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Watched the movie "Sneakers" tonight. It's been a long time since I'd seen it. It was ok. I did like at the end when the main characters were telling an NSA agent (James Earl Jones) what they wanted in exchange for the macguffin they had. One of them said he wanted "Peace on Earth, good will towards men." James Earl Jones replied "We're the United States government. We don't do that sort of thing!"
Edit: clothed post.
That movie has so many good moments.
I like the "cocktail party".
I am fairly certain that the building they have to break into is actually the Genentech facility just north of the Bay Area. I've driven past it a hundred times. Sadly never saw Dan Aykroyd or David Strathairn in the parking lot.
Last weekend, we watched The Sting.
I was gratified to note how many times my twelve year old howled with laughter.
Watched the movie "Sneakers" tonight. It's been a long time since I'd seen it. It was ok. I did like at the end when the main characters were telling an NSA agent (James Earl Jones) what they wanted in exchange for the macguffin they had. One of them said he wanted "Peace on Earth, good will towards men." James Earl Jones replied "We're the United States government. We don't do that sort of thing!"Edit: clothed post.
That movie has so many good moments.
I like the "cocktail party".I am fairly certain that the building they have to break into is actually the Genentech facility just north of the Bay Area. I've driven past it a hundred times. Sadly never saw Dan Aykroyd or David Strathairn in the parking lot.
Last weekend, we watched The Sting.
I was gratified to note how many times my twelve year old howled with laughter.
If you ever find it in English, watch Polish movie Vabank and its second part.
And a meeting to play Twilight Imperium got canceled at the last minute (one of the players woke up with a fever). Again. Last time it was the hostess who had to cancel because of feeling unwell.
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Watched the movie "Sneakers" tonight. It's been a long time since I'd seen it. It was ok. I did like at the end when the main characters were telling an NSA agent (James Earl Jones) what they wanted in exchange for the macguffin they had. One of them said he wanted "Peace on Earth, good will towards men." James Earl Jones replied "We're the United States government. We don't do that sort of thing!"Edit: clothed post.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
This was the perfect opportunity for you to be naked EXCEPT for sneakers!
More seriously I haven't seen that movie in a long long time.
As most of you have already heard, I didnt have cable growing up, so that meant watching channel 11/WPIX- the MOVIE channel.
They had a more or less set schedule and showed the same movies just about every day on their calendar. Because of...stupid family/cultural nonsense, I couldn't watch tv during the week. I grew up watching the commercials for this mysterious movie, with James Earl Jones and people sneaking(pun not intended) about. I can almost remember the commercial/preview for the movie.
Its so weird living in a time where I can watch just about any movie I want, because growing up I had to wait for the right time of year to see incredibly specific movies and if they came on during the week I might not be able to see them at all. I learned how to program a VCR just to get around that.
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Young apprentice, why your homework is completely unreadable under all those ink stains, again?!
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Young apprentice, why your homework is completely unreadable under all those ink stains, again?!
I would say this was the excuse i needed but i happen to know it doesn't work...
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It really is depressing watching animals behave in a manner that's detrimental to them, and having no way to communicate with them. (At least if a person is being self-destructive and you point it out and they continue doing it, you can wash your hands of them.)
GothBard's gone for 3 weeks and I was worried Nefret would pine away in her lonely existence in the studio; when we were in Vegas for only 5 days she lost almost half a pound.
So when it started sprinkling I brought her into the house.
The kittens spend almost every day sleeping in the studio with her nearby, so her presence is nothing new to them. But in the house!?!?!? They were all curiosity, and wanted to sniff her, lie with her, or otherwise socialize with her. And she growled and hissed and ran away to the point that I came across a tableau of her trotting through the dining room, one kitten ahead of her and two behind her, and she was hissing and growling and horrifically upset, and they were all tails straight up, happy-as-can-be, "What's wrong? Can we help you?"
Can't help but me reminded of Clippy. But cuter.
ALL Nefret has to do is not hate the kittens and her life would be SO much better. They've been better towards her than any kittens I've ever seen towards and older cat. And she'll have none of it.
Is there something the older can can/will get into and not be followed? A catwalk that's high up, a box with a hole in front for one cat, a bedroom the kittens aren't allowed in, a doggie door with a heavy door the cat will push open but the kittens can't....?
