Another post…

The laptop I bought about 2 years ago to replace my slowing but still excellent Samsung ultrabook of ten years, is already breaking down.
This is a pretty good Asus VivoBook, i7 quad processor, 16 gig of ram, 512 SSD etc. But only a few month after I got it the fingerprint sensor stopped working.
About a year later the card reader stopped working correctly.
The Bluetooth stopped working at some time too.
It randomly closes and reopens Windows explorer.
And now suddenly the wifi network adapter is toast. Nothing I cn do to repair it, no drivers work.

Lucky I had an USB Ethernet adapter from an old machine or this comp would have been almost totally useless. No exaggeration.

I'll never get another Asus.

ThrisbyDude wrote:
I don't quite know what you mean by people-watching, unless you mean watching people {shop} for seconds while I'm stocking, but, it's doing alright.

people-watching:: a favourite past time
involving the creation of an elaborate back story of a random stranger on the street that may or may not be true. Watching people while stocking would be a good place to run into a few characters.

I'm on the verge of wanting to do something else; not in the store I work, I mean somewhere else.

I understand completely. Same.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:

ThrisbyDude wrote:
I don't quite know what you mean by people-watching, unless you mean watching people {shop} for seconds while I'm stocking, but, it's doing alright.

people-watching:: a favourite past time
involving the creation of an elaborate back story of a random stranger on the street that may or may not be true. Watching people while stocking would be a good place to run into a few characters.

I'm on the verge of wanting to do something else; not in the store I work, I mean somewhere else.

I understand completely. Same.

Loved doing it when I worked in retail. Anything to keep the mind busy while the hands did the drudge work of stocking. And I stocked everything at one point or another and seen lots of people along the way. Used to keep a list of interesting names I came across to use in stories.

Reminds me of one such name I recall of a waiter when I was in a restaurant one time: Lamandre.

Ah, finally some new/different comics are emerging within the Top 10 on the homepage.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Am, finally some new/different comics are emerging within the Top 10 on the homepage.

Yes!! I saw The_Jagged’s Meatware was in the Top 4, how exciting.

ThrisbyDude wrote:
@kawaiidaigakusei + @bravo1102 - Ah, so literately watching people for seconds while doing the work. Yeah, I often do that. I rarely keep up with faces beyond the usual co-worker or manager but I still watch people for seconds.

The most interesting part about store dynamics that I learned about was a team called “loss prevention” where a secret team of individuals dressed like everyday customers would peruse the store and check out at the register like everybody else. I never knew any of them by name, title, or job description. They were all in the store, just like the rest of us, doing our job.

Using that bit of shop knowledge, I would suspect the regular customers the most.

I used to like spotting random ppl at places and analyzing them. It's pretty much just making up backstories. Spotting the ones who work as teachers were probably the easiest, they have a certain type of appearance where I live that just shows.

I'll be having a friend visit me in a couple of months and spend 5 days at over my place. As an introvert who normally has guests over like 3 times a year for an afternoon or evening, it will be an experience to have, but since we're like soul mates, I can't remember the last time I've been this excited about social interactions. Now I can watch parody musicals with someone, while eating ice cream in our pajamas, go to a karaoke night or craft stuff together. Feels like after a decade of missing out on fun stuff the balance will finally be restored for a bit. And since she lives abroad, we might not get another chance like this for another year, so we'll best bring out the most of the experience. :)

Gosh I must be very fortunate because I worked pretty close with loss prevention when a manager. Even better because years later he was my instructor for my security guard classes and let me sleep through then because he knew I'd pass all the tests. I was working double shifts doing both my eight hours and then the classes.

Before that my mother tried setting me up with one women in loss prevention but I wasn't bright enough to pull it off. Heck, the group manager, a very attractive brunette, was constantly flirting with me and I couldn't pull that off either. Things just never worked out for me in that job after that.

Dang, with all the crap I've been dealing with lately, World Puppetry Day completely escaped me this year! Oh well. Here's a little something I did several years ago that I even shared with Sid Krofft, and he liked it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBRLZKImCUs

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Dang, with all the crap I've been dealing with lately, World Puppetry Day completely escaped me this year! Oh well. Here's a little something I did several years ago that I even shared with Sid Krofft, and he liked it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBRLZKImCUs

Great PSA! I really think Steve D’Monster has some really good advice. I do not want “X”s for eyes.

