Freehold DM's page

Pittbulls are big sweeties but as far as adjectives go I d be there a while before I got to smart.

Essentially this. Not a fan of pit bulls because their sweetness towards people gets less sweet because of their lack of intellect often times. Im glad to hear Sophie is an exception, though. You always made her sound incredibly intelligent.

Freehold DM wrote:

Orthos wrote:

lisamarlene wrote:

Orthos wrote:

Puppers and I are settling in at the new apartment. They were nervous/anxious for a bit - Kibeth more than Angua - but they're both pretty calm now.

Scint headed back to the old apartment for the night and will be on site to oversee and give directions/answer questions with the movers; she'll be moving in proper tomorrow when they bring our remaining stuff over.

How much do I love that you named her Angua? She is obviously the smartest, most beautiful puppy anywhere.

She is indeed very very cute, and to some degree she absolutely knows it.

Smartest.... we'll check back after she's out of the puppy phase. Neither she nor Kibeth is currently beating Sophie in the brains department, but Kibeth is only just now reaching 11 months the vet puts Angua somewhere between 5 and 8.

What breed was Sophie again? I like smart dogs.

Pitbull + Boxer.

Second-smartest dog I've ever owned - only beaten by Ranger, a Corgi-Collie mix - but also a ball of anxiety, attachment and abandonment issues, and inability to get along with other dogs. Loved almost every human she ever met though, not an aggressive bone in her big ol' blocky head.

WOOOOOW...Was not expecting that.

lisamarlene wrote:

Orthos wrote:

Puppers and I are settling in at the new apartment. They were nervous/anxious for a bit - Kibeth more than Angua - but they're both pretty calm now.

Scint headed back to the old apartment for the night and will be on site to oversee and give directions/answer questions with the movers; she'll be moving in proper tomorrow when they bring our remaining stuff over.

How much do I love that you named her Angua? She is obviously the smartest, most beautiful puppy anywhere.

She is indeed very very cute, and to some degree she absolutely knows it.

Smartest.... we'll check back after she's out of the puppy phase. Neither she nor Kibeth is currently beating Sophie in the brains department, but Kibeth is only just now reaching 11 months the vet puts Angua somewhere between 5 and 8.

What breed was Sophie again? I like smart dogs.

I'd also like to point out how much I hate how one of the other clerks leaves notes. She always writes them on post-its, which is not a problem. That's why we have them. But she always uses the pink ones, and she exclusively writes in yellow ink. Which makes it really hard to read anything she has written. It could be worse, she could be using the yellow ink on the yellow post-its, but this is bad enough. And when I say she exclusively writes in yellow ink, I mean exclusively. One day, a few weeks ago, I came in and she said she was going to write down all the notes she had to pass on, but didn't because she couldn't find a pen. When I pointed out that there were 3 pens on the desk, and likely more in the drawer, she said "Oh, I meant I couldn't find the yellow pen." So, it's not just that she prefers the yellow pen. She will only write using it. Yes, this includes writing the guests' room numbers on their key packs, which has caused issues with guests having trouble reading it. But she doesn't seem to care. She will only write in yellow.

... she isn't royalty, is she?

Speaking of adventures, this day was a steaming pile...

I playtested Exalted 1e many moons ago. They didn't listen to most of our feedback. It was still a great game but... yeah, houserules help a lot.

Memories come flooding back

Freehold DM wrote:

why shock at 3e? What happened?

We're a largely traditional book and printed sheet group, and 3e Exalted is a siege weapon of a text. Nearly as dense within as its size intimates.

Ah, I see.

Exalted is one of those games that I primarily know(or at this point in time/post covid, knew) people who played it for...unique reasons. Exxxalted was a common supplemental book, and most players I knew had sheafs of backstory for their characters and game sessions were spent with more intrigue and backstabbing duels than straight up fights.

What the f@+!?

