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Things that make you laugh...

For some reason, David123's efforts, in the Religion forum, to define god, supernatural, evolution and purpose in such a way that God is natural, necessary and likely...
Well, for some reason that reminded me of the night of my roommate's breakthrough in physics.

During the day, we had a discussion about science and one thing that came up was the idea that 'gravity is a curve in space.' Or curved space.

Later that night, Mike decided that if we could flatten that curve, we could fly. He became fixated on this idea.

I woke up at 2am to find him pounding the floor of the living room with a mallet, hammering 'the curve' flat, then jumping in the air....and crashing down to the floor like a fucking stone.

Of course, by 'stone' i mean 'a drunken idiot.'
 
My company went to a weird schedule where we work a four day week of 9 hour days, then a 5 day week of 9 hour days and an 8 hour friday. We get a three-day weekend every pay period.

So last month, there was a 4-day week.
Then there was thanksgiving, which wuold have been a five-day week, but the holiday made it 3 work days.
Then another 4 day week.

My wife, who teaches at school, was remarking that next week, i'll have my first full work week in a month and it'll probably come as a shock.
I pointed out that i'm getting an injection in my eye on Monday, the work week will be a relaxing anti-climax after that. She winced and shut up.
 
I clicked something or other posted by a facebook friend and the link went to the site expandedconsciousness.com, which immediately informed me via popup: "Awaken Your Awareness By Liking Us on Facebook."

Hm. So that's how you do it.
 
Wife returns vocab tests to her 10th grade class.
One kid missed every single question in one section. He complains that he doesn't know what he did wrong, because his answers are the same as the answers his friend put down.
Wife checks. "Okay, well, he got version A of the test and you got version B."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there are two different versions of the test."
"Wait, you gave me a list with different words? That's unfair!"
"No, same words, i just put them in a different order on the two tests."

Kid insists that this is unfair. Doesn't realize that he has outed himself for cheating. I thought that was funny.

But the parents of cheater call the English department head. They're upset that the school allows teachers to use two different versions of a test! There should be only one test so that all the kids take the same test.

Now,the only complaint the parents really have is that their darling got caught. The DH just keeps asking why there's a problem in using two versions.

The parents claim that it makes it difficult for the kids to study together if they have different tests.
DH points out that if you're waiting to study for a test until you get your test results back, you're going to fail a lot of tests.

They complain that it means some kids get easier tests.
"It's the same material in different order. And neither test is in the same order as the worksheet. How could one possibly be easier than the other?"

There was something about kids' self esteem? I didn't quite get it. Something almost made it sound like the kids would perceive the A-test students as the Have's and the B-Test students as the Have-Nots?
But whatever it was, DH pointed out that the tests are handed out so that students next to each other don't have the same version, which changes depending on how many students showed up for class that day. The A's aren' talways given to the same students.

They mumble and say they're still not satisfied and threaten to take the matter to the principal.

DH hates the principal with an abiding passion and can't think of anything better than to tie up his time with this sort of thing. So she gives them the phone number.

When she relayed the incident to my wife, Mrs. &Co. said, "You should have told them it would take the Superintendent to change the kid's grade."
"Why? I don't hate the Superintendent?"
"No, but then Principal would be getting a phone call where the shit's rolling DOWNhill from his boss, asking why the Evil English Department is setting kids up to fail."
"Damn it!" DH never thinks ahead when it really matters.
 
Keith&Co. said:
Wife returns vocab tests to her 10th grade class.
One kid missed every single question in one section. He complains that he doesn't know what he did wrong, because his answers are the same as the answers his friend put down.
Wife checks. "Okay, well, he got version A of the test and you got version B."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there are two different versions of the test."
"Wait, you gave me a list with different words? That's unfair!"
"No, same words, i just put them in a different order on the two tests."

Kid insists that this is unfair. Doesn't realize that he has outed himself for cheating. I thought that was funny.

But the parents of cheater call the English department head. They're upset that the school allows teachers to use two different versions of a test! There should be only one test so that all the kids take the same test.

Now,the only complaint the parents really have is that their darling got caught. The DH just keeps asking why there's a problem in using two versions.

The parents claim that it makes it difficult for the kids to study together if they have different tests.
DH points out that if you're waiting to study for a test until you get your test results back, you're going to fail a lot of tests.

They complain that it means some kids get easier tests.
"It's the same material in different order. And neither test is in the same order as the worksheet. How could one possibly be easier than the other?"

There was something about kids' self esteem? I didn't quite get it. Something almost made it sound like the kids would perceive the A-test students as the Have's and the B-Test students as the Have-Nots?
But whatever it was, DH pointed out that the tests are handed out so that students next to each other don't have the same version, which changes depending on how many students showed up for class that day. The A's aren' talways given to the same students.

