Modern Vespa

I totally agree! Ebay is another one that wants feedback for every purchase, and keeps sending me emails looking for said feedback.

If a photo says "Getty" on it, I will summarily delete it. Getty Images protects their content zealously, while simultaneously making it attractive to the unwary.

And really, almost any photo with a prominent watermark is probably going to be deleted.

Is Mickey Mouse fair game now?

Only the original "Steamboat Willie" version, and Disney still retains the Trademark rights to that version.

The Steamboat Willie version lacks Mickey's gloves and oversized shoes, and has small black ovals for eyes instead of Mickey's larger eyes.

Here's a link to an image that has both versions for comparison (and a link to the page I found that image on). I'd post the images, but don't want to run afoul of Disney or Jess.

edit:
When I worked for Kinko's back in the '90s, Disney's lawyers contacted Kinko's lawyers and said that they NEVER give permission to reproduce copyrighted works, and that if they discovered that a Kinko's location had made copies of a Disney IP, they would sue. Our lawyers took it as the friendly warning it was intended to be, and it became company policy to not copy ANY Disney IP, even if it was a child's drawing. If the image was recognizable as Mickey Mouse (or Goofy or Minnie, etc), we'd refuse the order.

I agree.

I'll always say nice things to whoever I'm dealing with if the service is good but I'd rather not comment when it's crap.

I just choose not to go back.

Oh I'll comment if the service is crap - loudly too, if necessary. e.g. Wagamama's in Bath a few days ago - my food arrived in five minutes, Kristin's didn't appear for another twenty minutes. Unacceptable - especially when the manager said that this was normal, as 'they had two separate kitchens'. What, no-one coordinating at all?

They didn't give you the - Are you aware that some orders don't come out of the kitchen at the same time speech ?

I wonder if they use that as an excuse to not give a shit ?

They do that at my local one. This is probably the reason I don't eat there.

Oh yes, they tried that. I can understand the way it's meant to work - and a few minutes between meal deliveries would be OK - but twenty? That smacks of very poor oversight by the manager.

As it happened, K's meal turned up just as we were having the dialogue with the manager - we took it as a take-away, zero tip (usual rude automatic request for one on the web-page) and gave full feedback on the mothership's website.

This is going to sound really middle aged but did you find it really noisy in there ?

That one wasn't too bad (old building) but some of them are worse than swimming pools.

Apparently the Spanish attitude toward work in general translates to their shoe trees.

The one in the back is properly machined. The one in front definitely was pulled from the line early.

(tl;dr: at end)

Management moved me at work in August 2022 from the new HQ building to the 60+ year old warehouse. At the time, our main production setup (offset presses and bindery) was on the first floor, a Digital production room (two Xerox Nuveras, two Xerox B9100s, and one Xerox Versant 280) and our two designers were on the second floor, and I was placed on the fifth floor with my two Xerox B9100s and one Xerox Versant 280.

In October of 2022, a new Director was hired. The first thing she said when she took a tour of the facility (which ended in my room) was, "Why are you all spread out in the building? And why are we using technology from the 1600s? That's going to change."

Initially her plan was to sell off the presses and convert the press room into a new digital production space and move the equipment & staff from the 2nd floor and me from the 5th floor into it. I was all for it, as it makes sense. She told me in November that she figured it would be completed "by the time we [got] back from the Holiday break, in January (2023)." She didn't realize that the school district doesn't move at the same pace as private business does.

The presses were sold off in the spring, and the last one was finally moved out in August. Then they had to remediate the asbestos floor tiles. There was a lot of "do a little bit of demo/construction in 2-3 days, then stop for a month."

Well, the space finally got finished this week. Our Copier Fleet Coordinator scheduled Xerox to come out and move our printers. The techs were to be here Wednesday to take them apart, then the movers would come Thursday to move them, and the techs would come back to set them up today. There was a tech here on Tuesday afternoon working on a different machine, and figured since we were leaving at 4pm and he was here, rather than come back at 7am the next day he'd see if we were ok with him taking the machines apart that day instead. We were, so he did. The b/w tech showed up Wednesday morning and got my two b/w machines taken apart fairly quickly. As he was finishing, the movers showed up (we'd contacted Xerox to let them know we were ahead of schedule). The tech stayed and set the two b/w machines up shortly after moving them. The color tech showed up yesterday and got the three color printers set up.