You might be fighting nature here. Without the oxytocin blast from caring for kittens most cats don't care if another living thing lives or dies, and once kittens hit a certain point even that stops and you bap them in the head till they move out somewhere.
Sometimes just being ABLE to get away from someone elses brats is all you need to tolerate them. Not that I have any experience with that twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitch
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It really is depressing watching animals behave in a manner that's detrimental to them, and having no way to communicate with them. (At least if a person is being self-destructive and you point it out and they continue doing it, you can wash your hands of them.)
GothBard's gone for 3 weeks and I was worried Nefret would pine away in her lonely existence in the studio; when we were in Vegas for only 5 days she lost almost half a pound.
So when it started sprinkling I brought her into the house.
The kittens spend almost every day sleeping in the studio with her nearby, so her presence is nothing new to them. But in the house!?!?!? They were all curiosity, and wanted to sniff her, lie with her, or otherwise socialize with her. And she growled and hissed and ran away to the point that I came across a tableau of her trotting through the dining room, one kitten ahead of her and two behind her, and she was hissing and growling and horrifically upset, and they were all tails straight up, happy-as-can-be, "What's wrong? Can we help you?"
Can't help but me reminded of Clippy. But cuter.
ALL Nefret has to do is not hate the kittens and her life would be SO much better. They've been better towards her than any kittens I've ever seen towards and older cat. And she'll have none of it.
im sure cat-freehold will win her over.
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Is there something the older can can/will get into and not be followed? A catwalk that's high up, a box with a hole in front for one cat, a bedroom the kittens aren't allowed in, a doggie door with a heavy door the cat will push open but the kittens can't....?
You might be fighting nature here. Without the oxytocin blast from caring for kittens most cats don't care if another living thing lives or dies, and once kittens hit a certain point even that stops and you bap them in the head till they move out somewhere.
Sometimes just being ABLE to get away from someone elses brats is all you need to tolerate them. Not that I have any experience with that twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitchtwitch twitch twitch
Yeah, she has her own space, and if the kittens annoy her we close the door so she gets her own room. But after a couple of generations of introducing kittens to adult cats, Nefret's the first one other than Lily to completely reject the new generation.
2004: Calypso, 13: The smartest cat we've ever owned, though Morrigan may be vying for that title. When her companion Sekhmet died, we introduced two kittens. She adopted them pretty much immediately, and the three of them were frequently found lying in a pile together. When one of the kittens was hit by a car and we brought in Calliope. Once again Calypso (and Sama) accepted her without issue.
2007: Sama and Calypso, 3 and 16: Calliope got hit by a car (see a theme here? Why we keep our cats on leads?). We brought in Lily, the Cranky Calico. Our mistake. She was hopped up on pregnancy hormones when we adopted her. Once those went away, hoo, boy. But watching a genius cat (Calypso) brutalize an annoying interloper is side-splitting.
2007: Sama and Lily, 3 and 4: Calypso finally passed away at 16 and we brought in Nefret. Sama adopted her immediately. Lily hated Nefret for the next 18 years.
So the only adult adoption we've ever had issues with has been the Cranky Calico, so we thought of her as the exception...
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Speaking of self-destructive behaviors, I know I've mentioned this before, but modern phone etiquette drives me batty.
The evolution as I saw it:
Late 1970s/early 1980s: Phone answering machines became commonplace. A few people started using them to screen their calls. Cue a widespread indignant rebellion of, "Oh, if you didn't pick up, heck if I'm going to leave a message! Apparently I'm not important enough to you for you to pick up."
The bizarre, unimaginably egocentric entitlement of the mindset, "The only reason this person could possibly not be answering is because they're screening their calls and they're explicitly excluding me," is mind-boggling.
Mid-1990s: Caller ID became commonplace.
For some of us, this was a blessing because it eliminated the number of kids making prank calls. (One of our phone numbers was a perfect triangle on the keypad, so we were a popular target of younger, stupider kids.) It did nothing to shut up the, "You're intentionally screening me!" crowd, so refusing to leave messages somehow became "admirable"?
Early 2000s: Spam calls became so ubiquitous that picking up the phone if the caller ID didn't tell you who it was was guaranteed to waste your time. The indignant crowd taught a new generation that leaving messages is for suckers.
