Random Thoughts 7

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The discussion in the "Random Thoughts 7" thread begins with a user expressing a desire to have the first civilian post. Participants reminisce about a missing member, Evo, and share their hopes for her well-being. The conversation shifts to humorous musings about chatbots and the origins of the term "robot," followed by reflections on pop culture, including reactions to Matthew Perry's passing. There are also light-hearted anecdotes about close encounters with deer while driving and observations on the challenges of transitioning from undergraduate to graduate studies. Overall, the thread captures a mix of nostalgia, humor, and personal experiences.
  • #1,291
WWGD said:
I wonder what they'd think of recordings of their voice/sounds.
My daughter does field studies on owls in forests in Oregon.
They go out at evening and play their calls to draw in owls and count/observe them.
 
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  • #1,292
WWGD said:
I wonder what they'd think of recordings of their voice/sounds.
I saw that someone did an experiment where they played the calls of a deceased elephant. Its former herd immediately came running and were so upset that the experiment was never repeated.
 
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  • #1,293
Wise saying: ":After all has been said and done, usually more was said than done".
 
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  • #1,294
WWGD said:
Wise saying: ":After all has been said and done, usually more was said than done".
This is going in the conclusion of my thesis.
 
  • #1,295
Mayhem said:
This is going in the conclusion of my thesis.
So you will say roughly as much as you've done. Good job.
 
  • #1,296
Perhaps the coolest place I have ever been
https://www.gornergrat.ch/en/

So we got to the top of the mountain, deep in the Alps of Switzerland, where there was a very simple cafe for snacks and drinks. There was a waitress who came to take our order. She clearly spoke English very well so we asked where she was from. She had recently married a Swiss man and moved to Switzerland. Before that she lived a few miles from us.
 
  • #1,297
Note that is a gear-driven train. The rack is between the rails.
 
  • #1,298
I was in a blizzard in Indiana once.
The moisture in exhaled air from on my bread and mustache.
I bet that was cooler.
 
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  • #1,299
BillTre said:
I was in a blizzard in Indiana once.
The moisture in exhaled air from on my bread and mustache.
I bet that was cooler.
I think the coldest place I've been was somewhere in the rolling hills of Iowa. I don't remember how cold it got but I think the windchill was -50F or something insane like that. And the wind blew through those hills with a vengeance.

But I've never been more miserable than my three weeks spent in the frozen hell known as Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, Alaska. I was there for three weeks in late December and early January. We had 100 mph ice storms and had no heat in the factory; because it was still being built. I lost an inch off my waist every week. It was the worst work experience I've had in 30 years of doing this.

At least I was working on the side of the island with a runway. On the other side you had to land on the beach,

I was also held hostage at gunpoint for 24 hours in Peru, so that was a fun trip too.
 
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  • #1,300
Thought I might trigger an interesting response from you. Thanks. Quite enjoyable.

I hope you got double secret overtime on the Alaska job.
 
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  • #1,301
Ivan Seeking said:
Note that is a gear-driven train. The rack is between the rails.
I've been on that train. We stayed in an inn at the base of the mountain but it was covered in clouds the entire time. We took the train to Gornergrat and when we got to the top, the clouds all cleared. It was an amazing place.
 
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  • #1,302
Borg said:
I've been on that train. We stayed in an inn at the base of the mountain but it was covered in clouds the entire time. We took the train to Gornergrat and when we got to the top, the clouds all cleared. It was an amazing place.
We stayed in Zermatt. It seemed like something out of a storybook.
 
  • #1,303
BillTre said:
I hope you got double secret overtime on the Alaska job.
The truth is, I got burned for $30K. ?:)

The general contractor had a disaster that would drag out for years in court. So I got what I could and got out. I ended up getting as much as I would have had I gotten involved in the law suits. The lawyers would have gotten the rest. I did the math and told my customer if they pay me that much I will just go away.

This is not an exaggeration: When I got back, I was so physically depleted I probably should have been hospitalized.
 
  • #1,304
Surprise! Working 110 hours a week in subfreezing temperatures will eventually kill you.
 
