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In more entertaining news, the moment Microsoft Recall was announced Impus Minor and I concluded that we'd never own another Windows machine. So when Impus Minor got a voucher for a school laptop, he rather hilariously got it home, booted it to Windows ONCE, said, "Oh my god I can't believe how much crap they stuff onto a new machine these days!", wiped the drive, and installed Linux.
This week's assignment in his computer science class? A 4-page convoluted, poorly-written maze on, "How to get a Linux command shell installed on Windows."
The desired end result was a Linux command line. Impus Minor finished the assignment in under 20 seconds.
Wait till he will be asked to provide Windows Recall documentation of how he reached that results... :P
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Have I eaten a whole 1 kg lasagna again?
Yup.
I might regret the heartburn later, but for now I am full of joy.
Live in the moment. Yes, I support this.
In other matters: There are two kinds of people. Those who say they like Nickelback, and liars.
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At least the cop was reasonable about it with the verbal. I know one city in between us where they would have gone straight to a ticket with no discussion on the matter.
At least the cop was reasonable about it with the verbal. I know one city in between us where they would have gone straight to a ticket with no discussion on the matter.
Bizarre. California has an entire "fix-it ticket" system where you can't pay a fine for burnt-out lightbulbs until you've had 90 days to fix it.
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NEWS:
(1) You were all right, I was wrong, and I will openly admit it: I just got the thank-you from the prospective kitten-buyer, and she was very nice. So I'm just impatient.
(2) Morrigan has learned to open drawers. We are all doomed.
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(2) Morrigan has learned to open drawers. We are all doomed.
Maybe don't keep things that will doom us all in paws of a kitten in your drawers?
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Yesterday I run third session of Legend Of Five Rings this year, closing the story arc.
The players reached the master smith's workshop, discovered that Master Tsy demanded specifically Jin Kitsu presence because he was sure that the Kitsu Realm Wanderer will be able to open a gate to Gaki-Do (Realm Of Hungry Ghosts) in his family's treasure room, where his brother's restless (and hungry) spirit awaited...
The party was supposed to be bring back a finished sword set that is intended to be a present for their lord's lord's son wedding. It would be grace dishonor to them if they would came back empty-handed and a great shame for their lord to not have the suitable present.
After some back and forth, and threats of committing seppuku if pushed, finally they settled on letting the hungry ghost in so far it could witness destruction of earthly possessions that he accumulated over the years. They ended destroying the thing, possibly burning away some of the deceased brother's karmic debt and shortening his damnation.
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Impus Minor is now wiping ALL his laptops and putting Linux on them.
Linux is mind-blowingly amazing... until you find that one thing that it can't do that you really, really need it to do (for me it was the cutscenes in Final Fantasy XIV) and you end up with a "temporary" Windows box that becomes more and more permanent because game and driver developers develop for Windows.
We'll see how Impus Minor does.
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If you are ever about to be stranded in the desert with no survival gear and your captors tell you, "Choose one object to bring with you," respond, "Meatball the cat."
He is eternally wet. None of us can figure out where he finds all the water sources. Yes, he jumps in the tub after every shower. Yes, he jumps in the sink when there are dishes soaking. But even when the sink is clean and the tub is try he'll come to us with all four paws soaking wet.
I figure just like a cactus you can pick him up, squeeze the water out of his paws, go on, and in a few hours his paws will be renewed and you can get more water out of them.
Does he like water and being wet?
Does he like water and being wet?
No. He's just dumb and curious and constantly gets wet, then acts unhappy about it.
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If you are ever about to be stranded in the desert with no survival gear
Oh hell not again...
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Had a fencing competition today, and unlike the last one, when I won one fight and lost four, this time I won four and lost six, so a better result. I only got absolutely trounced once, too, so am relatively pleased with myself.
Mine do the same thing, but it's usually in St. Louis.
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Speaking of the horror of owning smart cats...
...I went out this morning to move the Celica into our parking space (more on that below). Came in. And Morrigan trotted over, sniffed the front doorknob, and started determinedly attempting to turn it.
Fortunately, she only weighs 5 pounds and it's a round metal doorknob; the laws of physics will prevent her from ever getting that door open. But she's clearly worked out how doors work and she's going to be testing every door in the house to see which she can open.
I have warned the family.
