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It's nice to see that some things never change.
The kids were planning on going out on Halloween to see the Five Nights at Freddy's movie with a bunch of their friends. They got invited to see it on Saturday as well, and they thought, "Why not? It'll be a blast to see it twice with all our friends!"
It was so bad that Impus Minor went ahead and cancelled his plans to go out, so he'd rather spend Halloween at home watching movies with his parents than see that movie again with his friends.
It brings back so many memories of the terrible horror movies we suffered through in the 80s...
EDIT: Speaking of terrible horror, sorry 'bout that!
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It really gets to me just how hard Microsoft is trying to fail.
As of Windows 11, you no longer get a convenient set of tiles in your taskbar listing all the file names you have open. Instead, you have to click on the icon in the taskbar to get the list, then you have to click the file. It's "only" one extra click, but considering Global Megacorporation is spending tens of millions of dollars of development effort to reduce the number of clicks a user has to perform, any change that increases the number of clicks is dumb. They also removed the ability to jump to a window from the task icon in the lower right. I see a chat indicator flash in the lower right, click it, and too bad. I need to click the icon on the left in the taskbar. It's driving me batty.
With the latest update they "improved" Notepad by allowing you to have multiple files open in tabs. But of course, they blew it. If you open a file twice, it opens two tabs. Even worse, it remembers what tabs you had open. So every morning I try to open my "To Do" list. Since it was open the day before, it opens a second tab. And it only records the edits in one of the two tabs.
Microsoft. Decreasing employee productivity since... er... their founding?
I know this isn't specifically relevant for a corporate-owned computer controlled by an IT department, but Open Shell is what you're looking for. It changes the Windows 11 start menu back to something people are used to.
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I have gmed a session of In Nomine today. In fact we managed to finish the adventure in a single session!
Ok, I had to hurry a bit at the end to fit in, to avoid having half an hour of adventure remaining behind.
I know this isn't specifically relevant for a corporate-owned computer controlled by an IT department, but Open Shell is what you're looking for. It changes the Windows 11 start menu back to something people are used to.It really gets to me just how hard Microsoft is trying to fail.
As of Windows 11, you no longer get a convenient set of tiles in your taskbar listing all the file names you have open. Instead, you have to click on the icon in the taskbar to get the list, then you have to click the file. It's "only" one extra click, but considering Global Megacorporation is spending tens of millions of dollars of development effort to reduce the number of clicks a user has to perform, any change that increases the number of clicks is dumb. They also removed the ability to jump to a window from the task icon in the lower right. I see a chat indicator flash in the lower right, click it, and too bad. I need to click the icon on the left in the taskbar. It's driving me batty.
With the latest update they "improved" Notepad by allowing you to have multiple files open in tabs. But of course, they blew it. If you open a file twice, it opens two tabs. Even worse, it remembers what tabs you had open. So every morning I try to open my "To Do" list. Since it was open the day before, it opens a second tab. And it only records the edits in one of the two tabs.
Microsoft. Decreasing employee productivity since... er... their founding?
I've used Open Shell, but no, I'm talking about the task bar itself. I work in PowerPoint and Word. Typically I'll have 3-4 PowerPoint files open at once so that I can quickly copy-and-paste between them. In Windows 10 you could force the taskbar to show them (and their names) as separate taskbar items. In Windows 11 they're auto-combined and you can't do anything about it; you MUST click the single, unlabeled PowerPoint icon to make the files you have open appear, then you must click on the correct file. It's an extra step. Dozens of times a day.
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Someone kindly gave me a pair of sai this evening. They are luxuriantly chromed, and far too solid to be used in fun, but will probably look nice on the wall. I've decided to name them the Sai of Contentment, and the Sai of Resignation.
Oh, hello unasked for expenses...
Apparently the grave of my grandparents is late on 10 or 20-year lease payments. Great.
*sigh*
Damn. I'm sorry.
I've used Open Shell, but no, I'm talking about the task bar itself. I work in PowerPoint and Word. Typically I'll have 3-4 PowerPoint files open at once so that I can quickly copy-and-paste between them. In Windows 10 you could force the taskbar to show them (and their names) as separate taskbar items. In Windows 11 they're auto-combined and you can't do anything about it; you MUST click the single, unlabeled PowerPoint icon to make the files you have open appear, then you must click on the correct file. It's an extra...I know this isn't specifically relevant for a corporate-owned computer controlled by an IT department, but Open Shell is what you're looking for. It changes the Windows 11 start menu back to something people are used to.It really gets to me just how hard Microsoft is trying to fail.
