Random Rants ΟΔ: broken record

[MaryKB]

Had what I thought was a nice dinner date tonight...

Until she just took off after going to the bathroom and leaving me with the bill.

I was on a date with a guy once, he insisted on choosing our restaurant and also how he'd pay for me. Well after he got our bill, he just sat there looking at it and huffing and such, I felt extremely awkward until I felt I needed to ask him "Would you like me to help pay?" and he said yes, and then it turned out he didn't have much money at all so I ended up paying for all of it, except he left his cash as a "tip" so our server could see. I wouldn't have minded if he asked me originally if I could pay, I just never understood why he'd be so adamant about going to a restaurant he knew he couldn't afford but still told me it was his treat? He had to know he would totally embarrass himself later, right?

My rant for today is about aggressive and mean drivers. I can understand you want to go faster than me, but why do you have to give me such a hard time? I'm going well over the speed limit and I'm obviously trying to pass vehicles next to me, can't you wait until I get ahead of them? I'm sorry but I'm not driving 90 miles per hour just because you're in some crazy rush, just be patient and I'll pull over when I can. And even worse is when you can see I have nowhere to go even if I speed up, so what really do you expect me to do if you're coming right up behind me? I totally can't push my way through a whole line of traffic, please just leave me alone and let me drive, I'm obeying the spirit of the road when I'm using the left lane to pass, that doesn't mean I have to be going as fast as you, just faster than cars over to my right.

 

[Takhisis]

Actually, it's part of the process needed to get my degree. My university has a copy of my secondary education degree but they refuse to integrate the database with that of the people actually in charge of giving me the @#~$%&! degree so I have to ask for a (physical) certificate that they have the copy of my secondary education degree and then take it, personally, to the other office who will then allow me to apply for a degree.

It is just as stupid as it sounds.

Update! I've managed to schedule an appointment for today, Tuesday the 9th of October, for the 2:00-2:30 p.m. timeslot.
It is 2:49 p.m.

*blinks*

 

[brennan]

You and Dej share that aim, brennan. Additionally, she wants to make sure internalized ideas about what it means to be a man don't interfere with their availing themselves of the place you are offering them.

(Near as I can make out, reading her piecemeal through hostile paraphrase.)

The #1 reason why homeless people can't be rehoused (if we forget about the actual housing for a second) is that they have addictions or mental health problems - which often leads to them back on the streets again in short order.

The #1 reason why the homeless are mostly (almost exclusively in fact) men is that they are automatically at the back of the queue for housing.

Deal with those things before nonsense about masculinity.

 

[cardgame]

My rant for today is about aggressive and mean drivers. I can understand you want to go faster than me, but why do you have to give me such a hard time? I'm going well over the speed limit and I'm obviously trying to pass vehicles next to me, can't you wait until I get ahead of them? I'm sorry but I'm not driving 90 miles per hour just because you're in some crazy rush, just be patient and I'll pull over when I can. And even worse is when you can see I have nowhere to go even if I speed up, so what really do you expect me to do if you're coming right up behind me? I totally can't push my way through a whole line of traffic, please just leave me alone and let me drive, I'm obeying the spirit of the road when I'm using the left lane to pass, that doesn't mean I have to be going as fast as you, just faster than cars over to my right.

My favorite is when somebody passes you going 10+ above the limit when there's a RED stop light 500 feet ahead. Like, what the hell, man? You're in a hurry to slam on your brakes?

If you're smart, like me, you can coast into a red light from such a distance that it turns green without you having to stop-start your car and waste gas. No guarantee of course, but it works roughly half the time for me.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is Maslow's hierarchy of needs still a thing? I think maybe it would apply to homeless people too. If you give them a place to live first the other stuff such as addictions and mental illness would be easier to treat.

 

[cardgame]

Yes, yes it is. And yes, it does. Utah had a tremendously effective anti-homeless campaign or program recently where they, you know, actually housed the homeless. Worked like a charm compared to everybody else's "soup kitchens and temporary shelters" band-aid.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

My computer seems to be running smoothly now after resetting it with a clean install deleting all the files it contained after backing up everything I thought I might ever want to access.

However, I am having trouble getting Civ IV to work again.

