Humor Random Comments Thread

[Andy44]

Interesting. The address was mine, but the name was someone else's. If the purchaser entered the incorrect shipping address, how could that have been caught?

Search around. There's some kind of scam going on with false orders and such. Did the products come from China? There was some story in the news a few months ago about some women who was getting box after box of useless products delivered to her house in the Midwest from some dodgy Chinese seller, it was part of some kind of scam, and there was nothing the post office or anyone else could do about it. She wasn't losing money or anything, she just keeps getting stuff she doesn't want. I forget the mechanics of the scam.

 

[mojoey]

Interesting. The address was mine, but the name was someone else's. If the purchaser entered the incorrect shipping address, how could that have been caught?

Really if the purchaser entered the wrong information, that's on them, and with the volume dealt with on a slow night, let alone a busy period like Prime Day or the holidays, we've no way to actually ensure that they've done their due diligence. Internally on our end, there's several ways to track not only the item, but the shipment itself before it leaves the network and gets handed off to a 3rd party carrier.

Now obviously this isn't idiot proof, and for 30% above the average retail wage in your area, the universe makes some damn fine idiots. If you're really interested in how all that works, shoot me a PM and we can talk more about it.

 

[Artlav]

Hm, it's not that hard to send someone something without sending it.

I once got a Florida friend of mine a poster by ordering it online from a local-to-him store to his name&address using a coupon code i got somewhere else and one of my spam-sink e-mail addresses. As far as everyone is concerned he ordered it himself without any Russian influence being exerted, and it got delivered just fine.

Caused quite a bit of confusion on his end.

 

[Linguofreak]

My local pharmacy has just installed a new electronic signature system that I swear is some left-hander's revenge on the world for making him use all sorts of right-handed things. The stylus is mounted on the left, and there are a bunch of buttons right where I'd normally rest my hand when signing (whereas left-handers write overhand, and so wouldn't have that problem).

 

[Apollon]

My local pharmacy has just installed a new electronic signature system that I swear is some left-hander's revenge on the world for making him use all sorts of right-handed things. The stylus is mounted on the left, and there are a bunch of buttons right where I'd normally rest my hand when signing (whereas left-handers write overhand, and so wouldn't have that problem).

Where's Joe McCarthy when you need him..

 

[Pipcard]

I started learning Orbiter in 2009.

Only now am I formally learning orbital mechanics in college.

 

[Andy44]

I started learning Orbiter in 2009.

Only now am I formally learning orbital mechanics in college.

Excellent book, once you get used to the units.

 

[Linguofreak]

Excellent book, once you get used to the units.

Flying spaceplanes in KSP or Orbiter is always a bit weird: I'm used to using SI in vacuum (or with tower and capsule vehicles) and KIAS, miles, and feet of altitude in atmosphere, but the default instrumentation in both only gives SI with true groundspeed. Last I checked (with Orbiter 2010), surface MFD in Orbiter had an option for IAS, but it didn't seem to work right at altitude (IIRC, at high altitudes the reading was always too high). So I'm always having to convert units in my head during atmospheric operations.

 

[Andy44]

Flying spaceplanes in KSP or Orbiter is always a bit weird: I'm used to using SI in vacuum (or with tower and capsule vehicles) and KIAS, miles, and feet of altitude in atmosphere, but the default instrumentation in both only gives SI with true groundspeed. Last I checked (with Orbiter 2010), surface MFD in Orbiter had an option for IAS, but it didn't seem to work right at altitude (IIRC, at high altitudes the reading was always too high). So I'm always having to convert units in my head during atmospheric operations.

Well, the book in the above post was written in the Apollo era and uses English units.

However, it also uses something you likely haven't seen in KSP or Orbiter: canonical units, such as earth radii and so forth. There is good reason for it, when you go through the text and problems.

 

[Linguofreak]

Well, the book in the above post was written in the Apollo era and uses English units.

However, it also uses something you likely haven't seen in KSP or Orbiter: canonical units, such as earth radii and so forth. There is good reason for it, when you go through the text and problems.

Which is somewhat the opposite problem from what I have in Orbiter/KSP, you're in vacuum, but the units aren't SI.

As for canonical units, I am used to dealing in AU, solar masses, and years for larger scale stuff.

