Randomness XVII: The Madness of the Quorum

[Serenity]

RTB Pro Tips! Fire Giant NMM(non-metallic metal) Gold!! - started at 11:35 AM.  Anne is painting 77614 Skorg Ironskull, Fire Giant King (Huge).

 

https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures/

[Glitterwolf]

I have been busy with cobblestones /pavement again, the new gazebo stands.

Now to rearrange an expand the pavement.

 

We're in the process of hunting for a new kitchen, it will probably be January before it can be installed.

And now our combi-magnetron in the current kitchen makes a noise while it's working.

A squeaking noise, it does heat well.

Hope it isn't something bad, I hate to have to repair or replace an oven when we will have a new kitchen within 6 months.

( providing the price of the kitchen is right, we will hear back from 1st company wednesday, and we will visit the 2nd one saturday).

[haldir]

1 hour ago, Thoramel said:

 

Yeah, but it's only about 2 meters long and only has a about a 0.4% chance of entering the atmosphere. So we're good.

 

Ah, but remember this is 2020 & we all know when it happens, IT HAPPENS!

[TGP]

1 hour ago, Cygnwulf said:

1 hour ago, NebulousMissy said:

Hah! I don't have to go to work today! Instead I have to write a lecture, call people about getting a university email already, get my student list from the professor, and roll d20s to assign random datasets.

 

Hey, I was told to assign data randomly. No constraints on how 

 

Probably more random than any attempt you could make at random within your own head.  I say it's good. 

 

There is a webpage, an app, and a research group called RANDOM.ORG. But failing that, d20 should be sufficient. The PhDs behind Random.Org are on a continual quest for True Randomness as opposed to pseudo random numbers.

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

22 hours ago, Mad Jack said:

Well, okay then - Jack is now only mildly irritated with EvilBuy. 

 

 Jack had won two auctions on EvilBuy, but neither of them were showing up in his cart so he could pay for them. Both auction pages said "You won..." but had  no "pay now" option and hadn't shown up on his unpaid items list or purchase history.

But now they've finally shown up an hour later.

 

Stupid EvilBuy. 

 

 

 

I've come across that as well, it told me I won 9 items but I could only see 8 in my cart. It took a bit of time for the update to happen, and I had to message the seller twice to combine shipping with another order I had.

[haldir]

The joy & frustration of finding a model kit. So I've decided to build up cars, that are media/entertainment iconic to me. Looking at online resources or the '66 Batmobile I came across the Mach 5 model. Now Speed Racer never really was a favorite but I did like the car. I also remember buying a model many, many years ago as well. I also remembered Polar Lights released like 2 or 3 versions of the model (prepainted, snap together & full glue kit). Looking on ebay prices are reasonable for a Out of print model. The thing is, they've updated the box art on all the kits since I bought my kit & all of them are out of print, sigh. 

 

Luckily, you can find the instruction sheets as pdfs. I was able to find out which kit was the glue kit. Now I mentioned I bought that kit. Looking for it this morning I came across it!! WAhhooo!!! I've started a inventory as I started this kit. The biggest thing I see is, I'm missing the wheels (HTH did that happen???). So it appears I have my kit, I just need the wheels, so in turn, I'm gonna have to buy a full kit.

 

 

[OneBoot]

4 hours ago, kristof65 said:

It's a good Monday when I can be the first one in, and have the service queue cleared before any of the other techs arrive. 

Crap, I probably just cursed us. 

 

Yeah, probably.

 

Over the years, I've come to the conclusion I have the minor and quite annoying power of jinxing something if I say it's going well.* The more often I say it, the more likely it is something bad will happen regarding the thing I'm talking about. 

 

*Not scientifically tested

 

Case in point: On Thursday, things were going amazingly well at work. We were not only caught up, but keeping up with all the new paperwork that was coming in. I was doing all the filing while NewTemp was doing the data entry. Awesome Coworker, who just recently became Awesome Team Lead, was doing team lead-ish stuff. I commented a few times how nice it was to be caught up, how lovely all the empty paperwork in-trays looked, etc. I should have paid closer attention to the small alarm bell ringing in the back of my mind that I should really have stopped saying that. 

 

For the next part to make sense, a little background: After the test results are faxed to us, someone (usually one of the nurses whose office is by the fax machine) will grab the giant stack of faxes and sort them into Filing Room Paperwork (the covid test results) and Nurse Paperwork (everything else). They then make copies of all the test results, put the copies on a nearby table with the envelopes so they can be mailed out to folks, then bring the original faxes into the Filing Room. 

