very valuable

And to think, I would have never known :)

I am going to read to Dragon for a while now, probably for 30 minutes or so. This time from 3001: The Final Odyssey (which I have never read). So, I'll be back soon.

okey dokey

@Jolenealaska every cloud has a silver lining

Good morning!

Is JJ upgrading her computer?

@Cerberus considering it

I should probably do so too...

Dragon is a system hog

I see.

@Cerberus you could just close some of the 8000 tabs and 2000 systray apps you undoubtedly have running

But but but...

My computer is actually quite fast.

how would you know?

what frame of reference do you have?

I have used my a computer in my lifetime?

you might be sitting there thinking "Wow, Chrome opened in 90 seconds today. Score!"

Like the ones made from sticks and sand, man they were slow.

What I mean is that my computer would become a lot faster with an SSD, but it is still about as fast as when I last installed Windoze.

i love my MBP

Whom?

even photoshop opens more or less instantly

Macbook Pro (which has an SSD)

Ah.

Sure, if you buy a computer that costs €2000...

Or how much was yours?

not 2000 euros that's for sure

1200

Ah.

That is still extremely expensive for a computer.

So it'd better be fast.

now, before you (or Faheem) launch into an anti-Apple tirade, hear me out. 1. I am a computational polymath. I have 2 windows PCs, my MBP, and I run Ubuntu VMs on all of them

Hehe.

That was a necessary caveat!

Have you looked at what €1200 could get you for a Windoze laptop?

Of course in theory I support Linux 100%, but...

2. my wife's last laptop, one of the white plastic macbooks, lasted eight years without a single problem.

my brother in law had five windows laptops in that time

It is not fair to compare cheaper Windoze computers...

I never had to reinstall the OS, never had to add more RAM, nothing

My computer is now more than 7 years old, still going strong. I paid €600ish for the parts in 2008.

I never added anything either.

3. for the level of spec I was looking, an MBP was only slightly more expensive than Windows alternatives, and along with much better reviews and the aforementioned reliability, it was a no-brainer

And I would not have had to restore a clone (takes 5 minutes) if I hadn't installed loads of crap onto my computer.

4. Retina <drool>

Ad 3, I'd like to see a comparison with a good Lenovo or something.

Ad 4, puh-lease, that's just a silly marketing term.

What resolution do you have?

And don't you miss the 8092098277 programmes that won't run on Mac?

@ElendilTheTall And don't you think he is right about everything he said in the past hour?

This occasion rarely happens

@Cerberus ah, so says someone who doesn't have a Retina display

@Cerberus like what

it runs Adobe Creative Suite. It runs Sublime Text. It has an awesome CLI terminal without faffing around with %PATH% variables

it's made of metal

girls want to touch it

Looks like I got here at a good time! :)

Hello all.

Hi Cindy.

@cindy hello cinders

@ElendilTheTall You have very good taste. :)

@Cindy I do?

You all heard her!

Yes. MBP!

Myelin basic protein

Ah

Well, y'know, great minds think alike

Absolutely!

plus, it apparently has the added benefit of getting cerb's back up

I've had 5 Macs and have never had a minute of trouble. Yet I have used Windows computers for the last ~18 years for work and it seemed that there was always something to deal with.

I use both and generally don't prefer one over the other - I just think Apple makes better laptops.

speed and software reliability aside, they are just built like tanks

sexy tanks

LOL. So true. But I can say that I haven't seen the longevity out of others that I've had from Macs. E.g., I have an original Bondi blue iMac running OS 8.6 on my desk that is up and running right this minute. I also had another just like it that got fried in a low power situation. That was a sad day. :(

3001 looks pretty good. Has anybody here read it?

Hi @Jolenealaska. I haven't read it.

@Jolenealaska <waves hand>

At this point, I don't know that I am really doing any real good for the accuracy of the speech recognition by continuing to read to Dragon (it has maybe 10 different choices of text)...

but it's better than being alone?

<sniff>

@ElendilTheTall Did you enjoy it?

...but I was way out of practice reading out loud. If I had read that excerpt first (instead of the Kennedy speech) I think I would have tripped over my tongue trying to do it too fast.

The excerpt I just read was 10 pages or so of Poole waking up and learning where (when) he is.

It reminds me of the TNG episode, The Neutral Zone.

