That might've been in The Before Times.
$40k repair...I'm going to guess an Alfa 8C, and my second guess is a Guilia Quadrifoglio.
For a man not into giant robots, your swiftness with car stuff is admirable.
You are also a man who isn't into giant .
Someone managed to back a "barely legal to drive without a CDL" (as long as you don't count the weight of the driver) garbage truck into the door of A 1980s chevy Suburban. IE, a land barge. It was the only car in the parking lot. And absolutely crushed the door.
We got 600 bucks and on the rare occasion we had back seat passengers they just got in the other side.
It's the last day of finals week for both kids, and Impus Minor's prof went ahead and already skedaddled, sending a substitute prof to proctor his exam. Impus Major's prof was late enough that the students started wondering whether they had the time right.
I have a simple proposal: If you send a substitute to proctor the exam, then each student gets to send a substitute to take the exam.
I could've had a really fun day.
Aaaand, add to the final day a classic "I don't care that it benefits me personally, that's fundamentally wrong" moment...
The instructor posted a lot of review materials. "These are the chapters we'll be covering. Here's a list of 200 homework problems from those chapters that you should know how to do," etc.
There was one little section called, "Q&A" where you could post questions for the instructor. Hidden in that section was, "Here is the exact list of the problem types that will be on the final and how many points each problem will be worth." Basically, "These are the 8 problems you're going to have: The first will be an integration by parts worth 15 points. The second will be a trig substitution worth 20 points." And so on.
Basically, students who go to the Q&A section have a massive advantage over those who don't.
Don't play games with your students. Ever.
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Aaaand, add to the final day a classic "I don't care that it benefits me personally, that's fundamentally wrong" moment...
The instructor posted a lot of review materials. "These are the chapters we'll be covering. Here's a list of 200 homework problems from those chapters that you should know how to do," etc.
There was one little section called, "Q&A" where you could post questions for the instructor. Hidden in that section was, "Here is the exact list of the problem types that will be on the final and how many points each problem will be worth." Basically, "These are the 8 problems you're going to have: The first will be an integration by parts worth 15 points. The second will be a trig substitution worth 20 points." And so on.
Basically, students who go to the Q&A section have a massive advantage over those who don't.
Don't play games with your students. Ever.
I mean, it feels like you're taking away a central perk of the job if you do that.
Oh definitely mess around that's how they learn to do things like read all the directions and check the fine print but if they don't know to do that by the final its not really teaching them anything if they miss it.
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Note to self: when cooking shepherd's pie, make sure the gravy is thickened up BEFORE the whole thing goes in the oven, else you will end up with a sort of meat and mashed potato soup. I mean, it tasted OK, and we all ate it, but it was certainly not what I intended.
Wow...
I'm at the end of the Second Doctor (The War Games) and I was appalled that they'd so flagrantly ripped off Jack Chaulker's Well World Series...
Until I checked the dates, the The War Games was aired in 1969, while the first Well World book was published in 1977.
It could be a coincidence, especially considering that even the VHS tapes of The War Games weren't released until 1990. But I remember watching Doctor Who reruns as a kid in the 1970s, and it makes me wonder whether Chaulker saw them as well, and said, "Hey! I can do one better than that!"
Yes, the Well World series takes the premise of The War Games and runs with it with a lot of new or expanded ideas, but the similarity between the two is still quite striking.
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Note to self: when cooking shepherd's pie, make sure the gravy is thickened up BEFORE the whole thing goes in the oven, else you will end up with a sort of meat and mashed potato soup. I mean, it tasted OK, and we all ate it, but it was certainly not what I intended.
I'm sorry that happened to you, but I did have a bit of a chuckle as I read it.
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Note to self: when cooking shepherd's pie, make sure the gravy is thickened up BEFORE the whole thing goes in the oven, else you will end up with a sort of meat and mashed potato soup. I mean, it tasted OK, and we all ate it, but it was certainly not what I intended.I'm sorry that happened to you, but I did have a bit of a chuckle as I read it.