Parking Nonsense:
I've spend far too many posts on here complaining about rude parkers, but when I saw an article titled, "In Colorado, is it legal to park in front of someone else's house?" I was intrigued: Had some community had so many issues with rude parkers that they'd passed an ordinance against them?
Nope. Just some cluuless letter-writer who was under the impression that they somehow owned the parking in front of their house and could tow away anyone who parked there.
The article replied with a surprisingly well-written, gentle, "No, you're wrong," but then went on to list "parking courtesy" that was so fundamentally in line with my attitude that it really resonated.
(1) In general, if you can, park in front of your own home. Garbage day around here is a great example of what happens when people violate this. About 1/3 of the people on the block don't want to block their own driveways or put their trash cans near their own cars, so they move their cars in front of other people's houses, who also have trash to put out. It ends up being parking armageddon with long rows of trash cans blocking entire houses because people can't just keep their cars in place and put their trash next to them. I've taken to putting the Celica in our illegally-short driveway just because the rest of the block ends up being such a mess. Park in front of your own d**ned house.
(2) When visiting, park politely. And if possible, park in front of your host's house. This seems like such a no-brainer, but the sheer number of people who come to visit their friends and then park in the wrong direction because apparently U-turns are hard, or very carefully take up two parking spaces because "we need room to load and unload our stuff", is appalling. Our old neighbors have a massive space in front of their house -- a solid 2.5 car lengths. But the number of times I've seen someone desperately try to park in such a way that there's 0.75 of a car length behind them and 0.75 of a car length in front of them is appalling. This isn't art. Don't center your car in a large space.
And as I've mentioned a ridiculous number of times, our space is in the direction you're going if you use Google Maps to get here, so anyone visiting any of the houses on the other side of the street always parks in front of our house, in spite of the other side of the street having massively more parking. So *WE* have to do the U-turn and park in front of our neighbor's house, and both we and the visitors have to cross the street to get to our cars. Makes no sense.
(3) When visiting for multiple nights, if you're going to park in front of a neighbor's house, have your hosts talk to them. Our new neighbor's son was here for a weeklong visit. They use their 2 parking spaces for their two cars. So they came and asked whether he could use my space for a week. It was easy enough to adapt, knowing who was parking there and why, and it all worked out with no grar at all. And we live in a friendly enough neighborhood that we all know each other.
That's it. And yet I'm psychotic for expecting it of people.
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You can blame Mike for that one. Name of his (otherwise unrelated) monster inspired me.
Yesterday I run third session of Legend Of Five Rings this year, closing the story arc.
The players reached the master smith's workshop, discovered that Master Tsy demanded specifically Jin Kitsu presence because he was sure that the Kitsu Realm Wanderer will be able to open a gate to Gaki-Do (Realm Of Hungry Ghosts) in his family's treasure room, where his brother's restless (and hungry) spirit awaited...
The party was supposed to be bring back a finished sword set that is intended to be a present for their lord's lord's son wedding. It would be grace dishonor to them if they would came back empty-handed and a great shame for their lord to not have the suitable present.
After some back and forth, and threats of committing seppuku if pushed, finally they settled on letting the hungry ghost in so far it could witness destruction of earthly possessions that he accumulated over the years. They ended destroying the thing, possibly burning away some of the deceased brother's karmic debt and shortening his damnation.
If a Spider Clan member was there, he would have been unjustly blamed.
You can blame Mike for that one. Name of his (otherwise unrelated) monster inspired me.
Mike? Never heard of him.
I love this big guy.
If a Spider Clan member was there, he would have been unjustly blamed.Yesterday I run third session of Legend Of Five Rings this year, closing the story arc.
The players reached the master smith's workshop, discovered that Master Tsy demanded specifically Jin Kitsu presence because he was sure that the Kitsu Realm Wanderer will be able to open a gate to Gaki-Do (Realm Of Hungry Ghosts) in his family's treasure room, where his brother's restless (and hungry) spirit awaited...
The party was supposed to be bring back a finished sword set that is intended to be a present for their lord's lord's son wedding. It would be grace dishonor to them if they would came back empty-handed and a great shame for their lord to not have the suitable present.
After some back and forth, and threats of committing seppuku if pushed, finally they settled on letting the hungry ghost in so far it could witness destruction of earthly possessions that he accumulated over the years. They ended destroying the thing, possibly burning away some of the deceased brother's karmic debt and shortening his damnation.
Some hundred years before they existed? Unlikely.
