Random Noise
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Posts posted by Random Noise
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16 hours ago, Moose135 said:
The best part of this time of year is the ability to take sunrise shots without having to get up in the middle of the night! Now I just need some decent weather...
You might like to visit Dawson Creek (the town, not the TV show), the sun never goes higher than sunrise this time of year.
Clear skies too, but dress warm. Very, very warm.
Alaska is good as well, but more coastal weatherwise. Kind of like Seattle but colder with lots of snow. And on a clear day, you can see Russia!
Edit: Sorry, I meant Whitehorse, Yukon, not Dawson Creek. Dawson is further south but still damn cold.
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1 hour ago, Zola said:
Today (21st December), is the Winter Solstice, and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. Which means the days will gradually become lighter - both in the morning and evening.
I look forward to the passing of the 21st as well.
It doesn't start getting light out until 8 AM and it starts getting dark around 3:30 in the afternoon. It's also -17° C (1° F) here right now so I don't really go out much unless I need to.
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I was just thinking back to a gag we used to pull in the late '80s that went like:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
* W A R N I N G *
Your computer has just been infected with a Virus.
Unfortunately our programmers are not experienced so
we require you to manually delete all the files on your
computer.
We're going by the honor system here.
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+Everyone thought it was a great joke, and what made it even better was we actually had someone ask "what should I do?"
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2 hours ago, Zola said:
Good points, although I would also add to be careful how you close your browser or browser tab, as some java scripts run in such a way that it will detect your mouse hovering and clicking over the little "x" of your browser tab, and will either launch another "infected system" tab, or actually trigger a cookie that could actually infect your browser settings (i.e. by adding irritating toolbars, messing up your proxy/vpn/security settings, disabling some or all of your browser extensions etc.)
Personally I launch Task Manager and close/kill the "infected" browser tab from there, which normally does the trick. But again, there's no 100% guarantee it will work.
Thanks for adding that. My brain tends to always think in terms of linux so I forget stuff like task manager in Windows.
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This would probably be a good time to mention, if you ever do land on a website that tells you your system is infected and to call a number to have it unlocked, it's a spoof.
It's really just a web page with the warning garbage, a bunch of phone numbers, and a small snippet of javascript designed to keep the browser so busy that it can't do anything else. If you close the browser, then restart it and clear the cache, then everything is good. It doesn't really damage your data.
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5 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:
And what the fuck is a "street sign"? To me, a street sign is on a pole on the corner and has Elm on one side and Main on the other. But all the captcha has are the overhead signs on an interstate. Does captcha think those are street signs? Why is this so hard?
Or storefronts. What exactly is a storefront? I got one the other day asking me to identify photos with cars. Hallelujah.
I run what's called a "honeypot," which is part of a volunteer cybersecurity network among web administrators. Unless you run or maintain a server, you can't really appreciate the number of attacks on a system.
A decade ago they would simply scarf up any email addresses they could find and you'd end up with an inbox full of spam, but spam blockers made that ineffective so now they crawl the web looking for anything that has a login, online shopping cart, or something that requires your input, and flood it with web links to various sites, mostly porn. I think a lot of overseas porn sites pay people to draw in traffic.
As annoying as they are, the "are you human" boxes are designed to protect the system you're accessing, and the fact that you see them much more often is an indication as to how many sites get attacked on a regular basis. It's also a protection for you, because a single link that you may find interesting could land you on some malicious code, ransomware, or spyware.
What's bothersome about it for me is I generally have to go through the links to determine whether the site is harmful or not, so I may have to solve anywhere between 100 to 200 of those in a day. The other one is the "horny women" one which was probably misconstrued and I should have elaborated more on at the time, but I've gone through 300 to 400 of those on some days. The code is obfuscated so the process can't be automated. I have to manually go through each one.
If you have an ad blocker on your browser that blocks various sites, or you get a "this site may cause harm to your computer" message, that's from data we collect with a honeypot. Eventually the "are you human" boxes will be replaced with something better but for now it's a fact of life and that's why you keep getting them.
Peeve On.
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1 hour ago, walnutqueen said:
Said no guy, ever. :-)
Except when you're showing your niece where to download TV shows from and she wonders if uncle is a perv.
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9 minutes ago, Katy M said:
I hate when on websites, they have those picture tests to make sure you're 100% human. As opposed to 50% human, I guess. Anyway, apparently, I am not, because sometimes it takes me 2 or 3 tries to get it right. Aargh.
