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Whelp...
So I have ordered a graphics card I have been eyeing for some time now.
Apparently there is a sale, with it being 150 złoty off, which is about half the price of Nioh 3...
Coincidence? Conspiracy to get me to buy it? A cruel prank to make my heart break if it won't fit my computer? (the length is right, but it is double slot...)
It's supposed to be in shop tomorrow...
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Behold the ultra-quality textures of my high-resolution nudity!
Of course the sale on Nioh 3 is already over. Duh.
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I fundamentally hate the annual performance review process for many, many reasons:
(1) If your manager doesn't already know how you're doing and hasn't been documenting your achievements or shortcomings, then WTF are they getting paid for? You can't call yourself "manager" and then fail to pay any attention to your reports... at least you shouldn't be able to.
(2) Trickle-down is a thing. I am looking at 9 goals, 9 competencies, and 3 overall summaries and I'm supposed to write 1-2 paragraphs on each. Of those goals, only 3 actually had anything to do with *my* job; the rest were decided on by the VP and instead of saying, "OK, let's pass those down to the appropriate teams," she mandated that ALL teams get those goals. Same with competencies. I have nowhere near the resources nor clout to perform some of the competencies ("Start global initiatives across all business units to transform the way we communicate"), and others are just plain stupid.
(3) AI is worse. The powers-that-be encouraged me to use the automated AI "to help me get started". It literally filled every field with two paragraphs of the worst AI slop imaginable. "As a <insert job title>, I strove to <insert goal>. I <insert paragraphs of meaningless buzzwords that don't list a single concrete action>. Given this, I feel I truly mastered this goal." My manager, my kids, and GothBard all took a look and said, "Oh, gods. If you actually turned this crap in you'd get fired on the spot."
The purpose of performance management is nothing more than to provide legal justification if they want to fire you. That's it. And a manager can do that WITHOUT wasting the rest of the corporation's time.
Hate. It. So. Much.
The purchase is financed (indirectly) by tax returns I got on Monday...
Which was almost twice my previous tax return.
Maybe I should wait until tomorrow before running driver update?
Eh, too late, I already hit install.
I forgot to complain to the desk clerk at the hotel I stayed in when I was in New
Orleans, night before last. The air conditioner was a loud machine. Oh, well. I’m sure that she could live without my bellyaching.
You should tell them, because they should get maintenance to fix it. You don't need to scream at them about it, but definitely inform them. And if it's so loud that you can't sleep, ask to move to another room. That's fine. Just, do it politely.I forgot to complain to the desk clerk at the hotel I stayed in when I was in New
Orleans, night before last. The air conditioner was a loud machine. Oh, well. I’m sure that she could live without my bellyaching.
I appreciate the advice. We stayed in that same hotel about a week earlier. The air conditioning in that room was almost as loud. Thing is, I was traveling in a group of five. We stayed in a two room suite. Lucky me got the couch in kitchen/living area. Also where the AC unit was. The bedrooms were probably tolerable. I did think about seeing if they had a single room available, but we left at 4:00 AM, so I didn’t think it worth the cost.
Extrovert: "You need to get out of your comfort zone."
Me: "No, YOU need to get out of my comfort zone."
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Watching the abjectly jaded palates of Gen Z Californians is something to behold.
When we were the kids' age, we were human vacuum cleaners. Maruchan ramen with an egg in it was the height of home cooking, and Taco Bell's $0.69 tacos were a staple of existence. We had a rotation of all the junk food places. If someone offered us junk food for free, we'd eat it, no matter where it was from.
Fast forward to 2026. While Jollibee's isn't fine dining, it's certainly far superior to the modern KFC dreck (oh, how I miss Kentucky Fried Chicken and their actual amazing fried chicken that is now extinct). The kids said it was, "Pretty good. Would eat there again."
And yet I need to buy 9 dinners total to distribute Final Fantasy codes to all my friends and guildmates. I managed to get 4 buying dinner for the family. As for the other 5 dinners, I can't even give them away.
"Hey, Impus Minor! I'll pay for all your friends' dinners if they eat Jollibee's!"
"No, thanks. We don't feel like chicken tonight."
"Hey, Impus Major! I'll pay for all your friends' lunches if they eat Jollibee's!"
"Well, Gamer1 has a nut allergy and Gamer2 has a capsaicin allergy, so neither of them can safely eat food from there, and no one else wants to get food that they can't eat, so no thanks!"
I mean, Impus Major's excuse is solid. But Impus Minor's? Only one of the gamers has a job; the rest are unemployed and insist on getting food as cheaply as possible, but apparently free food they didn't choose isn't as good as paid-for food they did choose.
