Useless Conversation

[bhodi]

That's hilarious. What a piece of shit. Can you copy paste or click on html links yet?

Reminds me of two articles that came across my twitter feed a few days ago:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

and the rebuttal,

http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html?view=sidebar

[Merusk]

That's hilarious. What a piece of shit. Can you copy paste or click on html links yet?

You can paste HTML links and not have them break. Clicking on them still requires a double-click.

File system links that have spaces are fucked unless you enclose them in quotes, which users will never do. It then pops up as "<X:\Software\Windows\Trimble SketchUp\SketchUp Pro 2015>" not as a link. However, full UNC paths WILL pop-up as links, which is fine for folks who understand what X, O, G, etc do but Users expect otherwise.

File transfer within the corporation is still fucked as well.  Although I'm willing to point at our lazy/ inept netadmin as the problem there if Ironwood protests too much about it
.

[Ironwood]

Your netadmin is a cunt.

Sorry.

[Samwise]

I welcome our updates to come.

To tie a bow on the situation with my bro, because I don't think I updated this thread: aside from Internet rationing, one of the outcomes of our Serious Talk way back in March-ish was that if I found him any job opportunities, he was going to apply for them and I was going to check in with him to make sure he was staying on top of those applications.  After which I started trawling Craigslist for job postings, harvesting ones that he qualified for, putting them in a Google spreadsheet so I could track them all, and following up with him daily on which places he had sent his resume to so I could update my spreadsheet and bother him the next day about those he still hadn't contacted.  It only took two weeks of this before he had a full time job (driver for Waiter.com).

During this time I also twisted our mother's arm into cutting the financial dependency ties he still had to her -- he is now in theory paying for his share of the phone family plan, and she also sold him the car he'd been "borrowing" from her for years so that the title and insurance would be in his name.

Once he had a month of work (and pay) under his belt, we started looking for places for him to live.  I was about to start another spreadsheet when, by a wonderful coincidence, a mutual friend of ours posted on FB saying that his roommates were moving out and he needed new ones.  My brother moved in there at the start of this month -- $900/mo for one (huge) bedroom in a (very nice) 5bd/3ba house in Daly City.  I haven't heard much from him since, but Facebook photo tagging suggests he might be dating someone now, which indicates that his social life and self confidence have undergone a major upgrade compared to the days when he was jobless and spending his entire day raiding.

 

[Selby]

That's a happy ending all around!  Amazing how you can actually find jobs in that area when you aren't raiding or catassing all day...

[Paelos]

Great outcome. Best for both parties involved.

[Merusk]

Your netadmin is a cunt.

Sorry.

I figured this to be the case.

No need to apologize, he's wormed his way into my boss' pocket and achieved "favored" status while pissing off the rest of us.  Duties that used to be department-wide he's now exempt from because "it takes a lot of time and effort and stress to keep the network up.  I used to do that job and it was high-stress and always needed attention."  

No. We're a company of 220 people in 2 (soon to be 3) locations and you have service contracts for most of the infrastructure. His "duties" consist of sitting on the phone all day while those service contracts fix things he fucked up.  That fucking with v-lans without telling anyone until we go to plug in to a room and it doesn't connect to the network because "oh, nobody was in there so I was trying something."  He fucked up a new DNS rollout so badly that Mac machines are acting as their own DNS servers.

Sorry vented.

ed: good news on the brother, Sam. Way to go, man.

[HaemishM]

He fucked up a new DNS rollout so badly that Mac machines are acting as their own DNS servers.

 

[Ironwood]

Yeah.

Christ.

[Merusk]

He's 2 years out of school and we had him here as a contractor when setting-up the wireless network. He impressed my boss there, but I strongly suspect he was leaning on his classmates or the company we contracted with to help.  He got buddy-buddy with my boss, though and got hired. 

Boss has been here 11 years and only has OTJ training from here and a year at a more tech-oriented company so he doesn't know better practices.  He's also more concerned with making VP this year and 'becoming the first CIO of the Firm" than being effective. Never underestimate how much smokescreen you can create when your users aren't savvy.

But I'm bitching now.

