NobodysHome's page

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.

NobodysHome wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

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?

If you think I put such things on the floor within reach of my feline army, you don't know me very well.

Considering mixing the rubber bands and string with the half-box of Kleenex that covers my floor every morning fills me with dread.

Yes. Kleenex.

Ah yes, kleenix, and their cousins the fat indolent rolls of toilet paper, have been the natural prey of cats for millennia. Thank goodness your little hunters haven't yet discovered cotton swabs.

OMG she did. Those are now in a glass jar hidden out of her sight.

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.

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".

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.

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.)

Also, it's been a while since I've watched YouTube with ads, and my god is it annoying.

It's kind of amazing -- we'd gotten so accustomed to the ads we didn't really notice them unless they put in two or three in a single video we were watching, but then Impus Minor did our new streaming device and it has an ad blocker and it's just amazing what a difference it makes.

NobodysHome wrote:

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 bit white splotch on his chest, and is the antithesis of the word "cautious". There is nothing he won't try to get into. Nothing.

All you say is that I need a bigger, wide-open backpack?

That would be enough.

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.

If there's one ray of amusement from the poor missing cat story, he's a black 10-pound tom, listed as "cautious but sweet". And with a $500 reward, I keep imagining one of the neighbor kids sneaking into the yard, making off with Mephisto, and trying to present him to the neighbors as their cat.

"Fearless docile eediot" and "cautious but sweet" are pretty easy to tell apart, methinks...

EDIT: And yes, in spite of the heat I'm going over there after work to see whether I can suss out a likely direction for the tom to have gone. It's been a fricking week and they're above Colusa so coyotes are a serious issue. But I can hope and try to help.

The variegation among humans never ceases to amaze me. Today's supposed to hit 89°F. It's already 84°F and it's barely 11 in the morning.

I opened up the house before sunrise, let it get as cool as possible, then once the sun came up closed all the windows, shades, and doors in an attempt to keep the house below 70°F. I was supposed to hike with weight today, but I'm strongly considering taking a skip day just so I can stay in the nice cool house.

The kids' friend (a charming young woman I'm quite fond of) took one look outside and said, "What a lovely day! Let's all go for a walk on the point!"
A walk at noon in 89°F weather in an area with no shade.

The idea of doing this voluntarily is so antithetical to my nature that I am baffled.

NobodysHome wrote:

Shiro, GothBard, Terrible GM, and I...

Is that the Not-Babylon V GM?

Yes.

Quote:

started playing Windrose.

How is it? It's one of the games I have on my ever-growing wishlist, though I suspect there is no point in getting until the situation with the main computer stabilized and I have it back (or replaced) and the new card installed and properly working.

On the other hand, Steam claims its graphics work on Steam Deck so it should work on Linux...

So, imagine someone played a lot of Valheim and said, "These are the things that I hate about it. Let's fix it!"

So I would rate original Valheim an A+ crafting/exploration game. I'd rate Mistlands Valheim a B, and Ashlands Valheim a C-. Given those parameters, Windrose is probably a solid B+.

*HOWEVER*, I have a desktop that was top-of-the-line in 2018, and even now it has a 3060 graphics card. And the fans on everything are running at top speed while Windrose is running. It burns harder than any other game I've played. So check the system requirements very, very carefully.

And it says a lot that my nearby neighbors have upset me quite a bit more, even though I've never met them.

They hung a giant banner, went door-to-door handing out leaflets, and offered a $500 reward to find their missing cat...
...a full week after he escaped (he was an indoor cat).

In my lifetime of cat ownership, I've never allowed an escaped indoor cat to remain missing for more than 20 minutes, much less overnight. Daytime is dangerous enough for an inexperienced cat, but they typically have enough sense to avoid cars. At night we have raccoons, skunks, possums, other cats, and the occasional coyote. It's out-and-out deadly. And yet the general attitude of cat owners is, "Oh, they'll come back in a couple of days once they get hungry."

Sure... if they survive that couple of days. And that's going on a 50/50 chance around here.

