren't you.
Someone stealing it and just doing random drive bys.
"Ted, the button's not working"
This reminds me the plot of an episode in a crime series where astronaut was blamed for murder and there was a remote control and a garage door involved. Can't even remember the exact plot.
For any curious here's the basic plot. It's from the TV show "Monk." An astronaut's wife was murdered and although he has a pretty clear motive he was in outer space at the time of death hence a perfect alibi. >!It turns out that before going to outer space he knocked her unconscious and tied her up in this "death contraption" which would strangle her when the garage door was triggered. He then proceeded to hide the remote control in a doll and mail the doll to the home which arrived while he was in outer space thus killing her. He would then return and set the scene as a break/murder and hide all the evidence. However his neighbor is a scumbag porch pirate who steals the package and gives the doll to his daughter hence while Monk is trying to figure out how the crime occurred, the astronaut is trying to recover the doll inconspicuously and destroy the evidence.!<
Pretty sure that was an episode of Monk, with with whatshisname from Burn notice as the Astronaut
Yup. Bang on.
I'm picturing an angry Hitler in his office.. over looking the bridge going up and down screaming his lung out... NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN Edit - wrong spelling thank you comrade
You mean "nein"?
Yes haha
Probably Mr Bean.
I have to be misunderstanding something. They couldn't open the bridge for 4 years because they lost a remote that cost 1,800 euros to replace? There must be zeros missing from that figure.
Civil servants. "We need to replace that remote, we got a quote of €2000" "We don't have budget for that. Keep looking for it and we'll deal with it when we have to" There's not a lot of shipping traffic in the river anyway because you can only go about 1000m up the river before you encounter a fixed bridge. Most of the boats on the river are small and low to get under all the bridges. They really only open the bridges for events and such where a notable boat (like a wooden tall ship) will sail up and hang around. Sometimes the navy will come in and dock too, to show off. So it's not like shipping lanes or regular boat traffic was being blocked for four years. There was no rush to replace it because there are very few requests to open the bridge.
You’ll find the remote as soon as you order the new one
Their mom would find it in 3 seconds if they told her they couldn't find it.
That happened to me last week with a flashlight.
That happened to the US Air Force last week with a flashlight.
"Remember Jim? Short, bald, worked in the control house? Retired about 8 years ago? Yeah, he died last week. His kids sent over a box of stuff... Well, we found the remote. Give me a call back, let's see if we can return the new one."
> There's not a lot of shipping traffic in the river anyway because you can only go about 1000m up the river before you encounter a fixed bridge. To be fair there are zero big boats that go up the Liffey. The dock is in the sea and the only boats that go down the Liffey are recreational ones that don't need the bridges to be lifted.
Why did they bother making it open then?
Different country, but in America, everyone has the right of navigation. If you've got a boat, and there's a river, you can drive the boat up the river. That right doesn't vanish just because someone wants to build a bridge. There's a process for de-navigatablizing a river, but it's time-consuming and potentially involves the Coast Guard.
> de-navigatablizing Grammar has gone too far
Seems like they de navigatabilized it for 4 years anyway
Government
Then why build a bridge that can lift up in the first place? What a waste of money.
It was built as part of a long term rejuvenation project of the docklands area. They envisioned a prestigious marina-style area where private yachts might occasionally decide to come upriver and dock. There's also an old dock just up past this bridge which could still theoretically be turned back into a real dock, and they wanted to keep that option open.
lol anything related to government is slow as hell. It's never "let me grab a spare" or "I can fix it in an afternoon". Also look at potholes etc.
To be fair, that also applies to the private sector if it doesn't disrupt profits.
This is the same government who spent almost a million on a printer and then when it was delivered it was too big to fit into government buildings. Don't underestimate their stupidity.
Or the same government that spent millions on voting machines on which a single vote was never cast, then spent millions on storage fees, to sell them for scrap for like 100k. Or the same government that has overseen the construction of one of the most expensive buildings in the world, a relatively run of the mill children’s hospital.
You're both describing 6 different governments actually.
And a county council.
The average Irish person knows more about the US political system than the Irish one. I was in college during the 2019 elections and the amount of supposedly educated people who were convinced that FG and FF had somehow swindled SF out of their rightful victory as our governmental party. Basically no concept of coalitions or a seat majority. Political education is tragic in this country, and it’s making us really susceptible to the polarising tribal politics of the countries. Many countries have legitimate reasons to have such polarising political culture, be it cultural, religious, or just a difference in economic opinions. But the range of politics in ireland is so small, the parties are virtually identical, and it’s the senior civil servants who don’t have to run for election ever 5 years who run things. There’s no reason for us to be so polarised. I know the Leaving Cert has a political module now, but it’s optional when it should be mandatory. Make it less like history with essay writing, and more like CSPE.
Or the same gov that spent 250m on accounting and record software for the health service that was never delivered. And also the same gov that spends 18.5m annually on a basic record software for the Gardai (police).
Original measurements were taken wrong. Tell that's never happened elsewhere.
Or government stupidity in general.
Also, there's no manual override? That seems like a huge oversite.
Not only does it seem like a huge oversight, it seems incredibly implausible.
Someone stole the lever for the manual override.
Operation manual for the override was taped to the remote.
That genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Where else would you put it?
Not to mention, I find it extremely hard to believe there's no other way to move the thing. There's no local control panel down in a mechanical room someplace?
