Humor Random Comments Thread

[MaverickSawyer]

It's also pretty durable. I knocked mine over by accident the other day... Stages popped apart and a few greebles fell off, but it held together surprisingly well.

 

[kuddel]

Now that I saw these...

...I think I'll have to order some (many) bricks

 

[Quick_Nick]

Another train wreck in the U.S.

Positive Train Control will be required by the end of this year, unless Congress acts to delay that deadline once again.
(PTC may or may not have helped in this situation)

 

[Urwumpe]

As expected: I can't watch Superbowl because of an customer appointment, so it is great.

 

[Notebook]

Don't see this very often...

Dow Jones stock index hit by record falls

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42942921

 

[Enjo]

Yep, I've heard many interviews, where it was said that the stock market was overpriced with all the funny money around. It's 'bout time for it to find its real value...

 

[steph]

After the Tesla roadster thing, I wonder how many car makers would want to try it for themselves? If nothing else, they can send one on a suborbital path, grab some photos while it's up there, then let it come back down. At 90 million $, they could even send one on a Falcon Heavy. I guess it's rather cheap compared to some other publicity campaigns.

 

[C3PO]

After the Tesla roadster thing, I wonder how many car makers would want to try it for themselves? If nothing else, they can send one on a suborbital path, grab some photos while it's up there, then let it come back down. At 90 million $, they could even send one on a Falcon Heavy. I guess it's rather cheap compared to some other publicity campaigns.

IMHO it wouldn't be worth it. Do you know anyone from the second team to summit mount Everest?

 

[steph]

It has become so bad here, the government agency responsible for communication companies has created an application to officially test your connection speed, which you can use for proving your provider is cheating you. Has already resulted in the first successful contract violation processes.

That's actually quite epic, provided there isn't a monopoly on ISPs in the area. Even the fear of bad publicity might make them to rethink their strategy..

In my experience, the mobile providers usually say that you're probably in an area with patchy signals (which might well be the case, but it doesn't stop them from selling you the high speed offers). Their signal maps are at best a rough estimate and at worst just wrong. I'm having doubts that they bother doing at least some quick field checks in every area. And , as always, their best advice is "have you tried it outside"? Sure, for mobile phone internet, bad signal is an assumed risk. But if they sell you a "box" which is basically for home internet (some even advertise TV capability), a minimal signal check should be common sense.

I wonder if the sharing of mobile telephony infrastructure isn't partly to blame for this. AFAIK, for quite some time, any network could use another company's cell tower if they didn't have any within range (perhaps some limiting factors still aply). In theory, it means you should have a decent signal on any network pretty much anywhere. In practice, it might have led to too many networks hogging the existing infrastructure, instead of expanding for themselves. As far as I've noticed, it doesn't really work. In urban areas you do usually get a signal, albeit not always a good one, and in rural areas it's pretty much guess work.

As for the cable provider, well, when I did have issues, the answer I got was that the contract doesn't specify a minimum speed, so they're not obligated to always respect the speeds they charge me for. Meaning that all I got was quick-ish internet, which got fast only sometimes, presumably when the planets aligned and the Probe smiled joyously down from the skies. Until I got the chance to change the provider, I still didn't downgrade, since I was afraid it would be even slower...

 

[Linguofreak]

In my experience, the mobile providers usually say that you're probably in an area with patchy signals (which might well be the case, but it doesn't stop them from selling you the high speed offers). Their signal maps are at best a rough estimate and at worst just wrong. I'm having doubts that they bother doing at least some quick field checks in every area. And , as always, their best advice is "have you tried it outside"?

In their defense, areas of good and bad signal can be very fine grained. I get quite decent speeds everywhere in my local area, but my house is right in the middle of a house-sized dead zone. I get next to no signal in the house (where I just use WiFi through our landline Internet connection, including WiFi calling), tolerable signal outside, and quite decent signal within, it seems, a couple hundred feet in any direction.