As of Windows 11, you no longer get a convenient set of tiles in your taskbar listing all the file names you have open. Instead, you have to click on the icon in the taskbar to get the list, then you have to click the file. It's "only" one extra click, but considering Global Megacorporation is spending tens of millions of dollars of development effort to reduce the number of clicks a user has to perform, any change that increases the number of clicks is dumb. They also removed the ability to jump to a window from the task icon in the lower right. I see a chat indicator flash in the lower right, click it, and too bad. I need to click the icon on the left in the taskbar. It's driving me batty.
With the latest update they "improved" Notepad by allowing you to have multiple files open in tabs. But of course, they blew it. If you open a file twice, it opens two tabs. Even worse, it remembers what tabs you had open. So every morning I try to open my "To Do" list. Since it was open the day before, it opens a second tab. And it only records the edits in one of the two tabs.
Microsoft. Decreasing employee productivity since... er... their founding?
Oh, sorry, misunderstood. I don't have to click the program, I just have to mouse over it and then move the mouse again to the right file and click on it. It's still stupid.
Gotta love scatterbrained senior team members causing you extra work and scrambling.
We have an "audio guru" who has to approve all our recordings. She's retiring next month. So my chain of events was:
(1) Audio guru approves my video.
(2) I add all the closed captioning, do all the publishing, post all the documents, and do the formal handoff.
(3) Audio guru sends a follow-up email, "Oh, by the way, since I'm retiring these two junior reviewers should check your stuff, too."
(4) One of the junior members picks a nit -- I have 13 seconds of silence at one point, higher than they like, even though there's plenty of activity on the screen. (I'm not a big believer in, "Make noise for the sake of making noise," so it's not uncommon.)
(5) This morning AFTER I HANDED EVERYTHING OFF audio guru revoked her approval and wants me to fix the silence.
As I always tell people in such situations, "I'll see what I can do."
On the other hand, how scary is it in tech land right now? As of last night our other "permajob" guy let us know he'd been laid off, so in our immediate gaming groups I'm the only tech worker who hasn't been laid off in the last 18 months. As per my, "Don't air other people's business," approach, I'll leave it at 6 of the 7 tech workers I keep in contact with have been laid off, and only one of them has found a full-time gig since then.
Not a good time to be on the market, so I'll accept some nonsense to keep my job, thanks.
Jesus. That's terrifying.
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Jesus. That's terrifying.
It's a combination of overhiring during COVID ("Everyone's playing games right now! So everyone will continue to buy games at this exact rate forever, right? So we'd better hire 30% more workers, right?"), the inevitable post-COVID slowdown ("Hey, why do we have 30% more workers than we need to do our work? Who was the idiot who hired all these extra people?"), and clever salespeople overmarketing AI to gullible executives ("You don't need designers, writers, engineers, or voice talent any more! AI can do all that for you! For FAR less money!").
Once the AI trend inevitably crashes and burns because it's not quite ready yet, there'll be a boom in hiring. It'll just take 6 months.
What are everyone's concerns with AI?
I work in a field where AI isn't much of a concern, but I realize not everyone works in such a field. I have found some concerns a bit overblown and others outright short sighted, but again that's just me.
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About half of my work at the (literal) moment is copying a patch of text into Google translate and then copying the output into the file. The rest is turning the results into sensible sentences... It's a very mixed bag. Depressingly lot of it comes out fine on its own. The rest are monstrosities that I have problems with.
If Polish wasn't such grammatically complex and very contextual language I would already be without work...
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What are everyone's concerns with AI?
I work in a field where AI isn't much of a concern, but I realize not everyone works in such a field. I have found some concerns a bit overblown and others outright short sighted, but again that's just me.
The way they're selling AI right now is that it can somehow replace all human technical workers:
(1) "Siri, create an application for me that manages all aspects of payroll management for a U.S. corporation."(2) "Siri, create documentation for the application you just wrote."
(3) "Siri, create training for the application you just wrote."
There is, quite literally, the idea that now or in the near future, AI can fully replace designers, developers, writers, curriculum developers, artists, translators, voiceover talent, etc. And executives are buying into it and either freezing new hires or even laying people off in anticipation of AI being able to replace their white collar workers.
And AI is nowhere near that point yet. But the idea of self-writing, self-documenting, self-correcting code is being pitched heavily in the tech industry right now as "the future".
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R&D on AI has been in the back rooms for decades now and it finally got to the point where enough of the nerds escaped and went rogue with their knowledge to start making it more open-source which is, for all intents and purposes, a far better and more efficient school of hard knocks for any technology.