They mumble and say they're still not satisfied and threaten to take the matter to the principal.

DH hates the principal with an abiding passion and can't think of anything better than to tie up his time with this sort of thing. So she gives them the phone number.

When she relayed the incident to my wife, Mrs. &Co. said, "You should have told them it would take the Superintendent to change the kid's grade."
"Why? I don't hate the Superintendent?"
"No, but then Principal would be getting a phone call where the shit's rolling DOWNhill from his boss, asking why the Evil English Department is setting kids up to fail."
"Damn it!" DH never thinks ahead when it really matters.
Click to expand...

:D
 
Keith&Co. said:
Wife returns vocab tests to her 10th grade class.
One kid missed every single question in one section. He complains that he doesn't know what he did wrong, because his answers are the same as the answers his friend put down.
Wife checks. "Okay, well, he got version A of the test and you got version B."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there are two different versions of the test."
"Wait, you gave me a list with different words? That's unfair!"
"No, same words, i just put them in a different order on the two tests."

Kid insists that this is unfair. Doesn't realize that he has outed himself for cheating. I thought that was funny.

But the parents of cheater call the English department head. They're upset that the school allows teachers to use two different versions of a test! There should be only one test so that all the kids take the same test.

Now,the only complaint the parents really have is that their darling got caught. The DH just keeps asking why there's a problem in using two versions.

The parents claim that it makes it difficult for the kids to study together if they have different tests.
DH points out that if you're waiting to study for a test until you get your test results back, you're going to fail a lot of tests.

They complain that it means some kids get easier tests.
"It's the same material in different order. And neither test is in the same order as the worksheet. How could one possibly be easier than the other?"

There was something about kids' self esteem? I didn't quite get it. Something almost made it sound like the kids would perceive the A-test students as the Have's and the B-Test students as the Have-Nots?
But whatever it was, DH pointed out that the tests are handed out so that students next to each other don't have the same version, which changes depending on how many students showed up for class that day. The A's aren' talways given to the same students.

They mumble and say they're still not satisfied and threaten to take the matter to the principal.

DH hates the principal with an abiding passion and can't think of anything better than to tie up his time with this sort of thing. So she gives them the phone number.

When she relayed the incident to my wife, Mrs. &Co. said, "You should have told them it would take the Superintendent to change the kid's grade."
"Why? I don't hate the Superintendent?"
"No, but then Principal would be getting a phone call where the shit's rolling DOWNhill from his boss, asking why the Evil English Department is setting kids up to fail."
"Damn it!" DH never thinks ahead when it really matters.
Click to expand...

This cheating story reminds of an amusing incident from when I was a junior in high school taking a History class. Most of the higher achievers in my grade were taking the Honors advanced course, but for some reason I don't even remember now, I didn't sign up for that, so I just took the standard History class. Subsequently, I think I was the very top student in that particular class. Anyway, there was a serious underachiever (but somewhat of a friend) sitting next to me who used to blatantly copy my answers on the tests. He always got A's and B's on his test, but was pretty much a C- student otherwise, so I suspected he was copying me on the tests. Finally, on one test (multiple choice) I intentionally mismarked all my answers and blatantly left my test exposed so he could copy. So, if the answer was "A", I would fill in the "D" circle. And if the answer was "B", I'd fill in the "C" circle, and vice-versa. When the bell rang, he handed in his test and bolted out of the class, but I stayed behind, erased all my answers, and filled in the correct ones and then handed in my test. Then I forgot about it for about a week until we got our tests back.

When the teacher handed back the tests, I got about a 96 or so, and he flunked it...miserably. He confided in me right then and there that he couldn't understand his low score, as he had copied my paper. I just shrugged. Then the teacher shows the distribution of test scores on the overhead projector and talks about how puzzled he is that he has never seen a score distribution like this in his life. There was my score at the top, followed by a few other random A's, B's & C's and then a massive amount of test scores below the "monkey factor" (i.e. under 25%). Just random guessing would get you 25 on this test, but there were people who had completed the test and got around less than 10! It was at that point that I realized there was a total racket going on of people copying off me (and the guy next to me) on the test...and probably every test I took that class. Made sense, as I was sitting in the front row, so it was easy to copy over my shoulder and pass it on. I totally thought I was going to get the shit kicked out of me by the low scorers for doing that, but oddly enough, I don't think anyone even cared, or put two and two together. I just remember being sort of simultaneously laughing inside and being horrified at the same time upon seeing that score distribution. Ah, memories....
 
