Useless Conversation

[bhodi]

ITIL v3 training.  First day (Yesterday) was a huge infodump, so here's hoping today and tomorrow are much better.  Not a bad class and the instructor's pretty good, but I was exhausted last night.  Being lazy and out of work has ruined me.

Nah, it's just that ITIL sucks.

[Bunk]

Well, that was fun. Transformer in the office park was blown. We all show up for the 6:00 AM shift, and none of the keycards work. Picture 30 callcenter folk sitting around in a hallway for an hour and half with nothing to do.

[Signe]

Psst, Trippy.  Big Brother.  Tonight.

[Trippy]

What?

[Signe]

Well, since you watch American Idol - and  because you're unlikely to pick on me for watching trash TV.   

[Trippy]

Oh okay, sure, though I don't watch BB. This season has the mole right? Could be interesting.

[Signe]

Yes, this season has a mole and an orthodox jew.  They could be the same person but I'm not sure if mole is kosher.

[Minvaren]

Funny how a cheaply-burned (Microsoft, no less) CD and a bad floppy drive can double your expected maintenance window.

Ah well, with any luck, should only end up being a 18-hour day today.  Just wish I had brought a book...

[schild]

What the fuck is a floppy drive?

[Ironwood]

A Drive without sufficient blood flow.

[Lantyssa]

Hah!  Thanks.  I couldn't figure out how to phrase that without being vulgar.

[Sky]

Found a nest of (I think) yellow jackets in my yard yesterday. I was mowing and they swarmed out of the ground. I took off running and they attacked the mower like crazy. Then came after me twenty feet away. A nice frosty beer later I was able to move my mower away, but there's a nice little un-mowed patch being guarded by some angry critters.

I'm allergic to some form of bee, but not others, and I don't know which. Got stung when I was a kid and my hand swelled up like a balloon, but dad never identified the attacker. Got stung lots as a teenager without an allergic reaction. So I mostly give bees/wasps/hornets a pretty wide berth. Hate to kill them, but my lawn does need mowed, maybe if I can get around that one patch until winter...

[Lantyssa]

I've always been highly allergic to insect bites, but my first wasp sting seemed to innoculate me against future ones, at least for a while.  Still, I wouldn't recommend getting stung just to find out.

They do make some cool anti-wasp sprays that shoot a dozen feet.  You could make a real-life tower defense game out of it!

[Samwise]

I have a live and let live policy with most critters, but fuck yellow jackets.  If I found a nest of those in my back yard I'd nuke it from orbit.

[Mrbloodworth]

You're better off with a fresh install anyways. Never seen an 'upgrade' process go 100% smoothly. Always something down the line comes and bites you on the ass.

I really really don't want to reinstall everything, but I understand what you mean. I'm thinking i'm going to just step down to home premium instead of pro, after reviewing the original thread here, I don't think I need pro really, and everything says i can just upgrade using that from where I am at.

I'm not sure, but I don't think you can upgrade from 32 to 64 bit, no matter what edition.

After researching some more, you are correct.

So, I took back the pro version to best buy, got a refund. Hopped over to Samsclub, bought a 350gb external drive, and 7 home premium. All told, I saved 12$ (VS. what I paid for just pro at best buy). Now to set aside some time to copy over, install, and replace everything.

I got it all sorted out.

After two attempts to install that is.  

Some pro-tips (Not really):

1. Even upgrading (or custom as they call it) saves all your files in the windows.old folder (wish I had known that, surprise #1)
2. Using the 32-bit disk because the 64-bit won't run in a 32-bit environment will only install the 32-bit version, it never gives you the option to pick. Nothing tells you this in the documentation. (That was install #1 and surprise #2)
3. To go from 32 bit to 64 bit, you need to boot using the 64 bit disk.   (Install #2!)
4. Make sure you have your DvD drive set as your boot drive in the BIOS (Looks like I never set this up  )

Windows 7 64 is fancy. Sadly, my modeling package seems to requite a different key (possibly dongle as well) for 64 bit version, I need to sort this out with Newtek, quite sure my copy has both, its just the registration giving me issues. The rest of my art tools seem to work just fine, thankfully.

