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Fail of Your Day

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  • edited February 2010
    "If you don't want to deal with security, don't fly in an airplane."
    Or you know, interface with the modern world.
    Post edited by WindUpBird on
  • My fail of the day is the awkward technical difficulties in the lighting of the Olympic torch.
  • My initial response is "If you don't want to deal with security, don't fly in an airplane."
    Except that it's all fake security.
  • edited February 2010
    Except that it's all fake security.
    Body scans aren't fake, per my understanding. Nor is x-ray scanning, metal detection, or bomb sniffing dogs. Patdowns, swabbing, 3oz or less, No Fly lists, Facial Recognition, that sort of stuff is all theater.
    Post edited by WindUpBird on
  • edited February 2010
    Except that it's all fake security.
    Incorrect. It's not all fake security. For example, the body scanners are a good idea, because they fix the shortcomings of the metal detector. A college of mine when I was flying was stabbed and gashed on flight but a crazy trying to rush the cockpit, armed with wooden stakes. With the body scanners, this wouldn't have happened, though this is just one example.
    I won't deny there isn't a ton of security theater, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's all theater, because that's equally as stupid an assumption as thinking none of it is theater.
    Post edited by Churba on
  • edited February 2010
    No, I think it's Rym. Is that a mudkip in the background?
    image
    Rym of The Mudkips leads his flock to shore...


    O__O!!!!!!!! X(
    GAGH!!! This took me the better part of 2 hours! TWO HOURS!! WHY DO I DO THIS?!?!?! THIS is my fail of the day.
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • Where is the dildo?
  • Where is the dildo?
    Picky, aren't we?
  • The story of part one of my flight home:

    I waited by the cruise for my taxi, which didn't seem to be booked by anyone, and once it was finally sorted I set off with about 45 minutes to go before my flight. Thankfully the airport in Ushuaia is pretty close to the town, because everything is pretty close to the town. It's not very big. I arrived at the airport 35 minutes before my flight, and nobody seemed to understand the hurry I was in, or seemed concerned that I might not catch my plane. It turned out the flight had been delayed for an hour and twenty minutes, so I had time to kill.

    I spent this extra time chatting to Ryan and Lola (two other entertainers from the cruise) about how I'd like to buy a new, bigger, more powerful laptop, and then sometime this year get some an ebook reader or tablet device so I don't have to always carry my laptop.

    Oh, and my hand luggage, because it was an internal flight up to Buenos Aires, was too heavy for the 5kg limit. So I took out my laptop and just checked it, no problem. My laptop has this neoprene case, which protects it quite nicely, so I wasn't worried about putting it in the overhead locker above my seat. Why am I even mentioning this?

    All was well until an hour or so into the flight. I was asleep, of course, but the seatbelt sign was turned on, because the pilot thought there might be some turbulence. He was right. First it woke me up. Then the turbulence started getting quite heavy, and progressively got more and more severe until it was far worse than anything I've ever experienced.

    Normally turbulence makes the plane go up and down, but this time the plane was twisting in the air, shaking everyone about heavily. People were screaming and everything. It was intense.

    Then there was an extra big jolt. I was sitting in the very back row of the plane, and one of the cabin crew was standing beside me in the aisle. The steward flew up (or, to look at it from a wider perspective, he stayed still and the plane dropped down), he struck really hard, flat against the ceiling, stayed there for a split second, then collapsed onto his face on the floor of the aisle.

    Everyone else had their seat belts on, so we were just thrown about violently but safely, although crap was flying all over the place. I clenched my hand so tightly that I gouged a chunk of skin out my thumb. I had jackets and iPods in my lap that didn't belong to me, and the guy sitting beside me lost hold of his book completely. Everyone was freaking out, including me. I didn't scream, but I might have yelped quite a bit.

    The steward got up and found somewhere to strap in, and he'd obviously hurt the back of his head quite badly. The turbulence continued for a while, but there wasn't a repeat of such enforced aerobatics.

