The Awkward Silence

Tinkeringbell

6:13 AM

Morning!

MiG

Morning :)

Tinkeringbell

6:35 AM

did you survive the weekend? :P

MiG

7:18 AM

Went on all the rides :P

And even though the kermis stopped early, they went until deep into the night dismantling everything, so screams and loud music were replaced by clanking of metal and very heavy duty trucks revving :'(

Tinkeringbell

7:33 AM

First part sounds okay, second not so much :(

Was it just one night though?

MiG

I think 2/3 are gone now, just some of the big things remaining

it's amazing to see these elaborate rides get dismantled and loaded onto trucks

Tinkeringbell

7:49 AM

Yeah, stuff like that is fun to watch.

MiG

well, occasional glimpses from the window... One of the rides was blocking a city bus for half an hour or something last night :x

they just parked their trailer diagonally, half of it so far onto the street that it couldn't go around

Tinkeringbell

XD I'd be soo frustrated if that would've been the bus I was taking home XD

Imagine missing the last train because of an asshat move like that!

MiG

8:10 AM

yep

"asshat" :D

how does that work, physically? Is glue involved? :P

Tinkeringbell

Sometimes ;)

Alex Robinson

good morning gamers

Tinkeringbell

"gamers" :P

Morning to you too :)

Alex Robinson

thank you! I have apparently survived the weekend... just a few more days and I get the entirety of next week off which is nice, what do you have to look forward to?

Tinkeringbell

Hopefully, a good night's sleep.

Oh and today is payday so I'm going online shopping :P

Alex Robinson

8:25 AM

a good nights sleep is very hard to argue with, but even with blackout curtains it gets light too early

Tinkeringbell

For the rest, not much. I do have Wednesday/Thursday/Friday off (Thursday is mandatory, Ascension Day, the rest is PTO).

@AlexRobinson Light isn't my biggest problem. I've had light curtains ever since I was a little kid, loved them (great airflow! the thick blackout curtain I have now also blocks any and all breezes). Temperature and noise are bigger problems here.

Any nice plans for the days off, or doing nothing (which is also nice!)?

Alex Robinson

@Tinkeringbell ahhh gotcha, i'm in a small ish town so noise isnt a huge issue but i will admit that heat can be

i have vague plans to try and see some of my uni mates but mostly just enjoy not waking up to an alarm for 7 consecutive days

MiG

heh, that sounds nice

I'll probably still wake up relatively early, I need a lot less sleep than gf does

but I can finally pick up on some projects, like commissioning that raspberry pi

maybe watch some movies and series I've been missing out on

Tinkeringbell

8:43 AM

@AlexRobinson I'm in a small-ish town too! (or a big village, whatever you want to call it :P). I mostly slept badly because of the heat last week, so I wanted to go to bed early this weekend. Except that if I go to bed early, I sleep for 1 or 2 hours and then get woken up by some kind of neighborhood noise, like visitors leaving and honking the car horn, or parties with loud music at the nearby restaurant (a one-off this weekend, according to the letter)

@AlexRobinson This is a great idea ;)

MiG

oh man, I will never understand people who honk their horn when they leave

wtf is wrong with waving? :/

Tinkeringbell

It's silent :P

MiG

yeah, I guess they actually like announcing their departure to the world :/

Alex Robinson

9:08 AM

I live 2 doors down from a pub but surprisingly its not that loud most of the time

that or my headset is better than i think it is

MiG

we lived across from an irish pub... that was... bad

no closing times, so drunk people kept pouring out at intervals, usually combined with shouting, loud singing and/or dropping glasses

and it was facing the bedroom window, so we tried to keep the window closed as much as possible, and used one of those standing fans as cooling + white noise

Tinkeringbell

9:35 AM

I came home last Thursday and there was a letter in the mailbox, from the nearby restaurant. Something along the veins of 'we agreed with all our customers/wedding parties that they can have a bit of background music, but nothing more. Except for the party from this weekend, as they've already booked their party 2 years ago before COVID. We've gotten a noise nuisance permission from the municipality for them'.

