Useless Conversation

[Yegolev]

Obviously she has canned alcohol that contains margarita flavoring.  This situation does not bear any consideration.

[Signe]

I'm so sorry about your job, WAP.  I hope you find something you love.  If you do, we can all celebrate with 6 packs of margaritas. 

Did somebody give you canned margaritas? These people aren't your friends.

No, I saw an advert on tv.  You can get all sorts of weird things in boxes and cans now.  I can't stop thinking about it.

[Chimpy]

Until yesterday, all my shit came over a pair of thin copper wires.  Today, all my shit comes over two bonded pairs of thin copper wire.  So, real Uverse is definitely not POTS.  In fact, we had to replace everything between the DSLAM (are they still called that?) and my NID when we converted.

U-Verse is tricky.

Some places, it is passive FTTH like FIOS/Google Fiber/etc.

Most places (the original rollout types were all this way) it is FTTN with ADSL3 DSLAMs in the neighborhood to feed the homes.

In other places, they rebranded AT&T DSL to be U-Verse.

If you are in a location where the max internet-only speeds are in the 30-40Mb/s range, you almost certainly are fed by a DSLAM.

[apocrypha]

Laid off today. Working through June 3rd (and then severance after that), which will leave me 5 weeks short of 16 years of service. Sigh. I have been half-expecting it for a year or two, but it still sucks. Looking forward to finding something new, but I doubt I will find something that lets me work remotely 100% of the time.

Sorry to hear that Way, best of luck finding something new and better. My wife had the exact same thing happen last year, 2 months short of 20 years service. After 7 months jobless she started work as an account manager in a photographic studio a few weeks ago and despite the 30% cut in salary she's (so far) about 200% happier than in her last job.

I've spent most of the last week looking after a 2 year old and a 1 month old, who are my godsons (in a non-God way). Having no kids of my own, and being in my late 40's, this has been something of a culture shock. I've never, ever been so utterly exhausted in my entire life. I think I'm going to sleep for a week.

[Salamok]

If we are shitting on ISPs my parents are in the midst of selling their house and the home inspection revealed that the direct TV a-hole sawed completely through a truss when doing their install.  The home inspection from when they originally bought their house has a picture of the same area showing it pre-Direct TV improvements...

[schild]

Will be in Vegas again from the 17th til the 22nd.

[schild]

Anyone have an Office 2016 key lying around for PC? ʘ‿ʘ

Turns out I'm really organized and had a copy of 2013 with the key in a well-labeled folder. Huh.

[Brofellos]

Tonight is my last night of being a law student. What a hilariously over-complicated ride. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be law students.

[Viin]

Congrats! Now who are you going to torture with your law degree?

[Brofellos]

Theoretically nobody, since i'll be doing corporate banking law. So I guess I'll be torturing whichever firm is on the other side of a negotiation with last-minute annoying document changes.

[Abagadro]

You are still a law student until you pass the Bar. 

[Merusk]

So for the first time in about 16 years I had to work with a single monitor yesterday, since I was at a client site and had only my laptop.

How the fuck did we get work done in the bad old days? I couldn't function efficiently because I was tabbing back and forth between windows trying to record information between three different references. Then I tried to do my timesheet at home and ran into the same problem. Fuck everything about that.

BLeh.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So for the first time in about 16 years I had to work with a single monitor yesterday, since I was at a client site and had only my laptop.

How the fuck did we get work done in the bad old days? I couldn't function efficiently because I was tabbing back and forth between windows trying to record information between three different references. Then I tried to do my timesheet at home and ran into the same problem. Fuck everything about that.

BLeh.

This is why I hate having to undock my laptop to go to a meeting.  Trying to do anything with multiple Excel spreadsheets on a single monitor?   

[Sky]

I had to sneak a second monitor during a round of upgrades a few years back, some things you just can't get some people to understand. Boss works solely on her laptop and doesn't understand why we need large monitors, let alone dual.

I agree it feels like working with one hand behind your back.

Then again, most people I work with multitask by dragging the front window to the bottom of the screen to look at what's behind it and refuse to learn hotkeys. My fiancee won't use a scroll wheel, she insists on using scroll bars both at work (with a mouse) and at home (trackpad). Heathens, all of them.

[Merusk]

Sometimes (not often) the scroll bars are more efficient. 30+ page documents and websites I use bars to navigate to beginning, middle, and end. I can't fathom not using a wheel at all, though.

