totm nov 2023 Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?

[tater]

It passed within 300m of my house about 4 hours ago. Still in the neighborhood.

[tater]

5.5 hours after the latest time in the window they gave me—which was just shy of 24 hours later than the first delivery window—it might be getting close to my house.

My computer has literally spent more time in a FedEx truck in ABQ than it took from the time the label was generated in China to passing customs in the US.

[Delay]

7 hours ago, tater said:

It passed within 300m of my house about 4 hours ago. Still in the neighborhood.

Legends say he's aimlessly driving around to this day.

Sorry. Shouldn't make fun of it, but that is ridiculous.

[AlamoVampire]

I just learned Bruce Willis is retiring from acting. Why is this? His family said he was recently diagnosed with Aphasia. I do not know any more than this, but its tragic. My best wishes to him and his family.

193903302022

Edited March 31, 2022 by AlamoVampire

[StrandedonEarth]

57 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

I just learned Bruce Willis is retiring from acting. Why is this? His family said he was recently diagnosed with Aphasia. I do not know any more than this, but its tragic. My best wishes to him and his family.

193903302022

Yeah, I just heard that too, bummer. OTOH, I haven’t seen him doing much lately; I suppose he was struggling with it and finally threw in the towel. 

He’s my wife’s favourite actor, so she was really sad to hear that. 

[StrandedonEarth]

COVID time, long line to get into Costco.

Restrictions lifted: even longer line at the Costco checkout. That’ll teach me for going on a Saturday 

[cubinator]

The .MAT file I need to turn in tonight freezes Windows' file system when I click on it because it's a MATLAB data file and not a shortcut.  

[DDE]

On 3/31/2022 at 3:38 AM, AlamoVampire said:

Why is this? His family said he was recently diagnosed with Aphasia.

Aphasia is a mere symptom. It's medicalspeak for being unable to formulate thought into language, any language, due to an underlying case of brain damage, e.g. via stroke or outside trauma.

On 4/2/2022 at 11:47 PM, StrandedonEarth said:

COVID time, long line to get into Costco.

Restrictions lifted: even longer line at the Costco checkout.

Not missing out on the latest round of buckwheat hoarding: priceless

[StrandedonEarth]

I can’t believe the idiocy of some of the drivers on the road this morning, particularly one semi-truck driver in particular: weaving back and forth in the two lanes available on one stretch of highway, trying to gain a few lengths by using the slow third (climbing) lane at another spot (with the lane ending in 100m), and almost sideswiping SUVs two separate times, almost forcing them off the road. 

Commercial drivers should be paid by the hour, not the km or mile, so as to not incentivize that sort of idiocy. O/Os should stand to lose their trucks for being that stupid. 

That company will be getting an email containing some dash cam clips, but with the driver shortage no company can afford to fire a driver. But when autonomous driving goes live, guess who will be first in line when the axe falls?

/rant

Edited April 7, 2022 by StrandedonEarth

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

weaving back and forth in the two lanes available on one stretch of highway, trying to gain a few lengths by using the slow third (climbing) lane at another spot (with the lane ending in 100m), and almost sideswiping SUVs two separate times, almost forcing them off the road. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-09/robot-trucks-get-u-s-tests-raising-self-driving-safety-stakes

Spoiler

Can a Self-Driving 40-Ton Truck Be Safe? Developers Say Yes

 

Proof:

Spoiler

 

 

Congrats, you took part in the testing!

[TheSaint]

2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I can’t believe the idiocy of some of the drivers on the road this morning, particularly one semi-truck driver in particular: weaving back and forth in the two lanes available on one stretch of highway, trying to gain a few lengths by using the slow third (climbing) lane at another spot (with the lane ending in 100m), and almost sideswiping SUVs two separate times, almost forcing them off the road. 

Commercial drivers should be paid by the hour, not the km or mile, so as to not incentivize that sort of idiocy. O/Os should stand to lose their trucks for being that stupid. 

That company will be getting an email containing some dash cam clips, but with the driver shortage no company can afford to fire a driver. But when autonomous driving goes live, guess who will be first in line when the axe falls?

