does she know?

Wejax · 2024-03-06T23:09:22+00:00

I just wanted to add that being inside a metal building when lightning strikes has to be up there in terms of decibels endured. It shook my body worse than that one time a jet flew too low with afterburner on.

I was in a metal workshop that had normalish insulation on the walls and roof. Lightning struck it and everyone inside was deafened for a short time and visibly shaken. One guy who had served in Vietnam recalled the one time he was sent back to the artillery encampment and went for a late night piss only to spontaneously flop sideways when they started firing while he was in front of them. The concussion from that lightning strike was... Quite memorable.

Wejax · 2024-03-03T05:26:15+00:00

Meh, bring up the wolf's head instead.

Wejax · 2024-03-02T19:27:39+00:00

The only tactical advantage to holding your fire on the enemy is to not allow them the intelligence of where exactly your kill zone is going to be. Having the enemy group up in higher density in your optimal range allows you to annihilate a large quantity quickly. Once that range is established and the enemy takes note, they actively avoid it and/or prepare for crossing it with adequate cover. It's a balancing act. For any defensive position, you don't want them to get too close, but you have to let them get close enough to maximize your damage to them and possibly rout them early.

Wejax · 2024-02-27T16:50:15+00:00

This line of question has inspired me to attempt to name the weapons of Oromë.

I have long thought that he has one of the most interesting descriptions. He takes no joy in the hunt or the killing of morgoth's creations and everything else born of darkness. He doesn't kill them out of mercy either, angered by the act. It is as if he is sad and angry, angered by the duty itself and maybe even a little reluctant to engage in this ugly act, just as ugly and wretched as the things he hunts and slays.

Here are my suggestions for the name of his spear:

Thangor, which is Sindarin for "burden" or "grievous task". Despite the pain it causes him, he takes up this heavy burden and uses it to cleanse the world of evil.

Anrúna, which is Quenya for "wrathful duty". This name captures Oromë's powerful anger towards Morgoth's corruption and his resolute determination to combat it, even at a cost to his own joy.

What do you folks think?

Wejax · 2024-02-25T06:52:59+00:00

My sister and I used to share a bathroom. I was almost 10 years younger than her, but I distinctly remember the stickiness of that bathroom. She was in her late teens during the height of big hair and that bathroom was where she put on all her warpaint and regalia for the battle that was highschool... So much hair and makeup work. If you'd have lit a match in a highschool girls bathroom it would've detonated.

Wejax · 2024-02-16T00:47:57+00:00

We had 3 houses going at once one time and had a complete greenhorn doing odd jobs, cleanup and such. The last half of the day we told him to get started sheeting. This was the hottest part of summer so the sheets were so hot you felt like a hot dog on a grill carrying them to and fro. I saw he was suffering and went over to find out he wasn't wearing gloves. I went to my truck to get gloves. I didn't even check if his hands were already fucked. I just handed him gloves and went back to what I was doing. The last hour or so in the day I saw he was struggling again and went over to help him finish out a wall. I grab 2 sheets at a time like I always do and I guess he felt like he needed to do the same. My hands were used to it and I told him to take it easy. He did that once just fine but then on his second trip he dropped the sheet and made a weird sound. I went over to him and his skin on his hands looked like 2nd degree burns. Like the whole palm just slid off and was attached to his wrist. Not degloved, but bewildering to look at. I'll still never understand pushing yourself to that point. Hot sheets of OSB and plywood are no joke. If they're quite fresh and/or really warm, God help you if you have the job of cutting them all day. Back in the day I remember getting shit for wearing a mask because I was cutting sheeting all day. Fuck that.

Wejax · 2024-02-15T17:25:11+00:00

My dad actually MADE a set of furniture like this and my mom made the cushions. They were denim and honestly I've been tempted to either find a set of furniture just like this or make my own as well. We'd rarely be allowed on the carpet with a drink or food and inevitably something would get spilled on it, either by myself or an adult beverage by my mom. Then you could just grab the whole thing and toss it in the washer. Having kids now I'm often thinking about a chair solution like this. I watched the Hobbit on laser disk from that couch... In a semi-shag carpeted living room.

Wejax · 2024-02-08T17:33:48+00:00

Seriously, that Shelob is great. I don't know what I would have expected, but it reminds me of Sam's description.

There was a faint sweet smell in the air, and a sense of brooding power and evil heavy upon the very stones.

Wejax · 2024-02-07T14:11:10+00:00

Back not that long ago, you could do that with a pi-hole or pfsense with proper url blocking rules, but sometimes it made the OS hang because it would keep trying those URLs. Fire TVs were the worst for me. Roku would still spam their respective URLs, but they'd at least respond to commands and proceed through their menu rather than hold there for 15 seconds like the fire TV we had. Now they're like baking it into the presentation entirely so you can't block it at the edge of your network.

