Times when nothing can substitute for experience

[Desert_Nomad]

@Lakai

I also didn’t realize how filthy rich I was until I saw what poor really was. It took the experience of living in a Belorussian house to make me realize what real poor people go through. No air conditioning, rock hard mattresses and pillows, 56k modems, versions of windows lower than Millennium. processors lower than 200mhz… how can people tolerate this?

I lived in the Republic of Georgia for a while… and winter of 02/03 was no picnic. Four to six hours of electricity each day, no natural gas (meaning no heat) for 2 weeks in January (courtesy of Russia). Imagine living in a Soviet apartment building, no electricty (so no lift, no light), no water and no heat. We washed and sometimes showered with bottled water and used candles. A 56k modem would have been about as useful as a rock as there was nothing to hook it to without power.

[jjimm]

@Desert Nomad

I lived in the Republic of Georgia for a while… and winter of 02/03 was no picnic. Four to six hours of electricity each day, no natural gas (meaning no heat) for 2 weeks in January (courtesy of Russia). Imagine living in a Soviet apartment building, no electricty (so no lift, no light), no water and no heat. We washed and sometimes showered with bottled water and used candles. A 56k modem would have been about as useful as a rock as there was nothing to hook it to without power.

Whoosh.

[Autolycus]

Has anyone mentioned plain old sex? I remember my first time, and no amount of porno or erotic literature came anywhere close.

[LouisB]

I get really pissed when people who have never experienced a migraine tell me that a migraine is “just a headache”; therefore I should be able to perform all normal functions during the course of one.

[delphica]

Managing a restaurant – the worst part of that is that everyone has eaten in a restaurant, so everybody has their two cents about how they should be managed. I think this is one of those cases where a little experience (eating in a restaurant) is much worse than none at all.

[Shagnasty]

@lobstermobster

I have no idea what you are trying to communicate to me. It was the Kentucky girl with chicken experience that was able to capture it during its brief reign of terror on our floor (monroe)

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you. I meant the Kentucky girl with the chicken. I think I saw a clip of that somewhere. It gives another meaning to KFC doesn’t it?

[Boyo_Jim]

I’ll betha nobody understands a pedophile but another pedophile.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@jjimm

T<snip>For me, it’s my damn clients. So many of them know nothing but still insist on telling me how to alter the website I’ve made for them, to make it less good. I have worked in this industry for eleven fecking years. No, I’m not perfect, but I know a lot, lot more than you. What you’re telling me to do will make the site less good for its users. Do you want it less good? No? Then why are you telling me to do it then? I will do it for you, because you’re my client, but why on earth won’t you listen to me?

This extends to my brother (who has since admitted I was right), and a good friend, who waited until the site was finished before he told me that he wanted the design changed. I nearly thumped him.

There’s an adage that I’ve learned that states “everyone’s a designer”. I guess that’s what it is.

I’m getting to understand this. When I designed my sister’s yard for her, one of her complaints was that I had used the same plants in different places. Yeah, it’s a basic design principle called “repetition,” and it’s one of those je nais se quois* things that makes people stop and stare at a well-designed yard without knowing quite what it is about the yard that makes it look so good. But no, feel free to take it right out of the design because you want an entire yard of every plant different (she didn’t quite, but the yard she’s planting isn’t the yard I designed).

*I have no idea how to spell that.

[jjimm]

Je ne sais quoi (I do not know what).

[jimmmy]

The hole in the Pentagon after 9/11.

Literally every person (I mean by this 3 people) who cam from out of town and commented on it to me said the same basic thing:
*
“I didn’t realize it was so big”*

That tells me it was something - despite the wall to wall pictures and coverage it was one of these things you need to see to truly get.

[OneCentStamp]

@jimmmy

The hole in the Pentagon after 9/11.

Literally every person (I mean by this 3 people) who cam from out of town and commented on it to me said the same basic thing:
*
“I didn’t realize it was so big”*

That tells me it was something - despite the wall to wall pictures and coverage it was one of these things you need to see to truly get.

They didn’t realize it was so big because until they see it, nobody realizes how big the Pentagon itself is. It’s fucking massive. What looks like a little hole when filmed from a helicopter 500 feet up, is in fact huge when you put it in perspective.

~OneCentStamp
(grew up in MD, dad worked at PGon for years)

[Sitnam]

Places. No book or person could possibly describe the Grand Canyon or India to substitute actual experience.