My favorite was finding out that bit locker was enabled on a forced update. The key was saved to the Microsoft account that was used to set up the lappy. Except, I didn’t use a Microsoft account because I’m not some tech marionette lemming who needs Gates hand shoved up my ass to tell me how to use my fucking computer. So I used a local account and disabled bitlocker via bios.
Nothing was lost, but it was still a pain in the dick hole.
Lol, so true. I always try to share the reach with others when I can. But after being married for about 15 years at the time, I found a bag of candy on top of the books on the bottom shelf. So I went around the house checking all the low areas and there was a veritable TROVE of sweets - everywhere. They were even in the garage that only I use. Partner was horrified that I found them and then wouldn’t say how long this had gone on for. I can only assume the entire time because I did find a few things like chocolate oranges that they only sell around the holidays. Every once in a while nowadays I see a wrapper, but the stash has been replaced and no one is talking. Mischievous.
But, who will tell Robert Barnes, “good job”? Who will feed Owen Shroyer? Who will help David Knight back to bed? Who will change Buckley’s diaper? Who will feed LeeAnn McAdoo’s addiction to being sexually harassed in not-so-subtle and sweaty ways by a greasy human christmas ham?
Well now I feel so cultured.
Pesto Broccoli Chicken Bacon Ranch
Hah! Great to hear then. My apologies for assuming. I didn’t understand the nuances or opportunities of engineering when I went through, but you sound much more prepared for the job than I likely was. Good luck to you then! And stick with it. It’s tough but worth it.
I’m unbelievably offended that you would assume I do IT. I’m an EE.
But yes I’ve done IT.
Lol, don’t let school indoctrinate you into thinking that design work is the only thing for an engineer to do. There is so much more. Field engineering is great and rarely requires design. Inspections are also an awesome way to use that degree sans design. Look into regulation or travel opportunities. High tech and applications also dabble in design without requiring it. Controls and instrumentation can also provide build, maintenance, or modification opportunities that more closely align with what you would call trade work. That said, if the cost is a problem (and I fucking get it), you can always take a hiatus and join the trades as a trial. Electricians have a pretty cool job. You can do residential and mostly cookie cutter work that never ends, or do commercial and specialize, get into service, or even govt inspection. Just throwing some ideas out. Good luck and grats! EE is the shit!!
I build electrical panels but walk past the machine shop every morning and love seeing all the machines that you get to work with. The water jet is my favorite. Also, the press. So f’ing cool.
I switched to PPG after realizing that piloting was not a good fit for my stress capacity. You still get to fly but for a fraction of the cost. 🪂
I’m so envious! My job is ending in a few years and I am going to do law school. I can’t wait.
Lol, yes, it’s been a fucking journey though. I didn’t realize I was abused by my family so I spent the better part of two decades being depressed, self-destructive, and suicidal. I also participated in the genocide in Iraq and tried to bury that away too. Therapy has been recent but life changing. I’d tried it before but I didn’t know that everyone wasn’t like me so I always came off as indifferent, insensitive, or unmotivated. I spoke to a VA counselor once, about a traumatic experience, and all he wrote in his notes were, “patient states”, then a very truncated summary of what I had said. Then he diagnosed me with halitosis. What an absolute fuck head. I wrote off therapy for 10 years after that. Finally met someone who was blown away that I had never been treated for ADD/ASD and she tested me. Then the therapy advanced and she was able to communicate with me. Realized the PTSD, child abuse, and toxic behaviors that I was newly habituating. Who knows if growing up in a healthy/safe environment or being tested would have changed any of these failed prospects. But if you have trouble getting along in a team environment (I massively do) then you can look for work in remote or secure locations, look for vocations that revolve around data collection and travel, or look into govt jobs. I’ve worked a few govt jobs (not infrequently unionized so 👍) and everyone there is either a 5th dimensional chess level wackadoo or they expect everyone else to be. They embrace weird, they just don’t pay shit. So here is my vocational history:
Medic - in emergency response/combat, no problem. But on the civilian side there were too many… civilians. May lean heavily on communication, but nearly all of it can be done free of niceties, body language, idioms, or banter.
Then a phleb/lab tech while I changed vocations. May require interaction with patients. So if that’s a problem then stick to lab tech work. Also, seek night shift positions if you want to take isolation to the next level.
Electrical engineer until I realized I had to work in a team of dumb people, and no matter how many companies I changed to the teams just got dumber. If you are more perceptive than you let on, and you expect people in high functioning/accountable roles to be demonstrably intelligent, then maybe steer clear of these team based fields of work. I switched to trades where I (admittedly, rudely) expect everyone to be a drooling lepton and am always impressed at their ingenuity.
So field engineering inspections for a while. That didn’t work out eventually, and after leaving this vocation I was diagnosed and mental health began to improve. This was travel based, and very solitary. I had to be self motivated but the work was enjoyable so that helped. Time management and resource allocation were always difficult so routines and checklists were leaned on heavily.
Then electrician, equipment fabrication, and control design (again, yes, but part time). Trades tend to work in teams at lower levels of experience so if you are willing to grit your teeth through the monotony of other people’s opinions, there are specializations that can alleviate the surplus extraversion. Custom work keeps things fresh. But if you have to do something repetitive, then maybe find a pastime that keeps your lizard brain occupied (I love podcasts, Behind the Bastards, Knowledge Fight, The Dollop - I listen to these and the day is over in a blink).
