I, for one, welcome our foreign-language advertising overlords. Or at least the ones whose marketing spend is being directed to people who simply do not understand the ad. May they go broke within the next financial quarter!
(For a while, a few months earlier in the year, my ads were very internationalised, despite my browser settings - EN-za, ZA, ZAR, etc (for language, country, currency). It was often interesting to attempt to guess the language - is it, for example Bengali, Marathi or Punjabi, none of which I know aside from the fact they all have a “line” abover the letters* - once I guessed the general region in which the ad originated. )
* Google tells me this is (in Hindi) called a Shirorekha (शिरोरेखा).
TIL something new about modern thermostats, or at least mine. I loved my mechanical “Honeywell Round” in the old house, but they don’t make them any more. Of course not. They were cheap, simple, and reliable. So obviously they must be discontinued and replaced by something worse and more expensive.
My old thermostat in this house was a “programmable” piece of shit in which I always turned off the “program” function, and which featured a “temperature down” button that had to be fiercely pressed about 1800 times before it would respond. It also featured a reluctance to turn on either heating or cooling – especially cooling – but when it did turn on, by golly, it had an equal reluctance to turn itself off.
Engineers refer to this lag as “hysteresis”. When the painters who redid the downstairs installed a new thermostat (a basic non-programmable Honeywell), I was surprised that on a cool night the furnace would come on for only a few minutes. The owner’s manual had no info about how to adjust this, as it was written for dumbasses who needed to be told things like “press the UP button to increase temperature”.
The installation manual was slightly more informative, but not much. One of the modes was to set what kind of heating/cooling system you have. It explained how to change the setting but not a clue about what they really did.
ChatGPT came to the rescue. You can’t explicitly change the hysteresis, but you sorta kinda by changing that mode setting. The key thing here with digital thermostats seems to be CPH – the maximum allowed “Cycles Per Hour”. That’s what those numbers mean on that setting, between 1 and 5, which is not explained in the manual.
It’s as if – in Dilbert world – the thermostat was designed by Dilbert and competent fellow engineers, and the manual was written by the marketing department under the supervision of the Pointy-Haired Boss.
Someone was talking about personal stuff w/relatives & hospital stuff, which unexpectedly triggered my memories of my late husband’s 6 mo.s (including an absolutely harrowing 2+ month ICU stay) so crying at work, yeah that’s super fun.
I have an almost-healed burn on my arm, so OF COURSE I snagged the edge of the 550+F oven in the exact same spot.
Probably cuz my eyes were leaking.
But wait …
We had a customer being such a polite-but-passive-aggressive $%&@ I thought my Sweet Manager was gonna lose her shit, all because we didn’t SLICE this dude’s pizza how he wanted … and then we both had to wait around on one of the crew (who is supposed to be training as a new mngr. but I dunno … ) show up late, while I’m rubbing this poor woman’s shoulders and thinking, “You better show up, @$$hole…” cuz I can’t leave till he makes his belated appearance.
Oh, wanna know the ^^ customer problem?
He ordered a large, and wanted it cut “pie triangles” which is nutzzz on a 16" large. It turns into 8 floppy messes .. but that’s what he wanted, so badly he was willing to sit there staring at us for 10 min while the rest of his order sat around in a warmer, so we could re-make THE EXACT SAME PEPPERONI but, yanno, sliced up all weird.
For a large (that’s 16" diameter) we normally slice it in squares. 3 slices across, 3 up’n’down.
Don’t come at me, this place has been in business for decades, that’s how they do. I just work here.
But for a big ol’ pizza, those “pie” triangles are large & awkward. I guess you gotta do it NYC style and fold it, then go shark-mouth on it.
ETA: why is slicing your pizza in such-and-such way so important? does it change the taste?
… not the first time I’ve had, “Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say, I wanted it cut in { whatever } Is it too late?” AS I’M HANDING THEM THEIR BAGGED ORDER.
I’m pretty sure “pie triangles” are the standard way pizzas are sliced: four straight cuts, one in half, one in fourths, the other two to get eight equal triangular-shaped slices.
That’s the only alternative I considered, but IME perpendicular cuts of round pizzas are very rare; triangles are the nearly universal norm, regardless of how difficult some may find them to eat.
That is how the very best pizza in my town is cut. The joint was started by Italians over from the Old Country in the 1930s and that is Just How It Is Done. Squares. Sheesh on that guy.
And yes, here we call it ‘party cut’. Too many Lutherans to call it ‘tavern cut’.
That was brought up in the semi-annual re-revival of the DST thread. Lotta over-protective modern parents want to finish trick or treat before dark. Not start it afterwards.
work.
messes .. but that’s what he wanted, so badly he was willing to sit there staring at us for 10 min while the rest of his order sat around in a warmer, so we could re-make THE EXACT SAME PEPPERONI but, yanno, sliced up all weird.
I’m so sorry, shoe. I hope Monkey gave you some good snuggles. Big hugs to you.