 

Thursday morning, there was only one nurse, and she was in a meeting, so I thought I'd be helpful and do the sorting and stuff myself; I'd done it a couple of times before, and it's pretty straightforward. So I took the stack into the Filing Room to sort it out (mistake #1). After putting the Nurse Paperwork back in their area, I proceeded to separate out the Positive test results from the Negative ones (since we have a slightly different process for those). I finished just before our group's morning meeting, so, wanting to be efficient, I took the pile of Positives with me so I could enter them during the meeting (it's a fairly casual affair, so I knew I wasn't going to be distracting while doing so). Bonus points if you've already spotted the big problem in my story; you noticed looong before I did.... 

 

The day progressed smoothly, and by about 3pm all of the labs for the day had been data entered, stapled to their req forms, and filed. I'd just finished filing the last record when a volunteer showed up. Since we were caught up on filing and phone calls, I showed her to the mailing table so she could address envelopes. I noticed that the 'Copies Inbox' was empty, and assumed someone else had grabbed the stack to work on at their desk (it happens sometimes). So I told her to wait for Awesome Team Lead to return from her break in a couple minutes to see if she needed help with anything. I then sat down to start alphabetizing the req forms for the next day.

 

As I was doing so, ATL returned and was chatting with Volunteer, but I wasn't really listening, since a thought was knocking at my mind and I was trying to focus on it. Something about the Copies Intray was bothering me, but I couldn't quite figure out what-

 

It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I jerked upright, startlingly the others, and said in a voice close to panic, "I never made the copies this morning!"

 

Dead silence. 

 

The other three are now staring at me; Volunteer with polite interest, NewTemp with mild confusion, and ATL with dawning horror. 

 

I buried my face in my hands and repeated my statement, adding that the originals are already stapled and filed.

 

All 150+ of them.

 

Even if we were able to filter through the boxes of records to find them all, which would take hours, they have staples in them. Which means we wouldn't be able to run them through the scanner as a stack, but would have to copy each one. Individually. One at a time.  (Note: this is the same problem that Medical Records Manager was freaking out about in The Staples Saga. I now have significantly more sympathy for her plight.)

 

I was busy panicking and close to tears and trying not to throw up (since I'd literally had a nightmare about this very thing happening), and the rest had stopped what they were doing to brainstorm how to fix this problem. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, it may have been me even, but someone suggested getting the fax machine to resend everything after a certain time/date (all our results for that day had come in after 9pm the previous day). So after poking through the fax machine menus with nothing looking promising, we call up one of our IT Guys to see if he can work some form of technomancy and make our problem magically go away. My hopes weren't too high, and indeed after looking through various options and reports, he regretfully informed us that the machine only stores a record that a fax was received and where it was sent from, not the content of the fax itself. I thanked him and hung up. 

 

Work slowly resumed, though we continued to brainstorm fiercely. ATL then had the idea to have the lab resend over everything they'd sent after 5pm yesterday. I offered to make the call, since it was my blunder, but she said not to worry about it and took care of it herself. Our point of contact over there, LabSara, wasn't in her office, so ATL left a message to call us back ASAP. We kept working, though we were all listening hopefully for the phone to ring. ATL told Volunteer she could go home if she liked, since there wasn't anything for her to do (she'd been politely and patiently waiting to be noticed again this entire time). 

 

30 mins later, LabSara did indeed call back, and ATL, bless her generous soul, explained what had happened in the best possible way, stating that "we were so efficient today, we skipped a step in our process!" LabSara laughed, ATL laughed, I nearly cried from relief, and to make a long story short, the required labs were indeed refaxed and mailed out properly. 

 

So, I learned two lessons that day:

1) Do not, under any circumstances, make idle statements to the room at large that things are going "well" or "better than expected" or "smoothly". (Reporting this to supervisors, though, seems to not trigger the effect)

2) Guess which mistake I'm never, ever going to make again?  

 

Huzzah! 

--OneBoot :D 

Edited August 24, 2020 by OneBoot

[Cygnwulf]

4 minutes ago, OneBoot said:

2) Guess which mistake I'm never, ever going to make again?  

Not sticking your foot in your mouth fast enough? 

[Dilvish the Deliverer]

5 minutes ago, OneBoot said:

 

Yeah, probably.

