Random Thoughts 7

[WWGD]

Bridge Collapses After Just 10 Years Because Designers Were Too Focused On Looks​

https://news.yahoo.com/bridge-collapses-just-10-years-134500502.html

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...after-ship-strike.1061229/page-5#post-7076390

 

[WWGD]

Reminds me of those news reports where I thought I heard the word " moron" so often.

It turns out they were using the phrase " More on", e.g., " More on this after commercials ".

 

[Borg]

My day today:
Spend months writing a software library for the company.
Share the code with others in the company.
Someone doesn't read the docs but instead creates their own, bastardized version because they couldn't figure out what they didn't read and didn't bother to ask questions.
Person then shares their code with others in the company.
Start getting emails about how the bastardized, undocumented version works.
Scream silently...

 

[Bystander]

My day today:
Spend months writing a software library for the company.
Share the code with others in the company.
Someone doesn't read the docs but instead creates their own, bastardized version because they couldn't figure out what they didn't read and didn't bother to ask questions.
Person then shares their code with others in the company.
Start getting emails about how the bastardized, undocumented version works.
Scream silently...

No good deed/job performance goes un-punished.

 

[Tom.G]

My day today:
Spend months writing a software library for the company.
Share the code with others in the company.
Someone doesn't read the docs but instead creates their own, bastardized version because they couldn't figure out what they didn't read and didn't bother to ask questions.
Person then shares their code with others in the company.
Start getting emails about how the bastardized, undocumented version works.
Scream silently...

Send all emails to the one above said persons supervisor.

 

[Borg]

Send all emails to the one above said persons supervisor.

I have been working on putting out the fires on that one. I'm hopeful that I've stopped it but there's really nothing stopping others from doing the same in the future.

 

[WWGD]

Wow, I was impressed by someone using " grafitto" as a singular form of " Graffitti".

 

[WWGD]

Just FYI, desktop Outlook does not have any of those problems, so they KNOW how to get it right but it's probably a Windows vs Android thing.

Excellent, thanks, that worked out perfectly. I opened up Outlook in Chrome, and no rendering issues whatsoever. It likely saved me a few hours I would need to figure out how to modify rendering settings back in Firefox.

 

[Borg]

I've been using a web site for years that lets me select and display various news feeds. Today, my Chrome browser suddenly alerted me that the website is dangerous and initially blocked me from it. It eventually allowed me to access it but it now has a prominent red "Dangerous" label on the URL. Of course there's no way to turn it off even though the 'dangerous' content is probably scripted links that I personally added to some of the links.

The alert had the opportunity to reply that the site wasn't dangerous and supply comments. I did avail myself of that and stated that it was primarily RSS feeds that I created. I just noticed today that it isn't marked as dangerous anymore. Interesting.

 

[pinball1970]

I gave a recommendation last week to a supplier.
This was verbally communicated to a colleague, who then sent an e-mail to the supplier did not follow the instruction.
So, this time I suggested my colleague contact them via mail again and state, “as per my previous instruction you need to…”

Only this time instead of using the one key word regarding what they were supposed to do, I used that word plus three other similar words thesaurus style.

My attempt at humour, which was not picked up.
My colleague did as I suggested, to the letter. She wrote down exactly what I said, sent it on and CCd me.

It did not read so well, snarky in fact. I will see what they come back with.

Not the worst lost in translation at work.
Reminded me of my lab days late 90s, we had a new admin about 40, older than me so I thought was wiser/ clued up in technical communications, that was her job after all.

We had some feedback on a development from an important customer via this new admin, the customer wanted adjustments that were not viable, the attempt to adjust would have created a lot of effort for little return.

I must have been busy between the lab and office, tetchy when she forwarded the request to me via e-mail, I replied to her something along the lines of, “look, I don’t have time, just tell them it’s the best we can do, if we try what they say it could end costing significantly more and they wont even be able to tell.”

So….making a mail of what I said tactfully and passing that on would have been the smart thing to do.
She opted for simply forwarding my mail wholesale back to the customer, no edits.

 

[Borg]

So….making a mail of what I said tactfully and passing that on would have been the smart thing to do.
She opted for simply forwarding my mail wholesale back to the customer, no edits.

Been there, seen that.

I was on a project with several companies working for a customer. I sent out an email asking why a certain feature built by one company wasn't working correctly. The lead developer meant to just reply to one of his developers by doing a ReplyAll and removing everyone else (he forgot the second part). His email was quite disparaging of myself and went out to all of the customer's management who were not thrilled to say the least. Yes, there was a bug that I had found and no, he wasn't allowed to interact with the customer anymore.

Also, while I was initially upset with the 'response', I saw all of the people that he replied to and figured that I would just let that one play itself out. I did have the last laugh on that one.

 

[pinball1970]

he wasn't allowed to interact with the customer anymore.

