totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[tater]

[HerobrineLiu]

My brother said “are you six feet tall?” I said no. Then, after pondering for a few minutes, he asked. “Are you at least 5 foot twelve?” And I laughed so hard.

[Mjp1050]

Last night I was at a Shakespeare in the Park event, and, as is one of the hazards of such showings, I got bored.

So, I looked back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Perseids, and - hey presto! I saw the ISS overhead!

That was the highlight of my evening.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Not today, but yesterday, had one doozy of a thunderstorm come thru. Old hat for some of y’all, but it’s fairly uncommon around here. Set new rain records on my home weather stations, .39 inches of rain in a single hour, .3 of that within about ten minutes, and a peak rain rate of 5.49 in/hr. Ended  up with .72 inches for the day, all within a couple hours. That’s more than our last half-dozen summers combined. 

That, and at one point the whole south half of the island was without power.  

[cubinator]

I saw one really bright Perseid meteor this evening. It arced at least 30° and had a thin, fiery trail.

[LordFerret]

On 8/9/2018 at 4:50 AM, YNM said:

This just came to my light.

 

Weird. When I clicked on that picture link, your entire post disappeared (see here). Something is wonky with Twitter embeds in these forums... been saying that for a while now, but nobody listens - which is ok, because I'm done giving a

 

 

 

On 8/12/2018 at 12:56 PM, Kernel Kraken said:

Don't worry, I played Sniper Elite III 

No video game nor tv movie will ever prepare you for the real thing.

 

 

20 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Not today, but yesterday, had one doozy of a thunderstorm come thru. Old hat for some of y’all, but it’s fairly uncommon around here. Set new rain records on my home weather stations, .39 inches of rain in a single hour, .3 of that within about ten minutes, and a peak rain rate of 5.49 in/hr. Ended  up with .72 inches for the day, all within a couple hours. That’s more than our last half-dozen summers combined. 

That, and at one point the whole south half of the island was without power.  

Small world. My nephew is stationed at Oak Harbor, lives near the southern end of what you've got hilighted.

Edited August 13, 2018 by LordFerret

[XB-70A]

After two years hesitating and postponing, I finally made it... I drop a request to customize my number plate, which will be:

Spoiler

 

 

The flight on which Columbia carried the Chandra space telescope.

Should receive it in six weeks, and I can't wait for it 

 

 

[razark]

1 hour ago, XB-70A said:

I drop a request to customize my number plate...

I have occasionally seen a license plate with "STS (number)" around here.  I just have to wonder who's driving the car.

[HansonKerman]

I somehow got the urge to make this.

 

[The Minmus Derp]

Hi friend!

On 8/12/2018 at 1:02 PM, tater said:

THAT IS HILARIOUS! I've seen that movie.

[tater]

Interesting stuff?

Sigh. Sometimes interesting is sad, but sad carries lessons.

Have 2 kids sleeping over at the house tonight who are very soon to be without their mother (godawful cancer, hospice, likely a few days left). Their dad is a good friend, and I got to talk to him for about an hour about what he's going through.

He had to go back home (wife is there on home hospice).

Another friend called, and I talked to him on the phone while he ate dinner out alone. He's getting divorced.

Life is short. Do what makes you happy. Love as well as you can, you never know when things will go south.

[JPGSP]

What happend to me insteresting is that when I when to KSP with +120 mods  I found out that I had +4400 parts 

Edited August 15, 2018 by JPGSP

[Kernel Kraken]

On 8/13/2018 at 2:41 PM, XB-70A said:

After two years hesitating and postponing, I finally made it... I drop a request to customize my number plate, which will be:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

The flight on which Columbia carried the Chandra space telescope.

Should receive it in six weeks, and I can't wait for it 

 

 

Hello? Is this 911? Yes, I'd like to report a stolen vehicle with the liscense plate number STS93... 

 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Kernel Kraken

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Hello? Is this 911? Yes, I'd like to report a stolen vehicle with the liscense plate number... STS93... 

 

I'm sorry, we've checked and we cannot find that vehicle anywhere on Earth.

[The Minmus Derp]

I now live on Notificatio

 

[steve_v]

On 8/1/2018 at 4:53 PM, Lisias said:

In the mean time, learn how to kick your opponent in the balls - strongly and without remorse.

Ahh, the male non-maskable interrupt. A guaranteed reboot if triggered with sufficient force.

I wouldn't call it funny, but today I got screwed over by the bass-ackwards 'murican date format. Again.

Edited August 17, 2018 by steve_v

[haanuman]

On 8/12/2018 at 11:53 PM, HerobrineLiu said:

My brother said “are you six feet tall?” I said no. Then, after pondering for a few minutes, he asked. “Are you at least 5 foot twelve?” And I laughed so hard.

Hahahaha! 

[MDZhB]

Today, I encountered an unusually high number of adorable things. Now I am temporarily happy.

On 8/12/2018 at 4:32 PM, Mjp1050 said:

So, I looked back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Perseids, and - hey presto! I saw the ISS overhead!

I remember being at a big scout event, and the ISS went overhead in the middle of a speech being given by an astronaut. I swear they planned it but I know they probably didn't.

