The rant thread.

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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Sat Oct 26, 2019 12:21 am

I was talking about twin adoption studies, since those were a big part of The Bell Curve's argument, but you are right that most twin studies just compare identical to fraternal twins to regular siblings all living with their bio families.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Oct 26, 2019 1:10 am

New York. New York is the city associate with Carl Sandberg. Now where's my candy?
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Sat Oct 26, 2019 1:48 am

NathanLoiselle wrote:New York. New York is the city associate with Carl Sandberg. Now where's my candy?

It's Chicago. And the great thing about this test is that that you have to point to one of three maps of the US with a city highlighted. So you not only have to know that Sandburg is associated with Chicago, but also know roughly where Chicago is on a map.

That test had a bunch of cultural loaded questions, but that one is still my favorite. Most of the culturally-loaded questions just require you to be a well-educated American to do well, but the Sandburg question equates intelligence with being a well-educated, white, old American with an interest in poetry and a passing understanding of geography.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sun Oct 27, 2019 12:32 am

You're Wrong!!!

*runs away crying*
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 29, 2019 6:10 pm

This really should be a minor announce, but it's pissing me off all out of proportion to the relatively minor cost, possibly because it involves the coercive power of the state.

Any rate, I make it a point to never, ever use toll roads if I have any other option. When I moved to Austin, my father took a bunch of toll roads without telling me, and since I didn't check my mail regularly, I accumulated a bunch of late fees on them as well, but since then I hadn't had to deal with the Texas toll road authority.

A few months ago, I went to Corpus Christi, and the 183 toll road weaves back and forth across the old, free, 183. You have to, IIRC, exit right, right, left, right in order to not end up on the toll road. But, I thought I managed it, and I did.

However, I went to my mail yesterday and found a notice from the toll authority which included a late charge. I never got the initial statement. I initially assumed this was 183, but then I saw the notice said that this authority only covers three highways in the Austin area: 45, 130, and Mopac. I never go anywhere near 45 and 130 and definitely never take the toll lane on Mopac, so I called them.

She said that I was on 130 between Lockhart and Seguin, and there's photographic evidence. I cannot for the life of me think what I might have been doing on that stretch of road; it's not on the way to San Antonio or Corpus Christi. But I checked, and there's photographs of my license plate, complete with the bend. I have no idea what I was doing there, but what I am sure of is two things:

1. I never, ever, ever knowingly use toll roads, and I have tolls on avoidance on Google Maps and Waze, so whatever I was doing, if I went through a toll it was clearly the result of badly marked signage.

2. I went through my old mail again, and don't see the thing from TXTag. I often get mail for my neighbors, so my best guess is that my first statement got delivered to one of my neighbors. It's a government monopoly, however, and they refuse to waive the late fee. I mean, what am I gonna do? Not use toll roads? I already do that and still ended up with a toll invoice.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Oct 29, 2019 9:15 pm

Thanks to recent updates to your medical profile, we at Molina Health would like to remind you of our non-discriminatory policy. We'd also like you to stick the wide end of a rake up all our asses. We will send you this same letter thirty more times over the next week.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Tue Nov 05, 2019 3:27 am

So, TIL that two things I hate—Daylight Savings Time and Austin drivers—combine very poorly.

I drove downtown, and it was like trying to drive downtown during ACL or SXSW, minus the traffic.

One car randomly stopped right before the road forks into two lanes for the light, despite the car behind me honking at them multiple times (the car right behind me was honking, stopped driver three cars ahead of me, I was the one the honking hurt).

Then after I made two turns (so a different car), one car got in the left lane at a stop light and so, even though I needed to be in the left lane eventually, I got in the right lane. At which point, that car made a right on red in front of me.

Then, where I needed to turn left, I was able to get into the left-turn lane. At that light, again, one car was already stopped, this time in the straight-only lane. Then when the light turned green, it joined me in turning left.

Then, another car just randomly stopped in a right turn lane, forcing everyone to get into the center lane briefly to go around it.

Then, an ambulance came at me, and one car decided that the thing to do was speed up, pass everyone pulled over, and then pull over after it passed the ambulance.

Then, the car in front of me couldn't decide which lane it wanted to be in, which was a little bit scary.

I was going to blame it on sleep deprivation, but this is fall back, so that can't be it. My best guess is that drivers sticking to their normal schedules suddenly found themselves driving in the dark, and like snow and rain, Austin drivers have no fucking idea how to handle driving in the dark.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Nov 26, 2019 6:12 am

As of Sunday, my POS car has gotten even worse.

It has almost always had something wrong with it since I got it about two years ago. Which is no surprise, even though the last owners took pretty good care of it; it’s from 2003.

Most recently, it seems incapable of shifting above second gear. At first I thought it just needed more transmission fluid (it was low), but that didn’t help as much as I had hoped. What makes it more interesting to me is that the car runs more smoothly (and can go faster) when I specifically put it in second gear than in drive. Naturally, I need to go on three different highways (including two interstates) to get to work.

