Random Rants 94 I rant at the thread title and shake my fist menacingly.

[Gori the Grey]

I wanted to look at the service manual for a particular appliance (dishwasher, I think). I had the product code, but to access the manual, I needed another code that could only be found physically on the item. I'm just saying that for some things, manufacturers have two separate product codes and one they keep close to the chest.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I've been playing Civ4 since its release (well, I've been playing the Civilization serie since 1991 on Amiga, so nothing surprising here), and I just realized yesterday (through the power of actually paying attention to what is written) that the Ironwork bonuses don't actually require the city to have both coal and iron in its fat cross. They just need to have access to it.
It took me nearly 20 years to actually realize what the tooltip clearly stated, and I wasted lots of planning in lots of games to hope that there would be a place on the map with both resources close by to put a city there. Misinterpretation is powerful indeed.

I blame Civ3 which did require it. Totally not my fault here.

I made the same mistake.

I did that too. Different timeline but same.

You guys comments reminded me of another thing I loved so much about Civ4... the Corporations

Mining Co + Sushi Co were my favourite combo

 

[H4run]

It’s crazy the training data can be relied on for product codes but google’s search, forget Gemini, doesn’t take you there.

I'm too lazy to go through lists of product names and input them one by one, so I just throw all the names and let copilot arrange them for me: product code, weight and dimensions and it does an awesome job. Copilot’s really helpful, and since it’s online and powered by Bing, I believe it gives me up to date output.

Still, I make sure to cross-check the output. The machine is designed to be super helpful and accommodating, sometimes that means it forces itself to provide an answer even when it doesn’t have one, leading to it making stuff up that doesn’t exist. Not a big deal though. I prefer that over the opposite, where it refuses to answer, gives vague responses, to avoid error, because that's not helpful.

 

[H4run]

I wanted to look at the service manual for a particular appliance (dishwasher, I think). I had the product code, but to access the manual, I needed another code that could only be found physically on the item. I'm just saying that for some things, manufacturers have two separate product codes and one they keep close to the chest.

Oh yes Gemini saying things like this: "it's also depended on the retailer and third party", but I just need the codes, it can tell me the twist that there are layers to the answer after it gives me the codes.

 

[Akka]

I made the same mistake.

You guys comments reminded me of another thing I loved so much about Civ4... the Corporations

Mining Co + Sushi Co were my favourite combo

I think I actually never used corporation in Civ4.
Like, never. I usually don't even remember they exist.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Well, NaNoWriMo is dead. The organization and site are shutting down. They claim it's a funding issue, but that is just a small part of it. If it had been properly run and the suits running it had been honest, they could have had lots of funding. But who wants to donate to an organization as dishonest as this one became during the last few years? Not me. And not the usual corporate donors that pulled their funding when certain issues became known.

The final nail was the suits' very ableist-worded endorsement of AI writing last year, because apparently disabled writers just can't manage to keep up with the non-disabled writers without it. A long-time donor promptly pulled funding, and that's that. And with the sleazy crap the last director was pulling... there is no way that I could in good conscience recommend it to anyone, least of all underage writers.

It was an interesting 17 years while they lasted. I enjoyed most of them.

More on this in A&E. Right now I just feel sick. I would have started my April Camp project in a couple of hours. I've invested too many years in this to stop now, so it means finding other writing groups.

 

[Birdjaguar]

...so it means finding other writing groups

Or just write on your own time and schedule?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Or just write on your own time and schedule?

Birdjaguar, NaNoWriMo was a worldwide community. Like CivFanatics is an international community of gamers, NaNo was an international community of writers, ranging from just-beginning amateurs to seasoned professional novelists.

Civ doesn't exist, each person alone, does it? Of course not. People share their experiences, bounce ideas around, help each other with technical and game-related issues and strategies, swap stories of interesting, funny, and bizarre things that happen in their games... I still drop by the Civ II forum now and then because there's the occasional time when someone wants to talk Test of Time strategy and I'm always up for that.

I'm talking about a community of writers that supported each other in a similar way. I did my best to help people who asked for information on a wide variety of things from historical details to how to properly punctuate dialogue, and gave numerous pep talks to people feeling embarrassed that their project was "just" fanfiction. There were times when I needed help with information, and people helped me.

I ran across someone who used to be active here in CFCOT years ago. It was nice to reconnect and chat.

That's gone now. It's not just about the physical act of writing. It's about the encouragement and developing the self-discipline to set a goal and meet it. I've been a terrible procrastinator my whole life, and it took 9 YEARS of trying this before I succeeded. You have no idea what an incredible feeling of accomplishment that was. My hands and fingers ached, my brain was fried, but at the same time it felt wonderful. And that's how it's been ever since, 3 times/year, in April, July, and November. Of course I write every day of the year now, because that's what NaNo did for me - I developed the habit of writing so it became as much a part of my daily life as eating, sleeping, and feeding the cat. Those three sessions per year were giving things an extra boost, or encouragement to try a new project.

