VisorCentral.com - Inane ramblings

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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
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-- Inane ramblings (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=16736)

Posted by KRamsauer on 01-26-2003 09:56 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson

Oh, and flame wars. It's been a while since I've seen a thread blow up over the span of a day. Roughly since bkbk and bblue left, it seems.

I was part of a thread that blew up recently. It wasn't flaming, though, just two sides of an issue combined with misunderstandings on both sides. I've actually yet to see a real flamer on TC/VC. THe folks here are really cool.

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Posted by Yorick on 01-27-2003 12:16 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson

Oh, and flame wars. It's been a while since I've seen a thread blow up over the span of a day. Roughly since bkbk and bblue left, it seems.

I miss those guys.

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Posted by John Nowak on 01-27-2003 02:49 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick

bah to you! bah I say!
I'm using correct English, not American corruptions!

Interestingly enough, although American spellings can be traced back a considerable time, they were formaliZed and put into government use by Theodore Roosevelt, who was very much interested in phonetic spelling. Interestingly, some of the phonetic spellings he preferred have gone into use in the UK as well, such as spelling "phantasie" "fantasy."

If an American uses British spellings, it makes Teddy Roosevelt cry.

Shame on you for making a Rough Rider cry.

Posted by John Nowak on 01-27-2003 02:57 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson

Oh, and flame wars. It's been a while since I've seen a thread blow up over the span of a day. Roughly since bkbk and bblue left, it seems.

This is probably very wrong of me, and I will certainly give a donation to the Red Cross in silent apology to all that is good and decent, but I truly wonder how bkbk, with his incessant rants equating New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani with Adolph Hitler, is responding to the enormous international honor paid to him in recognition of his handling of the crisis on 9/11. I am pleased by the notion that the special Nobel Prize was like rubbing sulpheric acid into bkbk's eyes.

And frankly, no, I don't have strong opinions about Guiliani.

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:32 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by MarkEagle
All this snow-talk seems to have scared Toby away. Did you nail him too, Yorick?

Or... maybe he's just waiting to ambush all of us? Does it even snow in his part of the world?

In my 33 years, I've seen snow here twice. Both times it was a light powder which was gone before noon (actually the second time, it was gone before mid-morning). The only time I see real snow is the occasional vacation to the west. Been about seven or eight years, though, and this boy was made for warm weather.

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:34 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick
N'awlins is on the Gulf of Mexico, so I doubt he sees snow often. but I can give him some!

Bring it on, cher. NOLA isn't on the Gulf, though. It's on the Mississippi. I'm closer to the Gulf, both at home and work.

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:50 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by BobbyMike
(Yeah kids these days have it easy. When I was kid, 15" was a huge television, and color, well color TVs were just making it into homes! Cable TV?! We had rabbit ears! And we were happy with our rabbit ears! B/W 9" rabbit-eared snow-falling fuzzy-looking reception, that was state of the art! Darn whippersnappers with their pay-per-view cable 60" 3D HDTV. Ungrateful hooligans! If it weren't for us TV pioneers, they'd be listening to radio, on the AM frequency! grumble grumble ... where's my maypo? )

Reminds me of an email my dad sent me:
"When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year 'round blizards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But....

Now that I've reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I can't help but look aroud and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet -- we wanted to know something, we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!

And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter -- with a pen! --and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ's usually talk over the begining and f@#* it all up!

You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11!

Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy **** like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the the phone rang, you had no idea who it was it could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died!

Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning... ...D'ya hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't lasted five minutes back in 1984!"

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:52 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by septimus
also, I saw Bowling for Columbine finally yesterday. That's my primary motivation for hitting this thread: whatcha'll think of that flick?

Didn't we discuss the cow-beast already?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.a...%5E7583,00.html
http://www.moorewatch.com

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:53 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by BobbyMike
Is AIDS;
2) a horrible, but preventable disease
3) a result of Western Free Love
4) Nature trying to rid itself of a pest

Yes.

Posted by Toby on 01-28-2003 06:57 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson
Nope, by being too opinionated. Especially that Toby.

Speaking of the devil...?

Guess who's back...back again...Toby's back...tell a friend...

Not my normal musical taste, but mildly referential.

Posted by K. Cannon on 01-28-2003 09:43 PM:

Jack Osbourne: "Hey, McRib is back!"

Posted by dick-richardson on 01-30-2003 06:28 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
Guess who's back...back again...Toby's back...tell a friend...

Not my normal musical taste, but mildly referential.

It works. How have you been?

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Posted by dick-richardson on 01-30-2003 06:57 AM:

Care for an update on the 4y/o dilution of my genetic potency?

The mom's were taking shifts for a while. We decided to try a home daycare provider who had an ejumakation. Things seemed to be going ok until my son decided to take a swing at her on the 3rd day, after which he was no longer welcome back. At that point, our intent was to keep him with the mom's for the forseeable future. My wife, however, did catch an ad in the paper for a sitter with 18 years experience. So we figured, 'what the hell, we'll stop by for an interview and see how it goes.'

The exchange that sold me started with my comment that he may take a swing at her when he gets pissed (my wife's a librarian, I'm a computer tech - give you one guess where he gets his temper). She mentioned that she'd be willing to do a trial period. When I asked her if that trial period would be longer than three days, she said that - per her experience - she had found that anything shorter than a couple of months was far too inconclusive as to whether or not her method of care (which bore striking similarities to the moms') was effective. She made the comment that it is usually the parents who know soonest.

