Bay 12 Games Forum

Public transportation to the rescue? Kinda' makes me wonder if increasing access and use cuts down on transportation related incidents of a similar nature.

In other news, what the hell scope creep is supposed to be involved in game design not amateur auto repair. House person asks if I can put a fly wheel on engine, told everything would be ready just need that bit, I'm like, sure, I'll try (didn't even really know what the hell a fly wheel was, but whatever). Get out to work area. Engine 1 balanced not worth a shit on a cinder block on one side and stack of mismatched wood on the other, and in such a way the fly wheel cannot be put on due to cinder block. Not attached to mobile lift hook whatsit, not attached to ceiling thing of similar function, no sodding clue how to work engines, available chain not able to wrap around only engine even remotely ready to be worked on. Engine 2 still in packing crate. Go ask wtf do; informed then that engine ("everything ready") 2 is the one that needs the fly wheel. Thing still in packing crate. On floor. Multiple feet away from where the winch chain thing hangs, which is directly above engine 1 (the problem here becomes evident shortly thereafter). "Ready."

Okay. Bullshit this was ready, but okay. Get crate top off, packing wrap crap off engine 2, informed of sketchy as fuck method of getting engine hooked with chain (til: you hold hundreds of pounds of engine block up with two goddamn screws holding down a length of chain), okay, okay. Get length of chain screwed in, winch hook on length of chain (poorly, trying to wrap the winch chain around the small one a few times because gods fuck metal fatigue and projectile chain segments, not even once), start doing the lifty thing. Crate starts getting drug over. Obvious (to anyone that has basically any mechanics experience, i.e. not me) problem becomes obvious; engine 1 in way. Bullshit ensues, ultimately a different chain was wrapped around engine one, a mobile lift hauled over and hooked to chain, and the goddamn thing hauled up off its dismemberment waiting to happen foundation and moved enough out of the way to get engine 2 in place. Fucking finally, fly wheel mount place is accessible. Fly wheel gets put on, amazingly enough it actually is pretty easy once the goddamn engine is where it needs to be. Huzzah done.

Except no. House person says what about front fan thing, like I have any idea what the blue hell they're talking about. Nothing except fly wheel was mentioned. Find out apparently they intended to put on fan pulley thingjigger, too. Okay, someone is going to do this because house person is combination of impatient and functionally suicidal (dozens times, doctor says stop fucking trying to pick things up you old shit, old shit proceeds to intimate somehow between the two of us we're going to lift and move a fucking engine block by hand), despite there being zero actual need to hurry. Readjust chain on engine two because thing was inclined and like hell I'm going to try this with a bloody engine block literally aimed at my face. Pick up fan thing. Look at engine 2. Look at fan thing. Look more at engine 2. Look more at fan thing. Ask what the hell. Someone out there may have guessed problem: Engine 1 was not actually taken all the way apart. Entire fan housing mount whatever the hell was still attached. Zero goddam idea what the sodding hell to do, my whats are thoroughly fucked. House person totality of instructions, take this three prong screw claw thing and stick it in non-fan circle thing (pulley casing? No clue, already forgot from checking), then take clicky wrench thing and turn until it comes off. They leave to go eat. Instructions fail, arms give out long before circle thingy comes off, assuming that was actually how it comes off because it damn sure wasn't working. Have to stop, as nearing the continuing=hospital trip point.

Day mostly passes. Several hours later, come out, notice suicidal old shit is back, didn't bother to try to get my attention, and is doing something outside near working area. Bright side, they didn't kill themselves and apparently managed to get rest of fan thing off engine 1 and on engine 2 (maybe, assuming it's actually on right which I wouldn't know), so that was done. Not bright side, then gave mention of drive shaft thing, like I knew what the hell they were talking about (basically none of the work on this car has been done by me, mind you). Turns out they had picked up bolts for far end of drive shaft and memory screwed up enough they thought I had sodding anything to do with unscrewing the thing to begin with. I didn't even know where the hell that part of the machine was (turns out, bottom, and accessible from there... technically). So, okay. I'll try says I. Get bolts, small clicky wrench with proper head, go towards tail end of vehicle. Vehicle is on the goddamn ground (wheels where should be and all, mind). Out in grass. Prickly grass. But okay, will try. Turns out can't even fit goddamn head under the machine where it's at, bloody thing sunk into the ground somewhat. Scope creep 3, torpedoed. I can't goddamn do it. Have to get car up on ramps, is for other day.

Long story short. Maybe ten minute job stretches from around 8 AM to around five o'clock in the goddamn afternoon (with few hour break during noonish region because it's finally starting to creep up into mid day suicide temperature ranges and I was getting into kill myself range anyway), because shit kept getting added and "ready" was about as accurate as "made of raw diamond laced with magical unicorn spunk". Like, I know it's senility and cognitive degeneration, but good gods, how do you miss the mark on intended bit of work that hard? Not even angry, just incredulity all over the place. This is scope creep in the real world, apparently. I could have done without.

Yeah... will note it again, so far as I've noticed if we're going to see nukes out of any non-minor actors, it's almost certainly going to be small yield (i.e. approaching that MOAB) and probably aimed specifically at military or insurgent targets. This, I wouldn't actually dismiss as a possibility, with the only likely candidates being russia or the US.

