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sedrosken

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Then don't touch them. Advise the customer that their contract/service agreement doesn't cover them and refer them to your boss/manager. If they get shitty at you, then leave and advise your boss/manager. (It's better to fire a shit customer than a good employee).

Oh, I don't. I know better than to mess with something I don't understand when it's not mine to potentially destroy.

I know its hard to say "no" to a customer, you want to be helpful, (I've been there), but if it's not part of your job or contract with the customer, then it's not your responsibility. If you get onsite and its a mac issue, call your boss/manager and get them to make the decision, basically CYA (Cover Your Ass) if something goes wrong.

That's basically how it went, but at the time it felt like a bit of a lame cop-out. I'm almost certain it caused us to lose that client, albeit I wasn't blamed for it or anything.

Imagine, you go onsite, find it's a mac issue and can't get it working (and unknowingly making it worse). Customer gets shitty, blames you, calls your boss, and all of a sudden you no longer have a job, as: a, you worked on something not in scope of the contract, b, you caused harm to the customer, c, customer is now suing your old workplace for loss and damages due to your incompetence/neglience. (not saying you are incompetent/negliant, but that's how the customer sees it).

Extreme scenario, absolutely, but I've seen it with my own eyes multiple times.

This scenario is precisely why I don't touch them. My luck is such that if I'm not 120% sure about something, it'll blow up in my face, so the "extreme" scenario is absolutely what flies through my head every time I'm out of my depth.
 

Mercutio

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At this point, the first question to ask Mac people is why they came to you instead of taking their shit to Apple. Either it's too old for Apple to look at or they have something weird going on that deserves additional explanation.
 

sedrosken

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The freshest in an annoying batch of issues is that I broke the back of my desk chair last night. Rushing to the local stores today for a replacement -- my back already hurts sitting at my desk in both the ruined old chair and one of my high-rise dining chairs -- didn't fill me with confidence. OfficeDepot has everything marked up 2-3x what they are online anywhere else -- and they wonder why brick and mortar stores are dying -- and Walmart, last resort though it is, didn't have anything other than the most basic of options. So I resigned myself to ordering online and just suffering until it arrives. I finally decided to spend a little money on something that's actually worth a damn this time, so I bought a Serta "Big and Tall" thing from Walmart.com, as it had the best pricing. $149 for something that, same model and all, cost $469.99 at OfficeDepot. Say what you will about having it now vs. waiting for shipping, but that difference was ridiculous.

I'm led to understand that Serta doesn't actually manufacture any of these chairs themselves, they slap their name on something manufactured (in China, presumably) by a company known as True Innovations, LLC. I understand the argument of getting what you pay for but I just don't have the 4-600 dollars to drop on something actually good, especially right now -- even when I have the money I can think of better uses for it. The holidays have me stretched thin as it is and then I had to buy new tires for my car. It really wasn't the best time for impromptu furniture shopping.
 

Mercutio

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It's very possible to pick up stupid expensive office chairs for very little actual money. Herman Miller status trophies wind up on auction sites all the time, and if you know NOT to look for those, you can do even better, because those are the ones everyone looks for. I picked up an X-Chair a few years ago for about $60 instead of the ~$1000 a new one costs. Just a basic Craigslist find.
 

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Steelcase chairs (Gesture/Leep/Think) would also be at the Herman Miller level of quality but not as many know that name when searching for a used one.
 

sedrosken

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Well, maybe once I'm not stressing about not having a working chair, I'll settle in and look for something better. I'll need it for the other desk on the other side of the room, anyway -- for now I'm just wheeling across the carpet to my work desk. Until then this already stands a fair chance of being the best piece of furniture I've ever bought just by virtue of it not being standard-issue Mainstays Office garbage.
 

