Useless Conversation

[ghost]

I might just take five days off and drive west, see if I can make it to the Grand Canyon.

That might be more up your alley.  There's honestly nothing in Dallas or Houston that you don't have in Austin.  

Time to get ready for the Jimmy Buffett concert at Alpine Valley.  We've got VIP parking and are leaving early to avoid construction and just hang out until the show begins.

That always appears to be the best part of a Buffett concert.  He hasn't done it in a few years, but in the late 90's/ early 00's he'd sell out 3-4 shows in Cincinnati and it was always a huge party.  Many a friend came in to class/ studio very green the day after.

The Cincinnati concerts are always some of his best.  Lots of partying going on there.

[Yegolev]

I'm against piracy at the moment mostly because it makes for very difficult searching on any sort of how-to-create-bluray queries.  I just need to fucking know what product I can use to put a plain fucking mts file onto a bluray such that it will play in any bluray player.  Menus and chapters would be nice also, but instead I get lots of "hurr I can't get my BD rip to play in WinDVD".

[Yegolev]

Also, Firefox 5?  It's nice but why the major increment?

[Chimpy]

Also, Firefox 5?  It's nice but why the major increment?

They changed their release schedule/numbering scheme. Apparently the fact that Chrome is like version 12 after only about half the time it took firefox to get to 4 and Google releases large number patches in a short cycle (even if they really are not huge revisions) has started an echo chamber of "OMG Y CANT U B MOAR LIKE GOOGLE?!?"

[Yegolev]

That's just stupid.

Last time I bothered to invent a silly numbering scheme, I used a year and a number.  Like script.2009.1 and then script.2009.2, etc.

[Lantyssa]

I commented on this in another thread when I found out 5.0 was in beta when 4.0 had been out like a month.

[ghost]

But Google Chrome goes to 11.   

[MuffinMan]

Shakespeare, wise fwom your gwave.

A scientist is trying to dig up Bill to comfirm that he smoked pot. I'm not sure why it matters, maybe they're just bored?

[Soln]

buddy who left the country also dumped us with his stuff, which included his Roku box.  I hooked it up, and there was nothing on Netflix I saw immediately to warrant a subscription.  But Roku also connects to Pandora and Amazon and others.  With my Amazon Prime membership there's a raft of stuff.  Basically, hooked up the Roku, connected the device to my Amazon account, and voila.  Watching now in order the complete Baker episodes of Dr.Who    Quality is pretty good.

[Abagadro]

I had a great weekend, my 360 blew up and then I had a tire blow.

[Mosesandstick]

Did you install a system update? Mine did that and it seems to a common problem.

[Merusk]

Fucking wonky-ass tire programmers.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Definitely Monday.

Is it too much to expect that my drink isn't going to drip down the front of my white shirt when on the way to work?  Honestly, McDonald's, maybe if you wiped the damn things off a bit before giving the drink out, this might not happen.  Had to stop and buy a new top because Dr Pepper and white doesn't mix well.

[Yegolev]

Bib.

[Sand]

People who drink sodas in the morning rather than good old fashioned coffee are strange. I expect it out of teenagers and their Mountain Dew, but adults who do it freak me out.

[Sky]

Well, I'm sure we'll be back to talking about apples in a page or so.

My producer tree just got a small infestation of aphids and buttsuckers (ants). So going to have to look into dual control, though at least the ants remove the honeydew that is the destructive component of the green apple aphid, so I'm just dealing with stunted growth instead of damage.

[RhyssaFireheart]

People who drink sodas in the morning rather than good old fashioned coffee are strange. I expect it out of teenagers and their Mountain Dew, but adults who do it freak me out.

Coffee is vile, vile stuff and the smell of it brewing nauseates me.  Coffee-flavored ice cream is heaven on earth though.

My pop vice is Dr Pepper and I much prefer to drink that over anything else.  I've found it really difficult to give up and I know I should if only for health reasons.

[ghost]

Go for a month drinking nothing but water.  You'll find you have more energy and generally feel better. 

[Cyrrex]

Meanwhile, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper is making a comeback at my local Target, and that shit is DA BOMB.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Go for a month drinking nothing but water.  You'll find you have more energy and generally feel better. 

Except for the mornings (lately), all I drink is water.  I occassionally get some of those flavor packets because plain water just gets old, but I carry my trusty water bottles with me everywhere.  I like the ones I have now because it's easy to track how much I've drank during the day (each is 24 ozs full and has tick marks showing how much is left/I've drank).  I find I tend to drink more water when I'm not guesstimating how much I've had already.