Waiting a week? I'm pretty positive their poor little guy is gone. I put out food and water in the yard, just in case; we're an "animal attractant" so if the cat follows other animal trails (cats included) he'll end up here and we'll spot him. But I'm not hopeful. And that upsets me, even though I've never met him nor his owners.

Speaking of terrible things...

(1) It's someone's 25-year anniversary at Global Megacorporation. Yep. Everyone HAS to Reply All to show what a Good Person they are. Guess I won't be using email this morning.

(2) You know you're just going through the motions of a game when someone completely screws you over and you just can't be bothered to care.
Shiro, GothBard, Terrible GM, and I started playing Windrose. It was actually pretty decent for the first week or two, which was a surprising change. Then it started: You complain about an issue and Terrible GM goes into "mansplain to a 6-year-old" mode, enraging you and not solving the issue because you're not an idiot and you've already tried all his suggestions. (I remember on one he literally started trying to walk me through how to use a computer menu.) You sort the storage chests in what you think is a logical manner (agility boosting foods are in the top row. Vitality boosting foods are in the second row), and without so much as a "by your leave" he rearranges it. The conversation was literally:
NobodysHome: What the h*** happened to the food chest! I just sorted it!
Terrible GM: Well, I re-sorted it.
NH: It was all set up by bonus type. What was wrong with that?
TGM: That doesn't work for me. I sorted it by ingredient rarity.

Um... how is "ingredient rarity" going to help anyone choose which food to use?

After over a week of condescension and undoing anything I tried to do, I simply muted his line so I can't hear him and stopped trying to help. I go on Discord and chat with friends. I talk to GothBard and Shiro on TeamSpeak. I check the news. If they ask me to participate in something I go back to the game and play it just long enough to do whatever. Then I go back to something else.

Last night was the realization of just how disinterested I've become.

On Tuesday, Terrible GM was away so GothBard, Shiro, and I spent the entire evening gathering the materials to build 4 new ships. We were 3 items short by the time it was time for me to go to bed, so I said, "That's fine. You three can build your ships tonight and I'll build mine tomorrow night."

So yeah, Terrible GM used up a huge portion of my shipbuilding materials while I was gone. No ship for me.

And I realized I just couldn't be bothered to care. I'll just toodle around in my smaller boat, and if they ask why I'll tell them. Otherwise I enjoy socializing with GothBard and Shiro so if they insist that I be in-game for that I'll be in-game. But it's not like I'm going to care or try. Very much like the players in MMORPGs who spend their existence standing around the main city: The human behind them has better things to do than move them unless asked.

NobodysHome wrote:

Is there anything worse than your manager taking shortcuts?

....

as I'm trying to be helpful, "no good deed goes unpunished".

well - I used to do this many ages ago (fixed width database from tape to disk, then data from that into a database. I did use a CSV file as a midstep to reduce data size bloat and help a resorting script. It's not complicated once you have a couple of programs on hand (like O/S scripts, python, C+, or java etc. Sometimes you can use import/export functions of spreadsheets/databases to do the work.).
You can use a text file of Titles as a touchstone to calculate title accuracy and do substitutions. If it is dynamic you'll have to update it.
I'd suggest your spreadsheet/database get a abbreviation field to help your manager.
yes - free advice is worth just that...

It's not a bad idea at all; I just worry about the AI being able to juggle so many ideas in its head at once.

Unfortunately, I just learned that her raw data makes matters even worse; the previous video owners had no concept of video curation. For example, they might have released a YouTube video in 2018 titled, "Bnar the Floog." Then they released a second video in 2022 titled, "Bnar the Floog." Then a third one in 2025.

And customers are still watching all three.

So we have repeated rows with identical title names, at which point I'd have to build up a translation spreadsheet between YouTube title and release date and manager's spreadsheet's title and release date. Considering this is supposed to be a one-off, it's too much work.

If she asks me to do it again, I'm going to ask for permission to fix the titles and dates so that AI can do the job properly.

(And to my absolute astonishment, without my instructions, the AI did align the most-recent versions of the videos in the spreadsheets; it just dropped the rest as nonsense data, so that's just a prompt fix.)

Is there anything worse than your manager taking shortcuts?

