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I have just read a beautifully snarky comment to this year's Halloween fad:
"Some degenerate put Halloween candy in my Fentanyl!"
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No, that is not a candy.
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It was kind of funny -- after tirading about it last week (I think), there was an oh-so-slightly apologetic article in the news this morning: "The most overblown story of October: Fentanyl in Halloween candy."
Too little, too late folks.
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I've eaten four buckets and haven't gotten the least buzz yet.
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Leave it to Shiro to make me feel better about humanity: He put out a bowl with a sign ("Happy Halloween! Please take 3!") and name-brand candy. (I refuse to call it "high quality" nor "the good stuff" any more.)
He has a door camera, so he got to watch every kid who came. And ALL of them read the sign, dutifully took 3 pieces, and happily trotted off.
Did I mention the younger generation gives me hope for the world?
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I've eaten four buckets and haven't gotten the least buzz yet.
A few more and you should get sugar high anyway.
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It was nice to dress up and go to the local downtown goth club and get immediate recognition and people yelling SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! at me last night. Best Halloween party I've been to in awhile.
Yeah, GothBard wanted to do the whole, "Leave out a bucket and lock the door," thing, but paladin: Doing that rewards the greedy, so I won't. I've never claimed not to have a giant stick up my butt about such things.Usually someone stays home and we'll get a few kids.
This year I was lucky enough to stay home so I just put the candy in a bucket on the porch and left it.
I ended up going through about half of the 5 gallon bucket.
Either we have more kids trick or treating or those few kids made off like bandIits.
Either way, I got to play Elden Ring interruption free and got rid of a good deal of candy.
That makes no sense. We had to do that during covid. And it worked well.
That makes no sense. We had to do that during covid. And it worked well.Yeah, GothBard wanted to do the whole, "Leave out a bucket and lock the door," thing, but paladin: Doing that rewards the greedy, so I won't. I've never claimed not to have a giant stick up my butt about such things.Usually someone stays home and we'll get a few kids.
This year I was lucky enough to stay home so I just put the candy in a bucket on the porch and left it.
I ended up going through about half of the 5 gallon bucket.
Either we have more kids trick or treating or those few kids made off like bandIits.
Either way, I got to play Elden Ring interruption free and got rid of a good deal of candy.
The last time someone I know tried it in Albany, less than an hour after the bowl hit the porch a boy around 10 walked up, dumped the entire bowl into his bag, and walked off. I've seen bowls before, but I've only spoken to three people in Albany who tried it. All three of them reported hearing about/seeing lone culprits taking the entire bowl. So maybe it's just an Albany thing. There's obvious selection bias (only the people who try it, have it fail, and hear the horror stories will tell you about the incidents), but back when I trick-or-treated I clearly recall more than half the bowls I encountered being empty by 7:00 pm.
I believe that smelling burnt toast when no toast is burning is a sign that you're having a stroke, but what about the phantom scent of fried beansprouts?
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I believe that smelling burnt toast when no toast is burning is a sign that you're having a stroke, but what about the phantom scent of fried beansprouts?
You're turning vegan.
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I believe that smelling burnt toast when no toast is burning is a sign that you're having a stroke, but what about the phantom scent of fried beansprouts?
check the other end
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The take one thing is going to be highly variable, all you need is one kid and the whole system goes kaput.
That makes no sense. We had to do that during covid. And it worked well.Yeah, GothBard wanted to do the whole, "Leave out a bucket and lock the door," thing, but paladin: Doing that rewards the greedy, so I won't. I've never claimed not to have a giant stick up my butt about such things.Usually someone stays home and we'll get a few kids.
This year I was lucky enough to stay home so I just put the candy in a bucket on the porch and left it.
I ended up going through about half of the 5 gallon bucket.
Either we have more kids trick or treating or those few kids made off like bandIits.
Either way, I got to play Elden Ring interruption free and got rid of a good deal of candy.
