Random randomness

[LawBeefaroni]

My bathroom diatribe was more about the interesting choices that business make. 50% auto, 50% manual.

Automatic towel dispensers and automatic faucets save them money anday get them green certs. I'm guessing the return on automatic soap dispensers isn't that great.

[hepcat]

...and still having issues with my gut. Three weeks in and I still can't eat some things without getting ill. Stuff I was perfectly fine with before this started happening. Had to cut short my trip down to visit Redwarlord because it happened Friday night after eating at a Mexican restaurant.

This is getting tiresome.

Sorry if this has been covered before...do you do any probiotics?

I do as of 4 days ago. Unfortunately, the one set of tests that my doctor ran when this all started didn't reveal the source, so it was assumed it was just a touch of stomach flu or something. But 3 weeks of intermittent stomach aches after eating has him scheduling another round. If that doesn't turn up anything, I'm making an appoint with a gastroenterologist.

I will say one thing with certainty, I need to stay the hell away from WebMD.

[Isgrimnur]

It says here that you may have internet connectivity problems.

[Holman]

We just saw a pretty thoroughly riveting production of The Crucible in New York.

I taught that play to 9th graders for seven years, but somehow it's different when it has Mance Rayder in it.

[Blackhawk]

I will say one thing with certainty, I need to stay the hell away from WebMD.

WebMD. Where the common cold is terminal.

[El Guapo]

I will say one thing with certainty, I need to stay the hell away from WebMD.

WebMD. Where the common cold is terminal.

It's definitely cancer.

[pr0ner]

I will say one thing with certainty, I need to stay the hell away from WebMD.

WebMD. Where the common cold is terminal.

It's definitely cancer.

Nope. Lupus.

[dbt1949]

Rabbits?

[Smoove_B]

If that doesn't turn up anything, I'm making an appoint with a gastroenterologist.

You haven't switched to eating foods with sugar substitutes, have you? Even something innocent like yogurt or coffee creamer with sucralose wreaks havoc on my intestines.

[rshetts2]

...and still having issues with my gut. Three weeks in and I still can't eat some things without getting ill. Stuff I was perfectly fine with before this started happening. Had to cut short my trip down to visit Redwarlord because it happened Friday night after eating at a Mexican restaurant.

This is getting tiresome.

Sorry if this has been covered before...do you do any probiotics?

I do as of 4 days ago. Unfortunately, the one set of tests that my doctor ran when this all started didn't reveal the source, so it was assumed it was just a touch of stomach flu or something. But 3 weeks of intermittent stomach aches after eating has him scheduling another round. If that doesn't turn up anything, I'm making an appoint with a gastroenterologist.

I will say one thing with certainty, I need to stay the hell away from WebMD.

Clearly there are several possibilities as to whats causing your issues but from my own perspective its sounds a lot like a diverticulitis flare up due to intestinal infection.

Hopefully your GI specialist will figure things out, I know from personal experience just how bad constant gut pain can be.

[Daehawk]

What kind of diet am I on? The lack of money diet of course.

[LordMortis]

Too morbid to read but I had to emote.

Spoiler:

So first thing Thursday morning, I go for a heart catheter, wherein they will probably put a stent in my heart.

So you go through questions before they put you under the knife. Historically, they've asked questions about donating organs. Do you ever fear that organized crime would seize that opportunity to claim a compatible organ?

I've had both scheduled and non scheduled surgeries too many damned times in life and they've never gotten to me. But this one's different. They had to go and tell me 1) There is a 5% chance of complication. 1 in freakin 20. If they do 4 a day, which is not unlikely, that's one D&D critical failure a week. And complications seem a bit more serious when they're working on your heart vs your teeth or arm eye or colon and also tell me 2) get a second opinion before scheduling because of 1. The second opinion had me go get heart CT, which was diagnostically inconclusive but suggested the gamble not getting a cath is a lot worse than the chance of a crit on a d20.

I'm actually going to take the time write all my account numbers down for mom and dad. Somewhere, deep inside, a bit freaked out. It's not crazy anxiety that sets my body and emotions to chaos, like I experience from public speaking or the dread of completing a major project or having someone watch me work. It's just the realization that this may scale anywhere on the 1 to 11 for life changer. On the bright side, I've always wanted to go with as little pain as possible. I'm a coward. I'm not like other people. Pain hurts me. I'm guessing if life changing goes to 11 then, when passed out from anesthesia, is about a painless as it gets.