 

[Andy44]

Well I went to the Philadelphia Eagles parade with some of my family this morning, stood around in the bitter cold for about 3 hours. Had a great time when the double decker busses rolled past us with the players up top. People were tossing them cans of beer and they were throwing hats and flags and stuff at the crowd. We all let the little kids get up front by the barricade so they could see the parade. Lots and lots of green. Lots of fun, a great time. Whatever your team is, they only get to win their first-ever championship one time, so you gotta savor it and enjoy it. Up by the art museum in Center City it was just huge sea of people as far as the eye could see. Not very often you see Philadelphia in such a happy state.

 

[Urwumpe]

Whatever your team is, they only get to win their first-ever championship one time, so you gotta savor it and enjoy it.

Was the same when my team had its first championship in 2009, the whole town was partying for three days. It was epic. I still can't remember when I was sleeping during these days.

 

[Enjo]

I won a lawsuit against TUI Fly GmbH. Their plane from Majorca to Hannover was delayed by more than 3 hours. Also the distance between PMI and HAJ is slightly (by 30 km) greater than the first zone of delays (1500 km), so my compensation was 400 Euros instead of only 200. Plus I was flying with my wife, which totals to 800. And 8 Euros interest, because TUI was so late with their reaction.

They didn't react on my lawyer's first letter, and only reacted after we made the lawsuit. They responded that they would fight back, but the judge ruled that the case was won, without even seeing the parties.

Thank you, TUI Fly :tiphat:

 

[Urwumpe]

I won a lawsuit against TUI Fly GmbH. Their plane from Majorca to Hannover was delayed by more than 3 hours. Also the distance between PMI and HAJ is slightly (by 30 km) greater than the first zone of delays (1500 km), so my compensation was 400 Euros instead of only 200. Plus I was flying with my wife, which totals to 800. And 8 Euros interest, because TUI was so late with their reaction.

They didn't react on my lawyer's first letter, and only reacted when when judge requested it (via letter). They responded that they would fight back, but the judge ruled that the case is won, without even seeing the parties.

Thank you, TUI Fly :tiphat:

Its always great when people think they can ignore you. You sometimes need a lot of patience, but the longer it takes for a very trivial case the more you get...

Sadly, the entity closest to get sued by me the next time is a government agency, so I suspect, I should prepare for geological timeframes. But I hate paying the same bill twice, just because department A is not communicating with department B and subcontractor C is not doing its job of handling the mail. I had send them a registered mail last autumn and it got lost! :facepalm:

 

[Enjo]

Sadly, the entity closest to get sued by me the next time is a government agency, so I suspect, I should prepare for geological timeframes.

I have two running lawsuits against government agencies and I must confirm the timeframe... expect up to two years.

But I hate paying the same bill twice, just because department A is not communicating with department B and subcontractor C is not doing its job of handling the mail. I had send them a registered mail last autumn and it got lost! :facepalm:

So you're suing the Deutsche Post A.G.? Then be happy that the mail was registered. They lost my unregistered one with important docus and I couldn't do anything about it. It makes me wanna cry, knowing, that my tax adviser sends my documents to tax office as unregistered mail too I proposed him to pay him extra for the registration and he replied that he just wouldn't have the time for this.

 

[Urwumpe]

So you're suing the Deutsche Post A.G.? Then be happy that the mail was registered.

No, and I don't want to get into too much details there. We are still looking at getting this solved without investing money that could be better used for our children.

 

[Enjo]

The best investment I made in this context was insurance at VGH.

 

[birdmanmike]

I must be getting old, memory going - just noticed "Most users ever online was 8,666, 01-19-16 at 11:32 AM." which is 8,398 more than this moment - (268, 21 Orbis rest guests )

But what happened that day to get all those users on - can't find anything significant online search ;-(
Was that why I joined? Or have I asked this before?

Oh no - or is it really age?

 

[Andy44]

Maybe it was bots? I often wonder about the veracity of that number. Maybe one of the admins can explain how that is tallied up. I imagine that this site attracts its share of bots, though.

 

[Artlav]

Fun fact - at Orbides i'm getting about a hundred bot visits per every human visit.