Testing Chat V: The Final Mysterious Island: Miami Beach

[timmy]

CASE CLOSED

[adr]

jesus the hosting company for two of my bigger work sites has been having some trouble recently

and it is starting to cost me money. "we're working on it"

well i'm leaving, time to find a new company. fuck the cloud.

[adr]

Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets.

scratch that

Twitter uses the t.co domain to make more money by tracking your online activity.

now that sounds more honest

[Oxymoron]

Can you do that ? Can you domain-name a single letter of the alphabet ?

[phongn]

actually the big bang theory isn't so bad now. i really disliked its first and maybe second season, i don't recall (i watched it tho cuz every monday i went to a friend's house and they loved it for some reason), but now it is fairly watchable.

i think the introduction of the female characters really helped it. there weren't any for a while leaving the cast as only the poorly written "nerds" and the list of extremely shallow "nerd" references - clearly chuck lorre hasn't got a fucking clue

but wait you say, penny was in the pilot. no not really. kaley cuoco was in the pilot, but she had.... seriously i think one line that wasn't "hi" or "ok"

anyway without the women, the show was JUST really lame references and annoying sheldon without anyone to play off, oh yeah and creepazoid howard. horrible.

i still don't think it is great tv but it is at least ok now

Yeah, all the extra ladies pretty much gave the show room to grow (and for the characters to grow, too). It was getting pretty stale before then.

Twitter uses the t.co domain to make more money by tracking your online activity.

now that sounds more honest

Like anyone will actually say that

Can you do that ? Can you domain-name a single letter of the alphabet ?

Uh, why not?

[adr]

t.co is a real thing twitter uses.... though I do think t.com would need special something from ICANN as i'm pretty sure those are reserved

but .co isn't .com. I think .co is actually supposed to mean Colombia but whatevs a lot of ppl use it

[Oxymoron]

Can you do that ? Can you domain-name a single letter of the alphabet ?

Uh, why not?

I dunno, that just sound suspiciously similar to trying to trademark a letter from the alphabet, if only in a certain context.

[RogueIce]

http://www.ibtimes.com/international-da ... men-742490

That's it, I'm moving to Brazil. They have much better holidays than the shit Hallmark pushes out.

[adr]

that ambulance billing company finally got back to me with a written bill... about two months after the event

they want $157.50 for "treat w/No Transport"

ugh looks like i'll have to call them and argue that. if i knew it would be that much i wouldn't have even let them take my vitals (pulse, blood pressure, and checking the blood sugar is all they did! then i signed the waiver to refuse treatment and that was it)

[Darksi4190]

So I tried to start biking today to lose weight, and i'm off to an inauspicious start. The left pedal came loose from the metal shaft it's attached to and the bike is now un-rideable. I'm taking it in to a bike shop this weekend, but it's a cheaper model and might not be worth getting fixed. Also, looking up prices online, it turns out once you get past the cheap Toys 'R Us shit for kids, bikes are fucking expensive. Expensive enough to the point I can't really afford to replace it and still replace my Laptop which i'll need to do at the end of the year.

So much for biking, I guess i'll have to find another way to lose weight.

[adr]

Pedals aren't hard to reattach or even replace; a basic set only costs like ten bucks, and they just screw into the crank arm. The one tricky thing to know is left side actually tightens the opposite direction that you'd expect: turn it counter-clockwise to tighten it. You should be able to get in there with an adjustable wrench to finish it after doing the first few turns by hand.

Or is something else wrong?

[Darksi4190]

By Pedal I actually meant the Crank arm itself. The thing the pedal is attached to. Looking around the 'net, it's apparently a common problem with Bikes produced by the same company.

[Darksi4190]

Also I don't think the gear shifts work either, though it's been so long since I rode a bike I probably just don't remember how that works anyways.

[adr]

hmm reattaching that arm isn't too hard either... i haven't done it for years now but..... iirc there's nothing more to reattaching the left side than just lining it up and tightening a bolt. the right side is more complex and needs a specialized tool to really work with, but the left side i'm pretty sure is simple enough

tho i guess this means it should be pretty cheap to do at the bike shop too, hell if it just needs tightening they might not even charge you for it


the gears are probably rusted derailleur(s) and/or stretched out cables, if it was ever left outside in winter that does a hell of a number to the whole gearing system. my winter bike last year had enough of that abuse (about five winters without an overhaul, i really neglected maintenance on it for too long) and had all kinds of problems - the chain actually broke on the road, the derailleur froze and the brakes failed both front and back

took me about six hours and $40 in parts just to get it road worthy again, and i still haven't actually fixed everything yet

but yeah depending how bad your bike is, getting the gears fully fixed could cost you a pretty penny, and you prolly don't wanna try DIYing that if you've never at least seen it done before.