Go figure...
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Yeah, presentations like this one are why I'm not an AI convert. "We can now use AI to look at an incoming email, review the email signature, and generate a contact based on the information contained in the signature..."
...um, just like standard process flows have been able to do without AI for at least the last 20 years?
I'm literally sitting in on an hourlong presentation on the new AI capabilities in our Sales product and halfway through they haven't shown a single feature that doesn't predate AI by 20 years. "We can now use AI to do the exact same thing we used to do with automated processes" does not impress me.
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The card is here. Obviously, the installation couldn't go completely smoothly...
More once I update the drivers and see what it can actually do.
Or if it will be taking too long, I might post from the other computer.
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... it's certainly far superior to the modern KFC dreck (oh, how I miss Kentucky Fried Chicken and their actual amazing fried chicken that is now extinct)...
Coincidentally today (or maybe yesterday) my nostrils were assaulted by smell of frying oil while passing by KFC strongly enough for me to take notice of that place...
Appallingly Unfortunate Timing, Episode 1: The Spam Call
Mother-in-Law was dropping her car at the shop this morning and wanted a ride home from Impus Major. I told him to expect a call. So when he got a call from an unknown number, he picked up but didn't say anything. Neither did the person at the other end. So, being a diligent anti-spammer, he muted himself and set the phone down on the desk to tie up the robodialer's line for a while. (Maybe Vanykrye can answer whether or not this has any effect on the robodialer.) The phone sat there connected for 3-4 minutes.
And yup, during those 3-4 minutes mother-in-law called for her ride and couldn't get through, so I got a distressed call from her that Impus Major was M.I.A.
Just amazingly bad timing.
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Yeah, *after* the meeting I was asked by a different group to provide feedback on AI. I pointed out:
(1) The data guys just re-created well-established existing functionality with an AI solution that takes 10 times as long and costs 1000x as much.
(2) The email guys just showed me an example where their 3-sentence email was extended to 3 paragraphs and talked about how much "better" it was. Those paragraphs added nothing to the content and were just fluff. "Longer" is usually not "better".
So they're sitting there, trying to shove AI down everyone's throat without asking the critical questions:
- Is AI appropriate for this task?
- Is the cost of the AI worth it?
And nobody wants to ask, 'cause suddenly it bursts the AI bubble.
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Watching the abjectly jaded palates of Gen Z Californians is something to behold.
When we were the kids' age, we were human vacuum cleaners. Maruchan ramen with an egg in it was the height of home cooking, and Taco Bell's $0.69 tacos were a staple of existence. We had a rotation of all the junk food places. If someone offered us junk food for free, we'd eat it, no matter where it was from.
Fast forward to 2026. While Jollibee's isn't fine dining, it's certainly far superior to the modern KFC dreck (oh, how I miss Kentucky Fried Chicken and their actual amazing fried chicken that is now extinct). The kids said it was, "Pretty good. Would eat there again."
And yet I need to buy 9 dinners total to distribute Final Fantasy codes to all my friends and guildmates. I managed to get 4 buying dinner for the family. As for the other 5 dinners, I can't even give them away.
"Hey, Impus Minor! I'll pay for all your friends' dinners if they eat Jollibee's!"
"No, thanks. We don't feel like chicken tonight."
"Hey, Impus Major! I'll pay for all your friends' lunches if they eat Jollibee's!"
"Well, Gamer1 has a nut allergy and Gamer2 has a capsaicin allergy, so neither of them can safely eat food from there, and no one else wants to get food that they can't eat, so no thanks!"I mean, Impus Major's excuse is solid. But Impus Minor's? Only one of the gamers has a job; the rest are unemployed and insist on getting food as cheaply as possible, but apparently free food they didn't choose isn't as good as paid-for food they did choose.
Go figure...
Dearest Father, it is Jollibee.
Please mail me my portion of dinner.
Someone brought katanas to Wednesday fencing, and while not a Katana Guy by any means, they were quite a bit of fun. For me, they were easier than a longsword, probably because the blades are shorter, which may also be why our longsword specialist found them a bit frustrating...
I brought the card around 16... Now it is 23:23 and I have neither a working graphics card, nor working computer...
Damn. Im sorry Drejk. I miss seeing you on Steam.
Watching the abjectly jaded palates of Gen Z Californians is something to behold.
When we were the kids' age, we were human vacuum cleaners. Maruchan ramen with an egg in it was the height of home cooking, and Taco Bell's $0.69 tacos were a staple of existence. We had a rotation of all the junk food places. If someone offered us junk food for free, we'd eat it, no matter where it was from.
