The $%*! frustration thread

[Sajainta]

This is coupled with my "I love fanart" comment.  It's inevitable that, while looking for fanart, you'll be absolutely inundated with random and weird slash.  Some of it is laughable, others are just What.The.Fuck.

Take, for example, the whole Saint-Just / Robespierre slash obsession.  What the HELL is up with that?!  I cannot think of anything more absurd.  >____<  Any artwork of Robespierre is 25% bishonen style (gag), 70% Saint-Just / Robespierre making out (points if they're making out on the tumbrel), and 5% actual art.  Laaaaaaaaaaaame.

[Thought]

I have a large head. It isn't noticeable most the time, but it does make it so that I can't wear hats (baseball caps excluded). There is an awesome world of head coverings that is barred to me... at least until I can find a proper hattery and the excess funds with which to pay.

[Lord J Esq]

Were you gestated in Earth orbit?

[Lord J Esq]

As much as I wish all science were accessible at a grade-school level to practically everybody, it's not. The vast majority of people, including my fellow Compendiumites and me, are not even amateurs, let alone experts, in the various fields of science popularized by science fiction and pop culture, particularly "quantum" anything. Nor is a lot of this stuff transferable to laypeople through the "references of irresistive resort" (i.e., the Internet). I regularly see folks on the Compendium (and elsewhere) casually make assertions that even the best physicists in the world could not utter with such confidence.

I used to have this problem myself, but over the years I have understood my error and it has since become quite a frustration to me to see science abused in this way by people who frankly do not know what they are talking about, yet are smart enough to recognize the mistake of presuming and supposing knowledge when they truthfully have none--especially when the mistake is pointed out to them by somebody else. But are they grateful for the insight and driven to speak more wisely? No, they become defensive and usually more ridiculous. Oh, human nature, you make me itch...

I don't want to dash anybody's eagerness for or interest in science. Goodness knows I got my start by watching Star Trek, which is not particularly scientific. But people need to learn to respect the difference between being interested in science and understanding scientific concepts. As Carl Sagan insisted, it's okay to say "I don't know."

[Thought]

I had worked for the state for the last 4 years, which included a retirement package. Due to my institution not actually knowing what it was doing (up to the point of me directly asking a question and being given an answer that was the exact opposite of what was reality), it appears that instead of rolling over that retirement monies into a different retirement account, they wrote out a check to me. Problem with that is that the government heavily penalizes the withdrawing of retirement monies. It looks like I will be loosing around 30ish percent of that (I'll need to get a tax adviser to know for sure).

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Put it into an IRA asap!

[Sajainta]

Going along (kind of) with what J said--I wish I were better at mathematics and the sciences.  I am just so abysmally horrid at maths that I can't even begin to understand basic chemistry or physics.  I was never any good at science courses either.  And I wish I was, because it is so fascinating.

I'm very much a stereotypical English lit major--I can't do maths or science at all.  Oh well.  I kick ass at writing papers, though.

[Lord J Esq]

My laptop hard drive died today. This is a considerable inconvenience.

[Sajainta]

Oh wow.  That really sucks.    I hope you have backups somewhere.

[Lord J Esq]

I have flash drive backups of all my most essential creative files. If memory serves, I have backups of some of my media library. Alas, however, I have no backups of anything since I moved out of my apartment early in August, including a number of passwords and, more importantly, a nearly-completed $2000 project, $800 worth of which just evaporated. But the real kicker is that I effectively don't have a computer right now. The ones in storage are not viable and certainly not portable. I'm typing this from Zephira's desktop computer, but when I leave her house at the end of this week I have yet to figure out what I'm going to do. Not only are both of my jobs done through the computer, but most of my communication with other people (except the in-person ones) is via computer rather than phone. I may have no choice but to spend Essential Monies on a computer replacement, not to mention a likely-futile effort to retrieve the data from the ruined hard disk.

I guess it's just as well that the first phase of my national backpacking trip is right here in my own city, so that these kinks can get shaken out. =/

[Ramsus]

Too bad my spare laptop hard drive is packed and being shipped by boat, or I could've mailed it to you with a Windows installation disc. Then you could've been up to speed again within a week or two.

Are you taking a vacation from work during your trip? If you're planning on using wifi spots, I suggest learning how to do some WEP and WPA cracking, otherwise you're better off just buying a 3G wireless card or usb dongle with a contract-free pay as you go plan.

[Lord J Esq]

My trip will be low on paid work, aye, although the nature of my present employment allows me to work from any computer with an Internet connection. Most of my computer work on this trip, however, is going to be of the old-fashioned offline variety, as I work on my book. I'll think about getting one of those USB modems, though. Rushingwind has one and it was very handy in a pinch or two.

[rushingwind]

My new geology professor is a hyper-religious New-Earther who stops lecturing every five minutes to remind us that Geology is a hard science, but it isn't, but it is! So therefore, we shouldn't let billion-year-old rock deposits and all this nonsense about carbon dating bother us too much. We just need to have faith, even though it's hard sometimes (he actually said this).

Really? I actually get a real hydrogeologist for a professor, and he starts a religious debate every few minutes? I took Geology to talk about science. The only class I want debate religion in is my religion class. I guess those billion-year old rocks from the Precambrian period are pretty stressful stuff if you're a New-Earther... (Unless, you know, God just made it that way)

Normally this kind of thing doesn't bother me, but goodness, he was extremely obnoxious about it. Enough so that I'm actually debating switching to another class. I felt really uncomfortable in there.

[FaustWolf]

Wow, that's gotta be a weird class. "Hey, students, you know that Turkana Boy? Poor kid missed the last call for Noah's Ark! By the way, so did T-Rex."

[Crono666]

My friends Cat has been missing for over a month now. Now most of us think that the cat got eaten by a wild animal, because a unidentified animal that appears to have been mauled was found around the same time that the Cat first disappeared.

My friend is convinced that the cat is still alive, not only that, but she thinks that someone is holding her cat captive. She is harassing people, and alot of people now are starting to think that she's going alittle nutty.

I feel sad that she lost her cat, but the way she's acting is really frustrating.