Useless Conversation

[Miasma]

I don't know how scared I should be about Canada's economy.  I waver between "a moderate bubble is going to pop" and "the end is nigh".  That Deutsche Bank report on Canada looks particularely scary but then it might all be the work of one bad analyst.  I have to decide whether or not to renew my mortgage or sell soon.  But rents are also high so I have no idea what to do.  My condo seems over priced and I wouldn't mind turning my equity into cash just in case everything goes to hell.

[bhodi]

Christ, there's tons to do, especially given the timeline.  Ironically, Sam might be better advice than I (since I live here and it's all shite), but we can drag some stuff out for you.

I really recommend getting pished with me, however, as I've heard it's morose.

Definitely! I'll send you a PM once I nail down the exact dates I'm avail. I haven't even booked places yet.

[Samwise]

I highly recommend getting pished with Ironwood.  I discovered my current favorite whisky (Bunnahabhain) that way in... Jesus, that was 2006.

Actually haven't made it over to Edinburgh yet on any of my Scotland junkets; I think Signe put me off it when she described it as being "filled with English people from Surrey."  Glasgow is great though.  Easily my favorite city to visit.

[schild]

Bunnahabhain

[Samwise]

I can't unhear that in my head.  Well played.

[Ironwood]

Heh.

[Paelos]

I'm back from the Caymans today. Do we have a deadbeat brother update?

[Signe]

What were you doing in the Caymans?  Secret stuff?  Tell us.

[Paelos]

What were you doing in the Caymans?  Secret stuff?  Tell us.

Board of Directors meeting for an insurance captive. Sexy stuff, I know.

[Trippy]

You were holding somebody captive for insurance money?

[Merusk]

Users.  

Note: You can't use Sketchup for a model of a department store WITH all interior fixtures. When you create a model with over 10 million faces and 20 million edges the little single-processor no-hyperthreading program tends to take a shit.  

No, I can't fix that.  

No, you can't avoid it without modeling things at a lower rez or breaking-apart the file into separate scenes. That's not how modeling works.

No, I don't care if you "HAVE TO" use Sketchup because "3ds is hard." You chose to be in visualization, learn the fucking tools of a professional.

Curse you for getting married in Hawaii this week, you magnificent bearded bastard. You need to educate your team more than you thought.

[Paelos]

You were holding somebody captive for insurance money?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_insurance

[Trippy]

I like my definition better.

[Ironwood]

That's often the way with wikipedia.

[Morat20]

So my brother finally got his CT scan (after like four attempts. Gotta love American insurance). He's been referred to an oncologist. The doctor basically said "I have no idea what it is, I'm referring you to a specialist" who he'll see Monday.

We've got nothing but "there's a mass". Admittedly, same thing they told my mother-in-law (hers was some sort of benign cyst around an old infection. She ended up losing an entire lobe though because the cyst had attached to her diaphragm or something), but they knew that going in.

About the only optimistic thought I've got is that, despite the fact that he sounds like shit, if it's cancer it's I can hope it's pretty early. He's not coughing up blood, has only had fatigue issues since the onset of the actual cough/wheezing (you don't sleep well, I gather) and hasn't had any pain or weight loss. Just chronic bronchitis symptoms of some sort, which he gets yearly and has for decades now. (And he's never smoked -- well, not cigarettes).

Not much of a silver lining, but it beats "Life-long smoker whose been coughing blood and has chest and back pain indicative of spreading tumors". Plus there's just the ONE mass. There hasn't been any talk of "multiple masses". I just wish he'd asked "How big a mass are we talking here, Doc?". (If they've told him, he's not passed it on to me or my folks. He's one of those really optimistic people, so he might not have asked. I'm more the worrier than he is, by far).

[WayAbvPar]

Don't you hate those non-worrier types? Bastards.

Hope things turn out as well as he hopes 

[Morat20]

Don't you hate those non-worrier types? Bastards.

Hope things turn out as well as he hopes 

Me too. Driving me nuts. He says "When the doctor says it's 'giant' you don't fret the millimeters'.

I can sort of see his point, 'cause after his doctor said 'i got no idea what this is' then really he's not getting anything useful until Monday when the oncologist looks at his CT scan and X-ray.

Man, me and my Dad are the same. I called him up and he's done the same thing I did. Googled "lung mass" and got really depressed. Basically "it's probably cancer" (unless you're a smocker, when it's "It's almost certainly cancer") followed by "And you better hope it's not in your lymph nodes, and fat chance of that".

Oh well. I'm off work Monday, so I've already told him I'm around if he needs anything.

[Sky]

I drive my girlfriend nuts the same way. She has to come along for any serious facts or I'll end up talking to the doctor about splitting wood or something (this has actually happened).

[Samwise]

"I spent an hour feeling confused because I didn't know X about Y!  The documentation for Y needs to include X."
"Here's a link to the documentation for Y.  X is stated in the first paragraph -- does the wording need to be clarified?"
"Well, I mean, I see it's right there NOW, but I forgot it while I was reading the rest of the documentation.  Maybe it would help if there were more reminders."

I swear I have some variant of this conversation once a month, always about a different X.  I would love to see documentation written by one of these people.  Would it just be an endless loop, like a goldfish's memoirs of all the castles it saw as it circled around its bowl?

[RhyssaFireheart]

Hope the appointment on Monday goes well for your brother, Morat. 

[Chimpy]

"I spent an hour feeling confused because I didn't know X about Y!  The documentation for Y needs to include X."
"Here's a link to the documentation for Y.  X is stated in the first paragraph -- does the wording need to be clarified?"
"Well, I mean, I see it's right there NOW, but I forgot it while I was reading the rest of the documentation.  Maybe it would help if there were more reminders."