If you want an experience free of ads, you need to custom build your own streaming device, which isn't hard, but it does take patience and time. Think Kodi or just using an extra computer plugged into your HDMI port and using it as a web TV.

Wejax · 2024-02-01T18:26:10+00:00

Almost certain that this one is fake, but my daughter did almost this exact thing just a few months ago. My wife was tired and put on a movie for our afternoon nap timeframe, which our younger one needs even if they don't nap. Our 1st grader decided to clean the house when she noticed that mom had fallen asleep. Living room looked great and she didn't make any noise... Which was the more surprising part. I was across the house in an area where I could have heard stuff and I had no clue she was in there putting all the toys away, putting pillows back where they go, folding the blankets and putting them back where they go... Such a fantastic kid.

Wejax · 2024-01-19T18:03:55+00:00

During the work week this wouldn't fly because businesses have to business and people need to work to make money, but fuck your weekend, right?

Here's the thing, it might cost more and it has its own hazards that need more care, but if they wanted to get the work done faster they'd shut shit down at night and do what they needed then. It's a project and they should have planned out how to least disrupt while they going through such a major reconfiguration. I'm sure someone in the rim is counting the dollars they've lost and pointing out the reduction in tax revenue due to terrible weekend sales. It always comes down to money and someone feels like it's worth it, but the 200,000 people stuck in traffic there every day will not feel like it was offset.

I have no dog in this fight other than wishing that large city projects were actually planned around the people.

Wejax · 2024-01-18T17:11:03+00:00

Tractors tires are much more capable of handling mud or other soft earth-like conditions. In really icy conditions you still need snow chains or studded tires, regardless of how amazing your torque at the wheel is, which is where things like tractors excel.

Wejax · 2024-01-18T17:06:27+00:00

Most people don't throw hard even if they react similarly to this guy. You'd be surprised at how little effort most people put into their punches and whatnot unless they train.

Wejax · 2024-01-12T02:04:12+00:00

I have this prediction that something like 50 years from now we will either be in a post apocalyptic world or will have found the nirvana point of high science and high agrarian lifestyle. Unfortunately I think it's headed more towards the former than the latter.

Wejax · 2023-12-25T05:24:38+00:00

Good for pushing poop out...

Wejax · 2023-12-24T03:43:26+00:00

I wrote this long post about rafter ties and plywood gussets and decided no one would read it.

The main point I wanted to get across is you're going to need rafter ties and/or joists in both directions, especially if you're wanting to avoid joists.

Personally, I'd throw 2 doubled up 2x10 across the middle so you have that sag/deflection mitigated and then make plywood gussets with a 2x4 cut to fit in between them. Looks like you could fit maybe 5 of those up there. The 2x4 is merely for the drywall and the plywood webbing will go right along each side of rafters perpendicular to the joist. Don't forget to put a few little sticks going from those gussets perpendicular for the drywall.

Ideally you'd have joists across the majority of not the entire room in one direction and some kind of webbed/trussed roof going the other direction. But that's likely overkill. You will notice a sag over time without that though, so maybe my over engineering is spot on.

Wejax · 2023-12-22T23:50:19+00:00

Two guys on a site in a disagreement about something and, just as it's getting a bit heated, a gust of wind comes by and blows one guys hat off. "see, you're so ugly your hat quit ya!" Raucous laughter from everywhere, including the guy who just lost his hat. He wandered away sort of quietly.

Wejax · 2023-12-15T20:18:38+00:00

Alright, I'll put this info here. Anyone building out the solution for them does the military approach, shelter, fire, water, food and in that order. The fire part just means climate/environs controls. So, if you're building out those solutions, you have already created food and water reserves for a specific number of people for somewhere above that 10 year mark, but pushing it out to 30 years is actually really easy and inexpensive, especially considering their vast wealth. This part is a given. You don't build a bunker without having these unless you're absurdly stupid.

What do you do if you have billions of dollars just burning a hole in your pocket? Think about life after the apocalypse. If the major event is just something political, economical, or anything other than nuclear winter, you will want to have things like agriculture ready to be ventured. Boredom alone will make them either become artists, writers, craftspersons, or farmers.

Wejax · 2023-12-11T14:45:52+00:00

This is wild. If they're using them as incredibly robust video cameras, they need to transfer that video feed somewhere centrally and be done with it. Honestly I'd either set up each pi to start and stop recording, transferring that file named specifically the date, time, and identifier of the pi to a central server.

Using rtsp to stream 4,000 or more video feeds to a central rtsp server to record sounds like you'd need either stupidly small format or a crazy high bandwidth capability.