I was hoping I’d have more time save up for another car, but nope.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Nov 26, 2019 10:34 pm

I'm all outta smokes until Friday. ARRRRGH!
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby Absentia » Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:57 pm

Just found out that I'm going to have to pay ~$200 and be without a computer for a week and half, because the whiz-bang engineers at Dell designed a laptop that is almost impossible to replace the keyboard on. You know, the keyboard: the part that breaks first and most often. I've replaced other laptop keyboards myself in 5 minutes after ordering a $20 replacement part, but this piece of shit requires the whole case to be disassembled and the entire top panel replaced, because the keyboard is basically glued to the underside of the case. So I have to pay a professional, and they have to order a salvage part from an identical model because Dell just doesn't believe in repairing broken computers, I guess.

I am literally angry with rage.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:15 pm

As with many things, blame Apple for this. Apple made their keyboards almost impossible to replace, and people kept buying Apple computers, so evidently other manufacturers are following suit.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Thu Dec 12, 2019 3:46 pm

Job applications for large companies and the government tend to be a sort of circle of hell. Every one has their own internal application website they apply for and every one is a nightmare of user interface design. (Well, Dell and IBM were merely bad interface design, but for tech companies I'd expect way better.)

Today, after applying to another large company, I discovered several creative new ways to make the application process absolutely miserable, even on a two-page application (which is one of the shorter ones I've completed).

1. For education, require you to choose from a dropdown list of every major university in the world and many of the more prestigious liberal arts colleges. (My undergraduate alma mater wasn't on there at all, and "other" was at the top, but I still had to scroll to where it would have been to confirm.)

2. Require you list the country where you worked at every job using another dropdown list, and not put the US at the top of the list for a job in the US. (Most internal jobsites don't follow such common-sense best practices, but it's the requiring it for every job that made it a pain.)

3. Have a long list of "degree" options (in another fucking dropdown) for education which somehow fails to cover my postgraduate experience. I figured that if they're not going to give me a better option for "I was in a PhD program but didn't finish," I'll just say I have a fucking doctorate. But for the other education, they somehow have a field for "Continuing Education (undergraduate)", but not for "Continuing Education (postgraduate)."

4. Attempt to autofill the form from resume, fail miserably, and not let you save the first page (which has everything from contact information to work experience to education) until you fill in every required field. Finding the last couple of fields I was missing ("are you still in this educational program?" another fucking dropdown where they somehow didn't think to distinguish "no, completed" and "no, not completed" options) was so much fun.

5. Apparently time you out after half an hour regardless of inactivity. Fortunately, I was already on the second page, which was just the demographic disclosure stuff, when this happened. I think if it had happened on that massive, unsaveable first page, I might have murdered someone.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby Absentia » Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:16 am

I'm convinced that they deliberately make the application process miserable as a screen, to make sure you want the job badly enough to put up with it.

I got "good" news on my laptop yesterday: it will cost slightly less money and be done slightly faster than previously projected. I would have felt better about this if I hadn't had to spend an extra $100 to get my car through inspection because of an electrical problem with some completely superfluous lights on the back end. Apparently the Virginia code says that if the lights are there, they have to work, even if there's no code saying they have to be there at all. Owning a car in this state is like being in debt to the Mob.
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby jbobsully11 » Mon Dec 30, 2019 5:04 am

My phone stopped holding a charge on Saturday, or even charging up at all while plugged in, and I didn't get a chance to get a new battery this weekend. I'm waiting on two different phone calls; one for the registration for my car (due by Tuesday; Enterprise said they'd take care of it, but I haven't heard anything since I got the car), and one for the last job I interviewed for. I would take care of the phone and the car tomorrow morning, except...

I have to be at work at 7 AM tomorrow. And it's a ten-hour day. I could've used sick time if I had known last week, but instead I chose to use eight sick hours on New Years Eve, which I still kind of think was a good decision. Maybe they'll make us leave early again, like they did before the holiday party (that won't happen).
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: The rant thread.

Postby cmsellers » Sat Jan 04, 2020 7:12 am

So, this may seem like it should be a minor annoyance, but it's super fucking pissing me off.

I'm having an issue within Firefox, wherein keyword search seems to have become disabled, despite it being enabled in about:config.

I googled the problem, and most of the proposed solution were to reset Firefox to default settings. Found another solution, which required me to open the "Preferences" panel.

Upon which I discovered I could not open the "Preferences" panel either. Googled that problem, and every single suggestion is either to reset to default settings or do a clean reinstall.

That is not a fucking solution you goddamn fucking motherfuckers! Resetting Firefox to default settings should not be the first thing you try.

Do you know why I use Firefox?

  1. I have a lot of addons for convenience, privacy, and security. Some of these addons, such as NoScript, have their own settings which I've spent years customizing.
  2. Firefox handles the excessive number of tabs I have better than any other browser.
Do you know what resetting to default settings does?

  1. Clears out all my addons and all the data associated with them.
  2. Starts a shiny new session.
In other words, resetting to factory settings negates the very reasons I use Firefox, it should be a last resort, a nuclear option, when there is absolutely no other choice. It should absolutely not be the equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
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