Randomness XVII: The Madness of the Quorum

[kristof65]

1 hour ago, kristof65 said:

OK, not really - it was only 4 emails and 1 call.  But sheesh, when it goes from 0 to 5 in less than 15 minutes, it makes me wonder if my customers are all conspiring against me. 

I shouldn't say this, ... but ... would you believe ... I got all five dealt with and it's dead again. 

I also noticed that stray dog that was hanging out in the field across the street has disappeared. 

[LittleBluberry]

It's amazing how many medical appointments kids seem to need.  Probably doesn't help that my one child is going to be seeing a fifth specialty department at Children's Hospital.  We've seen psychiatry, pulminology, endocrinology, orthopedics and now it's on to cardiology.  My poor, sweet, cursed child. 

[Serenity]

RTB Pro Tips! Fire Giant Sweetness!  -  started at 11:35 AM.  Anne is painting 77614 Fire Giant King (Huge).

 

https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures

 

[Weird-O]

1 hour ago, kristof65 said:

I shouldn't say this, ... but ... would you believe ... I got all five dealt with and it's dead again. 

I also noticed that stray dog that was hanging out in the field across the street has disappeared. 

 

Well, once you answered his call, he went home!

[SparrowMarie]

I have been so busy and so tired lately which has resulted in me doing a whole lot of nothing in my down time. 

 

That aside, I woke up this morning with an IG message from Reaper. I was chosen for the RCon showcase and got a gift certificate code! They didn't tell me which one was chosen but it's a pretty great way to start the day.

[TGP]

19 hours ago, kristof65 said:

OK, this is weird. 

I'm remotely connected into a site in Utah. i'm having intermittent connection problems, so I fire up Pingplotter to monitor if it's my side or theirs. While i'm monitoring it, I notice this:


This is the middle connection hops between my location outside of Des Moines, and the site's outside of SLC. 

 

The connection is going from Des Moines, to St Louis, then to Washington DC and then on to SLC. 

So I fire up ping plotter to check another couple customers in the SLC area.   Their connections don't have that DC hop.

DEA

 

Car washes are kinda notorious in some locales for being loitering sites for persons engaged in the drug trade. (Around these here parts.)  Local PD has several listed as problem zones. Is it like that there?
 

 

So, maybe DEA got a warrant to monitor transactions (?)  ...can a car wash be used to launder cash?

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Crowley said:

Same goes for everyone down along the gulf coast. I know @Guindyloo is down that way.

Sally is slowing and maybe stalling. It is caught in a balance of forces. Usually the point where the Eastward flowing jet stream beats out the Coriolis effect happens after the storm is over land but maybe not this time. 

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

3 hours ago, kristof65 said:

One thing I will never understand about doing service/phone support. 

How do the calls always manage to come in surges? 

First two hours of the day, it was dead.  Zero calls, so I could catch up on other things. Then in a span of 15 minutes, I get a dozen emails and another half dozen calls. 

OK, not really - it was only 4 emails and 1 call.  But sheesh, when it goes from 0 to 5 in less than 15 minutes, it makes me wonder if my customers are all conspiring against me. 

 

2 hours ago, kristof65 said:

LOL!

So you're saying it's W.O.O.F.?   

This might explain why calls get crazier around the full moon.

[kristof65]

28 minutes ago, TGP said:

DEA

 

Car washes are kinda notorious in some locales for being loitering sites for persons engaged in the drug trade. (Around these here parts.)  Local PD has several listed as problem zones. Is it like that there?
 

 

So, maybe DEA got a warrant to monitor transactions (?)  ...can a car wash be used to launder cash?

The car washes that I know of where there are issues with loitering and drug trafficking on the property, the property owner is generally working with police to stop it.  In many of those cases, the car wash owners are frustrated because police won't help enough.  If I have any owners involved in it, I don't know about them. 

I doubt this guy is involved in anything illegal, just based upon my personal dealings with him over the last 18 years.  And according to his distributor,  the wash is in a nice area, just down the street from an exclusive country club the owner belongs to and the owner is from old money (though none of us know where that old money came from? Robber barons, perhaps? )  

More than likely what I saw was a fluke of the older Ping Plotter software I was using trying to fill in a name for a server that wouldn't respond with a name or was too busy to - here is what I got today:

 

that hop is right in the transition from my ISP to their ISP. 

