Random Thoughts

[elsmere241]

Over the years, my wife (and I) have had hamsters, finches, guinea pigs, and a cat along the way.  (We had a hard time keeping the cat away from the one hamster we had at the time - I think the cat got to it at some point.)  We lost a bunch once due to heatstroke, when I drove them home from the beach and the car wasn't cool enough.

We've had as many as ten guinea pigs at one time, and I think I've buried at least a dozen.  (Over the years, we've learned the hard way how to take care of them.)  Right now we have eight, fortunately a pair in each of four cages.  They're like kids to my wife (we weren't able to have children of our own) but I do most of the work to take care of them.

Usually when we've gone on the road, we've brought whatever we have along.  That's going to be a lot more difficult now, since we finally got rid of the RV trailer a couple of years ago.  Not even the KOAs will let us stay there will all we have now.

[elsmere241]

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

[Max Rockatansky]

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

What RPM is it running in top gear?

[elsmere241]

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

What RPM is it running in top gear?

I didn't think to look.  We're going home tomorrow or Saturday (going south) and I think that will be a smoother ride.

We've been in the Poconos all this week.  Yesterday we had to go home (to Wilmington, DE) and back to take care of a couple of things.  I didn't expect so much traffic to get on the NE Ext southbound at Allentown - but it was 7:45 am on a weekday.

[formulanone]

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

What RPM is it running in top gear?

I didn't think to look.  We're going home tomorrow or Saturday (going south) and I think that will be a smoother ride.

We've been in the Poconos all this week.  Yesterday we had to go home (to Wilmington, DE) and back to take care of a couple of things.  I didn't expect so much traffic to get on the NE Ext southbound at Allentown - but it was 7:45 am on a weekday.

I'm hearing lots of tales of unkillable 300k-400k mile Mitsubishi Mirages, so as long as you handle the basic maintenance. Which is pretty amazing knowing their past track record and that these were the least-expensive vehicles for sale at the time.

[Scott5114]

The neighbors who took care of our cat, and for whom we took care of their cats, during vacations unfortunately moved away last year. So earlier this summer when we went to Florida we boarded her at a cat hotel in Alexandria. It worked out really well, but it's not the cheapest option. Thankfully that wasn't an issue for us. We were quite happy with them and would board her there again.

Since we've moved to Las Vegas whenever we have to go out of town we board our cats at the vet. It's convenient because if they need vaccinations or a checkup they will just do it while they're there and we don't have to make a separate trip.

[1995hoo]

The neighbors who took care of our cat, and for whom we took care of their cats, during vacations unfortunately moved away last year. So earlier this summer when we went to Florida we boarded her at a cat hotel in Alexandria. It worked out really well, but it's not the cheapest option. Thankfully that wasn't an issue for us. We were quite happy with them and would board her there again.

Since we've moved to Las Vegas whenever we have to go out of town we board our cats at the vet. It's convenient because if they need vaccinations or a checkup they will just do it while they're there and we don't have to make a separate trip.

We would do that except our vet doesn't board cats. So the cat hotel was a good solution. Her having her own private room was a nice touch. They let each cat out of its room for about 15–20 minutes each day and they sent us some pretty funny pictures of when she found her way into the office and decided to climb up on top of the printer.

[I-57/Route 66 Fan]

Why does every commercial break have ad for either prescription drugs or medical supplements.

[Max Rockatansky]

Why does every commercial break have ad for either prescription drugs or medical supplements.

I don't know, have you asked your doctor today?

[elsmere241]

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

What RPM is it running in top gear?

An unrelated thought we discovered yesterday: Trying to take a Mitsubishi Mirage up the Northeast Extension at the prevailing speed makes the engine get mad at you.

I didn't think to look.  We're going home tomorrow or Saturday (going south) and I think that will be a smoother ride.

We've been in the Poconos all this week.  Yesterday we had to go home (to Wilmington, DE) and back to take care of a couple of things.  I didn't expect so much traffic to get on the NE Ext southbound at Allentown - but it was 7:45 am on a weekday.

I'm going to try to answer everyone's questions here,

It behaved the same way coming back today (without as much engine noise), and this time I watched the tachometer.  The engine got up to 3000 rpm OK but would hold there.

We picked it up Wednesday, June 29th just inside Philadelphia near Bensalem.  It ran fine all the way back to Wilmington - I certainly would have noticed if it wasn't then.  It was fine going up to the Poconos this last Sunday, and coming back to northern Delaware Wednesday for my wife's pre-surgery medical appointment.  It started to have problems on the way back up to the Poconos Wednesday evening.

[I-57/Route 66 Fan]

i was watching Are you smarter than a 5th grader? last night and it reminded me that trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms are shapes.