Like the widely shared teaching story, a kid writes 'i don't know' as an answer, and another kid's test has 'neither do I' for that question?


When i was a young sailor, about 12 weeks out of bootcamp, i was in an electronics school. One week, i knew the topic cold. It was math and it came to me very easily. So i got cocky. I took one of my four-sided AD&D dice in on test day. I'd read the question, roll the die, then mark the right answer.
"&Co., what are you doing?"
"I cast a magic spell on my dice, Chief!" Chief came over to look at my test. While he was there, i rolled the die and marked whetever the die indicated. He shook his head in disgust and wlked away. I changed the answers to the right ones.

At the end of the available period, i was rolling the die, still.
"Now what?"
"Checking my answers, Chief!"

We took a break at the end of every test then wandered back in at the appropriate time. There was a form on my desk. It was the one they had students fill in to try to explain why we thought we failed. I laughed and handed it back. "No way I failed, Chief. Magic die."
The assistant instructor came in then, pale as a ghost. I'd aced the test. The Chief was speechless.
A friend offered me $10 for my magic die.
Another friend offered me $20.

A sailor who was not in on the joke offered me $50. That was very tempting.
But right then the Chief blew up, ordered us to never, ever, ever again bring dice in on test days.
Of course, i had to ask if that was TEST tests, or quizzes, too.
Five hours after school cleaning the classroom, but it was worth it.
 
In high school, I got a physics teacher (the same for the 3 years) who never seemed to notice people copying during test, however egregious (like some exchanging their copies to crosscheck their answers).

The only time she did substract points was when someone copied my test answer. I was allergic to learning formulas by heart at the time, so I often had to re-discover or bypass one to complete the test, sometimes through very convoluted ways depending on our advancement on the maths course. That particular test, about RLC circuitry, I had to go back to the basics of trigonometry to calculate a phase shift, and the guy just copied my reasonning.
The teacher was very apologetic about the point she substracted to both of us, but as she said, "I know only you could have found the right answer this way, I really cannot let that slide".

The funny part is that she also was one of the most inconsistently grading teacher I've known, a feat for a hard science teacher. It was rare that on test grading day, she wouldn't have at least 10 students going to her desk during break to complain about a forgotten point here or there. And much grumbling ensued, because she would often find a way ("oh, I didn't see, but that step isn't precise enough") to remove a point elsewhere and keep the grade where she had put it.

It's only after two years with her that it dawned on us that the ones she graded unfairly were usually the ones who had copied! She did see the copying, she just didn't care about policing - but she did not forget. Ended in much teasing towards the "copier" crowd by the non-copiers like myself.
 
One of my dad's courses in college was some literature appreciation thing that started at 6 am on Monday. He and a study partner decided that was just too painful and split it up. One would attend on weeks 1, 3, 5, 7... One would attend on weeks 2, 4, 6, 8... They'd combine notes at the end to study for the test.

After about 2 classes he decided that was still too painful and gave up on it. He figured he'd borrow his study partner's notes and get half the material, enough to get by.

Study time comes and these two meet and stare at each other. "Where are your notes?"
"Well, where are YOUR notes?"

Turns out great minds think alike. Neither had attended a class since the 4th one.

So they show up for the test, hoping that lightning will strike or she'll have a heart attack or something. They noticed that the other kids in class are shoving papers around with their feet, down on the floor. Turns out the teacher was so nearsighted she only hit the classroom door 2 tries out of 4. People that actually attended the class noticed this.
And she was pretty close to deaf.
As long as no one stood up, faced her and shouted "PLEASE HAND ME THE CHEAT SHEET!" they were good.

Dad learned an important lesson that day. Always get a study partner who's more dedicated than you are. Or at least drinks less.
 
I wanted a shot of whiskey before bed and Bilby sent me this:

10428652_10204339486265877_7435291053274595267_n.jpg


He then proceeded to tell me he had included a shot of Bacardi and Mead.
 
So I'm playing around with "cloud" hosting and I'm trying to understand the logic and hype behind Docker and everyone jumping on containers. I read this anonymous post on Slashdot that completely cracked me up:

And here we go again, adding yet another layer to an already wobbling stack of layers.

First we have hardware. Then we're running Xen or some other supervisor on that hardware, so we can have numerous VMs running Linux running on one physical system. Then each of these Linux VMs is in turn running VirtualBox, which in turn is running Linux, which in turn is running some container system. Then each of these containers is running some set of software. In some cases these containers are running something like the Java VM, which is, of course, another layer. Then in some truly idiotic cases, we have something like JRuby running on this JVM. There's some half-baked Ruby code running on JRuby.

