The Vent and Rant Thread

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You're right--that would be bad.

Discusses Thor:

Spoiler:

Is that like, Ms. Thor? Or, sorry, "Lady Thor?" Not that I'm un-liberated, but Marvel has completely let me down. Thor has always, since my earliest days, been my fave. Hunky. Now a girl? BUGGER!

Discusses Dr. Who:

Spoiler:

And is it twooly twoo: is The master a woman now, too? (I am behind on Doc Who)

Hitch

Yep, that spoiler hidden thing was revealed on last week's episode. As my icon might have said, Peter Capaldi's face was a mask of Fear and Loathing.

[PeterT]

I've not watched Dr Who on a regular basis since I was a child in the UK in the late 60s. Those were the days. Cybermen, Daleks oh my, oh my.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I manage to make my errand run, turn the disobeying vehicle off; it worked, again, when I start it up again to head home, and nothing really freaky happens further, other than me wondering when The Master will strike again, at the heart of my (rather ancient) car, leaving me a bit kerfuffled at high speed.

If you have an iPhone or Android phone, the Waze app has a speedometer.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

...

Well, as we refer to it, "The Healing Hand of DH," worked long-distance, and the speedometer popped up, abruptly, indicating that (miraculously) I was doing about 54. ("The Healing Hand" thing is a running joke; Himself is, actually "handy" in that way; things get fixed. More annoyingly, things that are NOT working will suddenly START working when he comes near them. DH asserts it's because they fear him. We call it "The Healing Hand of DH," because...well, what ELSE would you freaking call it?)

Hitch

In a former life as a repairer of personal computers I used to call that "The Geeks Curse". Whenever I got near a customer's computer it would mysteriously work perfectly. "How is that a curse?" you might ask. If you can't see what's broke you can't fix it. And it's really hard to justify charging a customer a one hour minimum for laying on of hands.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by wodin

In a former life as a repairer of personal computers I used to call that "The Geeks Curse". Whenever I got near a customer's computer it would mysteriously work perfectly. "How is that a curse?" you might ask. If you can't see what's broke you can't fix it. And it's really hard to justify charging a customer a one hour minimum for laying on of hands.

Indeed. I know the Geek's Curse, intimately. At one point in my rather bizarrely-varied career, I was actually in IT, before I was doing RE Development. Now, this was back in...ye gods, 1982-83. We were installing the old Basic4 minis, in hotels. (You can sort of see how my career path migrated from this, to putting them in hotels-being-built, to ending up building hotels.) We had this type of stuff happen all the time, along with the other infamous bit of Geekery, the

"How Do It Know" ponderment.

I used to have a knack of getting PRINTERS to work. And honestly, please don't ask me now, 3+ decades later, what on earth I did; I couldn't tell you. But part of it was convincing a relatively dumb device to think it was something else, or whatever, and one of my superiors would constantly ask, literally "But, how do it know?" "How Do It Know that you told it it's X?" I gave up explaining it.

;-) Ah, Geekery. So many weird things, so many weird clients, customers, bosses and the like. I'll never forget walking into the backoffice of a reservations department, and seeing a clerk pounding the top of an old-school ADDS terminal, trying to make the reservation she was looking for "fall down" from the top of the device, where, apparently, the reservation was being held hostage, presumably. Like trying to get the last bit of ketchup out of a container. Yowza!

Hitch

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

...
;-) Ah, Geekery. So many weird things, so many weird clients, customers, bosses and the like. I'll never forget walking into the backoffice of a reservations department, and seeing a clerk pounding the top of an old-school ADDS terminal, trying to make the reservation she was looking for "fall down" from the top of the device, where, apparently, the reservation was being held hostage, presumably. Like trying to get the last bit of ketchup out of a container. Yowza!

Hitch

Obviously she had the wrong sized screwdriver, a judicious tap in the right place with the right sized screwdriver would ALWAYS jiggle the errant bit lose. If you don't believe it just ask Dr. Who!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

If you have an iPhone or Android phone, the Waze app has a speedometer.

Yabbut...How Do It Know? ;-)

Hitch

[cromag]

Big data. I assume they track how long it's taking you to get handed off from cell tower to cell tower.

But that is just an assumption.

[Freeshadow]

*sigh* Tracking via cell towers works too (triangulation so you actually need enough of them) but because of being bidirectional and not really accurate I keep it off. The name of said malfeature is something along
'Use network to determine location' - crap

*sigh* just as a side note: these phones can and do receive GPS sat signal and have a built-in magnetic field sensor for compass just like ordinary stand-alone nav systems.

[cromag]

Doh! I hadn't even thought of GPS.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cromag

Doh! I hadn't even thought of GPS.

Hey, all I care about is, next time it does something funky, I can tell how fast I'm going. The troopers don't really care for crazy speeders, here. ;-)

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by cromag

Doh! I hadn't even thought of GPS.

Which in my case has been the reason to get a smartphone at all. All the rest is just nice addon for me. I've an orienteering skill of a snail and can properly distinguish four directions: inside, outside, up and down.

[5thWiggleWife]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Which in my case has been the reason to get a smartphone at all. All the rest is just nice addon for me. I've an orienteering skill of a snail and can properly distinguish four directions: inside, outside, up and down.

Don't worry - with a bit of practice you'll figure out left and right too.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggleWife

Don't worry - with a bit of practice you'll figure out left and right too.

Nah. They always say: 'left is where the thumb's on the right side'

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Which in my case has been the reason to get a smartphone at all. All the rest is just nice addon for me. I've an orienteering skill of a snail and can properly distinguish four directions: inside, outside, up and down.

Originally Posted by 5thWiggleWife

Don't worry - with a bit of practice you'll figure out left and right too.

Don't bet on it; I still get them confused sometimes. Back in my army days, whenever the drill sergeant would issue a command for, example, "RIGHT FACE", and one of the recruits turned to his left, the sergeant would turn to that recruit and yell, "Not THAT way, soldier! Your MILITARY right!"