Garage_Rubin Posted March 9, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2016 On 2016-02-29 at 1:15 AM, heavyboots said: Mojo for your mouth, man! Thanks again. :-) I had my doubts for a little while, but it did eventually work. Cheers, Patrick. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 11, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2016 (edited) Slept, without aid of anti-inflammatories, analgesics, antihistamines or even melatonin [although I'm much more comfortable with an ibuprofen than without it, at this point]. It's just nice to know I can. Pain has a different quality to it, when you know you're slowly but surely healing, not getting worse or just holding steady. The pain hurts a lot less, if that makes any sense. Hey Noirjyre, how's *your* face these days? You haven't gone into morbid detail about it [and people might be grateful for that...], but I hope you're feeling better too. Cheers, Patrick. Edited March 11, 2016 by Garage_Rubin PS: I never got that prescription for T3s filled, btw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heavyboots Posted March 11, 2016 Report Share Posted March 11, 2016 Yay! I too have managed to mostly back off the ibuprofen the last couple of days, so I feel you on that one. Did a 7 mile hike last night basically pain-free too. I can still make the collarbone ends grind together (as I accidentally proved in the shower today) but I think they're pretty close to knitting together permanently at this point. Still gonna be doing a whole lot of sleeping this weekend though, I think… 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 13, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2016 How could I forget the `Like' button? Sorry about that... Cheers, Patrick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psychophant Posted March 17, 2016 Report Share Posted March 17, 2016 Next week I will finally lose my first permanent tooth, one of my wisdom teeth that is lying on the side and damaging the neighbouring molar. As it has part of the crown out it was considered to be just a slow riser for years, as all my other wisdom teeth are in different levels of appeareance (Wise, me? Not really. Rather shy, however). Not looking forward to it, but at least I have beaten back the infection that set the alarm without antibiotics, as due to Easter I have to wait three weeks for the surgery/extraction. Meanwhile work continues at an unholy rythm. On average four flights a month, so I am afraid of calculating my carbon footprint. Our company is at the limit of no longer being a SME, so we still have a small, flat structure, and daily talks with owner/CEO, but the workload increases exponentially. There are some relaxing perks. We are still planning how keep supplying with a concrete additive a mine in Mongolia, and doing a Michel Strogoff. Last time we had a container blocked in China. Also the time taken to cross China is excessive. So we are revising again the original Transsyberian/Transmongolian train trip (one I would like to follow) with an alternative to cross through Kazakhstan and a brief hop through China, playing a reverse Silk Road. Crossing the Ukrainian/Russian border is a no right now so either you cross Belarus (not good) or you take a ship to Riga and enter there the old USSR rail system avoiding the freight black hole that has become Minsk. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanderer Posted March 18, 2016 Report Share Posted March 18, 2016 Walked out of work straight into a whole bunch of scary looking police and a small army of reporters. Seems like they finally caught that shitface responsible for the Paris attacks, and right around the corner from where i work. Nice. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remotevoices Posted March 18, 2016 Report Share Posted March 18, 2016 on that note, a body was fished out of the river that runs by our office. only over heard people talking. so know idea what that was about. though, there was a burnt out caravan in one of the other business premises... hum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striv Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 My second Dan certificate finally arrived! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gromit Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Huzzah! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 21, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 Slept on a concrete floor [sober], and it was nice and comfy. I like this biking body armour stuff. :-) Okay, some background; yesterday was pretty busy. Between church [hi Mz.Clean :-) ], some extra work at The Gym, and an extra shift at my other job, I didn't bother riding all the way home for a nap, then all the way back downtown again for my other job. Instead I showed up at my other job a couple hours early, got the lowdown on what was going on from the evening shift while they were still around, then settled in for a nap while they were getting ready to go. Also brought my laptop, because it serves as an alarm clock. That went well, except now I keep thinking today is Tues, because I don't normally work Sun nights. So on some level, my mind insists that was Mon... Cheers, Patrick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanderer Posted March 22, 2016 Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 Another "interesting" day. I was on my work in Brussels when everything went down. The train i was on was halted at the first station of Brussels, and as i got off they were in the process of shutting down the subway. So instead of trying to make it to work i immediately took a train back home. When i was riding out news came through that the entire city was going on lockdown so i guess i was lucky to get out before that happened. I saw a lot of nervous people... hell i am nervous as well. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArkanGL Posted March 22, 2016 Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 I'm glad you made it out okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wanderer Posted March 22, 2016 Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 Yeah... me too. I'm kind of apprehensive on what will happen now though, what the responsive of the general population will be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psychophant Posted March 23, 2016 Report Share Posted March 23, 2016 Next week I will finally lose my first permanent tooth, one of my wisdom teeth that is lying on the side and damaging the neighbouring molar. As it has part of the crown out it was considered to be just a slow riser for years, as all my other wisdom teeth are in different levels of appeareance (Wise, me? Not really. Rather shy, however). Not looking forward to it, but at least I have beaten back the infection that set the alarm without antibiotics, as due to Easter I have to wait three weeks for the surgery/extraction. Meanwhile work continues at an unholy rythm. On average four flights a month, so I am afraid of calculating my carbon footprint. Our company is at the limit of no longer being a SME, so we still have a small, flat structure, and daily talks with owner/CEO, but the workload increases exponentially. Still there are some relaxing perks. Yesterday I was in Milan for a very important meeting, and they had CNN on for breakfast. So throughout the morning, and also during the meeting, we were seeing the developing news, the rumours of closed airspaces, the mounting casualty numbers. Then in Malpensa airport all seemed normal and the only affected flights were those to and from Brussels. Extra security, but not much. In Barcelona at the train station there was a much higher security presence, and something that used to be relatively common but I had not seen in ten years, explosive detection police dogs at the entrances. It is going to be difficult, not overreacting, specially as our governments are already talking of freedom trade offs. I have flown from airports where you have a full security control to get in, another after the check in area, and another one before boarding the plane, But that is not safety, as then the terrorists hit demonstrations, cinemas, or even funerals. As long as we live in communities, we are a target, so we have to work in prevention and intelligence analysis, not in a false safety measurement that only tries to show we are doing more than we do. Unfortunately this is commonplace in many parts of the world, and all the measures and countermeasures are well known too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 23, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2016 Unfortunately, politicians are in the business of getting votes. So it's more important that they appear to be doing something about a problem, than to actually do something about it. Sorry. :-\ Hope you all get through it okay, and don't get searched too often. moi@phnx1:~$ fortune -aim thatcherite (knghtbrd) % Something must be Done This is Something Therefore, This must be Done -- The Thatcherite Syllogism % Mojo, Patrick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteMinotaur Posted March 25, 2016 Report Share Posted March 25, 2016 (edited) Went to my first court case, and won. Yay! I spent several hours rifling through state statute sections and subsections (with no Watson AI to auto-parallegal for me, mind you!) and essentially eviscerated the charge against me (not stopping at a crosswalk for a pedestrian) with 3 written witness testimonies, a live meat-witness at the stand, and even had copies of the statute there to refer to. Probably I have been watching too much Better Call Saul and have had my OCD giving me sleepless nights overpreparing for this hearing thing, but I've never had to go to court before and wanted to be safe rather than sorry. A potential $150 ticket is one thing but the lifetime bump of even $50 on 30 years of insurance premiums would be a major bummer. TL:DR you have to go full razzle-dazzle and nuke those moving violations from orbit --said everyone I know who has had one. It was interesting to see the way that most of these small-fish traffic court hearings come down to essentially 30-second self-help sessions. Like kicking the kickball through your high school's chemistry lab window and causing a small