Lounge random thoughts/stories thread -- CURRENT
- Thread starter The Sam
- Start date
Yep. In the home office my laptop sits on a couple of >30-year-old textbooks so the laptop monitor height matches the larger monitors.
20 years ago when I was in college it was already difficult to do without the included CD's online content authorization, but most of my instructors made that effort and taught the material without relying on the online stuff. I have the feeling that it's a lot less optional now, with essential content absolutely gated behind a web portal.
I kept most of my college textbooks and what do you know, occasionally I crack one open to
ah yes, settle an argument with outdated information from a twenty, thirty, fifty year old book! You should be getting your misinformation online like everyone else!
Damn zoomers! Internet information is unreliable! But if it's in print, it's gotta be true or they couldn't publish it. That's why my Introduction to Logic textbook sits happily on the same shelf as America: The Book by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.
My introduction to logic textbook exclusively used Rush Limbaugh quotes to illustrate logical fallacies.
The same section was listed as both PHI250 and MAT250- STEM majors could get 2 hours of philosophy/literature credit for taking it, and liberal arts majors could get 3 hours math/science credit.
The same section was listed as both PHI250 and MAT250- STEM majors could get 2 hours of philosophy/literature credit for taking it, and liberal arts majors could get 3 hours math/science credit.
Quoting from a couple pages back.... You know, if the local bakers could make a large enough bun, I'd totally give a bologna hotdog a run for it's money. Doubly so if somehow cooked on a grill. A lazy Sunday afternoon, football on the tube, a couple beers, and a giant grilled bologna hotdog? I'd food happily coma out the better part of the next week.
Whole grilled mortadella loaf on a giant bun? Yes please. Arteries be damned, full speed ahead.......
Fried bologna sandwiches are delicious. Sometimes it's several regular slices, but better places slice off a burger-thick round of solid bologna and get a little char on it. Toasted bun, melted Swiss, a little brown mustard and/or horseradish, Yummy.
A friend of mine is proofing/copyediting a werewolf book. She has repeatedly ranted that there's a difference between "rogue" and "rouge."
So, I, being helpful suggested "roque" (the croquet variant featured in "The Shining"). She ranted: "These werewolves with their croquet and red cheeks and unexpected makeup." Which gave me a moment of inspiration:
I was invited today
to play Werewolf croquet
At the Werewolf-American Lodge
The wolves wore rouge, red;
They'd not be caught dead
Looking scruffy while out on the lawn
The games were genteel
though I expected to feel
a frisson of fear from their teeth
I left at moonrise;
I thought it was wise
to leave lawn-games to wolves after dark.
So, I, being helpful suggested "roque" (the croquet variant featured in "The Shining"). She ranted: "These werewolves with their croquet and red cheeks and unexpected makeup." Which gave me a moment of inspiration:
I was invited today
to play Werewolf croquet
At the Werewolf-American Lodge
The wolves wore rouge, red;
They'd not be caught dead
Looking scruffy while out on the lawn
The games were genteel
though I expected to feel
a frisson of fear from their teeth
I left at moonrise;
I thought it was wise
to leave lawn-games to wolves after dark.
Indeed. Self published sword & sorcery fiction has a few frequent errors that grate badly (I mean great of course).
"The monster emerged from the trees so he knocked an arrow. When a second appeared, he mounted quickly and snapped the reigns to get his trusty steed to take them far, far away."
In some cases it appears to be voice to text software working about as well as expected. In others, the author apparently DGAF.
Prior to buying a Nissan Rogue in 2008, I read a ton of owner reviews. Just about half of them thought they drove a Nissan Rouge.
My wife listens to audiobooks while working. Some of them free and of (very) dubious quality. And then there's the AI ones... "Quickly, call nine hundred and eleven!"
One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of the shitty AI generated YouTube ads, especially for shitty trading and crypto scams seem to have trouble pronouncing live for some reason.
Well... live (currently happening) & live (verb of the state of something that is living) are pronounced based on context.
Not saying they shouldn't do better, but seems like it's not even AI voice, just TTS with shitty writing.
They're not even getting live/live wrong, the one stupid advertisement I've been getting on repeat recently is pronouncing live (as in livestream) as Liv, the name.
Maybe it's the equivalent of putting a backwards "R" on a roadside ad to try to force cognitive awareness of the error?
At the optometrist office today as we were walking past a row of open exam rooms I saw a computer screen lock screen, instantly recognizeable all these decades later.
Windows XP
I had to stop and stare for a moment. I wish I'd taken a pic.
Windows XP
I had to stop and stare for a moment. I wish I'd taken a pic.
Wonder if it was tied to a peice of equipment that they either can't, or don't want to, replace.
Temu, aliexpress, those cheap chinese sites.. its hard to resist buying some cheap stuff from China. I've found myself buying some penny on the dollar stuff from overseas, not the local state stuff, just to make a cheap purchase knowing that it will take quite some time to arrive from overseas. I just looked at my mail and something I ordered will be arriving tomorrow or the next day. I don't know what it is, I didn't pay much, but I'm finding it amusing to find novelty items in my mailbox sometimes when I get home after work. Sometimes it's kind of kitch I could live without, but sometimes I order something that is cheap as dirt that I can make use of later. I enjoy the little mailbox surprises.