All sounds good, right? Well here's the part that's pissing me off.

The printers showed from their end that they were on the network, but we couldn't see them on it. Our Copier Fleet Coordinator (who was a network admin at Raytheon for years before retiring and coming to work for us) spent all day yesterday trying to get them on the network, to no avail. Around 3pm he discovered why they couldn't connect.

The network jacks were not active.

The electricians had run the cables and set up the jacks and plugged everything in correctly, but IT didn't activate them (at least, that's how I understand it, I'm not an IT professional, and am barely an IT amateur).

So now we have to get IT to do the job that they should have done last week, so that we can get our printers working again.

tl;dr: IT didn't activate the network jacks so our printers could get on the network, so we're delayed an extra day+ from using them.

It's raining again today.

I never watched the show much, but this is one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen on TV.

Selling the family farm. Way too much sentiment subconsciously...she'd lived there nearly 75 years, encompassing my entire lifetime. Have to deal with my sister and BIL (as well as my wife, but she mostly takes a back seat). The guy giving us an assessment for inheritance taxes also does auction type sales, and gave us our sales pitch. A friend of the families (who I'd not spoken with earlier as he was several hours away) weighed in with some objections to the auction model, so we all had a lot of discussions about the way to go. As we were already on that track, I'd neglected to contact my mother's land renter who had expressed interest himself. Up to that point we were trying to decide the best way to list the property.

So, last night, spoke with the renter, nice guy, wants to live in the house and use the acreage for farming, which I'm sure my mother preferred. He could swing the appraised price. We decided to be fair to us, we'd contact another neighbor that we'd sold some of the land to earlier....so, this morning we find out that he's on board, not absolutely sure, but pretty interested. So now, all of the time and angst about selling via a third party is quite possibly wasted time, and now we're in the position of seeing how the private sale might go.

I'm pretty weary of sorting out my own sentiments, trying to honor my mother's, dealing with a moderately different mindset from my sister (and dealing with her and my BIL tag-teaming me), and the uncertainty of which way things will swing.

I know, I'm in a pretty fortunate place, but I'm not desperate for money and I'm just weary of trying to work through the process of getting this behind me.....

I'm with you.

I buy quite a bit of stuff from eBay. I sometimes sell stuff too.

Sending feedback annoys me. The only time I give feedback is when the seller went to great lengths to accommodate me or if they misrepresented something.

If you could give just a positive, neutral or negative rating I would probably do that but they make you write a note about your experience.

I don't write a thank you note every time I buy something from Walmart.

If there is a problem I will contact you first to try to work it out.

If you don't hear frome you can assume that I am satisfied with the transaction.

Not sure if it's eBay, but I just love it when I write something succinct and they tell me I'm not using enough words.

That's easy! Just turn whatever you were going to say into Shakespeare!

Don't limit yourself to just saying "Jerk!" Instead, say "Thou jerk faced buffoon! I should beat thee within a farthing of death were not for the fear of infecting my fists!"

Don't just say "Not as described." Instead, say "Thou art a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality."

Don't just say, "Would not do business again." Instead, say "There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, thou leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agatering, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch!"

I mean, you only get one shot in the comments. Make it count.

Excellent advice!

Fledermaus,

It is just like highly successful restaurants that have been in operation for generations. If the next generation is not interested, they just fade away. The world has changed. My parents, and all of their parents and relatives grew up on farms. That era is gone with the wind. It is kind of unique that you had the opportunity to live in both worlds.

In this great land of opportunity, we seem to bounce around. That concept of being attached to the land has definitely changed.

I expect as long as you drive by or see the old homestead, you will think of it as yours.

Bob Copeland

An advert for Shampoo or Delivery Meals that doesn't use the phrase " My life is pretty hectic" would be nice.