I have learned the hard way on mail boo boos. Dealing with a lot of foreign guys, suppliers and customers I double (triple) check I have the right person in the CC.

There was one other incident that stood out (same admin person)


The office manager went through all the systems and procedures including our reference system as part of the induction training for admin staff.

If a job came in from company A, lets call them Apple (we never dealt with Apple) the reference would be Apple with a number after it, the number for the number of jobs that year.

All explained….fully.

So, I had a query about a job, APPLE123 and I came in the office and asked for the file and background as it tied into some previous work.

Me, “Yeah, can I have the supporting mail and file on APPLE123 please?”

Her. “Which company is that?”

Me. “Apple.”

Cannot remember if I ever got that file or if I had to retrieve it myself.

If that preceded the mail incident, then it was my own stupid fault trusting her with anything more complicated than making coffee.

It sounds mean but she was a bit snarky too, like things not happening were other people’s fault.
I really make efforts with training these days, especially with younger people.

I want to be sure if they keep messing up it is them, not lack of support from me/others.

 

[WWGD]

I have learned the hard way on mail boo boos. Dealing with a lot of foreign guys, suppliers and customers I double (triple) check I have the right person in the CC.

There was one other incident that stood out (same admin person)


The office manager went through all the systems and procedures including our reference system as part of the induction training for admin staff.

If a job came in from company A, lets call them Apple (we never dealt with Apple) the reference would be Apple with a number after it, the number for the number of jobs that year.

All explained….fully.

So, I had a query about a job, APPLE123 and I came in the office and asked for the file and background as it tied into some previous work.

Me, “Yeah, can I have the supporting mail and file on APPLE123 please?”

Her. “Which company is that?”

Me. “Apple.”

Cannot remember if I ever got that file or if I had to retrieve it myself.

If that preceded the mail incident, then it was my own stupid fault trusting her with anything more complicated than making coffee.

It sounds mean but she was a bit snarky too, like things not happening were other people’s fault.
I really make efforts with training these days, especially with younger people.

I want to be sure if they keep messing up it is them, not lack of support from me/others.

I remember our Math Dept staff and their display of cultural sensitivity during the December holidays:
" Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannukah, or whatever it is you celebrate ". Ah, the warmth.

 

[pinball1970]

I remember our Math Dept staff and their display of cultural sensitivity during the December holidays:
" Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannukah, or whatever it is you celebrate ". Ah, the warmth.

We celebrate, Chinese NY, EID and Christmas to cater for our team members. We all bring food in to suit the particular holiday and eat too much it's great.
Other departments have got wind of it and are trying to get a look in.
Sorry chaps our meeting room ain't big enough!

 

[WWGD]

Ok, so I can back and restore in the other PC outside of my LAN or I can script it and send it the resulting script. But what do I do with the permissions, the login-user mapping? Can I script it too?

 

[Borg]

When all of your corporate email is auto-labeled EXTERNAL in the subject, it kind of loses its usefulness.

 

[WWGD]

When I'm talking with someone and I start pressing my thumb against my hand , as if to like something they said, I tell myself it's time to go out and take a break from the Internet.

 

[BillTre]

Here is a reason its fulfilling to improve people's eyesight:

 

[pinball1970]

Here is a reason its fulfilling to improve people's eyesight:

That was beautiful.

 

[Astronuc]

This is disappointing, but not surprising. I see some of that happening today.

 

[pinball1970]

This is disappointing, but not surprising. I see some of that happening today.

This gives some context. I think this is sincere.

 

[WWGD]

This gives some context. I think this is sincere.

Well, maybe, but she's raking it in in her YouTube channel. Talking about just about every topic you can think of.

 

[WWGD]

Ouch, 404 errors I'm used to. Not so much for 403s.

 

[collinsmark]

Here is a reason its fulfilling to improve people's eyesight:

That was beautiful.

Although I was about 10 years old, that was my reaction when I first got glasses.

 

[Borg]

Archiving and cleaning up the pictures on a woman's phone is not fun.

 

[pinball1970]

Archiving and cleaning up the pictures on a woman's phone is not fun.

You must be crazy.

Second only to going into a woman's handbag to locate lost keys.

 

[Borg]

The phone was hanging when she tried scrolling through the photo gallery because there were thousands of pictures in the same directory. An OS tends to hang when it tries to run background processes on that many items at once.

 

[pinball1970]

The phone was hanging when she tried scrolling through the photo gallery because there were thousands of pictures in the same directory. An OS tends to hang when it tries to run background processes on that many items at once.

I don't know her obviously but using past experience, I would suggest she edits her selfies.
My niece managed to cut down to two a day, she was up to two full batteries a day at one point.