On a lighter note they literally just fixed my AC and they called it a warranty repair (having replaced my furnace last October) so they didn't charge me a dime.

[Paingod]

I have a few d20's floating around still. I'll roll for you tonight and see how you do. Or maybe just use this one?

Does your insurance add anything to the saving throw?

*Edit: I need help. I just spent a few minutes doing the 4d6 drop lowest Stat rolls on that page to see how good I could do.

[LordMortis]

Does your insurance add anything to the saving throw?

I have no idea but I have already maxed my deductible for the year and I'm pretty certain after Thursday I will have maxed my coinsurance for the year. After that it's just me and co-pays until January (assuming I don't have another $7000 or so in co pays between now and then and I think that's a safe assumption as my max copay for any single thing is $150 a pop and that's for the big stuff, like crazy expensive drugs they don't normally cover or something that results in getting admitted to the hospital... like say surgery...)

[Isgrimnur]

*Edit: I need help. I just spent a few minutes doing the 4d6 drop lowest Stat rolls on that page to see how good I could do.

I'm going to say... 18.

[Paingod]

*Edit: I need help. I just spent a few minutes doing the 4d6 drop lowest Stat rolls on that page to see how good I could do.

I'm going to say... 18.

More like 97 points across 6 stats - so an 18, a couple 17's, etc.

[Isgrimnur]

[MHS]

Isg, your sig in light of this whole conversation is freaking me out.

[Isgrimnur]

In deference to the current state of affairs, it has been removed.

[GreenGoo]

In deference to the current state of affairs, it has been removed.

Your new one is better anyway.

[Isgrimnur]

Thank you.

[stessier]

Achievement Unlocked - Rescue Damsel In Distress

A friend called my wife today and asked if we could look at her tankless water heater - she didn't have any hot water. Her husband is on a business trip to Asia and her inlaws are inbound for a graduation party tomorrow.

When I arrived, it turned out that she couldn't get any of the panels to light up along with no hot water. I took a look at the fuse box and everything appeared in order, but it sure looked like there was no power to the unit. I grabbed a night light and sure enough, the outlet was dead - as were several others in the area. I checked the fuse box again and there was nothing labeled "crawlspace/hot water" or the like, so I started testing outlets inside as well - everything seemed to be in working order. Walking around the outside, I found a outlet on the back porch and it too was dead. Then I found one on the other side and lo and behold, it was a GFI and it was tripped. Reset it, and the power was restored. The crowd went wild!!

We still don't know why it was tripped, although we did have a decent rainstorm yesterday so perhaps one of the outlets got a bit wet. I'll let the husband worry about that when he gets home on Friday - for now, hot water is restored and the conquering hero has returned home for a well deserved game of StarCraft II.

[Isgrimnur]

Well done.

[El Guapo]

We still don't know why it was tripped,

Well, if pornography is any guide, the wife tripped it 'accidentally' to get you over so that she could seduce you.

[Paingod]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

[LordMortis]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

I wonder that when I am on hold all of the time, then I quickly forget and wonder why I'm talking to someone whose job it is, is to speak English over the phone and they can barely do it, which doesn't mix well with my failing comprehension and, tinnitus, hearing loss.

I hate phones.

[LordMortis]

Isg, your sig in light of this whole conversation is freaking me out.

You'd think that would bother me. Not so much. My mother bringing over a (The?) Bible for me to read before surgery and during recovery. That freaks me out a little. One of two people in the world I don't want to disappoint for no other hidden agenda other than I don't want to disappoint them and those conversations make me really uncomfortable.

[Paingod]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

I wonder that when I am on hold all of the time, then I quickly forget and wonder why I'm talking to someone whose job it is, is to speak English over the phone and they can barely do it, which doesn't mix well with my failing comprehension and, tinnitus, hearing loss.

I hate phones.

I just opted to wear the receiver like a hat until someone picked up. It made it a little more bearable.

[LordMortis]

I just opted to wear the receiver like a hat until someone picked up. It made it a little more bearable.

When they picked up did you scream "I just want three tacos!"

[MHS]

A woman just called 5 numbers here at the office before getting to mine ( I watched them come up one by one on everyone else's line) to say that she'd lost her phone with her contacts, and could I have {co-worker name} let his wife know to call her? That's dedication, I guess.