/rant

I was turning the truck onto the stub road that leads to the local Walmart the other day, and a guy turning right out of the parking lot into the left turn lane swept halfway into my lane. I had to panic swerve to avoid a head-on collision. So, yeah, I think this is going on everywhere.

I saw a FB post from the local PD the other day, Silver Alert, missing senior citizen. Described as 74 years old, in early stage dementia, last seen driving her 2020 Jeep Wrangler.

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Congrats, you took part in the testing!

If that’s the case, I’d give it a fail. 

That said, autonomous semis need to be put on the development fast track. Despite the current driver shortage, one would be a fool to train to be a trucker with autonomy on the horizon. Most truck accidents I’ve seen were caused by a sleepy or inattentive driver drifting into the ditch. Occasionally a driver deliberately ditches to avoid piling into stopped traffic, but that could often also be avoided with proper anticipation aided by modern information systems. 

[kerbiloid]

GTA drives nice, until the human player enters the traffic.

[Delay]

My basically new laptop, used for (combined) less than one month, apparently has some SSD issues that completely freeze it up. It has now happened twice within a few minutes!

There's nothing overly important on it, but it's really annoying that I have to go to the store again (I already went there a month ago, they reset the thing to factory settings).

[Gargamel]

Having a rough day overall.... take a break at work and play a little euchre to take my mind off things.   
 

 

If I had a table, I would have flipped it and punched a baby seal.        One of those days.

Huh?:  I was dealt the best possible hand you can get, just in spades, but my idiot partner made  Diamonds trump, making my hand completely worthless   

 

[Nuke]

On 3/29/2022 at 5:50 PM, StrandedonEarth said:

Human error for the win! loss!

”The truck is currently 0.5 miles from your house, 20’ below the road level, upside-down”

Which begs the question: how is the road up to your mountainside dwelling?

As for myself, our cat seems to like to meow seemingly constantly, especially when we’re sleeping.  Tried other food, new toys for entertainment, etc. I think she needs to either get spayed, or something that rhymes with spayed. 

if shes yowling she is in heat. get your cat fixed as soon as possible. because once they start marking they never stop even after they are fixed. dont let her escape or you will have kittens. not that kittens are bad, they are quite cute and its nice to watch 'em grow up. if you end up with kittens wait till they are weaned and then you can usually hand them out free within an hour or two.

On 3/29/2022 at 6:34 PM, tater said:

5.5 hours after the latest time in the window they gave me—which was just shy of 24 hours later than the first delivery window—it might be getting close to my house.

My computer has literally spent more time in a FedEx truck in ABQ than it took from the time the label was generated in China to passing customs in the US.

could be worse. tracking in these parts drops off at seattle. then it shows up anywhere between 2 days and a week later. ups is the only service that drops it at the door though. anything else and i have to walk to the post office about a mile up hill. 

[StrandedonEarth]

Discovered the roof of our little travel trailer was toast, and after a large repair estimate, made a difficult decision to sell it for parts. I was tired of that money pit anyways, the hardest part was convincing the wife.

[kerbiloid]

You could add a roof protection to prevent it from toasting.

Spoiler

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by kerbiloid

[richfiles]

Just feeling incredibly frustrated lately...

My replacement motor arrived for the damaged tape meter for my Kerbal Instrument Panel project. I haven't lifted a finger to work on it in ages. I've been busy with work, busy dealing with family tragedies, busy helping my mother prepare for a guest (I'm happy about the latter, but it still has taken time, and is tinged with the unfortunate reality of having only one visitor vs two)... I just feel spent lately, and I have nothing to show for my efforts, besides a really satisfying sewing room setup at my mother's place. I'm getting no where... Work is being held back due to the parts shortages, and the only work I still have doesn't pay me very well for my time. I feel like I've been busy as ever, but I have nothing to show for it, personally or income wise. Even when I do have time for the controller project, I'm stuck right now, cause I can't even afford parts to move forward with it. The things I can do, I just haven't had the energy for... Everything else has just been overwhelming, and it has severely impacted on my overall focus. I'm tired of being broke. I'm tired of being sick and tired all the time... Tired of my smoke machine and my car being the same machine. Tired  of feeding that beast oil and gasoline. Tired of the economy and the atrocious news of the world and everything that having to look out the window or turn on the TV entails...

