Ball's Pyramid Superthread

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I'm listening to a song called Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail. What an awesome title. Instant favourite.

Helps that the song's cool too. A kind of dark shoegazer, almost like Joy Division mating with Ride.
 
thanks everyone, belatedly, for the congrats 30 posts ago. sorry, been emailing people like crazy.

and yes ax, i'm with you on tthe WTF RICK WTF WARREN
 
yeah it makes little sense. obviously jeremiah wright was also out of the question, but it is very disapointing.

i am trying to decide if i should have a nap. i am kinda tired but kinda wired. i dunno.
 
Woah, Khanda, you're here early! :wave:

And go pwn that test, Ashley.
 
I like that plan.

I like it a lot.

Meanwhile, I need to do some more shitty cards. I suck at being timely for Christmas.
 
You don't care about Ashley and her worst Christmas card ever?
 
good lord. 7:52 am and there's a train coming by. there honestly should be a law about this. anyone trying to come on or off the main road will now be late for work, because a freaking TRAIN is going by during rush hour.
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
good lord. 7:52 am and there's a train coming by. there honestly should be a law about this. anyone trying to come on or off the main road will now be late for work, because a freaking TRAIN is going by during rush hour.
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Aww, the poor diddumses. :solitary tear:

Hate to think how they'd cope in a city with a real public transport network, where trains run every four minutes each way.
 
Axver said:
Aww, the poor diddumses. :solitary tear:

Hate to think how they'd cope in a city with a real public transport network, where trains run every four minutes each way.
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well i mean what's annoying about it is since they're always freight trains, they could run for a minute or 15. and i've seen them just randomly stop before. i know they have to because they haven't been given the go-ahead to keep going or have been told to stop since another train's nearby or something, but i just think it'd be nice if they weren't allowed to go through here between say 7:30-8:00, then 5:00-5:30. just one hour a day isn't bad. why they decided to put a major street running parallel to the only train track i think still in use in this city beats me. it's better when you go east a little more because then the train track isn't right there so you're not necessarily stuck, but right in this area, it's about half a block from the street.

seriously, someone didn't think at all. and there were no trolleys/trams ever used this far east in the city.
 
aaaaaaaaand it's 8:03 and the first person in our department finally came in. the other two aren't here yet. since timeliness isn't a big deal apparently, you'd think they wouldn't turn on our phones until maybe 8:15, to give everyone time to get their computers up and running. i mean, we've already got calls holding. why morons call right when someone opens is beyond me, but whatevs.

since we work 8-5 i personally think the phone lines should be open 8:30-4:30, to give everyone time in the morning to get every program up (we have to open tooooooooons of stuff), then in the afternoon to wrap up any loose ends like sending customers a letter or even just finishing reports.
 
But Khan, that would be atrocious transport planning. Freight is typically time-sensitive (not necessarily that it is perishable, but that the business needs it by a particular time or else) and runs when it needs to. If you were to impose some kind of curfew and not allow operation at a particular time, you would have two consequences:

1. Freight that is not dependent upon rail would begin to view road more favourably, since the curfew does not apply to road and you would be creating an uneven playing field that affords road freight an artificial advantage. Companies would shift from trains to trucks as soon as it is in their competitive advantage. Consequently, pollution would increase, wear and tear on roads would increase (repairs funded by the taxpayer, not the trucking companies), and congestion would increase (your commuters at the level crossing get fucked anyway). This has all been experienced by cities that have had curfews.

2. Freight that is dependent on rail is disadvantaged, and any delays or additional costs incurred are passed on to the consumer - i.e. you.
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
aaaaaaaaand it's 8:03 and the first person in our department finally came in. the other two aren't here yet. since timeliness isn't a big deal apparently, you'd think they wouldn't turn on our phones until maybe 8:15, to give everyone time to get their computers up and running. i mean, we've already got calls holding. why morons call right when someone opens is beyond me, but whatevs.

since we work 8-5 i personally think the phone lines should be open 8:30-4:30, to give everyone time in the morning to get every program up (we have to open tooooooooons of stuff), then in the afternoon to wrap up any loose ends like sending customers a letter or even just finishing reports.
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I love this idea. I wish AmEx worked similarly. We get 5 minutes at the start of our shift and 5 minutes at the end to get our crap together.