I'm not sorry at all.
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Note to self: when cooking shepherd's pie, make sure the gravy is thickened up BEFORE the whole thing goes in the oven, else you will end up with a sort of meat and mashed potato soup. I mean, it tasted OK, and we all ate it, but it was certainly not what I intended.I'm sorry that happened to you, but I did have a bit of a chuckle as I read it.
As someone that has lived the majority of their life in the Midwest I'm surprised that's not how a shepherds pie is supposed to be.
Jose put in a long day last week to ensure my job site was cleaned up so hardscapes would be done for the year and Jose can spend the next couple of weeks lording over everyone.
But the thing is, I still want to work so on Friday I text the boss and let him know I'm still ready to work so he texts back "great news! On Monday you're in charge of softscapes!" Which is Jose's department.
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Fantasy Monster: Lepusal Agathion.
A celestial midwife.
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I'm not sorry at all.Note to self: when cooking shepherd's pie, make sure the gravy is thickened up BEFORE the whole thing goes in the oven, else you will end up with a sort of meat and mashed potato soup. I mean, it tasted OK, and we all ate it, but it was certainly not what I intended.I'm sorry that happened to you, but I did have a bit of a chuckle as I read it.
No Soggy Shepherd for you, then!
I have been incredibly ill all weekend. I am eating everything in sight.
Classic corporatism: Uber Eats refunded me the cost of the food because I could sue them for that. But it turns out they refunded the tip as store credit because that was an optional expenditure so they can get away with it.
As if I'm going to shop from them again just to recover my $25. But I'm sure some people would.
EDIT: Odd. I was sick all weekend too. Not "incredibly" ill, but sick enough to spend all day yesterday in bed and to take work off today.
EDIT 2: And yes, if you look at the receipt, the driver gave up a $9 driver fee and a $25 tip just so he wouldn't have to get out of his car. For that kind of money even *I* would've gotten out and knocked on the door.
I feel like I have been in a fight. The areas where I had the body aches are tender.
While intellectually you know your tastes change over time, it's always interesting to get concrete proof of this change.
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s my only access to Doctor Who was my brother's girlfriend recording episodes off of Channel 54 and sending me the serials, so the only Doctors I ever saw were the Third (Jon Pertwee), Fourth (Tom Baker), and Fifth (Peter Davison). Of the three, I vastly preferred the confident, dashing Jon Pertwee over the-way-too-laid-back Tom Baker or eternally-sad Peter Davison.
Fast forward 20+ years and my Doctor Who mega-watch has proceeded into the Jon Pertwee years and... I hate them...
He's an arrogant prat. His "chemistry" with Lethbridge-Stewart has vanished (the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, had an amazing chemistry with him). His "companion" Liz seems far more like a girlfriend of convenience than a traveling companion. But of course, they don't travel. And worst of all, the "magic" of the Second Doctor was that he'd sit there for several episodes asking pointed questions, doing research, and refusing to come to conclusions until he was absolutely sure as to what was going on. And then, just like Scooby-Doo, he'd figure out the whole plot and come up with a brilliant solution to resolve it in a single episode. The Third Doctor is more of a scattergun, "Well, maybe this will work," approach, and I don't care for it as much. The Doctor is far less "brilliant" and far more "lucky as all get-out".
I found it amusing that after all my sarcastic criticism of the Second Doctor in spite of never having seen him ("Why would I watch Moe Howard portray The Doctor?"), he's now solidly my favorite Doctor of the "old" era. Which, amusingly enough, aligns with David Tennant's opinion, and he's my favorite Doctor of the "new" era.
I've still got months to go before I've even finished the old era, so we'll see whether my opinion changes as I move forward.
Oog. And I have to add, watching a television show morph from "classic" 1950s-1960s styles to 1970s television is... painful.
Nonsensical writing? Check!
Requisite coma in every episode? Check!
Incredibly poorly-choreographed "kung fu"? Check!
Stupid gimmicks like a tricked-out custom car? Check!