 

[Borg]

There are a lot of selfies... She discovered 'screenshots' one year and you can see the progression of more and more of them. Some of them look like screenshots of screenshots. I'm guessing that the logic was something like it took a while to find the one she was looking for so she took a screenshot of it so that it would show up as a picture from that day instead.

 

[Astronuc]

A pilot’s fateful, career-altering flight under Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge​

https://news.yahoo.com/pilot-fateful-career-altering-flight-161426997.html

 

[BillTre]

A pilot’s fateful, career-altering flight under Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge​

https://news.yahoo.com/pilot-fateful-career-altering-flight-161426997.html

I've driven over it a few times.

 

[Rive]

The worst part of an arthroscopic meniscus surgery is the fast recovery.
By the third day no pain at all, and you just know that you will screw it up due some sudden movement or momentary carelessness

 

[WWGD]

The worst part of an arthroscopic meniscus surgery is the fast recovery.
By the third day no pain at all, and you just know that you will screw it up due some sudden movement or momentary carelessness

Train yourself to use the remote with the other hand ;).

 

[BillTre]

Earth Day Celebration:

 

[WWGD]

Why does my phone give me an error message on Fortinet, an app I don't have installed and know nothing about?

 

[Flyboy]

… yeah, checks out.

 

[WWGD]

View attachment 343910

… yeah, checks out.

I remember Canadians trying to outdo each other, but with respect to cold weather. About going out in 10 F weather with shorts and a t-shirt.

 

[collinsmark]

View attachment 343910

… yeah, checks out.

There's definitely some truth there. The first half of my life I spent in America's heartland. I've been in both situations more than I can count. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend the second, cracking open a beer and sitting on the front steps looking around the sky for wall clouds is a thing.

 

[Flyboy]

I grew up in NorCal, and have only lived in tornado territory for not quite five years, but I am solidly in the first group. There was an EF-4 that tore across the south side of town a few years ago and it scared the crap out of me.

 

[WWGD]

Another day, or at least week, another language for my YouTube ads. Today , it was Arabic. And I don't use a VPN either.

 

[Borg]

I saw this picture for an ad for jigsaw puzzles online today. I really hope those hands were AI-generated.

 

[WWGD]

Wow, I helped my friend with what turned out to be a scarily, unusually-accurate model with her exercising. For one, the rate of .698 meters to a step ( her app uses meters), is accurate daily within less than 5-6 meters, for walks of several kilometers, according to her tracker app. So, say, 5500 steps will correspond to 3843 metters, only slightly above the 3839 metters expected. I thought the total would vary more than that.

 

[WWGD]

The author of a paper titled "What leads moral people to act immorally ?" , has been accused of plagiarism.
Should have been posted in the journal " Irony".

 

[collinsmark]

Wow, I helped my friend with what turned out to be a scarily, unusually-accurate model with her exercising. For one, the rate of .698 meters to a step ( her app uses meters), is accurate daily within less than 5-6 meters, for walks of several kilometers, according to her tracker app. So, say, 5500 steps will correspond to 3843 metters, only slightly above the 3839 metters expected. I thought the total would vary more than that.

Does the app use GPS to track her route? If so, I would expect it would be pretty accurate (i.e., the 0.698 m/step would have been calculated based on the GPS measured length of the route*, and not the other way around).

* Edit: and the number of steps, which can be recorded and counted based on the device's accelerometer.

 

[WWGD]

Does the app use GPS to track her route? If so, I would expect it would be pretty accurate (i.e., the 0.698 m/step would have been calculated based on the GPS measured length of the route*, and not the other way around).

* Edit: and the number of steps, which can be recorded and counted based on the device's accelerometer.

Good point. Not sure on the GPS issue. Will look it up.

 

[WWGD]

Annoying misunderstanding about the song "Under Pressure". No, I meant the one by ZZ Top, not the one by Queen.

Whatever they may say about Yes, 90125 is the only music I've been able to read in a focused way for more than 10 minutes.

 

[jack action]

 

[Borg]

That's just the help desk that was awarded to the lowest bidder.

 

[WWGD]

Ok, if you want to test my Sql skills, either don't ask me to compute a " moving average" or define it for me when you do. I computed the average correctly on the spot, but I had no idea what a moving average was.

 

[Borg]

Just trying to calmly drive to a party yesterday. I hate driving in traffic.


It took him about six seconds to get 7 or 8 lane markers ahead. Assuming about 30 feet for each section, it works out to about a 35-40 MPH speed differential. I was going with the flow of traffic at about 60-65 MPH so he was somewhere around 100+MPH.

I knew that I had enough space to merge in front of the car that I was passing but I was carefully checking my mirrors. I only saw him when he was about two car lengths back. You can see that I slightly swerve to the right just before he passed me. I see a lot of drivers who just swerve into a lane when they're changing lanes. If I had done that, it would have been a completely different story.