• 5 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • but they will continue to come and go, regardless of our input

    I’m not quite sure you understand the problem with climate change. It’s not that “they” will come and go, it’s that WE will only go. There’s no “coming” back with any reasonable immediacy. Or were you arguing that the stones wouldn’t be there for exhibition by the jellyfish that would be the only thing left living in the oceans?

    Now, it is my opinion that when Brawndo finally pushes the climate over the tipping point and life as we know it takes its final breath, that natural selection will do what it has always done and though life will change, it will persist in some form. So were humans able to outlast this foreboding obstacle and humanity persists, then so be it, but I honestly doubt they’ll give a shit about fucking stonehenge. If there were some life lessons from the past that only stonehenge can communicate, then it has obviously failed.


  • My favorite was finding out that bit locker was enabled on a forced update. The key was saved to the Microsoft account that was used to set up the lappy. Except, I didn’t use a Microsoft account because I’m not some tech marionette lemming who needs Gates hand shoved up my ass to tell me how to use my fucking computer. So I used a local account and disabled bitlocker via bios.

    Nothing was lost, but it was still a pain in the dick hole.


  • ZMonster@lemmy.worldtoMemes@sopuli.xyzPathetic.
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    16 days ago

    Lol, so true. I always try to share the reach with others when I can. But after being married for about 15 years at the time, I found a bag of candy on top of the books on the bottom shelf. So I went around the house checking all the low areas and there was a veritable TROVE of sweets - everywhere. They were even in the garage that only I use. Partner was horrified that I found them and then wouldn’t say how long this had gone on for. I can only assume the entire time because I did find a few things like chocolate oranges that they only sell around the holidays. Every once in a while nowadays I see a wrapper, but the stash has been replaced and no one is talking. Mischievous.




  • There’s a timing tolerance you can program. So if you only want to count double axles or get the speed data based on a presumed axle spacing, you can program that in. But, if you feel you must spoof it, listen to the sets of tires as they cross the hose and match that timing while stomping on the hose. You need to stomp pretty hard to get the hose to compress enough and you need to generate an air hammer pressure wave within the hose. This and the intensity is what is measured by the device and recorded as an event.

    But these modules are left for weeks to months. So if the counts are all in the, let’s say, 300 range daily but then one single day shows 1000, that day’s data is typically removed from the set. Outliers can happen for all kinds of reasons (e.g. failure, hose break, weather, loss of solar power, unusual or atypical activities, children young and old). So, if the counts are wildly different than prior years’ counts, daily/weekly/monthly inconsistent, beyond comprehension, or obviously defective; they can set up more than one device if they need and some devices can receive more than one input. They can also program the device with multiple inputs to only record data within a specific range of parameters. So there are lots of ways to limit the shenanigans in the data.

    And you’d be surprised at how much traffic some roads get. Even some residential roads would see thousands daily. So if you really want to bump up the priority of the road, you would be better off driving over it all day, every day until it was removed; because you’d destroy your leg trying to stomp on it that many times. And you’d have to do this on all adjacent and feeder roads to support that data. And you’d have to ensure that you do this every year until you recognize the desired effects of your endeavor, and then you’d have to continue this practice in perpetuity. Or the jig is up!

    DOT Jail!


  • Sure, they’re nothing special, but they were intense at the time. Especially for a bunch of summer interns that had the misfortune of needing to find employment during a recession. I was an engineering student and my cohorts were all in the sciences as well. For being a job that required hammering, measuring, and not getting hit by traffic it was one of the more stimulating jobs I’ve ever worked.

    So the typical process for us was to drive to the site, usually it was just a road segment from a list (3-5 year annually rotating lists). We had a truck bed filled with precut hoses, solar powered counting modules, spikes, and then wire mesh hose retainers. We would get the appropriate size hose, slip on retainers, hammer in the spikes, and attach and program the module.

    One day a fellow in a pickem’up truck followed us from one road to the next telling us that we had no authority to be there and he would sue if we didn’t take our computers and leave. The next day, at a completely different part of the city (honestly, I have no idea how he found us) he jumped out of his truck and racked a shell in his shotgun. We all just left everything and got in the truck and drove away with him standing there shit talking. The equipment was gone but the police knew the guy. They got our stuff back. They didn’t get my buddies coffee thermos though and he was pretty bent out of shape about that. I think it was old or his dad’s or something. But never saw that guy again.

    We would constantly get approached by homeless people who wanted to know what we were doing. I always tried to be as informative as possible but most of the time the basic concept was too confounding. The orange vests were always a problem. One guy asked me why I only have one cone. I still laugh about that today. Just the question. Fucking hilarious. The things you don’t think to ask. It was completely legit too. We were daily put in situations where we were inches from traffic. A single cone and a truck were the only things between oncoming traffic and our faces. Why only one cone? We had to cross roads to attach the hose on the other side. If we require a cone for traffic going this way, why don’t we require one going that way? Is the cone FOR THE TRUCK?!?

    dumbMeme

    What a treasure of a memory that was.

    EDIT:

    I forgot, there was a contractor who did the leftover work that was occasionally needed the rest of the year, but he was always out of work during the summer and he didn’t like that. So one night I was driving past one of the modules that we set up the week before and there was a frumpy looking guy walking back to his car that was parked very near it on the sidewalk. So the next day I found out who he was from the supervisor and went to the site to check it out. He had unlocked the module and slipped in a piece of paper that just said, “you’re a bitch”. Fucking ROFL.


  • Allow me to share some personal experiences when setting those up. Nimby’s would approach us and rant about how we were only there to justify a new stop sign or speed bump. A few times we were approached by ding dongs wielding weapons. And every once in a while people like to sabotage or steal the equipment. But once they tamper with the equipment enough times they basically get put on the shit list so their road doesn’t get serviced they don’t get plow service they don’t get anything. Maybe this was their goal maybe not who knows they’re idiots.

    Honestly, highway data is used for all kinds of things but mostly for planning repairs, upgrades, and modifications. Redesigning things like intersections, traffic lights, and stop signs are rarely the result of this sort of highway data collection. It’s reported collisions and fatalities that drive safety interventions.

    But again, we’re talking about nimby’s who are all fucking idiots.










  • I called his son dumb because choosing to join the military to fight in the Iraq invasion was dumb when he obviously didn’t come from a poor family and thus didn’t even need to do this due to a lack of job opportunities.

    As you have demonstrated, anyone is susceptible to misunderstanding. It does not discriminate by class or privilege. People join for many reasons. I wanted to get a warm meal, warm bed, and die. But others from my meps felt that they had familial or generational obligations. Some wanted the career and had great options. It’s a fantastic and debt free way of getting respectable credentials and high-speed to boot. But I don’t know a single person who honestly believed they were supporting genocide or imperialism, what have you. There were a lot of dumb people, but they risked it for their own reasons in a way you never could or likely ever will. And I will always cry for those that gave it all. Some of us are dealing with our guilt and doing what we can to prepare the next generation for the pitfalls they face. So spit at us all you want. There’s not thing one you can say that will make me loath myself more than I ever have. And I’m dealing with that too.

    I hope you are never in a place that makes you tangibly consider these choices you so virulently despise. You are still someone’s compatriot and you deserve that.