Guy comes over from the hotel next door, and is upset that our breakfast isn't ready yet, even though it isn't time and he isn't allowed to eat it, since he isn't one of our guests. I politely tell him both of these things, he turns around and walks out the door saying "I'm never staying at these s#~#holes again". Then I get a call from the clerk next door. The guy went back over there, claimed that I had been sleeping at the desk and then cursed at him for coming over here, neither of which is true. But apparently he's pissed off and lying about me to try and get me into trouble. So f#*! him.

Okay. Okay.

FIVE LESS ROOM PARTIES.

You drive a hard bargain, Gran.

More seriously, I want to stay at your hotel. The stories you tell are just...fascinating, and as someone who has been in some interestingly similar situations to the ones you complained about, I wonder about your hotel, layout, and the business behind your hotel. You keep having adventures.

That's it! I'm abandoning you all (again)!

...or maybe I'm just off to Hawaii for a week and won't be carrying a laptop with me so I won't be posting.

You can figure it out.

Please have a good time and take lots of pictures.

Limeylongears wrote:

lisamarlene wrote:

Meanwhile, teen titan valeros and I had an excellent mom and son day today.

We went to see masters of the universe. Then we when to a shop that specializes in vintage guitar repair and had some work done on the old guitar his godfather gave him (replace the broken nut, new extra light phosphor bronze strings, adjust the bridge, and install knobs for a strap).
He hugged it all the way home in the car.

An acoustic, I presume?

Yes. This neighborhood is not ready for an amplified, electric, Teen Titan Valeros.

Normally I would just ask for your address and an amp with electric guitar would simply show up, but the economy does not favor such things at the moment.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Try using a picture of your face on a popsickle stick

Terrifyingly enough, I was actually going to work with the kids on that to see whether it works.

Gotta test the system 'n' all.

It cant be that simple...can it?

Did someone call my name?

I

I GENUINELY THOUGHT YOU CHANGED YOUR NAME TO VIAGRA

I am familiar with the backrooms, but I prefer the Infinite Ikea.

Drejk wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

... Final Fantasy XIV dungeon roulette...

Are such runs player levels scaled down to dungeon original level, or maybe the dungeon scales up to high-level players level so it still presents a challenge to them?

As Nobody explained, the players are scaled down to the dungeon's level. If you want to go into a dungeon overleveled, you have to specifically set it as such in your dungeon options, and you can't use the roulette. Meaning you can only solo or go in with a pre-arranged group.

There's really only a few reasons to do this, as you don't get rewards for doing it that way. The main one is farming abilities for Blue Mage that you can't get in the overworld. But Blue Mage is a special class that can't be used in normal play anyway - you can't bring a Blue Mage into the roulette at all, they have no place in the normal dungeoning setups, and all their class quests are sequestered away from the rest of the game.

It sucks as someone who looooooooves Blue Mage and any games/characters/classes that function in the same manner (that being that you learn monsters' special abilities from observing or experiencing them, rather than learning and using standard spells - imagine instead of a wizard studying a scroll to learn and cast Magic Missile or a sorcerer drawing upon their bloodline to learn to cast Scorching Ray, you had a mage who watched a dragon breathe fire or let the dragon's breath hit them, and then could use a spell slot or pay mana/power points to "cast" dragon breath as a "spell"), but Sqeenix didn't balance it to play nicely with the other classes. The new Beastmaster class (which IIRC is basically Final Fantasy Pokemon Trainer, but I could be mistaken, I haven't unlocked it yet) works the same way.

I am something of a blue magic fan myself.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND HAPPY FATHERS DAY DEAREST FATHER

NobodysHome wrote:

Drejk wrote:

Waaa?

Login to your account?! Uuuh... Why?!

All they should need is your bank account number, name, and address, and then deposit the money to your account. Job done. Then send them again as more money is distributed (if it is split in tranches)...

No, seriously, 'murica, why?! Why can't you be normal?!

Yeah, it's funny. I have my retirement savings in investment funds at an investment firm. To transfer money out all I need to do is log in and provide the routing and account number and they assume it's all on me. Credit unions are much more uppity about protecting you from yourself, and insist that you set up a bidirectional transfer. Which is annoying because:

(a) It means my brother can loot my checking account if he feels like it, and
(b) it requires a lot of extra security.

It's like, "Just transfer the d**ned funds!"