    This was, by far, the most scared I've ever been on a plane, and I fly a lot. My hands were shaking and sweating, and the plane was making so many noises that I've never heard before. And I fly a lot, with over 50 flights last year. It is the only time I've ever believed we might not make it to the ground safely.

    After a few minutes the turbulence died down, mostly. Strangely enough, people started getting up to use the toilet right away, even though the seatbelt sign remained switched on until the end of the flight. I think only the six of us on the very last row saw the steward hit the ceiling above our heads. Those on the next few rows forward might have think he just fell on his face. Nobody else seemed to think it was FUCKING STUPID to get up and walk around so soon after such bad turbulence.

    We did, of course, land safely. The many Japanese passengers gave the pilot a round of applause when the rear wheels hit the runway, but I thought I'd wait until we stopped. Which took a looong time. I guess the pilot wanted to slow down gently, as the plane had had enough stress for one flight.

    To bring it back to the laptop, I just opened it and found the plastic body is cracked, and the trackpad button is making a strange noise. As long as the trackpad stays fully functional it'll be good for a while yet, but it means I'll be buying a new macbook pro (with an aluminum body) as soon as the next update to that line is announced.
  • edited February 2010
    Life has just become a bit more meaningless:/
    Damn it, that was one of my favorite podcasts, but something had to go not only was he putting over 4+ podcasts a week, he was also doing an online comic, played WoW and other video games, was raising two kids and was working through most of it. Not to mention putting on a small "convention" every year by himself. He made Rym and Scott look like slackers :-p Was always curious how he did it. Maybe people won't confuse me with him as much now :-p
    That show injected a great deal of humor and optimism into my week. I can still listen to Film Sack and FourCast, though, so all is good.

    Am I reading too much into it that the continuing shows in no way include Obsidian? I don't want to go all Churba here with the conspiracies, but....
    Post edited by Jason on
  • GAGH!!! This took me the better part of 2 hours! TWO HOURS!! WHY DO I DO THIS?!?!?! THIS is my fail of the day.
    Well, it's a very good job, at least. I'm guessing that masking out the hair was a big part of that. Do you know how to use layer masks? Channels?
  • @Luke
    Wow, that's freaking intense. I'm glad you're okay.
  • edited February 2010
    GAGH!!! This took me the better part of 2 hours! TWO HOURS!! WHY DO I DO THIS?!?!?! THIS is my fail of the day.
    Well, it's a very good job, at least. I'm guessing that masking out the hair was a big part of that. Do you know how to use layer masks? Channels?
    The hair was difficult. The source photo was one of Rym in Costa Rica, so the background was green. No I don't know what a layer mask is, but doing this photo helped me learn a lot about Photoshop; in particular about color replacement, balance, levels, and curves. Also, I got to experiment with opacity and flow levels with the eraser and brushes, specifically when it came to getting rid of the the shirt collars and blending Rym's skin with Daniel Craig's much darker, pinker skin.
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • Also, I got to experiment with opacity and flow levels with the eraser and brushes, specifically when it came to getting rid of the the shirt collars and blending Rym's skin with Daniel Craig's much darker, pinker skin.
    This is exactly the sort of thing you need to learn about layer masks for. It makes it a lot easier. Here:
  • Also, I got to experiment with opacity and flow levels with the eraser and brushes, specifically when it came to getting rid of the the shirt collars and blending Rym's skin with Daniel Craig's much darker, pinker skin.
    This is exactly the sort of thing you need to learn about layer masks for. It makes it a lot easier.
    Cool! I didn't know they were so useful.
  • My car is 100% stuck in the ice. I shoveled all I possibly could, but it's still stuck. No ice-melting items, no rope or items for traction, not enough people here to even help me physically push it...not being able to use my car suuuuuuuuuuuucks. (Lucky NYC people are their epic public transportation system)

