Modern Vespa

Could be worse.

Back in 2011 some friends and I drove to Austin for a bachelor party, and we all stayed in a motel room in Downtown Austin, just off Sixth Street.

This was the power cord for the AC unit in the bedroom:

Si!

This being Wyoming, it definitely could be worse as far as the weather is concerned.

This time of year, it could just as easily be smacking the area with blizzard conditions instead of blue skies and 80 degrees.

When they sent me out here last winter for a week, it was between 25 and 30 below zero (F), brutal driving conditions.

Dirty Windscreens Piss Me Off

For some reason people do not seem to clean their windscreens. A Harley will drive by that has been immaculately cleaned and the windscreen looks like bugs and birds have crapped on it for a year. If you turn the bike into the sun, you can even see through the windscreen.

If this was one off, I wouldn't bring it up - but, it is everywhere. It is like you never wash your face and leave nose boogers on it.

I carry a plastic bottle of Vinegar Windex and paper towels under the seat of my Vespa. When I rest stop on a ride, I spritz the windscreen and remove the bugs. Note: the Vinegar Windex does not cloud or damage your windscreen.

From the Country Western group Blackhawk's song: "There you have it, now I've said it, don't forget it".

Bob Copeland
For god sakes, clean your windscreen!

JBlack,

I expect at -20 Below there is so much window glass in a bus that it can't warm up much. You would be the authority.

Bob Copeland

Just out of curiosity Bob, is -20 Below actually 20 above? Or don't double negatives work in Fahrenheit?

I think this is much like Brits saying "half eleven" to mean 11:30. It's stupid and semantically wrong and violates all the rules of technical speech, but common usage trumps proper technical delivery when an entire population says it that way.

Yes, Americans will often say "minus twenty below" when "minus twenty" or "twenty below" would suffice. And Brits say "half eleven" even though the half in front of (rather than behind) the eleven suggests the value that follows is the subject of the halving.

Where I come from halb elf means 10:30. We can all agree on that. But it gets interesting when you get down to quarters. Quarter eleven would be 10:15 (again, we all seem to agree) and logic would tell you that three quarter eleven is 10:45, but for some reason, every southerner will go on a rant how this is crazy when you mention it.

It would seem to me that, unlike "halb elf", "three quarter eleven" doesn't offer any brevity, and would be more awkward than just saying "10:45".

If we're on the subject of stupid and semantically wrong and violates all the rules of technical speech can I add putting the home team second in a sporting fixture?

Baltimore Boozers at San Francisco Snoozers is just friggin mad

(IMO)

Thats just a shortening of half past eleven. Which is better known as second breakfast of course.

Oh, and I just googled Half Past 10

Oh, I completely understand how we (or you) got there. But removing the "past" changes the semantic meaning, from a strictly technical point of view.

"Half eleven" is 5 and a half.

It might be half past eleven. (23/2)

My dad (and other old people) used to say five and twenty past instead of twenty-five past.

Of course they came from a far less hurried period in time when it was perfectly normal to use additional words and syllables to say the same thing.

Anyway, gotta rush..

Hurricane Milton has pissed me right off. We are on a smallish lake with a floating dock and a small pontoon boat. This morning the boat is down by the left rear and half of one pontoon is breached. Also all the pilings holding the dock are loose and crooked. And of course we are just one of a million others with larger losses so I guess we will be looking at the half sunk boat for a few months. Of course hurricane season isn't over yet so I guess another one could come along and finish the job. They are watching for Nadine in the Gulf.

I happily accept "half eleven" instead of "half past eleven", but why use "off of" instead of just "off" ?

And don't ask my opinion on "plug socket", whatever that device may actual be...

A plug socket is a socket for plugs. "Plug" qualifies "socket".

Petty Portuguese bureaucrats are pissing me off today.

I have been trying to get a Portuguese bank account for about three years now. I get rebuffed every time, always for a different reason. I fulfill the stated obligation and try again, only to find another obstacle to be overcome. Or the rules changed.

Today, the reason was first that I didn't have a utility bill with my US address on it. I had a bank bill with my address, but a bank bill wasn't valid. I had a US drivers license with my US address, but even though that is an official government document, they would not accept it.

I had to go back to my apartment and print out an Xfinity bill (the only utility bill that is in my name — others are in Mrs. Jess's name) and went back.

But they found a new reason to turn me away on my second visit today. This particular bank (Activo) does not accept my specific Portuguese residency visa type, for some unfathomable reason.

The helpful lady at the counter helpfully suggested that we obtain a different kind of visa and try again. Helpfully.

Did I happen to mention that it took 3 years to get this visa, because Portugal is filled with petty bureaucrats? Yeah.

Fuck that.

So the golden visa isn't so golden?

So this could be a kitchen sink outlet then?

I might be wrong, but based on recent comments, I sense that you are arguing against linguistic inefficiency and redundancy.

To which I must call your attention to the incredibly awkward "value for money" (properly pronounced as "valEWE fah monEH!")

How about "a score and a quarter past"?

Ah, good ol' five and twenty to 😆

Not if you say it in German. 😀

All this discussion of partial times reminds me of why I like digital clocks. It's not half eleven, it's 10:30.

Apparently.

Yeah, silly me. The German language has never been big on brevity.

True story: Many years ago, as a software engineer for Apple, and in an age when UI layout was not nearly as fluid as it is today, we were advised to always leave plenty of room in our UI for the German localization of the software, which which was consistently 20% larger (i.e. longer text strings) than any other language.

Nowadays, it's mostly a non-issue, as dynamic layout has become infinitely better at re-flowing everything to accommodate any given size of text.

Indeed. In this context, Hochgeschwindigkeitsinternetzugang (high-speed internet access) and Suchmaschinenoptimierung (Search engine optimization) come to mind.

How about Mandarin? Our engineering team recently developed some FW that works pretty well around the world but locks up in Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified Chinese, I believe) because the strings are too long. China's a big market for us and, for god sake, they never tested the device in Chinese

Just to check, it seriously gets to around -30 deg celcius? That's unfathomable!

Yes, it really gets that cold in the Northern regions of the US. Canada gets even colder.

Given that we're talking about firmware, that sounds suspiciously like a buffer overflow, triggered by a string that is longer than budgeted for.

Just a hunch.

Thank goodness for DeLocalizer

Motorcyclist killed in head-on crash south of Kentwood

Rider I worked with for several years here. He was due to retire in a few months.

He rode a beautiful Harley, not overstated, with amazing pipes. Throaty, but not annoying. He told me he paid quite a bit for them and was really proud of his bike.

He was also not a helmet wearer. The story sounds like a classic left turner. I know the area well.

Be careful out there, folks.

See, when I posted that I was thinking "a score and a quarter" = a score + 1/4 score. I never even considered it'd equal a score + 1/4 hour.

"Murdering meteorologists won't stop hurricanes. I can't believe I just had to type that."

— Meteorologist Katie Nickolaou, on the platform formerly known as Twitter

There are idiots out there who are currently sending death threats to meteorologists because what meteorologists are reporting about hurricanes is contrary to the fantasy misinformation-based worldview of the idiots. And their fantasy worldview is being spoon-fed to them by bad actors with political agendas who know that idiots are extraordinarily easy to manipulate.

Cheese and fucking rice, people. Spreading misinformation for fun or profit is putting actual people in actual harms way.

Truth and objective facts are dead.

We have similar single cell organisms here in the UK, it wasn't long ago the national press were reporting that people were calling the Police due to KFC had run out of chicken.

I can see warning the police if donut shops had run out, but chicken?