Example, I bought two UV flashlights of two different UV frequencies. One was the generic type but the other was slightly higher frequency, filtered correctly, and was a steal at the price. So now I have two offset UV flashlights I can use to basically see where I missed cleaning up in the kitchen. Do I need UV lights to help show how poorly I cleaned the backstop? No. Does one do a better job? Yes. Am I strung out on meth and doing UV germ comparisons on kitchen surfaces looking for biological UV fluorescence tell tails? Not today! Maybe I just like cheap gadgets and I find humor in the fact that I have the budget to humor myself buying things I don't really need and doing weird comparisons.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I blame 'Project Farm'.
Example, I bought two UV flashlights of two different UV frequencies. One was the generic type but the other was slightly higher frequency, filtered correctly, and was a steal at the price. So now I have two offset UV flashlights I can use to basically see where I missed cleaning up in the kitchen. Do I need UV lights to help show how poorly I cleaned the backstop? No. Does one do a better job? Yes. Am I strung out on meth and doing UV germ comparisons on kitchen surfaces looking for biological UV fluorescence tell tails? Not today! Maybe I just like cheap gadgets and I find humor in the fact that I have the budget to humor myself buying things I don't really need and doing weird comparisons.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I blame 'Project Farm'.
It usually is from my experience with customers in optometry.
Is it now a musical, too?!? ’Cause I’d probably watch Rouge One: A Star Wars Musical!
So, I get into work and people are bitching about the internet and phones being down for over an hour. Comm techs are away, so I decided to take a look at the squat, little rack the equipment was mounted in. After a few minutes of clearing crap out from around the rack, I get into it and the cisco switch is dead. Fantastic. Find the power cord, trace it back to the outlet (a hanging extension chord) and plug it back in. 5 minutes later, everything mysteriously works!
I will be applying for IT positions shortly
I will be applying for IT positions shortly
So, I get into work and people are bitching about the internet and phones being down for over an hour. Comm techs are away, so I decided to take a look at the squat, little rack the equipment was mounted in. After a few minutes of clearing crap out from around the rack, I get into it and the cisco switch is dead. Fantastic. Find the power cord, trace it back to the outlet (a hanging extension chord) and plug it back in. 5 minutes later, everything mysteriously works!
I will be applying for IT positions shortly
Band da bana bana da! Da ban da ban dabada! 
(Sorry… couldn’t help myself…)
I hit Post Reply once, and four posts showed up. I edited two of them, and then only those two edited posts remained.
So I guess I can rewrite:
So I guess I can rewrite:
So is this a new creek flowing where you have been living, or are you new to living where a creek has been flowing?
Some of you will remember the 80s and into the 90s when some computer monitors ran a degausser when powered on. Sony Trinitrons in particular made an audible BROONGGG sound when first powered on. I was running the service department at a computer store and took a call from a customer complaining their monitor was broken. Of course one of the first things I asked was "is it turned on" and got a really indignant reply that of course it was. Like, did I think they were stupid or something?
This was followed about 2 seconds later by that BROONGGG sound, clearly audible over the phone. I just asked are we good now and they hung up without a word. I smiled the rest of the day.
This was followed about 2 seconds later by that BROONGGG sound, clearly audible over the phone. I just asked are we good now and they hung up without a word. I smiled the rest of the day.
I LOOOOOVED my 19" (or was it 20"?) Trinitron I managed to snag for (relatively) cheap around 2005 I think it was. OMG heavy, but amazing picture and the flat tube was outstanding.
I'm so bored right now. I've had about 4 hours of work over the last 2 days combined. My current project is wrapping up and my team's next project doesn't start until at least the 14th. I've given my team vague instructions on what to do with the implication to take it easy and chill out, but still show a bit of progress each day. I am waiting on Product to actually define the next work that my team is going to do, and they are dragging their feet at that.
So this is a kind of weird one for me. There's a guy I was best friends with in middle school and part of high school but we drifted apart after that. He's been fighting pancreatic cancer for I think three years now. He was initially given a 6 months expectancy but he's been through literally like 70 rounds of chemo and all that. Just recently (like three weeks ago) his cancer started growing fast again and the doctors said chemo wouldn't cut it anymore. They've tried to get into some test programs but those haven't turned out well (denied for some and the one he was accepted to turned out to cause a lot of other problems for him). His wife just posted saying that the doctors have finally said there's nothing else they can do but ease the pain at this point. It's pretty wild thinking about knowing that you probably only have a few weeks, at most, left.
This is complicated by he used to be my best friend, although that was literally 40+ years go. Also, there were some things that caused us to drift apart in high school (I don't want to post publicly about that but it wasn't over a girl, drugs, or other things that people might think were common) and then pretty much completely by a year or so after high school but in the past 10 years or so, we reconnected over Facebook and we've even met up twice and hung out for a few hours. So... I have a small bit of sadness about it right now... a lot of that being the thought of thinking about what it must be like knowing that you have limited time. Anyway... just finding an outlet of sorts, I guess.
This is complicated by he used to be my best friend, although that was literally 40+ years go. Also, there were some things that caused us to drift apart in high school (I don't want to post publicly about that but it wasn't over a girl, drugs, or other things that people might think were common) and then pretty much completely by a year or so after high school but in the past 10 years or so, we reconnected over Facebook and we've even met up twice and hung out for a few hours. So... I have a small bit of sadness about it right now... a lot of that being the thought of thinking about what it must be like knowing that you have limited time. Anyway... just finding an outlet of sorts, I guess.