[Molandfreak]

i was watching Are you smarter than a 5th grader? last night and it reminded me that trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms are shapes.

So, you're not smarter than a 5th grader?

[kphoger]

Why does every commercial break have ad for either prescription drugs or medical supplements.

Because, in this country (and apparently New Zealand), doctors are just drug dealers that you're supposed to hit up for whatever substance you're in the market for—not medical professionals that you're supposed to go to with your problems for them to decide on a treatment.

[kphoger]

i was watching Are you smarter than a 5th grader? last night and it reminded me that trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms are shapes.

So, you're not smarter than a 5th grader?

Alternate take:  nobody in the real world ever talks about trapezoids, rhombuses, or parallelograms—and it takes an encounter with fifth-grade curricula to remind a person that, oh yeah, those shapes do have names.

[1995hoo]

i was watching Are you smarter than a 5th grader? last night and it reminded me that trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms are shapes.

So, you're not smarter than a 5th grader?

Alternate take:  nobody in the real world ever talks about trapezoids, rhombuses, or parallelograms—and it takes an encounter with fifth-grade curricula to remind a person that, oh yeah, those shapes do have names.

I will disagree on trapezoids because that word comes up on a somewhat regular basis if you watch the NHL (I have no idea whether you personally do, of course). In the diagram below, note the two diagonal lines at each end of the ice. Those are there to limit the area in which the goalie can play the puck on that side of the goal line (the thin red line spanning the ice at each end)—if he skates behind the goal line, he can only play the puck in the area between those two diagonal lines, and if he breaks that rule he gets whistled for a delay-of-game penalty. The area between those diagonal lines is pretty much universally referred to as "the trapezoid."

[Molandfreak]

Another reason I've had to use trapezoid geometry in my daily life: at a previous position, someone came in with a building permit application which was at the end of a cul-de-sac and the property line happened to be shaped that way as a means of compensating for reduced street front. Unfortunately, they still had to apply for a variance in order to do what they wanted since it technically didn't meet the standard setback requirements, but I did everything in my power to ensure that the city council would approve the variance including direct GIS plotting and calculating how far the proposal would be from utility easements.

However, yeah, I don't anticipate needing to know rhombus or parallelogram geometry in the future.

[vdeane]

I would think roadgeeks would have good reason to know about trapezoids: they're shaped like truss bridges.

[kphoger]

I would think roadgeeks would have good reason to know about trapezoids: they're shaped like truss bridges.

Dromedaries have one hump, Bactrians have two humps, Camelbacks have five slopes on the polygonal upper chord...

[Scott5114]

I would think roadgeeks would have good reason to know about trapezoids: they're shaped like truss bridges.

They're also shaped like Nebraska route shields.

I've had to do complicated rhombus geometry for work involving California State Automobile Association signs, since they were shaped like rhombuses. I needed to figure out what angle to rotate them to in order to make them a parallelogram, because we figured out our supplier was charging us based on bounding box size rather than actual square inchage of the sign (so we needed to rotate them to have the smallest bounding box possible). Except I didn't remember any of that geometry (honestly I don't know if Oklahoma ever bothered to teach it, since the only geometry I remember being discussed is how to make love to a triangle), and all of the stuff I ended up finding was that smug "look at how much math notation I know" way of explaining math that doesn't actually help me. I ended up giving up and having ChatGPT help, except it was also doing the "check out how much math notation I know" thing (except worse because the notation wasn't actually formatting correctly) until I told it to write out the procedure in C. Then I understood what it was getting at, and I was able to do the math by hand.

[gonealookin]

Today I received a new debit card to replace one whose expiration date was 8/26.

The expiring card had the old-fashioned raised numbers and letters with the account number, the expiration date and my name.  The new one has all that printed on the back of the card but without the raised numbers.

I'm trying to remember when the last time would have been that someone laid any of my cards in one of those devices that took the carbon imprint.  Maybe not even in this century?  It seems like just about everybody had gone to the magnetic strip swipe by the late 1990s, and since then we've advanced to the chip insert and then tap-and-pay.

I do still have two other cards in my wallet that have raised numbers, both debit cards, with all the credit cards just having the printed numbers and the chip.

[kphoger]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

[Scott5114]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

[1995hoo]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

During the summer of 1993 I worked at Micro Center and they were extremely particular about that issue. They would not accept a card with "See ID" accompanied by an ID. Led to some arguments with customers, to which my reaction was that I wasn't going to jeopardize my job. I already knew they sometimes had fake customers to catch employees who didn't follow store policies and I had no way of knowing whether any of the "See ID" crowd might have been plants.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

It's also fun when a signature fades. I can't remember where this happened, but one time a guy refused to run my card because the signature I put on the card when I received it was no longer visible. I just signed it on the store counter.

[TheCatalyst31]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.