Russia potentially thinks it can get away with it (and they just might, with those qualifiers) and very well may be in a position to think it's worth the risk, particularly if the US and EU et al ramp things up in response to russian agitation or aggression.

The US, well, the US currently has the GOP at the head, and chunks of them have been courting the use of tactical scale nukes for at least a year or two now -- and trump has not exactly set himself staunchly against the possibility, not that it would have meant jack all if he had. Add on how much trouble the white house has been having on the administrative front and what that (and GOP and/or trump inclinations) is not terribly unlikely to mean regarding foreign relations, and the possibility of them deciding to drop a small one on, say, the development infrastructure of a thoroughly alienated Iran that's decided trumpian fuckery has gone far enough to say to hell with their agreements on their nuclear developments, is... not as small as I would like. Or something along those lines where the (near entirely) GOP aligned hawks decide to MOAB someone to similar effect, with shit breaking down from there.

Probably would get more difficult, though, or allowed ID chosen in part because of the relative difficulties to obtain (if not at first, then as time goes on and people pay less attention). It's fairly common when it's possible to leverage that sort of thing towards whatever goal the people managing the leverage has (and it can be all sorts, mind you -- politicians, corporations, criminal organizations that manage to obtain influence, looking to make sure they have good recruiting grounds, extremists looking to prey on the desperate or have something to point to for propaganda purposes, etc., etc., etc.).

Though yeah, it is uncommon* that someone does not have any sort of identification whatsoever. Which is why when you see stuff like that go through -- if it doesn't start that way outright -- the sorts of identification that are accepted don't fall particularly comfortably under that "whatsoever" label

Mostly ends up being one of those things that, in an ideal world without all the first and second+ order problems involved, it might actually manage to be a useful tool for identifying a targeted group. Obvious thing being obvious, this isn't an ideal world. It's something that's ripe for corruption and abuse, even when it does manage any gains toward that identification process.

* Mind, uncommon isn't even remotely unknown, still. You'd have to weigh that in consideration, too, whether hitting the groups where it does happen (if not commonly, then at least enough to be notable -- and don't forget to tally up the consequences beyond the immediate effect on said groups) is actually worth whatever you're getting out of it and/or isn't going to just make things worse on the net, however little.

@Refresher courses: Most schools I've seen do have refresher courses of one sort or another. They just tend to be somewhat derogatory in title patterns. Remedial something or other, stuff like that. Intro classes can work about the same way. Occasionally you'll find local outreach stuff, too -- libraries hosting tutoring or study whatsits intended for adults, that kind of thing. Job outreach junk also tends to be fairly likely to have connections to something or another along those lines. Basically it's not all that unlikely that there's local resources of one sort or another floating around... increasingly there's online stuff, too -- free online courses (pretty sure there's actually a thread for that somewhere back in GD's depths, school or library associated stuff, and so on.

And maybe, Arx? I remember there were folks talking about it, but there's zero chance anything is going to jog my memory as to the details. Can recall there was at least passing mention of fairly stand-alone chemicals (maybe diluted?), but that's it. Was sometime last year, and my memory's not nearly what it was a year or two before that, heh.

If by hardly comparable you mean exactly inside the range of a Davy Crockett, which explode for something in the region of 10-20 tons of TNT... think that was ninja'd, anyway. Suffice it that it's a explosive power that's very much comparable to low end nukes.

Interestingly (?) some GOP politicians stumped with using tac nukes (i.e. as small as possible) on certain national actors, such as Iran. Similarly, Trump questioned publicly why nukes were effectively off the table, and iirc Putin has expressed willingness to go that far (if perhaps not further into full power nukes) as well.

... won't lie, now that y'all bring that up and I start think about it, the use of a MOAB suddenly seems potentially rather more ominous. Because if this is a prelude towards desensitizing the population regarding very heavy ordinance as a build up to using nuclear for limited military engagements...

... man, I wish my memory was working better, or I paid better attention back in that hole in the wall hardware store or something. There's apparently a couple of non-gas options that work pretty well, I just can't remember what they were (and, being fair, I think one of them may have been mildly illegal). Might be worth it to poke around shops that carry stuff, see it they happen to have a recommendation or two. Do remember it might be worth spraying a line around the house with the regular stuff, too. Sometimes the things are coming in from outside more than they're managing an indoor infestation.

In personal wtf news, apparently richard strauss's Don Juan gives me a headache. Something about the damn thing sounds like it was inspired by like a half dozen or more major composers. Which translates into every handful of seconds there's another bit of music that sounds like it came from some other song, which gives the sound memory all kinds of metaphonical headaches. Sequential musical blue balls or something. It's a decent piece of music but bloody hell.

Yeah... like I said, conceptually I can see it. Practically, I guaran-damn-tee you that the second we did you would start seeing education curriculum failing (more) in fairly specific ways (probably on top of a handful of others as a smokescreen) in a number of areas, along with the oddest sorts of logistical difficulties in certain places that just happened to make that test a complete pain in the ass to get to or take for some folks. I'd probably recommend just cutting down on requirements for immigrants instead, heh.

But the night is dark and full of viruses.
Or slightly sub-par emulators.

It is, but there's exactly one that works vaguely like you want it to, so...