2010s: Even doctors' offices, dentists, and businesses jumped on the, "Leaving messages is for suckers," bandwagon.
It absolutely baffles me. I am a human being. I sleep. I use the bathroom. I take showers. I go for walks. Even if you're a legitimate caller there's a good percentage chance you won't reach me.
And yet you won't leave a message because it's "for losers" or whatever.
Baffling.
This will only end in tears.
As I've mentioned, the ragamuffins (Lenore and Nefret) get 40' leads (around 12m to you furriners) and have free reign over the entire yard. The hellions get 8' leads tied to the base of a cat tree. They cannot understand the fundamental unfairness of it all. And even, "Every time I jump a fence or climb onto the roof or run under the deck the mean giant ape throws me inside" hasn't been enough to make them think, "Hmm... maybe I shouldn't do that."
I'm honestly surprised Morrigan hasn't learned yet. I do not expect Mephisto to ever learn.
So today Mephisto's out on a 10' extensible lead connected to the clothesline so he has MUCH more freedom and can't get tangled. It's rated for "dogs up to 20 lbs". Watching him straining against it and looking at the thin string between him and freedom, I don't think the thing's going to last a day against his might.
So... 20 pound dog you say? What is that in hypermuscular, super-dense cat pounds?
Not as tearful as I thought. He was really well-behaved on the 10' lead but he was constantly at its limits trying to lie down in the flower beds so I switched him to a 15' lead. Zoop! Less then a minute later he was under the deck.
Yep, little ones. You've earned your short leads.
You have a suspicious surprising amount of leashes of various lengths...
Facing the death of nostalgia is a weird thing... Like, you remember you should feel about it much more deeply, but you don't anymore...
I used to well, love Temple Of Love, which might had something to do with a rather close dance that I shared with a girl, many winters ago, at a pub-club...
And now it's just fine song. Good, but not as thrilling as it was in the past. Cry Little Sister stirs me more, again (I think I liked it much more than Temple before that dance).
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Speaking of self-destructive behaviors, I know I've mentioned this before, but modern phone etiquette drives me batty.
It absolutely baffles me. I am a human being. I sleep. I use the bathroom. I take showers. I go for walks. Even if you're a legitimate caller there's a good percentage chance you won't reach me.
And yet you won't leave a message because it's "for losers" or whatever.
Baffling.
My opinion is that if your call isn't important enough for you to leave a message or text, you're not worth calling back.
Am I binging on old songs before sleep? Perhaps...
It's bold of you to assume that I actually wanted to call in the first place...
Alma Mater? It's been a while (likely over decade)...
Therion might be more to my liking...
Have I bookmarked a few songs that I haven't listened to in ages? Yup.
And now, to step back from the youtube music black hole of nostalgia (TM), now I am listening to Sinners soundtrack.
I think I will need to make subfolders in my OST subfolder of Youtube bookmarks folder...
Anime, Games, Movies?
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So, this is our first time with three kittens, and the noises are certainly something I didn't expect. With two kittens, apparently they always know where each other are, so they're pretty quiet. With three, once they wake up in the morning there is a neverending stream of chirruping so they can all locate each other. My living room and dining room are filled with chirruping and loud thunking from around 6-7:30 in the morning, at which point they're ready to beg to go outside.
It is absolutely delightful.
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Speaking of things I've tiraded about before: Public services that run early.
GothBard used to commute to San Francisco on the bus. The schedule for the nearby stop was 7:03, 7:23, 7:43, and so forth. But the driver routinely ran 5 minutes early. So GothBard would get to the stop at 7:20, nobody would be there, and she'd learn that she'd missed the bus by 2 minutes because it was running early. No! Not OK!
Similarly, our garbage pickup is from 7 am - 3 pm. The trucks just ran through at 6:40. You set a 6:45 alarm to push out your trash? Too bad! No trash for you this week!
I'd argue that early is even worse than late because people who are punctual miss the service entirely. If the bus were 5 minutes late, GothBard would still catch the bus. Because it was 5 minutes early. she used to miss it.
Not OK.
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Similarly, our garbage pickup is from 7 am - 3 pm. The trucks just ran through at 6:40. You set a 6:45 alarm to push out your trash? Too bad! No trash for you this week!