magnesium-bunsen burner fire with Bromide chaser. You get pulled into the counselor's office, are sternly asked if you learned your lesson, you nod, your parents come pick you up and ground you from Tinder / Netflix Binging for a week, and you move on. Dressing up with my Hawaii 'aloha-executive' aloha shirt / proper slacks wear and speaking haole (white-people talk) actually kind of backfired on me a little, and another guy who had like an entire legal defense. The judge, and perhaps he is more on the 'Judge Judy' side, more activist, 'teach you a lesson' side really mostly wanted to hear people's life stories, and how they're sorry and will never do it again. I brought a 70+ year old aunt and that, it seems, had a greater impact on the verdict than anything else- more than any of the HS-296c subsection 3 references and properly-constructed legalese defense I had worked so hard on. The judge had a plain face when I explained why I thought my actions (stopping quickly without entering the crosswalk) did not violate the word of the law. Then the judge asks, 'Who's this?' I'm like, 'This is my senior retired aunt whom I was driving to help get her groceries and medication.' And he's all big smiles and getting the feels. Then he's like, 'The officer has drawn out a diagram of the incident showing your car, coming to a screeching halt, inside the crosswalk, very close to the pedestrian.' I of course say I stopped before the line, which I did. Then he turns to my aunt, smiles again, 'So did he enter the crosswalk'. 'No your honor,' nice old ultra-conservative church lady face. 'Case dismissed,' just like that. I definitely feel like having gone through the extra trouble to bring her in with me into the courtroom made the difference between freedom and being haunted by a fairly serious, however false, citation. Take that under advisement, future-self. Watching all of the other cases, it was apparent virtually everything at the traffic court level is hearsay. Very little in the way of actual evidence. So it's basically a, 'Did you learn your lesson? Do you know what you need to do now? Ok. Next." The one other guy with this crazy, 5-minute trial-speech on the height differential between the specific model of the city police department's sedans and his 2015 Mercedes SUV, which explain why it would be impossible to provide evidence of 'texting while driving'... He was the most thorough, and he was the one with the biggest fine -- and the judge forced him to take the full fine, plus drivers ed. He probably would've faired better just talking pidgin, showing up in the t-shirt and board shirts that most everyone else was in, and telling it with an apologetic tone. He was also pulling out his cell phone and tap tapping away right as the trial started, like he had VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS that silly lower-court rules were in the way of. It's like if you're trying to look like you're beyond reproach, like the law can't touch you, then you get touched, and reproached. At least in this particular court. Reminds me of Benicio Del Toro's line in Sicario "You should move to a small country town where the rule of law still exists." Because while this court session seemed pretty fair to me, I don't know how the hell you go from that to the nine most august, senior judges in the US rationalized the Citizens United verdict. A very educational experience, all around. And I won my dismissal! Woohoo. Edited March 25, 2016 by TwiliteMinotaur 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 26, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2016 Slept until I ran out of things to dream about, which is a nice change from the kind of week I'd been having. Also didn't oversleep to the point of waking up with a headache, so I'd have to say that was just about perfect. Good morning. :-) So, the kind of week I'd been having... There was a large Native group at the Other Job most of this week, but considering the number of people who came through the building [about 2000 on average], they were surprisingly easy to clean up after. Since I was only in at night, making sure everything was ready for the next morning, I'm not exactly sure what was going on. The main emphasis seemed to be on preserving the culture, with a healthy dose of carreer opportunities to combat poverty. Also a big dance for the kids, which was all about having a good time. Meanwhile at The Gym, we've had a new auditor for a while, with a whole new set of pet-peeves to address, so she'd been kind of hard to please so far. Her appearances have also been amazingly erratic compared to the previous auditor, partly because she has more locations to cover, partly because she doesn't have family in town [previous auditor would generally come to inspect right after a long weekend / stat holiday, after visiting family here, so she was a little more predictable]. But this week, we aced our inspection for the first time since she started. This came at a cost, however -- mainly time and effort. So with all that out of the way, I passed-out and didn't come up for air 'til I was good and ready. Cheers, Patrick. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psychophant Posted March 28, 2016 Report Share Posted March 28, 2016 Survived Easter. Now the city is no longer filled with the sounds of thousands of drums, kettledrums, bass drums. And the center collapsed by parades and a certain religious zeal. This is in example of a small parade from one of the cofradías (brotherhoods, though women are now allowed to join), some of them from the middle ages, in one of the parades. There are 24, and this one is middle size. On Friday the holy burial parade, where all groups take part, lasts 8 hours... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 28, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 28, 2016 Turned 45 today, and I don't feel a day over... Actually, that number varies wildly from one day to the next, sometimes from one *part* of my day to the next. Eh, just another day. I might start celebrating my birthdays again when I have a few more teeth, some spare time, and maybe if I'm *really* lucky, a female of my own species [one who's not just looking for a friend, I mean [no offense to Aspie Girl of course, or to Mz.Clean for that matter]. Besides, Mz.Clean did say at one point, that there should be more people like me in the world. Can't do it myself; cloning is out. My boss at The Gym has already [jokingly] explored that option]. No, wait -- that's what I *want* for my birthday. Hope no one asks me about that, because it's kind of a tall order. Oh well. Cheers, Patrick. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
db Posted March 28, 2016 Report Share Posted March 28, 2016 Happy Birthday! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteMinotaur Posted March 29, 2016 Report Share Posted March 29, 2016 Happy Birthday man! I just got my first new laptop in a long long while, and my first Windows 10 machine. I really hope this doesn't suck! It's got a touch screen though, so futuristic! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted March 29, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2016 Thanks. :-) Okay, changed my mind at the last minute and did celebrate, just a little... Brought a miniature chocolate cake to work, more of a chocolate chip cupcake really, and split it with Mz.Clean. I also had some candles left-over from my ex-roommate's birthday, so that worked out nicely. Only used nine of them, because it was a tiny cake [four white, five blue; 4,5 ; 45]. Cheers, Patrick. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gil Posted April 2, 2016 Report Share Posted April 2, 2016 Irritation No 27: Give your email address to the gas company, on the pretext that they will let you know next time they need a meter reading from you. Your reward: an infuriatingly frequent "newsletter" containing drivel in which your interest is almost 0%, except that you can't spam the address or blacklist it and you have to read it in case there's something important smuggled in, like a price hike, or, as today, a request for meter readings. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garage_Rubin Posted April 10, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2016 (edited) Only 27? I'd say you're doing pretty well then. :-) Posting from my `SAMOS-3' because I can, which is kind of like driving an Abrams tank down to the corner store to pick up groceries. I actually found a use for it, btw. Came up with another bad idea for a music video, so I ended up re-downloading the entire Lucifer series [to date] at a higher resolution, then converting the files into something a little easier to edit. I'm not sure why, but Avidemux has always been a little twitchy when it comes to Matroska video. Seems to convert it to other formats just fine, but making edits...? Not so fine. Anyway, it chewed through about 7.5 hours of high-definition video [720p] in two hours. Then I grabbed potentially useful clips from the resulting AVIs, still recombining them into something semi-coherent. I have only two minutes completed so far, and the song is about seven minutes long. [In case you're wondering, `SAMOS-3' is the hostname of that `monster truck' computer I'd been working on a while back; an HP Proliant DL360 server with two quad-core processors [eight cores altogether, running at 3 gHz apiece], later upgraded with 32 GB memory, second power supply added, as well as a gaming-quality video card. Luckily the video card doubles as a sound card, which servers do not normally possess [via HDMI line-out, a combined A/V signal]. The Dell PowerEdge 2650 is semi-retired, btw. I'm thinking of setting it up for protein folding, SETI@Home or something, and wiring it to a thermostat switch so it'll boot-up whenever my room drops below a certain temperature.] Cheers, Patrick. Edited April 10, 2016 by Garage_Rubin bad timestamp on YouTube video 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noirjyre Posted April 10, 2016 Report Share Posted April 10, 2016 My friend Nakedbunni, brought me a voodoo doll, from New Orleans- It came with instructions-heh- like I don't know how to use a voodoo doll- 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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