Heh … The Color of Her Panties? I think I stopped reading the Xanth novels around that book. I tried going back to them after having read what you might call “higher fantasy,” but I just couldn’t get into them. The writing struck me as … well, juvenile. (Anthony’s other books that I’d read were pretty good) I do credit the Xanth series for turning me into a book lover, though.
Stupid tech questions? Oh yeah. Got those.
Got some kid – one of those ordinarily cocky “I rock, I can build my own system” geeks come in to the store I was working at as a tech. Built his own mid-range system, probably cost him $500 or $600 at the time, but it wouldn’t POST. It got power, but stayed black. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong to save his life, So he was willing to pay to have me look at it.
When I did get around to looking at it a few days later, the problem turned out to be quite simple: He bolted the motherboard directly to the case. No brass/plastic risers. And what happens when you take all those pointy soldered bits on the back of a circuit board, place them flat on a sheet of conductive metal and try and run a current through them? The power comes up a little short.
So I called him up and explained.
Me: “…so it appears that you screwed the motherboard directly to the case, which just shorted the whole works.”
Him: “Yeah. Is that bad?”
Me: ( :smack: ) “Well, yeah … you could say that. You’re lucky it didn’t fry anything permanently.”
Confucius say: Man who walk around with hand in pants feel cocky all day.
My coworker is still off, doubtless recuperating from last Friday’s accident. Can’t say I blame him. Emotional trauma aside, he’s probably still feeling pretty stiff.
Mornin’, all. It is currently seven days before my Week of Hell (more commonly known as Finals/Move-Out Week), and as an obviously brilliant preparatory measure, I skipped my Logic class this morning. Er, probably shouldn’t do that again soon, huh?
As for the OP topic, I have a friend who is pretty much a fountain of ludicrous, quote-worthy questions such as these, and whenever she says them, I write them down for all to read and laugh at. Here’s a couple classic examples:
“Germans eat cereal, don’t they?”
“Harrison Ford can’t be in Star Wars! He was Indiana Jones!”
Oh, and a conversation between her and Alistair:
Ali: “Did you know in Siberia you can buy milk on a stick?” Her: “How is that possible? Do they ferment it or something?”
When I was an animal care tech for a lab, we had a phone in the mouse room. Once, there was a call from some phone company.
“Would you like to change your long distance provider?”
“Lady, you dialed the number for a room full of rodents. None of them use the phone.”
“Umm. Are you sure? We can save them a lot of money.”
:rolleyes:
Another dull day in the lab, my co-worker’s last day was Friday (Happy 13th!). He’s off to a better position back home in Australia. I’m still wondering if Dr. Boss will throw in the towel. (He’s been interviewing at other universities. With a wife, four kids and an elderly mother, it would take a good deal to make him move, but he is not happy here.)
In other news: Watched Pathfinder with Mouse_Spouse over the weekend. He is now banned from choosing movies for a while. (I told him I would rather claw my eyes out than watch Epic Movie. His alternative was Ghost Rider. I’m not sure if that was much better. The next movie he wants to see is the Fantastic Four sequel. I like bad movies, but there is a certain kind of bad that I just can’t stand!)
Got an OB appointment today and a dental appointment tomorrow. Talk about getting it from both ends!
You think that’s bad, meek? When I first heard the term “CD burner” I actually thought (though thankfully, did not say aloud) that they were for getting rid of all those damn CDs that AOL was sending in the mail.
Don’t normally participate in the MMP, but shucks, I had a doper in spitting distance and I didn’t know. I almost posted a thread a few days ago asking if anybody was going to that. I live RIGHT NEXT to Flavet Field (of course, I’m assuming you’re talking about the free show at UF yesterday). I didn’t actually really go to the concert, but I sort of dropped by (seeing as how it was maybe 100 yards from my door).