[Morat20]

It is hotter than the surface of the fucking sun outside, and 70% humidity. I saw cars melting and two dogs catch on fire.

[Rasix]

It's pretty  when it hits 100 before 9 am.

[Selby]

Yeah, I was in Phoenix the other day and it was 97 at 8:15AM.  Glad I was inside with the AC...

[ghost]

So I'm into my once-every-six-months tour through the new Penny Arcade cartoons and I came across this gem:



which I found funny for obvious reasons.   

[Minvaren]

Always amusing when the company lays off 10% of headcount without notice...

[Paelos]

Always amusing when the company lays off 10% of headcount without notice...

On a Monday?

[Minvaren]

Always amusing when the company lays off 10% of headcount without notice...

On a Monday?

Yeah, threw me as well.  Especially as they decided last week they'd be laying off another 10% on Friday...

My job is safe, but the company is supposed to be "expanding" in the near future...?   

[Merusk]

You can expand while laying people off.  2 employers ago did exactly this, using war-chested money to expand while slashing existing jobs because the day-to-day revenue wouldn't allow the additional overhead for the new office.  Net employ stayed the same, but they were now in a new region of the country.

To cover the existing workflow, they just pay 'bonus' money for completing extra jobs/ tasks.  This bonus pay is perhaps 1/4th of what another person would cost in pay alone, never mind the additional overhead like insurance, workman's comp and equipment/ supplies.

[Minvaren]

It's pretty much the same scenario you describe, minus the bonuses.   

[Merusk]

Full disclosure, they didn't offer the bonuses there until 6-7 months later when they realized they couldn't actually squeeze any more production out of people and they'd poisoned the employment well enough that they wouldn't be able to hire-on new & skilled help in time.  (Sure, you can hire any number of college grads, but that just increases management's time checking shit.)

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yikes!  Sorry to hear that, Minvaren.

In other random news, the husband got an email in the middle of the day from his brother basically saying his wife's now staying with friends in town, they're separated and are going to be explaining the situation with their two girls, 7 and 4, this weekend.  They've already got a schedule figured out for sharing time with the kids and in a lovely bit of irony, this weekend would be their 11th anniversary.

[IainC]

...and in a lovely bit of irony, this weekend would be their 11th anniversary.

AlannisMorrissette.jpg

[Paelos]

I'm back from Ireland. I ate soooooooo much butter.

Also I walked it all off on golf courses. It's windy there. And green.

[ghost]

When I was in college I thought it would be really cool to ride a bike across southern Ireland.  Unfortunately it rained on me the whole time with 30-40 mph gusts.  It was certainly pretty though.  I wouldn't recommend the biking.   

[Morat20]

So, the estimate on my wife's Beetle (2001 Turbo, 35,000 miles on it. She doesn't drive it much. We're planning on giving it to my kid when he turns 16 (in two years) which is, coincidentally, when I pay off MY car so I can afford a new one for her.

Anyways, it's had a reoccuring AC leak for years. Really small leak. We'd have to recharge it every 12 months or so, they'd dye it, and by the time we brought it back  (cause the AC stopped working), the dye had all evaporated. It's been needing to have that done, and then it abruptly stopped going into either 1st or 3rd gear.

So I had it towed to the shop with a "Figure out the clutch or whatever, and recharge the AC. Don't worry about where the leak is, you guys couldn't find it the last four times".

THey called this morning. It was a good news/bad news/fuck you news situation.

The "gear thingy" was something called a "Shifter cable" (apparently both of them? I checked. Mine does apparently have two. Weird) and then some other related part. 500 bucks total. Since I was worried about 'transmission' that's not too bad.

The good news is the AC leak had gotten worse and was now, in fact, easier to locate. The bad news is it's a hose behind the dash. Between getting at it, fixing it, and replacing some other AC part that was involved...1700. Goddamn it. (Plus, it still needs a new 200 dollar tire. Stupid 16 inch performance tires). Also, it will be a week because something (evaporator? Condensor? Whatever the AC part is that isn't 'leaky hose behind dash') has to be ordered.

I do the quick math ("Is keeping this car worth 2300? It's the first major repair we've done on it in 10 years, other than that panel that fell off the bottom and that's because my wife keeps scraping it on stuff, and it's low-mileage and we want to give it to the kid...so, yeah, I guess") and authorize the repair. Sadly, since I am now at work I cannot do the "Drink beer and try not to think about blowing a sizeable chunk of savings on the damn car" thing I like to do in situations like this.

On the bright side, these mechanics have been highly recommended to me by multiple people who actually understand cars, and they're not known for lying or padding their costs.