So last Friday I was just about asleep and got woken up with K3, alle kleuren van de regenboog.

Not sure what Saturday was about though, there was loud bass boomish music coming from that general direction that woke me up, and people cycling through the streets here shouting along.

I'll see, if they keep it up I might need to get earplugs for weekend sleep or file a noise complaint (but the latter feels petty, because the restaurant was there before the houses XD)

Alex Robinson

its not uncommon for restaurants in that sort of position to offer a local discount, could be worth asking about

Tinkeringbell

Meh. It's not a great restaurant to begin with, so I think it'll die out eventually XD

It's at least not something I would go to, not even with a discount :P

MiG

10:03 AM

@Tinkeringbell wouldn't hold my breath... they managed to survive covid :x

Journeyman Geek

If all else fails...

Rats

MiG

@Tinkeringbell this has kinda been the dilemma for me when forming an opinion on Schiphol... yes, there's a lot of noise coming from the planes, but the airport was already there since 1916 so for all those new houses close to it was kind of a package deal

Journeyman Geek

Planes got bigger tho

MiG

on the other hand, it's also not the people commissioning a new house that decide on zoning, so the local municipality (Haarlemmermeer) is also to blame

Tinkeringbell

@MiG Yes and no. Yes, you know that you are going to live close to an airport, but if the airport (and the planes, as Geek already said) are just always increasing in size/traffic, the 'we were always there' argument doesn't count for me.

MiG

10:08 AM

@JourneymanGeek went about hand in hand, the jet age started in the 1950s-60s, and the houses around it were built probably in the 1960s-70s

@Tinkeringbell yeah, I think the baseline is the fairest way of determining this

Tinkeringbell

That would be like going from 8 trains every hour (with the ones in each direction basically arriving at the same time, so no more than 2/3 minutes of noise each hour) to having two trains (one in each direction) every 5 minutes here.

MiG

although property value going down hurts someone moving away from that area

Journeyman Geek

My new place might be in the flight path of an airbase :D

Tinkeringbell

oof

Alex Robinson

10:30 AM

my old flat was right next to a quite busy train station but it wasn't that bad... it was worse when i was living next to a cathedral

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, and I know every place has its own noises... it's just that I'm so very used to sleeping away from the street and not on ground level, that now everything seems so loud...

I was talking about this with Geek yesterday. It's just frustrating that if I'm very, very tired, I can't just say 'well, bedtime is at 8PM today', if I know the neighbor has visitors. Those visitors are loud, there's talking, screaming, laughing and if we both have the windows open, it's loud in my place too. So I can go to bed at 8, but be woken up at 10 or 11 because his visitors are leaving or having a smoke or…

My bedroom window is right next to other people's front doors, so I will always wake up.

I have considered just putting a bed in the living room, but then there's all the dust that comes with sleeping there and I also have my kitchen in the same space and ugh...

And once I've woken up, I have massive amounts of trouble getting back to sleep because often a.) The noise lasts for a while, long enough to fully wake me up and b.) it's hot in here, so often I can't find a cool enough spot again XD

MiG

@JourneymanGeek eek! That reminds me of Hong Kong's old airport :x

@Tinkeringbell sorry to hear :(

I can only suggest that fan that we use, white noise might help both with temperature and sounds

Tinkeringbell

It's okay, "my time will come". I'm hoping that with the weekend and the parties done, and a good bit of rain/thunder tonight, I can sleep again ;)

MiG

I mean, bomb threats do work, but only for a day or so... And then you'd have to get used to the noise of your new inmate neighbours :P

Tinkeringbell

@MiG Yes and no... It helps if I'm tired enough to fall asleep, but it doesn't stop me from waking up and if I do, the noise actually seems to hinder falling asleep again. (I have a fan, and tried using it :P)

Journeyman Geek

10:51 AM

@MiG as I said, rats

@MiG I was joking to Tink that not sleeping all night was my thing

MiG

11:02 AM

hehe

Tinkeringbell

11:18 AM

I said he shouldn't leave his things at my place then :P

MiG

like rats? :P

They're not things! They have feelings too!