This job ends in a few years, and I do have a master’s in software engineering, but the SO wants to be the bread winner so I’m preparing to do law school because why not.
I’d be happy to respond to any questions if you think I can help. Good luck!
There’s a timing tolerance you can program. So if you only want to count double axles or get the speed data based on a presumed axle spacing, you can program that in. But, if you feel you must spoof it, listen to the sets of tires as they cross the hose and match that timing while stomping on the hose. You need to stomp pretty hard to get the hose to compress enough and you need to generate an air hammer pressure wave within the hose. This and the intensity is what is measured by the device and recorded as an event.
But these modules are left for weeks to months. So if the counts are all in the, let’s say, 300 range daily but then one single day shows 1000, that day’s data is typically removed from the set. Outliers can happen for all kinds of reasons (e.g. failure, hose break, weather, loss of solar power, unusual or atypical activities, children young and old). So, if the counts are wildly different than prior years’ counts, daily/weekly/monthly inconsistent, beyond comprehension, or obviously defective; they can set up more than one device if they need and some devices can receive more than one input. They can also program the device with multiple inputs to only record data within a specific range of parameters. So there are lots of ways to limit the shenanigans in the data.
And you’d be surprised at how much traffic some roads get. Even some residential roads would see thousands daily. So if you really want to bump up the priority of the road, you would be better off driving over it all day, every day until it was removed; because you’d destroy your leg trying to stomp on it that many times. And you’d have to do this on all adjacent and feeder roads to support that data. And you’d have to ensure that you do this every year until you recognize the desired effects of your endeavor, and then you’d have to continue this practice in perpetuity. Or the jig is up!
Sure, they’re nothing special, but they were intense at the time. Especially for a bunch of summer interns that had the misfortune of needing to find employment during a recession. I was an engineering student and my cohorts were all in the sciences as well. For being a job that required hammering, measuring, and not getting hit by traffic it was one of the more stimulating jobs I’ve ever worked.
So the typical process for us was to drive to the site, usually it was just a road segment from a list (3-5 year annually rotating lists). We had a truck bed filled with precut hoses, solar powered counting modules, spikes, and then wire mesh hose retainers. We would get the appropriate size hose, slip on retainers, hammer in the spikes, and attach and program the module.
One day a fellow in a pickem’up truck followed us from one road to the next telling us that we had no authority to be there and he would sue if we didn’t take our computers and leave. The next day, at a completely different part of the city (honestly, I have no idea how he found us) he jumped out of his truck and racked a shell in his shotgun. We all just left everything and got in the truck and drove away with him standing there shit talking. The equipment was gone but the police knew the guy. They got our stuff back. They didn’t get my buddies coffee thermos though and he was pretty bent out of shape about that. I think it was old or his dad’s or something. But never saw that guy again.
We would constantly get approached by homeless people who wanted to know what we were doing. I always tried to be as informative as possible but most of the time the basic concept was too confounding. The orange vests were always a problem. One guy asked me why I only have one cone. I still laugh about that today. Just the question. Fucking hilarious. The things you don’t think to ask. It was completely legit too. We were daily put in situations where we were inches from traffic. A single cone and a truck were the only things between oncoming traffic and our faces. Why only one cone? We had to cross roads to attach the hose on the other side. If we require a cone for traffic going this way, why don’t we require one going that way? Is the cone FOR THE TRUCK?!?
What a treasure of a memory that was.
EDIT:
I forgot, there was a contractor who did the leftover work that was occasionally needed the rest of the year, but he was always out of work during the summer and he didn’t like that. So one night I was driving past one of the modules that we set up the week before and there was a frumpy looking guy walking back to his car that was parked very near it on the sidewalk. So the next day I found out who he was from the supervisor and went to the site to check it out. He had unlocked the module and slipped in a piece of paper that just said, “you’re a bitch”. Fucking ROFL.
Allow me to share some personal experiences when setting those up. Nimby’s would approach us and rant about how we were only there to justify a new stop sign or speed bump. A few times we were approached by ding dongs wielding weapons. And every once in a while people like to sabotage or steal the equipment. But once they tamper with the equipment enough times they basically get put on the shit list so their road doesn’t get serviced they don’t get plow service they don’t get anything. Maybe this was their goal maybe not who knows they’re idiots.
Honestly, highway data is used for all kinds of things but mostly for planning repairs, upgrades, and modifications. Redesigning things like intersections, traffic lights, and stop signs are rarely the result of this sort of highway data collection. It’s reported collisions and fatalities that drive safety interventions.
But again, we’re talking about nimby’s who are all fucking idiots.
I’d eat my hat if they weren’t taking subsidies and charging full price anyway.
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Now, something must be done
Or at least create SCOTUS terms, maybe. Does that do anything? Who could know such things. We need to do something though. The conservative justices aren’t legal activists, they are legal evangelicals.
I’m not quite sure you understand the problem with climate change. It’s not that “they” will come and go, it’s that WE will only go. There’s no “coming” back with any reasonable immediacy. Or were you arguing that the stones wouldn’t be there for exhibition by the jellyfish that would be the only thing left living in the oceans?
Now, it is my opinion that when Brawndo finally pushes the climate over the tipping point and life as we know it takes its final breath, that natural selection will do what it has always done and though life will change, it will persist in some form. So were humans able to outlast this foreboding obstacle and humanity persists, then so be it, but I honestly doubt they’ll give a shit about fucking stonehenge. If there were some life lessons from the past that only stonehenge can communicate, then it has obviously failed.