Useless Conversation

[Reg]

As a late boomer I can only hope to live long enough to see the paradise your generation creates once my seniors are all safely dead. Because honestly, who can think of a single 40-50 year old out there who is a corrupt, greedy, racist douchebag?

[Sky]

As a late boomer I can only hope to live long enough to see the paradise your generation creates once my seniors are all safely dead. Because honestly, who can think of a single 40-50 year old out there who is a corrupt, greedy, racist douchebag?

My fiancee was born in 64 and finds the boomer blame hilarious. I like to fact check and otherwise call bullshit on the never-ending stream of boomer blame memes the millennial art kids post (like, maybe your employment challenges have more to do with your quitting or shitting every job after a month, rather than an insidious plot by old people).

The irony is that millennials are tracking boomer behavior pretty well. I expect all these dippy 'lets all storm the detention centers' 'respect my pronouns' kids to turn into delightfully jaded and narcissistic destroyers of happiness for later generations. At least the boomers waited until they started getting old to go on nostalgia kicks...Mufuckin Millennials doin 90s nostalgia in 2005. Bitch, I had food in my pantry in 05 that I bought in 99 and was still not past end date.

[Mandella]

"Make way for the new boss, same as the old boss" does not absolve blame from the old boss.

[Hawkbit]

I’m thinking about taking up Nihilism.

[calapine]

Chances are if something is wrong, you can trace it back to the boomers.

So Hitler had the right idea, he just latched onto wrong group.

Boomer concentration camps when?

[Reg]

It can't be too soon. Here in Toronto it's been decided that Boomers are responsible for the housing crisis. Apparently, too many of us are staying in our homes after the kids move out rather than moving out of town to outer suburban shitholes like every previous generation has (failed) to do.

[Abagadro]

I’m thinking about taking up Nihilism.

Say what you want about the tenets of Boomerism, but at least its an ethos.

[WayAbvPar]

I’m thinking about taking up Nihilism.

Say what you want about the tenets of Boomerism, but at least its an ethos.

You are out of your element!

[Yegolev]

No matter your perspective on the boomers as good, bad, or otherwise, it's hard to argue that people born between 1947 and 1964 don't outnumber both their parents and children and therefore don't have additional influence due to numbers.

We certainly will find out how things turn out. Backlash is real and I'm very interested in how we progress. My son has decided that he is going to abandon his generation and move into the next one, which he hopes will be more mature and responsible. I don't know where this guy came from.

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, some of the ‘issues’ from the Boomers is just a numbers thing.  There are just shitloads of them.  They are both an outsized influence as well as an outsized burden.  And they are entering that influence+burden period of their lives (post retirement) where social media has given them even more influence than what any generation before them has ever had. 

I also have personal views about that generation that don’t add to that particular argument, so we’ll save that for a politics thread.

[Salamok]

So we owe it to the future generations to banish our folks into the old folks home as soon as possible?  This is a movement I could get behind! 

edit - Boomer or not senile old fucks should not be running for office, voting or making decisions for others!  I idolized my folks growing up but fuck have they gotten small minded and petty in their old age.

[Samwise]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MNZ5cJnQuk

[Mandella]

To my recollection Millennials only started smarting off about Boomers after "classy" publications  started running all those "Millennials are Killing the X Industry" and "Millennials Complain about High Rental Costs While Eating Avocado Toast" bullshit clickbait articles.

Before that, Millennials didn't even know Boomers existed as a thing -- they were just all those old fart landlords who probably voted for Trump.

[Abagadro]

Nah, this was being discussed a long time ago before Millennials were even a concept:

https://www.amazon.com/13th-Gen-Abort-Retry-Ignore/dp/0679743650

[Yegolev]

So we owe it to the future generations to banish our folks into the old folks home as soon as possible?  This is a movement I could get behind! 

edit - Boomer or not senile old fucks should not be running for office, voting or making decisions for others!  I idolized my folks growing up but fuck have they gotten small minded and petty in their old age.

I think this is the main point about the numbers. If the young, middle-aged, and old populations are relatively balanced, you have a better chance of both modernizing legacy thinking as well as tempering youthful idealism. As it is, non-Boomer thinking has a hard time flowering.

I don't think dumping on Millenials is terribly fair. Their parents raised them this way.

[Paelos]

I think the post-Millennial generation is set to eat Millennials alive, honestly. My interactions with younger people including those just getting into college now is that they have a much more ambitious yet grounded understanding of the world, and they use technology better than all of us.

I think Gen Z or whatever you call it will actually be the next great set of entrepreneurs. I think many of them will shirk the college route and go into lower cost education or chose self-employment or trades as options. They can use tech to do this because they haven't seen anything else their entire lives.

