@aediaλ A chocolate bar

Wait really?

I just bought one, but it's to might.

I mean, to my right.

Aaaaugh brain worms!

@aediaλ You mean, this? media.peeron.com/pics/inv/custpics/3069bpx66.1133841283.jpg

@Kitḫ Thanks :) Cycling home on unlit road in the late autumnal moonlight is quite pleasing.

If America elects that guy, it will set the country back 50 years

@MrShinyandNew安宇 devours

@aediaλ yeah, isn't it great? it's from a harry potter set

I don't have that, actually. I have this, but one of them.

They're not awesome, but my deli doesn't have anything better.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I've been avoiding movie sets of all types, but if they have chocolate bars in them, I'm going to have to reconsider...

@MrShinyandNew安宇 la la la not thinking about my country's idiotic politics

@aediaλ Well, Canada has its share of idiotic politicians too... remember my blog post? Sigh.

@aediaλ The Harry Potter sets have been really good, actually. Lots of good parts for castle builders. I have maybe a dozen HP sets.

@aediaλ this is Dove in the UK

We have that too I think.

Confusing, innit?

If you ever come here you'll want:

It looks like the same brand :D

Oh so it does!

Hey but Galaxy has more in it!

Oh really?!

47>37g right?

Oh, so it does!

Well, I guess we just love chocolate more?

who knows

Nestle, probably

Mars

examines package of half-eaten chocolate

according to wikipedia

Mars, yeah.

oh, well, Mars then. I'm no good with cocholate brands

It has a URL on it which I typed in my browser without googling, like it's still 1998 or something.

It was cocoapro.com and it redirected me to cocoavia.com where presumably they are going to educate me about how Mars makes chocolate a healthy food.

My chocolate bar is a piece of lego and not actually here with me, so it's a picture of a piece of lego. So I googled "dove chcolate" and Google said "dummy, it's chocolate" and wikipedia stepped in and did the rest.

:D

I have an 85% or 90% cacao Lindt bar in my cabinet at home that's now trying to make a telepathic connection with me.

Silly Dove bar doesn't even have a percentage.

eats more anyway

@aediaλ I think I hear it now too! mmmmmmmmmmm

@aediaλ That is seriously good stuff.

daydreaming about chocolate is way better than writing new report code

One holiday when we had family visiting we bought like ten different chocolate bars of slightly varying percentages and brands, and then did a blind taste test of them.

Of course our experimental protocol was probably flawed and no one remembered the results after having some more wine, but it was fun.

@JasperLoy :)

Now that we haven't kept a good experimental log we'll just have to repeat the test.

@aediaλ I was just going to suggest that. "whoops! Do-over!"

Chocolatl!

@JasperLoy A pedant walks into a bar. Well, it's a restaurant with a bar. Technically it's a brewpub since it has an onsite microbrewery.

@JasperLoy Which photo?

@aediaλ Chcoolate?

@JasperLoy More recent than which other photo?

That photo's around nine months old.

@JasperLoy Actually, I like choocolate.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 You didn't hear about the three big holes in the ground? Well, well, well.

@Danielδ groans

@aediaλ My personal favorite is the one in which the butcher accidentally backs up into his meat grinder and gets a little behind in his work.

@JasperLoy it's because a pedant would insist on specifying the kind of establishment he walked into, but "X walks into a bar" is a standard joke format. But also a pedant corrects people's spelling or facts constantly.

@Danielδ That reminds me of an episode of The Sopranos

@JasperLoy well, that's all there IS to it, really

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Well, actually, it's the associate dean's library. They cleared a space for me in the back.

It hinges on the listener expecting the punchline about the pedant in the bar, but instead you're treated to a display of pedantry.

@Kitḫ ah, a library. Where all sorts of shenanigans take place.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 No shenanigans.

@Kitḫ mmm-hm.

Libraries are sacred places. I don't defile them. Churches, on the other hand, are less than sacrosanct.

