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Heiwashin wrote:

The worst road conditions I ever dealt with were in Texas during a freak snow a few years back. They pretty much abandoned the roads because of an inch of snow. I almost got hit by people losing control twice that day because if their inexperience I'm sure.

...and no plows, and no deicer or traction enhancement on the roads, and people with old tires that are hard or bald, and...

A good many northerners who mock southerners for their lack of snow expertise would promptly put their own car in a ditch if they tried to drive on the type of road conditions that result when a couple inches of snow falls right at freezing point in, say, Atlanta.

I got out of my workshop after working out yesterday, all sweaty in shorts and a tanktop...it was a little above freezing when I went out to work out, and in low single digits when I got done (in like 1.5 hours).

That was the fastest I've run back to the house in ages We're not getting snow though so I'm pissed, we need moisture. Us panhandle denizens are laughing at south Texas freaking out over a few flakes though (yes, I understand the logistics, it's just funny).

The DBA class I'm in is being taught by a guy younger than me which does nothing for my ego.

But we're one session in and he's already stepped in it with me a couple times. He's bright, but he knows it and he's not afraid to tell you, and he likes to brag about his employer's clientele. All that just rubs me the wrong way and so I foresee a semester of looking for opportunities to pounce. He also teaches my Thursday night class, so I'm going to get another opportunity.

My favorite interaction tonight was, immediately after self-identifying as a hardware enthusiast that stays "pretty current", his assertion that the Phenom 2 was the latest line of CPUs from AMD, and that the Opteron line was the server family. I mean, Ryzen and Epyc are relatively new but it's not like they weren't the most exciting thing to happen in CPUs in 2017. I did correct him gently, but sure an "enthusiast" would know this stuff, right?

DerFunk, I've resembled that post, although I like to think I grew out of it at a younger age than he sounds to be. Hopefully time and life experience will make him more bearable, although I'd be impressed if you could fix him before your class was up.

Sounds like you're off to a great start!

Vhalidictes, I've also resembled it, but I always hate myself for it afterwards. And we were in a bad way last night. I'd like to think he was, to extent, shooting off the cuff.

The class is designed to prepare us for MCSA SQL Server certification exams, and part of that administration exam includes the installation process. Well, every PC in the removable-drive lab where the course meets apparently chose yesterday afternoon to install the Windows 10 fall creator's update and then fail at the ~92% mark. That made it hard to demonstrate. So he was doing his best to talk it through, and said a handful of boneheaded things (or things that were boneheaded in context) that he might not have otherwise said, and fill time. So I'm trying to give him a break. Still rubs me the wrong way.

It's not really about fixing or setting him straight, it's about making the semester tolerable via schadenfreude.

I could've almost forgiven him if he'd said FX series, though at this point you'd practically have to be living in a cave to have not heard of it. Actually, same could be said for Ryzen given all the hype it got.

ludi wrote:

A good many northerners who mock southerners for their lack of snow expertise would promptly put their own car in a ditch if they tried to drive on the type of road conditions that result when a couple inches of snow falls right at freezing point in, say, Atlanta.

For sure. Those types of rapid cold fronts usually cause freezing rain and large amounts of ice, and southern states rarely have any infrastructure to get salt on the roads. I'd say it's equal parts ice, lack of road treatment, and lack of winter driving skill.

just brew it! wrote:

I could've almost forgiven him if he'd said FX series, though at this point you'd practically have to be living in a cave to have not heard of it. Actually, same could be said for Ryzen given all the hype it got.

If he hadn't professed his "enthusiast" status I'd have let it go, but he had to go and say that not 60 seconds prior.

Something else kind of obnoxious is that he wants assignments turned in as printed paper rather than electronic form submitted through Blackboard, and as a result we're not allowed to hand them in early. Why not just have us turn in a PDF?