People who still don't know Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Tab or Windows-D are always amazed when I navigate stuff on their machines. "Woah.. how did you do that?!"   Much like the "secret" method for getting windows that were orphaned off the desktop back into view. The mysterious alt-spacebar-m command. OoOOoOOOOoooooh.  Spooky.

When you spend 8+ hours a day in front of a machine, you'd think people would learn shortcuts. Apparently this is one of those critical thinking skills not taught in schools.

[Sky]

Yeah, I use the scroll bar when appropriate. But not exclusively!

And man, if you're not using ctrl-x/y/z, I don't know if there's help for you.

[Merusk]

That one's so basic it skipped my mind, but yes, I used to encounter people all day who would right-click "copy" then right-click "paste"  Sometimes just finding it on the context menu took them longer than retyping. Ugh. Demonstrating the shortcuts often got a "I can't remember that" statement.

Smart people who are willfully dumb are the most infuriating types.

[KallDrexx]

So a family friend gave us their Brinkman offset smoker, as they upgraded theirs. 

I broke it in 2 weeks ago by smoking chicken wings and thighs with hickory wood, and it was glorious (about a 3 hour smoke). 

I felt good and this weekend I got overconfident.  I invited a bunch of people and smoked a 1.5 lb boston butt, 3.5 lb picnic (put on at 9am), a rack of pork spare ribs (put on at noon), and another batch of wings (put on at 2pm) all smoked with applewood.

Unfortunately, I apparently don't have any idea how to keep a smoker going for longer burns, since around 4pm the temperature was dropping and adding charcoal and wood wasn't really helping.  After an hour of trying different things i ended up just getting some wood and building a new fire, which put the temperature at 300, and I kept it there since people were coming over and the food wasn't high enough (even though the smoker claimed it was 250 inside, I could man handle one of the wings when I was testing if it was done, so I"m pretty sure it wasn't actually that hot inside and not cooking :-/.

I need to practice some more next weekend and figure this out.  Deliciousness awaits.....

[Rendakor]

Yeah, I use the scroll bar when appropriate. But not exclusively!

And man, if you're not using ctrl-x/y/z, I don't know if there's help for you.

What's ctrl-y?

[Pennilenko]

...meat smoking adventure...

I feel your pain. Smoking is an artform. Sadly, I am not artistic.

[lamaros]

Sometimes (not often) the scroll bars are more efficient. 30+ page documents and websites I use bars to navigate to beginning, middle, and end. I can't fathom not using a wheel at all, though.

People who still don't know Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Tab or Windows-D are always amazed when I navigate stuff on their machines. "Woah.. how did you do that?!"   Much like the "secret" method for getting windows that were orphaned off the desktop back into view. The mysterious alt-spacebar-m command. OoOOoOOOOoooooh.  Spooky.

When you spend 8+ hours a day in front of a machine, you'd think people would learn shortcuts. Apparently this is one of those critical thinking skills not taught in schools.

Why do you need your desktop shortcut?

[Merusk]

A few reasons:

1) Designers and Architects LOVE saving shit to the desktop. LOVE IT.

2) AutoCAD shortcuts are the best way of making sure people start the right profile. Saving them to the desktop puts them right in their face. This is due to things that require high-level-discussion of boring-ass back end things. It just works best this way, trust me here.

3) Sometimes you just want to minimize all 15 windows you have open at once and win-D is easier to press than win-m. Keystroke efficiency is an old CAD habit.

[HaemishM]

1) Designers and Architects LOVE saving shit to the desktop. LOVE IT.

This drives me fucking batty when I have to find a file on someone else's machine and they've saved it to their goddamn desktop. And yes, it's designers for sure, probably because most of those assholes started their professional careers on fucking Macs.

[MahrinSkel]

The only time I ever want to see my desktop is when I'm looking for the recycle bin because I want to undelete something. There is probably another way, but I don't need to do it very often.

--Dave

[IainC]

What's ctrl-y?

Redo. Reverts the last undo.

[Yegolev]

I finally figured out the incantation to find a conversion kit for old can lights to the new standard, and these fucking clips are Four American Dollars each.  God damn you, Sea Gull Lighting.

[01101010]

I finally figured out the incantation to find a conversion kit for old can lights to the new standard, and these fucking clips are Four American Dollars each.  God damn you, Sea Gull Lighting.