@JasperLoy youtube.com/watch?v=GU6i_JhbVsc

@Kitḫ shenanigans != defiling.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 i'm really surprised to hear Kit calling shenanigans defiling

Though I agree about their sacred nature

@MrShinyandNew安宇 youtube.com/watch?v=MFZG8KQJni8

@JasperLoy That's not so much of a place, really.

@JasperLoy Where are the women measured?

@JasperLoy Well, keep trying, I guess :)

Orly? Man includes woman? What century are you living in?

Can't resist the tide.

It is slow forward progress. There is no stopping it.

In this case "the nature of a man" sounds like it is exclusively talking about men. I'd say "a man" probably no longer stands for "a person" in modern speech/writing, except when the speaker is being sloppy.

You wouldn't think so if it were your gender that was excluded.

@JasperLoy wait, wait,.... why not try to tell Kit that women can never be equal to men unless they don't have kids. That was hilarious when Jez tried it.

@JasperLoy that's not a rule I'll be adhearing to

@MrShinyandNew安宇 No, he said that whether women have children or not, they shouldn't have equal treatment at work, because they could have children.

@JasperLoy well, I think more and more it will be seen as more correct.

@Kitḫ whatever it was, I found it pretty funny. I could almost see the punch you wanted to deliver

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yes, I was almost giggling in my office because I was so outrageously irate.

@Kitḫ heheh

I thought my response was calm and measured.

Considering how I felt.

teehee I'm still giggling about it

Indeed.

My wife's career was pretty badly harmed by having two kids. And we have fairly strong laws about this stuff in Canada. Parents can get up to a year off (combined) as long as they've worked a certain minimum time beforehand. They are required to have their old job, or equivalent, when they come back.

Yeah. It's like that only shorter here.

And my former workplace suddenly wrote me up for misbehavior like, a week after I told them I was pregnant.

@Kitḫ wow, that's like almost what happened to my wife. Her boss went from super-nice to super-bitch. She used to leave notes praising good behaviour, those notes stopped. She started nitpicking EVERYTHING. Micromanaging everything. etc. Then on the 2nd maternity leave, the store changed its hours and my wife was going to be busted to part-time, even though she out-ranked the other pharmacist on staff (both rank and seniority). Etc. it got pretty bad.

But I am pretty bossy about my expectations from a job, and I think my employers since then have just not known what to do with me.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah. It was hilarious. In my four-page resignation letter, which I distributed to all the staff, I pointed out that the situation was ludicrous. I had just three weeks prior received a sparkling annual review from my boss who said she didn't know what she would do without me.

The same boss that wrote me up and said that I had been rude to everyone and that she had given me numerous verbal warnings over the course of the past year.

I debated for a long time over suing them, but decided against it.

@Kitḫ Wow, you'd have a pretty strong human rights lawsuit here

It's one of the reason why I work in a union shop now.

@Kitḫ i didn't even know that there were union programmer shops

@Kitḫ wow you have union programming shops??!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 That place was awful, by far the worst place I have ever worked. Huge turnover and rotten right through to the top.

It's not the programming part that's union. I work at an educational institution. I'm a member of the NEA.

@Kitḫ glad to hear you got right out of there

@Kitḫ ah

send to writers?

@JSBᾶngs It was great. I loved my letter. I handed it out to everyone, and then walked out the door. My boss sneered at me "What are you going to do now?" And I replied, "I plan to go to my new job starting tomorrow. Today, I'm going to drink coffee and maybe take in a movie."

@Kitḫ I don't have kids yet, so I haven't faced the issue overtly. But I would say I've faced the omg you could have potential kids issue in the sense that I haven't been able to find a job where I make as much as many of my male college friends who graduated with similar qualifications.

@aediaλ Just have yourself sterilized, and Jez will hire you for the same wage as a man

I earn about 2/3 of what my husband earns and the main difference between us is that I am more diligent and he is more pushy.

@aediaλ I'm never sure if that's the case in my jobs. I usually run into the "We have a standard pay scale."

That's what they say.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 aye, but alas Jez can only afford to pay what he would pay a woman

@Kitḫ pay scales are always slidey and window-y. lots of space for inequalities.