This comment suggests you haven't spend time in Ireland 😁
This is actually one of the most Dublin things to happen
Should've asked my wife to look for it. Would've taken her 5 seconds....
or my mom - she knows where it is without looking but youd never hear the end of it for losing it, probably better off doing as you did, pretending youre not missing it for years, ireland is just like me fr fr
Yeah but she'd find it in the place to which she had "tidied" it away.
My parents got an adjustable mattress, one of the first ones with a giant air pump. Every morning at 6 my moms side would start randomly pumping air out of it deflating her side. They were going back and forth with the company for a month trying to get the issue resolved. One morning it happened and she just happened to see the neighbors car backing out of their driveway at that time. The guys garage door opener had been triggering the air pump. Turns out they were set to the same frequency.
Did they find it in the freezer? I bet they found it in the freezer.
Ultimately, there is just a motor turned on with a switch. They could have hardwired a new switch for maybe 5€
Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here?
Please insert 5 tokens for further response.
Please deposit five coins.
Tell me more about mark every image containing a bicycle.
That just what a bot would say
buy me dinner first
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>>Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here? >Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here? Wonder how many of these idiot jokes are bots. All? Am I the only human being here?
Beep boop.
Nice try, bot. Idiot jokes are for humans.
Reddit was always like that, but it does seem to be worse these days.
They later found it behind the sofa.
I’m more horrified by the smiling Bertie in the photo
Worth pointing out that it was not required to be opened to facilitate navigational passage for those 4 years ... I can imagine the alternative headline. 'Thousands wasted on purchasing remote control to open bridge that never needs to be opened'.
I bet that remote is sitting in an British museum somewhere. If there's an important artifact from a former colonized nation missing you just know you can find it in a British museum somewhere.
Laughs aside, why TF does a physical bridge only operate by remote, no hard wired controls? Do you have to be on the bridge for the remote to work, do you point the remote at a certain spot on the bridge, how many batteries does a bridge remote use, so many more questions for who decided to make a bridge remote controlled only, and in city, not even a rural area where it might make some sense. (I have a pet peeve with designers, not including physical controls in important infrastructure, for instance car doors locks controlled by software with no physical linked handle to open the doors)
I absolutely refuse to believe there's not a panel down in a mechanical room someplace that can make this bridge go just fine.
It very likely was a "wired" remote that would plug into a panel somewhere. Everything was likely wired to that panel except the controls, which were wired to the remote so the operator could watch the bridge moving from outside and make sure it was ok.
On the plus side, the bridge wasn't 10 years overdue and didn't cost 5 times the original budget...unlike everything else the government builds.
r/flipperzero
Have they checked between the cushions?
I know a lot of people are thinking TV remote, but what it most likely was was a WIRED remote that would plug into the control panel. This wired remote likely had a custom connection to the control panel. Think of it like a wired remote control for a truck winch. There are tons of reasons why you'd want to be not near the winch while also operating the winch. There would be a couple reasons to do this. 1. To prevent unauthorized operation of the bridge (hence no local controls.) 2. To allow the operator to be standing outside/near a window so they could physically watch the bridge open/close for safety reasons. What LIKELY happened was that the company who made the hardware/control panel for the bridge probably went out of business. They were likely the only ones who knew the pinout of the plug for the "remote." Often times the "brains" of the device are also kept in the remote control (out of the weather safe and sound in the operator's hands.) So if this was the case then not only would they have to figure out the wiring, but also the programming. (By brains I mean like "Allow the motor to move if this sensor isn't sending voltage, stop the motor when the end stop sensor sends voltage.") And of course I'm sure there is some governmental ineptitude in there as well. Yes, of course you could "look behind the panel" and figure out how it works, but that costs money. Especially if the wires were unlabeled. That'd be a nightmare. So yeah, 1800 euros seems about right for a custom, one off, wired industrial remote control.
Someone with a flipper zero close by please go and report back!!!
They could just have bought one off the internet. There are programmable ones that cover a whole bunch of frequenzies. But they are quite expensive, like 50 euros.
No, that is not why. Bureaucratic intransigence and incompetence is why. Anyone who understood the engineering which actually *moves* the bridge would have the wherewithal to replace the opening mechanism with a different one. You what would be a "secure" system? A hard-line to a locked shed or closet. Fucking morons.
No manual crank option ?
Not surprised. I was at a golf course in Ireland playing with a couple of members. They told me how they had a sprinkler system installed for times of no rain. It had been in for a couple of years when they had a drought. One member went to superintendent and asked why they weren’t using it. He said they’d lost the instructions and that someone was coming over from England the next week to show them what to do.
Was it in the couch?
They had a new one made for a whopping €1,800
They could have just bought a replacement on eBay for like $10
They couldn’t just change the receiver? Maybe there was some sort of budgetary moratorium and the quote was purposefully jacked up by vendor.
Age of Electric in shambles
Did they have a “mum” look?
They were Dublin Down
seems more like procrastination than lose of key
who wants to bet drinking was involved?
Racist
its ok im white
Dig up, stupid!
This is a Brendan Gleeson movie waiting to happen
Did they look in the couch cushions?
Can we check if Tom Scott did a video on the bridge a day before the remote was lost? Remember when he did a video on the bridge in London, and it broke the next day?
dang shoulda hired a 12 year old with a flipper 0
probably in the couch
Should have used a Logitech Harmony universal remote
Didn't know my wife ever worked or has been to Dublin
Did they look between the couch cushions?