Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
There was a huge storm last night that knocked our power out for a hour or more and flooded the roads. It also left a man's decapitated body lying on the floor next to his own severed head a bunch of mud at the base of the driveway. After mowing the grass, I decided that someone else's loss was my gain, free dirt, and used it to fill in some low spots where the seed never got established and the dirt eroded. After that, I seeded it and made a pathetic attempt at mulch using paper from the shredder. I may go and see about getting some straw later.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
I spent all morning removing a single punch from a spiral binding punch machine, and putting it back together. I have 1 washer and 4 screws left (luckily, I know they are securing screws for the housing of the binder machine).
Now, my binder will not punch 8.5x11 sheets. But it will bind 3x5 and 4x6 cards without any accidental holes near the edges of the cards.
Not as easy a task as I originally thought it would be.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
When a patron told me "I don't know where the basement is," I did not give her a funny look and reply, "Downstairs." Considering that's pretty much exactly what I did to the woman who asked me what the second floor was, only with "upstairs" as the response, I think it's a sign of professional growth.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
My friend and I have been trying to remember the name of this 24 hour coffee shop/diner we used to sit around in all night sometimes in the 80s, and we kept coming up blank. There were actually two of them, one north of Denver and one downtown. We even went driving around where the north one was once, hoping we could get the exact address to look up the property records or something.
But last night, this other friend was over who was in the area at the time too, and she remembered it too but also couldn't remember its name.
And then, I woke up this morning and I FOUND IT.
It was called Reese's.
What should I solve next? Jack the Ripper? That Tamam Shud guy?
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
Oh, I already solved that. He died near where they found the money, either during the fall or shortly afterward, and his body was scattered by animals.
In an astonishing twist that even I cannot fully explain, he was actually Ted Cruz.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
I posted in Crumb's TRAVESTY POLL on the favorite admins. It's petty because the poll was already closed so I couldn't vote for myself, which would of course be a great accomplishment.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
Quote:
Originally Posted by livius drusus
I posted in Crumb's TRAVESTY POLL on the favorite admins. It's petty because the poll was already closed so I couldn't vote for myself, which would of course be a great accomplishment.
I helped in a very small way to design the storage architecture that is going to handle all that data, and the prototype of the modular, distributed storage system we worked on is now going to be built and taken through its paces.
What I really love about it is that when all is said and done, it is going to be one ginormous tens-of-petabites large piece of entirely public data - any student, any researcher will be able to access it for their studies.
It will hopefully teach us a lot more about dark matter and dark energy.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
I burned olive pits! Years ago I read that burned olive pits were found in fireplaces/ovens in Herculaneum. Apparently olive pits are just compressed wood, so they pack a decent combustion punch relative to size. So I collected like three dozen pits from my favorite green olives (Castelvetrano, from Sicily) and then threw them on the grill when making sausages. Even with the charcoal smoking profusely, you could still smell them. They smell just like olive oil. Also they actually catch fire. You see these little balls of fire going at it for minutes until all that's left are tiny carbonized chunks.
From now on, all olive pits get saved for grilling in the summer and fireplace in the winter.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
For a research project for my jerb, I'm having to look at a bunch of websites from around the world, so they are in all kinds of different languages. I keep having to use Google translate to decipher them, and sometimes even to figure out what language it is in the first place. (Srsly, Icelandic? Finnish? How do you people get your own languages and Switzerland doesn't?)
I just now got to the batch from Mexico and I was like, phew! I can give my ctrl-c, ctrl-v fingers a rest!
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
Switzerland has a couple languages unique to it.
One is Swiss German, or Schweizerdeutsch or Schwiizerdütsch (in Swiss German), which is difficult for Germans to understand (if they're not from Bavaria, across the border). It is, however, a primarily spoken language, and most Swiss websites would be written in Standard German.
Then there's Romansh, which is a Romance language that has some similarity to northern Italian "dialects" (which themselves can be called independent languages), but which would be unintelligible if you only know Standard Italian. It looks a little bit like a blend between French and Italian with German influences. It has very few speakers though, so you won't likely find many sites in it.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
I knew a Swiss guy when I was a teenager who spoke Schweizerdeutsch. At the time, I had an OK grasp of basically high school level German (and I watched so many Herzog movies that my first German teacher thought I'd lived in Germany), and while I could sort of pick up a word here and there, I couldn't follow at all, really. He also and I think primarily spoke Romansh, but I have never understood Italian at any level, so.
And in keeping with the petty accomplishment portion of this thread, I used to make out with that guy when he bathed. He was insanely and smokingly hot and everyone here would be envious, but he would let himself get pretty ripe, so I'd hold out until bath day.
Re: In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments
Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea
And in keeping with the petty accomplishment portion of this thread, I used to make out with that guy when he bathed. He was insanely and smokingly hot and everyone here would be envious, but he would let himself get pretty ripe, so I'd hold out until bath day.
Oh, you mean after he had bathed. Not during. Which would have been less petty.