Speedy's Cafe - General Chat about anything you like!

[Sheerluck]

16 hours ago, linear_panda said:

I have an oral presentation coming up.
Does anyone know how to get out of it in a sophisticated, non-obvious way?

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

On 6/19/2020 at 11:00 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

That is bizarre.  Do you happen to recall if the seller claimed any particular advantage over a regular ladle?  The first ones do indeed look better, but my main consideration is not getting soup on the counter -- do your squirrels drip?

The first one is not for soup, I love it more for hygienic purpose, the squirrel legs enable it to sit on the counter without the part touching the food touches the counter, if it makes sense. Because sometimes in between cooking of if you are unsure that the counter is food-grade clean, you would want to rest the cooking spoon on something instead of directly at the counter.

The nessie laddle basically, perhaps, trying to copy the squirrel but it doesn't work because the legs touch the food as well. So except from being able to stand on its own, you might as well put it on the counter. Again, from hygienic POV. 

On 6/23/2020 at 7:07 AM, linear_panda said:

Does anyone know how to get out of it in a sophisticated, non-obvious way?

Offer them two bottle of pills and tell them they have to choose one to make you do your presentation. Make sure the contain is enough for everyone.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Weird, this didn't come up on my Unread Content page.  I just happened to come to this thread to post something else.  Added:  My bad.  My touchpad is becoming less touchy with age, and apparently failed to notice when I clicked the refresh button.

Anyhow, here's the gadget that VBS is referring to below:

On 6/18/2020 at 7:44 AM, Van Buren Supernova said:

 

On 7/9/2020 at 12:00 AM, Van Buren Supernova said:

... the squirrel legs enable it to sit on the counter without the part touching the food touches the counter, if it makes sense. Because sometimes in between cooking of if you are unsure that the counter is food-grade clean, you would want to rest the cooking spoon on something instead of directly at the counter.

As you mentioned earlier, that would be useful for cooking something like rice, where what ends up on the spoon would be either plain water or something too thick to drip.  Most of what I cook would drip, though, so I'd have to (or at least ought to) wipe the counter afterward -- but I suppose that's still easier than making sure the counter is truly hygienic beforehand or else using a saucer or spoon holder (which ought to be washed or at least rinsed afterward).

I tend to be a bit casual about such things.  If I'll be using a bowl to serve the food in, I'll use it for a spoon rest.  Otherwise I just set the spoon on the counter (and if it smudges the counter, I'll probably wipe that off with a sponge later).  Whatever I'm cooking is too hot for germs to live in anyhow.  If I'm cooking for guests, that's different, but it's usually just Alex and me, and we're acclimated to each other's germs already.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

What I wanted to ask:  We need a new toilet seat, so I was looking online, and came up with one called a Tet Seat (which doesn't look like what I want, but the term puzzled me).  I did an internet search on "tet seat," and it does seem to mean some kind of toilet seat, but although the word "tet" itself has quite a few meanings, none of them seem applicable to toilets.  Has anyone encountered the word in this sense?

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

If you have to replace your toilet seat don't do it halfway man

 

[Artemis]

Just found out about this global documentary project called "Life in a Day", sponsored by YouTube.

Quote

"On Saturday, July 25, 2020, film your day and upload your footage and you may become part of a historic documentary – a time capsule of the year 2020.  ...  Anyone can participate and submissions from all over the world will be woven together to create a feature film, produced by Ridley Scott, directed by Kevin Macdonald, filmed by you, and premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival."

There was one previously made in 2010 (viewable on YouTube), so I presume they're planning to do this every decade.

Quote

"In July 2010, tens of thousands of people picked up their cameras and followed a simple invitation: show us what your day looks like.  ...  With over 80,000 clips submitted from 189 countries, Life in a Day became the biggest participatory film project ever made. From 4,500 hours of footage, Kevin Macdonald and his team created a 90-minute feature film that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube. It’s since been watched over 16 million times."

...

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Now that a lot of people can "film" by using their cell phones, there will presumably be a WHOLE lot more submissions this time!

 

[Artemis]

4 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Now that a lot of people can "film" by using their cell phones, there will presumably be a WHOLE lot more submissions this time!

