Old Man

Re: Musings on Random Musings "Manchurians" would seem to be more appropriate. Similar to how people from Denmark are Denmarkians, and New Zealanders are Kiwis. And Kansans are Jayhawks. And Illinoisese are Hoosiers.

Re: More space news! Army Successfully Tests Hypersonic Weapon Design Cooool.

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN) (non-climate change thread) Pretty much. I'm wondering whether the duplication attempts will be just that, or if they'll try to improve the experiment. For example, we don't know if the neutrinos are actually going FTL or if they're teleporting a short distance and moving STL after that.

Re: The cranky thread All good points to be sure. Honestly, I'm just deeply annoyed by the whole situation, both because of having been forged and now because of the HR circus I'm going to have to launch. It's not like I don't have real work to do.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Sadly that movie has a nonzero body count at this point.

The OPERA experiment has repeated and confirmed their original FTL neutrino result, with some modifications that would seem to rule out certain sources of systematic error. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/neutrinos-screw-einstein/ So while the result is still improbable it still can't be ruled out either. Next up is for MINOS and (facility in Japan whose name I can't remember) to try to verify the results themselves, sometime next year.

Re: Musings on Random Musings What are you paying for the LCD monitors? You can get pretty good ones for $200 apiece nowadays.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: The cranky thread I'm being pressured to take the forgery issue to HR. I guess I'll have to, but I hate to do that to an otherwise okay sales rep just because she did something more stupid than usual.

Re: The cranky thread Updated: I did report the cow orker and judging by her tone of voice on the phone when she eventually called me to explain, I think she got verbally worked over pretty bad by a bunch of managers and/or the legal department. I still can't figure out what she was thinking--I looked over the forged papers and she gained nothing by doing that. Maybe she thought she was saving time, but the time it took to paste a screen grab of my initials (rolleyes) on every single page of the document can't have been much less than it would have taken her to forward me the changes for my actual approval which I would surely have provided anyway. It's possible that she might be... stupid. I told the timeshare lady I'd call her back. I didn't. The burglars apparently took nothing from the house--not even the laptop that was sitting in plain view in the living room. Apparently the meth dealer is pretty picky as far as what he'll take as payment. Need to fix a window, that's about it. We're just glad he wasn't home at the time, though it's likely that the house was being watched in the first place. The cops were pretty pissed, though--evidently there's a thieves guild that's been operating in that area for a while, but the police can only run a catch and release program because the prisons are overcrowded.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings My electric bill for this month is $250. For about 720 kilowatt hours of usage. 720 kilowatt hours conveniently works out to 24 kWh per day, or one kWh every hour. So my instantaneous energy consumption rate is one kilowatt. At 110V that kilowatt is roughly equivalent to .009 coulombs per second. Over the course of the month, that's 389 coulombs, or 2.427 × 10^21 electrons. Electrons weigh 9.10938188 × 10^-31 kilograms, so I'm getting 22.1 x 10^-10 kilos of electrons per month piped into the house. Which is about 780 x 10^-10 ounces of electrons. So I'm paying $9,200,000,000 per ounce for electrons.

Re: Traveller Hero: Aslan Mercenaries Question There's an Aslan Mercenary Ships PDF floating around the net that might be appropriate. I couldn't find any pictures of Aslan ships in three minutes of googling though.

Re: The cranky thread So far today: I found out one of my cow orkers scanned my signature and used it to show my "approval" on a document to get it through purchasing. I won a four-day trip for two to Vegas... if I read the nice lady my credit card number over the phone. Right now. Looked up the sponsoring resort online... oh, a timeshare. What a surprise. My father in law's house got burglarized. I'm about ready to go home and hide under my bed. You win, Thursday. Uncle.

Re: The cranky thread I'm often bothered by the carnage our vehicles inflict on wildlife. We don't get deer here, but I pass many corpses of birds, cats, and mongooses on my way to and from work. I can't think of a solution, either.

Re: The cranky thread But is the deer okay? Did you have to adjust it with the sledgehammer?

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Controllability has never been a selling point for any full auto pistol that I know of. It's more about shredding your opponent at very close range. There's usually some token attempt to try to control the recoil, like muzzle porting or the cheesy fold-down foregrip on the Beretta 93R. But realistically these are for spray and pray.

Re: The cranky thread Steel toed boots?

Re: The cranky thread Can that something be a person? Because I have a list. It's long.

Re: The cranky thread Yeah, I have to make an effort sometimes to remember that I have two great kids and nothing more than the usual aches and pains health wise. Although I wonder how long the latter is going to last under the circumstances.

Re: The cranky thread I hear you. I'm actually in full escape mode here--when I was interviewing for this job I was told commissions would be at a certain level, but in reality they've been less than half that. So overall it's been effectively a 25% pay cut. I've already had to borrow money to cover the mortgage. I probably have until March to either find a job that actually pays what it says on the tin, or else move out of the house. I can't take side jobs because of the strike threat, if I could find side jobs to begin with, and I'm up way late every night trying to hold down this job while simultaneously looking for an out. Then I wake up at 3 A.M. with the adrenal glands in full squirt because I'm screwed. Hence the lack of sleep at night. I'm in a bad place. All I can think about is my damn mortgage payment. Oh, and Christmas is coming.

Re: The cranky thread Jump online here, at least you won't be alone. I don't think I've slept more than four hours a night for a couple of weeks now.

Re: The cranky thread Exactly. Seriously.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games 100 round Glock dual drum pistol magazine

Re: Cool Guns for your Games SRM 1216 Tactical Shotgun - rotating magazines give 16 round total capacity http://youtu.be/M29ewKBjCf8

Re: The cranky thread