So, we're supposed to track video viewership of over 500 videos every month. We get the data in raw CSV format and there's no automated process; four of us manually go through the data line-by-line and update the records.

I thought, "Another perfect use case for AI!"

And yes, the AI can do it effortlessly in under a minute...
...except...
...the video titles in the tracking spreadsheets must exactly match the video titles from the raw data. This prevents the AI from making mistakes. "If it's not an exact match, don't try to make it fit."

So my manager's under the gun and she asked me to update her spreadsheets.

And yep. You guessed it. She abbreviated every title because she didn't want to type it all in. *I'm* having trouble matching it all up. So her one-time "shortcut" of using abbreviations to save time is going to cost us 2-3 hours of data matching a month.

And even this old grognard is wise enough not to yell at his manager, "Hey! Don't be lazy!"

But I *did* point out that the AI can do all this work for us as long as we get exact title matches and that there were a LOT of misses in the files, so hopefully she'll get the hint.

NobodysHome wrote:

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

Cat toy dispenser?

Some mornings I get up and our bedroom literally has a Kleenex carpet. I think she has the instinct to hunt things and bring them to us, but not the disposition, so hunting down Kleenex and bringing them to us presses all of the right buttons for her.

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

NobodysHome wrote:

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?

If you think I put such things on the floor within reach of my feline army, you don't know me very well.

Considering mixing the rubber bands and string with the half-box of Kleenex that covers my floor every morning fills me with dread.

Yes. Kleenex.

NobodysHome wrote:

Explaining German and French to Impus Major:

"In German, you add 100 letters to every word and you pronounce every one of them. In French, you add 100 letters to every word and you don't pronounce any of them."

ZastIstPresposterousImDeutschZieMergeAllenVordsImDieSingleUberSentence!

Yep. I loved my instructor's description of how Germans introduce a new word. "Come up with a one-sentence description of the new thing. Remove all the spaces to turn the sentence into a single word. You're done."

Explaining German and French to Impus Major:

"In German, you add 100 letters to every word and you pronounce every one of them. In French, you add 100 letters to every word and you don't pronounce any of them."

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.

So, as you know, I am very much an AI skeptic.

But there are a few areas where it shines. Illustrations is one example. I created an AI bot by feeding it our illustrations library and our formal illustration guidelines. It's really, really good.

Our division's guiding principle was changed to "AI first".

So, can I use my AI art?

Nope. The very first thing the design team in charge of our look-and-feel did was to block any and all AI image content from being released. It makes sense for them; they need to protect their jobs.

But to call ourselves an "AI first" company and then block any attempts to use AI to do our jobs because it'll take someone else's job?

It's another solid reason I'm convinced this whole AI thing is a bubble that's going to pop.

EDIT: A reasonable compromise would've been to have the artists act as gateways. "No, this illustration is wrong because xxx." "Well, this illustration is close. Hand me the .png and let me fix it." But it would've fundamentally changed their jobs from "artist" to "gatekeeper" and they didn't want that.
Speaking as someone who's had to go from live, in-person trainer to back-of-the-room PPT and Word curriculum developer to video editor and producer, you need to be able to adapt to your changing environment. Being able to say an absolute, "No," feels great... until some exec decides they're done with hearing, "No," and you end up out on your ear.

EDIT 2: Oooh... the switch just flipped. AI art isn't copyrightable. This has nothing to do with protecting humans or their jobs, it has to do with protecting intellectual property and a company's assets. Now it makes perfect sense...

Desperate colleague: Can you do a peer review for me? If I don't get good enough reviews they may let me go!

NobodysHome: No problem! I'll get it taken care of!

DC: Thanks SO much! Do you want me to do the same for you?

NH: No thanks. Nobody here gives a s*** about me.

(It's basically true. There's just an assumption that the division can't afford to lose me so they're going to throw a bunch of restricted stock my way come August, and my performance review is utterly irrelevant to those proceedings. So I don't want to bother people by making them write reviews for me that no one will ever read.)

The last two popes have seen the Catholic church move into the early (pre-19th Amendment) 20th century.

In another thousand years they might become downright pleasant.

