| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
So tonight is Zelda's youngest's 13th birthday party. She requested an escape room.
One of the attendees won't be making the drive up from Missouri due to a concussion.
Zelda has bronchitis.
I'm still battling near daily headaches and have an appointment this afternoon for traction.
But the show must go on.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ok, not that, not this time.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, as always happens the Smug Linux User has been brought low: Borderlands 3 applied a hotfix last night that rendered the entire game unplayable on Linux. There is no fix as of yet.
Thanks, BL3!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But it's quite a show.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ah, the Midwestern winter, where the temperatures are made up and the forecasts don't matter. We get a snow day for meaningless slush and a 2-hour delay for actual snow and slick conditions.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, there are many, many ways in which working for a tech company is awesome.
Unfortunately, there are other ways in which is sucks, especially the "established" promotion process:
- Get recommended for a promotion by your management
- Get turned down by upper management
- Go to another company and get an offer for a job at the new title and salary you want
- Return to your original company with the offer in hand and threaten that if they don't match it, you'll leave
- Accept whichever offer is higher
It leads to such employee dissociation and despair, and encourages such a mercenary, no-loyalty-to-anyone-but-myself mentality that I can't believe companies are still doing it.
But yep, Global Megacorporation is infamous for it (to the point that they had to change their policies because they were losing all their best engineers and no one else would replace them because of the reputation), and it just happened to GothBard: Above-average evaluations across the board, recommended for promotion the second year in a row, turned down for dubious reasons just to force her to force the issue.
What ever happened to decent employee-management relationships? Haven't ANY execs looked at the multitude of studies that prove that treating your employees decently massively increases both productivity and quality of work?
I swear, it's another OK Boomer moment: Upper management is all stuck in the 1970s.
EDIT: And in a bit of irony, the reason Shiro is "a C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company" is exactly this. Whenever a company forced him to look for a new job so they could match it, he just left. Even if they exceeded the other company's offer, he'd just say, "Well, no, you forced me to look for another job, so obviously you don't want me here so I'll be going. Thanks for the push!"
His performance reviews these days consist of, "Are you happy? Are we paying you enough? What can we do to make you stay another year?"
Rewarding an utter lack of loyalty and mercenary attitude is just SO depressing, and yet SO "the way things work".
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Woke up around 4:20 this morning to feel the house shaking for a few seconds. Groggy but concerned, I went downstairs to look out the windows to see if I could determine the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My wife and one of the two kids woke up, also. After settling my son back in bed, my wife and I sleepily debated if I shouldn't do a walk around the outside of the house. But I was sleepy, it was cold, and it was dark (and it was me going outside, no her), so no.
Found out after waking up for real that the cause was a manufacturing facility about 15 miles away blew up. A lot of houses in nearby neighborhoods had broken windows and busted garage doors from the blast. Some houses even have damaged roofs and walls to their homes. Here's a video of some guy's security camera catching the blast and then getting knocked off its bracket.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Woke up around 4:20 this morning to feel the house shaking for a few seconds. Groggy but concerned, I went downstairs to look out the windows to see if I could determine the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My wife and one of the two kids woke up, also. After settling my son back in bed, my wife and I sleepily debated if I shouldn't do a walk around the outside of the house. But I was sleepy, it was cold, and it was dark (and it was me going outside, no her), so no.
Found out after waking up for real that the cause was a manufacturing facility about 15 miles away blew up. A lot of houses in nearby neighborhoods had broken windows and busted garage doors from the blast. Some houses even have damaged roofs and walls to their homes. Here's a video of some guy's security camera catching the blast and then getting knocked off its bracket.
Wow! Good you're OK.
In California we don't even bother going outside because we figure it was just a quake.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
OK, everyone, here's something that SHOULD be simple, but it never is:
I have a piece of text in 32-point Arial black.
I want to change it to 28-point Courier New green bold.You would think that you could save your font as a style and apply it, but as far as I can tell, no. I have to select each stoopid piece of text, then one by one change its size, its font, its color, and its boldness.
Any suggestions on speeding up this stupidity? (Other than living with the old font?)
Probably too late for this to be helpful, but one thing you can do is use the F4 key. It repeats the last command or keystroke you've done. So since you can't create your own styles in PowerPoint, the F4 key can save you some labor. First, highlight the first bit of text you want to change and change it from 32-point to 28-point. Then highlight the second bit with your mouse hand and use your other hand to press F4, which will repeat the text size change. Then repeat for every other bit of text you want to change. And then do the process again to change the font, and again to apply the boldness.