    Which is pain, because I have to drive to my brother's tomorrow. Curse you ice!
  • My printmaking professor had us commute to Houston today for several museum trips. To our knowledge, we were to have one trip. He didn't tell us about the other stops, and did not give us an itinerary. Few of us had the ability to carpool, so it was an extreme inconvenience. Besides that, however, it was a fairly interesting trip, despite the two hour commute to and from Houston.
  • edited February 2010
    two hour commute to and from Houston.
    Rush hour? If so I feel your pain, the freeways suck hard around then. Even if not, Houston roads still tend to suck.
    Post edited by Shiam on
  • two hour commute to and from Houston.
    Rush hour? If so I feel your pain, the freeways suck hard around then. Even if not, Houston roads still tend to suck.
    Yes, on top of an 80 mile route.
  • Yesterday circumstances conspired to make me declare International Backup Awareness Day.

    I was literally in the middle of changing my backup setup when my Laptops drive crapped out. I didn't lose any of my data since I only temporarily dropped to one full backup, down from three. The fail of my day is that the one backup that was still operational was effing hard and time consuming to access. So instead of popping a new drive in and clicking "restore" I had to spend a several hours resetting passwords, accessing old accounts, etc.

    The upshot is that this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade to an SSD :-).
  • Yesterday circumstances conspired to make me declare International Backup Awareness Day. --snip--
    The upshot is that this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade to an SSD :-).
    I'm certainly going to get one with my next/impending laptop purchase. See my previous fail.
  • edited February 2010
    Yesterday circumstances conspired to make me declare International Backup Awareness Day. --snip--
    The upshot is that this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade to an SSD :-).
    I'm certainly going to get one with my next/impending laptop purchase. See my previous fail.
    Since you mentioned that you use TimeMachine, I'll share this: If you are backing up to a networked TM (sparsebundle) back up really important stuff separately. Sparsebundles have a design flaw (which is the reason I was in the middle of changing my backup strategies) in that there is a single point of failure in a token file, which if corrupted renders the entire sparsebundle useless. This is particularly annoying in that the token file contains just static metadata stored in the extended attributes (the token itself has no size) so it would have been easy to have designed it such that you have redundant copies, e.g., one in every sparsebundle band.
    Post edited by Dr. Timo on
  • Yesterday circumstances conspired to make me declare International Backup Awareness Day. --snip--
    The upshot is that this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade to an SSD :-).
    I'm certainly going to get one with my next/impending laptop purchase. See my previous fail.
    Since you mentioned that you use TimeMachine, I'll share this: If you are backing up to a networked TM (sparsebundle) back up really important stuff separately. Sparsebundles have a design flaw (which is the reason I was in the middle of changing my backup strategies) in that there is a single point of failure in a token file, which if corrupted renders the entire sparsebundle useless. This is particularly annoying in that the token file contains just static metadata stored in the extended attributes (the token itself has no size) so it would be easy to have redundant copies, e.g., one in every sparsebundle band.
    I have no idea what you're talking about. All my backups are done via usb cable to external hard drives.
  • edited February 2010
    I have no idea what you're talking about. All my backups are done via usb cable to external hard drives.
    Then you're fine.

    And the SSD: oh mans, apps launching before the icon has time to bounce once!
    Post edited by Dr. Timo on
  • My fail? I wrenched my lower back yesterday picking up a pillow off the floor for Kate who had just wrenched her shoulder fighting off Kodiak bears, and am now laid up like an invalid.
  • My fail? I wrenched my lower back yesterdaypicking up a pillow off the floor for Kate who had just wrenched her shoulderfighting off Kodiak bears, and am now laid up like an invalid.
    You Jewish men go from 30 to 70 in like a few months apparently :-p
  • Argggh, attempted to file tax returns but for some reason the site I use EVERY year is not letting me view my prior year return to get the information I require. Awesome. (Fuck you H&R Block)
  • It's Valentine's Day.
  • It's Valentine's Day.
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