[Sudy]

Oh, this is the best pizza in a cup ever. This guy is
unbelievable. He ran the old Cup 'o Pizza guy out of business.
People come from all over to eat this.

[Pyperkub]

Feeling some major weltschmertz after the shooting at UCLA today. It's over 300 miles away and I don't know too many people who are still there, but it has still left me shaken.

I'm guessing that's because it hits close to home and what I love, but it still seems irrational.

[Fretmute]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

I'm not aware of how things work in the modern world, but historically you only had about 3 kHz of bandwidth on a phone line, and that more or less kills music.

[Default]

Mom sitting tonight with just my phone and the most basic of cable packages.


I GOT THE HALLMARK CHANNEL BITCHES!!!!!

[Isgrimnur]

Feeling some major weltschmertz after the shooting at UCLA today. It's over 300 miles away and I don't know too many people who are still there, but it has still left me shaken.

I'm guessing that's because it hits close to home and what I love, but it still seems irrational.

Murder-suicide

The gunman in a murder-suicide at the University of California Los Angeles was a graduate student who apparently nursed long-simmering hostility toward the victim, his former engineering professor, who he accused of stealing his computer code, according to police and local media reports.

The gunman was identified Thursday as Mainak Sarkar, an engineering graduate student, according to Officer Jenny Houser, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. The victim was identified as William S. Klug, 39, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering engineering.
...
The motive remained unclear although police said they would focus on Sarkar's grades and a "longer-standing" poor relationship between the two men, KABC-TV reports.

[LawBeefaroni]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

I'm not aware of how things work in the modern world, but historically you only had about 3 kHz of bandwidth on a phone line, and that more or less kills music.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's less today. Regardless, maybe 8bit music would work better. Or someone could come up with music that sounds better at such low bandwidth. Touch tone music maybe?

[Max Peck]

Why is hold music so terrible in so many places? Not just the elevator music itself, but the quality is just crap most places I call. It's like they have a phone receiver sitting next to a tinny little speaker playing the same 30 seconds of music in a loop.

I'm not aware of how things work in the modern world, but historically you only had about 3 kHz of bandwidth on a phone line, and that more or less kills music.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's less today. Regardless, maybe 8bit music would work better. Or someone could come up with music that sounds better at such low bandwidth. Touch tone music maybe?

No, a standard POTS landline is is still a nominal 4 kHz channel with a 3.1 kHz passband (300-3400 Hz). Things get can get dicier for non-speech waveforms, like music, depending on exactly how the audio traverses the telecomms infrastructure to arrive at your ear. If it stays on a POTS network, the worst that happens to it is the basic analog-to-digital sampling errors when it is encoded, but if (for example) you're using a cell phone then it will have been re-encoded with a lossy speech codec, probably using a vocoder algorithm that actually synthesizes the output iaw a human speech model rather than conveying the original waveform. It's possible for a system to accommodate non-speech signals at the interfaces where the audio is re-encoded, but I doubt that it is going to be done for something like music (as opposed to, say, dealing with an audio modem signal).

[Anonymous Bosch]

Feeling some major weltschmertz after the shooting at UCLA today. It's over 300 miles away and I don't know too many people who are still there, but it has still left me shaken.

I'm guessing that's because it hits close to home and what I love, but it still seems irrational.

Murder-suicide

The gunman in a murder-suicide at the University of California Los Angeles was a graduate student who apparently nursed long-simmering hostility toward the victim, his former engineering professor, who he accused of stealing his computer code, according to police and local media reports.

The gunman was identified Thursday as Mainak Sarkar, an engineering graduate student, according to Officer Jenny Houser, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. The victim was identified as William S. Klug, 39, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering engineering.
...
The motive remained unclear although police said they would focus on Sarkar's grades and a "longer-standing" poor relationship between the two men, KABC-TV reports.

Is "aerospace engineering engineering" a thing, or just another example of slipshod journalism?

[Max Peck]

Is "aerospace engineering engineering" a thing, or just another example of slipshod journalism?

It looks like sloppy editing, perhaps a copy/paste fumble while attempting to change "mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering" into "mechanical and aerospace engineering" or something like that.

[wonderpug]

I think it's foolish to think aerospace engineering would engineer itself. Someone's got to engineer aerospace engineering, and an aerospace engineer engineer is the perfect person for aerospace engineering engineering.