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Anime Impasse:
Someone somewhere asked, "What does NobodysHome want in an anime?", and the result is Frieren, an absolutely beautiful exploration of, "What happens to the 20th-level elven mage when the campaign is over, all the other party members live their lives and die off, and she's left with another few thousand years of solitude to deal with?"
It is... magnificent.
At the same time, Impus Minor recommended Spy x Family, a ridiculous farce (and this is hardly a spoiler because it's Episode 1 stuff) where a spy, a telepathic 6-year-old, and an assassin have to form a fake "family" for various reasons, and only the telepath knows the secrets of the other two. It's delightful, it's silly, it's cute, and it's a really enjoyable watch, but it's about as "deep" as a kiddie wading pool.
So, since GothBard watches anime to relax, on nights that we have time we get in one episode of Frieren because I demand it, then binge watch Spy x Family for the rest of our time.
Not horrible, but holy carp Frieren is so up my alley it's scary.
EDIT: As I was telling GothBard, Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever? would sound horribly wrong with the rest of the music and theming, but OMG it hits so hard. And yes, I know it was written for Highlander. I'm old. I was there.
If all the parking spots in front of your hosts house are taken, park halfway between two different neighbors houses. That way they'll each think you're there for the other guy
If all the parking spots in front of your hosts house are taken, park halfway between two different neighbors houses. That way they'll each think you're there for the other guy
You act like there's anywhere on our block large enough to fit more than 2 cars...
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If all the parking spots in front of your hosts house are taken, park halfway between two different neighbors houses. That way they'll each think you're there for the other guyYou act like there's anywhere on our block large enough to fit more than 2 cars...
I mean in general but in your case there's always the lawns...
And for that ultra-special section of Hell...
We're in a "heat wave" (hit all of 85°F today) so everyone had their houses closed up, blinds down, keeping everything cool. The neighborhood was blissfully quiet.
It finally dropped below 80°F, everyone opened up their windows, and a neighbor started in with their circular saw. Because of course you're not going to work in the heat! Why not wait 'til everyone else has their windows open to get started?
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Anime Impasse:
Someone somewhere asked, "What does NobodysHome want in an anime?", and the result is Frieren, an absolutely beautiful exploration of, "What happens to the 20th-level elven mage when the campaign is over, all the other party members live their lives and die off, and she's left with another few thousand years of solitude to deal with?"
It is... magnificent.
It's been on my to-watch list for a while. Just haven't gotten around to it.
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Fun Fact Time!
All of the music and songs on Mister Roger's Neighborhood were done live in the studio during each taping. Including the opening theme. And because the man playing the piano for the first 30ish years was Johnny Costa, a famous improvisational jazz musician, each time the songs are played, they are different.
Also, Fred Rogers had a degree in music, so he wrote most of the songs and then let Costa and his crew embellish it however they wanted.
From everything I've read, Mr. Rogers was the real deal, as kind and compassionate in real life as he was on the set. I hated him when I was a kid 'cause he was boring as ****. Now that I'm adult I wish I'd watched him more.
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Planet Kibbeh (aka Lenore) has broken the 9-pound barrier. Chad (aka Mephisto Z. Meatball the Magnificent) is slowly playing catch-up; she gained 3.9% last week, he gained 4.2%.
The difference in body types is terrifying. She is a tub. There's no denying it. Add that to her long, unbelievably soft fur and picking her up and holding her is like manipulating furry water. He is built like a brick s**thouse. If you told me he's sneaking off to a little kitty gym at night I'd believe you. I have never seen such a sleek, muscular hunk of felinity before. Many years ago, our "bear cat" was a 12-pound ball of near-solid muscle, but she didn't have the cut definition he does.
He's like Abs Boy from the Saja Boys on KPDH.
Speaking of immense frustration, bleach.
I don't use bleach for laundry. Haven't in decades. I use it for disinfection, deodorizing, killing mildew, and the like. It's fantastic stuff.
So of course for whatever reason marketers decided to go whole hog into "non-chlorine bleach", which I'm sure is fine stuff if you're trying to dye your clothes white, but is useless for my purposes.
And of course the kids grab the center-shelf stuff (which is always non-chlorine), and GothBard gets the non-chlorine stuff because she doesn't like the smell of bleach, and it's like, "You've just wasted our money and added to the horrific chemical runoff by buying something that I simply can't use.