It really feels like circa 1970 someone handed every television and movie writer a checklist of things that had to happen in every show, no matter the genre or topic, and the writers dutifully tried to put it all in.
I can deal with the fashion atrocities, the terrifying makeup and hair, and the baffling choices in facial hair.
But early 1970s writing? I don't know that I've seen worse... even in the cheesy B-movie 1950s.
I just liked the 9th one. The rest of them are too quirky for me.
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I've never understood Doctor Who. Tried watching it a few times over the years, and there's just something I don't get about it that everyone else loves, and I can't figure out what it is. Very similar to my experiences trying to watch Seinfeld or The Office.
I may cosplay Stanley one day. Maybe.
I've never understood Doctor Who. Tried watching it a few times over the years, and there's just something I don't get about it that everyone else loves, and I can't figure out what it is. Very similar to my experiences trying to watch Seinfeld or The Office.
My take on it so far:
(1) If you like the really cheesy old 1950s and 1960s sci-fi movies with the rubber monsters, you'll like the First and Second Doctors. So definitely a matter of taste. And it's almost impossible to see these.
(2) So far, the 1970s has been uniformly terrible. I can't believe the series survived these years. Maybe it'll get better during the Tom Baker years, but the Jon Pertwee years seem to be, "We're watching this because it's familiar and there's nothing better on."
(3) Christopher Eccleston's appearance in the 2005 "rebirth" grabbed everything that was special about Doctor Who and modernized it, so it's not surprising to hear Freehold say he's the only Doctor he liked.
And yeah, if you don't like the Eccleston stuff, there isn't any of it you will like. His was the most public-pleasing, generally-accessible portrayal of the lot.
I have never watched, or read, any Dr Who, but I might make an exception for the novel Michael Moorcock wrote.
Ugh. I feel so weird. Odd combo of cabin fever and not being 100%.
That sucks. Hope you feel better soon.
My neighbor got a Harley Davidson. He let me ride it ‘round the block.
Made me feel like this.
Then I helped him try to figure out how to get the thing on a jack so he could pull the rear wheel off. The need to own a Harley melted away…
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Well, you do live in California!Keeping good records can really teach you something about what's happened in the medical industry in the U.S. in the last 25 years.
I'm doing my annual file cabinet purge and found GothBard's dental records. In 1998 she needed an emergency crown. Our total out-of-pocket cost was $55. Twenty-five years later in 2023 I needed an emergency crown. My total out-of-pocket cost was $2070.
And needless to say, I'm paying hundreds more per year for the dental insurance I have now than the insurance I had in 1998, and it's considered "very good" insurance these days.
Yeah. Shiro pointed out that in his new location (a heavily Federally-subsidized red state) dental and medical care is free (there are free dental and medical clinics in every major city and everyone uses them). It's no wonder they vote against nationalized medicine when they already have it.
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FFS. Progressive just sent me another letter stating that they'd totaled the Celica. So I called a lawyer and he said, "Yeah, they can't do that without your permission. Call them one more time, and if they don't fix it you should go ahead and lawyer up."
Whee?
But if they *do* make me hire a lawyer, I'll go ahead and ask the lawyer to go scorched earth on them. All they had to do was leave me alone...
my only exposure to the early DW era was the Fourth, and perhaps one episode of the fifth, all on late night PBS. i loved Baker's Doctor.
in the new era, i most enjoyed Eccleston's portrayal -- there was just something about the way he manifested the Doctor's rage that resonated with me. he's by far my favorite -- except for John Hurt, because he was perfect for the War Doctor. but maybe that's just because i always liked his voice, no matter the role.
i watched all the way up to the end of the first season of the Thirteenth. just got burned out on too much US-political-commentary and not enough of "the Stenza" (spelling?).
i'm going to have to follow your example, NH -- i need to see it all from the beginning.
my only exposure to the early DW era was the Fourth, and perhaps one episode of the fifth, all on late night PBS. i loved Baker's Doctor.
in the new era, i most enjoyed Eccleston's portrayal -- there was just something about the way he manifested the Doctor's rage that resonated with me. he's by far my favorite -- except for John Hurt, because he was perfect for the War Doctor. but maybe that's just because i always liked his voice, no matter the role.
i watched all the way up to the end of the first season of the Thirteenth. just got burned out on too much US-political-commentary and not enough of "the Stenza" (spelling?).
i'm going to have to follow your example, NH -- i need to see it all from the beginning.