I swear I have some variant of this conversation once a month, always about a different X.  I would love to see documentation written by one of these people.  Would it just be an endless loop, like a goldfish's memoirs of all the castles it saw as it circled around its bowl?

Maybe they are used to IBM "link to a different 500 page pdf every third paragraph of each 500 page PDF" style documentation.

[Ironwood]

What do you mean No Volumes Found, you stupid fucking NAS.

Going to be an interesting day tomorrow, I guess.

[Khaldun]

Just took off facial hair I've had on for 20+ years. Very weird.

[Maven]

Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson) if it wasn't apparent.

[Morat20]

Just took off facial hair I've had on for 20+ years. Very weird.

Oh yeah. I did that once after about five years. I didn't recognize my own face. My wife couldn't stop laughing. It's just weird, right?

[Rasix]

When my father-in-law shaved off his mustache, my wife took one look and started crying.   To be fair, it was a pretty awesome mustache.

My facial hair is mostly met with ridicule until it is shaved.

[WayAbvPar]

I am pretty sure my wife roots against the Canucks to miss the playoffs or get an early exit every year to avoid having to live with my playoff beard 

It was pretty epic when they went to game 7 in the SCF in 2011. I tried to find a barber shop that would shave it, but apparently that is a lost art for most places.

[Morat20]

When my father-in-law shaved off his mustache, my wife took one look and started crying.   To be fair, it was a pretty awesome mustache.

My facial hair is mostly met with ridicule until it is shaved.

My grandfather has, for all of his life, rocked the handlebar mustache. Complete with curls.

My grandmother complains at the sheer number of women (all roughly of their age) that keep coming up to them and asking to feel it and ask how he gets it to curl.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that my mother AND my grandmother would kill me, I'd have gotten him a 'free mustache rides' hat because of all the elderly female attention. :)

[Maven]

I have to create a 500-word personal statement for scholarship applications, but I can't shake that feeling that any personal essay I write reads like narcissistic self-aggrandizement. Then again, I don't know what an essay that something else would look like.

Would anyone be willing to do a once over of my personal statement for major flaws and feedback?

[Miasma]

You are going to school post internet so what you are supposed to do is google "500 word personal essay" and plagiarize the top result, it's what the kids do nowadays.

Don't really do that because any decent school has software to find out if you did exactly that.

[Pennilenko]

I have to create a 500-word personal statement for scholarship applications, but I can't shake that feeling that any personal essay I write reads like narcissistic self-aggrandizement. Then again, I don't know what an essay that something else would look like.

Would anyone be willing to do a once over of my personal statement for major flaws and feedback?

Whenever I don't understand the formatting and intended production value of a writing assignment I refer to the OWL. It is literally the best resource for writing. Here is a link that might help you. The Personal Statement

[Maven]

Great, thank you for the link.

There's something about having another person read your work and offer their perspective. My perspective with all its pros and cons is still the filter when it comes to online resources.

[Paelos]

Great, thank you for the link.

There's something about having another person read your work and offer their perspective. My perspective with all its pros and cons is still the filter when it comes to online resources.

My advice is since it's so short, you want it to be something that's about you. Once you write it, read every sentence and question if it could be about 100 other people. If that's the case, dump it and start over until it's uniquely your story.

[Morat20]

So the oncologist took a look at my brother and he's got a biopsy next week. (Needle through the lung. That's gonna be fun).

The results were..mixed. First, the Doc says it's definitely some sort of tumor or growth. Given his age and medical history, the oncologist thinks it's slightly more likely to be benign than malignant. (Fungal infection, benign tumor, etc). If it is cancer, it's very contained (if large) and the Doc says it looks like stage 1 (very good, if you're gonna have it). The problem is location. It's in a bad spot. If it's cancer, they'll have to do chemo or radiation (or both, I dunno how it works) first to shrink it down. It's apparently all entwined with important lung stuff.

It's in his upper lung, with the bronchial tubes or something.

I really don't know what the procedure is if it's NOT cancer but it needs to be removed. Lose the whole lung, possibly. You can get by with just one. The doc also said -- and this is the weird part -- that it doesn't look like a tumor for lung cancer. Tumors in other parts of the body, yes, but apparently lung tumors don't grow that way, so if it's cancer it's a very unusual type.

So I'm calling that on the 'could be a lot worse' spectrum. Thankfully, my son has decided to make ALL THE BAD DECISIONS IN THE WORLD to take my mind off of minor issues like my brother's health. If you imagine me mentally strangling him for at least the next year, you're not off the mark. For starters, he now owes me 3k. And I AM going to collect. 200 bucks a month for the next 18, 'cause if I'm going to be a bank I'm charging interest.

[Khaldun]

Hope it turns out to be "could have been worse" going forward. Fingers crossed.


---------

On personal essays, all I can tell you from having judged a lot of them in grant competitions, admissions, etc., is that some people really nail it and some people OMG fuck it up so apocalyptically bad. The basic goal is to hit the middle spot most of the time--not to lose a slot you probably can have safely. If the essay is what gets you a slot, you have to nail it, and cookie-cutter advice won't do it. The ones that really nail it:

a) feel reflective, grown-up, self-aware
b) feel right in the sweet spot between OMG I AM GANDHI AND JESUS and I DUNNO, I WATCH MOVIES SOMETIME AND LIKE TO DO STUFF. You can't sound stupidly amazing even if you are (because often stupidly amazing people know better than to say it) and you can't just be schlub.
c) show authenticity--you seem real
d) tell a good story
e) don't feel like anybody else's essay, which is really hard for 18-22 year olds that haven't really lived lives. Adults writing these things should be able to open up some space between "everybody" and "me".  Teenagers typically overplay "I have had bad things happen to me" or "I had a deep soulful connection with the wino who I said hi to on my way to high school until he died of liver cancer one morning" stuff.