Random randomness

[Kraken]

On my morning walk, someone had placed a sign next to the sidewalk saying "Now entering the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Silly Walks," with language adjuring the reader to perform said walk (and a reference to Python for the clueless). There was nobody around, but I assume a camera was watching, so I complied in a decidedly non-Pythonesque fashion, weaving and backtracking and walking backwards. My joints are too inflexible to give it a heartfelt treatment. A little farther along was another sign indicating that I was exiting the zone and thanking me for complying.

I have no idea what that was about, but I'll bet I end up online somewhere. I'll take a photo if it's still there tomorrow.

It's become a thing and yeah, somewhere out there is a person compiling silly walks so they can post it somewhere. For about a week I've been confused trying to remember if I was seeing the same thing or something new.

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/20 ... -join.html

I still don't know if it started here or not because I keep seeing it different places.

Liz Koto, originator of the silly walk on Yorkshire Road in Grosse Pointe Park, said she’s received messages from other United States cities, The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, France, England and Kenya who are all joining in.

If it's still there tomorrow I'll try to give a better performance. Because it took me by surprise, and because of the joint problems I mentioned, my walk was more weird than silly. It's on a quiet neighborhood street without a lot of foot traffic. I walk past that house several days a week at more or less the same time each morning, so I imagine they had me in mind when they set it up -- "We'll get that old fat guy, if nobody else."

[Daehawk]

I seem to have ants trying to move into my car. Two types. I have only one place to park and it sits there for weeks on end between drives. I opened each door and some dirt and im not sure what fell out of each door well and a hand full of ants. Then inside Ill see one crawling here and there. One is small and one is medium sized. No giant ant and no teeny ant. I dont 'think' they have a nest IN the car. Not sure how Ill remove them. So far they are not a bother and Im hoping they simply move on as there is nothing to eat in a hot summer time car. But thsi wet cool spring weather is great for them and they are out in force.

[dbt1949]

Maybe they're just trying to get out of the wetness.

[dbt1949]

Saw a video of some guy with one of those giant wasps from Japan and he let it sting him in the arm.
He writhed in pain rolling over the ground as I applauded him for being a nutjob.

[Daehawk]

That would be Coyote Peterson. He does a lot of those..Bullet Ants, Cow Killer ...you name it it got him.

[LordMortis]

Oh... My... God... this pizza is soooo good. It's been way too long. Delivery costs? $30 for what will amount to 2 LordMortis sized meals? You were worth it today. So good. I'm not sure it's possible to find a better way to break a pizza fast than with a Jets 10.

[Paingod]

Get the technical implementation done, hand her the keys for the visual layout and design, and wash your hands of it. You’re a tech worker, not a marketer or web designer.

This morning they asked me "So what's up with the Intranet?" I happily responded that I've pretty much taken it as far as I can without their input and directed them to the bare-bones framework I've established. I outlined all the elements I needed their input on in a full one-page email.

There's a fair bit of content there I could pull together from what I had, but 2/3 of the elements they wanted are going to require me sitting down with people who care more than I do about what's in there and now they know that. Since we've reopened and are getting back to business, I expect to discover there's no time for people to spend on this.

[Smoove_B]

Ok, this is random enough to go here. It's almost unbelievable

The woman attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community along the South Carolina coast was visiting the homeowner to do her nails and was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her, authorities said.

Famous last words:

After briefly getting away from the alligator Friday, the woman stood in waist deep water in the Kiawah Island pond and said “I guess I wont do this again,” but the alligator grabbed her in its jaws again and took her under, according to a supplemental police report released Tuesday.

WTF???

[AWS260]

On my 4th-grader's morning class videoconference, they are sharing what superpowers they would like to have. My spawn's contribution:

I would be able to make anything appear. Like if I wanted candy, I could make candy appear. But I wouldn't make money for everyone, because that would ruin the economy because then money would be worthless.

I do not know where he is picking up economics lessons.

[Unagi]

I remember impressing my parents as a kid, when I said I wouldn't want all of the money in the world, because I suspected everyone would just switch to a new currency if I did.

[hitbyambulance]

UPS delivery schedule got a little weird...

[Daehawk]

Looks like its trying to get away.

[Daehawk]

Chicago reversed its river to save itself from pollution

[LordMortis]

UPS delivery schedule got a little weird...

That is the sort of thing from Amazon the day before they give me the option to wait or cancel and reorder, which in turn is the day before they cancel the order themselves and ask me if I want to re-order.

[AWS260]

Name of the Year 2020 is upon us. I don't think the nominees are quite as strong this year, but I'm rooting for Smoki Bacon and Robespierre Bolivar.

Mathdaniel Squirrel.

[Daehawk]

One of my credit scores went up by 15 points. Its the one that hasn't moved in my lifetime I dont think. Nothing new yet it still went up. Its a mystery.