@MattЭллен wow, every single one of those tags is wrong

I would like to push for more in my job now. I make about 80% of the average local rate, but I'm not really sure how much leeway my boss has.

@MattЭллен I think you've stumbled on the answer! just pay all the men less.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 yes! progress! rolls eyes

@MrShinyandNew安宇 interesting. but how would we afford hookers and blow?

interesting random thought that just occurred to me: if all couples with children opted to have one parent stay home, would the reduction in labor supply drive up the wages for the rest of the workforce?

and would this offset the lost wages for the formerly two-income families?

guffaw

@MattЭллен get the male hookers, they're cheaper

@MrShinyandNew安宇 of course! problems solved

Male hookers are more expensive, duh. Where do you live?

oh. well, tbh I've never enquired, so I'm just going to believe whatever I'm told

@JSBᾶngs I don't think so. I think it would shrink the economy too much.

@Kitḫ No, after we pay all men less, they'll be cheaper.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm, interesting logic.

I can't believe I haven't done a single thing today.

@Kitḫ welcome to my yesterday

@Kitḫ Yes, but if I were hired with a different title, the title more of the men have, I would be in a more expensive window...

I sat on EL&U all day. I tried to do things, but really I'm mostly waiting for the meeting we're having with our in house customer, so stuff gets assigned

@aediaλ Hmm. That's an idea. How can I find out what titles are in my organization? And what the pay bands are?

today I tried debugging some 3rd party code

I have been staring at the same SQL script all day. I can't get my brain in gear enough to ignore you guys and fix the issue.

@Kitḫ Spies? Delicious, delicious spies?

@aediaλ Yes! Great! You can call my HR and request that information! Thank you!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 total economic output would fall, yes, but i wasn't asking about that. i was just thinking about wages

@Kitḫ the only cure to that I've found is to leave chat and log out of SE

plus, the economic indicators are kind of bogus when it comes to something like this. if you pay someone to take care of your kids, that money gets counted as GDP, but if you do it yourself it doesn't.

I think corporations would find a way to lower wages because of that.

@JSBᾶngs I dunno, I think if the economy crashed like that you'd find nobody could pay those wages.

@MattЭллен Nonsense!

@Kitḫ you're right! what was I thinking?

@MattЭллен you weren't, it seems

I've just not thunk hard enough

@Kit I don't really know. I'm going off some presentations that they let the youngish people see a while ago about how raises work and a directory we had, or used to have, that gives us the low, median, and high pay band info (which is pretty much all we're even allowed to know about our own pay band when we come up for raises). But it seems to be the same around here that some titles are much more valuable than others, even if the people in them, uhh, aren't.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 having more parents stay home would be an economic crash? i hope not. i wish more people opted to stay home.

@aediaλ this is pretty much true everywhere. altho my employer is pretty up-front about pay scales and stuff, and i have never heard anyone complaining about their pay

I'm trying to do some thingamajigger so I'm perpetually missing things you guys are saying. I guess I'm not doing very well at either thing I'm doing, though...

@JSBᾶngs Me too.

So I think I fixed my problem, but the real question is, does it seem like it should have taken me all day to do it?

@Kitḫ just talk up how hard it was. invent complications if you have to.

Damn it. Also, I did not actually fix it.

punches script

Oh FFS. facepalm

@Kitḫ Of course! You kept getting interrupted by the need to drill cranial burr holes!

How is your incision, anyway?

tilts head

Nothing falling out!

Excellent! And the pain?

Hmm. Not completely cured. I still think that grey stuff might be causing a bit of it. It's too bad Ceiling Cat wouldn't let you just take it all out.

Codez! Notty! Y u no werkn?

Uh oh. More important w-rk. Gracias por trepanning but must run!

@MattЭллен is that unicorn brain?

an approximate rendering of the colour and consistency of @aedia's brain

Thank you for chewing those Skittles and spitting them out for us.

@Kitḫ It is done in the name of science!

I have to go. Chat with you all later, in four hours or so!

see ya @Kit :)

I have to report two very exciting uses of the "needs washed" construction in the wild!