12 hours ago, steve_v said:

I wouldn't call it funny, but today I got screwed over by the bass-ackwards 'murican date format. Again.

The whole world needs to switch to the East Asian way of doing things and write it YYYY/MM/DD. Seriously, though, I always write dates like "4 Oct 95," so that way at least mine are relatively unambiguous.

[Delay]

I'm looking for assurance here: Could anyone who has seen Inception please confirm to me that the vocabulary used is rather highbrow for a non-native speaker (watched it partially with subtitles, so acoustic understanding is not my concern)?

It was an avalanche of unknowns for me personally and I wouldn't say that my vocabulary is bad or slim in any way.

If I'm watching a movie in English in a cinema somehow and somewhen in the future I will most likely not be equipped with a dictionary or any means of writing down words, and the words I didn't get were crucial to the context most of the time - if not all the time. I'm slightly panicking, to be honest.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Delay

[MDZhB]

17 hours ago, Delay said:

I'm looking for assurance here: Could anyone who has seen Inception please confirm to me that the vocabulary used is rather highbrow for a non-native speaker (watched it partially with subtitles, so acoustic understanding is not my concern)?

It was an avalanche of unknowns for me personally and I wouldn't say that my vocabulary is bad or slim in any way.

If I'm watching a movie in English in a cinema somehow and somewhen in the future I will most likely not be equipped with a dictionary or any means of writing down words, and the words I didn't get were crucial to the context most of the time - if not all the time. I'm slightly panicking, to be honest.

I've never seen it myself, but looking over the script, there were definitely some more advanced words in there. Most of it seemed kind of intermediate, though. Could you give some examples?

[Delay]

18 minutes ago, MDZhB said:

Most of it seemed kind of intermediate, though. Could you give some examples?

Well, most words, like "antechamber" and "strong room" were words I simply never heard before. Additionally there were some words used in a way I never heard before, like "honor an arrangement". Neither "honor" (which I assume is like "keeping" in "keeping a promise") nor "arrangement" (agreement) were words I ever heard before in this way.

Examples for words I didn't know: catharsis, reconciliation (as well as "reconcile" later on), condescending, animosity. Don't know if I should feel bad about not knowing some of these words.

Then there are some accents making some words more difficult, gunfire obscuring words, etc. But I will admit: DiCaprio has a nice, easy-to-understand voice.

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by Delay

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, Delay said:

Well, most words, like "antechamber" and "strong room" were words I simply never heard before. Additionally there were some words used in a way I never heard before, like "honor an arrangement". Neither "honor" (which I assume is like "keeping" in "keeping a promise") nor "arrangement" (agreement) were words I ever heard before in this way.

Examples for words I didn't know: catharsis, reconciliation (as well as "reconcile" later on), condescending, animosity. Don't know if I should feel bad about not knowing some of these words.

Then there are some accents making some words more difficult, gunfire obscuring words. But I will admit: DiCaprio has a nice, easy-to-understand voice.



Antechamber and Strong room are not used often. Honor does mean keep in this scenario, but using it like that isn't really that common especially with arrangement (but more common than antechamber). I have no idea what a catharsis is. Reconciliation is not common but still used. Condescending isn't that common either.  Animosity is pretty much not used for anything other than high school vocabulary quizzes.

[Delay]

So I actually haven't been doing as bad as I thought, then?

[MDZhB]

24 minutes ago, Delay said:

So I actually haven't been doing as bad as I thought, then?

No, you're doing fine, but you still need to learn them. They're not nearly as uncommon as, say, "oneiromancy" (so uncommon that my browser thinks it's misspelled,) but they are still used. I've heard that about 20% of words make up about 80% of speech. However, it is the other 20% of speech that actually contains the most meaning, as you discovered watching Inception.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

30 minutes ago, Delay said:

Well, most words, like "antechamber" and "strong room" were words I simply never heard before. Additionally there were some words used in a way I never heard before, like "honor an arrangement". Neither "honor" (which I assume is like "keeping" in "keeping a promise") nor "arrangement" (agreement) were words I ever heard before in this way.

Examples for words I didn't know: catharsis, reconciliation (as well as "reconcile" later on), condescending, animosity. Don't know if I should feel bad about not knowing some of these words.

Then there are some accents making some words more difficult, gunfire obscuring words, etc. But I will admit: DiCaprio has a nice, easy-to-understand voice.

I don't think you should feel bad about not knowing those. Most of them are synonyms or less common ways of saying something. In many ways English doesn't have a concrete "formal" or "high-brow" vocabulary, rather it has many ways of saying things, and some people choose to use less common ones to be more precise. I would not have known you were not a native speaker of English at all.

Of the words you listed, only reconcile and condescending are relatively common.

To reconcile with someone is to drop, or come to an agreement over, whatever argument you were having. It can can also be for ideas, you can reconcile two ideas or opinions that you hold. For example, I could be fighting with someone over whether KSP of RimWorld was the best game ever, and reconcile with them by both of us agreeing that they are the best at different things. However, I could also reconcile those opinions if they were both mine.

To be condescending or to condescend is almost exactly a synonym for patronizing, or treating someone like they are inferior, particularly in knowledge, often with a fake tone of teaching.