[hitbyambulance]

That is the sort of thing from Amazon the day before they give me the option to wait or cancel and reorder, which in turn is the day before they cancel the order themselves and ask me if I want to re-order.

i called UPS and the phone rep agreed this was weird and sent a notice to the local distribution location.

[Holman]

It's plagiarism season!

I'm grading my students' final essays, and I have a very interesting case.

One of my students is from Europe and probably writes two languages well, but English isn't one of them. When I grade her work I take extra care to point out constructions and idioms that are wrong for us here.

By the time I was on the second page, a certain familiarity was nagging at me, and I started looking through my other 50 essays (or at least the ones on similar topics). What I discovered was that this student and one other had submitted identical essays.

Or, rather, they would have been identical had my Eurokid not apparently run the essay through a translator twice, once from English into her native tongue, then back into English. I'm convinced this is what she did: the two essays are the same, sentence for sentence, but the Euro student's version features some constructions that are so oddly, mechanically off that they would have been difficult to produce by hand. Plus, she neglected to correct for the damage this process would do to quotations from the famous English novel she was writing about...

I've contacted both students separately, but I'm dying to know what happened here. I can't wait to ask about the translation.

[Isgrimnur]

[Unagi]

What was the novel? Just curious what your students read/write about.

(I’d understand if you didn’t want to give more detail)

[Holman]

What was the novel? Just curious what your students read/write about.

(I’d understand if you didn’t want to give more detail)

It's an essay-writing course built around a pocket literature survey.

I should be wary of giving more details for privacy's sake. You've got the funny part already.

[Unagi]

What was the novel? Just curious what your students read/write about.

(I’d understand if you didn’t want to give more detail)

It's an essay-writing course built around a pocket literature survey.

I should be wary of giving more details for privacy's sake. You've got the funny part already.

My wife was curious.

[Jaymann]

War and Peace

[Hrothgar]

I feel dumb. I'm beginning to forget what alone time is like. With everyone at home, I haven't had time to watch any of the less kid friendly shows on the Tivo. So I decided to hook up the tivo mini from the guest room to my monitor and computer speakers so I could watch in the office without disturbing anyone. Everything works great except for two things. The autoswitching on my monitor got confused and kept switching back and forth. So I turned that off. The other problem is that I could turn the volume up on the speakers, but I couldn't turn it down all the way. I kept fiddling with connections and the setting on the Tivo mini.

Finally I turned off the speakers in frustration. But I could still hear the Tivo mini. I realized that the HDMI I was using to connect to the monitor was sending sound. It turns out that my monitor has hidden speakers. I guess they're behind the screen. There is no speaker grille or vents. There are no separate ports for audio input. I had never told the computer to route sound through the displayport connection. There were no volume or audio controls in the monitor main menu. I had just presumed that like older monitors it didn't have speakers. Wrong. It turns out there's a hidden audio menu accessed by hitting the up arrow when you're not in any menu. There were the volume controls. Turned that all the way down. Suddenly all the audio is coming through the speakers. I guess I should have RTFM.

[Holman]

What was the novel? Just curious what your students read/write about.

(I’d understand if you didn’t want to give more detail)

It's an essay-writing course built around a pocket literature survey.

I should be wary of giving more details for privacy's sake. You've got the funny part already.

My wife was curious.

I use Turnitin.com (an online plagiarism checker) to check for these things. Turnitin is only as good as its database, but it has been building for two decades, and it actively seeks out material from Sparknotes and other cheat sites as well as paid essay suppliers and general information sites. It also compares submissions to a library of everything ever submitted to its checkers. (I once had it correctly identify a 2018 submission as something submitted to a course I taught in 2014. Apparently the original went into a fraternity collection.)

This pair of essays didn't flag anything in Turnitin, so it's likely that either one student got from the other or they both shared a very local source like a sorority sister.

[Kraken]

Wife had a similar situation in which she caught a plagiarist who had run his stolen copy through a translator. It was laughably bad, and she was trying to work with him on his writing before she found out what was really up. He wasn't stealing from another student, though, just stealing and disguising published content.

[Kasey Chang]

UPS delivery schedule got a little weird...

They are probably loading up one vehicle in your area to capacity. They're not sending it out until they can fill the vehicle. But they have to account for everything daily. Thus, multiple destination scans every day.

[Hrdina]

I turn 51 on the 9th. When I joined OO I was 35. I thought all you 50 year olds were old farts. Now Im in the old fart club and I look at you 70 year olds as old farts. I dont want in your club btw

When I joined up with everyone here (GG), I had one child in... 2nd grade, probably. Now I have three kids, two of them adults, the youngest almost to that point, and three grandchildren.

When I got here (a couple of months before Daehawk), I was just shy of 37. My oldest kid was 7 and my youngest was 1.

