Random Rants LXXII - What is wrong with us?

[Valka D'Ur]

Speaking of Canada Day...

I ordered some stuff from Amazon... a couple of books and a package of maple fudge. I always try to have some kind of treat on Canada Day, and according to the delivery date specified, I was to have received this order yesterday (yay for Amazon Prime).

For two days in a row I keep getting notices that delivery is delayed because of "external factors".

What does that mean? They got lost? They have a lot of stuff to deliver and put mine on the bottom of a very large pile? It's been alternating between too hot and thunderstorms, so they decided, "Skip the deliveries, let's just spend the day somewhere air-conditioned"?

It's not Canada Post doing this delivery; if it were, I would already have it.

It's Purolator that's supposed to be delivering this stuff. They've delivered a few other Amazon orders, but nothing was ever constantly late like this.

It doesn't matter if the books get here by July 1. But I want that maple fudge before Sunday.

 

[Arakhor]

Too many years of contact with Arakhor compel me to point out that Russia brings matches to you.

You couldn't stop yourself Russian to make that gag, eh?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Too many years of contact with Arakhor compel me to point out that Russia brings matches to you.

Fun fact, Soyuz rockets are still lit with actual giant matchstick torches. I'm not even joking.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Fun fact, Soyuz rockets are still lit with actual giant matchstick torches. I'm not even joking.

How do most rockets light? Some kind of sparker-thingy?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

How do most rockets light? Some kind of sparker-thingy?

Yeah a lot use sparkers on the launch gantry or have torch/sparker igniters internally. Some use chemical ignition instead - they will feed a mixture or substance into the combustion chamber that spontaneously ignites when in contact with fuel and that gets the process going.

Here is an external sparker system on the Space Shuttle Main Engine:

This picture shows where an internal igniter fits into the main injector of the SSME:

I do not know why the SSME had this ignitor when the launch gantry also had a sparker system. The SSME did not re-light in-flight so I'm not sure why it had two systems other than redundancy.

Here is a chemical ignition system on the Falcon 9:

The green glow is TEA/TEB (triethylaluminum, triethylborane) which ignites spontaneously and starts the rocket.

Here is a Russian matchstick igniter for Soyuz:

Other rockets that use hypergolic fuels don't need an ignitiion system at all since hypergolic means the fuels will self-ignite once they come into contact with one another.

 

[warpus]

I wonder if starting your Norway thread and editing the video footage isn't making you think about where your next holiday is going to be and you'd just rather be out hiking somewhere instead of in your office.

Not that I want you to stop the Norway thread. I've been thoroughly enjoying it.

Are there any local places where you could get away to for the weekend? Since Canada Day is on a Sunday this year, you should get Monday off, correct?

Yeah, I get monday off. I have a ticket to a Toronto FC game, but I put it up for sale, as I don't feel like heading to Toronto for the weekend this year.

My life has been overloaded a bit lately, with a lot of stuff happening. but the group stage of the world cup is almost over so I should find a bit more time in the next little while

I spent some time catching up on some work last evening and already feel a bit better

 

[Lexicus]

In a move that surprised no one, the Supreme Court smacked public sector unions in the face with its Janus decision.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

tl:dr ?


Edit:
Rant -

Someone quoted me about rockets and there was a question about what could be launched. Someone else replied to that poster about companies not being allowed to launch humans. I wanted to reply to this discussion but got sidetracked and now I can't find the exchange. I've looked through my history but I just can't find it. :mad

 

[Kyriakos]

For the last three weeks we had a monsoon season here. Feels like it is India.
Terrible.
Weather keeps getting weirder.

 

[shadowplay]

I'm going through some weird thing where I feel I can't relate to anyone, can't easily form connections with other humans. Everything's annoying me. I just threw some ham across my office for no reason

What's wrong with me?

Warpus throwing good meat? Something is definitely wrong.

tl:dr ?


Edit:
Rant -

Someone quoted me about rockets and there was a question about what could be launched. Someone else replied to that poster about companies not being allowed to launch humans. I wanted to reply to this discussion but got sidetracked and now I can't find the exchange. I've looked through my history but I just can't find it. :mad

That was me
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...is-wrong-with-us.632422/page-25#post-15160081

 

[warpus]

I had such a weird day yesterday. I had random eruptions of inner anger. I guess it probably just means I'm turning into a cranky old man

 

[Valka D'Ur]

tl:dr ?


Edit:
Rant -

Someone quoted me about rockets and there was a question about what could be launched. Someone else replied to that poster about companies not being allowed to launch humans. I wanted to reply to this discussion but got sidetracked and now I can't find the exchange. I've looked through my history but I just can't find it. :mad

Check your Alerts. You can search them farther back (there's a link at the bottom), so if it wasn't too long ago, you should be able to find it (assuming you've enabled it to alert you when someone quotes one of your posts).

 

[choxorn]

In a move that surprised no one, the Supreme Court smacked public sector unions in the face with its Janus decision.

And to make things worse, Kennedy just announced his retirement, so get ready for a Court with 4 hardline conservative justices and 1 still pretty conservative but sensible every once in a blue moon or so justice. I guess, if nothing else, Roberts probably wouldn't vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, but I can't say for sure he wouldn't overturn some other major Civil Rights cases.

We better pray to whatever higher powers exist that Ginsburg and Breyer live a few more years, or we can probably say goodbye to the last 50 years of progress and human rights advancement and say hello to the 1890's again.

This week has, without a doubt, been one of the absolute worst in the Court's history.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Put most of the steam wishlist games on sale in the checkout thing to see the total price, which is making me not want to buy any of them lol
I don't feel particularly interested in playing them at this moment

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Well, my Amazon order finally turned up. The driver claimed not to know what "external factors" prevented me from getting this stuff on Monday, as was guaranteed.

My next customer service review will not be favorable.

 

[Takhisis]

You couldn't stop yourself Russian to make that gag, eh?

I always seek to acomradate.

Fun fact, Soyuz rockets are still lit with actual giant matchstick torches. I'm not even joking.

This almost deserves your starting a TYL (today, you learn) thread by now, hobbs ma man.

 

[Synobun]

I always seek to acomradate.

 

[warpus]

We had a multiple choice question at trivia today.. "Which one of these was not originally written in English?"

6 possible answers. My team picked "Ivanhoe". It didn't feel right to me but that's not enough to overrule the consensus (of 7 other people). The consensus was based on not much at all and I knew it. But my objection was based on pure emotion and...

"The Metamorphosis" was on the list. I was like.. "I've had 3 beers but that sounds familiar. KYRIAKOS. My brain is telling me that this book is related to this person. Why. I don't know. It's probably Greek."

But I couldn't figure out how to explain this to my team in any way, and this all happened in the span of seconds.. so we didn't go with it. Turns out it was KAFKA. Right. Yeah that sounds exactly right, which it is. Too bad. We got 4th place (out of 13-14 tems today) by 3 points anyway, our worst performance in I think 2 years

 

[Takhisis]

We had a multiple choice question at trivia today.. "Which one of these was not originally written in English?"

6 possible answers.

"The Metamorphosis" was on the list.

Check.

 

[Kyriakos]

Check.

Prepare ship for metamorphosis.