Yes, being largely cash businesses, car washes can appeal to those in criminal enterprises as a way to launder money, as illustrated in the show Breaking Bad.  Car washes are also frequently audited by the IRS and state agencies as a result, too. It happens often enough that there is a lot of industry discussion about it. In fact, it is often listed as a major reason for washes to start taking credit cards - less cash, more trackable transactions, easier to deal with or even avoid audits.   

This is even more true for the equipment I deal with, because the reporting tracks cash in. We also have add-on boxes for other manufacturer's equipment that can add credit card to that equipment, but can be wired to monitor coins/bills in as well.   Back when I used to have to do the car wash trade shows, I had people walk out of the booth almost immediately after hearing me talk about the cash tracking features. I've also had new owners who just bought a site with the equipment already installed ask how to disable the cash tracking.  I quickly came to the conclusion that the guys using car washes to launder money don't want their cash to be counted that accurately by the system. 

I know I've got some dishonest car wash owners among my customers, but I don't think I have any Walter Whites.  There is one guy I'm pretty sure who's committed insurance fraud several times. 

 

[ManvsMini]

1 hour ago, kristof65 said:

I know I've got some dishonest car wash owners among my customers, but I don't think I have any Walter Whites.

 

That's how he stayed hidden for so long, no one thought it could be him.

 

Got back from the surgical consultation for my chocolate lab (which took FOREVER, but the animal hospital is being extremely thorough on keeping COVID out, and I can't argue with that). Looks like she is going to have some lumps removed in a few weeks. Surgeon said everything seems to indicate they are just lipomas and shouldn't hurt her, but his instinct is telling him that something is off; said she was too young to have them without some type of trauma to the area, which she hasn't had. Even asked if she eats sticks, as that could cause possible damage to the throat if she swallows them.

 

Better to get them off now, and luckily the hospital is thorough does pathology on every tumor/growth they remove.

[Chaoswolf]

Best of luck to the pupper!

[Pegazus]

Doubled up the strength on the Mandarin spice tea this afternoon. Been sleepy all day. 
 

Really trying to appreciate my blessings today without being braggy about them. Too many are going through rough times and here I am coasting on good times. Yes, I’m loafing way too much. But that’s not the good tidings in question. 
 

Best solution I have is to watch after friends and family and be supportive where I can. 

[PaganMegan]

There is something MAGICAL about watching a garbage truck with your child.

 

As the big robot hand reaches down, grabs the garbage can, then tosses the garbage into the truck's hungry maw.

On 9/14/2020 at 4:33 PM, Green Eyed Monster said:

If you remember how the pioneers made soap, they would pour water through ash to create a base [opposite of acid] as an ingredient for homemade soap.

Acid rain happens when it rains through air with the wrong kind of smog, mostly nitric oxides.

GEM

My grandda told me how the Nazis made soap, and gave me nightmares everytime I took a bath for years.

[Rob Dean]

6 hours ago, Weird-O said:

I wish I had some Greek ones, to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of Salamis, but I'm having to make to with Roman, geared mostly toward the Republic era. They're paper ships from Roman Seas, and I'm printing them out at 1/600.

 

 

Yeah, between the eternal choice of money for ships vs time for ships, I had to choose money. Because my wife is much happier when I can also buy her things like food and dice.

Nice! I have those pdfs too, and have never built them.  But if I did, it would likewise be the smaller sizes and using them for Persian and Peloponnesian Wars as well...

[Weird-O]

Assembling triremes at this scale is a rather fiddly process, enough so that for Greek fleets, I think I might try to just save up for a decent number of ships from Skytrex. Smaller vessels are actually easier because they lack the tiny thin outrigger pieces, and larger vessels are also easier because their outriggers are larger and thus easier to work with. I haven't tried to do any accessories like a corvus or missile tower, and at this size, I'm kinda scared to. I really want to get the Mark Antony set. Those bigger ships would also be useful for Diadochi fleets, and the Deceres sounds fun!

[MusicalFeline]

So where IS this Waldo guy I keep hearing about?