It's not great, but you can use it to save time for repetitive actions like this in all MS Office apps that I'm aware of.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow! Good you're OK.
In California we don't even bother going outside because we figure it was just a quake.
Thanks! I'm in Houston, so if flash-hurricanes were a thing, that's probably what I'd assume it was.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
this was on typewriter, the font was a bit larger, and it was maybe 500 or so words.Having a word processor/digital submission makes it so much easier. Open in Google Docs, ctrl-A, see if the font name/size disappear.I thought we were supposed to double space...? I know teachers went on me about double spacing when typing up papers...but that was on an actual typewriter.Oh, just don't even get me started. Many teachers insisted on double spacing so that they could fit their comments between the lines; it made editing much easier for them. But many other teachers would take points off for double spacing, and you'd be asked for "3 pages, single-spaced".
The whole idea of manipulating fonts and so forth was after my time.
But seriously. "Write an essay of at least 1000 words." How hard is that? No font shenanigans, no formatting issues, nada. And it's pretty darned easy to get a guesstimate of word count on a paper in 30-60 seconds, so it's not like it's much more work than checking, "Hmm... is that a double space, or a 2.5 space?"
I did have teachers who counted the words(not for a thousand word essays but for shorter works).
On both typewriter and word processor the Courier New font was my best friend. And later with the word processor I figured out that I could increase all four margins by a quarter of an inch...
I'm pretty sure that's what they mean by "street smart" guys.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Woke up around 4:20 this morning to feel the house shaking for a few seconds. Groggy but concerned, I went downstairs to look out the windows to see if I could determine the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My wife and one of the two kids woke up, also. After settling my son back in bed, my wife and I sleepily debated if I shouldn't do a walk around the outside of the house. But I was sleepy, it was cold, and it was dark (and it was me going outside, no her), so no.
Found out after waking up for real that the cause was a manufacturing facility about 15 miles away blew up. A lot of houses in nearby neighborhoods had broken windows and busted garage doors from the blast. Some houses even have damaged roofs and walls to their homes. Here's a video of some guy's security camera catching the blast and then getting knocked off its bracket.
Holy crap. Glad you're not hurt, and that was quite a shockwave. Hopefully people closer to the plant aren't seriously harmed. I haven't checked the news yet.
EDIT: At least 2 dead so far. Debris spread out 1/2 mile to a mile from the site of the plant.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ah, the Midwestern winter, where the temperatures are made up and the forecasts don't matter. We get a snow day for meaningless slush and a 2-hour delay for actual snow and slick conditions.
THIS happens down south, but more so.
On THREAT of a snowflake, we shut down EVERYTHING. Yet when we actually get BAD weather, (Streets flooding, water in your house, etc) they MIGHT let the kids go home early. Maybe.
;P
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just glad you are okay.
Any other fawtls in the area?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hello, John!
Well, it's good to have a brother in the industry. He's sending me a download of Windows 10 Home for $24. I can live with that.
AND he didn't even laugh at me for having to replace Linux... AGAIN...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I may have accidentally given my current events class the inspiration to become meme historians.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I may have accidentally given my current events class the inspiration to become meme historians.
Impus Minor is irritated with me for teaching him how to play politics.
His belief is that he's at 69.95% in his English class. (Color me skeptical, as that was his grade BEFORE he missed one last assignment and then got a 75% on the final.) He's hoping to get his teacher to round up and give him a C-.
She just happens to also be his Advisory teacher, and today is his Advisory "final", which consists of two hours of sitting around watching TV because they're not allowed to let students leave campus but they don't have any work for them.
So I told him: "You can cut the class, but I won't excuse you for it and you'll prove to your teacher that you're a flake and deserve the D. Or you can show up to a class you really don't want to, talk to her about your grade, and then sit there like an idiot to prove that you have some modicum of character."
I have no idea whether or not it will sway her (I've never been a fan of absolute cutoffs, because how many decimal places are you going to use, and how can you judge your grading that precisely), but at least he's showing her that he cares, and that might push her to round off. We'll see.
(When I was a professor, I did a "structured curve", where if you got over 90% it was an automatic A, over 80% was an automatic B, etc., but I reserved the right to push students up, so if there was a big block of students at 67% I'd give them all Cs instead of Ds. It didn't seem like rocket science, but after I got a formal complaint filed against me over it I started doing hard-and-fast grading and a LOT of students failed who really didn't deserve to.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Woke up around 4:20 this morning to feel the house shaking for a few seconds. Groggy but concerned, I went downstairs to look out the windows to see if I could determine the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My wife and one of the two kids woke up, also. After settling my son back in bed, my wife and I sleepily debated if I shouldn't do a walk around the outside of the house. But I was sleepy, it was cold, and it was dark (and it was me going outside, no her), so no.