Yeah we learned we had to put our trash out the night before at our place back in the states, otherwise it would get missed for the week basically right as both of us were waking up.
Thankfully we didn't live in a community that would throw a fit if your trash was out overnight.
Food delivery poll: I was talking with an East Coast friend about food delivery last night, and yet again I was astonished when she said, "I've never had a problem," because just a few weeks ago she was tirading at me about Olive Garden completely botching her order. So I'm curious:
Barring pizza delivery (which has a ludicrous success rate because they hire their own people), and given the two criteria:
(1) Did the order arrive, and
(2) was the order accurate?
What's your success rate on food delivery in your area?
Given those two VERY simple parameters, the success rate for food delivery to our group has been under 40%, and I have the receipts to prove it. Which explains why we don't do food delivery any more.
I'm wondering whether other areas have it better, or whether people just accept the mistakes as the price of convenience, as my friend does.
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In the states, we lived too far from any delivery zone except pizza so couldn't try it even if we wanted to. Problem of living in a small town, even one that was relatively close (~20 min drive) to a decent-sized city.
Here in China, I'd say our arrival rate for meal delivery is 100% and our accuracy rate has been about 90%. There've been a couple mistakes where one order got omitted or copied from the other instead of the different meal we actually ordered, but the vast majority have been exactly what we requested. (Since we're still learning what we like and translations in apps can be hit-or-miss, that 90% does not necessarily correlate to the number of meals we ordered that we liked everything we ordered, but that's not the restaurant's or delivery person's fault.)
EDIT:
Correction! I just remembered, I ordered delivery from McDonald's sometimes. Arrival rate was about 90% - only had my order cancelled a few times, but it was always annoying when it happened - and accuracy rate was somewhere around 75%, usually with something like the fries or the drink being omitted.
Yeah, I've heard WAY too many horror stories of Doordash/UberEats drivers getting to or close to the delivery, marking it delivered, and just keeping the food for themselves.
Yeah, I've heard WAY too many horror stories of Doordash/UberEats drivers getting to or close to the delivery, marking it delivered, and just keeping the food for themselves.
I posted about this before, but my final experience with Uber Eats was:
(1) Ordered nearly $350 worth of sushi. Order never arrived.(2) Complained to Uber Eats. They said that there were "no refunds" because the driver had followed all protocols, and sent me a picture of my house from around 100' away.
(3) Responded to Uber Eats. "Did you actually look at the picture?"
(4) Uber Eats refunded the money for the restaurant, but not the tip. So we got charged tip money for food that never got delivered.
So the driver got $350 worth of sushi they might or might not have paid for, plus a tip for not delivering the food.
And this was only our third or fourth try with Uber Eats.
Just sat through another, "Here are all the exciting new things AI can do for you to help you do your job," rah rah meeting.
I listened politely. But at the back of my mind I was thinking, "I already have tools that do every single one of the things you just mentioned. All you're doing is asking me to use a new tool. A new, buggy tool, that over half the time doesn't know what I'm asking for so I have to rephrase my question three or four times to get the answer I need. This is going to 'improve' my productivity how?"
Speaking of self-destructive behaviors, I know I've mentioned this before, but modern phone etiquette drives me batty.
The evolution as I saw it:
Late 1970s/early 1980s: Phone answering machines became commonplace. A few people started using them to screen their calls. Cue a widespread indignant rebellion of, "Oh, if you didn't pick up, heck if I'm going to leave a message! Apparently I'm not important enough to you for you to pick up."
The bizarre, unimaginably egocentric entitlement of the mindset, "The only reason this person could possibly not be answering is because they're screening their calls and they're explicitly excluding me," is mind-boggling.Mid-1990s: Caller ID became commonplace.
For some of us, this was a blessing because it eliminated the number of kids making prank calls. (One of our phone numbers was a perfect triangle on the keypad, so we were a popular target of younger, stupider kids.) It did nothing to shut up the, "You're intentionally screening me!" crowd, so refusing to leave messages somehow became "admirable"?Early 2000s: Spam calls became so ubiquitous that picking up the phone if the caller ID didn't tell you who it was was guaranteed to waste your time. The indignant crowd taught a new generation that leaving messages is for suckers.
2010s: Even doctors' offices, dentists, and businesses jumped on the, "Leaving messages is for suckers," bandwagon.