Also "Scientifically Proven". Stop that also.

It's scientifically proven that saying "scientifically proven" in an advert is bullshit

"I'm a Business Woman and a Mother" should be scrubbed also.

Mrs Syd and I never watch sitcoms while they are on the air. We wait ten years or more for said shows to hit syndication, and laugh our asses off watching. 3rd Rock was a funny show. We are currently in the throes of laughing at Frasier.

Frasier was one of the funniest TV shows ever. I did the same. It was years after the fact, but it quickly became one of my favorite shows.

Went out on the scooter.

Got rained on.

Came home.

Bah.

It's 60 degrees (F) and sunny.

I haven't been on a bike of any sort for a couple of weeks and had been looking forward to running up to Deadwood for a coffee meeting with a couple of other bums today.

Went out to the garage to dig out my Triumph and look it over a bit...and it's rear tire is just about flat.

I plugged in my handy-dandy little air compressor, but it would only pump about 30 pounds into it's tank, then no more, so it too has a leak and won't be of any help getting some much needed atmosphere into that big Triumph tire.

I tried our old fashioned bicycle hand pump, but twenty pushes on it managed about a pound increase in that fat bike tire.

Time was running out before I would have to leave for Deadwood, and I wasn't going to be able to make it happen today.

Bummer.

I could ride Trixie's Triumph up there, but I'm a little weird about not taking my own bikes, so have little interest in riding hers, even if it would be an enjoyable ride.

Tomorrow will be 66 degrees, and I'll have the situation under control by then, probably, even if I have to get my GTS's valves checked and the scooter put back together and FINALLY get IT back in the road.

It could happen.

More sad than anything.

Friday morning one of our engineers told me he passed an intersection on the way to work and saw the remnants of a vehicle / pedestrian accident. Emergency services hadn't arrived yet, but it was already crowded with people out of their cars on phones. Another engineer passed the same intersection a few minutes later and saw emergency vehicles, but said it didn't look good. Saw this in the news later.

Police: Moped driver killed in Grand Rapids crash It's a little over a mile from my house. I pass through there all the time.

Let's all be careful out there, folks.

I ride with the expectation that "they're out to get me". Some of them truly appear to be.

There's not a lot of info about the crash. There's another site that had a picture of the bike :



I checked the local Scooter Club FB page and didn't see an more details other than one rider claiming to be a friend of the victim.

My brother-in-law (Tim) is pissing me off.

Last Tuesday my MIL (Sally) called my wife (Cynthia) right as I got home from work to let her know that she had just gotten home from the ER. She'd been feeling ill for a while due to a particularly bad case of the flu, so her son, my BIL, had taken her to the ER. Turns out she was dehydrated, and all her bloodwork results were way out of whack because of it. She was incredibly weak, and had difficulty getting around. She wanted to know if Cynthia could come up and stay with her while she recovered. Since Cynthia still isn't working, she said she'd be there, but that she had a doctor appointment the next morning, so she couldn't be there until dinner time or later. Sally said that was fine, because Tim would be staying overnight with her.

I went out and got cat food for the trip (Cynthia was going to take Toby with her), and took her car to gas it up and check the oil. She made the drive to Van Buren, Arkansas with no issues.

On Wednesday afternoon when she talked with me, I learned that things in Van Buren prior to Cynthia's arrival hadn't gone as smoothly as we'd been told.

Yes, Tim had taken Sally to the ER on Tuesday morning. But he didn't stay with her. He simply dropped her off and then went home, leaving her alone. She sat for 4 hours, suffering, before finally shambling over to the counter, crying while asking how much longer it was going to be. They called her back 5 minutes later. When she was released, Tim picked her up and brought her home. I heard him in the background of the call when Sally told Cynthia that he was going to stay overnight with her (my wife had the call on speaker). But that didn't happen, either. After the call, he went home, leaving his 84-year-old mother, who was weak from dehydration and could barely move, alone until my wife arrived over 24 hours later. He lives 3.2 miles from her. He and his wife own a donut shop, and his wife had agreed to cover his shift so he could stay with Sally. So there was no reason for him to go home. If he was worried about his dog being alone, he could have gone home and got the dog and came back. But no, he chose to leave his mom alone.