Let's visualize this stack:

- Ruby code
- JRuby
- JVM
- Container
- Linux
- VirtualBox
- Linux
- Xen
- Hardware

Now that there's all this compartmentalization, it becomes a royal pain in the ass to share data between the apps running in the containers running in the VMs running on the actual hardware. So we start seeing numerous networking hacks to try and make it all into something barely usable. So throw on Apache, Varnish, and other software into the mix, too.

I'm sure that within a few years, we'll start seeing containers within containers, if that isn't already being done. Then those will need sandboxing, so there will be sandboxes for the containers that contain the containers.

Meanwhile, it's just one hack after another to intentionally get around all of this isolation, in order to do something minimally useful with this stack. The performance of the system goes swirling down the shitter as a result of all of the layers, and all of the effort needed to bypass these layers.

What a fucking mess!
Click to expand...

There has to be one other person who finds this funny?
 
I found it funny. My job sits at the hardware and OS layers, and I often look up at the towering stack of layers above me--supported by other people--and worry about the whole thing collapsing.
 
There's a coffee machine in the hall. When you select coffee on the panel, it takes about 40 seconds to brew it, then dribbles it down into the cup.
Everyone i've ever seen use it has gotten the cup in place, then selected their beverage.

Until today.

Someone from a distant work center was at a meeting on this end of the building. He pushed the button for the coffee, THEN selected his cup, slipped an insulating ring around it, added sweetener, and finally placed it under the spigot to wait for the coffee.

I appreciated the fact that he cut the wait-time of anyone behind him in half. But someone else in the hall lost their freaking mind.
"What if you hadn't put the cup in place in time?"
"Then i'd hit the coffee button a second time."
"But there'd be a mess!"
"I'd clean it."
"Someone might slip in the coffee!"
"Dude, i've never failed to get the cup there in time."
"But it's still dangerous!"

By then i had gotten my hot chocolate out of the machine. I left them there, still arguing.

I want that sort of job.

Roaming the building, making sure people assemble their coffee correctly.
 
So, I work from home, and in a different city from the rest of my team, so a lot of the time I communicate with my colleagues by instant chat.

This morning I came across a problem with a shared server we all use, and that I need for a customer job, so I emailed the server admin, and cc'ed my manager to get it fixed.

Just now, my manager 'pinged' me on instant chat to discuss the problem and see if we had got it fixed, and as is often the case, I was multi-tasking - chatting with my manager, running a virtual machine install, configuring a different remote machine, and (of course) checking out TFT.

So I typed a new reply to a TFT thread, and just as I was doing so, a chat message came in from my manager. The TFT post was a single word, and for a brief but horrible instant, I was not sure if the word had been posted to TFT, or sent to my boss as the chat window grabbed the focus.

The full text of the post in question can be found here.
 
I take lunch at my desk. People are constantly asking me questions and it's easier for them to find me here.
There's a gnat problem in the office, so i tend to keep the lid on my Coke except when i;m actually sipping.
And after a tour in Scotland, i enjoy vinegar on certain foods, so i keep a bottle on my desk.

But during lunch today (seafood bar), i had to answer a questoin that was pretty involved. I cleared a space and drew the interfaces of the subsystem on a sheet of paper. During the discussion after, i reached absently over to take a sip of Coke.
Took the lid off and knocked back a big ol' swig of malt vinegar.

just about everything on the left side of my cubicle smells of vinegar surprise, right now. Well, the whole area smells strongly of vinegar. I am apparently the only person for six cubicles in any direction who finds the smell of vinegar to be appetizing. I am apparently the only person for three cubicles in any direction who finds the smell of vinegar to be tolerable.

I have so far escaped any sort of retribution.

Someone sort of mockingly threatened to file a grievance about the working conditions
Someone else said 'Well, if we put up with the smell of Chris' perfume.'
Christine said, "I don't wear perfume!"
"I wasn't talking about you, i was talking about Christopher."
"It's AFTERSHAVE, not perfume!"


Somewhere in there, the tone shifted from 'mockingly' to 'workplace violence' so six coworkers are in my boss' boss' office as witnesses or plaintiffs.

I'm sitting here, answering a list of questions (emailed to me from 13 cubicles away) and contemplating the shaman who told me that Skunk was my totem animal.
Skunk's medicine power is to keep away shallow friends and the overly familiar... People who don't really, really want to get to know you won't hang around...

Certainly more accurate than any Fortune Coookie i've ever had.


ETA: Oh, and i guess the moral of the story is not to let people ask you questions directly. "Send me an email" is my new mantra, my supervisor told me.
I'm not sure she knows what a 'mantra' actually is. She didn't stick around long enough to discuss it, though.
 
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