It's frustrating because they mean well, but holy crap just get me my run-of-the-mill bleach. Unscented. Undyed. Just. Plain. Bleach.
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From everything I've read, Mr. Rogers was the real deal, as kind and compassionate in real life as he was on the set. I hated him when I was a kid 'cause he was boring as ****. Now that I'm adult I wish I'd watched him more.Fun Fact Time!
All of the music and songs on Mister Roger's Neighborhood were done live in the studio during each taping. Including the opening theme. And because the man playing the piano for the first 30ish years was Johnny Costa, a famous improvisational jazz musician, each time the songs are played, they are different.
Also, Fred Rogers had a degree in music, so he wrote most of the songs and then let Costa and his crew embellish it however they wanted.
Fun (possibly apocryphal) fact: he was an ordained (I think Presbyterian) minister. Every time he was due to have an appointment conversation with his bishop over where he should serve, it was agreed that there was nowhere he could be doing a better job than where he was.
As an ex-seminarian, I've always found very cool.
It finally dropped below 80°F, everyone opened up their windows, and a neighbor started in with their circular saw. Because of course you're not going to work in the heat! Why not wait 'til everyone else has their windows open to get started?
I'll side with the neighbors on this one. Getting hot sweaty and tired isn't fun when you're working out or moving lumber. When you're trying to run a circular saw you only use once a year its the difference between being able to type with all of your fingers or not.
I'll side with the neighbors on this one. Getting hot sweaty and tired isn't fun when you're working out or moving lumber. When you're trying to run a circular saw you only use once a year its the difference between being able to type with all of your fingers or not.It finally dropped below 80°F, everyone opened up their windows, and a neighbor started in with their circular saw. Because of course you're not going to work in the heat! Why not wait 'til everyone else has their windows open to get started?
If it'd been actually hot, like high 90s, or if they were moving lumber, I'd concede. But they were in a shady corner of their yard cutting trim. So lots and lots of little 3-5 second cuts. Not the kind of thing where you'll overheat.
One of the most powerful influences in belief in the supernatural is positive reinforcement; you tend to forget the unremarkable almost immediately and remember the remarkable for years.
This morning Mephisto came into our room at 3:20 am, meowing and jumping into the bed. It may be the first time he's ever done that. 20 minutes later, Lenore batted at my hand to wake me up, then jumped up to lie against me. She's never done that.
Once I got up I did a thorough check of the house, the family, and the other cats and there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary; they were just being weird for a morning. I'll have forgotten this event within a week. But if there'd been an earthquake, or if I found Morrigan or Nefret in dire straits, I would have immediately associated the cats' odd behavior with the remarkable event.
But nope. They just felt like waking me up early. Because cats.
Wow... sometimes you wonder whether being a survival monkey is the better path.
While I've done my best to keep Global Megacorporation's true identity secret, I know a few people have already guessed it, but I also know that some of this is in the public domain, so I believe I'm safe in saying we just had half our department laid off.
It makes little sense; we were all heads-down, 100% utilized so it's necessarily going to result in, "OK, what courses are we dropping?", but I'm sure the beancounters were more concerned with total expenditures than they were, "What won't we be able to produce because we've cut too many people?"
I've been wary about my job ever since they shut down my old department; I'm the most-junior member of my new department so I was expecting to be first in line (apparently not), and there's this whole misguided belief that AI is now ready to take over creative work from writers, artists, and curriculum developers. If you review the output, no, no it's not. But AI is much cheaper and faster than humans, and the global mantra is, "Cheaper and faster still sells, so why not?"
But I survived another round, and typically these layoffs come once every 2-3 years, so I have a couple more years to prepare for the inevitable. (I plan to go back to teaching once they finally cut me.)
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Some hundred years before they existed? Unlikely.If a Spider Clan member was there, he would have been unjustly blamed.Yesterday I run third session of Legend Of Five Rings this year, closing the story arc.
The players reached the master smith's workshop, discovered that Master Tsy demanded specifically Jin Kitsu presence because he was sure that the Kitsu Realm Wanderer will be able to open a gate to Gaki-Do (Realm Of Hungry Ghosts) in his family's treasure room, where his brother's restless (and hungry) spirit awaited...
The party was supposed to be bring back a finished sword set that is intended to be a present for their lord's lord's son wedding. It would be grace dishonor to them if they would came back empty-handed and a great shame for their lord to not have the suitable present.