I thought it would be a "fun long-term project" to watch an episode a day for a few years. Unfortunately, you quickly realize that it's far more satisfying to do one series a day, and that half hour a day turns into 2-3 hours a day and... whoops.
But yes, it's an enjoyable project, even if the Third Doctor continues to suffer from truly appalling writing. I recommend this bingo list to keep yourself entertained:
(1) Someone goes into a coma
(2) Someone is mind controlled
(3) Someone uses poorly-choreographed kung fu
(4) Someone uses a "cool car" (the Whomobile in particular)
(5) A main character survives a firefight where virtually everyone else perishes
(6) A villain keeps a named character alive seemingly at random after killing everyone else
I swear. The brigadier loses 50-100 men per series; the death rate is appalling. No peacetime unit would ever suffer such losses. Yet they barely ever bother to even mention the horrific loss of life that happens under the brigadier's command.
It's... silly...
OK. This is hilarious.
Last night, I described my situation to my advice lawyer and he said, "That's weird," and then gave me the advice to get in touch with the insurance company.
After multiple attempts, I called the advice line again. I got a new attorney, described the situation and she responded, "That's weird," and when I told her that's what the first lawyer said, she laughed and admitted they were partners in the same office.
I also paid the DMV $2 to get a vehicle history and confirm there is no total on the Celica.
So, putting all that together, both attorneys agree that it's a computer glitch on Progressive's end, and I can safely ignore them other than to leave angry messages about lawyers every week, and eventually they'll clear it up.
Because no, after I've settled and used their settlement money to repair my car, they can't turn around and total the car.
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Modern views on acceptable casualties are a bit different than it used to be. Just think where the word decimate comes from. The ancient Romans would kill 10% of their own soldiers, just to “improve morale “.
I have finished Prey.
Excellent game. I give it two shinny black oozing tendrils up.
I haven't so much fun searching every most those nooks and crannies that I managed to find, and gathering trash to recycle it into usable materials in ages.
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Me and Woodraven just got back from seeing Godzilla Minus One, and all I have to say about it is, whatever you're doing, drop it right now and go see it.
HOLY SHOT WOODRAVEN
HOLY SHOT WOODRAVEN
Yeah, I live like 20 minutes away from him now. I see him all the time.
HOLY SHOT WOODRAVENYeah, I live like 20 minutes away from him now. I see him all the time.
That's awesome
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Ugh. Well *enough* after being sick that I can't in good conscience take another day off, even though I want to stay in bed.
The good thing is, with two days of horizontality, I finally have Val's chainmail hoodie to the point that I think it will be done for Christmas. (It was supposed to be a tenth birthday gift back in March.) But it's going to be amazing. I just have to find someone to help me crochet the details on the neck placket, because for some reason, that's the only part of the pattern that's not knit.
The Good: My cold finally went away. I'm feeling quite chipper this morning.
The Bad: Doctor Who Season 8, The Daemons: Doctor Who vs. Satan. Truly an embodiment of the dregs of 1970s television writing. I'd forgotten just how formulaic and uniformly terrible television had become in the early 1970s. Now I remember.
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I made buttermilk chess pies yesterday, just because.
So of course I brought them to the shop for everyone to eat.
The landscapers who all do physical work were super excited.
The mowers, who ride on mowers all day and actively shy away from physical labor are all on diets apparently because they were not excited. In fact one actually threatened to kick my ass if I did it again. I'm not worried, I can take him.
I finally have Val's chainmail hoodie to the point that I think it will be done for Christmas. (It was supposed to be a tenth birthday gift back in March.) But it's going to be amazing. I just have to find someone to help me crochet the details on the neck placket, because for some reason, that's the only part of the pattern that's not knit.