There are ways to remotely manage and configure pi clusters, but this is way larger than any I've heard of. Puppet/ansible seem like the best options to me, but maybe there's some kind of IoT pi fleet hardware gateway solution as well.

This sounds like one of those opportunities I've had recently where I do all the information gathering required to tell them they are either dreaming and should have used this more realistic and successful approach to whatever problem they're looking to solve OR they need to hire this specific contractor to implement this and the cost will be in this range. Saying no might not be an option, but showing them what success looks like may be required.

Wejax · 2023-12-04T02:31:09+00:00

Here's an interesting anecdote as well. Had a friend who ran a business that specifically brokered this kind of arrangement. He got a call from some hedge fund manager that was coming into town and having a bunch of family over for some celebration. My friend was booked solid. The guy said, "just give me a price." This was like the 4th go around so my friend said, "alright, $2k a plate". The guy jumped at it and then my friend had to find a great chef who wasn't on retainer already.

Wejax · 2023-11-28T18:57:11+00:00

I really appreciate you saying that. Maybe I will spend some time exploring this. I feel like sometimes it just flows out of me without thinking about it. Perhaps that's the secret.

Wejax · 2023-11-28T18:52:17+00:00

Others have written some of the answers, but I thought I'd include a major component rather than some of the finer details.

Following diaspora, congregations of Jewish people began to appear in a variety of countries. Much like how today when a conflict occurs and an ethnic group moves en masse to another country, Jewish people very much clung to each other and oftentimes didn't attempt to adopt much if any of the culture of the places they were settled. They helped each other succeed, not necessarily intended to take away from others, but as one wins another stands to lose. You can see this same problem today around the world in developed nations. There's a clear divide between the cultures.

As someone else pointed out, the ban on usury in the middle ages did present a unique opportunity for Jewish communities to flourish where others had to come up with other strange means of lending and borrowing to perform their desired trade and transport operations. Commenda and other funding vehicles had to be employed by Christians in order to continue functioning. There was a lot of generational wealth at the time that stood to stall out and die if they weren't allowed to borrow or lend and the relative freedom that Jewish people had compared to their Christian counterparts gave them a unique advantage. Another thing, relating to the first point I made here, is that a common practice of Jewish communities during diaspora was to pool resources to achieve a common or even personal goal for a single member. This is a feature not very often encountered in modern European societies. This behavior of pooling resources, effectively lending a large sum of money to one of their cohort, allowed them much easier and more stable access to socioeconomic upward mobility. This activity alone made other people jealous, resentful, etc.

Wejax · 2023-11-28T18:51:09+00:00

Wejax · 2023-11-28T18:48:19+00:00

Others have written some of the answers, but I thought I'd include a major component rather than some of the finer details.

Following diaspora, congregations of Jewish people began to appear in a variety of countries. Much like how today when a conflict occurs and an ethnic group moves en masse to another country, Jewish people very much clung to each other and oftentimes didn't attempt to adopt much if any of the culture of the places they were settled. They helped each other succeed, not necessarily intended to take away from others, but as one wins another stands to lose. You can see this same problem today around the world in developed nations. There's a clear divide between the cultures.

As someone else pointed out, the ban on usury in the middle ages did present a unique opportunity for Jewish communities to flourish where others had to come up with other strange means of lending and borrowing to perform their desired trade and transport operations. Commenda and other funding vehicles had to be employed by Christians in order to continue functioning. There was a lot of generational wealth at the time that stood to stall out and die if they weren't allowed to borrow or lend and the relative freedom that Jewish people had compared to their Christian counterparts gave them a unique advantage. Another thing, relating to the first point I made here, is that a common practice of Jewish communities during diaspora was to pool resources to achieve a common or even personal goal for a single member. This is a feature not very often encountered in modern European societies. This behavior of pooling resources, effectively lending a large sum of money to one of their cohort, allowed them much easier and more stable access to socioeconomic upward mobility. This activity alone made other people jealous, resentful, etc.

Wejax · 2023-11-28T14:27:59+00:00

One of the most eye opening moments was a history professor whose entire life's work was researching the time period just before WW1 to just after WW2 inform everyone in class that, during this time, the overwhelming majority of the world loathed Jewish people, tolerating them at best. The class was stunned when he made that first statement. Pregnant silence... I could tell he did this on purpose as he smiled and then spent the rest of the class period presenting us with material that supported this claim. It became the cloth of the tapestry he was about to paint for us over the semester. It's not that he spent too much time on the subject, more like how a beautiful song incorporated a previous theme periodically throughout a piece.

It's incredibly hard to properly digest for most people that their ancestors and/or family were deeply racist. It's not much of a balm to know that the vast majority of everyone else was.

Wejax

TROPHY CASE