LunarMist

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SWA is FUBARS, I'm over 2000km out of position, and I have to work next week. 😟
 

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SWA is FUBARS, I'm over 2000km out of position, and I have to work next week. 😟

Several of my family members are also deeply hosed right now as well. I sincerely hope there's a very nice "Maybe you shouldn't be in business any more" from the Department of Transportation in their near future.
 

sedrosken

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Well, I certainly got what I paid for -- it's cheaper than my last chair, but higher quality, which isn't a terrific surprise considering my last one came from Office Depot with probably a 200% markup. But I certainly don't know where they get "big and tall" from -- it's comfortable, but it's mid-back at best when I'm pretty sure it was advertised as a high-back. It's smaller in general than the pictures indicated it to be, though thankfully the arms adjust out to the sides so I can make them wider. I'm probably going to be looking for another replacement in a year or so, though I hope I'm wrong -- the connecting pieces for the arms and back are metal at least rather than fiberglass-reinforced plastic, which gives me a bit of confidence. In any case, this gives me time to shop for a proper one.
 

LunarMist

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Several of my family members are also deeply hosed right now as well. I sincerely hope there's a very nice "Maybe you shouldn't be in business any more" from the Department of Transportation in their near future.
Unfortunately nothing will fix the problem now although it can help later. I can't help but think the new CEO has something to do with it. SWA was my second favorite US airline before the Pande, especially when having to fly economy. (Nobody had many of their flights in the Western US and some places East/West they had the only direct flights period.) Back then you could book fairly late, get two bags free and always fly on a real airplane, not those Embraer or CRJ flying toy planes with no decency in overhead bins for a 500/4 or 600/4 and other gear. Now there are also the 5-wide Airbus A220 (formerly Bombardier, previous maker of the CRJ) that are slowly infiltrating the states, but they have decent bins.
 

Mercutio

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Every so often, my father will share his Delta Platinum whatever lounge access and free miles with me, which has been great when sub-optimal public transit schedules have kept me at O'Hare longer than I'd like, but in general the thing I want to say is that Spirit has been solid in every way I actually care about. They can be low cost and nickel and dime their customers all day long, but their flights leave on time and their planes are clean and in great condition.

Delta's lounges, at least the ones in Atlanta and Chicago, are kind of the epitome of luxury compared to absolutely everything else at an airport. Plus they have free soup. I have no idea how much it costs to keep member status to get free passes for it, but if I got to fly for work or something, I'd be all over it.

Last time I flew, while I was leaving O'Hare, I got to see a dude having a tantrum over the fact that he missed a once-a-week flight to Bozeman, Montana because he didn't know that Chicago was in a different time zone from where ever he drove in from (one little corner of Indiana, "The Region", where I live, is on Central time. The rest of the state is Eastern, but has only been that way for about five years). He was literally demanding American Airlines turn the plane around for him. Even better, he didn't stop yelling when the security people showed up. I didn't stay for the whole show but I was definitely rooting for Chicago cops to live up to their reputation right in that moment.

That doesn't help the folks trapped on Southwest right now, but I think I have as much or more sympathy for the employees right now than the passengers. They can at least get a flight from a different carrier. The employees are just stuck and powerless to deal with the fallout.
 

Newtun

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SWA is FUBARS, I'm over 2000km out of position, and I have to work next week. 😟
Several of my family members are also deeply hosed right now as well. I sincerely hope there's a very nice "Maybe you shouldn't be in business any more" from the Department of Transportation in their near future.
Second mention I've seen about one aspect of the current SouthWest disaster, from the NY Times:
Southwest, which is particularly vulnerable because of its point-to-point routing — Dallas to Denver, then Denver to Seattle, say. (The other major airlines take a hub-and-spoke approach, funneling fliers and aircraft through central points, which can provide more flexibility.)​

So it's a "network configuration" issue. Along with their other failures to plan their infrastructure for peak capacity (hardware, software, meatware [pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, counter agents, . . .]).
 

