That’s a big sunflower! Your house is most certainly safe from zombies.
Well, only if he’s planting peas as well.
Ok, so I’m traveling on business this week, and after working tomorrow, me and the guy I’m traveling with are gonna hit Vegas cause we’re out near it for work.
I had a lucky little trinket coin in my wallet… some garbage thing I had picked up somewhere. It apparently fell out of my wallet today. I thought that’s a bad omen for going to vegas… so I checked around on the floor of the car to see if it fell there.
Instead of finding it, I found a quarter. I decided, “Alright then, this is my new lucky coin. Since I found it, it must be even more lucky than that last piece of crap, which really wasn’t lucky at all! I’m even more lucky now. Let’s roll.”
Then, after getting into my hotel room, I decided to check it out. This is the tails side of the quarter:
That is Frederick motherfucking Douglass, folks! I dunno if you are aware, but he is doing GREAT THINGS. People are saying it!
And I’ll tell you what, he’s gonna be doing some great fucking things in vegas this week.
Jury duty.
In California we now have a call-in system. Unlike my first jury duty here, many many years ago, when you had to go downtown and sit in this huge room for an entire week getting fifteen bucks a day, it’s a call-in thing now. I mean, I was happy to do my service then, even though it resulted in one of the most gut-wrenching experiences of my life. Still…civic duty. It felt important.
Now you call in the night before and they tell you whether to show up or not. I did that, and the recording told me to show up at 8:00am. Luckily this was in Burbank, which is only about thirty minutes away, and since the show I usually record Sunday nights at midnight had been moved to Monday night, getting to the Burbank Courthouse by 8 was no problem.
It was a small room. Not like the main courthouse in downtown LA or the Van Nuys Courthouse which are huge rooms (I saw Jason Schwartzman at the Van Nuys one a few years ago…true story!). Nobody was working. Nobody was there to answer any questions. The little booth/office was closed and the windows had blinds pulled down over them. It’s always weird to me to see blinds on windows inside of a building. Anyway, there were just a few other jurors in the room. An askew sign said that we didn’t need to check in, and that someone would be there to talk to us at “approximately 8:30am.” I loved the “approximately” especially.
8:30 came and went. 9 rolled around. More people holding their juror summons papers trickled in. Finally somebody asked somebody else.
She said, “I was told nobody would be here until 9:30.”
We all looked at the clock, which wasn’t even close to telling us what time it actually was, so everybody looked at their phones.
Another thirty minutes passed and a woman came walking in who looked like somebody who belonged in this office. She walked into the room, regarded us, and said, “I’m not supposed to have any jurors today, so I don’t know what you all are doing here.”
Most of us just kind of chuckled at this, because what’re you gonna do? A couple people got mad, but, again, what’re you gonna do? It’s the machine. Plus, she was really nice, and took all of our summons notices, said she’d check on them, then went into the office with the blinds on the windows. Computer noises, beeps that sounded like barcodes being scanned, and printer sounds emanated from the office for about half an hour. Maybe more.
Then she emerged with a bunch of green sheets of paper and I breathed a sigh of relief. Those green pieces of paper are well known to those of us who report for jury duty in Los Angeles.
“Well, I wasn’t supposed to have any jurors today so you’re all excused. For the next twelve months. Just come up and grab one of these sheets of paper and you’re done.”
I don’t like getting out of jury duty, but it was a decent ending to a goofy morning.
And people say the justice system is broken.
-xtien
The Feds use a system like that. We have a Federal Courthouse here in Fresno. I had my name drawn for it a couple years ago. You call the night before to see if you have to show up. The problem…there were people as far away as Bishop, almost 350 miles away, who were having to do the same thing. That’s insane.
I have been lucky. I haven’t had to show up in person in many many years.
I just got hacked. Cool.
I was getting fed up with work’s shitty VPN so I was looking into alternatives. It’s firewalled pretty well, so something like Hamachi was out. I tried Chrome Remote Desktop but it was painfully slow. RealVNC seemed to fit the bill. Set it up with a simple password, then added both a personal work term server and my home computer… with the same simple password, because why not? That was about two weeks ago.
Tonight I was in the bathroom and my wife says, “Uh honey, your computer is doing something weird.” Fucker logged in via RealVNC, connected to my home computer, went right to PayPal (auto login! yay) and sent himself $1500. He was in the process of sending more went I started alt-f4’ing everything and he disconnected.
sigh
I removed the work computer from my team, but I’m not worried because it was at the AD login screen. I’ve reconfigured RealVNC with tighter passwords and two factor auth, and changed my PayPal password as well. Started disputes with both PayPal and Chase. When the dust had settled I had emails from both RealVNC and PayPal saying they had detected unusual activity (he was Chinese, of course). Well, that’s nice guys, how about next time doing something about it?
Ultimately, of course, I only have myself to blame. I didn’t think RealVNC could be hacked so easily.
I wonder just how common that bit of the situation is. I know it’s happened to me, complete with that quoted line, and it sucks because you want to get right out there and get on top of it, but some things just can’t be hurried along.
I hope everything turned out okay?