 

[jedidia]

One of our devices went offline, as it turns out because the SD card died. And it died utterly and completely. As in, sd card readers don't even register that you inserted anything when you plug it in. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's like the insides of the card don't exist in the same reality anymore. Like, I've never even seen a floppy that was that far gone. What happened to that card? :blink:

Let me grab a rifle and some survival gear and go hunting for a mythological monster that does unspeakable things to SD cards. I think that's part of what I'm getting payed for. Maybe should check back with the boss first...

 

[Linguofreak]

One of our devices went offline, as it turns out because the SD card died. And it died utterly and completely. As in, sd card readers don't even register that you inserted anything when you plug it in. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's like the insides of the card don't exist in the same reality anymore. Like, I've never even seen a floppy that was that far gone. What happened to that card? :blink:

Let me grab a rifle and some survival gear and go hunting for a mythological monster that does unspeakable things to SD cards. I think that's part of what I'm getting payed for. Maybe should check back with the boss first...

Recall that an SD card is, effectively, a really tiny hard drive, and that the slot you plug it into is effectively the end of a bus. If the drive electronics are fried hard enough, it won't respond to anything that it's plugged into in any way. A floppy disk was just a storage medium with no electronics of any kind, and the slot you plugged it into contained all the control electronics and mechanical stuff needed to read that medium. If a floppy was as dead as could be, a healthy drive would still mechanically detect the presence of the disk, and when you tried reading/writing, the drive would return an appropriate error. And if the drive was so fried as to be undetectable, a good disk would still read fine in any other drive.

That said, the most common failure mode I've seen for SD cards is to suddenly become read only and silently fail to write anything.

Unrelated rant: Linux has sane process management, does swapping sanely, etc. Android, supposedly in the interest of power management, manages to insert some crapware layer in between the application layer and native process management that breaks everything. On fairly beefy hardware I can hardly keep two apps open at the same time, and my media player stops playing music not long after I switch focus to my browser.

 

[Artlav]

What happened to that card?

There are many possibilities, most of them producing a condition where the card fail to react in any way to any signals from the host, essentially making it appear like the slot is empty.

Can be as simple as a power line being corroded, can be some sort of static shock killing the circuitry, can be bit rot killing it's firmware, can be some chinese part inside failing short and burning the wires, etc.

Nothing surprising, really.

 

[Pipcard]

Well, the book in the above post was written in the Apollo era and uses English units.

However, it also uses something you likely haven't seen in KSP or Orbiter: canonical units, such as earth radii and so forth. There is good reason for it, when you go through the text and problems.

And that reason (or at least one of them) would be that μ (the standard gravitational parameter) is simplified to equal 1 when generic distance and time units are used.

 

[steph]

One of our devices went offline, as it turns out because the SD card died. And it died utterly and completely. As in, sd card readers don't even register that you inserted anything when you plug it in. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's like the insides of the card don't exist in the same reality anymore. Like, I've never even seen a floppy that was that far gone. What happened to that card? :blink:

Let me grab a rifle and some survival gear and go hunting for a mythological monster that does unspeakable things to SD cards. I think that's part of what I'm getting payed for. Maybe should check back with the boss first...

I once plugged an SD card into my laptop's default card reader (It was actulally a microSD with an SD adapter) and tried to copy some photos. The card reader doesn't properly idenfify the card (can't remember if it said it has a malfunction or viewed it as empty) and, after a while, I smell burnt plastic. Realizing something's up, I look for smoke around the laptop, and nothing. I touch the SD card, and it was searing to the touch. Shut down everything that moment, of course, and when I pulled it out, the microSD was basically welded to the adapter. I couldn't retrieve any info from that, even using USB card readers :lol:

 

[jedidia]

Practicing my 9-finger typing after getting an ugly wack by a sword... :dry:

 

[Ravenous]

Practicing my 9-finger typing after getting an ugly wack by a sword... :dry:

Ouch, not permanent I hope. As long as it's not your middle finger.

...how would we drive without it?

 

[Urwumpe]

...how would we drive without it?

You can also use alternative hand signals - French and Italian drivers can be pretty verbose without saying a word. :lol:

 

[jedidia]

Ouch, not permanent I hope.

Certainly not! Only idiots and Ammon Ammarth spar with sharp weapons! :lol:

As long as it's not your middle finger.

Index finger, "thankfuly". Even better, on the left hand... that blow came in really weird.

 

[Andy44]

You can also use alternative hand signals - French and Italian drivers can be pretty verbose without saying a word. :lol:

In New Jersey it's all in how you wave the gun, similar to semaphore flags.