Sally is doing better. She's able to get around the house and has been preparing her own meals. She isn't able to drive herself yet, due to her strength levels being too low. The other main hurdles she has is not being able to take the trash bin to/from the curb on trash day, and not being able to vacuum. They're looking into some sort of home health care/occupational therapy to help out.

I have an unorthodox relationship with my own mother. She gave birth to my two brothers and myself, then when we were very young (before I even was in pre-school), she and my dad divorced. She got custody, but then decided that being a single mother of three young boys didn't fit the vision she had for herself, so she called my dad and they worked out him getting us. She then moved 1000 miles away to Texas. We saw her maybe once every other year or so. I have no memories of her being my mother. The only reason I know she's my mother is that her name is on my birth certificate, I physically take after her side of the family, and people tell me she is. She's more like a distant aunt than a mother to me. But I still care about her wellbeing, and don't want anything to happen to her. I can understand having an odd relationship with one's mother.

But Tim & Sally's situation isn't like that. Sally & her late husband, Ted, were married for 45 years before he passed away in 2004. When Ted retired in 2003, they moved from McAllen, Texas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, specifically to be closer to Tim and his son, Shayne. It makes no sense to me that he would not help her out in such a situation.

I live 1000 miles away from my family, and feel guilty that I don't see them regularly. He's less than 5 miles from his mom, and sees her once a month.

I'm not a violent person, and he's bigger than me, but damn, I want to knock some sense into him.

Picture of Toby smiling while sitting with Sally, to help offset the anger I feel towards my BIL:

It's so cold out there my calves are still aching from an earlier ride.

Shivers.

The driver ahead of me who uses his screen washer to cover my bike in fluid while in traffic.

Forgive them Lord.

People who don't have the freaking courtesy to let me know in advance that they are going to be walking into my lab with a group of customers in suits.

I'm in the middle of scanning a 12 piece set of samples for Tesla. I'm on part 10 waiting for some developer to cure on a part I'm about to scan. I'm at my other desk, back to the door, headphones on tuning a synth drone I listen to while I'm working, and when I turn around there they are all staring at me.

I realize I am an employee, but for Pete's sake. It's. My. Lab. I could be making coffee, I could be eating lunch. Want to impress the customer? Let me know so I can clean up all of the study samples the engineers have left in here.

Not much ticks me off, but that really does. I am really busy, but the PERCEPTION by the customer now is there's a guy in the corner who thinks he's Howard Jones.

The nerve.

Things can only get better.

ISWYDT

Tree Pollen is pissing me off today.

It's so bad in North Texas right now that I am having a really hard time breathing.

I just paid $165 is StubHub fees for Blur tickets.

I won't get into the joke that is buying concert tickets in 2024.

JavaScript is pissing me off. Actually, it's not JavaScript, per se -- it's my lack of proficiency in JavaScript that is pissing me off.

There is actually a fair amount of JavaScript running various parts of Modern Vespa, of course, and I wrote nearly all of it. As a lifelong coder, I can hack almost anything, within limits. But proficiency in a programming language is a lot harder to come by, and I am realizing that I need much more proficiency in JavaScript than I currently possess.

When I was writing OS code for macOS and iOS, I really didn't have any use for JavaScript. I worked in C, C++, ObjC, and later in Swift. I got reasonably proficient in PHP because 98% of the code running Modern Vespa is in PHP, and it was trial-by-fire. But JavaScript has mostly eluded me so far. And as my job appears now to be full-time web developer, that puts me on the back foot.

JavaScript has matured a lot during my lifetime, to the point that it can do serious work these days. I can't dismiss it any more.

Time to hit the books.

As a former programmer (I've been away from it for a long, long time) you have my sincere sympathy. There's nothing quite so frustrating as knowing how to do a job in half a dozen languages, but not the one you need right now...