Fast forward to 2026. While Jollibee's isn't fine dining, it's certainly far superior to the modern KFC dreck (oh, how I miss Kentucky Fried Chicken and their actual amazing fried chicken that is now extinct). The kids said it was, "Pretty good. Would eat there again."
And yet I need to buy 9 dinners total to distribute Final Fantasy codes to all my friends and guildmates. I managed to get 4 buying dinner for the family. As for the other 5 dinners, I can't even give them away.
"Hey, Impus Minor! I'll pay for all your friends' dinners if they eat Jollibee's!"
"No, thanks. We don't feel like chicken tonight."
"Hey, Impus Major! I'll pay for all your friends' lunches if they eat Jollibee's!"
"Well, Gamer1 has a nut allergy and Gamer2 has a capsaicin allergy, so neither of them can safely eat food from there, and no one else wants to get food that they can't eat, so no thanks!"I mean, Impus Major's excuse is solid. But Impus Minor's? Only one of the gamers has a job; the rest are unemployed and insist on getting food as cheaply as possible, but apparently free food they didn't choose isn't as good as paid-for food they did choose.
Go figure...
Dearest Father, it is Jollibee.
Please mail me my portion of dinner.
Amazingly, the allergy crowd said, "Free lunch? We'll risk it!"
I'm assuming this means that their allergies are mild, and not that they're looking to sue me into oblivion for feeding them poison...
Apparently the cable connecting miniDisplay port of the card with HDMI of the computer doesn't work well with modern graphics cards, the card goes to forced sleep if it is not connected to a working monitor and you can't update its drivers while it is deep sleeping (at least in Windows 11).
And because of that I might have messed up the BIOS while trying to force the card to be active by turning off power management and some other options that were powering the card off.
Yay?
We'll see if removing the battery for a whole night will reset the BIOS to a state where it will start up or if I am screwed...
I brought the card around 16... Now it is 23:23 and I have neither a working graphics card, nor working main computer...
Ok, ok, I do have a recently bought backup computer...
Which might be part of the problem, as I would be less likely to experiment on the main one if I hadn't back up.
Still it has issues.
Do you think that Impus Minor could handle a BIOS mess up issue?
Watching the abjectly jaded palates of Gen Z Californians is something to behold.
When we were the kids' age, we were human vacuum cleaners. Maruchan ramen with an egg in it was the height of home cooking, and Taco Bell's $0.69 tacos were a staple of existence. We had a rotation of all the junk food places. If someone offered us junk food for free, we'd eat it, no matter where it was from.
Fast forward to 2026. While Jollibee's isn't fine dining, it's certainly far superior to the modern KFC dreck (oh, how I miss Kentucky Fried Chicken and their actual amazing fried chicken that is now extinct). The kids said it was, "Pretty good. Would eat there again."
And yet I need to buy 9 dinners total to distribute Final Fantasy codes to all my friends and guildmates. I managed to get 4 buying dinner for the family. As for the other 5 dinners, I can't even give them away.
"Hey, Impus Minor! I'll pay for all your friends' dinners if they eat Jollibee's!"
"No, thanks. We don't feel like chicken tonight."
"Hey, Impus Major! I'll pay for all your friends' lunches if they eat Jollibee's!"
"Well, Gamer1 has a nut allergy and Gamer2 has a capsaicin allergy, so neither of them can safely eat food from there, and no one else wants to get food that they can't eat, so no thanks!"I mean, Impus Major's excuse is solid. But Impus Minor's? Only one of the gamers has a job; the rest are unemployed and insist on getting food as cheaply as possible, but apparently free food they didn't choose isn't as good as paid-for food they did choose.
Go figure...
Dearest Father, it is Jollibee.
Please mail me my portion of dinner.
Amazingly, the allergy crowd said, "Free lunch? We'll risk it!"
I'm assuming this means that their allergies are mild, and not that they're looking to sue me into oblivion for feeding them poison...
Do they know about the inheritance?
Do you think that Impus Minor could handle a BIOS mess up issue?
Depends on what you mean by "issue". BIOS in modern computers is pretty amazingly forgiving today, up to and including flashing the wrong BIOS into your board. (Been there. Done that. There's a button on Gigabyte motherboards that says, "Yeah, I blew up the BIOS. Read the one from this USB flash drive and install it instead.")
So if it's something Google or the manufacturer website can't get you through, both Impus Minor and I have vast experience in misconfiguring BIOS. It's actually what I did in my first tech job. (Not what I got paid for; what I did.)