Of course I can do all this on my own time and schedule, but it's not the same. There's no camaraderie, and nobody to answer when I need to know something about the value of domestic chickens in the early 11th century. The discussion we ended up having about that was so much more interesting and fun than I could have had by just researching it myself. They've shut the forums down so I can't even find my posts anymore.

One of my online communities is gone. And they didn't even bother to let us know before today, when they knew we'd be expecting to start our projects tomorrow.

 

[dusters]

Birdjaguar, NaNoWriMo was a worldwide community. Like CivFanatics is an international community of gamers, NaNo was an international community of writers, ranging from just-beginning amateurs to seasoned professional novelists.

Civ doesn't exist, each person alone, does it? Of course not. People share their experiences, bounce ideas around, help each other with technical and game-related issues and strategies, swap stories of interesting, funny, and bizarre things that happen in their games... I still drop by the Civ II forum now and then because there's the occasional time when someone wants to talk Test of Time strategy and I'm always up for that.

I'm talking about a community of writers that supported each other in a similar way. I did my best to help people who asked for information on a wide variety of things from historical details to how to properly punctuate dialogue, and gave numerous pep talks to people feeling embarrassed that their project was "just" fanfiction. There were times when I needed help with information, and people helped me.

I ran across someone who used to be active here in CFCOT years ago. It was nice to reconnect and chat.

That's gone now. It's not just about the physical act of writing. It's about the encouragement and developing the self-discipline to set a goal and meet it. I've been a terrible procrastinator my whole life, and it took 9 YEARS of trying this before I succeeded. You have no idea what an incredible feeling of accomplishment that was. My hands and fingers ached, my brain was fried, but at the same time it felt wonderful. And that's how it's been ever since, 3 times/year, in April, July, and November. Of course I write every day of the year now, because that's what NaNo did for me - I developed the habit of writing so it became as much a part of my daily life as eating, sleeping, and feeding the cat. Those three sessions per year were giving things an extra boost, or encouragement to try a new project.

Of course I can do all this on my own time and schedule, but it's not the same. There's no camaraderie, and nobody to answer when I need to know something about the value of domestic chickens in the early 11th century. The discussion we ended up having about that was so much more interesting and fun than I could have had by just researching it myself. They've shut the forums down so I can't even find my posts anymore.

One of my online communities is gone. And they didn't even bother to let us know before today, when they knew we'd be expecting to start our projects tomorrow.

One of the appropriate times I can wholeheartedly say "I'm sorry for your loss".

 

[Samson]

The BBC has a thing about some salesman who "scammed" a load of people by over promising on software development. This is a description of one of the cases:

> A former customer, DeShawn Womack, says he felt "lied to" after he hired ConvrtX in 2021. He says he paid more than $50,000 (£37,750) for a mobile app that would allow users to remotely access their phone and all its data from another device if it was lost, stolen or damaged.

So the victim here was trying to get a spyware app developed for $50k during COVID? Either they knew exactly what they were doing, in which case they are as bad if not worse than a salesman who over promises, or they have no idea what they are doing, in which case what are they doing spending $50k on contractors to make them software?

 

[Kaitzilla]

I was under a tree today and a squirrel landed on my head.

It felt like a heavy ball, but with the squirrel rolling through the grass and nothing else around, it was probably the furry menace!
Good thing no claws.

 

[Ordnael]

That was your Snow White moment!

 

[Gori the Grey]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Thanks for letting me just vent, all.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I had a chance to adopt a cat, but had to say no.

A tenant in another building owned by the same company that owns the one I live in is moving back to Nova Scotia next month. He's driving, it's several thousand miles, and he didn't want to subject his cat to such a long trip (the cat hates being in cars).

So he mentioned to the manager there that he wanted to find someone to adopt his cat. She mentioned it to me after I'd mentioned Maddy dying last summer, and I asked her to ask him if it would be okay if I contacted him (the managers can't just give out contact information without permission due to privacy laws here).

The other day she said it would be okay with him, gave me his number...

The cat is an orange tomcat named Sunny. He's 8 years old, neutered, very friendly, loves to be cuddled... sounds perfect, right?

The problem is, he's long-haired. I can handle short-haired cats with no problem. Medium-haired cats aren't usually a problem, though there were times when I had to put my medium-haired cat down on the floor due to breathing issues - no cuddling for us on those occasions.

A long-haired cat would have been impossible, due to breathing issues. I'm someone who needs to be able to cuddle and play with a cat, and if the cat wants to sleep on or in my bed, that's fine too. I haven't really slept well since Maddy got too sick to jump up and down from my bed. It just feels wrong, like there's a person who should be there and they're not there anymore.

I hope he finds a home for Sunny. He sounded like a wonderful cat.