It absolutely baffles me. I am a human being. I sleep. I use the bathroom. I take showers. I go for walks. Even if you're a legitimate caller there's a good percentage chance you won't reach me.
And yet you won't leave a message because it's "for losers" or whatever.
Baffling.
Nowadays more people use Instagram as a method of communication. It seems the phone is...well, dying.
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Baffling.
Nowadays more people use Instagram as a method of communication. It seems the phone is...well, dying.
GOOD
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Food delivery poll: I was talking with an East Coast friend about food delivery last night, and yet again I was astonished when she said, "I've never had a problem," because just a few weeks ago she was tirading at me about Olive Garden completely botching her order. So I'm curious:
Barring pizza delivery (which has a ludicrous success rate because they hire their own people), and given the two criteria:
(1) Did the order arrive, and
(2) was the order accurate?What's your success rate on food delivery in your area?
Given those two VERY simple parameters, the success rate for food delivery to our group has been under 40%, and I have the receipts to prove it. Which explains why we don't do food delivery any more.
I'm wondering whether other areas have it better, or whether people just accept the mistakes as the price of convenience, as my friend does.
Never had a problem, but, to be honest, we're around a 10-minute walk from the takeaways we patronise, so normally just go out and get it ourselves.
...
Nowadays more people use Instagram as a method of communication. It seems the phone is...well, dying.
Instagram still exists?
We've pretty much converted to an all-Discord family.
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This is going to 'improve' my productivity how?"
They're hoping that if it watches you do your job enough times it will figure out how to do your job and then you can be productively unemployed while your boss productively pockets the money they were paying you.
Food delivery poll: I was talking with an East Coast friend about food delivery last night, and yet again I was astonished when she said, "I've never had a problem," because just a few weeks ago she was tirading at me about Olive Garden completely botching her order. So I'm curious:
Barring pizza delivery (which has a ludicrous success rate because they hire their own people), and given the two criteria:
(1) Did the order arrive, and
(2) was the order accurate?What's your success rate on food delivery in your area?
Given those two VERY simple parameters, the success rate for food delivery to our group has been under 40%, and I have the receipts to prove it. Which explains why we don't do food delivery any more.
I'm wondering whether other areas have it better, or whether people just accept the mistakes as the price of convenience, as my friend does.
Never had a problem. East Coast best coast.
Yeah, I've heard WAY too many horror stories of Doordash/UberEats drivers getting to or close to the delivery, marking it delivered, and just keeping the food for themselves.I posted about this before, but my final experience with Uber Eats was:
(1) Ordered nearly $350 worth of sushi. Order never arrived.
(2) Complained to Uber Eats. They said that there were "no refunds" because the driver had followed all protocols, and sent me a picture of my house from around 100' away.
(3) Responded to Uber Eats. "Did you actually look at the picture?"
(4) Uber Eats refunded the money for the restaurant, but not the tip. So we got charged tip money for food that never got delivered.So the driver got $350 worth of sushi they might or might not have paid for, plus a tip for not delivering the food.
And this was only our third or fourth try with Uber Eats.
If that happened here, we would hunt the person down.
I have seen Uber eats based ass beatings before. Ain't nobody helping an Uber eats driver that is believed to be a thief.
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I’ve never had an order go missing, but we have had a number of mistakes on what we received. Usually it’s Cyz’s items that get done wrong. :/
Come to the correct Coast, Cyz' first Uber Eats driver beating is free.
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Um...
Never had a problem. East Coast best coast.
I have seen Uber eats based ass beatings before. Ain't nobody helping an Uber eats driver that is believed to be a thief.
So it doesn't happen, but you beat Uber Eats drivers.
The sorry thing is, I can accept that.
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Um...
Never had a problem. East Coast best coast.I have seen Uber eats based ass beatings before. Ain't nobody helping an Uber eats driver that is believed to be a thief.So it doesn't happen, but you beat Uber Eats drivers.
The sorry thing is, I can accept that.
Dammit NH, the beatings will continue until the food delivery has improved!!!!!
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Why would I order food when I just bought an electric grill. No, really, I just came back from Lidl.
It costed 70 złoty (less than $20).
It might have been mistake.
I might keep eating grilled cheese until my heart chokes on all the cholesterol...