Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: Ford Cortina GXL?

Thinkpads are reliable.

And don't have a suspension that, in its natural state, resembles slighty-stiffened marshmallow..

(Yes - I had a pre-disastered Cortina MK4 - I hated the suspension so, thinking it a function of age, had it replaced. With no percievable improvement.).

I seem to recall the Capri had a similarly bad suspension (and a set of engine specs that went straight from 'woefully underpowered' to 'dangerously overpowered for the suspension and steering' with no intervening steps).

Re: Bias....

We all associate wolves with snow

That's because we[1] have managed to kill off, or severely hamper, the ones that live in non-snowy parts..

[1] That's the human 'we'. And we here in the UK have managed to kill off all our large predators, leaving only foxes and wildcats to represent them..

animal is a cat would be it having cat eyes?

Except their are other species that have very similar eyes..

(Mind you - I'm struggling with the caption picture - how many times to you have to identify an animal that has a small sprig of vegetation on its nose?)

I regularly see women passport control officers when flying to central and eastern europe

Ditto for the various Scandanavian countries I've visited. And The Netherlands.

same thing happens in SFO

Last time I was there (late 1990's) was after going on staff tickets with BA (our company, being set up by BA and some other airlines, entitled us to use BA staff standby tickets). THis was my first international flight and I made the newbie error of having some whiskies during the flight - which left me sober but with a raging migraine at the end of the flight.

The result of which was that I wanted to commit serious violence of the overly-loud persistent and annoying PA announcements. And my wife had to take over when trying to deal with the hire car desk as they seemed to want to upsell us everything that they could and I really didn't have the processing power to deal with it - I just wanted to get out and go to our friends house and lie in a dark room for a long time. It didn't help that I hadn't taken my migraine medication with me on the basis that it had opiods in it which would have got it seized by US customs..

Fortunately, we both survived and has a good time in San Francisco (hands-down my favourite US city) and, as a special bonus, got to see the 49ers beat New England at Candlestick Park. Slightly spoiled by the drunk yahoo sat behind us who, on discovering that we were British spent an hour trying to imitate our accents..

(Mine is a fairly neutral North London accent. My wife's accent is pure Janner (or was at that point - it's now Plymouth/Wiltshire. Something that more than one American seemed to have problems understanding..)

Re: Security passcodes

different floors but want to meet up for a nightcap?

There's this amazing modern invention that we like to call "stairs"...

and look at the specific spot indicated

I had this issue with a locum optician - he asked me to look at a specific letter on the chart while he was examining my bare eyeballs.

He was a bit put out when I asked which of the many graish smears on the white smear he was talking about. Then he looked at my records and went "oh".

After that he stuck to saying things like "look at the bright light" and "look top left". Which I can generally manage.

the machine shows a message not only can I not read it, chances are I don’t even know it’s there :/

Fortunately I have two solutions for this problem, having a Seeing-Eye Wife and not travelling abroad. The latter is mostly because of said SEW - she's really, really not a fan of travel.

Also because our previous pet sitters (my parents) have the bad taste to expire. I mean - don't they care about our lack of holidays?

And no, we're not about to try to put 7 cats and two dogs into catteries/doggeries. Not only are some of the cats impossible to catch (ex-feral farm cats that can seemingly sense when you are trying to catch them and have magical evaporative abilities) but trying to force all seven cats into the confines of a single cage would likely result in not having seven cats when we got back.. And, given that most places cost a fortune per pet, we'd be spending more on pet-boarding than on our holiday.

Maybe you need a new eye test? ;-)

I'd love one but I suspect that the results will be the same as the annual eye tests that I've had for the last 50 years..

Re: Habitual glasses wearer

med alert bracelets

I wear one of these - largely so, when they scrape me up off the road, they know not to risk giving my medication-soaked bits to anyone..

(I do carry a body-donor card but, since they won't even take my blood due to the medication I've been on for 20 years, I suspect that any bits they might take[1] will purely get used for medical research..Which is fine - at least I'll be more useful in death than I was alive..)

[1] Maybe corneas will be OK.

Re: Habitual glasses wearer

As long as you're wearing clean underwear

Especially if you are called Harold and there's a man[1] here from the BBC..

[1] Correct in the context of when the song was written. Not so much now

Should it really have taken so long?

I suspect that the delay is at the secure printers..

Umm no, not if you are a habitual glasses wearer

Just as well since my focal distance without glasses is about 5cm in front of the tip of my nose.. (if I have to read something when I don't have my glasses on I have to close my left eye since I have to hold it too close for stereoscopic vision to work).