[Hawkbit]

I think Gen Z or whatever you call it will actually be the next great set of entrepreneurs. I think many of them will shirk the college route and go into lower cost education or chose self-employment or trades as options. They can use tech to do this because they haven't seen anything else their entire lives.

Considering they'll be the ones living part of their lives in a world that looks like the movie Hardware, I'm guessing you're right. Their hand will be forced to ingenuity.

I'm really cooled out by my daughter - she's a week into an auto tech class in high school. She came home yesterday JAZZED because the instructor made them remove and install a new serpentine belt. I can't remember her being this excited about something in a long time.

[01101010]

Always exciting the first time you do it. It's the repetition that kills dreams.

[Sky]

If you're a tech vendor and you call me on the phone and leave a voice mail with no information except the number to call you back, you have utterly failed at communication.

And when I call at the expected time the next day and get your voice mail, once again you have (made me) fail at communication.

A simple text 'hey, let's remote at 10am tomorrow' and boom, communication complete. As it is? Did he get the voice mail? It's past ten, so did that time not work? Should I sit on my goddamned thumbs all day waiting for you to call back? Why are we using synchronous communication at all for the non-synchronous portion of this transaction? Phone calls are great for rapid communication of technical troubleshooting stuff, otherwise they are a hugely inefficient timesink.

On the other hand, it's what I've come to expect from anyone in a dead technology industry (microfilm readers lol).

[Sky]

...aaand just like that, my faith in humanity is slightly, temporarily restored.

Turns out the guy was a legit tech and we fixed both problems that the local middle-man missed. Tech told me he was frustrated with the middle-man's company, I agreed, got full contact info for folks I need at the hardware supplier so we can just skip the middle-man in the future.

Three weeks working on this with the middle-man's incompetent baboons and in less than 2 minutes with a competent dude, we're golden. I enjoy when things actually work out the way they're supposed to.

Also, given the frequency of these incompetent baboons in the tech field, I guess I missed my calling? Should've gone to work for a company where I can just troll people with incompetence and still get paid.

[Yegolev]

Depends on how amoral you are, or what percentage of your human soul you still retain.

[01101010]

Feel like I am back in the graduate school days at LSU with the heat and humidity outside and the meat locker conditions inside. I swear these people turned the AC down in fear it might reach 70 degrees inside this place.

[Sky]

Depends on how amoral you are, or what percentage of your human soul you still retain.

All of it, I removed a whole additional rant about a printer vendor that took 3 hours to get us a part we should've had in advance. I tore him a new one (physically backed him into a corner, oops) as I listed the patrons' situations that he fucked over by not having the part to us on time. People printing out stuff to avoid foreclosure, eviction, power being turned off, getting custody of their kids, etc. In 3 hours there were over a dozen serious cases that we had to accommodate because of his fuckup.

He made the mistake of laughing about it and I almost lost it. I take it very, very seriously. Real people's real lives. That's kind of a cool thing about what I do, helping people every day in our community.

Pay sucks tho.

[Sky]

Feel like I am back in the graduate school days at LSU with the heat and humidity outside and the meat locker conditions inside. I swear these people turned the AC down in fear it might reach 70 degrees inside this place.

Fiancee lives in a/c. Central air at her house, a/c cranked in her car, a/c at work. I don't turn my a/c on at home very often, usually when it's extremely humid (just to cut the humidity) or 90s+. And in the truck, I'm a 'roll the windows down' kinda guy, a/c only for highway speeds.

So over the years, I've realized that when I accommodate her by using the a/c at my house regularly in the summer, my body acclimates to the cooler, dry air. And it's brutal outside.

When I use it sparingly as above, I can usually hang out outside and be comfortable. I feel bad for her, because she's set herself up to be miserable through the entire summer, rather than just letting her body adjust to the heat every year.

[Salamok]

> Fiancee lives in a/c.

So she is the reason some building codes require a fresh air return on the AC system!  Just had the AC at my soon to be new house inspected and the guy was like "well they started mandating that the AC system pull a percentage of fresh air from the outside, instead of just recirculating everything, because people never open windows anymore and the newer homes are sealed airtight.  Oh and btw your fresh air return is located right at roof level where the temperature is currently around 140 degrees, i recommend we just shut that bad boy permanently..."

