Humor Random Comments Thread

[mojoey]

Glad that I'm not the only one that switches accents when they get on the line with a 'help' desk from Bangalore. >_>

 

[Quick_Nick]

Well, DC Snowpocalypse 2016 has begun!

20 minutes since snow started sticking and I've already blown through 5 rolls of toilet paper and 3 gallons of milk. I don't know if I'm gonna make it through the next 2 days...

The Army put up a couple of pictures on Twitter from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

 

[Linguofreak]

Glad that I'm not the only one that switches accents when they get on the line with a 'help' desk from Bangalore. >_>

Huh? Nobody in this situation switched accents, and Bangalore was not involved. An American with an American accent called a US helpdesk and the call was answered by a British-American who grew up in England and has an accent that is pleasant, intelligible, and, as far as my American ears can tell, is quite decently close to RP. The caller (the guy with the American accent) stated that he could not understand the agent (the guy with the British accent), and insisted on being transferred to someone that "speaks English".

I'm quite certain that if the Queen herself had answered the call, the caller would have given her the "English, Oedipus, do you speak it?" treatment.

 

[birdmanmike]

Sorry only second post, hi all.

A few (lot)(1980's) years back, my wife was on a coach (bus?) trip in New England of all places, with our kids. A friendly oldish lady asked where they were from. Wife replied "we're from England - to which elderly party responded "you speak our language very well!".

But then, someone else later pointed at some houses and said "some of these are over two hundred years old", so . . .

 

[Abdullah]

Anyone want a nyan cat? Anyone not want a nyan cat?

 

[Urwumpe]

Glad that I'm not the only one that switches accents when they get on the line with a 'help' desk from Bangalore. >_>

Put me into one office with some person from Berlin, who is speaking the rather strong dialect there and you can observe how I gradually shift into speaking with Berlin dialect. Its really annoying sometimes, because I need a time to shift back to local dialect then. :lol:

Happens to me also with other German dialects with different incubation times, except Saxon...

 

[Abdullah]

ANYONE WANT A NYAN CAT? ANYONE NOT WANT A NYAN CAT? If you don't answer NOW, I will delete the Probe :hailedbyprobe:

 

[Fabri91]

I've been catching up on episodes of The Expanse. I think I have a new favorite sci fi TV show. I like how the spacecraft use thrust for artificial G and are built with the decks perpendicular to the thrust axis, Star Frontiers style.

True, but I find that they get a bit sloppy in some scenes with this: in one docking sequence the main propulsion was clearly shut off, but everyone seemed to walk normally.

However, it's by far the show that has done the best job at it in a quite consistent manner.

Put me into one office with some person from Berlin, who is speaking the rather strong dialect there and you can observe how I gradually shift into speaking with Berlin dialect. Its really annoying sometimes, because I need a time to shift back to local dialect then. :lol:

Happens to me also with other German dialects with different incubation times, except Saxon...

What's the incubation time for Swabian?

 

[C3PO]

It was pretty easy, but I fear there's some young adults that spend too much time with their heads stuck up their... cellphones to answer some of them correctly.

We'd gone on vacation to New Orleans several years ago, when we got back the kiddo dumped her boyfriend (mainly for him being stupid?). Anyway, he didn't know anything about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Biggest story on the news for quite a while and he'd not heard a bit of it (too much into one game or another).

I mean, who here wants to be bothered by real life or something.

That kinda reminded me of a situation in 5'th or 6'th grade. The teacher in 'Religion-class' was reprimanding one of the 'tough' kids about not doing his homework. The guy gave this epic comeback: "So what? I bet even you can't recite the twelve commandments!"
:facepalm:

 

[Andy44]

True, but I find that they get a bit sloppy in some scenes with this: in one docking sequence the main propulsion was clearly shut off, but everyone seemed to walk normally.

However, it's by far the show that has done the best job at it in a quite consistent manner.

Magnetic boots. Watch when the thrust is cut their boots light up with red lights to indicate the magnets are on.

It's not perfect, but it's a good way to explain away things in a TV show, where the budget for doing lots of free fall scenes isn't there.

 

[Urwumpe]

What's the incubation time for Swabian?

With a sample size of 1, about 4 days. :lol:

 

[Fabri91]

Magnetic boots. Watch when the thrust is cut their boots light up with red lights to indicate the magnets are on.

It's not perfect, but it's a good way to explain away things in a TV show, where the budget for doing lots of free fall scenes isn't there.

Yep, the bits with the magnetic boots are well done. I don't want to spoil a scene, but, to be specific, in the last episode there is a docking§/boarding sequence where the main engine appears to be off and the crew is still acting like under 1G.