Now my oldest has graduated college and will shortly be moving to Massachusetts with his girlfriend. My youngest is almost 17 and studying for (online!) AP exams this week.

I thought I was an old fart at 36. I'm sure of it now.

[dbt1949]

When I started at GG I was only 17. Now I'm going to be 71 this summer.
It's been a looong time.

[Holman]

When I started at GG I was only 17. Now I'm going to be 71 this summer.
It's been a looong time.

Damn right! GG was coolest when it was mail-order. People *cared* then, man!

[Sudy]

I can't even remember when I joined GG. It was late. I might literally have been 17. Probably 18. I was depressed and worried I'd never amount to anything. Now I'm 35. I'm depressed and worried I'll never amount to anything. And I have grey hairs.

[coopasonic]

Our cat has kidney issues... he is 1.5 years old... the vet bills are a little over $2k so far... so glad we got a cat. Did I mention I am allergic?

[Daehawk]

Gotta ask why ya got a cat if you are allergic. Hope the best for him and you.

[TheMix]

Gotta ask why ya got a cat if you are allergic. Hope the best for him and you.

That's obvious. He's married with children. Some fights you don't win (or don't bother trying to fight).

[Daehawk]

Safer to just get kids cat costumes. Dont get the wife a sexy cat costume though or you just end up with more kids.

[coopasonic]

Gotta ask why ya got a cat if you are allergic. Hope the best for him and you.

That's obvious. He's married with children. Some fights you don't win (or don't bother trying to fight).

Ding ding ding.

We have a cat and a dog and I'm highly allergic to both, but I am also highly allergic to basically everything (excluding foods) so it doesn't make a huge difference to my suffering. I have been congested for ~35 years and counting. Colorado two summers ago nearly killed me. From now on I'll stick to visiting in the winter. Snowboarding >>> running anyway.

[Skinypupy]

Currently very annoyed with Comcast, but looking for an IT person to weigh in on whether it's justified or not.

I have my primary Comcast account, then three sub-accounts with different e-mail addresses that I use for different things. I.E. one for job-hunting e-mails, one for junk e-mails, one for gaming logins, etc. I've been trying to set up two-factor authentication for all the accounts, as I've been having some issues with hacked accounts lately.*

My cell phone number is linked to the primary account. When I try to set up two-factor for any of the other e-mail addresses, however, it tells me my cell phone is "already in use for another account" and I need to use a different number.

So instead of just being able to set up two-factor across the board for all four e-mails using the same cell number, I would need to have a separate cell phone number for each e-mail addresses. Obviously, I don't have 4 separate phone numbers I can use.

Is requiring a completely separate phone number for sub-accounts a really stupid thing? Or is that standard practice and I'm being too picky?

*Found out last week that the Instagram account I set up a year ago and never used was apparently taken over by a Russian named "Vanya". Time to change passwords again, I guess.

[Paingod]

Is requiring a completely separate phone number for sub-accounts a really stupid thing? Or is that standard practice and I'm being too picky?

You're calling them "Sub-Accounts" but I'm sure Comcast is calling them "Accounts"

It's likely a matter of how they arrange their recovery process and data. If you have a one-to-many structure, one phone number could control many accounts - but if you ever need to recover an account and use your phone number for it, how will it know which one you mean? They'd have to program the system to them safely prompt you to choose one to recover (without potentially exposing that one phone number controls 4 accounts and some basics of those accounts). It's a problem that's easier to solve by having a one-to-one phone to account ratio.

This may also be why I have GMail for personal email, Outlook for job hunting, and an ancient Yahoo for junk mail. I do have multiple GMail accounts, but linked the others to my primary one as the "recovery" address. My primary is the only one I've set up my phone number on. I never even considered two-factor authentication for throw-away accounts.

[Skinypupy]

Thanks, that's helpful. I'll suppress my annoyance.

I called them sub-accounts because the only way to create them is by logging into the primary, then creating a "new user". They're all tied directly to the main account, hence why I thought it would make sense to be able to use the same phone #.

I probably should have set things up differently, but I've had these accounts for so long with so many things tied to them (billpays, gaming subs, etc.) that it'd be a pain in the arse to change them at this point. Rainy day project, I suppose.

[gilraen]

Thanks, that's helpful. I'll suppress my annoyance.

I called them sub-accounts because the only way to create them is by logging into the primary, then creating a "new user". They're all tied directly to the main account, hence why I thought it would make sense to be able to use the same phone #.

I probably should have set things up differently, but I've had these accounts for so long with so many things tied to them (billpays, gaming subs, etc.) that it'd be a pain in the arse to change them at this point. Rainy day project, I suppose.

Is this using the Xfinity Authenticator or something like a text message to your phone? You should be able to add multiple Comcast accounts to the authenticator app.