Even non-enthusiasts have heard of Ryzen, so yeah that's pretty terrible. Heck, a few weeks ago I ran into the 40-something parents of a friend of mine. They know about crypto-coins and mined part of one, the guy was talking about it in that way people get with a new toy. Was amusingly fixated on figuring out when to sell it to get back the electricity he spent on it.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Something else kind of obnoxious is that he wants assignments turned in as printed paper rather than electronic form submitted through Blackboard, and as a result we're not allowed to hand them in early. Why not just have us turn in a PDF?

My experience isn't recent, but professors were always quirky like that. Some simply didn't want the hassle of dealing with getting files in outdated formats or programs they didn't use. Only accepting paper was the usual result. Edit: I'll add that the profs that allowed digital files for assignments also ran them through the usual plagiarizer-check programs though, so there's that.

The Egg wrote:

ludi wrote:

A good many northerners who mock southerners for their lack of snow expertise would promptly put their own car in a ditch if they tried to drive on the type of road conditions that result when a couple inches of snow falls right at freezing point in, say, Atlanta.

For sure. Those types of rapid cold fronts usually cause freezing rain and large amounts of ice, and southern states rarely have any infrastructure to get salt on the roads. I'd say it's equal parts ice, lack of road treatment, and lack of winter driving skill.

Local authorities have no equipment or supplies for dealing with snow or ice. My (90 minute - double the normal time) commute this morning (at 15-18 °F) was 35 miles of slick ice (about ½ to ¾ inch thick) followed by 15 miles that had an inch of snow on top of half an inch of ice. That wouldn't be too scary if I were the only car on the road (front wheel drive and a smooth and patient driving style has its advantages), but with the local yahoos spinning their SUVs and pickup trucks (and one Camaro) into the guardrails left and right, it made for a rather stressful drive. I actually laughed at the SUV driver that pulled out onto a four-lane U.S. highway, gunned the engine and spun 180° one way, then 180° the other, then fishtailed to a stop cross-ways across both lanes. Fortunately, I saw it coming a quarter mile away and I coasted to a stop before I reached the unfortunate SUV driver.

Although today's high didn't quite reach the freezing point, by the time that I drove home this evening, the sun had melted off 90% of the ice, leaving it only in the shade of trees, buildings and overpasses.I still saw more SUVs spinning off into ditches and guardrails in those shady spots.

Kougar wrote:

My experience isn't recent, but professors were always quirky like that. Some simply didn't want the hassle of dealing with getting files in outdated formats or programs they didn't use. Only accepting paper was the usual result. Edit: I'll add that the profs that allowed digital files for assignments also ran them through the usual plagiarizer-check programs though, so there's that.

I'm in my 4th semester so these classes are my 10th, 11th, and 12th at the school. This guy is the first, so it's definitely a quirk.

And yes, every one of my other classes that used blackboard has used the plagiarizing checkers. It's weird to see that my project is only 70% or 80% unique, but when they give you an interface to implement, all the method calls are going to match. Same for javadoc.

After the great snow storm of 2018 here in the Deep South I brave the still icy roads to travel into work to actually get some work done. So I stopped at my local Chick-fil-a for breakfast. As I was leaving and driving through an intersection some jasck@55 decides he wanted to change lanes mid intersection, cutting me off and almost forcing me into oncoming traffic I laid on the horn stomped the brake and seriously and very animatedly cussed him. The guy behind me cussed me but he saw what was going down and waved after we all avoided the accident.

I pull in behind Mr. Cut off still pissed but going to work. And for a few miles and turns, it turns out I am still behind this jack@55. Lo and behold he still taking the same turns as I am and he pulls into the same parking lot as I do. I sat there for a few minutes watching him and I got the sense that he's rattled, he thinks I followed him! Not thinking I work the same place he does. He's moving all nervous and finally someone else pulls in and he beelines toward that person making small talk about the weather and the roads.

So I approach just to see what he would say, (yes I admit I was agonizing him a bit) "hey man you almost caused a big accident back there by switching lanes in an intersection." He retorts, " And... We both have insurance."

Notsomuchasanapology

WHAT an EFF-tard.

