| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And now stressing for hours and hours before the election results are announced — and taking into an account how razor-thin the margin be, it's likely to be announced tomorrow.
Uhhhh...
The exit poll suggest results of 50.3% to 49.7%...
Oh boy, it will be a stressful night...
In this (second) round of presidential elections, we have one casualty so far (and over two more hours to go) - a 75 year old fainted while voting and died on the way to hospital.Elections.
Grumble, fumble, bumble...
People are dying to vote!
No, seriously, apparently there were at least two incidents when people came to vote and died - 97 old lady and 84 year old man. In the first case, she fainted before she received her voting card.
That's some voter dedication, there...
Speaking of getting old, once you're in your 50s or 60s you're likely to suffer from a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD), where your retina slowly pulls itself away from the gel that fills your eyeball. As long as it happens slowly and doesn't tear the retina, it's just an annoyance...
...*but*, if you're like me, and you spend all day every day doing physical labor, it can get really annoying.I just emptied the studio shed onto the lawn. Stood up. Saw a sea of floaters saying, "Stop all physical activity NOW".
So my kitchen and lawn are going to be full of crap for DAYS, because it's not just, "Stop working for a few hours to let it fix itself," it's, "Give it at least a week."
I'll see whether I can get the kids to throw stuff back in the shed.
*SIGH*.
The only good part about getting old is that it beats the alternative.
I am still trying to process that for the last two or so years, I started to need to take off my glasses (I was seriously shortsighted my whole life) to read the smaller script, like ingredients, phone battery level, and such...
It doesn't help that my standard handwriting was described by my mother as "poppy seeds" (a Polish expression that something is written in very small letters).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And now stressing for hours and hours before the election results are announced — and taking into an account how razor-thin the margin be, it's likely to be announced tomorrow.Uhhhh...
The exit poll suggest results of 50.3% to 49.7%...
Oh boy, it will be a stressful night...
I will have time to be happy that we are not going down the drain when the results are official.
Just how bad is food delivery service in our area?
GothBard's having a horrific vaccine reaction. I have my eye thing. Impus Minor will be in a game. Impus Major will be out. So no one can cook and no one can pick up food.
In spite of this, we've all decided we'd rather go hungry than risk yet another food delivery fiasco.
When food delivery is worse than having food at all, you know there's an issue with the industry.
And...
The late poll is the other way around...
We can still see reversal... But it doesn't bode well.
Here goes my sleep today, and tomorrow morning I am going to a dentist.
<censored>
And the night poll is getting even worse.
Ugh.
Meh.
It's over.
Two more years of obstructive president blocking any change for better, and then likely far right coalition will win elections making everything much worse taking us back to Hungarian level.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Meh.
It's over.
Two more years of obstructive president blocking any change for better, and then likely far right coalition will win elections making everything much worse taking us back to Hungarian level.
I'm sorry, Drejk.
I've never understood the structure of the Polish government, how you can have a President *and* a Prime Minister, particularly when they're from opposing camps. But I agree that it will be a s**show. Let's hope it doesn't get quite as bad as Hungary.
Or the US.
Meh.
It's over.
Two more years of obstructive president blocking any change for better, and then likely far right coalition will win elections making everything much worse taking us back to Hungarian level.
I'm sorry, Drejk.
I've never understood the structure of the Polish government, how you can have a President *and* a Prime Minister, particularly when they're from opposing camps. But I agree that it will be a s**show. Let's hope it doesn't get quite as bad as Hungary.
Or the US.
Poland is a parliamentary democracy (as opposed to US presidential system).
The party (or a coalition of parties) that wins the parliamentary elections gets to form the government lead by Prime Minister (who is the Head Of Government).
The president, which is elected in direct elections is the Head Of State and his prime role is representing the country both internally and externally.
While many of his functions are ceremonial, he holds certain crucial powers:
The last one is the big issue here because he will block legislation needed to fix the mess done with the judiciary system by previous, ultra-conservative, authoritarian-wanna be government. He will likely veto a lot of other attempts to make things better, in the hope of forcing early elections that might pass the government back into the hands of his party.
Have I tiraded about Windows lately?
I frequently have to have multiple documents open; 3-4 PowerPoint files or 5-6 Word docs. When I mouse over the taskbar, I want to see a list of file names, NOT a bunch of thumbnails with the titles cut off so I don't know what I'm looking at.
I found the registry key that fixed that for me. Applied it. Everything worked great. Until last week's Windows Update disabled that registry key. So, quite literally, "No, we will not allow you to view files in your preferred text-based format. You HAVE to use our thumbnails."