Cartoon (and in this case, puppet) Physics 101: no character is morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead unless they have Xs for eyes . . . and even then, you can't always be so certain!

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Cartoon (and in this case, puppet) Physics 101: no character is morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead unless they have Xs for eyes . . . and even then, you can't always be so certain!

And in cartoons: Flies circling overhead. ^_^

——————

When I'm too tired I pass out for a few seconds at a time and sometimes drop straight into a dream or a stray thought just turns into one. It's very disconcerting to experience: I'm trying to work and a thought just blows up, takes on its own life and I'm totally invested in it (because of dream logic), then that altered reality fades and I'm dropped hard back in the real world again where the concerns of the dream absolutely don't matter so I have to re-orient myself.

It's like “Hats are important, we MUST all get hats for our feet, right away, it's essential. Dammit, where are my feet hats? I need to go to the hat foot shop tomorrow… :(”
Aaaaaannd then it's over- Thank goodness I don't have to worry about foot hats anymore. Bit it's a whiplash effect. XD

(just an example, I don't think I've had a thing about foot hats yet)

I am now staring at my feet, thinking, Pork-Pie? Homburg? Pith helmet?
Then I remember I have to take off my Homburg because my overcoat is too long.

Why has no one figured to invent some kind of a wiper for side windows of vehicles? Those can be difficult to see out of when they're covered in rain drops too.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Why has no one figured to invent some kind of a wiper for side windows of vehicles? Those can be difficult to see out of when they're covered in rain drops too.

Long time ago all you had to do was roll the window down and the rubber seal acted like a squeegee.

They have it for ships and amphibious vehicles but who wants some ugly little motor on the top of every window? One hundred years ago window wipers on a car were an option and powered ones a luxury.

Just thank your lucky stars you never had to drive an army jeep in a heavy rain. Damn wiper motors always cooked out and one hand on the wheel, the other moving the wiper and a third needed to shift.

bravo1102 wrote:

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Why has no one figured to invent some kind of a wiper for side windows of vehicles? Those can be difficult to see out of when they're covered in rain drops too.

They have it for ships and amphibious vehicles but who wants some ugly little motor on the top of every window? One hundred years ago window wipers on a car were an option and powered ones a luxury.

They call it a “Clear view”, it works by spinning the glass.

One hundred years ago enclosed cabs were a luxury XD
You drove with a leather helmet, goggles, and a rain coat LOL! Try zero side windows…

I've done the no side windows thing too and hanging my head out the window because the wiper was a thin strip of rubber going really slow. That was the two and a half ton truck I drove a few years later. Lol.

I did a 23andMe gene test a while ago. It was interesting and confirmed stuff that I mostly already knew… 100% European background, almost completely Irish and British, dirty blonde, no baldness, etc, but the family connection have been cool.
Through one guy I was able to track great great great parents back to England in the 1850s.

Just last night I got a new connection, a fourth cousin related through those English ancestors. She's half African, with origins from all over the African continent. So that's very cool :D

Hey I just realized I'm maybe 5 pages away from completing WM's volume 1.

That's it, I just needed to tell someone.

Tantz_Aerine wrote:
Hey I just realized I'm maybe 5 pages away from completing WM's volume 1.

That's it, I just needed to tell someone.

Congratulations! That is awesome!

Sorry guys for a long post but really need to blow off a little steam. Mr. Niccea isn't home from work yet and I really need to let the venom out

Our church's parking lot was so full this morning that we couldn't find a parking spot even though we arrived 10 minutes early (our usual time.) Because I have a hatchback and didn't want to risk my undercarriage popping up curb and onto the grass. We decided to cut our losses and go home because Mr. Niccea had a shift to get to and they were paying really well to work today. I had the brilliant idea of taking the littles with me to my mom's church. I grew up in this church and return maybe once a year or so. It is that small little church where everyone knows everyone and the people that taught Sunday school/children's church when I was there are still teaching today. So, I don't mind going back every once in a while to see familiar faces from my childhood.