I despise flakes.

Not because being a flake should be criminal, but because the world sees fit to revolve around them rather than force them to face the consequences of the flakiness. Hence they never have any motivation to change, and they can eventually cause real harm.

20 minutes late to a doctor's appointment? No problem! The doctor will see you anyway, and everyone after you can just be 20 minutes late, whether or not they made it on time. 10 minutes late to your plane? No problem! We'll delay the hundreds of people already on board just to make sure YOU can make it (yeah, this one really pi$$es me off). Corporate-wide meeting? We'll start late so that everyone can make it.

Everyone I know of hates it. When I used to run meetings one of the most common pieces of feedback I got was, "I love NobodysHome's meetings because he starts right on time and we don't waste time waiting for latecomers."

Elder Brother was the most extreme example I know of: We'd plan beach trips to Abbott's Lagoon in the north bay. He and his girlfriend would show up three hours late and our group would inexplicably wait for him. They even went so far as to do stupid things like say, "We're going to leave at 8:00 am" to try to get him to show up by 11, but his response would be, "Why do you want to be there so early? It'll be too cold."
It wasn't until I simply started taking a car and leaving right on time with the people who were ready that he and his girlfriend started getting upset that we were leaving without them... and they started showing up on time.

But this brings me to my mother's estate. Younger Brother is a beneficiary, but not a trustee. By law we have to provide a legal accounting of the distribution. This is a full, auditable, traceable-to-every-penny legal requirement. We'd have to pay an accountant a couple thousand bucks to do this correctly. So the legal standard is to send a boilerplate waiver to the beneficiaries that says, "No, I don't need the legal, auditable record, I trust my trustees to do it right." Without the waiver, you must also wait 6 months before any distributions.

So, Younger Brother got the boilerplate. He didn't know what it was. So, Flake Moment #1: He threw it out without asking anyone what it was. And Flake Moment #2: He didn't tell anyone.

Fast forward 4 months to the moment we can start distributions. Lawyer: "Nope. Younger Brother didn't sign the waiver. You're not allowed to do anything." We notified Younger Brother. He said, "Oh, I don't sign anything that I don't understand."
And it's like, "Did you bother to ASK ANYONE WHAT IT WAS?!?!?!"
"I just received a legal document I don't understand so I'm going to throw it out and not ask anyone about it" is just... just... <snort>

So, we explained the waiver to him and he said he'd "get right on it".
Fast forward another 2 months as we dealt with other paperwork. We contact our lawyer again. "Nope. Younger Brother hasn't signed anything. You're going to need to do everything through an accountant."

He's going to cost us thousands of dollars in accounting fees... because he can't be bothered to sign something he doesn't understand, and he can't be bothered to take it to someone he trusts and get it checked.

It is... enraging laziness.

So, this week one of my colleagues found my "storyboard and animated PowerPoint" AI tool, and I had to demo my "corporate illustrations" tool multiple times.

I'm waiting to get yelled at for burning $23,000 in tokens or whatever.
And I'll just point out that our division mantra is "AI first!"

EDIT: No, I don't know how much my work actually cost, but I had Codex with the needle buried for at least 4-5 hours this week, plus ChatGPT in Pro mode churning for around an hour... I burned a LOT of GPU cycles.

Beast Boy takes the form of carnivorous animals. It doesn’t make sense that he would be a vegetarian. I’m not familiar enough with the franchise to know what the rationale was though.

He didn't want to eat anything he could turn into. Which was pretty much everything.

So, it's only taken 20 years, but...
New Management: What's your process for content review?
Us: We publish the content to a shared drive, notify stakeholders, and set a deadline. Once the deadline passes we re-notify the stakeholders that if we don't hear from them we're going to publish without them and our content may contain technical inaccuracies or incorrect positioning and we set a second deadline. Once the second deadline passes we publish everything anyway.
New Management: That doesn't sound like a very good system.
Us: Duh!

EDIT: And, of course, *MY* solution is considered "too Draconian" and "unworkable": "If you put in a request and fail to review it within the 2-week deadline, we will cease work on that request *and* you will be barred from making any further requests for a month."