Being partially-sighted sucks. Especially as you get older and presbyopia[1] kicks in..

[1] No - nothing to do with selective blindness by the POTUS..

Re: Very rare

To find managers like that

My boss 3 companies ago was like that - an American guy who taught be a lot about how to be a proper people manager (rather than just a task manager).

Unlike my time at Motorola which taught me everything about how *not* to do IT and how *not* to be a manager. Outright lying to staff isn't a good policy (and neither is promising what you can't deliver and then trying to blame the employee for your failure to deliver).

Re: The senior manager wearing a mob cap and apron

not having cleaners empting the office bins

We've gone the whole hog and dispensed with traditional office bins completely. We now instead have recycling bins at either end of the office (one for general recycling and the other for non-recylable waste).

Seems to work fine - we certainly generate less waste.

Re: Champagne

well-chilled prosecco

.. which bears the same resemblance to proper wine[1] as US Budweiser[2] does to proper beer..

[1] Defined as 'decent flavour with a proper amount of alcohol'. Can be red or white.

[2] Like Leffe Blonde or a decent German Weissbier. British Bitter tends to give me hangover symptoms even after only one pint..

Re: Champagne

drank a magnum of Moët from pint glasses

Just bought myself a proper German beer stein (OK - it was on special in Lidl). I now realise that I can fit a whole bottle of decent red wine and cut out all that tedious topping-up-the-glass nonsense..

(And no - the wine won't stay in the glass long enough to go off. And, if you are reading this My Dear [or my GP] I'm not serious.. Honest..)

Re: Champagne

I always find it difficult to wield a cutlass while in bed

No, no, NO!

Not a blunt and crude cutlass[1] - you need a proper cavalry sabre[2], sharpened until you can shave with it!

(And the technique is, apparently, to strike just where the neck flares out into the thickest area just under the cork on a slight upwards trajectory. Which pops the cork and the top of the neck off by cracking the glass and not by splintering the glass. I've never had the courage to try (or a suitable sabre).

[1] Cutlasses most often had a straight blade since you tended to be not moving quickly when you are using one whereas cavalry sabres were (almost always) curved so that slashing whilst moving past the target meant that the blade didn't get stuck. Cavalry sabres also tended to be lighter[3] than cutlasses as the speed of the horse acted as a multiplier

[2] Don't try this with a fencing sabre. It really, really doesn't work..

[3] Except for some of the heavy cavalry sabres - those were more akin to heavy basket-hilted broadswords. The heavy cavalry types tended to be a lot more slow-moving than the standard light cavalry.

Re: Beer...

And what about the antlers?

They can use them to help dig the quicklime pit out the back..

(Antler picks are surprisingly durable)

Re: Beer...

Just don't make the same mistake twice...

There's another saying: "There is no such thing as a stupid question unless you've already asked me the same question twice before and not bothered to learn the answer"..

Re: Beer...

It is also your responsibility to be sure they are able to carry out their duties or need supervision and training to be able to do so

My attitude as a manager was always "praise in public, correct in private". That and it's my job to stop the crap flowing downhill to my team - unless they really, really need to know what is about to deluge them..

(Add in responsibility to mentor - no-one starts out with the skills, experience and attitude needed to do the job and part of the managers job it to teach and encourage their staff - even if it means those staff end up with the skills and confidence to leave for a better job. I don't subscribe to the "the good of the company always comes first philosophy" unless it's in the sense that encoraging people to grow into their jobs helps both performance and morale.)

Re: The usual question applies...

What concrete evidence is there that a "state-sponsored group" was responsible

It's usually in what the 'hackers' are after. If they are looking to syphon money/bitcoin out of you (and are going after login credentials to paypal/banks et. al), they probably not state-sponsored.

If they are going after specific Government/State data or election/voting data (and targetting specific public-sector organisations or targetting political opinion) they are almost certainly state-sponsored.

Looking at what they are stealing (and who from) is pretty diagnostic.

Re: Sounds like...

but then most HR departments are useless

Most HR departments are incredibly useful - to the company. After all, they (nowadays) seem to only exist to make sure that the company is protected from its own employees..

Ah, the missing "unsend" button

Even more amusing - trying to explain to someone in HR that the 'recall' function only works in limited circumstances and *never* if you have sent it to someone external..

Re: This is why...

Sorry, fingerprint *what*?

There's a perfectly valid use for fingerprint sensors (I used to work at a company that made some very good ones - albeit fairly expensive). One of their modes was to be used in conjunction with an RFID card that stored a hash of your fingerprint (one that couldn't be reverse-engineered into the fingerprint) and then compared the scan with that hash.