The last time someone I know tried it in Albany, less than an hour after the bowl hit the porch a boy around 10 walked up, dumped the entire bowl into his bag, and walked off. I've seen bowls before, but I've only spoken to three people in Albany who tried it. All three of them reported hearing about/seeing lone culprits taking the entire bowl. So maybe it's just an Albany thing. There's obvious selection bias (only the people who try it, have it fail, and hear the horror stories will tell you about the incidents), but back when I trick-or-treated I clearly recall more than half the bowls I encountered being empty by 7:00 pm.
Definitely only an Albany problem. Sounds like your neighborhood is filled with a%!#@#*s.
I believe that smelling burnt toast when no toast is burning is a sign that you're having a stroke, but what about the phantom scent of fried beansprouts?
Beware of giants!
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Moved here 8 years ago. One group of kids in 8 years. And I was so looking forward to giving away all this fentanyl rather than sell it at a high profit to repeat customers.
Moved here 8 years ago. One group of kids in 8 years. And I was so looking forward to giving away all this fentanyl rather than sell it at a high profit to repeat customers.
Hey man, got some tranq?
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One of the things I've despised about Corporate America since the "Greed is Good" 1980s is the whole, "If we don't announce it, it's not a 'real' layoff," approach. The most hateful euphemism is, "We're not 'downsizing', we're 'right-sizing'."
So, as you know, back in August my company joined the crowd and had a big layoff. Like aftershocks, we've heard about small layoffs across the company since then. Not a week goes by that we don't hear about someone we know getting the axe.
I just got an email: "Please join us in welcoming our new hires!"
I really want to post something incredibly snarky such as, "Ah, you cut all the senior staff and brought in junior members to cut costs because your belief is that experience is irrelevant," but I suspect I'd get in trouble.
I'll just skip the celebration though, thanks.
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New month, new monies!
Pizza would be nice...
No pizza. :(
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...
I really want to post something incredibly snarky such as, "Ah, you cut all the senior staff and brought in junior members to cut costs because your belief is that experience is irrelevant," but I suspect I'd get in trouble.
...
Sounds like somebody is volunteering for the next round of rightsizings.
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Speaking of capitalist B.S., I got slapped in the face with it over the weekend:
Since we were near the end of the 90-day grace period, I rolled GothBard's 401(k) into her IRA, meaning that I had to make investment choices as to what to do with the money.
I'm not an investor, so my strategy is simple: Make a list of all the fund types I should probably have (bonds, international, stable income, aggressive growth, etc.). Then get a list of all the available funds of one type along with their 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year returns. And choose one that consistently outperforms the rest.
What did I learn?
While most funds have a minimum deposit ranging anywhere from $100 to $10,000, over half of the best-performing funds I selected had minimum deposits of $1,000,000.
In other words, if you don't have a million bucks lying around to invest, you're locked out of the best investments.
While I at least understand rich people's willingness to do anything and everything to stay rich, their constant efforts to prevent anyone else from becoming rich is baffling and rage-inducing.
New month, new monies!
Pizza would be nice...
No pizza. :(
Paid the bills, bought some groceries, ate some take out food.
It won't be a particularly extravagant month.
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I believe that smelling burnt toast when no toast is burning is a sign that you're having a stroke, but what about the phantom scent of fried beansprouts?Beware of giants!
I installed Robo Quest from this month's Humble Choice...
And then it was 4:40 am...
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There's nothing quite so relaxing as when another team screws up, relieving all the pressure on you.
I'm about 3 days behind schedule. We just got notified by the environment team that they're going to be 10 days late.
Suddenly, I have all the time in the world to get my work done...
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Speaking of rampant capitalism done well and done poorly:
Netflix: We're introducing an ad tier. It'll come in at half the price of your current subscription so if you want to pay less and you're OK with ads, you can opt in. Otherwise, you can keep paying the same and continue to stay ad-free.
Disney Plus: We're introducing an ad tier. It's the plan you currently have. You'll have to pay significantly more if you don't want ads. And you have to opt out of the ad tier, so if you don't do anything you'll start getting ads.
Guess which service we canceled?