[Bunk]

Have to agree with Sam. Unless you plan on cordoning it off with a nice little fence, you'll eventually have some visiting kid run across it on the lawn and then armegedon will strike.

I have memories as a child of my dad in his homemade anti-wasp suit attacking a hive with a blowtorch.

[Sky]

Unless you plan on cordoning it off with a nice little fence, you'll eventually have some visiting kid run across it on the lawn and then armegedon will strike.

Wait, is this supposed to mean I should remove it or train a camera on it?

The winter should freeze out the nest, so it's really down to how much I want that patch mowed. With the code nazi across the street, looks bad for the nest. And I don't mean code nazi in a bad way, I lived in the country for half my life, so I know what kind of nonsense people get up to lacking codes and enforcement. Maybe not HOA fascism, but codes are generally a good thing.

In other insect news, the beetles are out of control this year. My poor honeycrisp tree; first a couple of late frosts, then a couple visits from deer, and now beetles.

Bunk: sub in a can of WD-40 and a lighter and that was my childhood insect defense system. Or offense, really.

[Sky]

Don't know where to put this: http://www.blockposters.com/

[voodoolily]

Found a nest of (I think) yellow jackets in my yard yesterday. I was mowing and they swarmed out of the ground. I took off running and they attacked the mower like crazy. Then came after me twenty feet away. A nice frosty beer later I was able to move my mower away, but there's a nice little un-mowed patch being guarded by some angry critters.

I'm allergic to some form of bee, but not others, and I don't know which. Got stung when I was a kid and my hand swelled up like a balloon, but dad never identified the attacker. Got stung lots as a teenager without an allergic reaction. So I mostly give bees/wasps/hornets a pretty wide berth. Hate to kill them, but my lawn does need mowed, maybe if I can get around that one patch until winter...

I had the same incident - stepped on a yellow jacket nest when I was a little kid, got stung all to fuck, swelled up something fierce, but then never had a reaction to bees after that. Winter may kill most of them, but the queens hibernate so it'll be a recurring problem unless you extricate those motherfuckers now. Plus they get more aggressive as the summer turns to fall, so it's better now than later.

I really like Get Rid of Things for advice on how to well, get rid of things. His advice for Eurasian wasps worked like a charm, and I was 6 months pregnant while battling those fuckers.

[Ingmar]

The good news is where you live, nests will almost certainly only last for one year - the new queen(s) will jaunt off somewhere else to start the next year's nest(s). They're a much worse problem in places where the nest can survive the winter:

http://www.aces.edu/department/extcomm/npa/daily/archives/002320.php

The bad news is the next nest might not really be that far away, so you probably want to think about taking the nest out anyway.

[Rasix]

I had a bunch of wasps land in my lawn sometime last year.  Must have been 20 or so.  In about 10 minutes a combination of birds and lizards had killed every single one.  

The lizards in my yard are so awesome.  It's a pity when one makes it inside, only to find there are 3 sadist cats waiting for it.  One, however, did manage to hold them off (by yelling at my cats and biting them.. that was just hilarious to see) about a week ago until I could scoop it up and toss it back outside.

[proudft]

I took out some yellow jackets living in our deck a few years ago.  I started out just flyswattering the little bastards one by one on the theory it was a small nest, but it soon became apparent there were unlimited numbers of them, so plan B: wasp killer with the 10-foot stream in the dark of the night went into effect.  After a few days with no sign of life I pulled the board down and amidst the dead drones was a nice fat dead queen about two inches long.   

We used to get wasps in the house all the time when I was a kid and they were generally mellow (this is where I got my crazy flyswatter idea), but I agree, yellow jackets are the aggressive assholes of the insect world.  I got stung once while riding a bike and it knocked me straight over onto the gravel - it was like an electric shock more than anything else at first with the raw OOMPH of it.  Our neighbor actually got BIT by the damn things, poor girl.