The main problem it had was when things were very cold and fingers were very pale and shrivelled - since it checked that the finger was living (I don't have a clue how) it sometimes rejected the scan if your fingers were too cold.

a tribunal finds an individual more reliable in their testimony over a well lawyered corporate

Presumably because he (unlike the WLC) actually told the truth. Something that WLCs as a class are not exactly famous for..

Re: I have it on good authority ..

Is it deep rooted in British society though?

Yes. Very.

because I don't see it coming from the Britain I grew up in

Then you had a very sheltered upbringing.

Re: I have it on good authority ..

Public spending has risen year on year every year

Let me introduce you to a little thing called 'inflation'. Of course spending has gone up but I can tell you that, working in a public body as I do, that our spending has gone down. And, if you adjust for inflation, gone down fairly precipitously.

The Tories say that they have 'increased spending on xxx' without mentioning that they were the ones that cut the budgets in the first place (and yes, I know that the Blair and Brown governments were guilty of that as well).

I'm no fan of Corbyn though - I fully agree that neither he nor Boris are fit to be PM. Mind you, I'm not sure that *any* of the party leaders are..

Re: USA probably at the root of it

Can't imagine many Bedfords or Morris cars were exported to Germany

Quite a few of the million or so Morris Minors that were made got exported to various parts of Europe - including Germany.

But that was before the mid-70's when the quality of mass-produced cars in this country fell through the floor - the advice with later-build Morris Minors is "don't unless you plan a full rebuild".

Re: So if you ever wonder why Germany and Japan became so strong economically thats why

Germany was very definitely NOT economically strong at the start of WW2

Which is one of the probable reasons why Hitler invaded Poland well before his military thought that they were ready - it would have dented his myth of strength if Germany went bankrupt and couldn't feed itself.

Even during the war, the German economy never really went onto a war footing - mostly because they couldn't afford to - all the resources that they gained by invading other countries (including slave labour) didn't make up for the fact that they were living way, way beyond their means.

Re: Jet Engine

They were preparing for war. We were not

That's simply not true - Hitler was warned, time and again, by his military[1] that they really were not ready for an extended conflict. Especially one where they would have to fight a war on two fronts..

He decided to overrule them and invaded Poland anyway.

We saw the way the wind was blowing in the mid 1930s and started our own re-arming programme - not to the extent that Germany did admittedly. France did likewise (but made the huge blunder of only creating a partial perimeter defense)

[1] Especially the German Navy. They knew that they were completely outmatched by the Royal Navy and tried to make up for it by using hit and run tactics, commerce raiding and U-boat wolfpacks and, at all times, trying to avoid a face-to-face with the RN.

Re: USA probably at the root of it

They also dismantled the empire in exchange for their help

I think the politicians of the time were well aware that it was a case of 'dismantle it ourselves or lose it all through conflict that we don't have the resources to fight'.

At least the way it was done allowed the creation of the Commonwealth with its attendent benefits and allowed the UK to retain some dignity.

Of course, we have pretty much thrown that away now with the Brexit farce.

Re: USA probably at the root of it

helping to create and train the OSS

I'm surprised that we were even asked - before the US was dragged into WW2 the Royal Navy offered to teach them anti-submarine tactics (refined at great cost in ships and lives). The US Navy (predictably) refused - leading them to lose far more ships and lives before they eventually adopted similar tactics.

NIH is alive and well in the US military.

Re: Shamelessness is the new black

realise the path that the USA and UK are being led down

It's a path we've all been down before - except that this time the differentiation isn't determined by some myth of aristocracy but by wealth and access to information.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Re: Shamelessness is the new black

O brave new world / That has such people in it!

Smacked out of their heads on soma and genetically divided into classes? Sounds a lot like modern life..

Re: That's irrelevant.

it seems likely that all .org domain-holders

I've got a couple of .org.uk domains - hopefully our registrar won't do something similar. But I'm not holding my breath..

Re: I agree

The point is that .org was never intended to be exclusively for non-profits

It might not have originally been but custom and usage have established that it now is.

Re: But don't you realise

Chateaubriand

Hmmm.. Chateaubriand..

(Best steak I ever had in my life was in a high-end cafe in Paris. Since I wasn't paying, I went for a nice Chateaubriand steak with all the trimmings (no sauce though - not a fan of sauces or gravy)

Re: But don't you realise

but there are beelions to be made here!

And a swamp to drain and refill with toxic radioactive sludge..