Useless Conversation

[Sky]

We just saw CDB recently, they are still amazing live. They did a couple instrumentals that were almost straight up Allman Brothers, which was great now that they're defunct.

[Yegolev]

Cave Datthews Band?  He sucks.

[Viin]

Ivanka keeps calling me and leaving flirty messages on my voice mail. Doesn't she know I'm married!?

[Yegolev]

I don't answer the phone anymore.

[Abagadro]

Some crazy shit going on in Manhattan right now (IED went boom, might be more). Hope no one is caught up in it.

[MahrinSkel]

Is this something more recent than noon? Because that was at a technical school that did HVAC and welding, and probably just an ordinary accident.

--Dave

Edit: Never mind, I see that it is something about an exploding dumpster in Chelsea.

[taolurker]

Was some kind of explosion at the New Jersey shore earlier today too, and the local news is saying 15 injured, none life threatening in the New York Chelsea explosion just this past hour. New Jersey one was during a Marine Corp 5k run, which was cancelled, but no one was hurt (likely because of delays starting the race unrelated to the explosion).

NBC story on explosions in Chelsea just this hour
Jersey Shore explosions story

edit to update.. may actually be 25 injuries, none life threatening.

[schild]

"I was eating dinner and felt the vibrations of the blast," said Yemi Osibogun, a Bronx resident who was seated at a nearby sushi restaurant. "My plate actually shook."

Yemi's plate shook.

[WayAbvPar]

CNN was interviewing a 'witness' last night who was telling them what he read on Twitter. The Matrix is real.

[schild]

CNN was interviewing a 'witness' last night who was telling them what he read on Twitter. The Matrix is real.

If only millennials were a simulated generation. We could pull the plug.

[Strazos]

Can we just bitch about geolocking for a moment? I'm minding my own business, trying to watch some World Cup of Hockey in Egypt...but fucking ESPN refuses to stream to my location, because the content isn't available outside of the US. It makes no sense to me, especially since I have to log into a paid Verizon account in the first place.

I swear, these companies hate money.

[Yegolev]

Artificial demand is as good as real demand.

[Merusk]

Not to mention not having to come-up with one content to fit all laws.

[Yegolev]

Oh yeah.  If we find out that something about hockey is illegal in Egypt, please post here.

[Paelos]

Oh yeah.  If we find out that something about hockey is illegal in Egypt, please post here.

It probably should be.

[WayAbvPar]

Ice is proscribed under sharia.

[Sky]

I just threw out all my old game discs and boxes. Freeing.

[schild]

I've thrown out half the shit I own in the last few weeks.

Selling it all sounded like too much work for too little pay.

[Sky]

Someone at work asked if I was going to do a garage sale. You've got to be shitting me, a gaggle of strangers dicking around all day in my garage trying to barter me down a nickle on a twenty five cent CD?

Yeah, no.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Dammit, I have water trapped in my ear and the crackling is bugging the hell out of me. 

[Hawkbit]

Lay down and turn your head so that ear is facing downward, then blow a hairdryer set to a warm but comfortable setting up into it. It might take a bit but usually softens the tissue enough to let the water drain out. Works for my kid and I, but doesn't work for my wife. She had her ear bones replaced with stainless steel about 10 years ago and the new bones heat up too quickly for her.

[01101010]

She had her ear bones replaced with stainless steel about 10 years ago and the new bones heat up too quickly for her.

 

[RhyssaFireheart]

Lay down and turn your head so that ear is facing downward, then blow a hairdryer set to a warm but comfortable setting up into it. It might take a bit but usually softens the tissue enough to let the water drain out. Works for my kid and I, but doesn't work for my wife. She had her ear bones replaced with stainless steel about 10 years ago and the new bones heat up too quickly for her.

I'll try the hair dryer trick tonight when I get home.  It doesn't happen too often, but when I do get water trapped, it's in my right ear and seems to take forever to dry out.  I'm hoping that's not a sign of some problem.

-------------------------

On a totally different note - if your Visio diagram showing PO requests / Invoice processing is larger than 11 x 17 and goes across 7 swim lanes, then you're doing it wrong.  At least wrong for our place, because ain't no Project Manager in the world going to bother trying to decipher that.  Right now, I'm working on splitting the processes up, updating what I'd had documented previously, and then getting that explanation posted to our PMO site.  There's giving some detail and then there's noting every. single. movement. of. the. process. to the tiniest degree.  Honestly, it's really okay to not put separate process boxes for "Makes recommended changes and gets IT signature" and "emails SOW to vendor to get signature" and instead just say "Makes recommended changes and gets IT Owner and Vendor signatures."  Do we really need a flow showing that the PM emailed the SOW to the vendor, then the vendor signed the SOW, and then emailed it back to the PM?  (Yes, person who created this has that level of detail on it).
 