LunarMist

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Every so often, my father will share his Delta Platinum whatever lounge access and free miles with me, which has been great when sub-optimal public transit schedules have kept me at O'Hare longer than I'd like, but in general the thing I want to say is that Spirit has been solid in every way I actually care about. They can be low cost and nickel and dime their customers all day long, but their flights leave on time and their planes are clean and in great condition.

Delta's lounges, at least the ones in Atlanta and Chicago, are kind of the epitome of luxury compared to absolutely everything else at an airport. Plus they have free soup. I have no idea how much it costs to keep member status to get free passes for it, but if I got to fly for work or something, I'd be all over it.

Last time I flew, while I was leaving O'Hare, I got to see a dude having a tantrum over the fact that he missed a once-a-week flight to Bozeman, Montana because he didn't know that Chicago was in a different time zone from where ever he drove in from (one little corner of Indiana, "The Region", where I live, is on Central time. The rest of the state is Eastern, but has only been that way for about five years). He was literally demanding American Airlines turn the plane around for him. Even better, he didn't stop yelling when the security people showed up. I didn't stay for the whole show but I was definitely rooting for Chicago cops to live up to their reputation right in that moment.

That doesn't help the folks trapped on Southwest right now, but I think I have as much or more sympathy for the employees right now than the passengers. They can at least get a flight from a different carrier. The employees are just stuck and powerless to deal with the fallout.
ORD is one of the worst airports for delays, cancellations, and missed connections. It's horrible, and I will avoid Chicago at all costs. Even if you are CLEAR international connections are painful and more time is needed than necessary.

I was last in the Delta lounge in Atlanta this November and it was really busy and dirty. I almost wished I had stayed in the main area. They have several lounges and I'm not sure which it was that time. Of course they have food. What level are you, Silver, Gold, higher?
 

jtr1962

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Only thing to add reading all this talk about airlines is I'm glad I never was in a position where I needed to fly, much less needed to do so on any kind of regular basis. If I ever get around to traveling, it's Amtrak for me. I flew once, back in 1990, when the airlines were generally much better than now. Still couldn't stand it. Jet fuel fumes at the airport, the act of flying itself is very stressful, plus it just never felt safe. Not worth the time savings. Add in the security checks after 9/11, I wouldn't fly now if you paid me.

Frankly, if we had the foresight to have built a national high-speed system, taking the train would be as fast or faster point-to-point than flying out to distances of at least 500 miles. Traveling by car long distance sucks also (and that assumes you have a car or license, which I have neither). Trains are the only really civilized way to travel.
 

sedrosken

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Growing up I would fly unaccompanied minor on Southwest to my Mom's for Christmas (SDF to MDW) every couple years or so. More recently when I fly it's been Delta, but I wouldn't exactly call my experiences comfortable. Every time I've done it thus far has been with little enough warning or cost has been enough of a factor that the only option was economy. All in all, I'd prefer to drive. I can put on a podcast or something and before I know it, I'm there. Not that I particularly enjoy driving.
 

Mercutio

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ORD is one of the worst airports for delays, cancellations, and missed connections. It's horrible, and I will avoid Chicago at all costs. Even if you are CLEAR international connections are painful and more time is needed than necessary.

I was last in the Delta lounge in Atlanta this November and it was really busy and dirty. I almost wished I had stayed in the main area. They have several lounges and I'm not sure which it was that time. Of course they have food. What level are you, Silver, Gold, higher?

My father has Platinum membership. I'm not sure exactly how. It's been years since he's been on regular flights, but he may just have THAT many frequent flyer miles or a credit card that that keeps him up there. Sometimes I can convince him to book a flight on my behalf and I reap the benefit.

Chicago's Delta lounge JUST got renovated, by the way.