I encounter those all the time. Those, and the "horny women in your area are looking for you." Damn horny women are a real nuisance.
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5 hours ago, walnutqueen said:
They're green - that ought to count for something, eh?!
About 2 weeks ago I discovered a bread bag that had slid down between the fridge and the stove and it still had 2 slices in it.
They were green, but I guess I'm not as health conscious because I threw them out.
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4 hours ago, backformore said:
My pet peeves today is football on TV. Not football specifically, but men's fascination with it.
Here it's hockey, which I hate as much as football, baseball, basketball, curling, or any other sport.
When I was 19 I worked at a furniture store in the local mall and directly across the hall was a coffee and sandwich shop. Inevitably someone would walk across the hall and flip one of the TVs we had on display to the channel showing the game. Within minutes there would be as many as 25 people all crowded around the TV and then some would start dragging over chairs and recliners from the display areas.
I think it was a god-send for the women because they would just set their husbands down in front of the TV and carry about their business without the men tagging along.
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There goes my "a rabbi, a priest, and a politician" story ...
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3 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:
"I must have went" = wrong
"I must of gone" = wrong
"I must of went" = right.
i gone and went?
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3 hours ago, Zola said:
Why-oh-why do some IT guys not accept having a woman sharing their domain space? Why do they feel so affronted when I come in and advise them on certain aspects of IT that perhaps they overlooked or had no previous knowledge of in order to fix a problem? And why, when I'm trying to be nice and friendly, it is instantly misconstrued as some kind of come-on? And why do guys always want to know if you're dating anyone even though I barely know them, and being a consultant, will probably never see them again once my contract with the company is over?
I hate IT people, and that's from someone who got into the field when we were still DP (Data Processing) people and had to know enough electronics to repair interfaces and hardware problems rather than simply swap out a plug-in card. I'm sure a lot, if not most, women in the field experience the problems you have but I've had more than my share of ego-driven competition flung at me over the years.
I know there are women who are smarter than I am in several ways, and offer a fresh perspective of managing a project or problem. I wish more were inclined to pursue technical fields.
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2 hours ago, bubbls said:
And another thing! I'm tired of pulling strands of my long hair out of my nether regions!
Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13
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2 hours ago, bilgistic said:
I meant 1/3, not 2/3. Damned fractions got me again.* There's still plenty of fluid in the bottle and plenty of straw left; it's the spray nozzle that's faulty. Two bottles I have from the Method brand are like that. The other is Nature's Remedy(?)...something or another cat stain/mess spray. Totally different bottles and brands.
*My sister's boyfriend's son (13YO) taught us fractions at Thanksgiving. Clearly, I need a refresher course.
The IRS teaches fractions every year. That's 1/3 for you, 2/3 for them.
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1 hour ago, bilgistic said:
Today's peeve is spray bottles. They work until I get about 2/3 of the way through whatever is in the bottle, and then they stop working. I squeeze the trigger endlessly and nothing happens. I run the spray nozzle and straw thing under hot water and it works for five sprays, then quits working again. It's not just one brand/line of products. Why, lord, why?
They always make the suction tube too short inside the bottle, which is probably intended to get you to buy another bottle rather than use up what you have left.
I usually try to fit on a nozzle from a taller bottle if I can find one. I save old spray nozzles for that specific purpose. Otherwise, get a drinking straw, stick it in the bottle until it hits the bottom, then cut it just below the upper lip of the bottle. You can tape the straw to the suction tube at the point where it enters the nozzle. Scotch tape will dissolve after a couple uses, but electrical or duct tape works good.
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4 hours ago, peacheslatour said:
Yep. I was in gymnastics when it happened to my team mate. She also was paralyzed from the neck down. They didn't eliminate the gymnastics program but they did remove trampolines from every school in the district. I liked the tramp too but after that I wouldn't get back up on one for anything.
My high school got a trampoline and day 1 of gym class that year one of the guys went too far onto the edge. One leg went through on one side of a spring, the other leg on the other side of the spring. No one else dared go on it after that so it collected dust in a storage room.
The poor guy who suffered the mishap sounded like Michael Jackson for almost a week and grabbed his crotch a lot. If we had only known ... he might have had a future in the recording industry.
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6 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:
And of course they poured even more money into the fucking football team, hiring two additional coaches for the fucking football team. I hate football.
The game I hated worst of all was dodge-ball. Being an American growing up outside the U.S., especially during the Vietnam era wasn't all that great, and dodge-ball was the perfect opportunity to pelt the shit out of the stupid Yank. I always came home with bruises that would last for days.