EDIT: My usual approach is to first remove all components except the main hard drive so you're testing on a bare-bones box, then reset the CMOS and see whether BIOS comes up, then tell it to reset to factory defaults. Amazingly effective at fixing what ails you.
After the leaving the computer for the whole night without battery or anything connected, it still gets stuck at a black screen before finishing POST check.
I checked without drives and no peripherals and it still game the same results...
Of course, there is a real possibility that I scratched the motherboard somewhere...
I am stressed and tired, and I just got up. Ah, whelp. There wasn't s+*! hitting the fan in some time...
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I am stressed and tired, and I just got up. Ah, whelp. There wasn't s#*$ hitting the fan in some time...
Please don't throw fecal matter at the rotary air impeller. It is disgusting enough as it is.
Yeah, unless Vanykrye has any better ideas at this point it's, "Look up how to re-flash a corrupt BIOS for that motherboard."
Motherboards are pretty darned robust. I'd be impressed if you actually managed to damage one. In my 40+-year career of fiddling around inside computers I've never managed to damage a motherboard (unintentionally).
The main computer is at repair shop now and they should diagnose it by tomorrow evening.
Yeah, unless Vanykrye has any better ideas at this point it's, "Look up how to re-flash a corrupt BIOS for that motherboard."
Motherboards are pretty darned robust. I'd be impressed if you actually managed to damage one. In my 40+-year career of fiddling around inside computers I've never managed to damage a motherboard (unintentionally).
Hawkeye_Dont_Give_Me_Hope.gif
I am sorry drejk, I would not handle this with half your grace.
I am sorry drejk, I would not handle this with half your grace.
Come on, it was just half a day... And you already played Nioh 2 for half an hour today on the backup computer anyway!
For the context, the graphics card costed a little more than 10% of my financial reserve... If it comes to motherboard replacement, it might be around another 1/12th – 1/14th...
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Speaking of robo-calls, I just blocked the number for the last corporate pharmacy I do business with. (First OptumRx, then CVS, and now Safeway.)
Because no matter how many times you go to their website and opt out, no matter how many physical letters you send, no matter how many times you tell the beleaguered person behind the counter to make them stop, they won't. They have robodialers to tell you your prescription has been received. Robodialers to tell you your prescription is being worked on. Robodialers to tell you your prescription is ready for pick-up. They have robodialers to tell you that your prescription is due for renewal. They have robodialers to tell you that your prescription has been shipped. And on, and on, and on. A single prescription can generate 15-20 robocalls for you over the course of a couple of weeks.
I'm sure someone, somewhere out there thinks it's a useful intrusion. How about letting them opt in, instead of forcing the rest of us to block your number from incessant prescription harassment?
I literally tell everyone, family and friends included, that I will not answer a call on my cell phone ever, for any reason. And yet corporations (and a few friends) continue to try. And at least for the corporations, I block their numbers.
I know I've vented about this before, but people who refuse to learn new things outrage me because, as I put it to Impus Major, "They're perfectly willing to waste your time doing something useless rather than dedicate their own time to learning something useful."
So yeah, mother-in-law's computer has crashed again. It's appalling how often it happens. I've showed her what to do numerous times: Detach the peripherals, try CTRL+ALT+DEL, and if that fails do a hard reboot. She. Will. Not. Learn. It. And now she wants me to come over yet again, to fix a problem that should take a few keystrokes to fix.
It is more than enraging.
And I was thinking about it yesterday but I didn't post about it. I'm well aware that it's not like this with many families (Shiro and Hi's immediately come to mind), but for GothBard's parents, the only time they ever contact us is when they need something from us. As I've mentioned, father-in-law insists on getting everything he mail orders delivered here because he doesn't trust his neighborhood; we've literally had stacks of boxes 3-4' high in our foyer waiting for him to pick them up. GothBard's mother only ever calls if she needs a ride or computer help.
And so we all dread hearing from them. Which isn't how a healthy relationship works.
If you've got kids and you want to have a relationship with them into their adulthood and your old age, make sure you contact them more often than just, "Hey, now I need this from you..."
I literally tell everyone, family and friends included, that I will not answer a call on my cell phone ever, for any reason.
That's ok, I'd send you a message instead.
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I literally tell everyone, family and friends included, that I will not answer a call on my cell phone ever, for any reason.That's ok, I'd send you a message instead.
And that is how the universe should be. Asynchronous communication for non-urgent matters.