ORD itself is rarely my problem. I'm used to getting in and out, and having the individual security lines at each gate is much appreciated vs the clusterfuckery at Denver or Atlanta. The Blue Line is my friend. Spirit flies on time. American and United, not so much.

jtr, rail travel is generally impractical and terrible over long distance in a country the size of the USA. I know that it works in the Boston to DC corridor, and probably NYC to Philly as well, but as a counter-example, Kalamazoo to South Bend. The two communities are around 75 miles apart by car, something that can be covered in under 90 minutes including time for a bathroom break. Both communities are serviced by Amtrak and they are both college towns that are regional population centers. Amtrak takes just under 12 hours and costs just over $100. That's comically impractical.

(As an aside, my parents live within actual walking distance of McGee Tyson airport, which services Knoxville. It has never, not even one time, been a practical AND inexpensive flight from Chicago. It's either 12 hours with a layover in Atlanta or a $350+ direct flight. Sometimes both. This sort of the thing that makes Midwesterners say "Fuck it, it's only 10 hours in the car!")

I've thought about doing some portion of the Chicago / Denver / Reno / SF California Zephyr route, or to run the Spirit of New Orleans, but in either case, the cost is somewhere around six times what a flight would cost and, depending my needs, take somewhere between eight and twenty times as long in terms of transit time. Unless the route was specifically to be my vacation, that's just not a good solution for travel through the unbelievably vast center of the United States. Unless your specific needs involve a train that runs through Chicago, Kansas City or Minneapolis, East-West is kind of a non-starter. And I'm starting at Chicago, which is arguably the easiest starting point for nationwide train travel. Even in the east, there are some states that are barely serviced by passenger lines, like Maine, Tennessee and Kentucky. You can definitely say that it would be a great investment to improve rail lines across the US, but it's a pipe dream for the 95% of the country that isn't within 50 miles of a major shoreline.

Light rail within big cities is an amazing idea and I'm not dissing that at all, but trains cross-country aren't a good solution.
 

LunarMist

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Second mention I've seen about one aspect of the current SouthWest disaster, from the NY Times:
Southwest, which is particularly vulnerable because of its point-to-point routing — Dallas to Denver, then Denver to Seattle, say. (The other major airlines take a hub-and-spoke approach, funneling fliers and aircraft through central points, which can provide more flexibility.)​

So it's a "network configuration" issue. Along with their other failures to plan their infrastructure for peak capacity (hardware, software, meatware [pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, counter agents, . . .]).
It's way more than a configuration issue. It's called being cheap and not upgrading the systems over time and having enough staffing like normal airlines.
 

jtr1962

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Merc,

I know Amtrak sucks in most of the country. The only place it handily beats or matches flying/driving time overall is on the East Coast. I'm talking about national HSR running at 220 mph and averaging, say, 180 mph with stops. NYC to Chicago in 5 hours. Counting the time getting to/from airports, that's as fast overall as flying. Over that distance flying starts to have a time advantage, but in many cases people will trade a few hours for a one-seat ride, plus the greater comfort/safety of the train.

We spent what, $6 trillion and counting on Middle Eastern oil wars since 9/11? That money would easily pay for a national HSR and then some. This system would replace a lot of domestic air travel, and also a lot of long-distance driving, making wars to secure oil in the future unnecessary.

Flying is a non-starter for a fair percentage of the population, which is yet another reason for national HSR. Either the people have health issues which prevent flying, or just a general intolerance of the type of accelerations encountered on a plane, and/or perhaps an inability to tolerate jet fuel fumes. Driving isn't a great answer, either, for long distance. At best you can average maybe 70 mph. Car travel isn't particularly comfortable. On top of that you need to own the car (a major expense), plus you need a driver's license. A fair percentage of the population either can't drive at all due to health issues, or can't drive safely due to them. So that's why we should be building out a national system. As it stands now people like me really have zero long distance travel options. Not that I'm able to do much traveling until my mother passes, but it's something I might want to do in the future.

There's also the idea of maglevs in vacuum tubes. That's actually potentially faster than flying. We need to throw more R&D at it.
 