I was thinking the same thing.  I’m curious to see how many more there will be.

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

On 7/26/2020 at 4:04 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

Now that a lot of people can "film" by using their cell phones, there will presumably be a WHOLE lot more submissions this time!

Ugh, it would be hard to differentiate a real life, and instagram life for example.

 

Meawhile,

[Carol the Dabbler]

12 minutes ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

it would be hard to differentiate a real life, and instagram life

Good point.     That "day in the life" project could start to look like our Funny Animal Pictures thread (meaning that I suspect a good many of those pet pix are staged.)

[Carol the Dabbler]

I just came across this web page which has a nifty chart showing annual hours per worker for several dozen countries.  The figures "include regular work hours of full-time, part-time and part-year workers, paid and unpaid overtime, hours worked in additional jobs."  But the annual hours vary quite a lot, from a high of 2,137 in Mexico to a low of 1,380 in Denmark.

Which got me to wondering, what is considered "normal" in various countries?  Here in the US (where we average 1,779 hours per year), a full-time job is legally defined as anywhere between 30 and 40 hours per week, but common usage seems to be more like 35 to 40 hours per five-day work week.  And we typically get two to four weeks of paid vacation per year, usually depending on how long we've been with the company.

So, what is considered a normal work week in your country?  And how many weeks of vacation are typical?

 

[J.P.]

Okay, let's see. The normal in Germany is mostly 40 h / 5 days a week.
Where I work, we have 38,5 h/w with quite flexible times. Now with Corona and home office, they are even more flexible. I'm working 30h/w which is considered part-time but it doesn't change anything but the payment.
We've got 24-30 paid days of vacation, depending on company.

But I remember…
As I was at school, in Poland we've actually had 6 day weekdays, with 46 h/w, then it slowly changed into 1 free Saturday a month, then it was 1 "working" Saturdays a month. It changed to 5d/w some time in the 90ies.
When I started working I've had two weeks of paid vacation - must have been 10 or 12 days, but they counted Sat/Sun into it (or was it only Sat?) After 10 years of working you've got 1 month.

[Carol the Dabbler]

So the US has a German work week and Polish vacations. 

Companies over here generally express vacation allotments in days per year, meaning work days, but employees generally express them in weeks, meaning work weeks.  So I assume if your work week was six days, then 12 days would be two work weeks.

 

[besleybean]

I work in a school...

so simple for me!

[Carol the Dabbler]

Just in case some of you aren't already familiar with it, there's a website called Find A Grave where you can look up deceased people to see where they're buried (or scattered or whatever).  I think it started out listing famous people, but any deceased person can be added, and anyone can join and post new entries or suggest changes to existing ones.  For example, here's their listing for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Anyhow, I wanted to have a look at my aunt's page (don't even recall why now), and saw that it listed two deceased children.    I assumed that someone had accidentally linked the "extra" child to the wrong mother.  But then I noticed that he had died in the same year he was born, and got curious enough to load his page and saw that he'd lived only about a week.  Also, he was born about a year and a half before the son I was aware of (and well before I was born).  And he was born in the city where my aunt and uncle lived at the time, but he was buried in another town, in a cemetery where quite a number of our relatives are interred.  So it does sound plausible.

My brother was totally unaware of this as well.  I need to phone my aunt's daughter, who is still living, and see if she can confirm this.  But it's really weird to find out that I once had a cousin that I didn't even know had ever existed.

 

[Arcadia]

On a completely different subject ... does anyone else have one of those convertible laptops? You know, that ones that are also supposed to act like an iPad if you want it to? In other words, it has a touch screen, and you can adjust the screen size with gestures, stuff like that. 

I was given one, and not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I loathe it. It is constantly going into "iPad mode" whether I want it to or not, changing screen size because I touch something, jumping from one app or screen to another without warning ... and then freezes up because it's gotten itself so confused.

What I want to know is ... can you turn off all the stupid bells and whistles and make it just act like a plain old laptop? For a while there I thought I'd managed to deactivate the touch screen, but it's been worse than ever lately. It's an HP Pavilion, and I miss my old Dell so much it hurts......