 

Over the years, I've come to the conclusion I have the minor and quite annoying power of jinxing something if I say it's going well.* The more often I say it, the more likely it is something bad will happen regarding the thing I'm talking about. 

 

*Not scientifically tested

 

Case in point: On Thursday, things were going amazingly well at work. We were not only caught up, but keeping up with all the new paperwork that was coming in. I was doing all the filing while NewTemp was doing the data entry. Awesome Coworker, who just recently became Awesome Team Lead, was doing team lead-ish stuff. I commented a few times how nice it was to be caught up, how lovely all the empty paperwork in-trays looked, etc. I should have paid closer attention to the small alarm bell ringing in the back of my mind that I should really stop saying that. 

 

For the next part to make sense, a little background: After the test results are faxed to us, someone (usually one of the nurses whose office is by the fax machine) will grab the giant stack of faxes and sort them into Filing Room Paperwork (the covid test results) and Nurse Paperwork (everything else). They then make copies of all the test results, put the copies on the table with the envelopes so they can be mailed out to folks, then bring the original faxes into the Filing Room. 

 

Thursday morning, there was only one nurse, and she was in a meeting, so I thought I'd be helpful and do the sorting and stuff myself. I'd done it a couple of times before, and it's pretty straightforward. So I took the stack into the Filing Room to sort it out (mistake #1). After putting the Nurse Paperwork back in their area, I proceeded to separate out the Positive test results from the Negative ones (since we have a slightly different process for those). I finished just before our group's morning meeting, so, wanting to be efficient, I took the pile of Positives with me so I could enter them during the meeting (it's a fairly casual affair, so I knew I wasn't going to be distracting while doing so). Bonus points if you've already spotted the big problem in my story; you noticed looong before I did...

 

The day progressed smoothly, and by about 3pm all of the labs for the day had been data entered, stapled to their req forms, and filed. I'd just finished filing the last record when a volunteer showed up. Since we were caught up on filing and phone calls, I showed her to the mailing table so she could address envelopes. I noticed that the 'Copies Inbox' was empty, and assumed someone else had grabbed the stack to work on at their desk (it happens sometimes). So I told her to wait for Awesome Team Lead to return from her break in a couple minutes to see if she needed help with anything. I then sat down to start alphabetizing the req forms for the next day.

 

As I was doing so, ATL returned and was chatting with Volunteer, but I wasn't really listening, since a thought was knocking at my mind and I was trying to focus on it. Something about the Copies Intray was bothering me, but I couldn't quite figure out what-

 

It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I jerked upright, startlingly the others, and said in a voice close to panic, "I never made the copies this morning."

 

Dead silence. 

 

The other three are now staring at me; Volunteer with polite interest, NewTemp with mild confusion, and ATL with dawning horror. 

 

I buried my face in my hands and repeated my statement, adding that the originals are already stapled and filed.

 

All 150+ of them.

 

Even if we were able to filter through the boxes of records to find them all, which would take hours, they have staples in them. Which means we wouldn't be able to run them through the scanner as a stack, but would have to copy each one. Individually. One at a time.  (Note: this is the same problem that Medical Records Manager was panicking over in The Staples Saga. I now have significantly more sympathy for her plight.)

 

I was busy panicking and close to tears and trying not to throw up (since I'd literally had a nightmare about this very thing happening), and the rest had stopped what they were doing to brainstorm how to fix this problem. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, it may have been me even, but someone suggested getting the fax machine to resend everything after a certain time/date (all our results for that day had come in after 9pm the previous day). So after poking through the fax machine menus with nothing looking promising, we call up one of our IT Guys to see if he can work some form of technomancy and make our problem magically go away. My hopes weren't too high, and indeed after looking through various options and reports, he regretfully informed me that the machine only stores a record that a fax was received and where it was sent from, not the content of the fax itself. I thanked him and hung up. 

 

Work slowly resumed, though we continued to brainstorm fiercely. ATL then had the idea to have the lab resend over everything they'd sent after 5pm yesterday. I offered to make the call, since it was my blunder, but she said not to worry about it and took care of it herself. Our point of contact over there, LabSara, wasn't in her office, so ATL left a message to call us back ASAP. We kept working, though we were all listening hopefully for the phone to ring. ATL told Volunteer she could go home if she liked, since there wasn't anything for her to do (she'd been politely and patiently waiting to be noticed again this entire time). 