@Jolenealaska I think so, it was a long time ago

And my curiosity is piqued. Just like the excerpt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory led me to reread that book, now I want to read 3001.

and that's the reason the publishers let Dragon use the excerpts :)

The premise is cool. Waking up 1000 years after you lived. Yes, they even say as much.

If you enjoyed this excerpt....

Which of course makes the whole exercise more enjoyable.

I don't think I could read the phone book out loud for 20 minutes.

I suspect that Dragon will continue to improve its accuracy even in the face of me not always keeping a steady tone, if I continue to read these excerpts.

@Jolenealaska you'd like Futurama then

@Jolenealaska that will come in handy for all sorts of things, I'm sure

@ElendilTheTall Yes...

All hell yeah, the recognition is noticeably more accurate and faster since reading the last excerpt.

Before the last reading there was a noticeable lag that has almost disappeared since the reading.

And I made no effort to keep a steady pace or tone.

so now what you need is a real test... hmmmm....

I read it like I was reading it out loud as a bedtime story.

So Cindy, how goes the search?

Any new nibbles? (Dragon still wants to spell that word with Ps)

oh sure, Dragon. You've got a one-track mind, Brown

:)

(also, I think Cindy has wandered off)

So it would appear.

@Jolenealaska Nothing yet, but I am hopeful that I will get something from some of the applications I put in yesterday and will put in today.

I found some pharmacy tech jobs that don't require certification or license and allow you to train to get them.

ah ha, speak of the devil

and another one

mornin

yo

yesterday i went to the comcast corporate office

damn it was nice inside

and the cafeteria was on the 42 floor so the view was sooo gorgeous

the comcast center is the tallest building currently in philly

how was the fresh baby blood?

As a vet tech, I always enjoyed pharmacy work. You could probably find online training that would give you a leg up in getting a job as a pharmacy tech.

@Jolenealaska Give her the benadryl test, quick!

whats the benadryl test

@Jay if you have to ask, we can't tell you

god damn it Jojo

Hard to believe it's been four hours!

how are we supposed to maintain an air of mystery around here if you just answer people's questions?

lol

yeah, it's a rollercoaster all right

< faucet drips, paint dries, clock ticks >

I worked very closely with the vet I used to take my dogs to. He was a very good friend and taught me quite a bit over the years. And I think I would do well in the pharmacy arena. I know the pay probably won't be much starting out, but I need $$ to pay bills, so any pay is better than none.

have you applied?

Yes I applied to 4 yesterday and found a few more this morning that I am going to apply to shortly.

You can take the licensing exam without any formal training, you can prep for the exam on your own.

@Jolenealaska Are you kidding that this person couldn't figure this out?

If you pass the licensing exam, you would probably be hired right away.

I learned to give subq and IM injections. I never did IV, though.

@Cindy Yep, that's why I said she was too much of an idiot to be trainable.

Another good thing is that I would think your, ahem, slightly increased age would be an advantage. You don't want some ditsy girl running around weighing your meds, you want some wisdom there

Not to mention, a 20-year-old is more likely to be tempted by being surrounded by drugs than someone more tempered by life experience.

@Jolenealaska Yes, but there is a lot to learn and I researched it yesterday. The certification exam is $129. I don't know about the state licensing. I haven't had time to dig into that yet.

@Jolenealaska I dont really agree. I feel like without peer pressure, a 20 yo is old enough to decide whether or not they want to do drugs or not. Maybe I just have a skewed perspective since I never had the urge to do any drugs

@ElendilTheTall Nicely put. And finally something positive about being my age and trying to find a job! Not that I feel old or anything, but for the first time in my life I have felt that it is a factor in not getting responses.

My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the pharmacy tech exam is a lot like the veterinary tech exam. Piece of cake if you're reasonably book smart and just plain good at taking tests. $129 and perhaps 100 hours of studying would probably be enough.

pharmacy-tech-study.com

If I'm fortunate enough to land something I will pursue it vigorously. But right now, with no income, $129 is out of my range. I mean, I'm not sure all of the bills can be paid this month. That's how tight it is.

In the meantime, studying is free.

That site has 29 practice exams.

If you know that you can pass the test, $129 becomes pocket change.

I just took a look. It's bookmarked and I will start going through later today. Thanks!

Okay, I'm off to apply for more. I will pop in later today. :)

I know that as a vet tech, walking into a new clinic as a "licensed vet-tech" pretty much guarantees a job.

aargh. if there is anything worse in the world of coding than manipulating dates I don't know what it is

@jay amirite?

