Some Random Dave

The reason I'm not driving the first-responder-standard personally-owned urban assault vehicle is because I don't want $50 fill ups. And yet, here we are...

I'm gonna mark myself safe from the great Ruzzian trollfarm outage.

Happy Dolly Parton Day (9/25), to those who celebrate (or just those who live in places where date conventions make that possible)

Ultimate man has seen things you people would not believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. He has watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.

Seized from the group chat.

🎨Robert Ariail

The man's skeletal injuries looked like a train hit him, but he died in 1304 CE. At #ppa26Berlin last week, @uniofbradford.bsky.social scientist Jo Buckberry concluded he was likely whacked by a flying boulder, making him the first confirmed trebuchet death in the archaeological record. @science.org

Suresh reports on his experience talking with hundreds of executives (and, more importantly, their subordinates) about what (if anything) AI is doing for business in an essay entitled "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking": hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mani... 11/

Firefighter Dave would like to remind folks that, if you see an emergency vehicle running lights and sirens do the dance to go though the intersection on red, please look both ways before entering the intersection to make sure there's not a second one behind it.

Went outside. Smells like I'm about to get charged $50 for a mediocre pizza the cook scorched.

App developer suggestion: Make a voting app for karaoke bars. Every singer pays a deposit to sing, and the audience votes on if it gets refunded or dropped directly into the bar staff tip jar.

The nice thing about being the semi-retired silverback at the station: When a 4-year old makes you an ice cream sundae with seriously excessive sprinkles, you can just say "oh, how pretty!" and enjoy it in front of probies who would die before enduring insufficiently manly ice cream.

Russia's most reliable air defense "Vanka360" holds all-around defense and guards against NATO drones 24/7.

Mechanism and updated prediction for the epic fail of Lincoln Memorial Bioreactor's polyurea coating! First chemistry, then physics It was sprayed in big sections. In addition to pool edges, failure will concentrate at the OVERLAP SEAMS between sections because they likely barely bonded at all. 1/x

"Countries that relied only on the normal tools (voting, suing, legislating) climbed back to democracy seven percent of the time... But! Countries that added a civil resistance movement on top of that... climbed back fifty-one percent of the time."

Sitting in the outskirts of DC, listening to the (average of) $68k/flight hour (per plane) being spent announcing the entry of the US into the third world.

Since I did do my PhD in cyanobacteria growth and treatment optimization modeling AND work in the water treatment industry, I’m gonna share my theory as to what’s happening here and how to fix it. People are focusing on the painted bottom of the pool increasing residual heat, and while that 1/19

Clearly the work of Sporos

The reflecting pool is being sabotaged by paid protistas

Thought for the day: If he's not controlling the algae, he's probably also not controlling mosquitoes (it just takes longer for that to become obvious).

The whole "sweaty-muscular-scantily-clad men cuddling aggressively on the White House lawn" thing has to rank as the creepiest Presidential observance of Gay Pride month ever.

Nothing more frustrating than driving past the downed trees and getting reminded that Fire only gets to play chainsaw games if the downed tree is preventing us from getting to a call, and otherwise, it's either DOT or DPW. (Or a landscaping company, if it's on private property.)

Suggestion: Don't oppose datacenters because "AI Bad!". Oppose it because AI is very clearly a bubble, and given the time it takes to finish build-out, it's likely that a number of them won't get completed prior to the bubble popping. And they're even less reusable than a big-box store.

It's telling that my activity tracker only recorded 4 minutes of activity during a day of running around after professional athletes damaging themselves, but it's recorded 15 minutes of activity during the 30 minutes of (sponsored!) happy hour following.

Thought for the day: Pretty much nobody actually takes the time to fill out the "are you satisfied with your service" survey, especially when it's buried in a footer of the "your ticket has been closed" email. So if you take time to use your words, your comments are probably going to get read.

Here's the serious bit for anyone who'd rather skip the 4000 words of jokes

To quote the great Gene Spafford (let me know if he's here and I'll link him): There is no 'i' in 'team', but there is one in 'incompetence'.

Watching old X Files episodes, and thinking how much more quickly a number of the early episodes would have reached the same conclusion if Scully had just shot the bad guy the first time he menaced her.

Every time I take required computer-based training, I become increasingly convinced that the goal of the CBT is continued employment of someone's niblings who happen to work for a company that creates CBT. (Seriously, I should not need to randomly click screen elements to continue to the next slide)

Apparently, I'm not supposed to use "sorry, the Medetomidine is wearing off" as an explanation for the meeting exceeding my attention span and the fidgeting starting.

Firefighter Dave sez: If you're wondering if that elevator "close door" button works, it does, but only when there's an override key (look at the elevator control panel - see that switch requiring a key labeled "firefighter operation"? Yeah.).

Why are we having a holiday for a carpenter calling out dead and finally showing up 3 days later? Have you ever dealt with building trades? I mean, I realize the dude probably wasn't union, but still.

Dear CNN, it's not a "historic moon mission" until they land on it. It's like saying it's a "historic NYC visit" if you never exit I-95.

Firefighter Dave reminds folks that people will be reposting April Fools postings for at least a week or two.

After spending far too long trying to find matching socks without holes or stretched elastic or..., the contents of the sock drawer went to the garbage can and I'm starting again from empty. With a package of socks I bought a year ago with the intent of exactly this. Adulting, belatedly.

Happy Pi Day to those who use the default USAnian date ordering, and Happy Saturday to everyone else.

As we go into "St. Paddy's Weekend!", Firefighter Dave would like to thank everyone in the service sector who will have to say "How about we work in some water? I think you've had enough for one holiday." sometime in the next week. The ones you cut off are the ones I don't have to cut out.

But what I really wanna know is... Will CletusBubba be keeping the adultery plane?