We sit down, sing a few songs, and listened to a long prayer that needed that song from the Academy Awards to cue the pastor to wrap it up. Up to this point, my kids are behaving more or less as usual though that prayer was a little rough on them. The pastor starts with your typical Palm Sunday/Good Friday sermon. Having heard the same sort of thing almost every year of my life, I zoned out a bit which is my normal. But then at the half way point our visit went to shit. The pastor creases droning about Joseph of Arimathea and says that is a shame that many people forget or ignore some of the teachings in the Bible. I'm vacantly guessing he is going to go into tangent about the 10 Commandments, Golden Rule, or “Love Thy Neighbor.” I was very wrong. He said, “I'm talking about what the Bible teaches us about gender, sexuality, (a third thing I was already too the triggered to remember), and abortion.” At that point I packed up my kids, there things and stormed out of the church.

Though my family attends a Roman Catholic church, we are teaching our children that is ok for people to be true to themselves. It's ok for two men or two women to marry each other and start a family. If a woman doesn't want to be a mother, that is ok too. And, overall, as long as someone isn't hurting you physically or emotionally, it is ok for them to be different or worship different god(s). (We keep language simple since they are under the age of 6, and focus more on gender or gender roles not being black and white.) I know it is hard to reconcile this sometimes with being Catholic, but our church is on the more easy going side. Our priest is from India and after including a story about Vishnu in one his sermons and did not burst into flames, people at the church have reached a truce. We acknowledge that we have different viewpoints and instead of praying for an end to gay marriage or abortion, or anything else hot button issue, we just pray that our leaders represent our country with honor and integrity and the interpretation is just to the congregation.

I managed to escape Mom's church when the pastor was starting up a “men are men and women are women” tierade. I vehemently told my older child outside that he was preaching hatred about people that who are different than him and God will take him straight to Hell for not loving his neighbors. My Mom joined me few seconds later to apologize and help me load my brood into the car, but she had to go back in because had post church duties.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. And I'm sorry if I triggered anyone by speaking about being triggered.

This is why even as a Liberal Christian myself (yes, Liberal Christians do exist), I really don't attend or go to church anymore, because it seems like many churches are going that route in their sermons where they preach about Christians losing sight of Biblical teachings because modern society has “normalized” what they deem to be sinful lifestyles . . . and even if you do take them to task with this sort of bigotry, such as reminding them that Jesus Christ Himself was the original liberal, and that He walked the earth and mingled with the same kind of people who were considered societal misfits who the church often preaches again, they will have some kind of rebuttal like, “Yeah, well, that didn't mean that Jesus didn't also try to change them, either.” The bottom line is Jesus didn't turn people away; the church is turning people away. And then these churches actually have the nerve to wonder why more and more people are turning away from God and organized religion in general these days.

Churches would probably view me as a heathen or a pagan, because my personal circle of friends are some of the very people who they say willfully live in sin and will be going to Hell because of it; I have a ton of LGBTQ+ friends for example: almost every woman I know is either bisexual or a lesbian, and even some of my male friends are also either openly gay or openly bisexual as well. Almost all of my friends are artists in some way or form, whether visual artists, or performance artists. And, dare I say, I also have friends who are either of other faiths (like Judaism, for example), or just aren't religious at all . . . and just about all of them in their own way are far more Christlike in their acceptance of other walks of life, and being kind and decent to other human beings, than many of the more devout and pious Christians than I know. As a matter of fact, I'm just going admit this: I had one lady friend who I was particularly fond of, and even fancied for a number of years who I knew was an extremely devout Christian, and once a certain someone who has presently been indicted for paying hush money to a porn star ended up in the Oval Office, I began seeing more of her true colors; I saw just what a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, bigoted piece of work she really was, I would say she was what Taylor Swift would describe as being a nightmare dressed like a daydream . . . needless to say, she and I are no longer in communication with each other, while she continues to spew her hatred for people of color, or people who wear hijabs, or people who are in love with another person of their same sex, and spews that hatred in the name of the Lord.

Heck, even the Pope recently said that Christianity as a whole owes a tremendous apology to the LGBTQ+ community as a whole for the mistreatment they've extended to them lo so many centuries and decades, and it's only the more narrow-and-closed minded rightleaning Christians who are denouncing the Pope for saying this because, “he's not God, he can't tell us what God would want us to do.”

I brought this up in another thread, but if any of you want to see a really weird, underground movie that shows just what a dystopian world society would be like under the iron ruling of the religious right, where all the kinds of people I previously mentioned who are my friends basically had to live their lives in hiding like the Jews in Europe did during the Holocaust, look up EXISTO: THE FORBIDDEN MOVIE on YouTube . . . it surprisingly was made by a lot of the same people who were involved with those old ERNEST movies - including Jim Varney himself (and he was a Christian in real life, which makes his involvement in such a movie all the more epic).