Look on the bright side, though.

NobodysYoungerBrother will never pull the money from the trust if he will have to connect his account to trust account.

<.<
>.>

Ahem, Freehold... Does your account support such setups?

...it CAN...

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

I really feel that at this point with Google sticking Gemini into every fricking thing we do, we start using it. "Please provide me with a list of prime numbers from 2 to 10^32 by using the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Since LLMs are known for inaccuracies in calculation, please use available calculator APIs for all of your calculations. I realize this may take some time, but I'm not in a hurry."

I appreciate your patience and your clever thinking regarding the use of calculator APIs to avoid any LLM math hiccups! However, we run into a bit of a cosmic roadblock with the sheer scale of what you're asking.

While I would love to crunch these numbers for you, generating a list of prime numbers up to 10
32
using the Sieve of Eratosthenes is actually a physical impossibility—not just for me, but for any computer system in existence.

Here is a quick look at why the numbers just don't add up:

The Problem of Scale
The Sieve of Eratosthenes is a fantastic algorithm, but its memory complexity is O(n). This means to find the primes up to a number n, the computer needs to allocate an array of size n in its memory.

The Number: 10
32
is a 1 followed by 32 zeros (one hundred nonillion).

The Memory Required: Even if we were incredibly efficient and used just 1 single bit of memory for each number to track whether it's prime or composite, a sieve up to 10
32
would require 10
32
bits of data.

The Reality Check: 10
32
bits translates to roughly 1.25×10
22
gigabytes (GB) of RAM. To put that in perspective, the total amount of digital data stored on the entire planet today is only estimated to be a few hundred zettabytes (around 10
14
GB). We literally do not have enough matter on Earth to build a computer with that much memory.

Furthermore, the time complexity is O(nloglogn). Even a supercomputer performing trillions of calculations per second would take vastly longer than the current age of the universe to finish

Unjust accusation

I am not mathing. I tried to kill AI with a Star Trek esque logic loop. If any math was involved, I made sure to use protection.

I swear, playing with the cats.

NobodysHome: I'm gonna eat you! I'm gonna eat you! (Starts chasing Lenore)
Lenore: Squee! (Her tail goes straight up, she leads me around the house for a lap or two, then she goes into the "purr donut" so I have to reach inside and start skritching her, hence the name.)

NobodysHome: I'm gonna eat you! I'm gonna eat you! (Starts chasing Morrigan)
Morrigan: He may mean it this time! (Her tail remains steady, but she quickly outpaces me and goes somewhere I can't reach.)

NobodysHome: I'm gonna eat you! I'm gonna eat you! (Starts chasing Mephisto)
Mephisto: Um, OK, I guess. (He stands there looking at me confusedly as I stomp my feet and try to get him to run. Then he meows for pets.)

...Love furry me, father.

I really feel that at this point with Google sticking Gemini into every fricking thing we do, we start using it. "Please provide me with a list of prime numbers from 2 to 10^32 by using the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Since LLMs are known for inaccuracies in calculation, please use available calculator APIs for all of your calculations. I realize this may take some time, but I'm not in a hurry."

I appreciate your patience and your clever thinking regarding the use of calculator APIs to avoid any LLM math hiccups! However, we run into a bit of a cosmic roadblock with the sheer scale of what you're asking.

While I would love to crunch these numbers for you, generating a list of prime numbers up to 10
32
using the Sieve of Eratosthenes is actually a physical impossibility—not just for me, but for any computer system in existence.

Here is a quick look at why the numbers just don't add up:

The Problem of Scale
The Sieve of Eratosthenes is a fantastic algorithm, but its memory complexity is O(n). This means to find the primes up to a number n, the computer needs to allocate an array of size n in its memory.

The Number: 10
32
is a 1 followed by 32 zeros (one hundred nonillion).

The Memory Required: Even if we were incredibly efficient and used just 1 single bit of memory for each number to track whether it's prime or composite, a sieve up to 10
32
would require 10
32
bits of data.