There is something *SO* viscerally satisfying when a customer has a brain and asks the obvious. To paraphrase the customer: "Can you provide me with information about the value add from AI in your product? Everything I've seen could already be done using your existing workflows. What is the value add of using AI for those workflows?"

And there, my friend, is the titanic elephant in the room...

I just hope that more corporations get hit with AI cost overrun and they learn to not use it. Pipe dream, I know.

The tech papers are starting to report more and more of this. One tech company apparently got surprised with a $500 million AI bill.

It was pretty much inevitable given the uniquely corporate American way it was approached:
(1) Give everyone access to a cool new toy for free.
(2) Collect staggering amounts of venture capital to pay for your ludicrous costs in giving everything away for free because the venture capitalists look and say, "Holy carp! Everyone loves that! We want in!"
(3) Once the bills come due, start actually charging people what the service costs.
(4) Collapse, because nobody wants to pay for the cool new toy they've been using for free for the last few years.

EDIT: I mean, it was infinitely predictable. If you're an executive and someone says, "Here's a new tool that will allow your workers to do their jobs in 1/100th the time," and you say, "I'll take it!", you're a fool and you deserve to go bankrupt.
The correct response is, "That's awesome, but how much does it cost?"

I swear, being Lawful can be a righteous PITA.

Yesterday I fed our corporate image library and illustration style guide into Codex and created an image generation skill. It's absolutely fabulous. I put in things like, "A dark-skinned, black-haired woman on a bicycle riding through an open door, representing achieving freedom from adversity," and I get an image that looks absolutely spot-on like all our other corporate stuff.

It is a "perfect" use for AI in my job...
...except...

...I used an internal library of images and an internal style guide to train the AI. Legally can I show the results to an external audience?

And even more importantly, the design team in charge of corporate illustrations is incredibly possessive of their work; they have literally mandated that no image nor illustration go out without their approval. Will they approve any AI images, knowing that said images are putting members of their own team out of jobs?

And I seem to be the only person who asks such questions. Everyone else just says, "Woo hoo! Corporate AI!" and uses it to generate anything and everything. (And yes, we're one of those corporations that's already gotten the notification, "Um, guys? Can you tone it down on the AI use? This is costing us a TON!")

Y'know, actually considering the repercussions of what you're doing and how it impacts others is kind of part and parcel of working in a group...

Speaking of things that are fundamentally hard for me to grasp...

I hated Microsoft in the 1990s for their corporate practices. Nevertheless, because they were the major player in operating systems, they didn't have to adhere to standards, the standards were written for them. Thus, I always had a machine with a Microsoft OS installed (even pre-Windows) lying around in case I needed to do something that was only possible on a Microsoft operating system.

I hate Google in the 2020s for their corporate practices. Nevertheless, because they are the major player in internet browsers, browser standards are written for them. Thus, I always have Google Chrome installed on one of my machines in case I need to do something on a Chrome-only site.

So at work our internal applications are "Chrome-only". It's not a surprise. They build and test everything on Chrome and don't bother to test on any other browsers because corporate clients are willing to use Chrome.

And yet every week or two one of my colleagues contacts me with a "tech issue" that boils down to, "You're using Firefox for this internal app that is explicitly stated as being 'Chrome only'."
"Yeah, but I don't like Chrome so I want to use Firefox."

It's good to want things. It builds character.

But don't waste my time telling me you have a "tech issue" when your issue is that you're too stubborn to use the corporate-recommended browser that corporate installed on your desktop for exactly this purpose.

Speaking of understated brilliance, Undead Murder Farce. Worth watching, in my humble opinion.

Impus Major has such a way with understated brilliance.

He and a psych major friend were seeing a movie together. His friend said, "This is really disturbing. It makes me think a lot about my interactions with my patients."

Impus Major replied, "Yeah, but my unruly patients are a heck of a lot more disturbing than your unruly patients."

And quietly let it sink in...

