Get Your Grump on Thursdays - Was (What's chapping my @ss today?)

[dashDustin]

Been talked about for a while, but we have now finally started to upgrade our computers at work, starting with me, my manager, and a co-worker (we're the estimators). I was the first to get a new computer (laptop), replacing my Windows7 machine.

IT guy took 8hrs to set it up, including 2hrs to get me hooked up to our big printer (often times print 11x17 drawings). At this point, I still can't print 11x17 drawings single-sided. But whatever. Baby-steps.

Next came my manager and co-worker. They got setup much faster. However, also unable to print properly.

Then the fun part. Converting all of our everything to a cloud-based system, instead of our server closet. Almost 2TB of data.

This has been a nightmare. I've lost multiple days of work due to helping our IT guy. And we started fairly impulsively last Wednesday, when the previously-mentioned laptops showed up. Everything is super crazy fast now, and docking station + new laptop is awesome. But so far, every morning, we've been unable to connect to our virtual machine, leaving us estimators helpless till IT guy has time to figure out what's going on. Don't want to say I'm frustrated, but I'm in the middle of handling the 3 largest contracts we have ever had, so time lost is killing me.

Ready for this dust to settle.

[72gmc]

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jum...e-capitalists/

I wish this article was dated April 1.

More on CVC Partners, mentioned as a potential investor: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...ip-rugby-union

[bigbill]

My wife and I have been suffering through some kind of virus that we likely got from the little Petri dishes we teach each week.

[bigbill]

And, it's a week later and I'm still recovering from illness. I've done two, 35 minute rides on the trainer and several two mile walks in the neighborhood. At this point, I think the congestion may have resulted in a sinus infection. My wife is fully recovered, but she was sick about a week before I was.

[robin3mj]

Final walk of the day with the dog around 9pm last night and we had to move off the bike path because a car was driving down it like a regular street. Called the non emergency police number, and they could not have cared less. No matter whether the guy was just stupid or drunk and that I had the license plate and car description. Traffic enforcement in this town is a joke but at least pretend to care, right?

[bigbill]

Final walk of the day with the dog around 9pm last night and we had to move off the bike path because a car was driving down it like a regular street. Called the non emergency police number, and they could not have cared less. No matter whether the guy was just stupid or drunk and that I had the license plate and car description. Traffic enforcement in this town is a joke but at least pretend to care, right?

When I was stationed in Hawaii, I used the Pearl Harbor bike path for my daily bike commute. I got to see bizarre stuff on almost a daily basis. There was a guy who drove an older Toyota pickup on the path and one day I saw him off the path, up to the axles in mud. Over the next week, the truck was stripped to the frame. On another section, someone cut the center post off about a foot above the pavement. They didn't cut the padlock the fire department installed to allow them access in an emergency, they cut a 5" diameter post. On my home commute, there was a Honda Accord that had run over the post and left a trail of fluids for about 100 feet before they abandoned the car. It only lasted two days before it was completely stripped.

[bigbill]

Yesterday was Day 4 of middle school substitute teaching. I had 6-8 grades in a small K-8 school with 90 students. My classroom had 22 students in one room, 19 were Hualapai Indians, the remaining were ranch kids who live next to the Reservation. As a historian, I have written papers on various events or conditions on Reservations, primarily Tribes in the west such as Crow, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Navajo. I live twenty miles from the Hualapai, which have a Reservation that encompasses old Rt 66 to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I've done quite a bit of research on the Hualapai, and I'm surprised how little the kids know about their own culture. Covid decimated the northern Arizona tribes, especially the elderly. Most of the kids I work with no longer have grandparents. Death is taboo in this Tribe, and the numbers reported during the peak of Covid were not accurate. Many of the kids only have one parent because one has died of disease, alcoholism (which is a disease), or complications from diabetes. Without grandparents, the kids get bounced around between relatives, so they lack stability in their lives. One sixth grader has no parents or grandparents. She was living with a great aunt, but she died. Now she's living with one of her friend's family. She's 12.

[bigbill]

I am in the second week of a master's in military history. It is an online course with a small group and a professor from the Army War College. I'm a little oversensitive about discussions because this will be my second MA. I am okay being wrong, or someone disagreeing with something I wrote, but folks aren't supporting their comments with citations. More than a few times I've had to state, "you disagree because...." It is graduate school, opinions have to be supported.

[johnmdesigner]

Progress...



Sorry a bit early. My head hurts from beating it against the wall.

[j44ke]

Progress...



Sorry a bit early. My head hurts from beating it against the wall.

The problem is NYC is trying to accommodate people. That's never going to work out well.

[rwsaunders]

Ride the Light Rail in Seattle where there are no turnstiles and one rides solely based on the honor system…until or if you’re caught.

[bigbill]

I am a few months from 59 and after a lifetime of engineering, my semi-retired life includes teaching STEM at a K-8 school serving an Indian Reservation means my immune system gets a workout. Today, it is a sore throat and headache. I guess when you pull up a small classroom chair to help a kindergarten student with their computer and end up less than a foot away from the kid, if they're sick, you get sick. Unfortunately, many of these kids don't have the most stable home life, and a little time spent one on one means a lot.

My secondary ass chapping is my current MA program. I worked thirty seven years between the Navy and private sector, as an engineer, chief engineer, and engineering manager. In 2021, while still working full time, I completed a masters in American History. Now I am working on a military history masters, which I will complete in December. My GI Bill pays for my masters and I hope to have enough remaining to eventually attend some classes at UBI. My grump, fellow students that still fail to grasp the concept of supporting their answers. You can tell me I'm wrong, and I'm okay being wrong, it makes me smarter about a subject, but you have to tell me why. Unsupported opinions, or in a few cases, using Wikipedia to support an answer, is not graduate level learning.

If I didn't have all this going on, I'd probably be outside yelling at clouds.

[takashi]

What is your current MA program? Which school? I think about an MA periodically.

[bigbill]

What is your current MA program? Which school? I think about an MA periodically.

I'm working through Norwich University in Vermont. I live in BFE, Arizona so I do online classes. I occasionally lash out at the History Channel because they push false narratives that appear in textbooks but have been disproven.

[bdaghisallo]

Progress...



Sorry a bit early. My head hurts from beating it against the wall.

I wonder why they couldn't simply put in wider gates with wider/deeper/longer turnstiles?

[Scott G.]

I'm working through Norwich University in Vermont. I live in BFE, Arizona so I do online classes. I occasionally lash out at the History Channel because they push false narratives that appear in textbooks but have been disproven.

There is no news in Isvestia and no truth in Pravda.

Old Soviet saying.

[ides1056]

The average IQ is under 100. Trees have more self-awareness.

[johnmdesigner]

I wonder why they couldn't simply put in wider gates with wider/deeper/longer turnstiles?

Oh it gets better...

https://www.curbed.com/2024/01/mta-s...rs-fences.html

[j44ke]

MTA - Better Than Nothing!

Could be the motto for whole damn city.

[johnmdesigner]

MTA - Better Than Nothing!

Could be the motto for whole damn city.

Maybe Try Again.

I think I could get Cousin Bob to weld up some yellow fencing for less than $180K.
Really, just put up chain link floor to celing with a chicken coop door for the entrance and call it quits.