Hate. Windows. SO. Much.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Have I tiraded about Windows lately?
No, not this week...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
...Polish politics...
What's fairly interesting/pathetic about U.S. politics is that the President was originally instilled largely as a figurehead; Congress made the laws, the courts verified that the laws were constitutional, and the president signed off on the laws or oversaw the departments that implemented the laws. There was a HUGE amount of discussion about how much power the president should have during the Constitutional Convention; it was probably the second-most-debated matter (after state's rights), and the "weak president" faction won.
Unfortunately, in the intervening 200+ years, Congress hasn't wanted to take responsibility for anything and people have shown that they adore a dictator, so the president has been given more and more leeway to do whatever the **** he wants, to the point that our modern presidents are pretty much mini-emperors.
The U.S. Constitution does now allow for presidential actions that create new laws; that is completely within the purview of Congress. So Obama's original order should have been declared invalid the moment he made it. Instead, everyone accepted it and it became de-facto law. Then Trump undid it and upended half a million people's lives for no particular reason.
Which is what you get when you let individuals make the law.
Fantasy
MonsterFey: Fairy MaidDon't tell Freehold!
I'll take your whole stock.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The strange things that make you happy:
NobodysHome: Well, I hit my production for the day but it's only noon; I guess I'm going to have to hunker down and work ahead for the afternoon.
Email: Annual compliance training is now open.
NH: Woo hoo!
I'll take your whole stock.Fantasy
MonsterFey: Fairy MaidDon't tell Freehold!
That can be arranged... You have PM.
Summer break has its perks for adults as well: Talky came to visit today. He's living in a no-cats apartment so he and the Impii proceeded to spend over 2 hours playing with the kittens. They left, I'm back at work, and there is much unconsciousness.
Rain. In June. So confusing.
I suspect it's part of my OCD that I am hyper-aware of situations, but it still stuns me just how little people can think about the repercussions of their actions.
For example, I put a folding door on WhimseyShire. It collides with the door to our bedroom if you open both at once. It's been more than a year. And yet several family members still routinely slam the doors into each other, as if they're somehow surprised that there are two doors trying to occupy the same space. It took me a week or so to learn to start opening the doors carefully. I cannot comprehend how a year later people are still banging the doors.
Which leads to this morning. As I've mentioned, we have raccoons, possums, and skunks scavenging in our yard every night. Everyone in the family knows this. Everyone in the family has seen this. Yet last night someone brought out their trash, saw that the trash cans were out front for pickup, and just put their trash bag at the normal location of the garbage cans, presumably to put the bag in after pickup. And to absolutely no one's surprise, the raccoons found the unprotected bag and had at.
And I'm left at a loss -- I know my brain is wired differently, but, "I'm going to leave a trash bag out in the side yard overnight and see what happens," just seems like such basic unawareness that I can't understand not realizing what was going to happen...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ouch TOZ. Been there. You have my sympathies.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Proposal for a new international law (possibly an addendum to the Geneva Conventions):
Any adult who gives a child under 10 a battery-powered device whose primary purpose is to make noise shall be imprisoned for a period no less than 1 week in a solid 20'x20' cell with at least ten such children with ten such devices.
I still haven't figured out who's giving Junior all those toys other than confirmed it wasn't those darned Plumbers. My next guess is Daisy.
...Are...we not supposed to give the children toys?
Fog this morning. So very strange.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Pet peeve of the day: "It's not A.I."
Our department has started using a text-to-speech tool. Such tools have existed for decades. And yet ALL of my co-workers started calling them, "AI voices."
At a team meeting a month or two ago I pointed out that we were NOT using AI voices, and were just using old-school text-to-speech.
At this morning's team meeting again, "The AI voices sound really robotic." So I pointed out that the company that provides our text-to-speech services also provides premium "AI text-to-speech" at a much higher cost, so if the team keeps using that term and it gets back to the vendor, they will be rightfully upset with us for publicly misidentifying their products.
And I see it on an almost-daily basis. People take something that's been around for years, or even decades (for example, self-driving car technology). And they randomly slap AI in front of it even when the product has never remotely been approached by AI.
It incenses me, because you're giving AI credit for stuff it has nothing to do with.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I made peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast this morning. They were freaking amazing.
Threw out my back this morning cleaning up dog toy stuffing.
Probably exacerbated by having to change a flat tire beforehand.
What a day.
Damn. I'm sorry the bad luck is making its way around.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I made peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast this morning. They were freaking amazing.
You mean AI made you some peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast.