And, peeking through the fence, I see the issue is classic Bay Area construction. Our new neighbors moved in roughly two years ago. Before they moved in, the absentee landlords had the property manager hire a couple of guys to build a deck in the back yard. Took them a disturbingly short amount of time and I'm sure they were cheap...
...because...
...the work neighbor and his friend are doing this morning is replacing the entire staircase of the deck.

After two years.

I'm frankly flabbergasted that they managed to build a deck that poorly; *I* could have done a better job.

Speaking of laws that I *do* approve of: It is illegal in Albany to use power tools before 8:00 am. However, this law is never enforced unless someone complains, at which point it is enforced ruthlessly. On our walk the other day, GothBard and I passed a construction site with a large red sign: "Remember, it is illegal to make excessive noise, such as by using power tools, before 8:00 am, as per Albany City Code xx.xxx.xxx."

So, someone complained and they acted.

I mention this because new neighbor started using a hammer drill at 7:20 in the morning, scaring the living s**t out of Morrigan and she's moved inside for the morning. I could call in and complain, I could just talk to my neighbor about it, or I can close the windows and keep Morrigan inside until he's done. I'm choosing the final option, but as the offended party, it's my choice what to do.

I personally like laws like that. I can escalate to whatever level *I* feel is appropriate, and otherwise it won't be enforced at all.

The whole discussion of wrong hotels really sets me to wondering. I predate the (public) internet. When it came along, the maxim, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," arose in under a year.

So if I Google (or whatever) an establishment, I always go to their web site (not Google nor a third-party site) and verify the phone number and address.

I am amazed that I am ancient yet I am better at this than many people who are coming of age in the age of AI slop. Now it's pretty much, "If it's on the internet, there's more than a 50% chance that it was generated by an AI and it could well be complete nonsense."

I think it says a lot about my work habits that I have a 5:30 am meeting this morning and it's in conflict with another meeting.

gran rey de los mono wrote:

Also, thagomizer.

The Far Side has been my favorite comic since it came out. Calvin and Hobbes is probably second.

I am the reverse, but yet, two of the Greatest Ever.

Now I'm starting to wonder whether there's a world record for this, and, if so, just how big it is. According to a (getting less and less trustworthy) Google search, anecdotal accounts have it at over 40 years.

Well, at least I'm almost halfway there.

My father, who passed away in 2007 at a residence in the same ZIP Code, receives junk mail at my address once every few months. With alumni organization fundraising in full swing, he's getting an unusual swath this time of year.

And I love Google. "Do you want me to help you stop this?"

Heck, no. I want any company using a marketing list that old and corrupted to continue losing a few pennies a month to me. It all adds up..

EDIT: And I'll admit, physical junk mail fascinates me. The envelopes are over $0.04 apiece. The color flyers have to cost more. So, let's generously assume that a single hit gets you $400. You still need a hit rate of over 1 in 10,000 to make it worth your while. And even that teensy number seems huge to me. There are really people who still even look at junk mail?

How to get evicted:
(1) Find out that the property owner died, and less a month after her death try to buy out the house from the heirs.
(2) A month later, badger them again.
(3) Monitor property tax records until you see their new tax rate, then email them again pointing out how much their property tax went up, and how you're sure that's a hardship for them, and you'll happily take the house off of them for (cite 20% off market price).

They're sleazeballs. If I wanted to sell the house today I might well take my realtor, my lawyer, AND my accountant's advice and evict them first.

And all they had to do was shut up and NOT try to rip me off. Apparently that's too hard for some people.

(No, we're not evicting them... yet. But I told them not to bother me again before 2027.)

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Some animals earn their keep in odd ways.

A fly got into the studio and was driving GothBard bonkers. After 20-30 minutes of waiting for it to leave, a few treats lured Mephisto out and he was placed in the studio.

I have watched boi hit 6' vertically while in a harness. I've watched him run straight up steel piping. In a harness. And Boi loves flies more than anything in the world. There is no play. There is only death.

2 minutes later GothBard returned Mephisto to the house, mission accomplished.

And he earned his keep for another day.

Furry me need not "earn" his keep, he is an experience all on his own!

If we made cats earn their keep, no one would ever keep them.