Speaking of rampant capitalism done well and done poorly:
Netflix: We're introducing an ad tier. It'll come in at half the price of your current subscription so if you want to pay less and you're OK with ads, you can opt in. Otherwise, you can keep paying the same and continue to stay ad-free.
Disney Plus: We're introducing an ad tier. It's the plan you currently have. You'll have to pay significantly more if you don't want ads. And you have to opt out of the ad tier, so if you don't do anything you'll start getting ads.
Guess which service we canceled?
Wasn't Netflix plan originally the same as Disney's but they have backtracked after consumer outrage?
If only consumers stand up in mass more often against ridiculous company practices...
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It sounds like the teams are GLOBALMEGACORP need to seriously consider implementing more serious self-assesments and applying the Scotty Principle to their delivery estimates.
It's not so bad -- both delays are justified and were telegraphed well ahead of schedule:
(1) I hit my major deadline of posting a draft course on October 21. My mistake was to give myself only a week to apply feedback and debug. In my previous department we were lucky to get 10 comments for an entire course. In my new department I got around 10 comments per lesson for a 26-lesson course, so I'm dealing with well over 200 comments. Everyone can see that, so my delay in addressing them all is perfectly reasonable.
(2) I've been warning all the teams for two weeks now that there were two show-stopper bugs in the environment that had to be manually patched on a per-machine basis, so we could expect delays in our test environments. I expected the delay to be 1-2 days. 10 days? OK, that's a bit much. But I'm not the one sitting there desperately trying to apply emergency patches to a bunch of test environments, so it's not my place to judge.
We happen to be in a division where we set reasonable deadlines based on known circumstances, and if the deadlines need to be pushed because of unforeseen events that's fine. It's far more efficient than having everyone pad their schedules by 2-3 weeks "just in case" and then slack off because nothing goes wrong.
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Speaking of rampant capitalism done well and done poorly:
Netflix: We're introducing an ad tier. It'll come in at half the price of your current subscription so if you want to pay less and you're OK with ads, you can opt in. Otherwise, you can keep paying the same and continue to stay ad-free.
Disney Plus: We're introducing an ad tier. It's the plan you currently have. You'll have to pay significantly more if you don't want ads. And you have to opt out of the ad tier, so if you don't do anything you'll start getting ads.
Guess which service we canceled?
Wasn't Netflix plan originally the same as Disney's but they have backtracked after consumer outrage?
If only consumers stand up in mass more often against ridiculous company practices...
I have no idea. I know that Netflix made many, many promises of, "We will never run ads," so consumer sentiment among their customers is far stronger.
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Ah, California kids.
We're now in our standard winter weather pattern: Sunny and clear all day, no wind, low of around 40°F, high of around 56°F. It'll be this way with very little variation until March. Yeah, during a cold snap the lows will drop into the low 30s or even high 20s, and during a warm snap the highs might go into the 60s, but our weather is amazingly boring from here on out.
So Impus Minor started griping about how it's so stupid that winter doesn't start until December 21. It's obviously already winter, so why call it "fall"?
Because, my young friend, other places in the world have these things called "seasons" that we don't, and fall is actually one of them...
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Disney+ purposely started out with a lower subscription cost then Netflix to poach their customers.
This was always their plan.
Personally, we also cancelled Disney+ after I had everyone in the family list their top 3 streaming services and no one had Disney in their lists.
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There's nothing quite so relaxing as when another team screws up, relieving all the pressure on you.
I'm about 3 days behind schedule. We just got notified by the environment team that they're going to be 10 days late.
Suddenly, I have all the time in the world to get my work done...
You? Behind schedule? That's unpossible.
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Ah, California kids.
We're now in our standard winter weather pattern: Sunny and clear all day, no wind, low of around 40°F, high of around 56°F. It'll be this way with very little variation until March. Yeah, during a cold snap the lows will drop into the low 30s or even high 20s, and during a warm snap the highs might go into the 60s, but our weather is amazingly boring from here on out.
So Impus Minor started griping about how it's so stupid that winter doesn't start until December 21. It's obviously already winter, so why call it "fall"?