Still waiting on PayPal. My request is “awaiting customer response.” They’re asking the guy who stole from me if it my claim is legit. Cool. I don’t expect Mr. Min Zhang to respond.
I had my annual and the doctor (who is retiring) used the “O” word.
Fuck!
I am not fucking obese. I hate that shit. She has never talked to me about my weight before today. And I have never heard her say obese. WTF is this bullshit? The only time we talked about weight was her weight and she got irritated with me for saying you can’t lose weight if you eat out all the time. At least, that has been my experience. She told me she works late, so she has to eat out, but I only said what I said because, well, it’s true.
This should really be in a rant thread, but fuck it.
I don’t think she liked me.
When I was like late 40s she kept reminding me that when I hit 50 she would be obligated to stick her finger up my ass (because that’s what doctors do during an annual to 50 year olds). The first time she told me this, I was shocked and didn’t know how to respond. She filled in the silence by suggesting that maybe I’d rather have a male doctor. She said maybe a male doctor might make me feel more comfortable, but that shit just totally confused me. Why would she think I’d be more comfortable if a guy stuck his finger up my ass? That makes no sense on any level. Guys are generally bigger than women, with thicker fingers. And, really, why would gender even factor into this? I mean, I’m trying to be open minded and forward thinking and everything, but if someone has to stick their finger up my ass, I think I’d definitely prefer it to be a woman. Not to turn it into a sexual thing, but I’m just saying.
I think, really, it made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t say that, so I didn’t volunteer to get a new doctor. Anyhow, I’m sad to lose her because she was a good doctor, but it totally fucked me up to hear the “O” word.
Fuck!
Know the feeling TIm! I’m 6’2" and around 265. When I went to my new Dr last year I was 275 and that put me as “Morbidly Obese”, once I dropped under 270 she was pleased to tell me that I’m now merely Obese, but not morbidly so! I mean, I’ve got a dad bod but carry my weight pretty well. But fuck their obesity scale!
You would switch doctors because one referred you to the category your BMI puts you in? It’s a medical term. As doctors, they have to present you with information, recommendations and choices. As people, they are also trying to help you be better. So it’s tough to hear the word obese in reference to yourself. So would the terms heart attack victim, or stroke victim, or diabetes sufferer.
Roughly:
Grade 1 overweight (commonly and simply called overweight) - BMI of 25-29.9
Grade 2 overweight (commonly called obesity) - BMI of 30-39.9
Grade 3 overweight (commonly called severe or morbid obesity) - BMI ≥40
Tim, if it makes you feel any better, a large number of us, and a large percentage of the U.S. are well above 30BMI on that scale.
My understanding is that the BMI metrics are super general, to the point of being almost useless by themselves. Hopefully she either provided some context as to why it is (or isn’t) a concern, or it sounds like she may have just mentioned it as a fun bit of trivia.
High BMI is a marker for increases in other things. It’s a strain on your body and a compounding factor to other diseases and conditions. Doctors and scientists agree that as you move up that scale you can take YEARS off your life. The issue is that it isn’t a given, so they can’t tell you specifically, “okay Skipper, you are obese, so you’re going to die approximately 5 years early.”
There are body fat measuring scales as well that can help shed some context as well. BMI does a poor job of accounting for different types of body builds but generally broadly applicable, I think.
Thanks guys! I appreciate the input. I know it’s a technical term, but I haven’t heard it in my visits before. I’m 5’ 10’’, 200lbs. I’ve been heavier than this before. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the green on the BMI scale. I think I’d have to be ~170, but it’s never been a goal, so I was surprised to hear her pull out the BMI charts.
@skipper she’s retiring. I’m switching doctors because she’s leaving her practice. She’s a good doctor and took good care of me. I was just expecting yesterday’s visit to be more of a “so long, farewell” kind of thing, but it went in an unexpected direction.
Ahh, gotcha. Well hey, at least you get an opportunity to hopefully get someone with a different manor and hopefully even better expertise.
By chance did you get a flu shot? :)
Tomorrow I’m going to have lasers shoot holes in my eyes. I’m both excited and terrified.
It’s an iridotomy to prepare for an implanted contact lens (ICL) surgery in a few weeks. My prescript is around -13D which is about at the limits of LASIK, and I also have dry-eye which LASIK exacerbates.
I’m excited because it will be great to finally be rid of these ugly glasses. I’m terrified because with the glasses I have perfect vision. Who knows what I will have after the surgery? Halos? Blurred vision at the edges? White lines? Will I be unable to drive at night? All are side effects I’ve read about. The good news is ICL is fully reversible (except for the iridotomy).
haha, I had my flu shot at work a few weeks ago!
Balasarius, plead keep us updated on that. I’m at -10 myself and have contemplated LASIK, but been told me corneas are a little thin, I’d have to do PRK.
Yeah, I’m a little freaked out by the irreverisble-ness of lasik, but ICL’s seem appealing to me. Also, both my parents have had lens replacements for cataracts (not the same thing, but conceptually similar in that it’s an implant) and they seem very happy with the results.
I keep telling myself that the risks probably aren’t higher than wearing contacts the rest of my life and accidentally getting an infection or something due to carelessness…but the idea of the surgery still weirds me out.