 

30 mins later, LabSara did indeed call back, and ATL, bless her generous soul, explained what had happened in the best possible way, stating that "we were so efficient today, we skipped a step in our process!" LabSara laughed, ATL laughed, I nearly cried from relief, and to make a long story short, the required labs were indeed refaxed and mailed out properly. 

 

So, I learned two lessons that day:

1) Do not, under any circumstances, make idle statements to the room at large that things are going "well" or "better than expected" or "smoothly". (Reporting this to supervisors, though, seems to not trigger the effect)

2) Guess which mistake I'm never, ever going to make again?  

 

Huzzah! 

--OneBoot :D 

I've been going through a similar thing with a periscope dip loop (carries RF and electrical signals to periscope).  We rebuilt the diploop a bit ago, and when we powered the scope back up, we didn't have any elevation control.  Looked at the cable that carries those control voltages and some of the cable look frayed.  No problem, just rebuild that connector.  Still have elevation issues.  Chain fall up a periscope so we can crawl under it, and verify the slip rings, pigtail cable and dip loop cable.  All test good.  conntect pigtail to slip ring and retest.  Still good.  connect dip loop cable and retest.  All good.  At this point someone starts to say how easy this is going.  I stop them in time (I thought).  Connect and wait for power to be reapplied.  Test today.  No elevation. @#$##$@!#$%$!@##$!  test for the Control voltages in at a filter upstream of the dip loop it's there.  That means dip loop is good.  Something else failed.  So that's my day in a nutshell.

[kristof65]

23 minutes ago, OneBoot said:

So, I learned two lessons that day:

1) Do not, under any circumstances, make idle statements to the room at large that things are going "well" or "better than expected" or "smoothly". (Reporting this to supervisors, though, seems to not trigger the effect)

2) Guess which mistake I'm never, ever going to make again?

3) It never hurts to make an extra set of copies if you aren't sure you did the first set. 

I often end up with extra packing lists and quotes printed because I can't remember if I sent them to the printer or not. 


My wife just informed me that she hates the commission she's working on. The huge expensive one. She hates the pattern, she hates the glass choices that the client chose. She will be so glad when it's done.  

The client, however, appears to be ecstatic - every update photo she sends him garners replies of enthusiasm and joy.  

[OneBoot]

57 minutes ago, kristof65 said:

My wife just informed me that she hates the commission she's working on. The huge expensive one. She hates the pattern, she hates the glass choices that the client chose. She will be so glad when it's done.  

The client, however, appears to be ecstatic - every update photo she sends him garners replies of enthusiasm and joy.  

 

Better than the other way around...? 

 

She has my sympathies; working on an artistic project one doesn't like turns it into a grinding chore. I hope she's able to finish soon and move onto other projects that make her happier. :) 

 

Huzzah! 

--OneBoot :D 

[Serenity]

Miniature Monday! #031 started at 3:03 PM.  Josh is painting 77924 Skeletal Chimera.

 

https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures/

[kristof65]

46 minutes ago, OneBoot said:

Better than the other way around...? 

 

She has my sympathies; working on an artistic project one doesn't like turns it into a grinding chore. I hope she's able to finish soon and move onto other projects that make her happier. :) 

True that. 

She is powering through this, and looking forward to working with you on yours, and me for our Christmas presents. 

[kristof65]

For those of you who remember my Tamiya Clears experiments, the links to the original threads are getting harder and harder to find quickly - so I finally spent some time and added them all to my profile page:
https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/profile/3533-kristof65/&tab=field_core_pfield_11

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a couple years back I did some experiments with various Bones Translucents and the Tamiya Clear paints. 

[haldir]

9 minutes ago, kristof65 said:

For those of you who remember my Tamiya Clears experiments, the links to the original threads are getting harder and harder to find quickly - so I finally spent some time and added them all to my profile page:
https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/profile/3533-kristof65/&tab=field_core_pfield_11

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a couple years back I did some experiments with various Bones Translucents and the Tamiya Clear paints. 

 

Tamiya smoke in the TS spray can line makes for excellent shadows, if you don't mind the glossiness. I use the spray to tint plastic model car windows. So awhile back I sprayed some of those invisible Wizkids D&D minis. Turned out great!! I had a spare window, so figured I used that as the test''r & I dullcoated it. It made the smoke effect opaque. Of course that was not what I wanted so all my transparent shadowy figures are from the plane of shadow & glossiness.........

 

I recently sprayed the new Nolzur's shadows with this. I'll try & post em on here when I can.