Because, my young friend, other places in the world have these things called "seasons" that we don't, and fall is actually one of them...
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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The brand of tools I personally dislike the most is Husqvarna.Hey, they're not all bad. For example, they used to make decent sewing machines. And the chains on their saws will stay on for at least thirty seconds before falling off or breaking.
Having just recently helped take down a number of old trees with a Husqvarna, let me say that you sir are an optimist.
OK, maybe my family had a point in being appalled when I burnt my fingers on the Que Bueno last week.
I was making a fresh pot of coffee (French press, of course). I boiled the kettle, poured the boiling water into the carafe while stirring with a chopstick, and accidentally poured the boiling water over my fingers.
It was a mild irritation. I wouldn't even call it "painful". And it certainly didn't burn me.
Yeah, my fingers may be slightly calloused from decades of cooking...
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Paladins do get fire resistance at high levels, so I'm not sure why they were surprised.
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It is Friday.
I worked on Saturday last week.
The rain is supposed to start in a couple of hours.
Sounds like I'm about to get a case of Selective Pattern Amnesia (or SPA) for however long it takes the rain to get here.
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Today I offer a moment of silence to Twitter employees.
What would I do in the same situation? If I could afford to, I'd walk. But look at my current position: GothBard's been out of work for 3 months now, so if we lose my income we have to dip into our retirement funds just to keep the house. I'd certainly be looking to find new work ASAP, and if GothBard found a job I'd walk instantly.
But I feel for the employees who are trapped there by their need for an income.
I know there are a handful who will stay because they admire Musk's "bold leadership style" or whatnot, but in a just world, 100% of the employees would walk and Musk would be left with a worthless $44 billion shell.
I am sad for every employee who was laid off, and every employee who feels they're stuck staying there.
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Today I offer a moment of silence to Twitter employees. ** spoiler omitted **
I'm waiting for the fired employees to start up tweeter or something
Which is a problem with your business model when the core functional concept of internet communications platform really isn't patentable. Twitter and facebook are only vulable because everyone is on twitter and facebook. As soon as something else gets momentum people can hop onto that en masse with a few clicks. Look at myspace. (please. It needs to see someone)
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OK, maybe my family had a point in being appalled when I burnt my fingers on the Que Bueno last week.
I
We were catching bats in what is basically a giant volleyball net.
Theres a loud WATHUNK and the net rocks back and forth like it was punched.Check it out, there's a giant Hoary bat wrapped up in the net like a taco. (Its the biggest bat in most us states i think)
I try to get him out, no dice.
My partner tries to get them out, keeps getting bit through the gloves and has to stop "Ow ow ow "
Alright. We can either cut the bat out of the net , which would take our biggest net out of operation, or...
Take the gloves off. The bat bite bites nom nom...NOM?
"Ow ow ow...."
From the bat. You can practically see him go "Well THATS not working.. FIIIINE do your thing...." and let me unwind him, and is a pretty good sport about the whole physical exam thing.
I used to work for a living and whittle. Nothing but callous and scar tissue there (I am not a GOOD whittler)
I ended up working until 10:15 before developing a case of Selective Pattern Amnesia and calling it a day. At 11 it started raining so definitely called it there (I'm working in an area with little to no cell phone reception).
My dad once killed a bat by stabbing it with his fork.
Probably one of the coolest things I've seen him do.
..was it dinner?
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My dad once killed a bat by stabbing it with his fork.
Probably one of the coolest things I've seen him do.
ACK!!!! WHy?
ACK!!!! WHy?My dad once killed a bat by stabbing it with his fork.
Probably one of the coolest things I've seen him do.
Because stabbing it with a spoon wouldn't work as well?
So far, I've only got one thing to say about House of the Dragon, and that is that Matt Smith's character is an absolute mad lad for going into a joust with an open-faced helmet.
Actually, also, to the other guy: bringing a flail to a duel? What were you thinking?
And to both of them: that worked?
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Where will it end? Un-padded mail coifs? Studded leather armor? Back scabbards? For shame.