I found a folder of installer backups which included ISO files of the vanilla Civ IV and BtS disks (which I made about a year and a half ago when I got this computer, as it has no optical drive to read the disks themselves). I used those ISO files to install the programs and the process seems to have worked, but nothing I do so far seems to be able to make the game actually open.

Vanilla Civ IV shows up in the start menu and as a desktop shortcut, but clicking them either does nothing or opens up a compatibility mode troubleshooter which then does nothing when I try to test any settings. I can find the BtS folders in the Programs (86x) directory, but it does not show up with links anywhere.

I vaguely remember having some issues that might have been similar when I first got this computer and when I upgraded the previous computer to Windows 10, but I cannot recall anything about how I fixed the problem.

I know I struggled before to get full access to edit files in the mods folder, and don't recall that process either.


---

My mom got her new glasses in the mail today. She was very happy when they first arrived but even more disappointed to discover that she still cannot see very well with them. They do make her sight a little better, but much less than she expected.

She was crying this evening about how her eye sight will never get better and she won't be able to read well until she dies and goes to heaven.
​

With her reading glasses she still cannot read the small print of a newspaper and struggles to use Facebook on her own, but she was able to read most of the words on a worksheet her old speech language therapist left behind. That was probably a 12 or 14 point font, which is significantly smaller than she could read without glasses.

I'm not sure whether the visual impairments is due mostly to the neurological damage from her strokes, to her cataracts, or to the diabetic retinopathy. Her eye doctor a few months ago said her retinopathy appeared mild enough that he expects it to heal if her blood sugar remains under control, but he recommended seeing a retina specialist before her cataract surgery but after her next carotid endarectomy. (That procedure had to be postponed due to the last stroke, but we have an appointment with her vascular surgeon next week to decide the plan going further.)


Mom was supposed to begin her in-home physical therapy today (she had an evaluation last Friday but this would be the first day of therapy proper), but the therapist never showed up. She has been really bored and upset that she had to stay dressed for company all day for no good reason.

---

When I took my car to get its oil changed this morning they found that the air filters needed to be replaced. The cabin air filter was just really clogged, but the other one had some sort of nest built in it.

 

[Takhisis]

The cabin air filter was just really clogged, but the other one had some sort of nest built in it.

Eh?

 

[Traitorfish]

Americans keep pissing on about how ~~divided~~ their country is, and how they're a nation "at war with themselves", and, it's like,

You guys know what an actual civil war looks like. I know you do. You've had at least two, and you've started about twenty.

Shut up.

 

[Takhisis]

"at war with themselves"

It might be a Freudian slip. After all, they did arm both Iraq and Iran in the 1980s.

 

[Cutlass]

---

When I took my car to get its oil changed this morning they found that the air filters needed to be replaced. The cabin air filter was just really clogged, but the other one had some sort of nest built in it.

Don't trust them on that. They lie. Particularly if it's a Jiffylube. Most cars the cabin air filter can't be pulled in 5 minutes to show you what it looks like. And so places will pull a particularly bad one they save in a box to fraud you with. And change the engine air filter yourself. Most cars it can be done in 2 minutes without any specific tools or knowledge, and buying one at an auto parts store costs far less than the oil change place.


_______________________


Rant: Took some selfies and had a couple people take pics of me on trip. What came out at all were the worst pics of me ever taken. Seems I've completely lost the ability to smile.

 

[Cutlass]

Americans keep pissing on about how ~~divided~~ their country is, and how they're a nation "at war with themselves", and, it's like,

You guys know what an actual civil war looks like. I know you do. You've had at least two, and you've started about twenty.

Shut up.

Yeah. We know. And we know that what's going on today looks one hell of a lot like the 10 years previous to our last civil war.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Cant be worse than this

Spoiler :

 

[Cutlass]

It's at least that bad.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Anyways, there's a reason i never allow myself to be photographed.

 

[Ajidica]

Americans keep pissing on about how ~~divided~~ their country is, and how they're a nation "at war with themselves", and, it's like,

You guys know what an actual civil war looks like. I know you do. You've had at least two, and you've started about twenty.

Shut up.

You know American history well enough to know that we are the queens of hyperbole. Nixon devolving into drug-induced paranoia has nothing on some of the stuff MI5 got up to in Northern Ireland, and we treated the President getting some hanky-panky as some sort of moral crisis.

