@Kitḫ When I went to college I started emailing with my mom and that helped... things have gotten better over the years as they've to some extent accepted that I'm an adult and not coming back to the nest ;) and also with the advent of smartphones so I can write back frequently even if it's briefly composed on the bus.
@JSBᾶngs I sat all the way through what was shown. Some jerk threw a roll of toilet paper at the screen, which parted in the middle. At this point the projectionist threw everybody out.
And since I got Pi instead of the second disc of Doctor WhoSex in the City? I dunno, something girly. season six, I think I will be watching a lot of Mr. Show for a while.
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I have to wipe 'em down neurotically regularly from all the other people who think it's okay to use 'em as a napkin, so they're probably pretty clean...
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yes, they always say "let me come show you on your computer, it'll be quick" right before they jab an open pen in the direction of your most recently cleaned monitor
@aediaλ In this case, he'll ask me if I can pull up a report so he can ask me why the numbers are the way they are; the report will have only one row in it, but he has to touch that row with his greasy fingers before he can tell me about it. It's like a frickin' ritual. Or maybe he's hoping to massage the numbers. I dunno.
@Kitḫ I grudgingly accept that my touchscreen devices get fingerprints on them, but I still wipe off my phone with a cleaning cloth rather frequently...
You might be happy to know that my keyboard is probably full of crumbs and I don't care about that. I guess it's how I compensate for being neurotic about the monitors.
Curses, @MrShinyandNew, I just had to clean my glasses to decide if this spot on my monitor was real, and it is, and it isn't going anywhere. Grr.
@aediaλ I try not to think about my glasses, because once I discover that they're filthy then I can't not notice it. It's like quantum dirt: they're both dirty and not dirty at the same time, until I check and the dirt-form collapses (it always collapses to "dirty")
@Kitḫ It's sort of actually easier to clean my glasses than my monitor, so I don't mind that much when they get dirty... oh, that's what you mean. Yeah I hate that.
unless a bunch of glasses-wearers were all standing around comparing glasses and prescriptions and whatnot. Then everyone wants to try everyone else's lenses to see who's blinder.
I don't remember people doing it recently to me but other kids would always want to, when I was in high school especially, and I thought it was rude then. They would want to try 'em on.
my wife once broke her glasses and had to walk to the optometrist; she was so blind she couldn't recognize faces without her glasses. Then she got laser surgery and now her vision is almost 20/20
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I am so paranoid about that. Once when I broke my glasses I was barely able to use my old pair to do schoolwork (at the time I didn't even have contacts I could wear) until I could replace them... now I leave myself a pair of contacts at work just in case. Probably overkill, but man. I think I could get home on public transit without glasses... maybe.
@Kitḫ Uhoh. Sorry. I am like... I worry about things that probably will never happen and insist on being prepared for them anyway. I didn't mean to spawn new fears in you!
@Kitḫ I got contacts this past year because my eye coverage would subsidize either glasses or contacts and I didn't need new glasses yet. I used to have contacts but never wore them except for some special occasions, swimming, exercise, etc. so I got a limited amount of single-day use ones that I like. (I pretty much never wear 'em to work because who can open their eyes that early in the morning to shove a piece of plastic in there?)
And Cake always makes me think of Perhaps, and that always makes me think of Coupling, and that always makes me think of how lulz that series was and how it hasn't been running for a decade or so.
In heaven, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, and the police are English. In hell, the cooks are English, the engineers are French, and the police are German.
@aediaλ It could be more prevalent at university, here, to say "chem", I don't think I knew any chemistry students back then. We do say tech a lot, now I think about it.
