What's up with you?

[specious_reasons]

Did you know that if your right shoulder has a tendency to pop out of its socket, you might want to be extra careful with a 2 person auger?

Mrs. Reasons wanted to put up a trellis and a swing, which required digging 4 roughly 30" deep, 12" diameter holes. We rented a 2 person auger, which was OK until it hit a stone or root and twisted hard enough and in just such a way that my arm popped out of its socket.

It wasn't a bad one, but the 2 person auger became a 4 person auger, and I didn't need to use my right arm except to operate the throttle. Yay for adult children still living at home!

It was a very active weekend. On Saturday. I rode my bike to get a haircut, and then, since I was out I rode it to the library and the local liquor store. I bought myself an expense (to me) Scotch - The Macallan 12 Year Double Cask. Then we assembled a pergola that didn't fit on our deck and put it in a shady spot in the yard.

Today, we dug the aforementioned 4 holes, but only had time to pour the concrete for the trellis.

We probably did the concrete wrong - We'll found out by tomorrow.

[erimir]

I'll keep that in mind if I, for some reason, decide I need to auger something. I can partially pull my right arm out of its socket which I've been using to gross people out since I was a kid.

I decided against providing a picture (also kind of hard to take a picture when the left hand has to pull on the right arm).

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by erimir

I'll keep that in mind if I, for some reason, decide I need to auger something. I can partially pull my right arm out of its socket which I've been using to gross people out since I was a kid.

I decided against providing a picture (also kind of hard to take a picture when the left hand has to pull on the right arm).

It's exceedingly painful for me. Everyone knows when it happens because all I can do is flop/flail around and swear until I can get it placed back. I never do it intentionally. My wife could tell this wasn't as bad because the flailing was short, and I didn't spew a stream of "fuck"s.

My shoulder is still loose in the socket. That and the sore triceps from all the work makes it hard to shift.

[Ensign Steve]

We're going to see a show in Oakland tonight and we decided to take the BART. Despite having lived in the BA for 7 years, this is our first time riding BART. (To be fair, they didn't start serving San Jose until 2019).

We watched a 20-minute youtube video about BART last night because we are train nerds.

How neat that we have 3 different gauges of train that service our home. Did you know BART has its own unique gauge not shared by any other rail systems? I did! We already knew that before the video because, again, train nerds. Still have no clue why though.

[Ari]

Haha! “Neat” indeed.


I don’t know of any good resources off the top of my head but you should do some googling as there’s a whole lotta drama around the reason bart is a different gauge. The short of it is that it was early ‘DRM’ the slightly wider guage means they have to buy their trains and track maintenance equipment from specific contractors instead of the general market. Bart swears to this day it’s instead because the wider overall train gives more roomy space and a smoother ride reducing potential motion sickness.

Bonus there’s two different car styles going around right now, the old multi row grey seats and the new wider open brightly colored style I often think of it as ‘airport tram’ with fancy screens.

Also ETA: It’s run by computer system, the computer system is… old, and so there are special quirks, like you don’t hold doors, holding doors long/forcefully enough will cause the system to assume the train is broken and take it out of service.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ari

Also ETA: It’s run by computer system, the computer system is… old, and so there are special quirks, like you don’t hold doors, holding doors long/forcefully enough will cause the system to assume the train is broken and take it out of service.

Pshaw. The London Underground has had that quirk since before computers. Just leaning on the doors will cause something to trip, the driver to have to reset it, and Make An Announcement.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Ari

Bart swears to this day it’s instead because the wider overall train gives more roomy space and a smoother ride reducing potential motion sickness.

I googled and skimmed the first result which is as deep as I care to dive into this matter, but according to this the official story is that the wider gauge helps provide stability during high wind events.

The 13-page report – though brief and small in size – describes BART’s need for a wider gauge to keep its proposed ultra-lightweight cars on the tracks during high Bay Area wind events.

“It is now conclusive that the lateral stability of lightweight vehicles in the 800-pounds-per-linear-foot class can be assured through designs incorporating a 5’-6” gauge track,” the pamphlet says. “This is the most effective and most economical design measure by which the desired stability can be obtained.”

50 years of BART: Why BART uses a nonstandard broad gauge | bart.gov

[Ari]

While I’m sure true, a decent portion of BART is under ground or not in high wind areas, especially when originally built. As noted the larger gauge for high winds was proposed when it was expected to be going over the golden gate. It doesn’t go over the golden gate (or any large bridge, it goes through a tunnel under the bay to cross into the east bay), so they kept the wind stability, while scrapping the places where it might encounter wind.

There’s lots of drama, speculation and intrigue in the reasoning. Whatever the reason, BART very much enjoys being it’s own entity in a self contained system (the good is that it’s pretty simple and smooth, the bad are things like BART Police).

[Ensign Steve]

It was good. It was indeed a very comfy ride. Also it was so fast! Less than an hour from SJ to Oakland. Comparable to driving in light traffic, and no time spent looking for parking. I was curious so I checked the timetable and it's actually faster to take BART from San Jose, through Oakland, to San Francisco, than to take the local on the CalTrain (not that I ever take the local if I can avoid it, that shit is 2 fucking hours). How exciting, we are definitely going to do this some more. We're keeping an eye on the Fox Theater calendar, and maybe we'll start looking for stuff to do in Berkeley, too.