Rant: I lost track of the last day I could see the sun. For easily the last two weeks it has been cold and damp. Must be what Scotland feels like.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

When I get under the covers in bed, I feel too hot. But when I just sleep on top with a spare blanket covering me, I feel too cold. This is not very nice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

When I get under the covers in bed, I feel too hot. But when I just sleep on top with a spare blanket covering me, I feel too cold. This is not very nice.

Find Baby Bear's porridge and sleep in the bowl.

 

[tjs282]

My rant for today is about aggressive and mean drivers. I can understand you want to go faster than me, but why do you have to give me such a hard time? I'm going well over the speed limit and I'm obviously trying to pass vehicles next to me, can't you wait until I get ahead of them? I'm sorry but I'm not driving 90 miles per hour just because you're in some crazy rush, just be patient and I'll pull over when I can. And even worse is when you can see I have nowhere to go even if I speed up, so what really do you expect me to do if you're coming right up behind me? I totally can't push my way through a whole line of traffic, please just leave me alone and let me drive, I'm obeying the spirit of the road when I'm using the left lane to pass, that doesn't mean I have to be going as fast as you, just faster than cars over to my right.

Have you been visiting Germany? Because that's exactly what the BMW/ Merc/ Audi drivers are like here, on multi-lane roads, all the time; on single-lane roads they just tailgate you until they think they can overtake 'safely' — for them, anyway.

(Hey, stopping distance? Who needs THAT? I am Michael Schumacher INCARNATE!!! You WILL respect my THROBBING 2.5-L ENGINED ****-EXTENSION, behold the GLORY of my 60-W LED brakelights flashing (as I pull in, 2 m in front of you, at 100+ kph), and be CURSED for EVERMORE, you SPEED-LIMIT-RESPECTING, FORD-DRIVING, PEASANT!)

My favorite is when somebody passes you going 10+ above the limit when there's a RED stop light 500 feet ahead. Like, what the hell, man? You're in a hurry to slam on your brakes?

Yup, see this too, on a regular basis. Except I'm out in the sticks compared to you, so we likely have fewer traffic lights and more 'Village-limit' signs (you know, where the speed-limit instantly drops from 100 to 50), and 'Give way' junctions/roundabouts. And tractors.

My rant for the day:

Last night I lost my entire set of keys, somewhere on the short walk between locking up my bike, and sitting down to eat in a restaurant (work-related occasion). Of course, I didn't realise this until after the meal was over ~2 hours later, and I wanted to unlock the bike to pedal home. The keys do not appear to have been mislaid in the restaurant itself (or at least, the staff were not holding them when I asked), nor were they (still) lying on the pavement along the route I walked (checked it 3 times, admittedly after dark) — but they had not been handed in at the local police-HQ, either , even though it was only another short walk beyond the restaurant (and the logical place for an honest citizen to take them, you would think).

My darling wife drove down with the spare bike-lock key, so I could at least retrieve the bike; but in addition to that, I have lost my house-key, mailbox key, both shed-keys, my car-key, my wife's spare car-key, and my key to my office. Most are simple Yale-type keys which are easily recut/replaced, but the (transponder-bearing) car-keys are the real bummer: it will likely cost €€€ to replace those, and/or the car door-locks — especially if we have to do it for both cars. And I have no idea how/where they went: I find it hard to believe that I could have dropped this large and jangly assorted chunks of metal on a stone pavement, in daylight, without me or any of my colleagues feeling/ seeing/ hearing it fall.

The only bright side to this is that there was no personally identifying information attached to the keychain.

 

[Traitorfish]

Rant: I lost track of the last day I could see the sun. For easily the last two weeks it has been cold and damp. Must be what Scotland feels like.

Ironically, we've had an unusually sunny day, for mid-October.

Naturally, we are suspicious, and assume that the English are up to their usual tricks.

Yeah. We know. And we know that what's going on today looks one hell of a lot like the 10 years previous to our last civil war.

The bit of the 10 years prior to the Civil War were a Congressman beat a Senator half to death in the Senate chamber, or the bit were paramilitary groups engaged in open warfare in Kansas?