Teacher claims not using Microsoft is “holding our kids back”. Letter received by HeliOS, a firm that issues refurb machines to poor kids with Linux distros installed.
Ridiculous. I kinda wished his reply included the “free as in beer” and “free as in speech” lines just to watch her head pop off.
I pulled the following off of my deskchair:
“Do not operate on or near an open flame”. Good advice.
While driving to work I saw a car pulled over by a Town and Country Minivan that had been converted to a cop car.
I was going to try to add something witty to this observation, but there’s something perverse and sad and funny and enraging and mystifying about it like a crying clown.
In an attempt to save material cost, a coworker was tasked with determining the actual surface area used of a material on one of our products. Watching him measure a curved surface with a ruler was almost painful so I proposed he cut the film of interest away from the product, mass it, and compare it to the mass of a reference sample. I was told this was “too inexact” compared to trying to measure a curved, inflated, stretchy surface with a ruler.
He then moved to using CAD to view the device in 3D and started using the ruler functions to again measure the surface and tried cutting the space into smaller geometric figures as the surface of consideration wasn’t quite spherical. I proposed he use the equation for the surface curve and that he calculate the volume as an a surface of revolution. Once again, I was rebuffed for it not being exact enough.
Calculus, not exact enough. The only method for perfectly determining the area under a curve after literally millenia of estimates using stupid rectangular prisms and trapezoids is not exact enough. A mathematic accurate enough to shoot the Voyager 2 probe within 70 km of Neptune at a distance of nearly 4.5 billion km. Your right, calculus, not exact enough. You got me.
During Scrabble:
Joe Naylor: Why did you spell FACE, you could have spelled FARCE and hit the double word score.
Anthony: FARCE, I thought that was a made up word.
Until I get a computer account at work the scanner that’s my current partner must be accessed by a co-worker. The computer automatically logs after 15 minutes of use. I tried right-clicking and going to the Screensavers tab to adjust the time and couldn’t, so I called tech support and asked if there was an alternative. For security reasons, they apparently tightly control the log-in period. But there’s a back-door. Despite spending millions on setting up a Group Policy and having IT bees buzz around and secure it, I have somehow have unmitigated access to the registry. I promptly set the key ScreenSaverActive to “0” to disengage it and started looking around. Every major security feature can be manually disabled through the registry.
I told my manager about this problem and he began looking around in confusion until his eyes lit up after seeing the key that sets the screen saver.
Manager: So I can finally change the screen saver I’ve been forced to stare at for 5 years with a picture of [a pretty lady].
Me: Yes, yes you can have [a sequence of nice ladies] as your screen saver. But I’ve been told it’ll reset each night as the magical computer gnomes reset the group policy.
Manager: It’s worth it.
Request I sent to GameServers.com tech support to switch our TeamSpeak server to Ventrilo:
Dear Imponderable Rulers of GameServers domain. Team Interrobang humbly beseeches thee and thine to change our humble TeamSpeak server to a mighty Ventrilo server such that we may gayly game in gameservers glory with superior intra-team sound quality with the same number of slots.
Response: It would be much appreciated if you could elaborate on your issue so that we can help you further.
Smooth.
Request I sent to GameServers.com tech support to switch our TeamSpeak server to Ventrilo:
Dear Imponderable Rulers of GameServers domain. Team Interrobang humbly beseeches thee and thine to change our humble TeamSpeak server to a mighty Ventrilo server such that we may gayly game in gameservers glory with superior intra-team sound quality with the same number of slots.
Response: It would be much appreciated if you could elaborate on your issue so that we can help you further.
Smooth.
I was trying to track down an high resolution copy of the OSR logo to put onto sign posts and so on and tracked down a vector graphic of the logo from the guy who prints our shirts. He sent it to me saying it was “the graphic he used” but the file I received didn’t include an extension. Time for trial an error!
BMP – No
JPG – No
TIF – No
PNG – No
SVG – No
VML – No
XPS – No
PDF – No
JP2 – No
RAW – No
PBM – No
EWC – No
CGM – No
DCS – No
SWF – No
GIF – No
ANI – No
PAT – No
CFA – No
DNG – No
GIH – No
TGA – No
PGF – No
EPS – GOOOOOOOOOOAL!
Yep. Encapsulated post script. The graphic equivalent of storing a term paper as a spreadsheet. It’ll work, sure. But no sane person would do it.
He included another image that I’m yet to figure out what it is. I’m confident if I open it in a hex editor it’ll just be pseudorandom data.
During the week, one or two Scouts in the provo got seven merit badges each. I mentioned that I was impressed:
Provo: Do you want to know our secret?
Me: Sure….
Provo (whisper in ear): Jews pwn n00bs.