That would've pissed me off even more. After a retort like that I would've asked him for his insurance info on the spot, and say in that case I just want it in advance. Since the guy works there you'll be sharing the roads with him frequently.

Found out he's fairly new and that he's pretty much a long term contractor that probably going to turn into permanent. It didnt register at first but the guy has a British Accent his plates were from Florida. Next time I see him I'll be sure to call him a wanker and give him the two finger salute.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/perso ... n-chicago/

Saw all the police cars as I was leaving work this afternoon, and wondered what was up. Figured someone had probably gone over the railing into the river or something.

Someone at work is posting pages from an Agile tutorial in the restroom stalls.

That's weird, and yet a perfect thing to post in DYMT.

The charging port on my Nexus 6 has become very particular lately. I now have to do the dance of phone charging in order to get the cable seated properly. I'm pretty sure there's a fair amount of compacted gunk in there. Attempting to de-gunk it produces scritchy scratchy noises which make me nervous and has been mostly unsuccessful anyway. Even if I did manage to de-gunk it I'm not sure how much of the problem is caused by the gunk, and how much is just the effects of it being old and wiggy. I have no complaints about the phone in general, and for my uses battery life is still acceptable(at least compared to battery life of most phones in general these days). Even though I could upgrade to something else I'm not really interested in doing so.

The solution: a puck of wireless charging. It's pretty nifty. Score one against planned obsolescence, at least for now.

Redocbew wrote:

The solution: a puck of wireless charging. It's pretty nifty. Score one against planned obsolescence, at least for now.

Yeah, I got a pair of wireless chargers (one for home, one for work) shortly after I got my G4. I went with an angled stand style of charger instead of a puck, so the phone remains at a good viewing angle even while charging. I figured it would save a lot of wear and tear on the charging jack, given how frequently modern smartphones need to be charged.

Edit: The Agile tutorials are reportedly showing up in the women's restroom too. So either there are two (or more) "somebodies" of different genders, or someone is sneaking into the opposite gender restroom before/after normal business hours to post these.

Well, they are "Agile" after all

I bought tickets for the Falcon Heavy launch. Don't know when it'll be, but I'll be ready for it. $195 was alot of dough, but to be ~6 miles from the launch pad on the inaugural launch of something that I expect to be a game-changer is fabulous. The closest analogy I can think of would be the launch of STS-1 with John Young on board.

I'd like to attend something like that. Unfortunately with the likelihood of schedule changes of launches it's not reasonable for me to try.

Correct. They change all the time. Unmanned launches tend to be a little more stable though as the tolerances for weather are lower. For manned launches, they have to have clear weather at the launch site, and also at I think it is 3 different landing sits; primary plus secondary and aborts. Also the tracking stations have to be all setup etc.

That static fire video of the Heavy was intense. I particularly liked the flickering at the end of the flame trench - nothing like seeing sound to know that is pretty loud!

Went to the local Asian market today to pick up some ingredients for a batch of Dan Dan Noodles, and came across this. I flipped the box over and it was made in Japan. Interesting to see that somehow VT is associated with apples & honey in Japan.

Captain Ned wrote:

Interesting to see that somehow VT is associated with apples & honey in Japan.

My Google-fu turned up this explanation:
http://justhungry.com/house-vermont-curry-mystery

I'd try that. But I mix stuff up; right now I'm eating chili that we made out of leftover green chili pulled pork. It's different but good. And hot.


I want everyone to be healthy; can I complain about that? Since Christmas we've passed around ear infections, strep, and bronchitis. And a stomach bug that my 5 year old is currently miserable from (wife's got bronchitis). The family that coughs together stays together

TFW you are taking a shower, fumble the soap, try to catch it but only succeed in launching it into the air, and it bounces off the wall and out of the shower thru the gap between the shower curtain and the wall. Now you're dripping wet, naked, half-blind (you took your glasses off because you were going to take a shower), and crawling around on the bathroom floor looking for the soap (which is in the far corner, under the overhang of the vanity where it would be hard to see even with your glasses).

jbi, work naked day was yesterday.

The incident in question occurred yesterday.