Is it too much to just want things to go well  for a change? 
At least the sewing room turned out really nice!

Edited April 21, 2022 by richfiles

[Pthigrivi]

We're working on branding for a certain Austrian-influenced resort right now, which means designing lobbies,  furniture, fireplaces etc. Part of that is selecting the art package, which includes 1930s-1940's alpine ski art... which brings us to my fun new game at work: googling whether the artists we may or may not include were or were not actual national fascists. :puke:

Edited April 22, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

12 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

We're working on branding for a certain Austrian-influenced resort right now, which means designing lobbies,  furniture, fireplaces etc. Part of that is selecting the art package, which includes 1930s-1940's alpine ski art... which brings us to my fun new game at work: googling whether the artists we may or may not include were or were not actual national fascists. :puke:

Sad that it matters.

The graphic art of the 30s and 40s is full of art styles that were used later by totalitarians—and some is GREAT graphic art. Obviously you don't use the ski chalet art with the national symbols no one wants to see, but who cares if the travel art was made by someone who later made propaganda art? If that was the standard, the resort should turn away Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen cars Or people in Hugo Boss clothes (or Che shirts).

I actually really like graphic art, and particularly travel poster art of that era (20s-30s, sorta falls off in the 40s ) The original poster to my left is a Nepal travel poster

I was actually looking for original posters of cable cars, since I live under one (Swiss) here in NM.

Edited April 22, 2022 by tater

[kerbiloid]

The "father of chemical watfare", who implemented the WWI gases, the nerve agent chemical weapon (Sarin), and on the other hand the industrial method of ammonia synthesis, which put the end to mass hunger by producing fertilizers from air (got the Nobel Prize for that), obviously, the method was used first of all for explosives.

A very distracting person himself (wife and son committed suicide). Wasn't an official fascist only because died in 1933 (ideologically was totally for that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

The ammonia process was first implemented by now-BASF corporation, which is basically the renamed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASF#IG_Farben

Should we stop eating?

Edited April 22, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pthigrivi]

40 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

 

Should we stop eating?

No, but we also don’t need to hold dudes like that up as the saviors of humanity or pretend they weren’t who they were.  In my case there were plenty of great artists and architects who did tell the fascists of their era where they could stick it. 
 

https://www.google.com/search?q=alfons+walde&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS992US992&hl=en-US&prmd=isnv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-1v3-gaf3AhVHa80KHUPXB0MQ_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=375&bih=553&dpr=2

 

[tater]

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

No, but we also don’t need to hold dudes like that up as the saviors of humanity or pretend they weren’t who they were.  In my case there were plenty of great artists and architects who did tell the fascists of their era where they could stick it. 

I certainly wasn't suggesting holding up some graphic artist as a "savior of humanity," they were people making posters, and likely they made them for anyone who paid them. There's a whole Soviet style of graphic art that is also pretty cool sometimes, and is associated with a substantial body count as well. Doesn't mean any art in that style is "bad."

Love art deco posters, regardless.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by tater

[Pthigrivi]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

I certainly wasn't suggesting holding up some graphic artist as a "savior of humanity," there were people making posters, and likely they made them for anyone who paid them. There's a whole Soviet style of graphic art that is also pretty cool sometimes, and is associated with a substantial body count as well. Doesn't mean any art in that style is "bad."

Love art deco posters, regardless.

 

 

Totally. Style is one thing and for the most part movements like Brutalism or Bauhaus or Neoclassical had lots of adherents all over the political spectrum. That can be teased apart. But when it comes to individual artists or architects who joined fascist parties in Germany and Italy we don’t include their paintings or reference their buildings as precedents. There’s no reason to reference Albert Speer when there are a dozen Hanz Poelzig’s out there. 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Pthigrivi