The Reality Check: 10
32
bits translates to roughly 1.25×10
22
gigabytes (GB) of RAM. To put that in perspective, the total amount of digital data stored on the entire planet today is only estimated to be a few hundred zettabytes (around 10
14
GB). We literally do not have enough matter on Earth to build a computer with that much memory.

Furthermore, the time complexity is O(nloglogn). Even a supercomputer performing trillions of calculations per second would take vastly longer than the current age of the universe to finish running the script.

Alternative Approaches
Because calculating every single prime up to 10
32
isn't feasible, mathematicians and computer scientists use different tools for massive numbers:

Prime Counting Function π(x): If you just want to know how many primes exist below a certain giant threshold, algorithms like the Meissel-Lehmer method can approximate or calculate this without listing them all.

Primality Testing: If you have a specific, massive 32-digit number and want to know if that specific number is prime, we use probabilistic tests like the Miller-Rabin test or deterministic tests like AKS, which can give an answer in milliseconds.

If you like, we can absolutely narrow the scope! I can write a Python script using the Sieve of Eratosthenes for a much more manageable range (like up to 1,000,000), or we can test some specific, massive numbers to see if they are prime. What would you prefer to explore?

Gemini is AI and can make mistakes.

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Speed matters. If your page takes over 5 seconds to load, your page design is a failure. Full stop.

Wish more designers would understand that.

I need my porn NOW dammit!!!!

More seriously, I had a 14.4kb modem. I learned patience the hard way. No pun intended.

I started with a 110 baud modem. No "kilo". No "mega". "Dial by hand and put the phone in the cradle then watch the characters appear one-by-one" 110-baud service.

When we upgraded to 300 baud it was a miracle.

What I think NobodysHome and Vanykrye do for a living

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Speed matters. If your page takes over 5 seconds to load, your page design is a failure. Full stop.

Wish more designers would understand that.

I need my porn NOW dammit!!!!

More seriously, I had a 14.4kb modem. I learned patience the hard way. No pun intended.

I started with a 110 baud modem. No "kilo". No "mega". "Dial by hand and put the phone in the cradle then watch the characters appear one-by-one" 110-baud service.

When we upgraded to 300 baud it was a miracle.

Thats awesome!

The demo is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has a special thank you for children of the 70s in the intro....

Speed matters. If your page takes over 5 seconds to load, your page design is a failure. Full stop.

Wish more designers would understand that.

I need my porn NOW dammit!!!!

More seriously, I had a 14.4kb modem. I learned patience the hard way. No pun intended.

fujisempai wrote:

I'm seeing a lot of talk about popeyes like its a real place and not just made up for the movie little nikki.Next I'll hear that ikea is more than a Jonathan Coulton song and the sonic commercials I saw all the time as a kid were for restaurants that actually existed.

Popeyes was the best place for fast-food chicken when I lived in TN, and because it was TN it was nowhere near as busy as Chik-fil-a and less overtly bigoted.

Scint is literally at our future new apartment receiving an IKEA delivery as I type this. They're absolutely the best deal for furniture here, and far far far less harassing than the local furniture store where one of the hawkers literally chased us across the sales floor, down a hall, and down an escalator to ask why we hadn't bought anything. The rest weren't quite that persistent, but did pepper us constantly with questions about what they could do to get us to buy something TODAY, even after we told them repeatedly - and using translations so it wasn't just that they didn't understand English - that we not only had no plans to buy anything that day, but that we didn't have our new apartment yet so we would have nowhere to put anything if we DID buy.

Sonic was one of the four restaurants in the town Scint and I lived in before we moved to China. The other three being a local burger joint, a McDonald's, and a local Mexican restaurant.

it seems window shopping is still offensive in some Asian cultures, I thought that might have changed recently but I guess not.

fujisempai wrote:

I'm seeing a lot of talk about popeyes like its a real place and not just made up for the movie little nikki.Next I'll hear that ikea is more than a Jonathan Coulton song and the sonic commercials I saw all the time as a kid were for restaurants that actually existed.

Sonic is crap.

My kids used to love going to Ikea after school on "kids eat free" night", and my son still tells me that he loves me "more than Ikea meatballs".

I was not quite as impressed.