She has an innate understanding of childcare that flies in the face of her intellectual prowess. I have to plan 15 minutes of my day to pick up my son, because whether or not I care to, I'm going to hear the same thing everytime: 'I don't know why anyone else had a problem with him...'

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Posted by Toby on 01-30-2003 11:32 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson
It works. How have you been?

Been working (planning and conducting a major server migration). Other than that, threw my daughter's third birthday party on my birthday. Still planning and conducting a major bathrooom renovation at home due to the housebuilder's incompetence (the guy did an excellent job with the structural stability, but didn't know with whom or when he should subcontract, apparently).

Posted by dick-richardson on 01-31-2003 01:02 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
Been working (planning and conducting a major server migration).

Sounds like fun. Who do you work for, may I ask?

quote:
Other than that, threw my daughter's third birthday party on my birthday.

I'd have you send my regards, but considering the best it would sound is, 'some guy I type with on the net says Happy Birthday,' I don't think the sentiment would get through. Still, it's there.

quote:
Still planning and conducting a major bathrooom renovation at home due to the housebuilder's incompetence (the guy did an excellent job with the structural stability, but didn't know with whom or when he should subcontract, apparently).

I've been rather lucky in that the contractors that have worked on the house have all been competent, or hired competence. Were the house not falling down around us, my inability would never be known.

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Posted by Toby on 01-31-2003 01:25 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson
Sounds like fun. Who do you work for, may I ask?

You'd likely have never heard of it. It's a local communications company. We cover the gamut of telco services, but for a relatively small area. I started out working for the wireline carrier, but when one of the brothers bought out the other last year, my department was drawn up to the parent company.

quote:
I'd have you send my regards, but considering the best it would sound is, 'some guy I type with on the net says Happy Birthday,' I don't think the sentiment would get through. Still, it's there.

LOL...that'll do.

quote:
I've been rather lucky in that the contractors that have worked on the house have all been competent, or hired competence. Were the house not falling down around us, my inability would never be known.

Well, the house falling down around us is a non-issue. The structure is very sound. The finishing and detail work is where this guy sucked. Things like installing a non-standard flange in the master bath where the toilet never sealed properly and ruined the floor tile. If it weren't that we hated all the fixtures and planned to change them eventually anyway, it might have been more upsetting, but as it is, it's only inconvenient.

Posted by dick-richardson on 02-02-2003 04:53 AM:

Don't suppose anyone knows if it's possible to get front mount usb working when ones mobo doesn't support it? Is there a pci card with the pin outs?

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Posted by ToolkiT on 02-02-2003 06:20 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by dick-richardson
Don't suppose anyone knows if it's possible to get front mount usb working when ones mobo doesn't support it? Is there a pci card with the pin outs?

Easier: get a USB hub and put that on top of your machine or even better build it in...

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Do files get embarrassed when they get unzipped?

Posted by BobbyMike on 02-04-2003 05:23 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby Well, the house falling down around us is a non-issue. The structure is very sound. The finishing and detail work is where this guy sucked. Things like installing a non-standard flange in the master bath where the toilet never sealed properly and ruined the floor tile. If it weren't that we hated all the fixtures and planned to change them eventually anyway, it might have been more upsetting, but as it is, it's only inconvenient.

That guy gets around! I think he's the same guy that built my sister's house here in Houston that I'm repairing, and I also think he did the renovations (I use the term very loosely) on my house in NY state.

I'm busy trimming out my sisters and getting real frustrated at the lack of attention to detail that I'm having to work around.

I guess I'm just spoiled because the guys I've learned from have all been masters at what they do (houses featured in This Old House, Fine Homebuilding, etc.). The worst thing is that they're just as fast as less competent builders who skimp on the details.

I think 50% of the work I've done on houses has involved re-doing something the right way. That's one of the reasons I stopped doing chimneys for other people. It was getting to be too stressful seeing all those bare studs right next to a non-lined flue.

My wife just had to deal with a chimney fire at my house (while I've been here). Seems that when the addition was built in the early '80s whoever put in the fireplace (masonery block with metal flue) decided that it would be a great idea to stuff newspaper around the bottom of the flue between it (the metal flue) and the masonery block (they also had used paper faced-insulation!!). The only reason she could tell where the smoke/flames was coming from was that I had removed the top of the (ugly) mantel and she was able too pull the paper out with the poker (after she doused the flames with a bucket of water). If she hadn't been home, and I hadn't removed the mantle prior, my house would have burned down ("Hi honey, how was your day? Oh by the way we just lost the house in a firey blaze while we were at the store.")

I won't go into the bathroom situation, other than to say that's what I'll be working on as soon as I get home.

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"I am a debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish."

Posted by Toby on 02-04-2003 06:06 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by BobbyMike
That guy gets around! I think he's the same guy that built my sister's house here in Houston that I'm repairing, and I also think he did the renovations (I use the term very loosely) on my house in NY state. [...]

I think it's just typical of the industry. When times are good, contractors can skimp on the details without harming their reputations too much because they're on to the next job, and usually people aren't going to take somebody to court for a bad paint job. Of course, at least now I know what 'average workmanlike job' means in appraisalese.

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