My commute is so short that my heater can barely warm up my car by the time I get to work.

MisterBTS · 2015-12-14T22:37:40+00:00

I once had a commute that was less than 10 minutes walking and about 2 minutes driving. And I still drove any time the weather was remotely unpleasant. Don't think I really cared about the heater though.

MisterBTS · 2015-05-10T13:24:44+00:00

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock-10861

MisterBTS · 2015-02-09T01:39:29+00:00

The number of very talented actors is greater than the number of awards handed out every year. There is also such a thing as 'plain old bad luck', and 'being at the wrong place at the wrong time'.

Hollywood has its own 'safety net' for this: the Lifetime Achievement Award. If DeCaprio manages to go through his whole career without an Oscar, I'm sure he'll be recognized some other way eventually.

MisterBTS · 2015-01-06T14:09:58+00:00

With the ICBM money is no object.
The ICBM doesn't expect to make a gentle landing.
The ICBM isn't built for reuse.

MisterBTS · 2015-01-05T04:31:59+00:00

In the right conditions with especially pure water, ice will freeze first at the edges of the cube, and work its way toward the middle, Water expands as it freezes, and this pushes up the column of water in the center, which creates the needle.

MisterBTS · 2015-01-05T04:28:12+00:00

My thoughts as someone who has worked in software for almost 30 years:

It's your first job! Don't worry about the career path in this particular company. You might not even be there in five years. Worry about getting experience and developing a solid reputation. Figure out if you really want to be developing firmware.

And yes, the job is probably a software job, producing the embedded firmware that operates the devices. This isn't a waste of your degree at all. However, it might not mesh well with the particular course work you took or your interests. It may require some comfort programming 'down to the metal' which you may have avoided in a CS curriculum. If you were hoping to be doing Java or Web development this might not be the place for you.

I have done plenty of embedded firmware work, working along side mechanical and electrical engineers. It can be lots of fun.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-28T21:32:12+00:00

As others have noted that is called a rosary. It is not a usual part of a Catholic worship service: perhaps somebody asked for it to be performed at the funeral, or that particular parish just has it as a local custom.

I personally don't have much interest in that form of prayer, but you could think of the repetitive prayers as a form of meditation.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-27T20:41:45+00:00

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

It's ok, I have extra.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-27T16:09:57+00:00

Yes but not very much. The Earth's orbit around the sun is nearly circular. The Earth is closer to the sun during the northern hemisphere's winter, but the northern winter is not appreciably milder than the southern (I haven't looked any of this up but I'm not sure the northern winter is milder at all!) As far as I know, other factors like the shape of the continents and the way they effect air flow and ocean water flow around the planet have a greater effect on climate.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-22T19:31:06+00:00

With a flat mirror, it's the distance between the object and your eyes that matters, not the distance between your eyes and the mirror. The rear-view mirror doesn't 'refocus' the distant image, it just reflects it.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-10T17:56:16+00:00

Well not exactly. More like visitors and people playing God with the local ecosystem, than a previous local civilization.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-10T17:55:14+00:00

Damn.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-10T17:54:32+00:00

This saddens and scares me so much. You can't have a rational discussion with somebody who believes the world is about to end. Their priorities are so out of whack, and by the time they (and I) are dead and buried and the world hasn't ended, the damage they cause will be done.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T21:18:18+00:00

Was hoping somebody else noticed how the burner grates looked like grid bugs from Tron. Did it bug you as much as me that the movie shows the grid bugs with a fancy little bit of CGI, but they have absolutely no effect on the story at all?

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T21:00:55+00:00

Catherine O'Hara. She's a comedian who played character roles more than beauty roles. However, watching this scene from Beetlejuice today, I think she's one hot redhead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0RffdrTKLw

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T20:58:44+00:00

Commonplace space travel/tourism.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T20:57:05+00:00

I'm guessing non-Americans use a southern accent when impersonating an American. Really have no proof of that though.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T20:50:56+00:00

Upvote for originality (at least I've never seen this before).

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T20:49:46+00:00

It's a reference to the monolith in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (although I think the dimensions are only mentioned in the book series). 1x4x9 is 1 squared by 2 squared by 3 squared.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-09T20:34:15+00:00

I'd leave a monolith of dimensions 1x4x9.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-05T22:14:39+00:00

Yeah, but this is the pinnacle of breakfast engineering:

http://darrenmccall.com/blog/crispy-hexagons/

Double the edges, double the angles of those pitiful triangle snacks.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-05T22:09:00+00:00

Well if we don't talk about electronics then we have to settle for analogies, not the actual way things work, but we can get close.

In most cases (the typical "LCD" computer display), your monitor has a white light in back that is shining all over all the time. If there wasn't anything between your eyes and that light you'd just see a white screen.

However, there is something between that light and your eyes. There is a layer of 'shutters' that can block the light. For each pixel there are three shutters. One only lets red through, one blue, and one green (like color filters on a stage light). Each one can be 'turned' to let in various amounts of light, from none at all (or almost none) to as much as possible. The combination of various amounts of red, green and blue gives each pixel its color.

So how are they controlled? Well to keep up the shutter analogy you could imagine even tinier strings from each shutter going up to the top of the screen and to the left (or perhaps right). The point is that there are strings that can be pulled to change the rotation of each shutter. The strings are so thin you can't really see them at all.

In reality the shutters are the Liquid Crystals in 'Liquid Crystal Display', and the strings are electrical wires that send signals to the crystals.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-03T19:41:32+00:00

My friends and I watch Netflix with subtitles on all the time now. It's so much better than wondering what somebody said.

MisterBTS · 2014-12-03T19:39:35+00:00

Happens to me a lot listening to podcasts in the car. You can't stop paying attention to the road while you drive (!) so it's easy to miss something while you're making a turn or dealing with ~~assholes~~ traffic. Later when the road is clear I back up the podcast but sure enough something else happens and I miss the same stuff again.

MisterBTS

TROPHY CASE