But then, everybody takes 10 minutes or so and logs out for illegal breaks, plus there's times when they put thru a security patch and the whole damn computer just randomly shuts off...and you have to restart it 3 times to get it up and running again cause it's a piece-of-shit Dell, and you're logged out for that...

Actually, it's a wonder any work gets done :hmm:
 
i knew i would get such a response from you :lol:

it's more wishful thinking than something i think could ever actually be done. i mean, it'd be nice if at least there was a schedule, at least if everyone knew the train came by every morning at 7:52, well if you were late for work as a result of the train then it's poor planning on your part because you knew. but i know if they could run on a schedule, it would.

ultimately, if i were to blame anyone it'd be city planners, for building so much stuff right on top of a major freight line. since the train's never been used for public use (aside from amtrak which i'm sure uses it, but i mean city-wide public transportation of course) there was no need to build everything here. just even one block north would've been perfect. i mean, the train tracks were built well before people really settled in this area so that's definitely to blame, not the trains.
 
RegularBonoFan said:
I love this idea. I wish AmEx worked similarly. We get 5 minutes at the start of our shift and 5 minutes at the end to get our crap together.

But then, everybody takes 10 minutes or so and logs out for illegal breaks, plus there's times when they put thru a security patch and the whole damn computer just randomly shuts off...and you have to restart it 3 times to get it up and running again cause it's a piece-of-shit Dell, and you're logged out for that...

Actually, it's a wonder any work gets done :hmm:
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ooh, that's cool. at harrah's we could clock in up to seven minutes early for our shift (that was a company-wide thing, even when i worked in pbx where all you needed to open was as/400 to be able to look at hotel rooms and such) and obviously clock out up to seven minutes early. (since time was calculated in 15 minute interims there was no way i was working even one minute past when i clocked in + the eight hours. i'm not working for free!) that was more than enough time for you to get everything open.

i clock in here early too so i'm all ready to go. no one's said anything to me about not being allowed to leave early, and even though they count every minute you're here payroll's kind of complicated. you get paid 40 hours a week no matter what, so i'm not sure how they handle overages.

and we had the same problems where i used to work with those stupid security updates. it'd randomly pop up the computer was shutting down. and since they were idiots and ran everything through our computer, even our phone, you could still technically take calls while your computer was off if it was shut down and you didn't log off first. well, when everything freezes you can't. but when you're computer's off or frozen you can't do anything for a customer, unless it's a simple question like "what are your department's hours" or in the case of my last job, "when was this confirmation letter sent out" or something.

it's all craziness.
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
i knew i would get such a response from you :lol:

it's more wishful thinking than something i think could ever actually be done. i mean, it'd be nice if at least there was a schedule, at least if everyone knew the train came by every morning at 7:52, well if you were late for work as a result of the train then it's poor planning on your part because you knew. but i know if they could run on a schedule, it would.

ultimately, if i were to blame anyone it'd be city planners, for building so much stuff right on top of a major freight line. since the train's never been used for public use (aside from amtrak which i'm sure uses it, but i mean city-wide public transportation of course) there was no need to build everything here. just even one block north would've been perfect. i mean, the train tracks were built well before people really settled in this area so that's definitely to blame, not the trains.
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Yeah, I've seriously thought about going into transport planning, I know I'd be good at it, but I think I would get too frustrated by important projects never getting the funding they need.

There is of course a simple solution, grade separation, so that you don't have the level crossings in the first place. The problem here is that grade separation is typically charged to the railway, when in fact it should be charged to the road users. The road users are the ones who have a problem; they are the ones who want an overpass or underpass or whatever. Hence they should pay for its construction. Especially since their road use is SPECTACULARLY subsidised by government to an obscene level. But of course, it never works out that way, and instead the railways end up spending money making life easier for entitlement whore road users, money that could be much better spent on maintenance, newer equipment, etc.