Still, in general they're doing a very good job.

 

[jedidia]

I've been catching up on episodes of The Expanse. I think I have a new favorite sci fi TV show.

Still a bit torn about it. They're doing a generally good job at catching the hard-sifi style of the books, but I'm not quite fond how they're making the lighter parts of the book more "dramatic" (specifically, the entirety of scenes involving the crew of the Roci). I get how they want to be Game of thrones in space, and the novels (especially the second one) lend themselves well enough to that, but they still managed to strike a good balance between terrifying, introspective and fun, and the separation is mostly handled by characters and locations, and doesn't really break down until the whole main cast meets (though from there it gets very dark for a few chapters). By pitting the Roci crew against each other at the beginning instead of them already being a band of brothers, they lose a lot of that, in my oppinion.

Also, shoehorning Avasarala into the first novel might turn out great in the long run, but for the moment it introduces too much segregation for my taste.

 

[Andy44]

Well, I didn't read the books, and that, as I've found, usually leads to me liking the movie/TV show version better.

---------- Post added at 06:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:17 PM ----------

Back to Snowpocalypse 2016, It's been snowing here at my house for over 24 hours now. It looked like we were done this morning but then it got heavy again and the wind picked up. I'm looking at about a meter of snow in some spots here, the snow is up to my hips just trying to walk anywhere, and driving is a distant fantasy. My truck is buried under at least 2 feet and the street hasn't been plowed. When they do plow it, it will further bury my vehicle. It's gonna be a rough day tomorrow and probably the next few.

This is the price we paid for having a 70 degF Christmas.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

We just started getting this snow this afternoon. 3 to 10 inches expected. Outer Cape Cod is getting up to about 18 inches.

Hopefully this won't be like last year where we seemed to get 18 inches of snow every few days for the whole of February. Had 9 ft of snow last year. :huh:

 

[MaverickSawyer]

I'd say "load it into train cars and ship it to California", but they're getting a lot of snow this year, too, which is a good thing.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Even with last year's winter we had a relatively dry year here in Massachusetts. That's nice in that the mosquitoes and ticks didn't have a good year, but bad in that our reservoirs are lower than they should be this time of year. Hopefully we'll get some good spring rains vs. mountains of snow.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Even with last year's winter we had a relatively dry year here in Massachusetts. That's nice in that the mosquitoes and ticks didn't have a good year, but bad in that our reservoirs are lower than they should be this time of year. Hopefully we'll get some good spring rains vs. mountains of snow.

See, I'm a Californian by birth and childhood. Snowfall always is a good thing, as that's what builds up the water reserves for the summers. Rain is a bad thing, as it doesn't provide long-term water.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

See, I'm a Californian by birth and childhood. Snowfall always is a good thing, as that's what builds up the water reserves for the summers. Rain is a bad thing, as it doesn't provide long-term water.

Yeah, I hear you. I follow the hydropower scene and know the snowpacks disappeared in a lot of areas out there.

---------- Post added 01-24-16 at 10:02 AM ---------- Previous post was 01-23-16 at 11:03 PM ----------

My neighbor is a bit of a tinkerer and seems to like how complex machines magically make extra parts when you take them apart and reassemble them. He has been running his snowblower all morning trying to clear a 10 ft by 30 ft driveway of 6 inches of powder. I think the operating principle of his snowblower is it burn enough gas to cause global warming to get the snow to melt faster, because every time he attempts to push it into snow it simply stalls out. He's going to give himself and the neighborhood carbon monoxide poisoning if he keeps it up.

My wife and I cleared our driveway in 10 minutes with shovels. :huh:

 

[Urwumpe]

My neighbor is a bit of a tinkerer and seems to like how complex machines magically make extra parts when you take them apart and reassemble them. He has been running his snowblower all morning trying to clear a 10 ft by 30 ft driveway of 6 inches of powder. I think the operating principle of his snowblower is it burn enough gas to cause global warming to get the snow to melt faster, because every time he attempts to push it into snow it simply stalls out. He's going to give himself and the neighborhood carbon monoxide poisoning if he keeps it up.

My wife and I cleared our driveway in 10 minutes with shovels. :huh:

When I had to clear a very large area during medium snow fall (resulting in 3 cm snow on the end I started, when I finished at the other end) , I wondered if it would not be easier to build a robot for that task.... like a bucket-wheel excavator with a 50 meter conveyor belt to get the snow directly to the other end of the property...

Work had been pretty nasty that winter, because after the third day, just pushing the snow on a large heap at the side of the road did not work any more, so we needed to use a wheelbarrow for transporting the snow further away to the river...