It is already a mild disruption in a ton of industries and the rest that it's even arguably feasible to make an impact on, well, the biggest players in those markets are frontloading a TON of budget because the writing it very much on the wall even IF only 10% of what seems possible in the next decade shakes out to be the most cost-effective way to deliver something that is at least somewhat adequate and can be refined by 5% of the current human staff that they currently employ.
Saying AI is going to shake things up is and understatement, not sure how much of one it will be at the end of the century, but regardless it will almost certainly be squarely at the roots and foundation of the next technological revolution and like any revolution, there will be real people who are harmed and replaced in the wake of the changes that come of it. On a related note: I'm trying to do my best to teach my about the beauty of nature and encourage them to be naturalists if I can at all help it, the less their career demands that they have an active wi-fi connection and a computer the better off I think they will be.
I'm trying to do my best to teach my about the beauty of nature and encourage them to be naturalists if I can at all help it, the less their career demands that they have an active wi-fi connection and a computer the better off I think they will be.
If this were the case, I wouldn't be trying to become Freholdius Medius.
What are everyone's concerns with AI?
No comment.
Speaking of psychology, with "cold" weather upon us the family's approach to heaters continues to drive me nuts:
(1) Our heaters have a fixed output. Setting the heat to 60 or setting the heat to 90 has no effect on heater output.
(2) Nevertheless, psychologically it feels "warmer" to set the heat to 90, so the family constantly does so, in spite of my protestations. Why do I object? Because
(3) family forgets that they set the heat to 90 and leaves, leaving our heaters constantly burning for an empty house with all the associated aggravations (waste of money, waste of natural resources, pollution, etc.).
And year after year after year I tell them, "Don't do that," and year after year after year they ignore me and do it.
I think this year I'm going to set up a "waste fund". If I find a heater set to 90, I charge everyone in the family $10. That way they'll watch each other.
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Took the kids out for Halloween as usual in the same middle-upper-class neighborhood we've always relied on (It's about 5 "blocks" of residential suburb with homes ranging in the 300-700k value range so not a wealthy neighborhood but certainly a nicer one for where I live) and as usual just like the last four years it starts to snow. The last two years the first snow of fall came a week or so beforehand but this time around it decided to wait until precisely 7 pm on Halloween night when the maximum number of kids were out and about and let me tell you, while the ground wasn't cold enough to accumulate ALL of the snowfall as it was melting pretty quick, the inch that it dropped over the next two hours was coming down so fast that driving back home at 1/3 the speed limit was quite fun... and here I was only a week ago thinking "hmm, I need to get on top of buying some fall clothes for the goblins" and all of a sudden I'm driving home in the middle of an "Engage" cutscene as my headlights were useless among the stars flying past remembering that there is no point in buying fall clothes at all. We went from 75f FOUR days ago to mid-20s last night. I guess it's time to stock up on winter clothes instead.
Kids had a great time and despite the actual temp it didn't feel so cold as there was very little wind, just a lot of strait vertical snow coming down to help fill up buckets and blanket their fleece costumes.
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I think this year I'm going to set up a "waste fund". If I find a heater set to 90, I charge everyone in the family $10. That way they'll watch each other.
Just turn your heater upside down.
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....
That was an option?!
While we have no proof, GothBard had quite the depressing epiphany yesterday:
(1) Last year, we bought candy for the kids and GothBard tried a Kit Kat bar. Her immediate reaction was that the quality had deteriorated so much that she never had to eat one again.
(2) A few months later, the kids were doing a game day and had a bowl full of Kit Kats. The kids said they were perfectly fine, so she tried one and it wasn't an "old school" Kit Kat, but it was edible.
(3) Last night, she and Impus Minor bought candy for the kids and yet again, the Kit Kat was inedible.
The conclusion is as depressing as it is believable: The major candy companies likely massively reduce the quality of their product right around Halloween time in order to maximize profits, because little kids aren't going to complain about free candy as long as it's sweet.
I'd love to know whether it's true. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it is.
EDIT: How many other people are old enough to remember when major brand candy bars still had cocoa liquor in them?
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Huh. I also ate a Kit Kat last night, and I agree it was pretty disappointing. I had attributed it to the fact that I don't eat "candy" very much nowadays, and I had lost my taste for the processed nature of it, but now I want to try one out later in the year and see if it's still just as disappointing.
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Today was Contemporary Country Music day in the office. O dear.
Most of it sounded like mid 90s Bryan Adams, with extra banjos/fiddles, and a man in a big hat singing through his nose. Still, given that it was that or Christmas music, it had to do.
Last night was Halloween Movie Night with GothBard, and we tried watching a couple of "obscure classics", leading me to believe that my brain just doesn't work like most people's.
