Random Thoughts

[formulanone]

There should be a restaurant called Jimmy Buffet – All You Can Eat Cheeseburger Paradise.

Watch out for pop tops and missing salt shakers.

[Scott5114]

There should be a restaurant called Jimmy Buffet – All You Can Eat Cheeseburger Paradise.

Watch out for pop tops and missing salt shakers.

Jimmy Buffet owns, or used to own, a restaurant called Cheeseburger in Paradise. It wasn't a buffet, though, just a regular tropical-themed restaurant. I ate at the location in Kansas City a few times. It wasn't anything really special, and the one in Kansas City closed a few years back.

I don't remember having any trouble finding the salt shakers, though.

[kphoger]

Do people who STOP at Yield signs, YIELD at Stop signs?

I think a lot of them just do the exact same thing at every intersection, no matter what kind of sign there is.

[webny99]

Do people who STOP at Yield signs, YIELD at Stop signs?

I think a lot of them just do the exact same thing at every intersection, no matter what kind of sign there is.

"The exact same thing" would probably be yield, or slow way down unnecessarily in the case of a signalized intersection.

[kphoger]

Do people who STOP at Yield signs, YIELD at Stop signs?

I think a lot of them just do the exact same thing at every intersection, no matter what kind of sign there is.

"The exact same thing" would probably be yield, or slow way down unnecessarily in the case of a signalized intersection.

I didn't mean signalized intersections.  At least, I hope they wouldn't slow way down for green lights...

[kphoger]

I just asked Alexa this question . . . AND SHE TOLD ME THE ANSWER.

[D-Dey65]

Last month, I took a day trip around North Central Florida, specifically the vicinity of Ocala National Forest One of my pictures that I took at the time was the Marion County Road 316 bridge over the Ocklawaha River. Unfortunately, want I discovered on the west end is somebody's poor little dead beagle. You'll have to zoom in to see this one.



Sadly, I made a phone call to the proper authorities in Marion County about it, and they hung up on me.



So, somebody in the Fort McCoy area will never know the whereabouts of one of their pets.

[kphoger]

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

[Max Rockatansky]

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

Super flatness on Pasco County Route 41 descending the Brooksville Ridge:

https://flic.kr/p/2m32Q1N

[CoreySamson]

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

Yep, Florida has hills...
https://goo.gl/maps/TsHahXpw5BxmGR5m8
https://goo.gl/maps/dhVePXox6tNZdNVa6
https://goo.gl/maps/CR1vyAanDwaEQbq19

I got the first location on Geoguessr once and was completely baffled as to what it might be.

[kphoger]

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

Super flatness on Pasco County Route 41 descending the Brooksville Ridge:

https://flic.kr/p/2m32Q1N

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

Yep, Florida has hills...
https://goo.gl/maps/TsHahXpw5BxmGR5m8
https://goo.gl/maps/dhVePXox6tNZdNVa6
https://goo.gl/maps/CR1vyAanDwaEQbq19

I got the first location on Geoguessr once and was completely baffled as to what it might be.

Huh.

Has |Crash_It| been made aware?

[D-Dey65]

Is that a hill?  I thought Florida was literally as flat as a pancake?

It's actually the foot of a high bridge, but Florida does have hills, and many have pointed out.

[Scott5114]

Why don't music videos usually include the lyrics as subtitles?

[CNGL-Leudimin]

What time is it along I-64 near Ferdinand, Indiana?

[hotdogPi]

This question is for Scott5114, but anyone can answer.

Take a typical retail store or counter service restaurant (whether fast food or not). If change is rounded up to the nearest five cents on cash transactions, for each customer who pays cash, doesn't pay exact change, and has a total that isn't a multiple of 5¢, it saves about 2 seconds per customer at the expense of 1-4 cents per transaction. From a corporate perspective, is the tradeoff worth it? If not, is doing it when it's only one cent different (loss of 1¢ and not having to grab four pennies out the cash register) worth it?

[jeffandnicole]

This question is for Scott5114, but anyone can answer.

Take a typical retail store or counter service restaurant (whether fast food or not). If change is rounded up to the nearest five cents on cash transactions, for each customer who pays cash, doesn't pay exact change, and has a total that isn't a multiple of 5¢, it saves about 2 seconds per customer at the expense of 1-4 cents per transaction. From a corporate perspective, is the tradeoff worth it? If not, is doing it when it's only one cent different (loss of 1¢ and not having to grab four pennies out the cash register) worth it?

If the typical transaction takes about 2 minutes in total and there's non-stop customers, that's 30 customers per hour. At 2 seconds savings, that's a max of 1 minute saved at a potentional loss of $1.20.

If the checkout line has occasional traffic but there's gaps, ultimately no time is lost, at a profit loss.

Credit card usage is so high now, that the majority of people are paying cash. If, say, 25% ate paying with cash in example 1, the savings is 15 seconds over that hour, with a loss of $0.28.

To sum it up, the time lost is nominal at no benefit to the business.

[Scott5114]

This question is for Scott5114, but anyone can answer.

Take a typical retail store or counter service restaurant (whether fast food or not). If change is rounded up to the nearest five cents on cash transactions, for each customer who pays cash, doesn't pay exact change, and has a total that isn't a multiple of 5¢, it saves about 2 seconds per customer at the expense of 1-4 cents per transaction. From a corporate perspective, is the tradeoff worth it? If not, is doing it when it's only one cent different (loss of 1¢ and not having to grab four pennies out the cash register) worth it?