After some back and forth, and threats of committing seppuku if pushed, finally they settled on letting the hungry ghost in so far it could witness destruction of earthly possessions that he accumulated over the years. They ended destroying the thing, possibly burning away some of the deceased brother's karmic debt and shortening his damnation.
EXACTLY! Always unfairly maligned.
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Anime Impasse:
Someone somewhere asked, "What does NobodysHome want in an anime?", and the result is Frieren, an absolutely beautiful exploration of, "What happens to the 20th-level elven mage when the campaign is over, all the other party members live their lives and die off, and she's left with another few thousand years of solitude to deal with?"
It is... magnificent.
At the same time, Impus Minor recommended Spy x Family, a ridiculous farce (and this is hardly a spoiler because it's Episode 1 stuff) where a spy, a telepathic 6-year-old, and an assassin have to form a fake "family" for various reasons, and only the telepath knows the secrets of the other two. It's delightful, it's silly, it's cute, and it's a really enjoyable watch, but it's about as "deep" as a kiddie wading pool.
So, since GothBard watches anime to relax, on nights that we have time we get in one episode of Frieren because I demand it, then binge watch Spy x Family for the rest of our time.
Not horrible, but holy carp Frieren is so up my alley it's scary.
EDIT: As I was telling GothBard, Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever? would sound horribly wrong with the rest of the music and theming, but OMG it hits so hard. And yes, I know it was written for Highlander. I'm old. I was there.
I always knew GothBard had good taste.
Ill keep my eyes open next time Im con adjacent. There WAS a salacious Freiren in a mimic cosplay a few days ago, but I didnt get a chance to get a picture.
I am not the worlds biggest SpyxFamily fan but there was a staff at work named Anya who rolled her eyes and was sooooo used to folks pointing that out.
Ill look for SpyXFamily too.
Please give Sakamoto Days a try. Its funny, but I find the pacing off.
And for that ultra-special section of Hell...
We're in a "heat wave" (hit all of 85°F today) so everyone had their houses closed up, blinds down, keeping everything cool. The neighborhood was blissfully quiet.
It finally dropped below 80°F, everyone opened up their windows, and a neighbor started in with their circular saw. Because of course you're not going to work in the heat! Why not wait 'til everyone else has their windows open to get started?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's been on my to-watch list for a while. Just haven't gotten around to it.Anime Impasse:
Someone somewhere asked, "What does NobodysHome want in an anime?", and the result is Frieren, an absolutely beautiful exploration of, "What happens to the 20th-level elven mage when the campaign is over, all the other party members live their lives and die off, and she's left with another few thousand years of solitude to deal with?"
It is... magnificent.
City The Animation is good for anyone who likes 4 koma/Azumanga Daioh stuff.
Aaaand... another bit of mountain childhood burned down. Chinese Camp got hit this time. And I am so beyond sick of the politicization of it and the accusations that anything done in the last 20 years had anything to do with it.
Pre-1800s, we had 6-12 million acres burning a year. Starting in the 1800s, Westerners didn't like so much smoke so they reduced it to 4.5 million acres a year. By the 1900s, we were putting out fires as they popped up.
So the forests and scrublands had 100 years to build up fuel. And now it's burning. Anyone who's surprised hasn't read up on the history of forest (mis)management in California.
What's missing from the article is the explosion of suburban construction in the 1970s with no regards to buffer zones in case of fire. Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s we built housing wherever it would fit without regard to the environment around it.
Blaming anyone post-2000 for this idiocy is completely pointless and unfair. But popular.
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Mm, oat stout.
It's stout, with oats in, so you can give it to your horse, too.
Well, our new VP has her first stumble less than a month into the role, and I can't say I'm surprised; our outgoing VP fought her way up through the trenches and a LOT of abusive management, so she was amazingly empathic. "Your health first. Your family second. Your job third."
The new VP's a career bureaucrat who's been with Global Megacorporation longer than I have.
So, widespread layoffs. Some departments under her lost 50% of their staff. Widespread dismay and panic...
...our old VP would've had a meeting at 7:30 this morning.
Our new VP scheduled the meeting for tomorrow at 8, 'cause it's nothing important, right?
Letting your employees stew and panic for 24 hours is terrible management. It kills morale and productivity.
Strike one.
Drought is a huge factor in the fires that plague the entire Western U.S. I’m pretty sure we have some idea of what might be causing it…