Found out after waking up for real that the cause was a manufacturing facility about 15 miles away blew up. A lot of houses in nearby neighborhoods had broken windows and busted garage doors from the blast. Some houses even have damaged roofs and walls to their homes. Here's a video of some guy's security camera catching the blast and then getting knocked off its bracket.
Wow! Super-glad you’re OK! Praying for you and all others in the area!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow... Thanks, Microsoft, for reminding me why I hate Windows so much!
Ubuntu's 2-year-old installer: "Oh, I see you're using a BIOS-level RAID! No problemo! Let me configure that for you."
Windows downloaded-today-installer: "I don't recognize what you're doing with your disks. Can you reconfigure your BIOS so that *I* am in charge of everything?"
Grrr....
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just glad you are okay.
Any other fawtls in the area?
My company has an office *very close* to the site. However, since it was 4 in the morning, none of our employees were there. The building did sustain damage, but that's way less important in the overall scheme of things.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The storm that's been hovering over us for the last two days and will continue to hover tonight will then move east.
So now it's on CNN.
I guess it's true what they say "if it happened in Wisconsin it didn't actually happen".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fat Pervert Captain didn't make it through the whole run.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yesterday I had a kid on my crew that I had for a few runs last year, he's a family friend of the boss, so last year the boss told me to be extra hard on him (apparently he was trying to pass the firefighter obstacle course). So yesterday when I saw him he thanked me for being so hard on him (it's true what they say "if you want to teach someone discipline, send them with the hippie").
Rocko and Fat Pervert Captain didn't seem to like that.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
Yes, but you're not correcting it "that's no way to build a criminal empire! 96% pure meth? That's pretty good, I guess" So I'd say it doesn't against your point total.
I was trying to find the recently linked video to the guy talking Japanese and being confused by getting money back - anyone able to find it?
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Woke up around 4:20 this morning to feel the house shaking for a few seconds. Groggy but concerned, I went downstairs to look out the windows to see if I could determine the cause, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My wife and one of the two kids woke up, also. After settling my son back in bed, my wife and I sleepily debated if I shouldn't do a walk around the outside of the house. But I was sleepy, it was cold, and it was dark (and it was me going outside, no her), so no.
Found out after waking up for real that the cause was a manufacturing facility about 15 miles away blew up. A lot of houses in nearby neighborhoods had broken windows and busted garage doors from the blast. Some houses even have damaged roofs and walls to their homes. Here's a video of some guy's security camera catching the blast and then getting knocked off its bracket.
Wauw, glad you're ok!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow... Thanks, Microsoft, for reminding me why I hate Windows so much!
Ubuntu's 2-year-old installer: "Oh, I see you're using a BIOS-level RAID! No problemo! Let me configure that for you."
Windows downloaded-today-installer: "I don't recognize what you're doing with your disks. Can you reconfigure your BIOS so that *I* am in charge of everything?"
Grrr....
How would Mac OS (or however the newest versions are called) react to such circumstances?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
Why? How?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How would Mac OS (or however the newest versions are called) react to such circumstances?Wow... Thanks, Microsoft, for reminding me why I hate Windows so much!
Ubuntu's 2-year-old installer: "Oh, I see you're using a BIOS-level RAID! No problemo! Let me configure that for you."
Windows downloaded-today-installer: "I don't recognize what you're doing with your disks. Can you reconfigure your BIOS so that *I* am in charge of everything?"
Grrr....
For as far back as I can remember, MacOS installers check to see what kind of Mac you're installing on, and if it's not a Mac, it won't install. Yes, you can download hacked versions that'll install, but in general MacOS won't install on non-Mac hardware, so it's not something you run into.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why? How?I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
Impus Major's friend recommended it to him, and it turns out it's a really good show.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Speaking of really good shows, GothBard saw one on the evolution of pot (marijuana) over the last 40-50 years, where selective breeding to increase the amount of THC has actually significantly decreased the other psychotropic drugs, in particular, the one that makes you mellow.
So everyone thinks that smoking pot makes you high and gets you mellow. Unfortunately, that's no longer true, as the profit margin can ruin everything.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why? How?I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
Impus Major's friend recommended it to him, and it turns out it's a really good show.
It is a really good show, I also recommend Better Call Saul afterwards.
