dvtv75

I know a guy who moved to New Zealand from Hungary, with several years experience in broadcast TV. He thought New Zealand was going to be a new start, and got a job at a regional TV station working with a friend of mine.

After about a year of working for that place, he got very angry with it and quit because they were cheap beyond what you can imagine. He ended up doing a lot of overtime to make up for software and hardware problems. A few years ago moved to Auckland to work for a production firm up there, thinking it would be a better job.

Rumor has it that he gave up and went back to Hungary.

I have a Bachelor's degree in CS. Nobody will hire me because I don't have experience.

Funny thing is, before I got my degree, they were happy enough with my experience but wouldn't hire me because I didn't have a degree. Even had the same interviewer tell me one of those things on either side of my graduation.

"Get a degree and we'd love to hire you for your experience!" "Oh, sorry, you're qualified but don't have any experience."

It's like my degree reset me to zero.

> Shit salaries, overpriced housing, and everything is expensive

You're not kidding. A decade ago I looked at buying Autodesk Maya. It was $US3999 if I were in the US, so how much was it from the local reseller in NZ? $NZ13,000, just because it could be. At the time, that was enough to make a deposit on a house. A group of us started calling it "the New Zealand tax," because we noticed that almost every price for an imported good was 2.5x what it would cost to purchase, ship from another country, and pay tax - often more. HDMI cables were $40, and my friend from Dick Smith (roughly equivalent to Fry's) told me they bought them for $5.

My partner has, for 20 years, hated Babylon 5. An ex-boyfriend apparently forced her to watch an episode, which generated a lot of hate for the show. I re-watched it a few years ago, and she incidentally watched this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GOHqe0vokU

She laughed herself silly, and told me that the show isn't what she thought it was. I gave it a few months, and showed her some funny bits from it every now and then. The last one I showed her was this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwF5BBL26I

She smiled a little, but clearly didn't get it. I explained that it's much, much funnier if you know the backstory of the characters, the how and why of G'kar's hatred for Londo, and she said "OK, I'll watch some of it."

I showed her the pilot and a few episodes, and she kept saying that it didn't make as much sense as she expected, and wondered why I kept pointing things out; "remember this for future reference."

So, we got halfway through the season, and she started asking to watch more of it. We're stalled just now, part way through season five, but she's firmly a fan of it.

When I watched it back in 2015/2016, I did notice how some of the scenes appeared to have been cropped and zoomed for the DVD release, The composition was off, and as noted in the story, some shots looked very much like a low res MPEG in fullscreen. I wasn't certain if they were originally like that or not. Glad to know it wasn't, although I would much rather watch a standard def (or plain upscaled) rather than the crappy video we got.

> Plenty of studies around long term intelligence of children learning second languages early on....

This in itself may be a myth:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-rages-over...

Many years ago, I traveled to another city to see a Joe Satriani concert. I was really hyped to finally see him in concert, and hoped that I'd run into him and get a CD autographed.

So when I did run into him in the local community space, I had a thought: I could be another fawning fanboy, interrupting his shopping and day in general, or I could just think to myself "Hey, that's Satch!" and not bother him at all.

So I didn't bother him. I've long wondered if I made a good choice or not, now I think I made the right one.

I think that's actually meant to be an orbital nuclear launcher, making the comparison even more appropriate.

A few days back, to allow me to download the software I had just bought, the site kept putting up those damned pictures for me to click on. Street signs were the first three, I apparently got all of those wrong (even though I got them right), shop fronts was the next lot (that's a little harder to work through, I can't tell Chinese shop fronts from Chinese warehouses by text alone) and I had two of those, then more street signs, and finally cars.

It took longer to confirm I was human than it did to download the software. My partner came through to see if I was alright, after I was shouting abuse at the computer for an extended period. She sat through one of them with me, confirmed that I had it right, then swore and walked away when it decided I was wrong.

If I'd known that it was going to screw me over that much, I would have recorded it and put the video on YouTube.

It's not just a problem in the US, either. I recently learned of a New Zealand concrete company who deliberately don't bother with environmental compliance and instead just cop a fine and pay it. They budget for the fine every year, rather than spending the money to get into compliance.

Edit: change of wording

Back in 1999, I was standing outside gazing at the stars, when I heard this "tick tick tick" sound behind me. Turned around to find this tiny little weta, maybe three centimeters long, jumping around while appearing to look at me.

My father's cats used to capture them by the dozens and bring them inside, usually they'd kill them, but if I could tra pthe weta I'd take it outside and put it near some bushes, so it could get away.

Fascinating little things.

> By the way, my tonsils disappeared by themselves!

You're not alone there: my partner's tonsils "dissolved" when she was younger. I've never heard of this anywhere else until now.

This can be true, but it's not necessarily always so.

Many years back, my partner was sexually assaulted, so I attended a few of her counseling sessions with the local Rape Crisis center as a support person. The female counselor commented that I was "very brave" to do that - something I found very odd.

Years later, my partner said that the sessions I didn't attend were little more than "man hating" and "man-blaming" for all of the world's wrongs.

I have also attended counseling, as I've recently started to understand the level of physical and psychological abuse that was inflicted upon me by my mother (and her boyfriend, as well as my stepfather) while I was growing up. My counselor was also female, yet not once did she belittle my suffering as less because of my gender. As I described a few events, I'd even hear her let out a gasp or draw a sharp breath, or a few words of concern.