[Darksi4190]

If I just go and buy a cheapo 100-250$ bike at Target or Meijers or Wal-Mart or something, how much use do you think I could expect to get out of it before the same shit starts happening to it again? I'll be keeping it in the garage, and try to avoid getting water on it, but I live in Michigan so shit's going to happen.

[adr]

the biggest problem with wal mart, etc., bikes (well, other than the fact that they suck - heavy frames with shitty components, but eh you get what you pay for) is that they are often assembled by people who don't really know what they're doing.

so you'll get problems usually pretty early on as a result of that - something comes loose after a few months, the brakes aren't aligned right on your very first ride, etc. but if you get one competently assembled though and take care of it (especially if you don't ride it at all in winter), even a cheap bike can give you many years of riding

however even keeping your receipt doesn't necessarily save you from a bad assembly because you'd be going back to the same folks who fucked up the first time


here's what i would check first: see if the bike shop has a used bike for sale. i got one of mine used for $200 in 2001 and am still riding it and still loving it. he (owner of the store) wanted i think $350 for it on the tag, but i offered him the $200 cash and he took it.

bike shops tend to stand behind their sales better, since they actually know what they're doing, and a well maintained bike can give good service for decades (my summer bike here was already ten years old when i bought it, and now into its 20's, it is still in excellent condition), so being used isn't necessarily a bad thing.

still almost certainly going to cost you more than the wal mart plan, but if you have a wee bit more up front cash it'd be worth it, and who knows, the guys at the shop might be willing to give you a deal. def doesn't hurt to ask at least

[Questor]

Yo, Testingstanis!

Have any of you ever read Scalzi's Redshirts? I want to talk about it with non-crazy people (or at least non-sdn people who will get the joke), but don't want to spoil it. It's too awesome to spoil.

[Bounty]

Ha, I love that book! It's been a while since I read it, but I know the spoiler you're talking about.

Anyone who likes SF series and hasn't read it, go and read it.

[Phantasee]

++http://www.xvideos.com/video5037256/30/ ... pornuxe.ru

Ever seen a gangbang involving clowns? NSFW

Accidental misclick avoidance instituted -- B

[Oxymoron]

Yeah, I think you really need to find sleep, Phant.

[Phantasee]

oh man how inappropriate, with my avatar...

[Bounty]

Just as inappropriate with your avatar.

[adr]

unbelievable, they're insisting on that whole $157.50 bill

they''ll let me make it in installments, but still, that's absurd. and i don't have the cash right now to lawyer up so i guess i'll just pay it over the next three months

but really how the fuck can someone who's allegedly unconscious consent to a billing contract anyway?

convo:

me: "one of the reasons i told them i don't want treatment is because i don't have that kind of money right now"

rep: "did you call 911?"

me: "no, someone else did while i was briefly fainted, but when i woke up i told them i don't want any treatment, and they actually called back and tried to cancel the call, but the ambulance came anyway"

rep: "well, their policy is if they're called, you have to pay the $157.50 and i apologize that you weren't aware of that..."


what the fuck. like i said in another post though, i did ultimately let them do a basic check so i can understand some bill, but this is absurd


the whole system pisses me off

[Oxymoron]

So now I know that if I want to piss an American off, I'll just have to call the ambulance for him, and he'll have to pay the bill.

Coolio.

[Bounty]

So now I know that if I want to piss an American off, I'll just have to call the ambulance for him, and he'll have to pay the bill.

Coolio.

It's pretty damn worrying that you can't even call an ambulance for someone who might need it without running the risk of accidentally bankrupting them.

Speaking of soaring medical costs, my mom got a pretty hefty bill today. She had a painful wrist which she refused to have checked out until she started dropping things from the pain. We convinced her to go to the doctor who sent her to a specialist. The good news is that it's a joint issue that's treatable, the bad news is that she needed multiple X-rays and two specialist consultations.

It's a euro and sixty-six cents. Or, in US money, a little over two dollars and twenty-two cents. I have no idea how we'll manage.