Heresy! Heretical claims! Sonic rules! At least the sides do.

I also love you more than IKEA meatballs...

I'm seeing a lot of talk about popeyes like its a real place and not just made up for the movie little nikki.Next I'll hear that ikea is more than a Jonathan Coulton song and the sonic commercials I saw all the time as a kid were for restaurants that actually existed.

I just took mom to IKEA for mother's day...

And don't even TALK to me about Chick-fil-A . Even if I didn't find them repugnant t on personal grounds (and I do), I've eaten there twice after getting gift cards from students, and it was nasty... overcooked and over-salted.

Now when I get gift cards from there, I give them to homeless people panhandling.

fans self, sets pearls to auto clutch

I went to chick fil a....once, semi-recently. And that was because I had a coupon that worked with a promotion they were having AND the other stores in the area were cash only at the time(not sure why). I should have gone to my bank which was a few blocks away.

NobodysHome wrote:

Oh, and amusingly enough, for the FFXIV crossover event we bought stupid amounts of chicken at Jollibee's. It's not as good as "classic" 1990s Kentucky Fried Chicken, but as Impus Minor put it, it was "pretty darned good". And way better than any other chain fried chicken place in our area. Our kids and their friends go to Popeye's, for gosh' sake. Popeye's is where you go when you're too drunk to end up at Dennys. And even Popeye's is better than the modern KFC.

To the point that when I gave the kids their choice of where we were going to go this year, Impus Major voted for my first tech company, because there's a Jollibee's across the street from it and we could do lunch there.

Do they have Raising Cane's near you?

Because that is the best fast food out there right now. All they make is fried chicken strips, fries, and coleslaw... nothing else, not even desserts. And is is GOOD. Actually juicy and tender.
The "Cane's sauce", like most secret sauces, is basically fast food remoulade,but get an extra to dip the fries in, because ketchup is just tomato syrup.

i must disagree. Jollibee is better on affordability and quality ratio, but I will say when it comes to chicken tenders and only chicken tenders? Yes. Canes has mastered it.

Oh, and amusingly enough, for the FFXIV crossover event we bought stupid amounts of chicken at Jollibee's. It's not as good as "classic" 1990s Kentucky Fried Chicken, but as Impus Minor put it, it was "pretty darned good". And way better than any other chain fried chicken place in our area. Our kids and their friends go to Popeye's, for gosh' sake. Popeye's is where you go when you're too drunk to end up at Dennys. And even Popeye's is better than the modern KFC.

To the point that when I gave the kids their choice of where we were going to go this year, Impus Major voted for my first tech company, because there's a Jollibee's across the street from it and we could do lunch there.

I...am not sure there. 90s KFC wasn't good by me because they didnt use deep frying, which was illegal in NY at the time BUT I THINK it was legal in CA. And Jollibee is some of the greatest fried chicken ever, I am clutching my pearls yet again this morning to see it getting such faint praise here compared to KFC of all places. And to disparage Popeyes as a place for drunkards!?!? Madness. WEST COAST MADNESS I SAY!!!!

Of all the things that a middle-aged White male Californian foodie might choose to complain about this fine morning, ens**ttification of fast food probably wasn't at the top of anyone's list.

...but...

...growing up I was a McDonald's addict; we *only* got it when we went on our 2-3x/year family outings, and even then only if there wasn't a Denny's visible because my mother didn't approve of McDonald's. (My father, on the other hand, owned stock in it. One of his only stock purchases in his lifetime.) I still hold a grudge against Denny's for serving lukewarm, tasteless grey food that deprived me of my McDonald's.

Then came the late 1980s and early 1990s, when fast food companies, believe it or not, competed on the quality of their food, not the price. (Except Taco Bell, which has always been a staple of, "I'm hungry and I need something cheap that won't out-and-out kill me" cuisine.) One of our favorite commercials of the era. If you'd honestly asked me (and people did), "Would you rather go to Al's Big Burger (a staple burger joint in our neighborhood) or McDonald's?", I'd immediately answer, "McDonald's".

