We had a huge number of orders from Alaska. I wondered why this was and checked out the orders. They were all mostly for 50 lb bags of dog food. And we offered free shipping. To Alaska. For 50 lb bags. I mentioned to someone that the shipping costs as much as the dog food. They stopped doing that.
And then I worked in customer support for a few weeks--that was lovely. People called all the time asking us complicated dietary questions. And pet health questions. Ones that would stump a vet. It baffled me every time. Why would you put your beloved pets health into a guy on the phone from a web page selling dog toys?
And one woman called from New York. She ordered a 50 lb bag of dog food and she said it was sitting outside in the hallway and what were going to do about that? I asked if she could get a neighbor to pick it up and bring it inside. She said "This is New York, nobody knows their neighbors." Then I said "I can get UPS to pick it up and return it to us." And she said "that would be fine. How long would it take?" I said "4 to 6 weeks." And she screamed at me. Prolonged screaming. I gave her to somebody else.
A kid from an elementary school asked me how to tell if a rabbit was a boy or a girl. I found a good web page on "sexing rabbits." (Which is what the procedure is called.) I sent the link to the kid and I got called into an office and asked "why am I sending 'sex with rabbits' webpages to kids? I just received an angry call from a parent." I showed her the webpage--it was not 'having sex with rabbits' but 'how to sex rabbits' and showed a bunch of rabbit private part's pictures. I was off the hook.
FTA: " With packet prioritization (generally referred to as QoS)... your own video downloads won't need to be stopped and they won't interfere with your VoIP or gaming."
My Linksys router has a section conveniently called "QoS" Is there any way to adjust these settings so I don't get severe lagging while downloading the latest Ubuntu ISO? (Or something else?)
Also, I turned on Encryption inside Azureus and my download speed jumped 4 times the rate I was getting. Just a hint for everybody who has Comcast.
Actually, there was a small town somewhere in the Midwest where they passed a law requiring every home-owner to buy and learn how to properly use a gun. (Kennesaw, GA for one.)
Crime went down.
There have been other small towns that do this and crime goes down.
You should have seen CNN when Vista came out. Gates was giving a presentation of all the new Vista features.
One of the reporters said "Many of these features have been available on Macs for years." Oh man, Bill Gates was stuttering mad. It was great because I think the reporter was totally clueless about the Mac/Microsoft rivalry and just asked the questions on observations he made while watching Gates's presentation.
"One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded.
The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast."
Funny, after Serpico came out, all the undercovers started acting and dressing like him. Hopefully they emulated his finer qualities such as honesty and integrity.
A murder committed using a Microscopic Black Hole.
This scientific team was orbiting Mars, and their power source on the space craft was using some kind of high energy collisions which had accidentally created a Microscopic Black Hole. It was being held in the spacecraft because of the high energy magnets. These two scientists had been going at it the whole long trip and a bit of the space crazies came over one of the scientists. He called his colleague to an area 'below' the Microscopic Black Hole (you know, underneath the magnets with the gravity well of Mars underneath him.)
The mad scientist let the magnets go and the MBH went through the ship, through the scientist's head, and out of the ship to the center of Mars. The tidal forces of the MBH tore apart the ill-fated scientist as surely as a bullet travelling through the body. But there was no evidence of anything. The mad scientist got away with it. And he doomed Mars to boot.
When I worked at Apple, there was a guy who built an igloo with styrofoam over his cubicle. Didn't have a door but it was a nice cubicle-igloo. One night I went to check it out, seeing as how it was 1 am and there was nobody in the building. His office was lined with monitors displaying a trippy acid pattern that had me mesmerized for about 15 minutes. Just the quiet of the office building and the dim lights with the monitors going all loopy and the igloo above created a very serene environment.
Then I heard "Can I help you?" And I jumped. I turned around and there was a bearded guy in a sleeping bag. I said ".....uhhhhhh......sorry" and leaped out of there.
I never did find out who it was or why he did that. I wasn't really supposed to be in that area of the building at that time so asking around was a no-go.
If anybody knows, I'd like to hear it. This was about 1990 in DeAnza 3 or 4.
That's what I was thinking. A huge, unwieldy, Kafkaesque nightmare that, on top of everything, really doesn't do anything, is a bureaucrat's wet fucking dream.