I think that studies from countries that have eliminated their 1¢ coin (e.g. Canada) have shown that it ends up basically balancing. The essentially random nature of the one-cent column makes it so that it's impractical to intentionally game the rounding so that it favors the customer on all but one-item transactions. Sales taxes make doing so even more difficult.

If you're wondering about the impact from a labor cost perspective, that really depends a lot on the particulars of an individual business (what percentage of customers use cash, what the ratio of pennies coming in to going out is, any fees the bank may charge for rolled coins, how much wait time there is to restock when a cashier runs out of pennies, etc.)

Skill of the cashier plays a small role too. Toward the end of my cashier career I got to where I could pretty reliably reach in the drawer and grab 40-50 coins to make up a roll and be within one or two of the amount I wanted. So pulling four pennies out of the drawer at once without even looking was just muscle memory. Obviously, though, a 16-year-old fast-food cashier who doesn't use cash in their daily life will probably never reach that level of skill unless they just want to.

[SkyPesos]

I-35 would be the longest north-south interstate without the existence of Florida.

That's a fascinating way to look at it.  Seriously, it's one of those odd quirks about the shape of the United States.  For the most part it has some pretty consistent geographical features, but the East Coast is abnormally longer than the the width of the rest of the country.  It's funny how it can be pretty symmetrical and yet not symmetrical at the same time.

Also I find it interesting that because of the US's shape, I-10's eastern end would be equivalent to an x0 ending at I-77 in the Midwest, and I-5, 15, and 25's southern end would be equivalent to an x5 ending at I-20 in the east.

[kphoger]

Why don't music videos usually include the lyrics as subtitles?

Personally, I dislike having the lyrics displayed, for the same reason that I dislike subtitles on TV shows or movies:  I find it very difficult to take my eyes off the subtitles.  To me, songs are best appreciated while listening, and reading detracts from that experience.  Likewise, the conversation in shows and movies.  And, much though I try, I just can't stop reading them when they're there.

[Max Rockatansky]

Why don't music videos usually include the lyrics as subtitles?

Personally, I dislike having the lyrics displayed, for the same reason that I dislike subtitles on TV shows or movies:  I find it very difficult to take my eyes off the subtitles.  To me, songs are best appreciated while listening, and reading detracts from that experience.  Likewise, the conversation in shows and movies.  And, much though I try, I just can't stop reading them when they're there.

I'm fine with them given how hard it is to understand song lyrics and lines in movies sometimes. 

[ethanhopkin14]

Why don't music videos usually include the lyrics as subtitles?

Personally, I dislike having the lyrics displayed, for the same reason that I dislike subtitles on TV shows or movies:  I find it very difficult to take my eyes off the subtitles.  To me, songs are best appreciated while listening, and reading detracts from that experience.  Likewise, the conversation in shows and movies.  And, much though I try, I just can't stop reading them when they're there.

I'm fine with them given how hard it is to understand song lyrics and lines in movies sometimes.

I hate subtitles.  I find them distracting.  I hate that the young folks like them because "they can't hear what the people are saying over the sound of them chewing potato chips".  Such a 1st world problem.

I mainly detest this opinion because I am 100% in to a movie or 0% in.  I am not between.  So I don't understand the watching a movie while I write something and play on my phone and have a meal thing.  I find doing all that "multitasking" to be an insult to all the people who worked hard on the movie; you can't even give them two hours of your time to watch the movie they made for you?

The perfect solution, if you are watching a movie or music video, watch them subtitle free.  Then when it gets to a line in the movie or song that you can't understand, turn on the subtitles for a second to get the line, turn them off and move on.  Albums used to have lyrics in the liner notes to keep this from being an issue.  That's back when the lyrics actually meant something.

Words in music and movie are hard to understand now days because the "artists" want it hard to understand.  Several theories I have are slurred mumbled words take away the fact that the singer really can't sing or the lyrics are not very good.  Whispered dialog is there to detract the fact that the script isn't really that good.  Singers also sing lyrics that are hard to understand because they are "deeply moved" by what they are singing, so much so that they pronounce words wrong.  I see it as a fake moving experience on the part of the singer.  If they put their fake emotions into it, then you will buy the fake hype...and their latest album!!  They say it's just the style of the times, but I see it as a bunch of mediocre people have somehow gotten enough steam behind them to have an album or movie released and quite frankly, most of the stuff is really not that good, but the big budgets and artistic style are things in there to distract you from that.  I think of it along the lines of how all these action movies in the last 20 years have the action sequences in the dark.  I find them very hard to see and it's on purpose because if it were well lit, then they would have to actually, you know, choreograph the thing.

[Max Rockatansky]

Why does my wife want a camper that costs almost double what I bought my last new car for?

[kphoger]

The perfect solution, if you are watching a movie or music video, watch them subtitle free.

Not an option in some situations.

For example, at the gym, I can't very well remove the subtitles from the TV screens while I'm using the stationary bicycle.

[Max Rockatansky]

The perfect solution, if you are watching a movie or music video, watch them subtitle free.

Not an option in some situations.

For example, at the gym, I can't very well remove the subtitles from the TV screens while I'm using the stationary bicycle.

I prefer foreign movies when they are spoken in native language with subtitles.  I find it kind of distracting when there is an English voiceover dub.

[J N Winkler]

My random thought:  do the subtitle haters have any family members who are deaf?