As to the rest of my weekend, since i’m here now anyways, I drank myself silly on Friday and Saturday, recovered Sunday, and now here I sit in class not paying attention and posting to the SDMB. Soon I’ll be scrambling around trying to start and finish a paper by 3PM tomorrow
I’m sooooo glad I’m no longer on the front-line phones. When I was, I wrote down some of the best of the worst:
Should I enter that as upper, lower or middle case?
Where did you get an Elvish keyboard? I know some geeks that would love to have one!
My manager didn’t do the knife and fork.
What, she eats with her fingers?
Should I know my user ID?
No. You probably shouldn’t be in the building, either. SECURITY!
Probably my worst was trying to verify a letter in someone’s ID:
M as in Mary? No, Kathleen. M as in Kathleen? No, my first name is Kathleen.
No, no… Is the last letter of your ID M? Yes, my middle name is Mary.
:smack:
What we are dealing with here is a loss of natural habitat. The North American Concert Going Stoner (Homo Cannibus) could normally be found traveling across the US in herds of VW busses following the Greatful Dead. As that habitat was destroyed by mostly natural causes, the Stoners began the Great Migration, heading north in surprising numbers to the green mountains of Vermont, where they found a great little band called Phish. Soon, this little band became quite a success, and once again the herds of VW buses roamed free across the plains. Sadly, Phish (taking a page from our current leader’s environmental policy) decided the only way to preserve the band was to destroy it, casting the Stoners out into the country without a unifying force. Their ancestral migratory routes were lost, and they began to aimlessly wander the country, searching for another band to once again unify the great tribe. Some have latched on to the Flaming Lips, and those stoners you saw are the last of a dying breed of the once great North American Concert Going Stoner.
But all is not lost! For as little as a dollar a day, you too can help preserve the habitat and cultural practices of the North American Concert Going Stoner! Please see www.norml.org for more information.
I love bad movies as well, but you are right there are some bad movies that are just, well… bad. I hope Pathfinder falls into my category of entertaining bad though, since I have no choice but to see it. It stars someone named Moon Bloodgood. I have no idea who she is or what else she has been in, but some part of me feels compelled to support anyone with a name like that.
Nope. I went to the Pompano Beach performance on Friday night. (The guys kept calling it “Miami,” though. Miami is a good hour’s drive from Pompano Beach and has a very different lifestyle/set of locals/atmosphere than Miami.
There was a free show at UF? That’s almost as good as me seeing The Dresden Dolls, Yellowcard, and Flogging Molly for free when I was a student at FSU. (No hate, though. I don’t like football; it’s just a game.)
What are you majoring in?
ETA: Nava, it’s how they make sure that their “stuff” is still there. Apparently with some of these guys, it might fall off. :eek:
Sorry to be such an infrequent poster in here… you folks were so nice about welcoming me way back when.
I’ll go ask the Gang of 16 (Goldfish) if they’d like some Modular Seaweed.
Life is good this morning - it should be nice and warm, and I have the day off. Better than last Thursday, when I had to work with torrents of snowmelt pouring down my back… and into my pants. Brrrrr.
Can’t think of any useful puns or bad questions to add, so I’ll just let you know that my Wonder Pup, Corbi, is going to make her NADAC Agility debut on Sunday. I don’t think I’ll dress her in white, though, as somebody suggested.
My, ya’ll are a chatty bunch this morning! Errr…afternoon.
I think I read the first dozen or so of the Xanth books before I lost interest. I loved the Incarnations of Immortality series, though.
CanineAttendant, I love the 'Canes sticker on your Roomba. I guess I’ll have to get one so I can join in your league.
I’m going through stuff getting ready for a yard sale at a friend’s house this weekend. Sadly, I am looking at a lot of stuff and throwing it away.
Would anyone care for a cat or three? The little buggers - all nine of them - are in “must be touching the Mama” mode and it is driving me insane. Of course I’m kidding - insane or not no one can have my fuzzbutts.
Off to finish surfing and do more yard sale stuff.
Xanth is okay, but obviously the horrible puns are not a mark of creativity on Piers Anthony’s part, because he gets many of them from his readers.