I'll counter with: Last year we had to pay $7,500 for rat extermination on the rental property. We've never in our lives had rodent issues, even when we were in Davis and the nearby fields flooded and every house around us got infested. People just don't notice things that don't happen, so, "Your house is free from infestations for another year," isn't a thing they think of. Considering the price of rodent removal around here, I think you can keep two cats and still make money.

Four? You're just a crazy cat lady.

NobodysHome wrote:

Some animals earn their keep in odd ways.

A fly got into the studio and was driving GothBard bonkers. After 20-30 minutes of waiting for it to leave, a few treats lured Mephisto out and he was placed in the studio.

I have watched boi hit 6' vertically while in a harness. I've watched him run straight up steel piping. In a harness. And Boi loves flies more than anything in the world. There is no play. There is only death.

2 minutes later GothBard returned Mephisto to the house, mission accomplished.

And he earned his keep for another day.

Furry me need not "earn" his keep, he is an experience all on his own!

OMG. Watching him accept the pecking order of the house is side-splitting.

Among the cats, as I've mentioned, his existence is trying to steal grandma's food. But the pecking order is Lenore > Nefret > Mephisto > Morrigan. And watching giant floof Lenore just mosey up and shove solid muscle Mephisto out of the way to take his food is side-splitting. "You're a pound heavier and probably three times as strong! What are you doing?"
"Oh, it's not right to hit a floof. She can have my food. I'll steal someone else's."

Then comes his relationship with hoomans. If I cradle him he claws and bites the s*** out of me. Playfully; he's darned good at knowing how thick my skin/sweatshirt is, but it is nothing but claws and bites. And if either of the Impii picks him up in the exact same way, he just relaxes and gazes at me balefully. "What?"

But if I'm carrying him somewhere he goes 100% limp, like the world's worst suitcase. 'Cause he's honestly curious where he's going. Every. Single. Time.

Some animals earn their keep in odd ways.

A fly got into the studio and was driving GothBard bonkers. After 20-30 minutes of waiting for it to leave, a few treats lured Mephisto out and he was placed in the studio.

I have watched boi hit 6' vertically while in a harness. I've watched him run straight up steel piping. In a harness. And Boi loves flies more than anything in the world. There is no play. There is only death.

2 minutes later GothBard returned Mephisto to the house, mission accomplished.

And he earned his keep for another day.

NobodysHome wrote:

Nope. I've started in as a healer (my previous job) on an alternate character and I'm doing dungeons with random groups. And I have yet to find a tank who manages anything beyond, "Make sure every creature is angry at you."

Slow down? NEVER!
Use damage mitigation? Why bother? That's the healer's job.
Let new people explore? Nope.

Dungeon after dungeon it's, "Pull everything I possibly can and it's the healer's job to keep me standing, and go in a direct start-to-finish line without any exploration at all."

Not a fan.

And gee, "You're better than most tanks I encounter," suddenly isn't much of a compliment...

Part of that might be that tanking in some MMOs is really easy unless you run higher difficulties/challenge modes/so on, and only some specific bosses/fights are demanding during baseline runs because of specific mechanics.

That's a very fair point. Base FFXIV is a "cozy" game; you have to work hard to get yourself in trouble (and these tanks do). There are additional tiers for people who want greater challenges (extreme, then unreal or savage, then chaotic). My friends and I consider the extremes to be fun, light entertainment, and unreals are slightly below our level, while savages take practice. And on those, proper technique is essential for every role.

Another part might be that people weren't taught any better, and a final part is that people can be simply careless...

It's unfortunately even worse -- there are a multitude of YouTube videos out there showing horrible technique. Hi ended up being a MUCH worse healer because he kept seeing all these YouTube videos saying, "If you're not contributing 15% to the damage as a healer, you're crap."

It's kind of amusing/embarrassing to learn that you've been damned with faint praise.

For the last 10 or so years in MMORPGs I've played tank. The job is pretty simple: Make sure every creature is angry at you, keep them in a group so your damage-dealers (DPSes) can cast area-of-effect spells, and monitor your health and use damage reduction to help the healer as needed.