Cold and dark is your friend when dealing with them.  Use your warm blooded homeothermic powers to your advantage and ambush them when they are sluggish!

[Ingmar]

Yeah one got under the back of my shirt somehow in about 8th or 9th grade or so and stung me 4 or 5 times. In retrospect I probably looked pretty funny freaking out trying to get it out from under my shirt, but it wasn't much fun at the time.

[FatuousTwat]

I've had my head covered with yellow jackets before, it wasn't fun. Only got stung once though.

[Sky]

I really like Get Rid of Things for advice on how to well, get rid of things.

He likes Sevin dust, one of my favorite tools as a relative newbie homeowner. I normally hesitate to use it because it kills bees.

Still leaning toward a late night dousing with gasoline + match. Only concern is how soaked the stump roots would get, they're pretty porous by now and that could smolder for quite some time. That's when living in the country is a good thing, burning things with gallons of gas is your right on your property, gets a bit sticky in the city limits. Also looks like hot nights for a week at least, so pretty bad timing.

[Bunk]

I'm now picturing you setting up a portable AC unit on your lawn to slow the fuckers down.

[Sky]

Hmm...I do have some 1x2s and 6mil poly....

[craan]

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my Chapter 13.  4 more years to go!

[Viin]

I thought it stuck around for 10 years?

[Paelos]

I thought it stuck around for 10 years?

Chapter 13 plans usually propose a 3-5 year payback period. The law doesn't allow periods of longer than 5 years for a payback plan.

[Nebu]

The disadvantage of filing for personal bankruptcy is that, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a record of this stays on the individual's credit report for up to 10 years.

Perhaps this is what he meant about 10 years.

[Viin]

It is. But congrats, my mom had to go through this after a failed business venture and she's getting back on her feet now.

[RhyssaFireheart]

*sigh*

Just had a second interview for a job I know I'd like, but I came away feeling confused about how it went.  Only lasted a half hour and the exec director who I was meeting with also was like "you've worked in huge corporations with lots of responsibility, why do you think you'd fit in well at a small 10 person office?"  I think I gave a good answer to that (aka appearances are deceiving.  I typically worked alone/from home or with small teams.  It's not like I interacted with tons of people daily).

Still, just don't know how to feel about things.

This whole looking for a job thing just gets depressing after a while and it's been 9 months already.

[Engels]

Hang in there, Rhyssa. I was on the job hunt for a while too, and then suddenly I got one that interview I didn't expect, and then I got the offer I certainly didn't expect! Just remember, even if you think there must be a zillion other candidates, chances are, you're still in the top 5 percent of remotely viable candidates.

I know you're trying to break into a new field and all, which can be suuuuper frustrating since no one wants to take a risk, so that must be extra frustrating.

The way I made it through the months was just spend an hour each day, early in the morning, going through a search routine. After an hour, if I found nothing, I'd quit for the day and not think about it anymore. At first I had a hard time not feeling guilty for not looking ALL THE TIME, but my rational mind knew that realistically I had exhausted the reasonable options out there.

Anyways, probably stuff you'd heard a buncha times, so I hope it wasn't too annoying to hear again.

[Paelos]

*sigh*

Just had a second interview for a job I know I'd like, but I came away feeling confused about how it went.  Only lasted a half hour and the exec director who I was meeting with also was like "you've worked in huge corporations with lots of responsibility, why do you think you'd fit in well at a small 10 person office?"  I think I gave a good answer to that (aka appearances are deceiving.  I typically worked alone/from home or with small teams.  It's not like I interacted with tons of people daily).

Still, just don't know how to feel about things.

This whole looking for a job thing just gets depressing after a while and it's been 9 months already.

Took me 11 months here, but it was really happened because I started getting face to face with people even if they weren't hiring. Asking people for guidance or direction instead of interviews got me lots of names, contacts, and direction before one of the people that wasn't originally hiring remembered me and offered a job.

So, I'll echo the hang in there mantra and always suggest getting face-to-face contact as often as possible.