[Chimpy]

Thank you IBM for not supporting Microsoft TRIM/Unmount on your enterprise storage and not mentioning it anywhere in your documentation!

Good thing I have enough free space on the SAN to copy the volumes from thick to thin.

[Ironwood]

The Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell BBC Adaptation is actually quite good thus far, two parts in.

Not good enough for, you know, it's own thread or anything, since I ended up hating the book, but it's good.

[Signe]

I'm sorry for all the people who died, I always am... but what the fuck is a Chinese Pleasure Ferry??

[Paelos]

I'm sorry for all the people who died, I always am... but what the fuck is a Chinese Pleasure Ferry??

China is apparently trying to bolster their own version of a cruise ship business by offering low-cost tours of the Yangtze river.

[Sky]

Yangtze River take my mind
Don't let the commies torture me

[Signe]

Don't drown.  Your soul will get wet.

[Furiously]

My cat makes a brief appearance on animal planet show treetop cat rescue. If you go to the working with firefighters 4 minute clip he's in the last 10 seconds.

[pxib]

Meet Thomas Midgely, Jr., a mechanical engineer and chemist born in Pennsylvania in 1889.

In 1923, working with Dupont and General Motors, he won the Nichols Medal for his work developing anti-knock compounds, most importantly Tetraethyl Lead and  - overstating the point only slightly - inventing leaded gasoline.  At a press conference in 1924, Midgely poured TEL over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and inhaled the vapor for sixty seconds to demonstrate its total safety. There had already been ten deaths from lead poisoning at production plants, and Midgley had had a prolonged vacation the previous year hoping to clear up his own symptoms.

In the early 60's, a geochemist named Clair Cameron Patterson who had been using lead isotopes to date rocks, found that his samples got contaminated if he left the window open and, more distressingly, that lead levels in soil were 80 times higher than they were in sediment from the past. Starting in 1965 he was the leading scientist against lead and in 1975 found that human bones had 700 to 1200 times more lead than 1600 year old bones with practically identical levels of barium and calcium. In 1979 the US started phasing all chemical lead use, of which leaded gasoline fumes were by far the most pernicious.

Meanwhile, back in the 20's, Midgely and General Motors (specifically their Frigidaire division) were looking for a non-toxic, non-flammable replacement for the current ammonia, chloromethane, propane, and sulfur dioxide refrigeration systems. Focusing on alkyl halides, they eventually came across dichlorodifluoromethane. They named it Freon, and the world's first industrial CFC went into production in 1930. In 1937 Midgely wins the Perkin Medal for his work.

Ozone hole? Ozone hole.

Patterson and Lovelock both live get to see their causes win, but not Midgely himself. In 1940, at the age of 51, he contracts polio. Ever the engineer, he invents and constructs a complex pully system to help people lift him into and out of bed. Four years later, on November 2nd, 1944, he gets tangled in the ropes and strangles himself to death.

[schild]

Someone just told me about Mattress Girl.

What a piece of trash she is.

[tazelbain]

Someone just told me about Mattress Girl.

What a piece of trash she is.

What every say on Facebook can and will be used against in a court of law.

[schild]

what

[Furiously]

My swingset was just on animal planet Treetop cat rescue. I'm glad my swingset is more famous than me.

[Nebu]

My swingset was just on animal planet Treetop cat rescue. I'm glad my swingset is more famous than me.

Wouldn't that assume that people watch Animal Planet treetop cat rescue?

[Furiously]

I watched it. It's pretty fun to play, guess what road they are on and is it a meth addict or just a crazy cat person...

[Johny Cee]

Whelp.

Roadblocks up everywhere because a couple of inmates Shawshanked themselves out of prison. 

[Signe]

Whelp.

Roadblocks up everywhere because a couple of inmates Shawshanked themselves out of prison. 

Speaking of that... why do inmates have power tools?

[Johny Cee]

Whelp.

Roadblocks up everywhere because a couple of inmates Shawshanked themselves out of prison. 

Speaking of that... why do inmates have power tools?