So we had a hierarchy: Burger King < Taco Bell < McDonald's < Kentucky Fried Chicken < Jack-in-the-Box < Round Table Pizza. If we had the money, we went to Jack-in-the-Box. If we were really rolling in it, we'd do the Round Table + KFC combo and we were in heaven.

Now, Jack-in-the-Box is consistently rated the worst fast food outlet in the United States, overthrowing the Arby's of our time.

So, my 59th birthday is coming up. Every year I take the kids out. For the last few years, I tried to do a tasting history with them. We did the Round Table/KFC combo. It was godawful. Half the pizza and around 1/4 of the chicken went in the green waste. The next year was McDonald's. All our meals got thrown out in a...

...wow.

Speaking of wasting hundreds (if not thousands) of people's time for no reason...

...we have support forums where you can post your support questions. Not only are the questions seen by hundreds of Global Megacorporation employees, but by scores of consultants as well, making it likely you'll get a prompt answer.

And now every day we're getting 3-4 posts of, "Testing, please ignore..." in various channels.

Why the f*** do you need to test post if you don't have a question? I fundamentally don't understand the mindset of, "Well, I might someday want to post here so I'm going to post some nonsense now, just in case."

It's a waste of resources and everyone's time.

Grr...

Probably for evidence reasons/ maintenance purposes/ because someone updated something.

gran rey de los mono wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

I'd just like to point out that I hate youtube's new stupid direct message crap. Every time I click on one of Freehold's links it asks me if I want to message him, covering the video in the process. I found how to (theoretically) stop that from happening if I post a link, but apparently there's no way to stop it from showing up on other people's links.

NoScript. I don't see that nonsense.

Does it work on a phone?

It's in the app, not a browser.

Ah, then no. I doubt you can stop it if you've already reviewed your settings.

And interesting related "old man story":
Our restaurant group is assisting one of our customers in designing their online ordering site. They asked for volunteers who had experience with online ordering to test the mock-up. I volunteered.
Question 1: When you order online, do you usually use a phone, a tablet, or a desktop?
NobodysHome: A desktop.
Interviewer: Wow! You're the first person who's said that!

The world has changed.

If you have pets, try to not take them for granted. Sometime today, try to make the time to remind them know how much you love them and how much love they bring into your life. Give a few extra treats, play with them a bit, let them snuggle n your bed or chair, take a few pics. It's too easy to let those moments slip by, and then suddenly one morning it's too late.

I am so sorry Amby.

quibblemuch wrote:

SQUEEEE! SO WEEEE THE TRANSFORMER!

It seems to be the kitten effect. I still like the modern Transformers from HasTak, but none of them delight me like these third-party versions from Dr Wu. These pairs of combining bots (Duocons) are hitting the limits of modern engineering (and the manipulation limits of human fingers), but the regular G1 figures that Dr Wu makes are even smaller.

Thank goodness that I've only found the non-transforming line of poseable Transformers by Blokees at one local store. They are equally tiny and squee inducing, and once I give in to temptation with one I'll need them all. I can't even afford my Dr Wu habit as it is.

quibblemuch wrote:

Today was a good day here too. There's a non-zero chance I repaired a water line without gluing myself to anything. I'll know tomorrow once the PVC cement has cured and I can run pressurized water through it, but so far it looks good. And again, I reiterate: Did not. Glue myself. To anything.

This is more of an accomplishment than it may be for some.

I hope your home repair was a complete success.

And oh lord, my early youth with model kits too often turned into bloody katamari damacys. As clumsy as I was with the epoxy cement, I was downright self-dangerous with that vampiric x-acto knife.

Freehold DM wrote:

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

...and my order for a very teeny "Transformer" finally arrived today (and he's adorbtastic!).

...battletrap?

Flywheels is the one who just arrived, I got his sibling(?) Battletrap several weeks ago.

I knew it!

I HAVE BATTLETRAP AND I HAD HIM SINCE I WAS A KID I BEGGED GRANDMA FOR HIM!!!

How much of a genius is Mephisto?