If people had to pay the true cost of driving, 90% of the population would sell their cars tomorrow.
 
god, without fail, this one girl comes in THIRTY MINUTES late. she lives like an hour away, so she obviously doesn't plan enough time for her commute. i guess it's supposed to be our fault she can't find any work out in the boonies and doesn't want to move to any civilized city?
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
ooh, that's cool. at harrah's we could clock in up to seven minutes early for our shift (that was a company-wide thing, even when i worked in pbx where all you needed to open was as/400 to be able to look at hotel rooms and such) and obviously clock out up to seven minutes early. (since time was calculated in 15 minute interims there was no way i was working even one minute past when i clocked in + the eight hours. i'm not working for free!) that was more than enough time for you to get everything open.

i clock in here early too so i'm all ready to go. no one's said anything to me about not being allowed to leave early, and even though they count every minute you're here payroll's kind of complicated. you get paid 40 hours a week no matter what, so i'm not sure how they handle overages.

and we had the same problems where i used to work with those stupid security updates. it'd randomly pop up the computer was shutting down. and since they were idiots and ran everything through our computer, even our phone, you could still technically take calls while your computer was off if it was shut down and you didn't log off first. well, when everything freezes you can't. but when you're computer's off or frozen you can't do anything for a customer, unless it's a simple question like "what are your department's hours" or in the case of my last job, "when was this confirmation letter sent out" or something.

it's all craziness.
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At ours, you can't even log in 1 second early, or it throws off your schedule adherence metric for the day. Luckily, the only people concerned with this are the ones who do the scheduling. And since they often leave us with only 6 people to take calls after 10 PM, they can fuck off.

Everything's run through our computers, too. And when one of those patch thingies comes thru, a little window from the scheduling dept. will pop up, saying that if you got the warning that the patch is going thru to log out and reboot. But everyone gets the warnings at the same time...so nearly everyone logs out at once to reboot their computers, which take some coaxing to work after said patch installation and bogs down the entire system for 30 minutes. Those guys are brilliant.
 
Axver said:
Yeah, I've seriously thought about going into transport planning, I know I'd be good at it, but I think I would get too frustrated by important projects never getting the funding they need.

There is of course a simple solution, grade separation, so that you don't have the level crossings in the first place. The problem here is that grade separation is typically charged to the railway, when in fact it should be charged to the road users. The road users are the ones who have a problem; they are the ones who want an overpass or underpass or whatever. Hence they should pay for its construction. Especially since their road use is SPECTACULARLY subsidised by government to an obscene level. But of course, it never works out that way, and instead the railways end up spending money making life easier for entitlement whore road users, money that could be much better spent on maintenance, newer equipment, etc.

If people had to pay the true cost of driving, 90% of the population would sell their cars tomorrow.
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oh, i agree. for things like that, we shuld foot the bill. the train drivers i assume don't care if they're driving on the ground or on a bridge. here's the thing. the street i take to work also runs parallel. that street is called poplar pike. the main road is poplar avenue. so for me i go poplar pike - side street - poplar avenue. driving on poplar avenue is ridiculous, there's a traffic light every block because it's so popular (hurrr!!) and none of the lights in this city are sychronized - so if you get one red light you get them all. but that's another story.

there's one intersection i come to where the train goes above the intersection via a bridge. why the bridge doesn't just keep going is beyond me. like i said, i wouldn't mind helping along with all the other taxpayers to foot the bill, but whatevs. there's lots of things in this city i'd change that never seem to get talked about.
 
RegularBonoFan said:
At ours, you can't even log in 1 second early, or it throws off your schedule adherence metric for the day. Luckily, the only people concerned with this are the ones who do the scheduling. And since they often leave us with only 6 people to take calls after 10 PM, they can fuck off.

Everything's run through our computers, too. And when one of those patch thingies comes thru, a little window from the scheduling dept. will pop up, saying that if you got the warning that the patch is going thru to log out and reboot. But everyone gets the warnings at the same time...so nearly everyone logs out at once to reboot their computers, which take some coaxing to work after said patch installation and bogs down the entire system for 30 minutes. Those guys are brilliant.
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good lord, what a crappy system. at harrah's it was calculated every 15 minutes, so if you worked from say 10:45-8:00, you'd have worked 8.25 hours. here it's calculated to the minute, so if you clock in and then right back out, you worked 0.02 hours. lol.

sometimes i honestly wonder about it departments at companies, when they do stuff like that. our department was closed from 11 pm-7 am. they were open 24/7 though. why couldn't they set it to run all the patches then, in the middle of the night?
 
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