@ElendilTheTall Oh i am an expert at manipulating "dates"

@ElendilTheTall Funny, the 3001 excerpt brought that up too.

if you know what i mean ;)

@Cindy if necessary, we will pass the hat in here and get you 129 bucks!

@Jay No. No I really don't. :|

;)

I, on the other hand, am clueless. I'm just an innocent babe in the woods.

lol just making a joking reference to like 3 years ago when i had like 3-5 different dates a week

And yea @Cindy if you set up a paypal account im sure it wouldn't be that hard to get a little donation from everyone to add up to 129

@Jay I was joking :) I bear no resemblance to an innocent babe in the woods, except perhaps blushing trying to write erotica.

teehee

i had a hand in writing some erotica in the past

I have read a lot of erotica, but until very recently I have never even tried to write it.

It poses interesting challenges.

haha yea, it gets "distracting"

@Jay Yes :)

it makes progress painfully slow

@Cindy I took a closer look at that website. Everything looks just like taking the vet tech exam 20 years ago. It's the same test no matter where in the country you take it, states will vary as to whether or not you need formal school or OJT to sit for the exam.

@Jay ah, but Jojo now has Dragon - missing a free hand shouldn't be an issue any more

:D

@Cindy If your state requires OJT or formal school, you can drive to a state that doesn't have that requirement.

@ElendilTheTall omg lol you just went there

@Jay it had to be said. It had to! :D

dhp.virginia.gov/pharmacy/pharmacy_forms.htm

@Jolenealaska csc, jolenita!

ok i need to peace for a little. i actually have a lot to do today and i find myself distracted lol

@Jay so long as your hands are free ಠ_ಠ

@Jay there is a lot of that going around.

@Jolenealaska keep cscing

nytimes.com/2015/07/08/technology/…

yup, it's a can of worms alright

jeez, today is dragging

The US was sucker-punched by 9/11. By then, NSA already had far more data than it could possibly analyze. I can't even imagine how much more data there is today than there was then. To try to comprehend what it would take to effectively monitor communications in order to prevent the next one makes my head spin.

that's what computers are good at: looping through lots of data very fast

But how can a computer break the code of Navajo code talkers?

well, there aren't any Navajo code talkers left IIRC, so that's moot :)

I know, I was using that as an example of the creativity of humanity.

They are is always another way to approach the problem...

Computers may be very fast at doing what they have been programmed to do, but, as of yet, they aren't very creative.

It makes me think of playing Scrabble against the Kindle AI.

@Jolenealaska as far as you know

True

I'm fairly sure the Scrabble app on your Kindle is about as far away from the bleeding edge of cryptography as it's possible to get and still be using an electronic device...

consultar su correo, chica!

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the same room I worked in 25 years ago.

epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/…

yum

Just another pepper substituted for green bell pepper, a mix of red bell pepper and a hot pepper of some kind, perhaps.

Dragon just pooped out on me

it just stopped

Ah, now it tells me that it has more data in my profile than it has room for the data. Well shit, I have some 500+ GB of hard drive space. You have my permission to take up more space!

That was a lot faster than it has ever loaded before.

That took about as long as it takes to load Word.

cool

How long it took to load was a source of annoyance before now.

How pleasantly surprised I am by Dragon's ability to learn brings to mind what we just discussed about "cutting edge" cryptology.

yup

and that's decade-old consumer level tech

So far every session with Dragon has shown noticeable improvement over the last session.

And I was pretty impressed with it right out-of-the-box.

That last line was mumbled under my breath, I didn't even really intend to post it, yet, it says exactly what I said.

Even the dashes, that's how I would have typed it had I typed it.

it knows your dash preference!

grab your go-bag, head for the chickaloon compound, tell no one

Spooky!

Here's a good reason to check out different dried chilies:

as if you need one

epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/…

Do you see canned chipotles in adobo in stores?

nope

online though

There are probably three brands on the shelf at my local Fred Meyer.

A couple of years ago I experimented with every kind of dried chili I could find to make adobo style enchilada sauce.

Pasilla and guajillo were both very high on my list of favorites.

I imagine alembics and retorts...

I had to Google alembics.

Seven letters! :)

Do you know of Rick Bayless?

Can't say I do

He does a cooking show on PBS that specializes in the cuisine of a small region of Mexico.

rickbayless.com/recipes-from-chef-rick-bayless

His recipes are worth checking out.

