Useless Conversation

[Ingmar]

Slightly late picky comment:

If you aren't dead you weren't electrocuted, you were just shocked.

[Endie]

So, to summarize the last page of this thread: electrocution improves your recall ability.  Any Republican worth his salt coulda told us that.

Especially Texan ones:

"That boy's going to learn a lesson he'll not forget in a hurry."

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=49e_1265173147
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e81_1252776013

I kinda meant them executing anyone darker than Hannah Montana, but those will work.

[Signe]

I'm a little upset to see the number of people on F13 who have been shocked by sticking their fingers, forks, whatever, into electrical outlets.  It even rivals the number here who seem to suffer from personality disorders.  I'm too lazy to check to see if they happen to be the same people.  There's a lot of lazy people here, too.   

[Yegolev]

I am better now.

[Selby]

I'm a little upset to see the number of people on F13 who have been shocked by sticking their fingers, forks, whatever, into electrical outlets.

Heh.  Fingers\forks\whatnot in electrical sockets is amateur work.  I bet most kids eventually do it though.

[Cheddar]

I got hit by 220 while on a ladder when I was 17 - it was beyond painful.

I walked it off.

[Signe]

   What the hell is wrong with you people???

[Lantyssa]

They were electrocuted as kids.  Why do you ask?

[Yegolev]

I got hit by 220 while on a ladder when I was 17 - it was beyond painful.

I walked it off.

Yeah... unrelated tip: don't put your ladder near where the power comes into the house, and if you must then don't also carry sheets of corrugated metal up there.  Don't ask how I know this is a bad idea.

Speaking of bad ideas, I find myself imagining how fun it would be to slowly strangle some coworkers.  It would also be fun to be able to squeeze their necks hard enough to make their heads comically pop into the air.

[Selby]

I got hit by 220 while on a ladder when I was 17 - it was beyond painful.

I walked it off.

Yeah, like I said I did 480VAC across phase B & C once.  My fingers and arm twitched all day, I had a hard time gripping things, and the marks are almost faded so you can't see them anymore.  My other hand has a pretty severe one that's never going to go away I got from a DC bus which was more of an electrical burn than shock.  Just checked the pulse-rate every 15-m to make sure it wasn't irregular or too fast\slow after the adrenaline rush subsided and I was fine.  I do not recommend it at all.  Someone loves me somewhere.

A friend of mine in college was messing with a van-de-graff generator trying to make it hit his bald spot on his head and while lining it up it zapped him in the eye.  Luckily it was very low current so he was fine.  Said the bright blue flash coming towards him was out of this world.  We did alot of stupid things in college with electricity.

[Sky]

I got 110 from a light ballast while standing in a meat bunker. I almost got 220 from a wall oven unit, blasted a notch out of my pliers.

I know better, my step-father was an electrician. Since I bought the house and have done a bunch of electrical, I check everything twice every time I return to the site.

[Sir T]

I grew up on farms with lots of electric fences. Nuff said.

[Engels]

they called him the charred one...

[Lantyssa]

"I ever tell you I was hit by lightning seven times?"

[Trippy]

I grew up on farms with lots of electric fences. Nuff said.

My neighbor across the street had an electric fence to keep their dogs out of the flowers. Fun times, as long as you weren't the one "playing" with the fence.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Speaking of bad ideas, I find myself imagining how fun it would be to slowly strangle some coworkers.  It would also be fun to be able to squeeze their necks hard enough to make their heads comically pop into the air.

Fitting into the HP culture quite well, are you?  I used to do that fairly frequently myself, typically any time I was on a team call with my direct manager usually.

[Yegolev]

Speaking of bad ideas, I find myself imagining how fun it would be to slowly strangle some coworkers.  It would also be fun to be able to squeeze their necks hard enough to make their heads comically pop into the air.

Fitting into the HP culture quite well, are you?  I used to do that fairly frequently myself, typically any time I was on a team call with my direct manager usually.

The HP suits are comical buffoons and I pay little attention to their antics.  I did work for Coca-Cola for ten years so I'm accustomed.   No, it's actually my own teammates.  Now that they are unable to hide within an organization that it is practically impossible to be fired from, the chaff is really pissing off the wheat.

I finally came to my senses and realized that I cannot carry the team.  I'll do what I have to do to stay employed, of course, but working nights and weekends for a whole month is stopping now.

[Khaldun]

I actually have been hit by lightning through the telephone, while I was living in Zimbabwe. (Among the highest per-capita deaths from lightning in the world, btw). Big slow thunderstorm was moving through the capital and I was on the phone in my little apartment to my wife who was back in the U.S.. I remember hearing a huge CRACK and there was a sort of loud, strange popping sound near my ear. I closed my eyes as I felt a really strange sensation. When I opened my eyes, I was about 3 feet from where I had been sitting, on the floor, and most of the hair on the arm that had been holding the phone was gone, with a kind of black dust on my skin instead. I had a really bad headache and there was a ringing in my ear. So I went back to the phone and told my wife to hang up, I'd call her later.

She said that what she heard was the same crack and static on the line and I made a kind of weird short yowling sound and then nothing until I came back to the phone, out of breath and shouting to hang up. So yeah, she was a little worried.