[Artemis]

I have one (a Lenovo), but I don't have any problems with it at all, so I'm not quite sure how to help.  I rarely touch the screen and it operates just like a regular laptop.  If I were you I'd poke around in the Windows Settings, particularly the settings for your display (under System) and touchpad (under Devices).  My touchpad was set to perform specific operations if I brushed my fingers certain ways, and I pretty much turned all of those off right after I got the laptop, which seemed to help a lot.  I'm not sure where touchscreen settings might be, but there is a setting called 'Tablet' that might help you.  (I can't say for sure because I don't want to risk messing around with mine, lol.)  Go to Windows Settings > System > Tablet.

 

[Caya]

This seems to be a fairly common problem, because HP has its own help page for it: https://store.hp.com/us/en/tech-takes/how-to-turn-off-touch-screen . Did that work for you?

[Arcadia]

Okay, thanks ladies. I've spent some time rummaging around Caya's link and in the Settings menu, and I think Artie's on the right track ... most of my problems seem to stem from the touchpad settings. Certain gestures produce certain results, evidently. I'm not aware of making any gestures, but it's acting as if I do. What I really want is to disable them, but so far I can't find any way to do so. I adjusted the sensitivity, let's see if that helps.

I have noticed that the problem gets worse the longer the laptop is left on, which makes me think the whole unit is, basically, a piece of crap and needs to be replaced with a better product.  

The best laptops I've owned were both Dell "business" products ... better software, longer lasting hardware (but poor hinge design ... that's what killed both of them). Alas, they were both bought and configured for me by someone else, I haven't a clue how to pick one out myself. Sigh, more stuff to learn..............

[Carol the Dabbler]

Alex and I have a couple of Dell laptops (and I have mine hooked up to a Dell monitor).  We've just about decided to stick with that brand, partly because there's a place in Texas that will fix them -- they send you a prepaid shipping box, you send them the laptop, they fix it and send it back -- for a very reasonable fee.  We've used them several times, with excellent results.  Dunno if they can do hinges (we've never had that problem, perhaps because we generally leave our machines set up like desktop computers), but if you still have either of your Dells, you could give 'em a try.

They're called Parts-People.com.

 

[Arcadia]

Thanks. I still have the last one, because the Hazardous Materials Recycling Facility has been closed since COVID started and I'm determined not to throw it in the regular trash. But it's so ancient it's not worth repairing. Probably couldn't even run the current version of Windows on it.

Which reminds me ... when I recycled the one before it, I decided to take out the hard drive and smash it, as I'd read (more than once) that someone could get hold of it and steal all your data. Took it out and threw it onto the pavement ... no damage. Banged it with a rock ... no damage. Set it under my car wheel and drove over it a couple of times ... no damage. I finally ended up whanging away at it with a hammer, barely made a dent, gave up, and threw it away in the regular trash. I figured if anyone could dig it out of the landfill they were welcome to it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Loads easier to reformat it -- but it'd have to be in a working computer for that.  

Alex sometimes gets emails from Dell when their laptops are on sale, and they sometimes have some pretty good deals.  I'll see if he can tell me how you could get on that mailing list.  OK, he's asleep (sensible fellow!), but I just sent him an email.

 

 

[J.P.]

Usual reformatting discs will only delete the directories. The data itself is still there and a specialist can still access them. There are options on the newer devices with the names like secure delete or similar. You could try to fill your disc with some huge amount of trash data, but it would take a lot of time.

[Carol the Dabbler]

9 hours ago, J.P. said:

Usual reformatting discs will only delete the directories.

Thanks.  I guess I'm behind the times, because that used to rewrite the sector headers, so that (depending on the exact process) if any data was still physically present, it was inaccessible to anyone except major hackers.

9 hours ago, J.P. said:

You could try to fill your disc with some huge amount of trash data, but it would take a lot of time.

With discs now holding several gig, yeah!  (Or am I behind the times there as well -- anybody doing terabytes yet?)

 

[Artemis]

4 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

anybody doing terabytes yet?

I've seen hard drives as big as 2 terabytes.  I've heard talk of 15 - 20 TB drives but haven't seen one offered in a PC yet.