My brother was in the Air Force. There were many times when a plane full of Marines or Army couldn't take off until my brother fixed what was wrong on the aircraft. (In fact, one Colonel was yelling at him to get the plane off the ground and he replied "I will, if you'll stop yelling at me." The Colonel got pissed and said "Where's your salute?" and my bro said "No saluting on the flight line sir." And went about his business.)
Those soldiers would have had to book a commercial flight to whatever hot zone they were going to without my bro. (Southwest discourages HALO jumps I believe.)
Why not have the waiting/seating area resemble the plane layout. The people can sit down where they're supposed to sit on the plane. Then you have the seat number plastered all over so people can get their seat number unconsciously ingrained in their head. Then the stewardess comes along and says "Seat 29 go ahead....Seat 28 get onboard...." All the way down. It doesn't have to resemble the plane seats. Just the layout.
There. i solved it. Thanks to your removable seat theory.
DeBeers created the greatest marketing campaign in history. (recently voted on by marketing people.) Even children know that a man gives a woman a diamond before marriage. Which wasn't always the case. And they created the idea that second-hand diamonds are somehow inferior. A "diamond is forever" after all.
My brother works at a major pharmaceutical company. I was asking him recently about stocks and he said the following:
"I don't understand the stock market at all. We get a good FDA report and a promising drug is released, and the stock goes down. We kill 10 people and the stock goes up. Who the fuck knows?"
It's like when I worked at Pets.com. The stock was at 2 cents--for a couple months.
My boss turned to me one day and said "Ummmm...what the hell are you still doing here?" (While I was browsing the internet and my mouth full of bagel.)
A friend of mine recently bought a new laptop. He told me that this brand new laptop was infested with all sorts of viruses, making it act very strange. I thought he was using XP (I haven't bought a computer lately) and told him I would take a look at it.
He gave it to me and I saw it was Vista. I turned it on and he showed me how the screen would blank out and dialog boxes would open up. I told him that was the Vista security features. He should be happy that his computer was being so diligent in protecting itself. I could turn them off but that would lead to no security at all.
This guy died because he didn't get the right medication.
When you have chronic pain, you pretty much have to take opioids. I have a herniated disc and I didn't get the right medication until I found a specialist. Previous doctors were loath to prescribe even Vicodin long-term.
Although you can't think as well on opioids, at least you can function day-to-day and not think about offing yourself. I feel really bad for this guy. He didn't get the right treatment because of our fucking drug laws and paranoid doctors.
That reminds me of trying to explain "I can has cheezburger" to my hairstylist.
While cutting my hair one day, she mentioned she loved taking pictures of her cats.
I said "You should check out this new craze. It's called "I can has cheezburger" and you take a picture of a cat doing something, and then you put a caption on it that is clever, then you post it on the internet."
She says "I already go to a site and upload my cat pictures."
I say "Well, it's not really cat pictures. It kind of 'transcends' cat pictures and becomes something else. Kind of a "meta-cat picture".
She says "....uhhhh...what?..."
I say "I can't really explain it, you kind of have to see it. Go to this website: 'I...can...has...cheezburger... spelled with a z and no 'e'"
She says "....uhhhh...what?...."
I say "I'll write it down...the site is named after the first cat picture called "I can has cheezburger". Now that cheezburger cat is famous in his own right. He's called 'Happycat'."
She says "the pictures are of cats eating cheeseburgers?"
I say "No, just captioned cheezburger."
She says "Ok"
She now thinks I'm completely insane and is silent for the rest of the haircut.
Einstein said quite a bit more than just "God does not play dice with the universe."
He also said "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive."
And "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion."
From "The God Delusion" by Dawkins p. 18:
"There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like 'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice' should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.' 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' means 'Could the universe have begun in any other way?' Einstein was using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense.
He said even more things. Enough so that a rabbi said about Einstein that "his religious views are diametrically opposed to Judaism." The Christian leaders of the time denounced Einstein as a filthy atheist.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at Pets.com.
We had a huge number of orders from Alaska. I wondered why this was and checked out the orders. They were all mostly for 50 lb bags of dog food. And we offered free shipping. To Alaska. For 50 lb bags. I mentioned to someone that the shipping costs as much as the dog food. They stopped doing that.
And then I worked in customer support for a few weeks--that was lovely. People called all the time asking us complicated dietary questions. And pet health questions. Ones that would stump a vet. It baffled me every time. Why would you put your beloved pets health into a guy on the phone from a web page selling dog toys?