Niccea wrote:
Sorry guys for a long post but really need to blow off a little steam. Mr. Niccea isn't home from work yet and I really need to let the venom out

Good on you for standing up for your position Niccea!

I was a Christian until I read the Bible.

Sorry to hear it's getting more and more difficult to avoid such experiences. I recall sitting at the wedding of a friend of mine many years ago and the priest going into an “Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve” stand-up comedy special that just made people uncomfortable. And that was back when our corrupt government's oppressive laws against LGBT+ people weren't even drafted. Now they're inspiring lawmakers in the US to follow such example. Part of the reason why I'm not religious is that it's so difficult to find a circle of ppl that are devoted, kind, meek and overall happy with their beliefs and ironically, at the same time wouldn't hurt / disown their kids for just being different.

That's why there's a difference between religious people and spiritual people - the former of which would be like those holier-than-thou Bible-thumpers who try to shove their beliefs down your throats while also chastising others for what they perceive to be doing the same simply by existing; the latter of which are like the people you describe as they should be.

But yeah, just look at Florida for example: for all intents and purposes, DeSantis has basically turned it into the kind of fascist police state that seems a few tweaks away from becoming a modern-day Nazi Germany; he only won the 2022 midterms in his state because of how he redistricted it to put minority voters like POC, LGBTQ+, and others at greater disadvantages to ensure that the majority of those who could and would vote for him were old racist and homophobic white people.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
T

But yeah, just look at Florida for example:

And at least two old college friends and many of the guys I served with support De Santis. Of course it won't go fascist because that can't happen with an armed population. The state only wins after it disarms the population. It's a 2d Amendment supporter talking point. 🙄

But this whole post is dripping in sarcasm. Most gun owners are more likely to support a police state than fight it because they don't care much for marginalized groups and never really have.

And that includes my group. I'm an atheist. They'd just love to line up we godless “evolutionists” along with the LGBTQIA, abortionists, and anyone who owns an EV.
Even worse I listen to NPR!

The irony is that the pastor that was at my mom's church during my childhood was the opposite. She spoke from the pulpit saying she was pro-choice and replaced the word “man” with “person” when she told any stories. I.e. “the three wise people” and the “tin woods person.”

Mr. Niccea got home and we were finally able to talk. I'm feeling much better now. Thank you for listening to my story.

I temporarily worked for a pastor who said that gay people should be allowed to attend church . . . as long as they don't sit together. I also took him to task one time by asking him that if, based on what he says, even if gay people were to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, which, according to Christianity, promises eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, they still would go to Hell simply for being gay? His response was yes, because they are still willfully living in sin.

He and other local religious leaders called for a boycott of Disney's live-action remake of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which came out at the time, since LeFou was apparently gay and had the hots for Gaston in that version, because . . . dear me, it was causing kids to ask questions! The horror!

Actually, when I was a teenager, I worked at our local PBS station, and during my time with them was when news of that infamous “two moms” episode of POSTCARDS FOR BUSTER had broken out, and many of these religious groups not only successfully gotten that episode banned from being aired before it was ever even released, but they also started a campaign that called for a boycott of not only PBS, but also Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, because they were, “attempting to brainwash our children into accepting the evil cult of homosexuality.” Why also Nickelodeon and Disney Channel? Well, because this joint music video that was produced and broadcasted on TV at the time was somehow interpretted as promoting homosexuality and trying to brainwash children into gayness. Because I was homeschooled during my high school years (and homeschooling is faith-based), I saw the writing on the wall, and knew what was happening, and as such, I tried to inform my fellow PBS teamsters of this storm cloud, which they just kind of shrugged off as being more empty threats from the right that wouldn't hurt them. Unfortunately, they were wrong. As ours is a red state in the Bible Belt, our viewer funding took a big hit and dropped drastically - so much so that they stopped doing on-air pledge drives altogether, and have since collected pledges through private fundraisers.

And let us not forget when J.K. Rowling outed Dumbledore in 2007 . . . remember how people all across the country (and presumably other parts of the world) were burning Harry Potter books, and once again, accusing her of, “Trying to brainwash our children into this evil, evil cult”? And this is exactly what the GOP is attempting to regress back into.