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RTDNTOTO šŸ» Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 20 (2025)

Suburb Repairman said:
Someone at the office is about to learn a valuable lesson about ticking off a guy that keeps receipts. I expect team players.
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Waiting GIF


:smirk:
 
Wondering why no court has ever thought of doing traffic court online. If you can do regular court online, it would seem to me to be a simple matter to set up traffic arraignments in front of a judge.

Note: I didn't get a ticket . . . but someone I know got one in Kansas and feels it's not worth going back to fight it. If only the court was online . . . Personally, I think he had a good case (ran a light to avoid getting sideswiped by someone turning into his lane) but that's not my call.

Jim
 
Just realizing that many more colleagues are using that AI helper thingie on their email app to assist with messages than I previously imagined. Itā€™s all reading the same these days, messages lack ā€œvoiceā€. Itā€™s all glurge now.
 
Wannaplan? said:
Just realizing that many more colleagues are using that AI helper thingie on their email app to assist with messages than I previously imagined. Itā€™s all reading the same these days, messages lack ā€œvoiceā€. Itā€™s all glurge now.
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I will not use AI for writing at all. As a writer, I believe in the art of writing.
 
Maister said:
Ironically, I got Junior a walkie talkie set when he was the same age. He was so unimpressed with the gift, that he never even took it out of the box! Guess Santa should have gotten him a smart phone instead. Santa had a nasty tendency to judge what was 'fun' based on what happened to be fun for a free range kid in the 1970s, I suppose.
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I had a techie friend who rigged our Walkie Talkies to transmit at a much higher wattage than they were supposed to, and also at 108.1 MHz, the high end of the commercial spectrum (which radios could sometimes tune in). Also a frequency used for aircraft VOR navigation.

This was the 80ā€™s, so neither the FCC nor FAA ever came knocking.
 
luckless pedestrian said:
I am in a women's group called Lagniappe - a little of this and a little of that - instead of book club, though a book could be a theme, you do something, learn something, craft something

so tonight I am hosting, and, because I have no personal hobbies, which is another thread entirely, I am having my daughter who works at an oyster farm come to talk about oyster farming, learn to shuck them, and what wine/beer to serve with them so I am skedaddling in a few to get ready!
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It went great - if you follow me on socials, I posted a pic to my story
 
I got my phone replaced recently. I had to set it back up and decided I wouldn't bother adding Facebook on my desktop icons. Still have an account, but never look at it anymore. Guess I'm 'quiet quitting' social media.
 
Maister said:
I got my phone replaced recently. I had to set it back up and decided I wouldn't bother adding Facebook on my desktop icons. Still have an account, but never look at it anymore. Guess I'm 'quiet quitting' social media.
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My general rule is I don't look at FB on Mondays under normal conditions.
 
Faust_Motel said:
I took a sales call from Placer. Too rich for my blood but man the data is impressive.
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We subscribed to it this holiday season. We are awaiting the complete data back from it. Just on a pure numbers perspective, we are a town of 7K. From December 1-December 31, we hosted approximately 775K from preliminary data provided by Placer. And we have 26 public toilets to boot. Number 46 flew in after the 47 took office.. it has upset some of the natives.
 
I hate writing performance reviews. It's a good person so all good stuff, I just hate our system making me copy and paste all the job duties every time and I suck at writing things.
 
While listening to George Straight's Amarillo by Morning, it inspired me to look up the distance to Amarillo from San Antonio. It's about 8 hours. Assuming that morning ends when Whataburger stops selling breakfast which according to google is 11 am; one would have to leave by 3 am at the latest to make it to Amarillo while it's morning. If anyone sees George Straight ask him what time is considered "by morning", I'd like to know.
 
Big Owl said:
While listening to George Straight's Amarillo by Morning, it inspired me to look up the distance to Amarillo from San Antonio. It's about 8 hours. Assuming that morning ends when Whataburger stops selling breakfast which according to google is 11 am; one would have to leave by 3 am at the latest to make it to Amarillo while it's morning. If anyone sees George Straight ask him what time is considered "by morning", I'd like to know.
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I would assume that "morning" covers the period from midnight to noon, exclusive.

Jim
 
DVD said:
I hate writing performance reviews. It's a good person so all good stuff, I just hate our system making me copy and paste all the job duties every time and I suck at writing things.
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Our company makes the individual employees write their own goals at the beginning of the year, then grade themselves against those goals at the end. Writing your own performance review is hideous.
 
Doohickie said:
Our company makes the individual employees write their own goals at the beginning of the year, then grade themselves against those goals at the end. Writing your own performance review is hideous.
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Check this thread - maybe it will help.

www.cyburbia.org

Planit's Evaluation

I mentioned in the Random Thoughts thread that my boss is making me complete my own evaluation. I need help from the Throbbing Brain. The sections include: Communication Completion of Duties Customer Service Dependability Job Knowledge Teamwork Decision Making Professional Conduct Staff...
www.cyburbia.org www.cyburbia.org
 
Planit said:
Check this thread - maybe it will help.

www.cyburbia.org

Planit's Evaluation

I mentioned in the Random Thoughts thread that my boss is making me complete my own evaluation. I need help from the Throbbing Brain. The sections include: Communication Completion of Duties Customer Service Dependability Job Knowledge Teamwork Decision Making Professional Conduct Staff...
www.cyburbia.org www.cyburbia.org
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Your post is...
Seth Meyers Sarcasm GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers


:smirk:
 
Doohickie said:
Our company makes the individual employees write their own goals at the beginning of the year, then grade themselves against those goals at the end. Writing your own performance review is hideous.
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We do collaborative goalsetting. We have an "individual development plan" which is about the employee communicating to their supervisor where they want to be, and then the actual goals that are developed by the supervisor. In our formal goalsetting, there's the hard KPI stuff where we make sure what we're setting is reasonable to the individual level, and then a discussion about other priorities (like how they want to develop themselves and some things I'd like to see them work on) and how we want to measure success for those. It is a bit of a grind, but in the six years I've been in this process it seems highly effective in generating high quality work, good workplace relationships, a good mix of skills on teams, and happy employees disinclined to leave.