I have the Unofficial Stupidest Question that was asked of me at work. Caller wanted to know if we sell envelopes, and I told him we did and asked if he was looking for window or non-window envelope. His response? “What’s the difference?”
It beat out “How many pens are in a dozen?” and “What’s the difference between white and clear labels?”
The route to competition is second nature to me now, this being the sixth time I’ve driven it. But it had occurred to me I might be able to shave a few minutes (and 10 traffic lights) off the last leg of the trip. So I studied Google Maps and Google Earth and confirmed my suspicions that I could stay on Route 30 off the Ben Franklin Bridge and take the 15th Street exit, thus avoiding those traffic lights on the service road. One of you Philly area Dopers should have sensed this an warned me.
We crossed the bridge at about 1pm. It took 25 minutes to traverse the half mile to the exit ramp, and another 15 to get to the top of the ramp. We pulled into the hotel driveway just before 2pm.
Chapter Two
I had called, earlier in the week, a company that specializes in renting out mobility scooters and wheel chairs to conventioneers. I’ve used them in the past with satisfactory results. They said the scooter would be at the hotel between 9am and 11pm. That’s ideal, I told them.
We arrived, as I said, around 2 - no scooter anywhere. So I called the scooter company and asked them where my scooter was. A man in their reservations department said he’d have to call around to find the dirver and he’d get back to me. My friend and I decided to have some lunch since we couldn’t get into the room yeet anyway. While waiting for our food, I see the scooter come in. But it looked small (I’d ordered a heavy duty one). The delivery kid (he couldn’t have been more than 20) said “but this is heavy duty. It’s rated for up to 500 lbs” I sat in it, the seat was barely wide enough for a supermodel (I exaggerate, but only slightly) and there was no leg room. I put my feet on the base of the steering console, and my knees were in my ears. Apparently, it never occured to the manufacturer that heavy people are often longer and wider than your everyday run of the mill sized person. I sent it back. It wasn’t the scooter compnay’s fault - they just contacted their local supplier.
Whatever.
So I deceided to treat the walking I would have to do as my pre-surgical physical therapy.
Chapter Three
Since our room wasn’t ready, we stored our stuff with the bellman. Normally, I’d keep the totebag with me, but it was heavy (there were some extra things in it), and I wsa tired from being stuck in traffic, and by the time I thought of it, the stuff had already been stored. But my digital camera was in the totebag. Now it was working when I left my house Friday morning (I checked it) but it was not working when we got up to the room. I believe the bellman just dropped the bag on the floor with my friend’s two totes and that was it. I cannot prove it, but I know that’s what happened. It’s my own fault for letting it out of my site.
I first thought maybe I’d just use my camera phone, but the resolution sux big time. So Saturday morning I went down to the hotel gift shop and bought some throwaways. When everyone saw me using throwaways, they all offered to let me use their cameras. I said, “Instead of that, you all make on line albums, and I’ll pics some shots from each one to make the “official” album.”
But I still have to get my camera fixed.
One of the stupidest questions I ever heard at my job was after my boss was hit by an RV while he was on a bicycle, so I had to reschedule all of his meetings. After I explained the situation, idiot asks, “So he’s not coming in, then?” :rolleyes:
I have been very slothful for the last 3 months, doing whatever I feel like, eating whatever, getting absolutely no exercise whatsoever, and today I decided to step on the scale to see what the damage was. Since January 17, I have…lost 3 pounds. So I went from 30 - 40 minutes of walking 5 days a week, eating reasonably healthy, to making a sloth look like the Tasmanian Devil, and I lose weight? How does that work?
I liked Xanth in high school, but after a while, Anthony’s obsession with underage girls started to creep me out Incarnations of Immortality was a good story line, but the men can only be redeemed by the love of good women bit got extremely tiresome. The less said of his other works, the better. Actually, I think he writes great one time reads, but for me, they don’t hold up on re-reading. Except his author’s notes. I would actually read an entire book of nothing but his author’s notes, proving once and for all that I am a very strange person.
:smack:
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Here’s a couple classic examples:
M as in Kathleen?