*Waves at NH*
I made peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast this morning. They were freaking amazing.
I'll have to hunt up that recipe - my wife always has spare sourdough starter looking for a purpose in life (and I suppose sourdough starter IS technically alive...)
Rain. In June. So confusing.Not in the UK, it’s pretty common here.
Yeah, but in Arizona, June usually ushers in dry heat followed by extreme dry heat, and hot dry afternoon winds. We hope for the summer thunderstorms to roll in around the 4th of July, bringing some relief.
I made peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast this morning. They were freaking amazing.You mean AI made you some peach sourdough discard muffins for breakfast.
*Waves at NH*
Ohoho!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Quack.
*tappy tappy tap*
Quork!!
*trips over feet, knocks over expensive vase*
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mark Twain never said anything about San Francisco summers...
It's actually a really interesting read -- I've never seen that site before, but the short version of the famous quote's history ("The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco") is:
James Quin, London, attributed to him in 1789 even though he died in 1766 Yes, just such an one last summer!"
Mark Twain, Paris, 1880: "Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the Damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, “Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?” “Yes,” said he, “Last summer.” I judge he spent his summer in Paris.
R.Q.Grant, Duluth, MN, 1901: "He says the coldest winter he ever experienced was the summer he spent in Duluth."
It got attributed to Twain in 1928, still about Duluth. It took until 1963 to be applied to San Francisco.
Now I want to spend the day looking up other quotes on that site...
Mark Twain never said anything about San Francisco summers...
It's actually a really interesting read -- I've never seen that site before, but the short version of the famous quote's history ("The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco") is:
James Quin, London, attributed to him in 1789 even though he died in 1766 Yes, just such an one last summer!"
Huh. Neat!
Coincidentally, last night I was just revisiting where I first encountered the quip, in the elliptical reference in Sleater-Kinney's "Jumpers." :/ (Love the song, but it's a bit grim.)
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If that hadn't been so ridiculously cute it would've been downright menacing:
A black kitten sits in the hallway door, gazing at me intently.
A white kitten emerges from behind the bedroom door, sits down near the black kitten, and gazes at me intently.
A striped kitten emerges from behind the hallway door, sits down so I'm surrounded, and gazes at me intently.
Were they not embodiments of pure cuteness, it would've been something right out of a horror movie...
Sitting through another "Reply All" storm, I wish Microsoft would provide a button where you could produce an auto-generated, anonymous response of, "Why the **** are you Replying All to this thread? Are you a ****ing moron? Do you really think everyone on this 2,000-person list cares that, 'I see it, too!' Learn which button to push, idiot!"
Yes. I have filters for all our major department mailing lists. Yes, they created a new list that included multiple old lists. So they managed to bypass my filters for the sole purpose of me reading 160 "I see it too!" responses.
Grr...
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Friend of mine doesn't understand what I do for a living.
I ran into a strange audio issue on 2 of the three PCs in the house. Minor annoyance, I'll get to it later.
He's trying to help me troubleshoot, unasked. He's just trying to be helpful, and he is a friend. I'm trying so hard not to tell him to just go away.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Friend of mine doesn't understand what I do for a living.
I ran into a strange audio issue on 2 of the three PCs in the house. Minor annoyance, I'll get to it later.
He's trying to help me troubleshoot, unasked. He's just trying to be helpful, and he is a friend. I'm trying so hard not to tell him to just go away.
But... you're not female.
No, I take it back. That would be, he knows what you do for a living, tries to help anyway, and explains how to fix it incorrectly in a condescending way.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Friend of mine doesn't understand what I do for a living.
I ran into a strange audio issue on 2 of the three PCs in the house. Minor annoyance, I'll get to it later.
He's trying to help me troubleshoot, unasked. He's just trying to be helpful, and he is a friend. I'm trying so hard not to tell him to just go away.
But... you're not female.
No, I take it back. That would be, he knows what you do for a living, tries to help anyway, and explains how to fix it incorrectly in a condescending way.
What's truly terrifying is that I can personally testify to this.
Yet when I was helping GothBard's mother with a security issue with her Microsoft account and two-factor authentication, one of the male guild members started trying to explain (in incredibly condescending terms) how passwords, passkeys, and two-factor authentication worked. He kept going even after I corrected him because he was wrong. He kept going even after I asked him how many implementations of security protocols he'd done, 'cause I'd bet my number was infinitely times his because I've done them. He never stopped. I just tuned him out and he eventually went away.
But holy **** I wanted to punch him in the face. And I'm a peaceable guy.