Converting to LED?

[Rendakor]

What's ctrl-y?

Redo. Reverts the last undo.

Oh, duh.

[Sky]

I use the desktop as my, um, desktop. I keep current project folders and random stuff I want to follow up on sitting on there. I archive it regularly to keep it from getting too chaotic, of course. Drives the fiancee nuts, but it works for me.

I have two people at work who refuse to use the file server at all and every now and again I have to "fix" their desktop because it gets so overloaded there is a stack in the corner a hundred files deep. These are also the two most clueless users who have zero point zero usefulness on a computer. They don't like when I talk about the fact that people without solid computing skills have no place in a modern office.

Because they don't. We work on computers most of the day and help patrons using computers most of the day. Kind of important to know what the fuck you're doing on one.

Also carries over to general competence, though. When I was on vacation, a kid puked on a computer in the children's room (surprisingly the 1st time in 16 years I've been here). One of these 'challenged' employees put it in a plastic bag and left it sitting on my chair. Luckily, my boss is not a moron and took it out to the garbage cans in the parking lot. Seriously, who the fuck leaves a puke-encrusted keyboard sitting in a plastic bag for a week+? What did they think I was going to do, clean it and return it to service? I would've put it on their desk if I had, of course. I'm that kind of old testament bastard about things like that.

[Sky]

Also, I'm cranky because I was in a rush this morning (thanks to getting to bed at 3am thanks to Stellaris) and left my phone sitting on the bed.

Dammit.

[Yegolev]

I finally figured out the incantation to find a conversion kit for old can lights to the new standard, and these fucking clips are Four American Dollars each.  God damn you, Sea Gull Lighting.

Converting to LED?

Yes.  My current cans do not have the side clips required to install the LED BR-30 replacements that I already have (and that match my newly-finished basement).  I guess I should be glad that I can actually find retrofit clips at all.

[Hawkbit]

I only made it two years in the library system. I really was going through a phase where I wanted to make other people's lives better, only the entire process reinforced that most people are really shit.

About half the employees in our system did nothing, absolutely nothing beyond what was written on their job summary. I literally had "not in my job description" thrown at me by a few people. The system works on seniority, so all these fuckwads stayed when it came time to shuffle positions.

[Selby]

My 11 year old computer is finally giving up the ghost. I could attempt formatting and reinstalling Windows, but putting XP back on just seems like a silly bandaid. Debating just buying a new desktop while Windows 7 is still available or going with Windows 10...

[Sky]

I only made it two years in the library system. I really was going through a phase where I wanted to make other people's lives better, only the entire process reinforced that most people are really shit.

About half the employees in our system did nothing, absolutely nothing beyond what was written on their job summary. I literally had "not in my job description" thrown at me by a few people. The system works on seniority, so all these fuckwads stayed when it came time to shuffle positions.

We ditched seniority as a thing a few years back. One of the few 'old guard' left is finally moving, just one more really egregious one to go (and two more it wouldn't hurt to lose). Toughest part is the people who do the least work and are resistant to change are the ones making the most money (because the previous administration hooked them all up when she retired...). Not just because they've been here for decades, I'm still a new kid at 16 years and our force-of-nature awesome 'new' director has been here 20 years (and director for 11 of those).

But I /love/ serving the public. For me it's not the entitled or angry people that stay with me, it's the ones that truly need help and appreciate it. It's watching the kids grow into adults and continue to be library patrons. I get to actually be a positive force in people's lives, keeps me going. Helped a woman yesterday with a presentation because the local college decided to renovate their lab and told her to drive to the other campus (she doesn't have a car). Little things like that, every single day.

So the general morass of shitty humanity just slides right off my back. I feel sad for most people, the entitled and angry folks who don't want to take any personal responsibility for their lives. I've been yelled at by so many people for so many years I just have a natural immunity to it. We just help them anyway, unless they get disorderly. We have a good relationship with the police, too.

[01101010]

Converting to LED?

Yes.  My current cans do not have the side clips required to install the LED BR-30 replacements that I already have (and that match my newly-finished basement).  I guess I should be glad that I can actually find retrofit clips at all.

Haven't ran across that issue as I have only my friend in the Carolina's that has recessed lighting which I put in for her in 2010. But I'll make a note of this in case it comes up.