I felt old when the other day I got crammed near some kids in a cafeteria. I was kind of hoping they were interns at the place I was at, but they may have been recent college graduates. They were uptalking up a storm, and they were silly every time I overheard them. "Like, fruit juice, yeah, I know, juice is like so bad for you!" "Yeah I nev-er drink juice." - you should imagine this as just slightly more than I use "like", so it was noticeable to me :P
Then five minutes later they would be on to discussing how PBR and Miller Lite were viable options for purchase when trying to not run up the bar tab, and in my head I'm thinking, what? Y'all won't drink orange juice but you'll drink seriously the worst possible beers you can purchase, in a town where we have tons of VA and DE and MD microbrews or anything else you want if you want to be a beer snob? I wanted to shake them...
@MattЭллен I'm sure I do it and I only notice because they did it just that little bit more. Also, because I was stuck cramming food in my gullet alone, listening to them jabber.
I wish they wouldn't use HRT as the abbreviation for "high rising terminal" on teh wikis. It confuses my poor tired brain every time and I think it's hormone replacement therapy.
I'm writing up an audit report. There's one control that I'm making a finding against, which essentially is an umbrella control that says "everything here is wrong". Then, I've got to enumerate findings against the other controls. How can I properly express the relationship between the umbrella control and the rest? Right now, my draft has "Many of the other findings in this report are components of this finding" but that doesn't quite "feel" right.
I'm not quite sure. The umbrella finding is effectively "your real-world implementation does not match your documentation", and the other findings specifically cover pieces of the documentation (or real world implementation) that aren't right. For some reason, the nouns I've used in the draft sentence just don't seem quite right. Or, there may be something missing that's just not making the sentence feel like it properly expresses the situation.
The sentence is grammatical, and it makes sense given the context. I think I would have trouble trying to more clearly express that idea too, but perhaps you can tell us what makes the other findings components? Or, explain that the umbrella thing is a summary, rather than expressing the relationship the other way?
a finding is something one finds, i.e. concludes. A control is something used to control something else. So, "Your main conclusion is made up of many other conclusions in this report". Does that express anything like what you mean?
@aediaλ The way our documentation works, is that we write Implementation Details to match the requirements of certain Controls. One Control is essentially a self-reference, saying "you will create and maintain accurate documentation, describing how you do things". The rest of the controls are the "things you need to do", which the first Control requires to be documented.
An example of talking about the one finding of the summary is that I might write in that one place, "The findings summarized in this item are explained in more detail in parts 3, 7, and 9." or "See items 3, 7, and 9 for more detailed explanation related to these controls."
Usually, we just write findings against the lower Controls. In this case though, there's enough of those that I want to call attention to the higher one as well.
@Iszi I would probably conclude my writeup for the first Control by saying that, then. I would summarize the general problems and then say something like "This item requires all of the following controls to be documented. Please see the findings under each individual control for problems that are specific to that control." Or, if it is really only certain items, I would list out their numbers or names, rather than saying "all of the following".
An amusing note: While writing up another finding, the term "anecdotal evidence" came to mind. If something is anecdotal, is it really evidence? That's kind of like someone being subjectively objective, isn't it?
@aediaλ Ricky Gervais had a radio show. This guy was involved as something or other and they found out how ignorant he was one day. Karl Pilkington. He's got a TV show now!
Although, the idea that stuff we build could affect the planet isn't entirely completely stupid. Not that long ago my husband told me he read on the interwebs that Three Gorges Dam changed the earth's orbit and number of leap seconds by just a little bit when it filled up, and I was like no wai! and he was like yes wai! and we googled, and I was still very skeptical when it all kept coming back to the same press release...
...and then we looked up what NASA actually said that was in the press release, and it was all like well duh it changed things that much but that's nothing compared to natural earthquakes and stuff so don't worry.
@Iszi anecdotal evidence is reporting of something without having any physical evidence to back it up - hearsay is another word for it. I suppose it is subjectively objective, since you have to trust the person to believe them.
@aediaλ very true. but the planet doesn't get any heavier :D
@MetaEd By the way, I don't know if I remembered to tell you about ipa.typeit.org. It's helpful for fetching symbols that probably aren't on your keyboard.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…