I know I've vented about this before, but people who refuse to learn new things outrage me because, as I put it to Impus Major, "They're perfectly willing to waste your time doing something useless rather than dedicate their own time to learning something useful."
So yeah, mother-in-law's computer has crashed again. It's appalling how often it happens. I've showed her what to do numerous times: Detach the peripherals, try CTRL+ALT+DEL, and if that fails do a hard reboot. She. Will. Not. Learn. It. And now she wants me to come over yet again, to fix a problem that should take a few keystrokes to fix.
It is more than enraging.
It is. But sadly, it's in no way surprising in people of her age (I am guestimating, on the fact that you and GothBard are similar if not the same age, so her mother obviously must be a generation older).
My grandfather was kind of outlier, starting his computer hobby while being 81 or so and finally, finally teaching himself how burn CDs with photos a few weeks before his death nine years later.
I know I've vented about this before, but people who refuse to learn new things outrage me because, as I put it to Impus Major, "They're perfectly willing to waste your time doing something useless rather than dedicate their own time to learning something useful."
So yeah, mother-in-law's computer has crashed again. It's appalling how often it happens. I've showed her what to do numerous times: Detach the peripherals, try CTRL+ALT+DEL, and if that fails do a hard reboot. She. Will. Not. Learn. It. And now she wants me to come over yet again, to fix a problem that should take a few keystrokes to fix.
It is more than enraging.
It is. But sadly, it's in no way surprising in people of her age (I am guestimating, on the fact that you and GothBard are similar if not the same age, so her mother obviously must be a generation older).
My grandfather was kind of outlier, starting his computer hobby while being 81 or so and finally, finally teaching himself how burn CDs with photos a few weeks before his death nine years later.
Admittedly, my parents and her father were all STEM majors, but they all mastered computers when they were well into their 50s or 60s.
I am... pleased...
...Mephisto is inside. Nefret doesn't care. Aggressive crow decided to try its luck with Morrigan. She resoundingly reminded it which end of the food chain it's on. Crow survived. By a couple of feet. Crow will not make that mistake again, because crows are scary smart.
Re Scam Callers
The only thing staying on the line does is tie up your line. Does nothing to the robo caller system anymore.
Re BIOS
Reflashing the BIOS/UEFI or defaulting back to factory reset is the only real answer if you don't want to buy a new board.
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I am... pleased...
...Mephisto is inside. Nefret doesn't care. Aggressive crow decided to try its luck with Morrigan. She resoundingly reminded it which end of the food chain it's on. Crow survived. By a couple of feet. Crow will not make that mistake again, because crows are scary smart.
The crow is either going to teach their brethren the dangers or, and potentially more likely, will just bring backup next time. Because corvids.
The crow is either going to teach their brethren the dangers or, and potentially more likely, will just bring backup next time. Because corvids.I am... pleased...
...Mephisto is inside. Nefret doesn't care. Aggressive crow decided to try its luck with Morrigan. She resoundingly reminded it which end of the food chain it's on. Crow survived. By a couple of feet. Crow will not make that mistake again, because crows are scary smart.
Yeah, I doubt they'll escalate. They've been observing my behavior with the cats for several years now. I come out, I take care of the cats, I give them food at a location out of the cats' reach. I believe that corvids are intelligent enough to consider consequences. "Eliminate cats, hooman stops putting food out for cats."
On the other hand, I've seen groups of corvids vs. cats before, and while their tactics would be extremely effective against most cats, I believe they would take heavy losses against Mephisto, 'cause boy just doesn't care. Caws? Pecks? Nips at the tail? Any other distractions to keep his target alive? Most cats would react. He just doesn't. He's kind of scary that way.
And now she wants me to come over yet again, to fix a problem that should take a few keystrokes to fix.
Have you considered sending the GothBard's minions Imps?
Though it is intersting a bit – GothBard is working with computers as well, and yet her mother wants you to fix that problem? Does she expects more of you? Knows that GothBard is less willing to deal with that? Got used to you fixing her problems?
Well. I finished my "supposed to be two-week, but we're pushing you through in 4 days because you already know this" orientation today, and come home to my mom telling me my sister got fired today. She was a remote pharmacy tech for CVS. Apparently, their reasoning was something to do with her not completing enough tasks/requests/whatever over the past year, and supposedly sent her warnings via email about this, which she says she never received, but was unable to verify because they forced her to log off immediately upon telling her she was terminated. Its a load of BS. The reason her numbers were down, is that she spent most of the past year as a trainer, teaching classes for their new hires, so of course her numbers were down because she was teaching flipping classes for them.