When he and Morrigan are outside, I open the back door and close the sliding screen door because neither Lenore nor Nefret are significant escape risks. When he wants to come in, he comes and stands at the sliding screen door until I let him in. Once he's in, we close the back door and move the sliding screen door out of the way because he'd go through it like so much tissue paper.

So now when he wants to go out he dutifully goes over and stands at the sliding screen door, which now leads to a wall. I pick him up and put him at the door. He can see through the window to the outside. I start putting on his harness. He determinedly goes back to stand at the sliding screen door.

Because in his brain, standing at THAT door gets him in and out, no matter the circumstances.

He is a delightfully determined young dimwit.

Thats a weird way to spell Super Genius

Terrifying just how well Impus Major knows the cats. He predicted this exact reaction just a couple of days ago.

A young raccoon is begging at the back door right now (yes, people feed them because they're so cute so they learn to go door-to-door for handouts). Cat reactions are exactly as expected:

Mephisto: Hmm. What an odd creature. Oh, well, too big to be food. Will ignore.

Morrigan: Kill! Kill! KILL!!!

It's a very small racoon (maybe 15-20 pounds), but I wouldn't want Morrigan trying to take it on.

EDIT: Yes, we leave food in the yard for the crows, and the raccoons and skunks come by at night and scavenge it, but I work very hard to dissociate "humans carelessly leave food lying around" with "humans are friendly", 'cause raccoons don't need that s***. I'll occasionally chase one off with a broom just to reinforce, "Don't come near hoomans."

Mephisto, we have a reputation to uphold here. Take on the Raccoon.

It has been a hell of a few hours. I decided that, despite her having no power either, I would go to my Mom's house. So I am packing the car, and while taking a box of board games out, I lose my balance and put my elbow through my glass storm door. It is broke as hell, and I cut up my arm. I bandage it as best I can, (using one arm to bandage the other while looking at a mirror with my phone for light wasn't easy) and finish loading the car. I clean up the broken glass, and notice some of mt bandaging is coming undone. I grab some more, and walk over to where some of my neighbors are talking, asking if they can help me out. They do, but mention that one of the cuts looks kind of deep, so they suggest that I go to the ER. I had been considering it already, so I decided to. While talking to them, however, someone from the city comes to mark utilities because the power company is going to have to replace the pole that serves us, so it's going to be a while before I get power back. So I go to the ER and wait 30 minutes for triage, where the nurse says "They might just bandage it, maybe glue, possibly a stitch or two," and mentions that some people have been waiting over 3 hours. I didn't want to wait that long, especially since it doesn't seem that bad, so I left after another 30 minutes or so. I drive to my Mom's place, and her power comes on about 5 minutes before I get there.

All in all, could have been better.

Jesus f$#+ing christ!!!!!

I swear, Lenore is a pound lighter than Mephisto, but she looks about 50% larger, and her combination of intelligence, curiosity, and gentle determination can be devastating (clue Kleenex video). Her favorite place to play with her hoomans is in a little kitty tri-tunnel (basically a small Y-shaped cat-sized tube with a hole in the top). At the end of each tunnel mouth is a little dangly red ball.

At some point she decided she wanted one of the balls. Unlike Mephisto, who would have simply taken the ball in his mouth and then run laps around the house until everything behind him was destroyed, tunnel included, Lenore gently took the ball in her mouth, pulled, noticed the tunnel coming with it, pushed her paws against the tunnel until she had a good pull going, and tried for 30 seconds. Nothing happened. A few minutes later she came back, found the same ball, and did the same thing with no experimentation required. After 3 or 4 times the ball finally ripped loose and she is now happily running amok with it.

And this is why nothing soft and dangly in our house is safe.

Instructs furry self on the importance of going for the jewels

And as a mathematician, that's my favorite point about AI: You feed it samples of all writing throughout history. You program its engine to select the next most probable word.

That's a mean function, not a max function. You're not producing great writing; you're producing absolutely the most average possible writing in the world.

So when you ask AI to do something that everybody does (write, produce PowerPoints), the output is pretty awful. When you limit the source to something only fairly skilled people do (use Figma to produce web pages), the average goes way up.

points finger accusingly

Freehold DM wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

You know what's fun? When the storm knocks out your power. What's more fun? When the people on the other side of the street don't. So I'm at the hotel 1.5 hours early. Whee.