From what I can tell:
1. Portions of the prison were being renovated, as it dates to 1865, and contractors/whomever may have left power tools where they could be acquired.
2. No one has ever escaped the from Max portion of the prison, so guards were kind of complacent about bed checks/supervision.  Honestly, I think alot of guards are kind of fuckups because nobody wants to work in the max prison with all the serial killers and lifers, so you transfer out as soon as you get seniority.

The Governor was up, skipping the Belmont and missing a Triple Crown win, so heads are going to roll.


Considering some of the folks in that prison, probably lucky its just two no-name murderers.  Could have been a couple of the serial killers or spree killers.

[Samwise]

I hope the Introversion guys mention this in their next Prison Architect alpha video.     They were just talking about the "contraband" system in their last one, where your workers will occasionally drop power tools and inmates will try to hide them for escape attempts.

[Merusk]

Honestly, I think alot of guards are kind of fuckups because nobody wants to work in the max prison with all the serial killers and lifers, so you transfer out as soon as you get seniority.

The thing to remember about a large number of prison guards is they're typically locals (which means rural locals since prisons aren't in cities) who can't pass the CS exam to become cops.

Then tack on the for-profit system which encourages lowest wages possible for these positions.

[Johny Cee]

Honestly, I think alot of guards are kind of fuckups because nobody wants to work in the max prison with all the serial killers and lifers, so you transfer out as soon as you get seniority.

The thing to remember about a large number of prison guards is they're typically locals (which means rural locals since prisons aren't in cities) who can't pass the CS exam to become cops.

Then tack on the for-profit system which encourages lowest wages possible for these positions.

I'd be more polite, but this is Politics Forum grade stupid.  I mean, you didn't even bother to do a couple cursory google searches?

1. Only around 8% of inmates are in for-profit prisons...  and I don't think any are Max security.  I'm not sure how the significant minority of for-profit prisons largely in the South and West are supposedly affecting wages of prisons in the Northeast?  Voodoo?  Witchcraft? 

For profit prisons are largely an internet hurf-derf outrage issue, as realistically the for profit industry is tiny.  I don't like the idea of for-profit prisons, but pretending that they are the tail that is wagging the dog of Corrections in general is silly.

2. There is a difference between jails and prisons.  Jails are where folks go awaiting trial, usually staffed and run locally.  Usually paid shit.  Prisons are where you go after sentencing, generally run at the state/federal level.

2a.  The Corrections system in New York pays very, very well for a job not requiring any real degree.  Mean wage for New York is $30/hour.  Though benefits have gone done a bit from the old days of fantastic medical (no employee pay in) and no pay in Pension paying out up to 80% of your average earnings in your last three years of employment and able to retire after 25 or 30 years, the benefits are still probably better than 90% of jobs out there.

Basically they are paid like skilled tradesmen, except with far better benefits worth another 20k/year easy.

Corrections runs at the state level, so you have folks sometimes commuting significant distances.  Prisons are actually set up with overnight housing and stacking shifts so guards can commute multiple hours to work a few days in a row and commute back home.  With seniority, you can transfer to a prison closer to you.

3.  Like anything else in the US at the State/Local level, conditions vary from area to area.  Why even make this comment if you don't know anything about New York? 


My comment was directly to the fact that, in the New York system, not many people want to work the Dannemora max security wing because that is where you send the worst of the worst and throw away the key.  Multiple serial killers, spree killers, axe-murderers, serial rapists, etc.  In the most liberal and rehabilitive Corrections system, these people would still be in prison for the rest of their lives.  If you had the choice, and your pay was the same anywhere in the system (which it is!), would you want to work Max with the guys that are never getting out rather than someplace where inmates have at least a small chance of getting out so don't want to rock the boat too hard?

[Merusk]

No because it's policing and i'm sick of googling policing. I've juped on the they're all sociopaths and drooling morons bandwagon. Hop aboard, this is the level of discourse you get about it now.

[Signe]

Juped?

[Johny Cee]

Update:

State Police and Corrections have cordoned off my parents street.  They let residents out, but they aren't letting residents back in.

[Trippy]

Uh oh. Are your parents okay?

[Johny Cee]

Uh oh. Are you parents okay?

Yah, both are out and about.