… to get to Houston for Super Bowl LI… It’s your turn Bears.
Where’s Dawn? We need ice.
[video]
[video]
I am a fan of sports. If I’m listening to the radio, it’s probably sports talk. Except in the shower. I listen to NPR in the shower. But suffice to say I know a good deal about sports and obviously know a player or two.
On Monday when I heard that NBA player Jason Collins had shared with the world that he was gay, I said, “Good for him!” and then immediately Googled him to see who he played for.
So me, who follows sports, had no idea who this guy was. He has had absolutely no bearing on my life… and beyond a handful of people in this entire world, Jason Collins hasn’t had any influence on anyone else’s existence either. He pretty much didn’t exist.
Until Monday when he announced he was gay and pooped in their Manischewitz.
Now all the bible thumpers and raving religious lunatics (redundant I know) are all upset because this man they had never heard of decided to share with the world that he’s gay.
I could get into the silliness set out by the random rules of the bible, like not wearing clothing made out of two types of thread… but after 12 years of parochial schooling, I know there’s no arguing with people who put more stock into a book than science and common human decency.
I could also point out how much more they care about the sex life of an NBA journeyman player than they do the leaders of their political party. (Using a broad brush here, but c’mon…) How many of these elected officials are adulterers and yet they don’t care?
It’s only a god damn Commandment!
But last I checked they had alot of skeletons in Newt Gingrich’s closet.
For me, the thing I just can’t get over is how much these people are upset about a back up center for the Washington Wizards who played 12 minutes this year announcing he’s gay.
Who cares? You don’t know him! You never heard of him! Hell… Washington Wizards fans didn’t know he was a Washington Wizard… so why does this matter?
Why does the Westboro Baptist Church and their legion of nut jobs feel they need to protest NBA games?
How does a man they’ve never met telling us that he likes other men become an abomination worthy of all of this attention?
Ignorance?
Lack of human decency?
Weakness leading to a dependence on a code laid out by characters in the best selling collection of fictional short stories mankind has ever seen?
Dependence on a principles and ethics laid out by the greatest money making scheme ever devised?
Complete and utter deficiency of free will, open mindedness, and self worth creating a void that can only be filled by need to be governed by the rules of others?
Ugh…
I heard an analogy of how these people will look as bad as the opposition to the equal rights movement decades ago and that’s one aspect of this I kinda relish… instead of hiding behind white sheets, these idiots are on Twitter and FaceBook spewing their hatred.
The thing is… the white sheet can go back on the bed, but their digital bigotry will never go away.
*Apologies if the Onion already used this and I missed it.
We have a stomping problem above us. For about 30 to 40 minutes in the evening but more so in the morning…
Boom, boom, boom to the bathroom.
Boom, boom, boom to the kitchen.
Boom, boom, boom to the bedroom.
Boom, boom, boom to the to the living.
And then…. Nothing…. they go to work, go to bed, or they seemingly go out of town for a few days.
The randomness is what bothers us. It’s not the same time, it’s not even every day. — Granted the alternative is that it would be constant… but somehow I feel like that would be better. We don’t notice the traffic anymore, or the day laborers banging on scaffolding across the street from 8am to 5pm. (More on that another day.)
It just comes down to we’re just never sure when it will be back and when it will wake us up… it’s almost like torture.
When nicely asking them to stop, when the office and the community service officer (off duty HPD officer who lives down the hall), and when following them around banging the ceiling with the broom handle didn’t work, I had to figure out a solution.
I’m a bit proud of of what I came up with… this is like lifehacker stuff.
What we needed was a way to muffle or drown out the sound from above us as we tried to sleep.
Our apartment has a “feature” where there are speakers in the master bedroom ceiling that have inputs in the living room where you could wire up your stereo receiver to them, back when people had such things. The speaker wires then went thru a conduit to a volume control next to the light switch in the MBR where you could pipe in your music, or in my case, sports talk radio.
My thought was to use these speakers as a noise machine somehow…
So the problem was… how do I use this… and how do I wire it up using the media devices I already have… essentially cell phones, tablet, and computers which aren’t exactly speaker wire compatible.
Wires… they’re so 1990s.
So I had a number of things that had to be figured out here and I figured the logical order would be:
What could I use for white noise?
What do I play it on?
Wow do I get it to the speakers?
So I start with the white noise… and obviously start with Google.
You can make your own by recording something and looping it, but that seemed like a lot of work.
In some cases tune to an empty FM frequency, but I really couldn’t find anything in Houston. I’m guessing that would be an issue in most large and even medium sized cities.
Then I click on videos and right there on YouTube… 12 hours of white noise on YouTube. Or better yet, 11.5 hours of a flight on a 777. (After the stupid commercials of course.)
Ok, I have the white noise, and just need a device to stream it on… I kept my old HTC Incredible around for surfing on the WiFi when my wife had the tablet. Since the battery is for crap it wasn’t useful as a portable device beyond a few hours… but in this case I can leave it plugged in since it won’t be going anywhere.