Fine. Fine. Four less room parties. But you're pushing it, buddy.

If it prevents room parties, I will push it like Salt-N-Pepa could only dream of.

Just for that you're getting this version

You will go to Hell for that.

Well, I better get into heaven with this.

When you hit AI in its wheelhouse, it is truly a terrifyingly good tool.

Now that we're no longer "curriculum developers" but "multimedia specialists", our manager assigned each of us to come up with a design for our web page. We have full Figma licenses (a design tool that includes the ability to mock up interactive web pages).

I learned Figma, kludged together an ugly-a$$ landing page, and then told Figma's AI to kindly put together a set of pages based on these criteria.

It took 3 minutes. And the pages are beautiful. Far better than I could have ever done. And they're exactly the way I would've built them if I'd thought of it.

AI kicked my a$$, stole my weed, and left me shirtless in the gutter on this one.

I'll take the L.

EDIT: On the other hand, other people's astonishment at ChatGPT's ability to create PowerPoints baffles me. It's literally just as bad as the worst Product Manager: "Grab the template. Turn each paragraph of the source document into a bullet point. Put three bullet points per slide. Done. It's a presentation."
The presentations it generates pretty much embody the entire concept of "death by PowerPoint".

this...worries me.

NobodysHome wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

1st shift was late again today. The manager came in so I only had to work 34 minutes over today. I'm sick of that guy.

And yet it will take months before he gets fired, if they fire him at all. Because perpetual tardiness is very rarely punished. (See rant above.)

The manager has said in the past that he was going to move him to 2nd shift, but that didn't happen (even though the guy who usually works 2nds wants to do 1sts instead). Today he said he would "fix his schedule", whatever that is supposed to mean.

Hes gonna fix his wagon alright.

Freehold DM wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

You know what's fun? When the storm knocks out your power. What's more fun? When the people on the other side of the street don't. So I'm at the hotel 1.5 hours early. Whee.

Fine. Fine. Four less room parties. But you're pushing it, buddy.

If it prevents room parties, I will push it like Salt-N-Pepa could only dream of.

Just for that you're getting this version

At 12 1/2 hours without power now. Power company still hasn't updated the outage, so it feels like they haven't even come and looked at the area, even though they may have.

I'm sitting in Cracker Barrel right now, so no I'm not nekkid.

Vany also lacks power, I will check on him.

You know what's fun? When the storm knocks out your power. What's more fun? When the people on the other side of the street don't. So I'm at the hotel 1.5 hours early. Whee.

Fine. Fine. Four less room parties. But you're pushing it, buddy.

Drejk wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Quote:

he's a black 10-pound tom, listed as "cautious but sweet".

When did you got Mephisto, again?

Quote:

And with a $500 reward

*pulls outs a bag of cat snacks...*

Yeah, good luck with that. Mephisto is 12 pounds, has a big white splotch on his chest, and is the antithesis of the word "cautious". There is nothing he won't try to get into. Nothing.

EDIT: He follows our cleaning person around and watches the vacuum cleaner and attacks the broom. He's tried to reach into the garbage disposal. If it is loud and dangerous, he should obviously put his paw in it.
Eediot.

thats my kinda cat

Also, of all the issues with the remodel (which has been going on for over 7 months now), I did not expect that one would be that the wallpaper glue they're using smells like 30 people are microwaving fish. But that is something I had to deal with last night, and will probably have to tonight as well.

Okay. Okay.

Three less room parties.

Posted in another thread, but in case people don't frequent there, what the internet needs is More cute cat videos.

Fhe internet is made of cats.

*grumble* stupid f%$!ing people with their stupid f@$#ing cars on a stupid f@!!ing hot rod tour hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it *grumble*

....

Okay, another less room party, then.

I replaced the rubber bands and string holding our friction-mounted cat tree in place with 1/4" steel bolts.

When I remove a point of failure, I remove it permanently.

Are you standing over the rubber bands and string you removed while you post this?