So is this:

rickbayless.com/recipes-from-chef-rick-bayless/ingredients

(essential ingredients)

interesting

hmmm...

rickbayless.com/recipe/mole-coloradito-enchiladas

Do you know what's meant by a "tablet" of chocolate?

amazon.com/Nestle-Abuelita-Mexican-Chocolate-19-oz/dp/…

compressed cocoa?

It's more like a chocolate bar. It doesn't have the creamy texture of candy, but the flavor is great just out of the package. It has cinnamon, sugar and other "stuff".

hmm

not a huge fan of cinnamon when it's the main flavour

CSC, btw

The ingredient list of that particular brand says "artificial cinnamon flavor" but there are other types. (I already have, and responded:)

no, you haven't :)

oh...new one!

This is waaaay to spendy, but I'd buy it in a heartbeat if I saw it locally for a reasonable price:

amazon.com/Taza-Chocolate-Mexicano-Sampler-Ounce/dp/B0088OSAZ2/…

but $26? No way.

Oh dear...this make take me a while!

:)

@ElendilTheTall You never cease to amaze me!

<bows>

On a totally different subject (as I try to recover my composure):

I have mentioned before that Amazon sometimes spooks me with their spot-on recommendations.

I just got an email recommending this:

smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P72KQI2/…

well, you visited the writers se didn't you?

Voice to Text software and a laser printer doesn't seem to me to be enough to guess that the customer is trying to write her first book...

Do you think Amazon feelers would go that far?

Again that theme pops up.

Maybe Googled some tips?

It doesn't matter if it feels that way to you

Amazon uses an AI

it is a true AI (in the sense that it uses the theory which computer scientists have developed for AIs, not in the sense that it can think like a human)

which means that it will offer you what you are statistically likely to buy, no matter the possible logical inferences made of the "meaning" of your previous buys

Humans are absolutely terrible at that type of reasoning, actually

there are the good old classic Tversky studies on that

You know, where they describe a young woman who votes Democrat, is health conscious, is a feminist, has a good job

then they ask you, "What is more likely: that Linda has a college degree, or that Linda has a college degree and goes jogging regularly?"

That just came up in conversation. The AI that Kindle uses for its Scrabble opponent knows every single allowed word, yet I consistently win against it because it plays stupidly. My ability to think ahead trumps the AI's complete memorization of the Scrabble Dictionary.

The way that question is worded, there is only one answer.

Most people say the second, which is simply another example of how common sense and statistics have very little overlap

@Jolenealaska ah, that's another meaning of AI

game playing "AI"s aren't really AIs in the sense of being capable of learning

machine learning, that is

while Amazon's recommendations are all about machine learning

the Amazon thing is probably brute forcing its way through the dictionary

it either doesn't have the resources to really brute force everything, so it uses bad but processor-time-cheap heuristics

That has been a theme of conversation tonight because I have been floored by Dragon's ability to learn.

or it is dumbed down on purpose, because nobody likes to get creamed by a machine 90% of the time and end even 10%

It has 5 levels of "smartness". I play at the maximum.

yes, machine learning is quite simple for the voice recognition of one person

What it seems to do is always make the play that gives it the maximum points for the turn.

not playground simple, but easy to do when compared with other ML tasks

@Jolenealaska that's a common strategy for many games. Also used by some good human players in games like Go, I don't know about Scrabble.

@Jolenealaska This still doesn't mean that it's the maximum they could program, it's the maximum they bundled with the software, for whatever reasons.

A good example in Scrabble is if you have one of the two blanks in the game (wild cards) or an S.

An experienced player will hoard either of those for the chance of a very, very high scoring turn later in the game.

Kindle AI will just play the top word on the list of possible plays with the tiles it has on that turn.

Maybe Board Games allows to ask for software implementations of Scrabble with better computer players. Or Software Recommendations.

@Jolenealaska If that's enough to win against 95% of all humans, why bother to use another strategy?

I mean, how many humans are there who are capable of being as good as that?

and out of these, how many have reached that expertise without having a human to play against and not caring for AI?

Not many.

Tall is the only human who has won against me in probably 5 years.

As far as I can tell, lowering the difficulty level just decreases the absolute vocabulary of the opponent. The "strategy" seems to remain exactly the same.

Hmmm...The reviews for that book (the one Amazon just recommended) and the other four in the series are pretty stellar.

cnet.com/news/…

On the subject of AI.