LunarMist

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Only thing to add reading all this talk about airlines is I'm glad I never was in a position where I needed to fly, much less needed to do so on any kind of regular basis. If I ever get around to traveling, it's Amtrak for me. I flew once, back in 1990, when the airlines were generally much better than now. Still couldn't stand it. Jet fuel fumes at the airport, the act of flying itself is very stressful, plus it just never felt safe. Not worth the time savings. Add in the security checks after 9/11, I wouldn't fly now if you paid me.

Frankly, if we had the foresight to have built a national high-speed system, taking the train would be as fast or faster point-to-point than flying out to distances of at least 500 miles. Traveling by car long distance sucks also (and that assumes you have a car or license, which I have neither). Trains are the only really civilized way to travel.
It depends on how much time you spend in the states. Get TSA pre-check and CLEAR for the US. International security can be tougher, but you just allow a little more time. I'm pretty sure we will never have trains to the other six continents. 😆 Smaller airports are no so bad, assuming the planes get there from the other airports.
 

jtr1962

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It depends on how much time you spend in the states. Get TSA pre-check and CLEAR for the US. International security can be tougher, but you just allow a little more time. I'm pretty sure we will never have trains to the other six continents. 😆 Smaller airports are no so bad, assuming the planes get there from the other airports.
There's ships to the other continents. If/when I ever travel overseas, time isn't an issue. I'm happy to spend two weeks on a freighter crossing the Pacific if it means avoiding flying.
 

LunarMist

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I'm platinum on AA, but not on Delta. They don't fly where I need to go, other than connecting through ATL or MSP. ATL is not bad, certainly better than MIA. For obvious reasons, I fly through MIA, ATL, DFW, and LAX.
 

LunarMist

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There's ships to the other continents. If/when I ever travel overseas, time isn't an issue. I'm happy to spend two weeks on a freighter crossing the Pacific if it means avoiding flying.
My trips are rather expensive and my time is limited as I am still working to paty for them. Generally you have to get somewhere to board the ship. I cannot imagine taking a train to Ushuaia for example and I doubt there is a ship from NYC or Dallas.
 

jtr1962

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My trips are rather expensive and my time is limited as I am still working to paty for them. Generally you have to get somewhere to board the ship. I cannot imagine taking a train to Ushuaia for example and I doubt there is a ship from NYC or Dallas.
Well fortunately the NY Metro area is a major shipping hub, so I'm good to cross the Atlantic at least. If I needed to cross the Pacific, it's Amtrak to the West Coast, then hop a freighter from LA. Since I would most likely stick to major cities overseas chances are great those would be major shipping hubs also. I'm not traveling if I'm so time limited that I would need to fly. The idea is that it's fine taking a week or two to get there given that I would be spending months in these places. I'm sure traveling on a freighter would be an experience in and of itself.

If you enjoy flying, great. Not for me. Plus when something serious goes wrong on a plane, you generally end up as a collection of body parts. Not so with other modes where your chances of survival are pretty high.

This is all academic anyway for me at this point. Until my mother passes, travel isn't a option. I wouldn't travel without a SO anyway, and that's probably never going to happen for me. Most likely I'll never travel even domestically, never mind internationally.
 

LunarMist

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I sure don't like to fly, but you have to get there. There are plenty of small group travel opportunties for active seniors. Many of the people I travel with don't travel with a SO or spouse, either because the other party is not physically capable or (more often) not interested. It's mostly the younger folks that have need to travel with someone. I do avoid all ocean trips alone because the single supplements are +70 to 80% or not available (maybe has changed since pendem). Air and land trips the singles are +10 to 30% if available.
 

sedrosken

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[...] We spent what, $6 trillion and counting on Middle Eastern oil wars since 9/11? That money would easily pay for a national HSR and then some. This system would replace a lot of domestic air travel, and also a lot of long-distance driving, making wars to secure oil in the future unnecessary. [...] So that's why we should be building out a national system. [...]
There's no question that we should be building it, but a. we likely never will and b. the discussion as I understood it was primarily around the state of rail travel in the US as it currently is. I don't even know where my closest train station for passenger use would be, nor have I really ever in all the places I've lived all up and down the eastern half of the country. I've never been to the actual east coast proper, though. Incidentally, looking it up, the closest rail stations to me appear to be Crestview at ~25mi away, and Pensacola at ~35mi away. I've never seen either of these stations, but the funny part is I know Pensacola better since I'm there so often for my work, so I'd probably go the extra 10 miles to get to that one.
 