And one woman called from New York. She ordered a 50 lb bag of dog food and she said it was sitting outside in the hallway and what were going to do about that? I asked if she could get a neighbor to pick it up and bring it inside. She said "This is New York, nobody knows their neighbors." Then I said "I can get UPS to pick it up and return it to us." And she said "that would be fine. How long would it take?" I said "4 to 6 weeks." And she screamed at me. Prolonged screaming. I gave her to somebody else.
A kid from an elementary school asked me how to tell if a rabbit was a boy or a girl. I found a good web page on "sexing rabbits." (Which is what the procedure is called.) I sent the link to the kid and I got called into an office and asked "why am I sending 'sex with rabbits' webpages to kids? I just received an angry call from a parent." I showed her the webpage--it was not 'having sex with rabbits' but 'how to sex rabbits' and showed a bunch of rabbit private part's pictures. I was off the hook.
FTA: " With packet prioritization (generally referred to as QoS)... your own video downloads won't need to be stopped and they won't interfere with your VoIP or gaming."
My Linksys router has a section conveniently called "QoS" Is there any way to adjust these settings so I don't get severe lagging while downloading the latest Ubuntu ISO? (Or something else?)
Also, I turned on Encryption inside Azureus and my download speed jumped 4 times the rate I was getting. Just a hint for everybody who has Comcast.
Actually, there was a small town somewhere in the Midwest where they passed a law requiring every home-owner to buy and learn how to properly use a gun. (Kennesaw, GA for one.)
Crime went down.
There have been other small towns that do this and crime goes down.
That sucks
You should have seen CNN when Vista came out. Gates was giving a presentation of all the new Vista features.
One of the reporters said "Many of these features have been available on Macs for years." Oh man, Bill Gates was stuttering mad. It was great because I think the reporter was totally clueless about the Mac/Microsoft rivalry and just asked the questions on observations he made while watching Gates's presentation.
It was very funny.
Especially seeing as how she lives in a LAKE.
I would like to play Google-sub through the Marianis. Wouldn't you?
Sheesh, what do you do at work?
A good SR-71 anecdote. From "Sled Driver"
"One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded.
The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast."
Serpico was NYPD but I get your point.
Funny, after Serpico came out, all the undercovers started acting and dressing like him. Hopefully they emulated his finer qualities such as honesty and integrity.
Awesome.
THanks.
I hate when I can think of a short story, but there's no way to google for it. How do you google the basic concept of a story? I don't know.
A murder committed using a Microscopic Black Hole.
This scientific team was orbiting Mars, and their power source on the space craft was using some kind of high energy collisions which had accidentally created a Microscopic Black Hole. It was being held in the spacecraft because of the high energy magnets. These two scientists had been going at it the whole long trip and a bit of the space crazies came over one of the scientists. He called his colleague to an area 'below' the Microscopic Black Hole (you know, underneath the magnets with the gravity well of Mars underneath him.)
The mad scientist let the magnets go and the MBH went through the ship, through the scientist's head, and out of the ship to the center of Mars. The tidal forces of the MBH tore apart the ill-fated scientist as surely as a bullet travelling through the body. But there was no evidence of anything. The mad scientist got away with it. And he doomed Mars to boot.
They should make a CSI based on that.
When I worked at Apple, there was a guy who built an igloo with styrofoam over his cubicle. Didn't have a door but it was a nice cubicle-igloo. One night I went to check it out, seeing as how it was 1 am and there was nobody in the building. His office was lined with monitors displaying a trippy acid pattern that had me mesmerized for about 15 minutes. Just the quiet of the office building and the dim lights with the monitors going all loopy and the igloo above created a very serene environment.
Then I heard "Can I help you?" And I jumped. I turned around and there was a bearded guy in a sleeping bag. I said ".....uhhhhhh......sorry" and leaped out of there.
I never did find out who it was or why he did that. I wasn't really supposed to be in that area of the building at that time so asking around was a no-go.
If anybody knows, I'd like to hear it. This was about 1990 in DeAnza 3 or 4.
That's what I was thinking. A huge, unwieldy, Kafkaesque nightmare that, on top of everything, really doesn't do anything, is a bureaucrat's wet fucking dream.