  • #1,305
" Our Gpt may display incorrect or offensive information". Wish I'd known before using it to build that bridge...
 
  • #1,306
1736562500863.png
 
  • #1,307
1736611842203.png
 
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  • #1,308
  • #1,309
Added to my CV: Sat the Spirit free (0:42)

 
  • #1,310
I have no idea what to expect in the energy sector now. Will alternatives continue to evolve or will that all grind to a halt with drill baby drill? Sigh.

The future ain't what it used to be.

I have to give a presentation tomorrow and don't know what to say.
 
  • #1,311
Ivan Seeking said:
I have to give a presentation tomorrow and don't know what to say.
It is worth plotting American oil and gas production (or just about any other economic indicator) over time, then comparing the inflection points to the election years.
 
  • #1,312
Nugatory said:
It is worth plotting American oil and gas production (or just about any other economic indicator) over time, then comparing the inflection points to the election years.
Oh yeah it is all drill baby drill now. But how much funding will alternative markets receive that are still in the R&D or D&D mode?
 
  • #1,313
Earth rotation is hard in the wildcard round.
 
  • #1,314
Ivan Seeking said:
I have no idea what to expect in the energy sector now. Will alternatives continue to evolve or will that all grind to a halt with drill baby drill? Sigh.

The future ain't what it used to be.

I have to give a presentation tomorrow and don't know what to say.
I found inspiration, worked 12 hours straight after I posted this, and knocked their socks off! :cool:

Inspiration led to some fortuitous discoveries. I love it when that happens,
 
  • #1,315
The addins installed on the browsers at my company's computers are seriously annoying. Any tab that hasn't been refreshed within a short time frame will auto-refresh when you go to that tab. Same for any currently-selected tabs even if you are doing something else. The net effect is that if I'm typing something in the browser, the text gets wiped out and I have to start over. It even refreshed itself while I was writing this. :mad:

Oh, and searching for text on a page is loads of fun as well. If I have a long conversation in ChatGPT and I search for a word, it will go to that word and then immediately scroll to the bottom of the page.
 
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  • #1,316
Borg said:
The addins installed on the browsers at my company's computers are seriously annoying. Any tab that hasn't been refreshed within a short time frame will auto-refresh when you go to that tab. Same for any currently-selected tabs even if you are doing something else. The net effect is that if I'm typing something in the browser, the text gets wiped out and I have to start over. It even refreshed itself while I was writing this. :mad:

Oh, and searching for text on a page is loads of fun as well. If I have a long conversation in ChatGPT and I search for a word, it will go to that word and then immediately scroll to the bottom of the page.
At least in some browsers (Mypal, for instance) the auto refresh is a user configurable item. Try the Tools menu and Preferences, or your browser's equivalent.

Oops! I just checked and the Auto Update control is in a browser add-on called "Tab Mix Plus." And it does not automatically block Auto Update (at least in my old version) but gives you a keyboard sequence to switch it On or Off on individual tabs.

Hope this helps at least some.

Cheers,
Tom

p.s. If the company is big enough to have an actual I.P. department, maybe you can write a service request and demonstrate the problem to them in real time.
 
  • #1,317
At times I wonder if quantum mechanics really is hard or if it's just that the goons who really understand it have zero communication skills. Reading about self-consistent fields yields explainations along the lines of: "A self-consistent field is a field that is self-consistent. That is, a field that is consisent on itself."
 
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  • #1,318
I would think that each field has similar statements that are import to a part of the larger field.

In biology, there is natural selection that has circular definitions like adaptive things are the things that survive. The things that survive are defined as being well adapted. You can't measure one without the other. Its a circular definition of an important concept in biology.

I expect that each field is going to have things like this due to its explanatory information structure and something like the incompleteness (Gödel) of the overall knowledge system.
 
  • #1,319
Tom.G said:
p.s. If the company is big enough to have an actual I.P. department, maybe you can write a service request and demonstrate the problem to them in real time.
It's a third party extension that's automatically added to all browsers and isn't configurable. I'm not chasing that windmill.
 
  • #1,320
That is what a 404 should look like!

1737130608115.png
 
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