If one of the balls was laying on the gym floor, the teacher would haul back and boot it as hard as he could in my direction. I fixed that problem one day though. Before class one morning, I took one of the balls and let the air out, then filled it with water and strategically left it in the middle of the gym floor. The teacher came walking in, spotted the ball on the floor, hauled back and ...
I'm not sure exactly what happened to him, but he wore a cast on his foot for the remainder of the year. And that, my friends, is what's called American ingenuity.
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3 hours ago, Sandman87 said:
The one that annoyed me the most was the code wheel that came with the SSI "Gold Box" D&D licensed games. The program would put up two "runes" and a number, and you'd have to align the runes on the inner and outer wheel, then type in the word that appeared in the windows that matched the number. Yeah, fiddling with an external gimmick for a minute or two when I just wanted to play the damned game.
Yep. Those and the "what is the first word on page 4 of the booklet that came with your game," type stuff.
The funny part of it was they would put in elaborate schemes to validate your response to the question and then a simple valid/invalid test once it was completed. So you'd have something like:
CALL (call to validation scheme)
JNZ (jump if invalid answer given)
JMP (jump to actual game code)Then a simple hack would fix that annoyance:
CALL (call to validation scheme)
NOP (no operation)
NOP (no operation)
JMP (jump to actual game code)A simple two byte patch to the game totally undid all that garbage of code wheels and stuff. I did find a nice surprise in one game though, embedded in the code was a message "If you're reading this, we're hiring!"
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2 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:
That's one of the roughly gazillion reasons I chose a career path that was not doing retail sales. It doesn't seem as if it should be that difficult to choose a career that does not consist of doing stuff you already know you despise doing.
Most people, it seems, would rather stay at their job and complain rather than take the incentive of learning whatever job skills are necessary for a more enjoyable career. If they do change jobs, it's usually the same damn thing but at another place. It's like a friend of mine when I order something at a restaurant, he'll tell the waitress "I'll have the same thing ... but on a different plate."
I did a disaster management course once. It was for managing high casualty incidents such as plane crashes, explosions, and such. Working in emergency services, several of us had the opportunity to take the course at no cost and completion of the course meant a pay increase as well. Only two of us took the course. The others didn't take it because it crimped on their personal time and they thought they should be paid if they took it.
The saying holds true, "you're the author of your own fate."
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2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:
My dad and I meet for lunch every Friday at the same restaurant and every time the manager comes over to talk to us the minute our plates are on the table. He's even gone so far as to slide into the booth with us. I'm as nice as I can possibly be to him because that restaurant is basically adult day care for my dad, but who does that?
That really depends on where you live. In smaller communities something like that is not at all uncommon, especially if you're a regular customer. There's a local restaurant owned by a Vietnamese family that my mother used to frequent. On her birthday they would bring a cake to her table with additional plates for her friends, or at Christmas they would give her gift certificates for a free dinner every month, or similar things like that.
We also tend to do other things you would probably find equally bizarre, such as if a neighbor is in the hospital or away for several days, someone will go over and mow their lawn or shovel snow off the walkway.
As much as I loved living near Seattle (Woodinville), I appreciate small town living even more.
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3 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:
Added to my wish list! I like to be prepared.
Probably the most useful thing you can get are Super Scissors. Paramedics typically use them to cut off seatbelts or heavy clothing, but they're strong enough to cut the metal on a car door. When she was still alive, my mother used to use mine to trim her plants in the yard.
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10 hours ago, MrSmith said:
I play video games (typically I only have time to play a single game well). However, I make sure to spend time socializing with people at holidays. I suppose it helps that I like my wife's family and the holidays are the only times I really get to see them. So playing a video game is comparatively less attractive than spending a day (or two, when I'm lucky) getting to catch up with my in-laws.
Back in the early '80s most of those games came on a floppy disk that you had to boot the computer from. What I found much more entertaining than the actual game itself was the methods used to copy protect the disks. Over the course of time I would extract the binary image off the disk, reverse engineer the disk I/O calls and recode the works into a DOS compatible program.
Haven't done that stuff in years, but I can still look at a hex dump and disassemble a lot of the opcodes from memory.
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Pet Peeves: Aka Things That Make You Go "Gah!"
in Everything Else
Waiting for the mini-series.
Bilgistic Blues. Part 1 - Christmas Chaos