Office Space

Did you Apple toy lovers upload your iOS patches yet?

God, how I miss those opportunities to interact with my fellow workers.

@SanFranLefty: Did the iPhone at once. Downloading the OS X update now.

@Mistress Cynica: Mail seems to be finally working properly again. Although I say “seems” since Gmail problems returned after a week last time.

@SanFranLefty: Yes, thank you. I’m using the famous Garbo quote as my ring-tone. When approached by a fan in Bloomingdale’s eager to share with the star-in-retirement all that her wonderful movies had meant to him she muttered, Fuck off, buster.

That video would make more sense if it had one guy walking in with his PJs and unshaven thanks to working from home. For a while I was that guy.

MTGOX go boom. Bitcoin now joins the Ron Paul Blimp in libertarian infamy.

Question for Stinque grammar nazis (you know who you are) : do American men say ‘pee’ or ‘piss’ for the act of micturation? Does ‘pee’ carry fancy-pants overtones? Are there regional differences? Would a young man in Utah pee or piss? Also, has the word changed over the years? Was it different in the ’60s? (aren’t you glad jnov ordered me to get my ass back here?)

@Benedick: Depends on context, but if you want macho, go with piss.

@ManchuCandidate: Or you might just wear jeans, a sweatshirt and Birks for twenty years.

A little change of subject but this is quite good –

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/opinion/when-may-i-shoot-a-student.html?ribbon-ad-idx=10&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

BTW how does one paste links without all of the gibberish?

@Benedick: Interesting question. I use both expressions for the act, among others, just for variety. I think I use the word leak more than the other two but maybe that is a regional colloquialism.

@DElurker: Thank you, respondent #1. ‘Leak’ is not an option in my world, pointing the way to Depends. Absent ‘leak’ would you say, I must take a piss? or, I must pee? (Note: we’re not talking about, I must piss/pee on you, you slave bitch fag so open wide for daddy, oh yeah. That’s a different discussion)

Also, Times column is Swiftish.

@Benedick:

“Man, I gotta piss.”

“Hold on, gotta pee.”

Polite company: “Pardon me, I must use the restroom.”

I would say that pee is crap to piss’s shit. Just slightly more dainty.

@nojo: One embraces your ambiguities. Now I must go watch Friends.

@ManchuCandidate: All those ones and zeroes are now just plain ole’ zeroes.

@¡Andrew!: Geek joke in the Ars Technica comments:

Commenter #1: I’ll sell you an unlimited number of ones and zeroes.

Commenter #2: Are they in the right order?

Bada-bing!

I go to Ars when I’m looking for a higher class of flaming than Verge.

@nojo:
When I did go to the office, I wore jeans, loafers and a button up shirt (unironed.) None of this dressing up shit for me.

Might explain why I was never considered “managerial” material which I found odd for a while as I thought it was better to act (which I thought I did) the part than look the part. Stupid me.

@ManchuCandidate: I thought it was better to act (which I thought I did) the part than look the part.

Oh, honey. You aren’t nearly shallow enough to make it in the corporate world. Appearances are everything. It’s all how you look and who you know–actual knowledge and ability count for almost nothing. See Bush, George W.

@Mistress Cynica:
Yeah. I doubt I am cut out for corprat world. About the only thing I have going for me is that thanks to my poor fashion the twits underestimate me or overestimate their own abilities.

@Benedick: Young Utah man might take a whiz?

@ManchuCandidate:
Going from no job to temp job has been a shock to the system, both from a sleep and getting dressed aspect. Gettin paid is good though, I guess.

@ManchuCandidate: My office is so slobby casual that when I wear a button down shirt or anything other than jeans, I’m repeatedly asked if I have a meeting today or if I am going to court. (No, just because I’m wearing khakis and an oxford doesn’t mean I’m going to court).

Re: Current events.

Ukraine. What the fuck?

Venezuela. What the fuck?

@Benedick:
Gotta take a leak
Gotta drain the main vein
Going to throw out some old coffee (when in more polite company)

or “Damn blood pressure meds! I got to go!”

@SanFranLefty: Clueless about Venezuela, and I have no expertise about Ukraine, but the latter sounds like yet another example of lines drawn a century ago that have no relevance to the underlying geography. Time and again over the past generation, we’ve been treated to civil wars in countries that enclose disparate nations — particularly in the Arab world and Eastern Europe. I, for one, blame the Ottomans.

Layered atop that is the centuries-old Russian preoccupation with border/buffer states, plus its concern with accessible Black Sea ports. It’s not a “Soviet” thing at all, except to the degree that the Soviets were just Russians clothed in ideology.

And there’s no end in sight. Europe didn’t finally sort itself out until only seventy years ago, after all. Check back in another century.

@flippin eck:
Congrats… getting paid is good.

@SanFranLefty:
Nojo is right. It is Russia being Russia. When the pro-Russian Ukrainian prez overplayed his hand, Putin stepped in to protect Russia’s interests.

Losing the Black Sea ports would reduce his influence in that part of the world and can not project power to the Middle East or send arms to places like say Iran.

@nojo: Try 500 years ago. Or 1000. Reading an excellent and astoundingly boring (when compared to Angry Birds Rio 2) book about the origins of WWI entitled The Sleepwalkers that is awash in Serbs, Croats, Crimea, and the Ukraine.

Spoiler alert: the Serbs did it.

@Benedick: When it comes to word usage over time, Google’s Ngram Viewer is your friend. To wit, “piss” overtook “pee” in popularity around 1964. I blame Johnson.

@SanFranLefty: I’ve been working three day weeks, in order to use up accumulated leave that they won’t pay out before I leave. And my job is already fairly casual (no tie in seven months!). But this means my “casual” day comes on a Thursday – last week I wore Vibrams just to drive it home.

@SanFranLefty: I think Flippin is our resident Crimean. The ‘Zuela is basically just the Chavismo chickens coming home to roost. I’d look on it as “job security” except I wouldn’t live and work in Caracas for all the chicha in the world.

@mellbell: Thank you for that. I was right all along. Of course I assumed I was but it’s gratifying to have proof.

For casual day I wear a bathrobe.

@Benedick: It’s best to greet the Mormon missionaries that way.

@Beggars Biscuit: I think the major difference between Georgia and Ukraine is that Georgia has very, very few citizens who sympathize with Russian interests, let alone identify with them. In two years of living there, I never heard a Georgian speaking Russian or claiming to actually be Russian. Georgia does have some breakaway provinces with Russian loyalties (South Ossetia, which was the region that triggered the war with Russia a few years ago, and Abkhazia, the region that was the epicenter of Georgia’s civil war in the 90s and is now a sparsely populated, extremely run down area with a closed border), but the bulk of Georgia is strongly and uniformly nationalistic.

Ukraine, on the other hand, sounds like it’s much more evenly split between people who identify as Ukrainian and Russian. And of course, Russia is acting exactly the same as it has in the past with regard to vulnerable bordering countries that it would like to reclaim for the Motherland. In short, and in my limited understanding, I’m really worried that Ukraine is ripe for a Big Giant Clusterfuck.

@flippin eck: I wonder if the country will end up split down the middle, eastern part attached to Russia, the south and west forming a New Ukraine?

Interesting factoid: the name itself means something like “borderland”. Putin is just testing the in/ability of the West to take on a good ole fashioned land grab while still caught up in the Bush Wars and fingering the worry beads over Syria, Egypt, Turkey, etc.

RISK was always most fun when you could just upend the board and go for a Popsicle.