Rotten Tomatoes' blurb on the 1977 movie Suspiria is that it's a "giallo horror as grandiose and glossy as it is gory." OK. I can't disagree too much, since there was very little blood in the movie by modern standards, so its lack of grandiosity is therefore a given. And I'll give it points: The lighting and cinematography were boldly stylish. The colors were an assault on the senses. The pulsing music score was unique and different. But there was no "there" there. The plot was thinner than orphanage gruel. The motivations were nonexistent. There was no particular story of interest. It was just, "Watch this stylish movie with this overwhelming music and be mesmerized."
Sorry. I need a plot. And characters. And motivations. I'm not surprised at the 94% critic score. Things like the first-person point-of-view camera and the lighting were very daring for the time. I'm surprised at the 83% audience score. I couldn't recommend it to anyone not on psychedelics. Which is like most movies from the 1970s.
The blurb on 2013's Under the Skin is, "Its message may prove elusive for some, but with absorbing imagery and a mesmerizing performance from Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin is a haunting viewing experience."
And I will admit... I was mesmerized for the first 20-30 minutes. I thought I was curling up to a truly different and interesting horror experience. It was riveting. Then Scarlett did her thing again. OK. Then she did it again. OK, er, is she going to do anything different? Then again. OK. Now I'm just irritated. We turned it off after an hour because it had even less of a plot than Suspiria. At least in Suspiria there was progress. As I remarked to GothBard, watching Under The Skin was like going to a "take your friend to work" day with your friend whom you think has a really cool job. For the first hour you're amazed at what they do. After two hours you start asking, "Er, don't they do anything else?" Four hours in and you're ready for the day to be over already.
GothBard and I both want to watch the rest of the movie to see whether anything ever actually happens, but given the critic score of 84% and the audience score of 55%, I'm guessing it's just another hour of watching exactly what we've already been watching for an hour.
The soundtrack to 'Suspira' is a smasher.
While we have no proof, GothBard had quite the depressing epiphany yesterday:
(1) Last year, we bought candy for the kids and GothBard tried a Kit Kat bar. Her immediate reaction was that the quality had deteriorated so much that she never had to eat one again.
(2) A few months later, the kids were doing a game day and had a bowl full of Kit Kats. The kids said they were perfectly fine, so she tried one and it wasn't an "old school" Kit Kat, but it was edible.
(3) Last night, she and Impus Minor bought candy for the kids and yet again, the Kit Kat was inedible.
The conclusion is as depressing as it is believable: The major candy companies likely massively reduce the quality of their product right around Halloween time in order to maximize profits, because little kids aren't going to complain about free candy as long as it's sweet.
I'd love to know whether it's true. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it is.
EDIT: How many other people are old enough to remember when major brand candy bars still had cocoa liquor in them?
You gotta get the Japanese ones. Quality is far superior.
Some news
squeeee my first RPG
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Our new back yard neighbor has taken to holding all of her business calls in her back yard. For hours every day. If we open our windows we are subjected to the day-to-day dealings of her department. Most of the time she's on speakerphone so we can hear the full conversation.
And as usual, it has me wondering: Don't you have any concept of privacy?
Yes, our cell phone coverage around here is so terrible that the back yard is the best place to get a signal. But once you're talking department business you turn on WiFi calling and move indoors.
Ah, well, hopefully as the weather gets colder she'll move indoors. Or at least we won't open our windows so we don't have to hear her.
EDIT: If I had nothing better to do I'd spend a couple of days listening in and taking notes, then write up a detailed analysis of her department's business and slip it under her door, but I have better things to do with my time.
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Ah, the sweet smell of victory.
Impus Minor finally exploded at me this morning because he couldn't find any of his stuff because it was all buried in the 3' pile-o-crap that I'd been generating on the foyer table. We had a discussion. Others got involved. Everyone put their own stuff away. The table is clean. And I suspect they'll all remember to check the table for at least the next couple of months.
It's something.
Out-of-the-blue question: How are people doing with colds right now?
I have 2 co-workers (both on the East Coast) out sick today. Impus Minor had to cancel last week's game because 2 of his group were sick, and this week it's up to 3, including one with COVID. Impus Major's prof just canceled tomorrow's class due to illness, and GothBard's friend canceled tonight's outing.
We are seeing a ludicrous number of sick people right now, and I'm wondering whether it's a statistical fluctuation or whether something highly communicable is making the rounds.
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Ah, the sweet smell of victory.
Impus Minor finally exploded at me this morning because he couldn't find any of his stuff because it was all buried in the 3' pile-o-crap that I'd been generating on the foyer table...