[beyelzu]

I too enjoyed the BART, it is a comfy ride and it was much faster than the Caltrain up to SF.

We had a blast at the Fox theater, Tash Sultana was fucking awesome.


We’ve long made occasional rides up to SF on Caltrain, but I’m excited to take BART more in the future. The drive up to Oakland isn’t bad, but I like leaving the car in San Jose.

Hell, we could BART home after a concert (it runs til midnight) but that we do like staying overnight.

The next morning we walked around and had breakfast. Oakland was setting up for a music festival.

Like ES said, it was a very comfy ride. I’ve been playing a new gps game (orna) which worked great except for when we were underground

[ShottleBop]

Last night, Mrs. S and I went with Mrs. S's older sister and her granddaughter (our great niece) to see a local production of "Cabaret" at the theater in Old Town San Diego. The production is a reprise of the presentation they did 11 years ago, which we'd seen as well. I'd forgotten just how triggering the song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" can be for me.

And when the guy sitting behind us groused to his date/spouse/companion about the fact that one of the actors' pronouns were "She/him/they," Mrs. S. put her hand on my shoulder to keep me from turning around and saying something to him (like, "It's people who say things like that who end up singing 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me.'").

P.S. The production was excellent.

[specious_reasons]

I had a temporary freakout this morning. When I walked into my neighborhood at work (our open offices are segmented into neighborhoods), the place was slightly rearranged, and I couldn't find my desk.

I was not paying attention, and walked into the same neighborhood on the wrong floor. Luckily, no one was there to witness this.

[JoeP]

So ... you just walked into the wrong 'hood?

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by JoeP

So ... you just walked into the wrong 'hood?

Yes, but the most dangerous thing about it would be the damage to my pride.

Today, three of us used another neighborhood's team room because all of ours were being occupied. It was faster than going further down the hall to a meeting room. We only got one curious glance. Considering my company's "hybrid work" policy, neighborhoods of 12-15 desks have between 0 and 10 people in them on any work day, so there's not a lot of risk we'd be interfering with another ad-hoc meeting.

[Ari]

Ugh California is on fire again. I went out to the mountains north of lake Tahoe for a wedding and everything was smoke hazed like there was a light yellow fog that cut off visibility of the mountains. It did mean the wedding had nice a golden light to it all day although fewer people came because being outside was like you could smell someone having a campout nearby at all times. Like the California version of gold at the end of a rainbow. That pot of nice wood smoked food is always just 50 feet away no matter what you do or where you go.

About a year ago my cousin and her boyfriend got into a nasty wreck, he pulled out in front of a truck he didn’t see until the last second and got hit on the drivers side. She got some bruises he went to the hospital, ended up in a coma for a bit, died, was revived, and is now walking around with only a bit of left arm mobility issues.

So they said fuck it, let’s get married. And so they did.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

DA64261C-C6B5-4CF5-941D-77B22D757490.jpeg

Hi.

[Ari]

I see your red sun and raise with, there’s a mountain there somewhere!
(I’m sure I could make this smaller, and I’m to tired to at the moment).

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Lol, you’re like my mom who won’t resize any image.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Can see silhouettes of mountains today and the sun is almost yellow

[vremya]

What should have been a one day job replacing the tiles in the shower has stretched into four days without a shower. Between rotted out wood and previous half ass plumbing repairs, it's turning into a nightmare

My landlord is doing the best he can, so I really can't fault him, but I really really want to take a shower.

[viscousmemories]

I am currently engaged in the always exciting process of trying to convince various corporate representatives that I am worthy of their exploitation. On the bright side I have had an unusually high degree of interest in and clarity of focus on tech for the past couple of weeks, so I'm actually enjoying that aspect of the search. The market doesn't seem to be as hot as it was this time last year--I only got a couple interview requests via Hired.com when I uploaded my resume last week compared to about 15 in the same time span last year--but if I'm able to land a job after a week or two of looking I'm still very obviously way better off than a lot of people, and I don't take that for granted.

[viscousmemories]

All the interviews are done so now I'm just waiting to find out if I get an offer from one or both of the two remaining options. I went through 3 rounds of interviews each with 3 different companies. I am genuinely excited about the possibility of one of them, another one is meh (but an improvement over where I am), and the third one already told me to fuck off because I failed to impress them with my attempt to analyze a Ruby script. I've spent a lot of time watching videos about how programming languages work over the past few days though, so I think I'm finally starting to get over the mental block that makes me see a jumble of unrelated characters every time I look at a program. Anyway the one that I really want to get is a fascinating business that I can't wait to talk about, which I will do at some point regardless of whether they hire me.

[specious_reasons]

My children learned two lessons today.
1. Always shovel the entire driveway.
My son shovelled around my daughters car, and left a large wedge of a snowbank she ran into, then slid and drifted further into the snowbank.

2. Put your hybrid in "power mode"

My daughter's hybrid has 3 modes: eco, power, and hybrid. Put it in power mode if you want it to get enough power to get out of the snowbank. Well, that, and we had to shovel out the snow from under the car.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

3: get a Subaru.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

3: get a Subaru.

My son drove my daughter to work in our Subaru this morning, as penance for not clearing out the entire driveway and indirectly getting her in this mess.