Is that a hoodie that looks like it's made from chainmail, or is it actually chainmail in the shape of a hoodie? Either way, that sounds fun.
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I finally have Val's chainmail hoodie to the point that I think it will be done for Christmas. (It was supposed to be a tenth birthday gift back in March.) But it's going to be amazing. I just have to find someone to help me crochet the details on the neck placket, because for some reason, that's the only part of the pattern that's not knit.Is that a hoodie that looks like it's made from chainmail, or is it actually chainmail in the shape of a hoodie? Either way, that sounds fun.
It's a hoodie in a chainmail-look knit pattern, out of merino wool. Which is what they used to do for films (Anthony Hopkins in the jousting scene in Lion in Winter, all the knights except Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, etc.)
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OMGOMGOMG!
I just found out that the Dresden Dolls are playing the small venue right near my house in March!
It always depresses me when a place counts on margin rather than repeat business to stay afloat. It baffles me when it does it in a location where repeat business is the bread-and-butter of all the shops around it.
Ike's Love and Sandwiches opened in the El Cerrito Plaza and decided to compete with other high-end sandwich shops in the area by offering $16 'artisan' sandwiches. The price isn't unprecedented; there's a deli on Solano that makes its own pastrami that charges $18 per sandwich. But the local go-to deli is only $11-$12, Andronico's is $9, and there's literally a Trader Joe's 100 feet away from the place that sells pre-made sandwiches for $5-$6.
So Impus Major wanted to try it. His declaration: A mediocre sandwich that wasn't worth it. Impus Minor (our resident deli sandwich addict) was even less impressed. GothBard got the worst of it, with a big chunk of bone in her roast beef sandwich. I did a breakdown of her uneaten sandwich and it was amazingly cheap stuff -- only Trader Joe's uses cheaper ingredients.
The margin on their $16 sandwiches has to be staggeringly high, considering the location and the ingredients. And it has to be, because no one I know who's eaten there will ever go back.
Not a great business model, in my mind.
In other news, I finally got in touch with Progressive. They have already escalated the he** out of the case because I mentioned being in touch with a law firm, a fact I reiterated two or three times during the call just for effect. "Yeah, I got in touch with a law firm and they said, 'No insurance company behaves like that. It's got to be a technical glitch. Just call them and they'll work it out."
The agent was as pleasant as humanly possible to me, but it was VERY obvious they're scared at how badly they screwed up. As it should be.
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I just realized I may achieve the Impossible Trifecta of Bureaucracy (ITB):
(1) I have a letter of apology from the I.R.S.
(2) I have a letter of apology from a major health insurance company.
(3) If this proceeds as expected, I may receive a letter of apology from a major car insurance company.
Is there any better measure of bureaucratic splendor?
EDIT: LOL. GothBard suggested the DMV, but I get their apologies all the time. "We're sorry we were 3 hours late in getting to your appointment. We'll try to do better in the future." If it's a meaningless apology, it doesn't count.
I made buttermilk chess pies yesterday, just because.
So of course I brought them to the shop for everyone to eat.
The landscapers who all do physical work were super excited.
The mowers, who ride on mowers all day and actively shy away from physical labor are all on diets apparently because they were not excited. In fact one actually threatened to kick my ass if I did it again. I'm not worried, I can take him.
What?
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My lack of imagination can be painful.
Impus Major and I were discussing the frustrations of formulaic writing, and I pointed out, "If you've already read Little Red Riding Hood, you're not going to want to listen to the stories of Little Green Riding Hood, Little Blue Riding Hood, and Little Yellow Riding Hood, being menaced by a badger, an... um... mole rat, and a... a... vole..."
At which point Impus Major completely lost it and responded, "What are you talking about, Dad? I'd love to hear the story of Little Yellow Riding Hood being menaced by a vole!"
And he started telling the story... while giggling uncontrollably.
It was... unfortunate.