It's actually a better show but it's based on side characters from Breaking Bad.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why? How?I may have lost my chance at a Father of the Year award in 2020.
The kids are in the living room watching Breaking Bad.
Impus Major's friend recommended it to him, and it turns out it's a really good show.
It is a really good show, I also recommend Better Call Saul afterwards.
It's actually a better show but it's based on side characters from Breaking Bad.
Agreed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Speaking of really good shows, GothBard saw one on the evolution of pot (marijuana) over the last 40-50 years, where selective breeding to increase the amount of THC has actually significantly decreased the other psychotropic drugs, in particular, the one that makes you mellow.
So everyone thinks that smoking pot makes you high and gets you mellow. Unfortunately, that's no longer true, as the profit margin can ruin everything.
indeed.
Weed hasn't been weed since around 1996.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow... Thanks, Microsoft, for reminding me why I hate Windows so much!
Ubuntu's 2-year-old installer: "Oh, I see you're using a BIOS-level RAID! No problemo! Let me configure that for you."
Windows downloaded-today-installer: "I don't recognize what you're doing with your disks. Can you reconfigure your BIOS so that *I* am in charge of everything?"
>_>
<_<
NO.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, Linux is vindicated: Did a full Windows 10 install, re-installed Borderlands 3, and got the exact same error.
The help link? "You have been locked out by our DRM. Please wait 24 hours and try again."
Grr...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Round 3... Fight!!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
3-6 inches of snow the weather report said.
I'm guessing the storm forgot to carry the 2 because I only see an inch of snow on the ground and the snow should be wrapping up in an hour or so, and since we aren't in the Cascades I doubt if we're getting another two inches of snow in an hour.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yep. Pretty peeved right now. After scrambling to get a Windows 10 license and wipe my Linux box (which is kind of why they exist -- easy come, easy go), Borderlands 3 didn't work again, so I went to the help desk now that it was on a Windows machine and I got "you had a DRM error, wait 24 hours and try again".
So, Borderlands 3 is now running fine again. On a Windows machine I neither wanted nor needed.
Grr...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For as far back as I can remember, MacOS installers check to see what kind of Mac you're installing on, and if it's not a Mac, it won't install. Yes, you can download hacked versions that'll install, but in general MacOS won't install on non-Mac hardware, so it's not something you run into.How would Mac OS (or however the newest versions are called) react to such circumstances?Wow... Thanks, Microsoft, for reminding me why I hate Windows so much!
Ubuntu's 2-year-old installer: "Oh, I see you're using a BIOS-level RAID! No problemo! Let me configure that for you."
Windows downloaded-today-installer: "I don't recognize what you're doing with your disks. Can you reconfigure your BIOS so that *I* am in charge of everything?"
Grrr....
There are no (BIOS-level) RAID disks for Macs?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yep. Pretty peeved right now. After scrambling to get a Windows 10 license and wipe my Linux box (which is kind of why they exist -- easy come, easy go), Borderlands 3 didn't work again, so I went to the help desk now that it was on a Windows machine and I got "you had a DRM error, wait 24 hours and try again".
So, Borderlands 3 is now running fine again. On a Windows machine I neither wanted nor needed.
Grr...
How much more will you play BL3 anyway?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Good news: Got Mechwarrior 5
Bad news: Next to no controller support. Need to figure this out. Ugh.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How much more will you play BL3 anyway?Yep. Pretty peeved right now. After scrambling to get a Windows 10 license and wipe my Linux box (which is kind of why they exist -- easy come, easy go), Borderlands 3 didn't work again, so I went to the help desk now that it was on a Windows machine and I got "you had a DRM error, wait 24 hours and try again".
So, Borderlands 3 is now running fine again. On a Windows machine I neither wanted nor needed.
Grr...
Probably another 50-100 hours, so worth my time. And having a Windows machine means I won't be spending time working on Linux hacks.
But I really want to start supporting Linux ports of games, so it's just an annoying setback.
Now I have to wait until I have time again and turn the system into a dual-boot system so I can start forcing every game that'll do so to run on Linux.
I'm a stubborn man...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The question is, should one of my fencing groups buy a ship or not?
It's £10,000, which none of us have, and we don't need a ship by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The question is, should one of my fencing groups buy a ship or not?
It's £10,000, which none of us have, and we don't need a ship by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same...
How much of your fencing groups' fencing is done with cutlasses and other ship-appropriate weapons?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Distressingly little, but you make a good point - we definitely need cutlasses/boarding axes/boarding pikes and whathaveyou. Those would be a lot of fun...