Healers talk about what a great tank I am. I thought that was because I did all the little extras: Keep boss monsters pointed in a uniform direction so all the flanking-based DPSes can get in their flanking bonuses. Cast group protects just before boss AoEs to reduce the impact on healers. If there's a new person in an instance, go slow so they have time to look around.

Nope. I've started in as a healer (my previous job) on an alternate character and I'm doing dungeons with random groups. And I have yet to find a tank who manages anything beyond, "Make sure every creature is angry at you."

Slow down? NEVER!
Use damage mitigation? Why bother? That's the healer's job.
Let new people explore? Nope.

Dungeon after dungeon it's, "Pull everything I possibly can and it's the healer's job to keep me standing, and go in a direct start-to-finish line without any exploration at all."

Not a fan.

And gee, "You're better than most tanks I encounter," suddenly isn't much of a compliment...

It *is* fun working with the kids on the local nocturnal wildlife. Something dug a massive hole in our yard trying to burrow under the cat tree. Impus Major immediately thought, "Gopher," because that's what you learn from media: Only gophers can possibly dig holes.

But:
(1) Gophers are surprisingly small,
(2) their holes are sized for them, and
(3) they don't burn effort making massive, wide, shallow holes.

It took a remarkably long time to get them to, "What nocturnal creature is local to this area, is not afraid of the smell of cats, and digs large holes looking for worms and other insects to eat?"
(The answer is "skunk".)

NobodysHome wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

"Is there a combination of words that more scary than 'Fully armed pack of frat bros?'"

...

"A gaggle of White Claws out there, up to no good."

I am dying here because Californians' understanding of wildlife is... lacking.

LMAO. I will NEVER forget the time I was with the kids at a park in the Berkeley Hills (Arlington Park, NH), and a group of idiot parents were freaking out because there was a "giant scorpion" in the creek.

(This is not the Silurian Era, scorpions are no longer aquatic, and back then "giant" meant eight feet long.)

So I went to look.
It was a crayfish.

Shiro will never forget when he was driving to Mount Fremont for some astronomy and a woman flagged him down to warn him of "a mutant dog, or maybe a bear, hiding in the bushes over there."

It was a deer. And she literally did not know what it was. She kept trying to get HIM to call Animal Control to come deal with it. Because... um.. she couldn't use a phone herself?

NobodysHome wrote:

gran rey de los mono wrote:

"Is there a combination of words that more scary than 'Fully armed pack of frat bros?'"

...

"A gaggle of White Claws out there, up to no good."

I am dying here because Californians' understanding of wildlife is... lacking. First we have hundreds of videos of people being chased off by geese. Now we have a formal warning about being attacked by turkeys.

Um... birds have hollow bones and are less than 1/10th your weight. It's like any other fight -- you're going to get hit and it's going to hurt. And yet sheer bone mass and strength determines the winner. Of course, somehow geese and turkeys immediately recognize the humans who aren't going to run. The last time a goose attacked me it charged me, I moved aggressively towards it in return, and it was like, "Nope. Uh-uh. I'm gonna lose this fight badly."

Because yes, I know how to clean and prep a bird for roasting. And if it attacks me, it volunteered for the honor.

The university I went to had tons of Canadian geese during certain months. They were frequently very aggressive, and you couldn't do anything about it. Even if all you did was stand your ground and yell back when they honked at you, you could be fined by the campus police for "harassing a protected species". In practice, you would likely just be told to walk away instead of standing up to them, but the possibility existed. As did the possibility, or rather likelihood, that someone would see you and write an exaggerated column in the campus paper saying that you (not by name, but it was a small school so people could find out who it was easily) were "attacking the beautiful, harmless, and oppressed wildlife". So, people would walk/run away from the geese, which made them bolder, so more people would run, and the cycle would continue.

My last year, there was talk of having wildlife specialists go out and...

A food creature that attacks you is food, reputation be damned. But yeah, protected wildlife might be an issue. But I somehow doubt the turkeys are protected...

EDIT: And their reading of human body language is excellent. My friend and I attacked a gaggle of geese with intent to kill (they pecked a friend). Those geese knew damned well what we intended to do and we couldn't lay a finger on any of them.