Tinkeringbell

His lack of sleep :P

Journeyman Geek

No no, we release the rats in the restaurant!

Tinkeringbell

11:36 AM

And get better food?

Actually the food isn't even the worst (even though the quality varies hugely), it's more the service that sucks. It's one of those places for people with disabilities to spend their time, so it's slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

And they mess up orders very often, which makes things even slooooooower.

MiG

@JourneymanGeek but before that, you're keeping them somewhere... at home we presume? :P

@Tinkeringbell oh, that's a dilemma as well... On the one hand I'm happy that everyone can be part of society this way, on the other hand... If we go out for dinner, I'm usually huuuuuuuungryyyyyyyyy :'(

Journeyman Geek

@MiG there's a buncha huge ones wandering around downstairs

I mean like foot long big rats

MiG

@JourneymanGeek I was wondering... you're citing the line where I'm talking about people with disabilities... "there's a buncha huge ones wandering around downstairs" seems like a rude way of referring to them :x

@JourneymanGeek bit surprised tbh, I thought Singapore was utterly spotless with nothing for rats to feed on?

I keep thinking of this article, written almost two decades ago :D

wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2

"Disneyland with the death penalty", written by William Gibson of all people :)

Journeyman Geek

12:02 PM

@MiG Well yes and no

Our current cleaning contractor is kinda understaffed

and our neigbhourhood committee head's wife had the local strays removed

other than the two completely useless ones that live in the multistory cary park

Tinkeringbell

@MiG It's not Geek that's citing that line, it's the system that links an @-mention simply to the last line you wrote ;) If he replied, there would have been a little arrow thing before the @ :)

Journeyman Geek

Yup

And I am notoriously bad about replying

Tinkeringbell

@MiG This for me too, mostly. I also dislike the non-consistent quality. Mom got food from them during COVID a few times (because it was 'nice to support local shops') and one time the food was absolutely good, the other it was just 'meh' or not great.

Not sure if that's an 'employee' problem, but you would think the same cook can make the same dish consistently.

MiG

12:38 PM

@Tinkeringbell this is strange, I can reply to earlier lines that you wrote right now?

@Tinkeringbell yeah, I'd expect chef supervision at least

the number behind the colon seems to be unique per line, so even if you type something new while someone else is replying to you, it should still refer to the one you clicked :)

Tinkeringbell

@MiG Sure, if you click the 'reply' thing.

MiG

I think it's just geek :P

Tinkeringbell

If you start your message with @MiG it won't though

@MiG like this will be linked to your last message, even if it's a reply to an earlier one.

MiG

@Tinkeringbell test

ah, different pathway

Tinkeringbell

Yep!

MiG

12:40 PM

I rarely use that one :)

Journeyman Geek

@MiG If I reply, its to a specific message

If I @MiG Its to the last one

MiG

I'm guessing fixing chat is not high on SE's list :x

Journeyman Geek

Its by design

MiG

12:58 PM

"reply to THIS message" suggests that the target is not moving

and I thought that was the part that worked?

I'm talking about messages beginning with @name referring to whatever was last, regardless of when you started typing - that reference doesn't make sense half the time

Journeyman Geek

@MiG How would the system know which message?

SO very much by design

MiG

I'm saying REMOVE the reply link when someone does an @name at the start of their line

when you do the thing you just gif'ed, the system knows because you replied to that specific message

when you do @name, it shouldn't link

Journeyman Geek

ah

MiG

I thought that was clear :/

Journeyman Geek

I guesssss

MiG

1:06 PM

I'm not sure why it does that, you're just highlighting someone, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who use chat like whatsapp, where they send short bursts in separate messages

at which point it will never make sense, a bit like here right now :)

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