Granted, they're in writing not speech, but they're in semi-casual writing (ticket/bug request system) from a user who I think is from Western MD and originally from there or western PA.

> original date needs changed

Do tell.

> The following blah have changed from blah blah blah and Admin needs updated: blah blah w-rk stuff

That's it. Okay, so it's not that exciting.

But I don't think it's an error; I think she really uses it.

I'm going to have to look out for it when I see her in person.

That is pretty interesting!

OMG, what is my child doing?

Throwing flour all over the house?

Hopefully not.

Hmm. Does not convey.

His mouth is stuffed full of peas.

Guilty look?

Ohhh.

Ack. Don't look at my house though.

I am jealous of your house! There are even stairs in it!

I have a room.

It only has windows on one side.

Also, our bed is the couch (futon).

The apartment looked nice and big but then we moved all our junk in, and it's not so big now. I'm glad we got rid of as much furniture as we did.

Awwwh!

That's the eldest. I didn't want to post only a picture of the littlest.

OK. Gotta go. Back in a while.

Have fun!

AWww!

You should be glad I am a vegetarian dog on Wednesdays.

I could just eat him...

Kids are crazy. It's mindblowing that they're like, little people and stuff.

And like, they can just learn language practically by osmosis.

(If we were talking in person there would probably be a few more instances of like in there.)

Do you ever have a sort of brain clash thingamajigger that's like semantic satiation but not exactly? Where you read one word and after a while it keeps making an association with something else, although not a nonword?

What I mean is, for example... I read this question and after a bit, the word simply started bringing up nothing about simple at all, but just simper, so that I started thinking about simperingly every time I saw simply.

Maybe it's just the excessive number of coffees or the headache drugs or the skittles in my head.

Hello people.

Hiya!

@aediaλ How are you?

@Mahnax Head not hurt much anymore but words no come out good now.

You?

@aediaλ I'm pretty good, we were dismissed early today. Teacher's meeting or some such nonsense.

Nice!

Indeed! So now I'm home early, enjoying some solitude.

groans oh great why do I take such bad notes? why did I never learn to take notes?

I'm trying to finish some work I met about last week and not only can I barely read my handwriting, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

@aediaλ Are you in post secondary then?

Half the phrases trail off before they get to the important bit.

Nope, I'm pretending to be a real grownup.

OH GOD MORE EMAILS ABOUT URGENT WORK hides under rock

I have days like that. Days when I almost want (shudder) @Kit to stab my ears with knitting needles or railroad spikes or whatever else.

@aediaλ tries to coax @aedia out with some sprinkles

peeks out and eats one

steps farther away, beckoning with more sprinkles

tries to sweep sprinkles toward her with tail

There's bad things out there!

deletes nasty e-mails

It's safe now.

follows sprinkles and emerges from rock

Okay, if you say so.

Good, good.

Do unicorns like being petted?

Behind the ears.

@aediaλ I see. pets @aedia behind ears

I hate arrays.

They are evil.

Nuh uh!

Draw the boxes on your paper.

They are awesome.

They're like linked lists with more indexing and less thinking about pointers.

It turns out if I can think of something, it's already been written in Wikipedia.

Well, now that I know how to use them, thanks to w3schools, they look pretty nice.

@aediaλ Are you a programmer then too?

Not right now, but I have a CS degree.

Ah, cool.

I'm sort of a writer/designer/usability/accessibility person.

Interesting. Painful degree of empathy for usability test subjects, right?

I actually recall that, I did not just go to your profile.

Heh.

And something about coffee.

I don't know if that's even in my profile. I just talk about it constantly, because I can't live without it in my veins.

@aediaλ Hm. It's not good to inject yourself with coffee.

Oh, it is in my profile. Go figure.

@aediaλ Aha!

@Mahnax Haha, I'm sure it's fine...

@aediaλ That's what the heroin addicts say.

brushes fur down Iimm nnoott jjjitterry attt allll!

¡hola!

@aediaλ Haha.

Hi @itsme.