And before folks say that they've seen really complicated Visio flow charts - I know. I'm talking about really over complicating what actually isn't that complicated a process.

[HaemishM]

Sounds to me like somebody got chewed the fuck out for something once and so went all "CYA motherfucker" on a Vizio diagram to compensate.

[Merusk]

That was my thought, too.

How many Toxic managers do you have, Rhyssa?

[rattran]

That's easy to figure, you just take the total number of managers, and there you go.

[Selby]

You think your charts are bad, you should see some we have at work for process control.  It's like 10 pages long with 80 steps in it with multiple branches (and that's just one part).  It's so ridiculous if you try and read it all, you find sections referencing other sections that reference back to the original section for instructions and definitions.  It's like someone just made this up as long and as detailed as they could to hope no one would read it...

[Cyrrex]

On the team I work with, they produce these ultra complicated process flows like that and teach other teams to do it the same way.  I just kinda smile and go along with it, because I actually like these people and a few of them are employed specifically to create and manage this documentation.  And of course, nobody in the business actually follows these processes (which is a huge problem), and you'd think it might clue them in a little.  Less is more, motherfuckers.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Well, I'm fairly certain the complexity is a combination of the manager and the other project coordinator on our team.  They did these things before I joined and then "updated" them to include the stuff from my group when we merged with theirs.  Example - the manager quibbled over the words "approved" and "confirmed" in a flow.  In one box, we said "will approve invoice" and the in another box said "will confirm the invoice" and he wanted to make sure they meant the same thing and which word we should use.  He's overly detailed and nitpicky, but the PC can be the same way.  She blames it on her journalism major background and also uses that as an excuse for why she gets confused on some of the financial things we have to do.  I finally got a bit frustrated with her and said I was an art major, so she can't use her degree as an excuse to not understand some of the financial things we do as part of our freaking job.

Otherwise, I'm not too plagued by managers, luckily.

[Morat20]

Well shit, halfway through the transfer of data from old laptop to new.....hard drive eats itself.

Fan-fucking-tastic. I've got about 50% of the data moved, and I've got a backup from 2012, but I'm still missing a fair fucking amount.

I don't think 2k for recovery worth. (Drive head was stuck, and now happily clicks as the hard drive says "Fuck no, I won't spin up."). No scratches in the platter, but still.....

Of course, it's my wife's data so she may have different ideas.

Fuck....on the other hand, if the drive head has been problematic for awhile, that could explain why the fucking thing had gotten so slow. It wasn't just old age.

[Sky]

Last time that happened on an old server (set up prior to me running the show) I was able to continue abusing the platters with a dying head several times over. Ended up only having to pull about 10% of the data off the backups, I think it ended up amounting to two people losing a file or two. Will it work enough to keep running until it takes a dive again?

[Morat20]

Last time that happened on an old server (set up prior to me running the show) I was able to continue abusing the platters with a dying head several times over. Ended up only having to pull about 10% of the data off the backups, I think it ended up amounting to two people losing a file or two. Will it work enough to keep running until it takes a dive again?

No, I unstuck the head but now I just get some slow clicks as the head moves, but no spin and eventually it gives up. No scratches on the platter, but either the head is bent "up" a bit (sliding it back seemed to miss the guide, so I had to sort of do that again) or the motor's gone, or perhaps I fried it with static.

Never unstuck a drive head before so I quite possibly fucked it up. :)

I think the drive's been failing for awhile. It would explain quite a bit. Luckily nothing too critical was lost. (All the photos actually made the transfer before it ate itself).

[calapine]

I just discovered that eating too many bananas is not good for the digestion.

[Morat20]

Finally did one of those escape rooms. We filled up two rooms (with one observer, since we had an extra). Was a lot of fun!

We managed the primary objective early (get what was needed to escape) but continued working on the secondary ones (gathering loot, as it were) until the last minute. We got out with under a minute left, but enough loot to manage the secondary goal.

We were SO close on finding one piece that would have doubled our loot, but we sorta got mentally locked into this one particular solution. (We had every piece of it right, most of them incredibly complex, but the simplest part had two things we could have used -- and we used the wrong one. If we'd stopped and just thought for a second.....but then, time was running out there).

It was really fun. We had a wide range of people there (in both rooms) and a wide range of problem solving skills. Everyone just seemed to find things that fit them, there was a lot of talking. (Communication is critical, that was easy to tell).

People would randomly shout "I need four letters! I have a four letter puzzle here, anyone got for letters?" and then someone randomly shouting "Wait! There were four of THESE, each missing a letter!" and boom -- another problem solved.

It was pretty nice coming out of it and thinking "Now I want to do their other two rooms. RIGHT NOW."

[Yegolev]

Pro Tip: Do not get drunk immediately before your escape room.