Now was the tricky part… I needed to somehow get the audio from the phone and there were no red and black plugs on the back of it. Not to mention it would never have enough power for the passive speakers.
I didn’t want to buy a receiver with an input for such things… but I felt it would be a waste of money and take up a lot of room.
After a variety of Google searches I found this on Amazon… Lepai Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Audio Mini Amplifier with Power Supply
I could plug the phone into the amplifier and then send the audio to the speakers. To do this I bypassed the volume control knob in the bedroom and connected the wire from the amp to the speakers… plus this meant I could control everything in the bedroom versus the living room.
And there you go. For the past week we haven’t heard any stomping from above or traffic outside when the windows are closed. The first night it was running I turned off the TV at 9:30… about two hours earlier than usual because I just couldn’t stay awake.
The next morning we both had trouble getting up… My wife practically slept through her alarm. Not only did we get some solid sleep, I think we got too much sleep.
The project was an utter success.
As for the future or in a situation where ceiling speakers aren’t available, we will just get some nice, compact speakers and use those… mount them in the headboard perhaps or .
As an added feature, the amplifier also has RCA jack where we can hook up our TV or DVD player to add a “surround” effect. That could be fun.
Or if the stomping gets out of control, we’ll put a good old disaster movie into the DVD player…
[video]
“
Dear Candidate
Following your recent application for the position of Technical Editor (reference: 96259), I am writing to let you know that unfortunately you have not been successful this time.
Best Regards
” —I just got this from a recruiter… it is probably the most awkward rejection letter I have ever gotten.
I wasn’t successful?
At getting the job?
At applying?
What?
Recruiters are just precious.
… and it’s even harder to shop for them.
I’m serious.
When a person you’re related to by marriage loses touch with reality… doesn’t work, doesn’t leave the house, doesn’t have any hobbies, doesn’t have friends, doesn’t shop, doesn’t cook, doesn’t do anything but watch TV… what the hell do you get them?
They’re basically a shut in that already has the only thing they “need” in their lives… the TV… and do you want to encourage that anyway?
To add to it… if they are a borderline hoarder, it only makes the problem worse. It’s like the White Castle slider after 14 beers, you know you’re going to have to deal with it later, and it’s not going to be pretty.
And despite being out of touch with reality, and by that I mean while the rest of us were glued to the news waiting for the bomber to be caught in Boston… they were watching a cooking show despite the fact they only eat frozen dinners…
Despite that, they have become incredibly judgmental.
Nothing you get for them is good enough. There’s always something that some talking head on a TV show says is better.
Because of this they also become demanding.
If you and some siblings decide to chip in for a big gift, let’s say a laptop cause the computer you personally bought her years ago when you really didn’t have the money is a brick because they downloaded every virus know to man…. she’ll give you a delusional list of things she feels it Must Have.
Sorry, no one Needs MS Office anymore.
So here you are, trying to think of a gift and coming up with nothing… and just not caring. I want to be supportive of my spouse, but when they care just as little as you… so we’re down to expensive flowers or going to the grocery store for some generic gift cards to try to force her out of the house.
But you know, deep down, you may as well use that money to clean up the White Castle beer shits and flush it down the toilet.
Responsibilities Create maintain and deliver training materials to IT team Create and update training documents for IT team and end users Update all process and procedure documents and other department foundational materials Interview developers and technical support team to understand the documentation requirements for a product or project release Develop useable and readable end user materials based on available documentation interviews and personal research Utilize and provide recommendations to editorial and design standards and documentation procedures processes and templates Provide improvement recommendations to documentation and documentation process Serve as author and editor for IT Portal page Provide enduser training (classroom or webbased) Collaborate with functional leads and other IT groups to review impact of training materials and courseware Work with the functional leads to understand and develop upcoming training needs Requirements At least 5 years ofoverall IT work experience At least 57 years of Training and Communication experience Extensive experience with design documentation sets and online help Experience with usability testing and design a plus Demonstrated skill with PowerPoint Excel Visio and MS Project Ability to provide enduser training Experience with Adobe FrameMaker RoboHelp (or similar) and Adobe Acrobat High aptitude for understanding highly technical material and translating it for various audiences Excellent composition and grammar skills Excellent interviewing skills Other Requirements Degree in communication English technical writing or related field preferred 5+ yrs IT exp; 5-7 yrs Training & Communications exp; exp w/ Adobe FrameMaker & Acrobat
Found this job posting as-is on the internet. Formatted just like that… and yet somehow before I clicked away from this block of text before going cross eyed I noticed they’re looking for someone approximately 77 years old to fill this position.
Sure I know it’s supposed to be 5-7 years but c’mon it’s a bit humorous… and I could look past it… but that and the block of text and the typos just scare me away.
That said… I did get a job once after pointing out that their job listing wanted someone to “marinate” their docs.