Sweet? Shouldn't a doctor check that?
Out-of-the-blue question: How are people doing with colds right now?
I have 2 co-workers (both on the East Coast) out sick today. Impus Minor had to cancel last week's game because 2 of his group were sick, and this week it's up to 3, including one with COVID. Impus Major's prof just canceled tomorrow's class due to illness, and GothBard's friend canceled tonight's outing.
We are seeing a ludicrous number of sick people right now, and I'm wondering whether it's a statistical fluctuation or whether something highly communicable is making the rounds.
There were definitely bugs going around late last month - a sort of 24-hour I Can't Believe It's Not Covid, followed by an extended period of sniffles.
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Out-of-the-blue question: How are people doing with colds right now?
I haven't gotten sick in 3 years, and none of my coworkers have been sick this season.
Out-of-the-blue question: How are people doing with colds right now?
I have 2 co-workers (both on the East Coast) out sick today. Impus Minor had to cancel last week's game because 2 of his group were sick, and this week it's up to 3, including one with COVID. Impus Major's prof just canceled tomorrow's class due to illness, and GothBard's friend canceled tonight's outing.
We are seeing a ludicrous number of sick people right now, and I'm wondering whether it's a statistical fluctuation or whether something highly communicable is making the rounds.
In Dallas, we had another big round of Covid in late September/early October (at least a dozen people I see on a weekly or daily basis had it, we escaped this time); followed shortly by a wave of strep cases (I had seven out of 25 students out with it last Friday, and a couple are still out).
So, yeah. But this area tends to scoff at the concept of social responsibility vis-a-vis public health.
Out-of-the-blue question: How are people doing with colds right now?I haven't gotten sick in 3 years, and none of my coworkers have been sick this season.
Same.
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Industry secret time!
This spring when I was starting my first new job of the season I needed my pavers so I texted the salesman for the distributor "OMGINEEDTHOSEPAVERSASAPTHEFATEOFTHEUNIVERSEISATSTAKE" he texted back "they'll arrive Thursday".
They ended up arriving on Wednesday with the owner of the distributor tagging along to see what I was working on.
I then texted the salesman thanks and he responded "the fate of the universe is on your shoulders now"
Ever since then I've gotten every order a day or two early. With a reminder that the fate of the universe is on me.
So, you're welcome, I guess.
No pressure or anything.
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"I'm not saying I would kill you if you can't find it, but I'd definitely hunt you for sport" - Me (after new guy said he couldn't find my giant German mallet.
I neglected to pack a razor when I went on my cross-country trip, and when I got back, I was told that the beard I'd grown made me look "more grown-up," which, given that I'm in my mid-thirties, gave me some mixed feelings. Still, the general consensus is that I should keep the beard, and it's odd, since I've never really had one before.
My only real concern is that on job sites, one often needs to describe somebody to a client, engineer, or delivery guy (so they know who to bother about whatever paperwork they need signed), and now "white guy with a beard" refers to two people at the company where I work, which could become confusing in the future.
Hmpf. Rain. Wet. Drying at home.
Of course it started raining when I left the shop, stopped. And then started again when I had to run to the library to return an (one day overdue) book.
I had to pay 20 grosze as a late fee. Apparently, the Treasury Office deemed waiving small late fees as depriving the budget of revenue, so librarians can no longer void it.
The Forest Service is burning stuff all around. Apparently there’s an inversion layer, because the smoke is laying in low and thick. At least it smells like burnt pine needles. Which is a nice odor. Can’t be good for the lungs though.
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Today was parent-teacher conference day, which I actually enjoy doing.
Usually if I talk to parents, it's because their child has a fever/an unpleasant bodily fluid situation/an injury; or because they have just walloped the heck out of another kid.
This is the day I get to tell parents about how great their kids are. I made a couple of moms tear up.
And it was my mother-in-law's 85th birthday, and I had set out a gift and flowers for her on the dining table before I left for work, and made a batch of her favorite dairy-free-sugar-free-gluten-free lemon bars, which is what she always wants instead of cake, so she was considerably less frosty towards me this evening. Downright cordial, in fact. So it was a good day.
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i have no idea who's calling the shots in my work area anymore, but *somebody* in line of sight needs to have pity and pull that idiot's brain back out of the blender.
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Installing Fallout 76 might not had been a best idea... It's the kind of game I won't finish or get rid of soon, so it will keep occuping a large chunk of HD. Now I have to finish more other games to make space for BG3...
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Let's see whether this still works...
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Let's see whether this still works...
Dang. She looks good!