[Lantyssa]

I've had a router next to me fry from a lightning strike on the building (blackened half the circuit board and me startled), but that can't even compare.  Wow.

[IainC]

When I lived in Nottingham, I was across a narrow alley from a copper roofed clocktower that was always getting hit by lightning. My bedroom window was about 4 feet from the thing and every time there was a thunderstorm I'd have to unplug everything in my apartment otherwise something would melt.

[Nerf]

A good friend of mine got zapped through his laptop one day in Mississippi.  We were sitting in a coffee shop, he was sitting in the back corner and all of a sudden it lights up bright blue and he let out a yelp.  We had just tried to clean all the virii off of it not too long before that, so we figured it was just trying to get some revenge.

Edit:  Laptop still worked fine afterwards, that goddamn thing wouldn't die, I had been trying to convince him to buy a new one for months.

[Selby]

I've had a router next to me fry from a lightning strike on the building (blackened half the circuit board and me startled), but that can't even compare.

I did that to my building's router equipment in college when an experiment went horribly wrong.  I only fessed up the o-scope and differential probes dying (about 55k worth of equipment) since you can't pretend that stuff just stopped working.  The maintenance guys were grumbling the next day about how horrible some of the equipment they had was since they had to replace several routers.  The guy in the next room said he was glad he wasn't in the room hooked to the network like he usually was (I think a computer's NIC got knocked out too).

[Sky]

I think my monitor is on its last legs. Bulb just went, color wheel is about to go, and there may have been a short on the circuit board. About $250 to replace the bulb/color wheel, if only to find out the circuit board has died too...(not to mention the color wheel is a royal bitch to get to). Really wish I could afford a new set.

Interesting timing given the nvidia 3d thread and I just tossed a mitsu 73" set in my amazon list for shits/giggles yesterday. Probably wouldn't be able to sell the fiance on that one, but she's pretty hooked on the big tv setup so might be able to figure out how to get a 65". Downside is it seems mitsu didn't pick up the led light engine tech from samsung, was really hoping for more than 2-3 years out of a bulb (1-1/2 for this last "cheap" one).

Given that I spent a decade not knowing where my next meal was coming from, I call these 'good problems'.

[Yegolev]

I almost bought Office 2007 but I found Office 2010 Beta.  Stupid OpenOffice.

[Selby]

I almost bought Office 2007 but I found Office 2010 Beta.

So, do people actually like Office 2007?  My company forced it on everyone and it just... isn't what I am used to nor really care for.  I am not sure if it's because I'm an old fogey now and they are trying something new and hip that everyone under 18 will love or if it's just not well implemented.

[Ingmar]

If you already know the prior Office interface the new one is really hard to get used to. Supposedly they did a whole bunch of end user focus testing and stuff to come up with the new interface, but I dunno how true that is. I don't really have a strong opinion about it other than it is annoying to re-learn where everything is. Finding the internet headers for messages was a pretty frustrating exercise (not that it was in a real obvious place before, either.)

2010 seems nice enough. Same interface as 2007, but hey you can tie your Twitter and Facebook and shit into Outlook. 

[schild]

I like 2007, but I loved the 2010 stuff I used. I switched back to 07 just because I had a legit copy.

If you asked me for a list, I couldn't even remember, but I do remember Excel being more of a joy for work for my couple weeks with it.

[Yegolev]

2007 has, I am told, more keyboard shortcuts than previous versions.  Unfortunately, when I use Windows I turn into a slobber-case and mouse almost everything.  The Ribbon doesn't bother me because I didn't know where anything was anyway.

2010 seems to have a smaller ribbon so I feel less like I am using only part of my screen.

I think OpenOffice was programmed by prisoners in Croatia.

[Strazos]

Just wanted to thank Cheddar for keeping my FiOS on while I've been snowed in for nearly a week.

Don't have work, can't go anywhere, so it's nice to at least have this connection for Netflix and shit.

[HaemishM]

Office 2007 is a mixed bag of decent improvements on top of IT BURNS LIKE VD. For instance, Powerpoint has some really cool features with templates and such that are completely invalidated if the presentation you are creating is going to be running on an older version of Powerpoint. But then Powerpoint is the absolute devil's anus of computer programs. Why Microsoft felt the need to create a completely new document format for all Office programs that is incompatible with previous versions is a mystery to me, unless I abscribe the usual "MICROSOFT IS GREEDY BASTARDS" motives to them. .docx can suck my balls. But then I'm still using a version of Microsoft Word 97 to write my novels with, so I'm probably to blame for all this by not paying Microsoft $200 every 2 years for a new version.

[Sky]

There's a docx plugin for older versions.

[HaemishM]

Motherfuckers. Would have been nice to know that.

[Sky]

To be fair to you, I don't think Office 97 is supported by the plugin. I've only used it here for Office 2004 (mac).

[Signe]

Another two feet of snow on top of the two feet of snow we got the other day.  What fun.  NOT.  Oh, and it's going to snow on Monday!  Bleh.

[Yegolev]

From the chip and virtualization capabilities all the way through to the operating system, middleware and energy management, Power Systems from IBM are integrated to help support the complex workloads and dynamic computing models of a smarter planet.

I might attend this anyway, it's about POWER7.