It seems possible to me that you've come across individuals with their own concerns and agendas that lie outside the requirements of their jobs, but I couldn't write off an entire profession based on that.

A friend of mine is a camera operator for a small production firm. They have some really old equipment, including tripods that aren't safe to use for their cameras, but they still cheap out on them anyway.

He gets paid about $16/hour to stand by the camera for up to 20 hours a week to make sure it doesn't fall over, which costs around $10k/year. A new tripod would cost $1500 and could last for a decade, so $it's 100k vs $1500.

Justify that, if you can. I can't, and I'm not being sarcastic or bitchy, I really want someone to explain it.

My job is one of those. I do about 35 minutes a day, I'm paid SFA (legal minimum) for turning up to stand around for a few hours. I can't swear enough to underscore how much I hate it and I would leave in a cold second.

The worst part is that they rely on my skill when stuff goes wrong, which happens very rarely, although they've just assigned me a high end graphics project (I'm not a graphic designer by any definition of the term), a $10,000 project that they've promised to pay me about $100 for.

Most days, I'd rather just drive into the oncoming truck than go there.

My workplace just went through that very thing. We had a company-wide review of employees attitudes, remuneration, equipment, the works. They released a letter telling us they were going to begin a few months later, starting with pay raises and equipment upgrades - and then did nothing. It's a year on from the initial review, and I guess they managed to complete their goal: stave off the riots for a while by letting the minions feel heard.

I have the same hardware, and I'm sitting here just looking for excuses to upgrade (of all reasons, for a new heatsink I was given) and I just can't bring myself to place the order because I just don't need it.

As you say, these i7s are still handling the load quite nicely.

For me, my present manager is my main referee, and the longest I've held a position in years. I don't have many other referees, most have left the country or just disappeared.

There's also the bad reputation that can be spread around the golf course meetings. It's quite a small city.

One important thing I've learned is that you can't change a bad business. It doesn't matter how hard you try, or what you do, they will remain the same.

I had a similar reaction, I was wondering if I should update the Tomato on my WRT54G, but no matter, it's still running nicely.

If it ain't broke...

This is extremely important. A qualified trainer (I'm one, but hate the work, too many people watched a program on a body builder and know all about it) will assess your strength and fitness, determine your goals, and then create a program to help you achieve them, as well as teach you to lift properly and safely.

Poor form can cause long term injuries, soft tissue damage, or even arthritis.

If you do a search, you'll get a number of links (the farthest back I found was 2010) on feather color. I found one popsci article that describes how it was determined:

https://www.popsci.com/discover-color-dinosaur

I had an argument with one guy who would fire you for "lying in an interview" if you didn't tell him you had a degree, or list it on your resume. His position was that people with degrees would work for him until a better job came along and then just move along, wasting his time "training" them. (Basic laboring work.)

He didn't understand that he was just hiring the lowest common denominator because he wouldn't run a workplace that people wanted to stay in. I've long wondered how many exceptional people he's cast off because they didn't fit his employment profile of "no hope, minimum wage."

Before I earned my degree, I had countless interviewers tell me that they wouldn't consider me until I had one, in spite of my "not insignificant" experience and interest in the field. (It was sysadmin at the time.)

So I got my degree. Suddenly, the interviewers - some of them the same as before - changed their positions to not considering me in spite of having the qualifications, but because I had no experience.

So before it was experience but no degree, then it was degree but no experience. It's been about eight years since I gave up trying to find work appropriate to my training.

Well, it was almost 20 years ago and I only heard about it long after I'd forgotten his name. Without an actual conviction, I don't think my word would carry much weight and could just cause me a lot of trouble.

Hopefully he's grown up a lot since then, but if he hasn't I can't imagine that kind of stupidity could be hidden forever.

I had one of those, I think it may have overclocked to 550MHz, I can't remember for sure. The cooling fan was audible outside of my house!

I worked in a film processing store (before the turn of the century), and one of my workmates there told me how he'd set up a friend to pretend to be a former boss for him. Said friend forgot, my workmate was called in to the business and they told him they would ring the police if they ever heard his name again. Apparently there was swearing.

Same guy found a mobile phone and rang some random number in Australia. Ran up a massive toll bill talking to strangers, and ditched the phone.

Last I heard, he'd got into med school. As you might observe, I'm not sure this is an appropriate field for someone of his ethical caliber.

One of my colleagues used to be required to clock out for a toilet break, and I recall that there was a minimum time he would be docked pay for, even if his break was less than that. He worked for a supermarket.

My partner used to work for a business that had a swipe-in resolution of 15 minutes, so if you were just 30 seconds late, you would be docked 15 minutes of pay. You had to work the unpaid 14.5 minutes or you got your butt kicked out the door. That was a factory job.

I have seen just this happen. I don't know how someone as basically incompetent as my former boss could do it, but he was made an IT manager for a huge government department, in spite of the IT department at my workplace having the worst reputation in town.

> I hear so many comedians and read articles where people make fun of "vaping" as super lame and uncool

This comes as a surprise to me, as the majority of people vaping are hipsters, where I am.

I do know someone who tried to use it to quit smoking, but that lasted about a week.

I once heard someone say that the best puns cause physical pain, either with the listener groaning or the listener punching, but either way the pain is the proof of success.