[Cyrrex]

Dear 3rd Party Contractor Dude Who Has Been Hired to Replace All the Lights Out in Our Hallway,

Listen, maybe you're not used to working in an office environment.  Cool, cool.  But as you've no doubt noticed in the three days you have been here, we have no air conditioning.  And while we are not having quite the extremes that our good friends in the UK and France are having, you can't help but observe that we're in the midst of a bit of a heat wave.  Maybe you don't give it much thought as you wake up to start your day, but your job this week involves you standing out in the hallway on your ladder, with your arms raised above your head all day.  I get it.  That must kinda suck.  I once tried to see how long I could hold just a single arm over my head like those weird dudes in India, and I had to give up after like 80 seconds.  That shit's hard, yo.  So you probably try to AVOID thinking about it overly much.  Also, you work with fucking electricity, and that shit is For Realz.  I mean, 220 in Europe!  You know what that shit can do to you?  I can only imagine the stress.

That said, 3rd Party Contractor Dude, you fucking stink.  Deodorant is a thing.  Have you even showered yet this week?  Smart money says no.  "Live and Let Live" might be a motto I adhered to were it not for the fact that I can even smell your gnarly ass from the otherwise safe confines of my office, if only the gentle breeze we have flowing through the spaces shifts just so.  And I realize I have a bit of a coffee problem, which hilariously compounds into a frequent urination problem, but this means I have no choice but to walk past you (on your ladder, arms lifted as if signaling a successful extra point) 10 to 15 times a day.  I do try to hold my breath, but I'm not fucking Aquaman.  And I think some of what you're emitting sticks to the fine hairs in my nasal passages, so as to be experienced at a later time.  Sorta like that good spaghetti sauce you had for dinner hours earlier, where frequent belching let's you re-experience the tangy flavor over and over again.

I know you can afford the deodorant.  This is like mecca for socialism, you have plenty of goddamn money.  But even so, maybe times are tough.  Maybe the wife left you and took all your shit, emptied your bank account, ran off with the kids and her new Italian lover and used your last stick of Old Spice to write "Go Fuck Yourself You Bitch" on the bathroom mirror.  I'd be more than happy to front you the cash if that'll solve the problem and get your life back on track.  Consider it a gift.

I'm glad we've been able to reach this common understanding, 3rd Party Contractor Dude.  It gets better from here, trust me.  But the first step is just admitting that you fucking reek.  You're the Theon Greyjoy of 3rd Party light fixture replacement services.  I'll be your Ramsey Bolton.

Yours in Friendship,

Cyrrex

[Paelos]

Cyrrex is having a different week than me apparently. It's a smooth 74 degrees in Atlanta as the high today is only 86. That's about 23 to 30 degrees Celsius for you folks across the pond.

Sorry to hear about the heat wave and the smells.

[HaemishM]

We're having the same weird ass fall-like cold snap after a week plus of 100+ degree real feel days (thanks to 70%+ humidity). I had to put on jogging pants instead of shorts to walk the dog.

Oddly, it sounds like there's a good chance my dog smells better than 3rd Party Contractor Dude.

[MahrinSkel]

Jet stream is all fucked up:

https://www.wunderground.com/maps/wind/jet-stream

in essence, you're enjoying a "polar vortex" like wobble that is pulling air that belongs over Toronto down to the southeast US.

--Dave

[Cyrrex]

It's not actually that hot here in relative terms, only getting between 25 and 30.  But as someone said before, this country is not designed for even that much heat, so it sucks.  I lived in Chicago for 5 years and would much prefer that kind of heat in those kinds of buildings.

[Mandella]

In scanning the threads and not paying much attention to where I was I honestly was reading Cyrex's post as one of his VR game reviews and thinking "Holy Cow does this game sound like it sucks! And there is smell now??"

Anyhoo, also yes nice for the polar vortex which is making the outside bearable for the first time in months down here. I actually had to get up and grab a blanket last night. I may even go outside later and do some yardwork, if I can find the pruners...

[Sky]

New in early access: Lighting Contractor VR!

I honestly don't think they'll be able to top Cable Installer VR, tbh

[Sir T]

So my laptop stopped working and gave me a mysterious morse code blinking light error. So I looked up the code, then rang the local computer repair guy, told him what the code meant (it said you had to reseat the battery) then we arranged a time for him to come over to do it.

Needless to say he never turned up. And didnt answer the phone when I rang him twice.

I say fuck this and fix it in 20 minutes, most of whiich was figuring out there were screws under the pads that I had to peel the pads off to get to.

2 days later the guy rings and says that he had lost his voice. I tell him I had already fixed it.

This was after he had my laptop for 3 months after apperently breaking his ankle while he was supposed to be replacing the screen. As you do.

I think I'm going to be handy with a screwdriver and fixing my shit myself from now on. Feck sake.

[Sky]

Isn't that how everyone gets into repair work?

[Salamok]

I think I am headed the other direction, fixing these newer laptops where everything is micro sized is tricky.  The mylar ribbon cable connectors are my bane I think I have broken 2 of these brittle as fuck 10 cent clips over the last 18 months.