I don't love everything in our HR world, but this is something I think we get right.
 
arcplans said:
We subscribed to it this holiday season. We are awaiting the complete data back from it. Just on a pure numbers perspective, we are a town of 7K. From December 1-December 31, we hosted approximately 775K from preliminary data provided by Placer. And we have 26 public toilets to boot. Number 46 flew in after the 47 took office.. it has upset some of the natives.
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We've been using it for the last year and half. The data is pretty impressive. The chamber and tourism have been excited to see the numbers and information on trip origination and other stops.
 
bureaucrat#3 said:
We've been using it for the last year and half. The data is pretty impressive. The chamber and tourism have been excited to see the numbers and information on trip origination and other stops.
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We looked at it with my former community and could not justify the cost given the budget. Here, the budget is much deeper, so it is a combination of ED and Tourism. I use it an average of every day for something. I was surprised on how deep the data can go and I am sure we will be capitalize on it when we do our new Comp Plan this summer.
 
I hate it when I get a voice mail that says to "call for an important message." This is exactly why I find VM to be a grossly inefficient way of communicating. Why not send a text, postal letter, or an e-mail? I will "call for the important message" when I get around to it, which is often weeks, months, or years later. If I know the message, I can decide if it's important or not.

Banks and doctors are notorious for this.

I still have unreturned VM's in that category from as far back as March 2021. I will call them back someday . . . But it's been my experience that by the time I call and sit on hold and finally get through, they have no idea why they called. That's why you LEAVE THE MESSAGE.

I had my brain surgery in July 2021, so it may have been something related to that. Honestly, the whole year of 2021 is pretty much blacked out in my brain due to the anuerysm.

Jim
 
Read the list of local bills. Still laughing that it is your right to have the smallest lot possible.
 
btrage said:
I haven't been on FB or Instagram since Saturday. This 4 day stretch is probably the longest I've gone since I first got it back in 2008.
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Going on 9 days. I do have the urge to get back on, but not enough to do so yet.
 
The office half-joke is that even people who don't know the outcome of the Commanders/Eagles game would know the Eagles won because I am at work today. Had the outcome been different, I would have been too, uh, "sick" to come in.

I did, however, bring in some goodies leftover from our party yesterday.

Jim
 
mendelman said:
I was here, but busy with PZB packet pretty much all day.
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Admin retired at the end of the year and we had the MLK holiday plus 2.5 days of snow. I had to compile the packet and comments, figure out the system to post it to the website, and then send out all of the emails and reports that go along with it. Friday was a blur.
 
Recent news reported some advanced AI thingie coming out of China, with capabilities that leave US AI developers in the dust. A related news item from this morning had said that stocks are now tumbling because of that Chinese AI. I am struggling to understand the connection - why do stocks tumble if there are tech advances in another country? Makes no sense to me. Unless stock traders universally have gone "all in" with AI investments? If true, seems way lopsided to me.

Can someone help out and be a Stock Market and AI whisperer so this Cyburbian that's somewhere on the spectrum for money management understand the scope of what's going on? Thanks in advance!
 
Wannaplan? said:
Recent news reported some advanced AI thingie coming out of China, with capabilities that leave US AI developers in the dust. A related news item from this morning had said that stocks are now tumbling because of that Chinese AI. I am struggling to understand the connection - why do stocks tumble if there are tech advances in another country? Makes no sense to me. Unless stock traders universally have gone "all in" with AI investments? If true, seems way lopsided to me.

Can someone help out and be a Stock Market and AI whisperer so this Cyburbian that's somewhere on the spectrum for money management understand the scope of what's going on? Thanks in advance!
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the US has limited the amount of chips being sent out overseas, particular to China. Navida, and other tech firms such as Meta, chat GPT, and others that utilizes an expensive subscription base to access their AI models, utilizing a ton of chips and learning, which in turn, requires an infusion of cash to create the AI learning models. So this firm in China has been able to replicate an AI learning model, with less than 1/4 of the chips necessary, therefore a fraction of the computing power that other AI "all in" US tech firms have claimed necessary. So take away.. tech has sold us they need a lot of capital and subscription based models to sustain AI, which therefore the chip makers respond by cranking out more chips, has been proven to be bunk.. at least on paper.
 
arcplans said:
bunk
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Cool, got it, thank you! Dumb question, is AI use that widespread that it disrupts stock market investments, or is this all reactions to speculative investments? (When it comes to AI, I have my tinfoil hat on, I donā€™t see how it is useful, ergo, my dumb thoughts that everyone else thinks itā€™s useless.)
 
Wannaplan? said:
or is this all reactions to speculative investments?
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Mostly this due to the potential for immense use spread/ubiquity.

Like how Amazon lost money for years and years, but still received constant investment and increasing stock values.
 
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