jtr1962

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I sure don't like to fly, but you have to get there. There are plenty of small group travel opportunties for active seniors. Many of the people I travel with don't travel with a SO or spouse, either because the other party is not physically capable or (more often) not interested. It's mostly the younger folks that have need to travel with someone. I do avoid all ocean trips alone because the single supplements are +70 to 80% or not available (maybe has changed since pendem). Air and land trips the singles are +10 to 30% if available.
Last thing I'd ever want to do is travel with seniors. Ditto for group travel where you don't set your own agenda. I just turned 60 but me and my siblings look 20+ years younger than we are, and can match that in terms of physical ability. My sister is almost 59. She has so few gray hairs she just plucks them out. My nearly 84 year old mother is at worst 20% gray. I've been working on myself lately, eating better and so forth. I'll probably look like I'm in my early 30s/late 20s by the time I'm done. I guess all those years of riding a few thousand miles annually paid off. Anyway, if/when I look for an SO, I'm going with people in their 20s, or at worst 30s who look young and never married or had children. So yeah, I'd be doing what the younger folks do, traveling with someone.
 
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jtr1962

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There's no question that we should be building it, but a. we likely never will and b. the discussion as I understood it was primarily around the state of rail travel in the US as it currently is. I don't even know where my closest train station for passenger use would be, nor have I really ever in all the places I've lived all up and down the eastern half of the country. I've never been to the actual east coast proper, though. Incidentally, looking it up, the closest rail stations to me appear to be Crestview at ~25mi away, and Pensacola at ~35mi away. I've never seen either of these stations, but the funny part is I know Pensacola better since I'm there so often for my work, so I'd probably go the extra 10 miles to get to that one.
I'm seeing a major generational shift. Your generation supports this a lot more than mine. As your generation gets into power, it's a lot more likely we'll start to do something. Your generation is really the first to acknowledge en masse the problems with an auto-based transportation system, suburbia, and oil dependency. It took us decades to get to this point. I expect it'll take many decades to undo the damage. That includes changing settlement patterns so most people don't need a car in their daily lives.

The sad part is the framework for all this was there before WWII. Rail was how people traveled. Car-dependent suburbia largely didn't exist. Then the 1950s came and ruined everything.
 

LunarMist

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I'd say that you are an active senior by definition. :) You choose a trip by purpose and the people are the ages they are.
Many people in their 60s-70s+ are hiking miles each way to get to the best sites and carrying tripods and photo gear including 600/4s. It all depends on the person's condition and interest, not so much age.
 

jtr1962

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I'd say that you are an active senior by definition. :) You choose a trip by purpose and the people are the ages they are.
Many people in their 60s-70s+ are hiking miles each way to get to the best sites and carrying tripods and photo gear including 600/4s. It all depends on the person's condition and interest, not so much age.
I agree. Biological age matters a lot more than chronological age. I'd say me and my siblings are probably still in our 30s going by biological age. I'd still rather find someone first before going on any trips but there's lots of opportunity for that in NYC. Just walking the streets and riding the subways you never know who you'll meet. Unfortunately, so long as I'm caring for my mother I just can't get out. It's a pity she ended up like this at a relatively young age. Most of our relatives don't start needing assistance until they're in their late 80s or 90s.

BTW, the impetus to make me start taking better care of myself came from me seeing pictures online of people I went to high school with. Frankly, without the name tags I wouldn't have even recognized most of them. They're already looking like grandparents. Do most people really age this fast? Or is it just the American diet of processed crap, plus being sedentary?