My brother was in the Air Force. There were many times when a plane full of Marines or Army couldn't take off until my brother fixed what was wrong on the aircraft. (In fact, one Colonel was yelling at him to get the plane off the ground and he replied "I will, if you'll stop yelling at me." The Colonel got pissed and said "Where's your salute?" and my bro said "No saluting on the flight line sir." And went about his business.)
Those soldiers would have had to book a commercial flight to whatever hot zone they were going to without my bro. (Southwest discourages HALO jumps I believe.)
"Knock, knock"
"Who's there?"
"A terrorist with a bomb--fucking BANG!"
Why not have the waiting/seating area resemble the plane layout. The people can sit down where they're supposed to sit on the plane. Then you have the seat number plastered all over so people can get their seat number unconsciously ingrained in their head. Then the stewardess comes along and says "Seat 29 go ahead....Seat 28 get onboard...." All the way down. It doesn't have to resemble the plane seats. Just the layout.
There. i solved it. Thanks to your removable seat theory.
DeBeers created the greatest marketing campaign in history. (recently voted on by marketing people.) Even children know that a man gives a woman a diamond before marriage. Which wasn't always the case. And they created the idea that second-hand diamonds are somehow inferior. A "diamond is forever" after all.
Damn. That's a lot of latency.
The Japanese are going to have to tap into subspace to avoid all that latency. When is that going to happen?
I think we all know biospheres are unsustainable. Pauly Shore proved it in the eponymous documentary.
My brother works at a major pharmaceutical company. I was asking him recently about stocks and he said the following:
"I don't understand the stock market at all. We get a good FDA report and a promising drug is released, and the stock goes down. We kill 10 people and the stock goes up. Who the fuck knows?"
It's like when I worked at Pets.com. The stock was at 2 cents--for a couple months.
My boss turned to me one day and said "Ummmm...what the hell are you still doing here?" (While I was browsing the internet and my mouth full of bagel.)
That was my notice. Seriously.
A friend of mine recently bought a new laptop. He told me that this brand new laptop was infested with all sorts of viruses, making it act very strange. I thought he was using XP (I haven't bought a computer lately) and told him I would take a look at it.
He gave it to me and I saw it was Vista. I turned it on and he showed me how the screen would blank out and dialog boxes would open up. I told him that was the Vista security features. He should be happy that his computer was being so diligent in protecting itself. I could turn them off but that would lead to no security at all.
Problem solved!
This guy died because he didn't get the right medication.
When you have chronic pain, you pretty much have to take opioids. I have a herniated disc and I didn't get the right medication until I found a specialist. Previous doctors were loath to prescribe even Vicodin long-term.
Although you can't think as well on opioids, at least you can function day-to-day and not think about offing yourself. I feel really bad for this guy. He didn't get the right treatment because of our fucking drug laws and paranoid doctors.
That reminds me of trying to explain "I can has cheezburger" to my hairstylist.
While cutting my hair one day, she mentioned she loved taking pictures of her cats.
I said "You should check out this new craze. It's called "I can has cheezburger" and you take a picture of a cat doing something, and then you put a caption on it that is clever, then you post it on the internet."
She says "I already go to a site and upload my cat pictures."
I say "Well, it's not really cat pictures. It kind of 'transcends' cat pictures and becomes something else. Kind of a "meta-cat picture".
She says "....uhhhh...what?..."
I say "I can't really explain it, you kind of have to see it. Go to this website: 'I...can...has...cheezburger... spelled with a z and no 'e'"
She says "....uhhhh...what?...."
I say "I'll write it down...the site is named after the first cat picture called "I can has cheezburger". Now that cheezburger cat is famous in his own right. He's called 'Happycat'."
She says "the pictures are of cats eating cheeseburgers?"
I say "No, just captioned cheezburger."
She says "Ok"
She now thinks I'm completely insane and is silent for the rest of the haircut.
Einstein said quite a bit more than just "God does not play dice with the universe."
He also said "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems
even naive."
And "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat
new kind of religion."
From "The God Delusion" by Dawkins p. 18:
"There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like
'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or
'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic,
not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice'
should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all
things.' 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' means
'Could the universe have begun in any other way?' Einstein was
using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense.
He said even more things. Enough so that a rabbi said about Einstein that "his religious views are diametrically opposed to Judaism." The Christian leaders of the time denounced Einstein as a filthy atheist.