Look at her. 47 but looks like early 20s at most. I think it's lifestyle more than genetics.
 

Mercutio

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A lifetime of not being in the sun definitely helps as far as wrinkles, as does abstaining from smoking or drink. I just turned 47 myself and given my choice of unnatural hair colors and my social circle, I'm usually mistaken for someone in my early 30s.

The matter of my hair is partly a case of not wanting to be mistaken for somebody's dad. I like being colorful. It's very unusual in the midwest.
 

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Avoiding the sun is easy for a night person like me. I'm rarely even out of bed before noon, never mind outside. Most of my riding/walking is done at night.

Unusual hair colors probably wouldn't work for me. Besides, fortunately as I mentioned earlier going gray isn't a problem in our family. Nothing ages a person more than gray hair.
 

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"Unusual hair colors probably wouldn't work for me. Besides, fortunately as I mentioned earlier going gray isn't a problem in our family. Nothing ages a person more than gray hair."

Or naturally occurring No hair.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
Or naturally occurring No hair.

No hair is at least a valid option. My older brother started losing his hair by the time he was 30. These days, he does the clearly-unfortunate combover where he keeps hair from one side of his head far longer than the other. That's the look I can only pity.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
16,624
Location
USA
I'd shave my head completely before coloring it some unnatural way.
 

sedrosken

Florida Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2013
Messages
1,590
Location
Eglin AFB Area
Well, tonight's been a rollercoaster.

I get home from housesitting, go to install my new GPU, test-fit the dual-GPU setup I was wanting to go for, rip off my bottom PCI-E slot (!!)* but it's fine, I can't use that slot for my purpose anyway since putting GPUs in each slot there stifles the cooling for the top card. The pins are all mangled, but I don't explicitly need the slot, so I snip the pins so nothing shorts when I hook everything back up in the meantime. So, I'll need a board that can space the cards out more anyway... a friend offers me his X470 Aorus for a good price, so I take it. Now I just have to wait for shipping and I can move forward.

Turns out the new home server is a bit beefier than I thought -- the MP510 is 960GB, score; it has a real full-fat Ryzen 5 2600, the actually good VS550 variant from Corsair, better RAM than my main and even a duplicate of the BD-XL drive I use in my main that happens to be among the only ones that can rip PS3 games. I'll definitely take having to futz around with blacklisting kernel modules over SSH in the hypervisor layer to get it to where I can pass my 1070 through to the Plex VM since it doesn't have an iGP, in exchange for 50% more cores and 200% more threads. I know its board very well, it's a double for the one I already currently have in my main, and I can even individually control the PCI-E Gen mode for the bottom slot so I can set it to Gen1 mode so my VGA capture card works.

Everything's coming together.

* Long story short, AsRock didn't use the correct physical connector. There's the kind that you anchor with solder, and the kind that snaps in with plastic pegs, and you have to design your board around which one you're using. They used the ones you anchor with solder on a board they designed to take the plastic-peg mount ones. I pull just a little too hard, thinking the clip for the slot is disengaged when pulling out the other GPU I was installing, and crrrruunch.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
16,624
Location
USA
I've had much difficulty in removing the large video card because the release lever is not accessible. I was hoping to get a video and install it only once.
 

sedrosken

Florida Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2013
Messages
1,590
Location
Eglin AFB Area
Frankly I almost want to remove the clips and be done with it -- they're probably not doing anything important when I've got the card mounted with two screws.
 

sedrosken

Florida Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2013
Messages
1,590
Location
Eglin AFB Area
If you bought a Stadia controller like I did (I got mine as part of a bundle with a Chromecast), as one of the swan-songs of the platform, the crew is going to be showing you how to unlock the bluetooth sometime next week. I really like the controller, but having to use it plugged in was the achilles' heel. I wonder if it's going to support XInput -- if it doesn't, I'm pretty sure there's a way to convert it anyway. That's much less egregious than having to have it plugged in.
 
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