Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[O. Hinds]

@Swicked:
Might I ask what the source of your new avatar is?

It's in my sig :P

Ah. So despite thinking "Hm, that reminds me of Researcher Twilight" and having words saying "This is from Researcher Twilight" right in front of me, I somehow managed to completely miss it. Well done me!

[Ironmonger]

I'm addicted to this song.

Behold my admittedly strange taste in music!:

[RoboRed]

BANANAS:

[Cptadder]

So these past two weeks have been interesting because of the following (PS keep reading it gets better)

1. While trying to corral my dog I somehow grabbed her mouth, specifically the inside of her mouth while she was at full speed which deeply punctured my hand bad enough to required compressing and gauze to wrap it after dousing it in peroxide

2. My mothers long time babysitter (One of those people who become Auntie or Uncle despite no blood relationship) had a heart attack and is currently dieing making her mostly depressed and calling me to deal with it

3. My Grandmother took a sharp turn for the worse with her Alzheimers as she's still functional but went from "occasional lapses of well known things" to "I'm in a mall I don't know where I live" She's still together enough she stopped herself from booking a ticket from LA to Indiana where she spent twenty years of her life and was convinced she still lived.
She went through a pretty bad panic attack worse than her own heart attack last year because it's her mind going and she does not want to go like her own mother did a drooling vegetable for five years. And I've spent several hours on the phone talking with her about this

So sad news all around except now we shift from sad news to....


4. As a result of the long talks with my grandmother I found out a fun story I had never heard about my grandfather. In 1978 he had a massive heart attack and would have been stone cold dead except he had it... and this is the great part... he had his heart attack at the meeting of the US Naval Surgeons association where he was to deliver the keynote thanking a doctor who had saved his life during the Korean war and stressing the importance of high quality medical personnel to the heath and well being of our troops. So he walks out to give his speech has his heart attack and falls down off the stage at the feet of the number 2 and number 3 best trauma doctors in America at that time and the director of the Bethesda Medical Facility, sitting behind them was head of the OR at Bethesda and he had this heart attack within five miles of Bethesda. After that he totally changed his career path because this brush with mortality was so close he went from international business relations to managing the business side of hospitals because he always wanted medical staff close at hand in case of his next relapse.

5. He should have been more worried about city buses which everyone in the family agrees is ironic considering he refused to take public transport because he thought he'd get stabbed and robbed just because that happened to his brother never thinking it was not some person on the bus who would kill him but the bus itself who would do him in.

6. I've been hired to a job with 1. A lot better pay than my current occupation, and 2. Lots of travel, IE getting payed to sit in airplanes and travel to other America states to set up networks (I'm a System's Engineer). And what does one do on airplanes these days for hours at a time on the company dime? Post ponies that's what.

[Kippershy]

On second thought, I better spoiler this. I posted it because I came across it but it's probably not the best thing to post randomly right after Captains post.

Spoiler:

[Guest]

@CptAdder
Terrible to hear that you've been hit with so much grief of late, but congratulations on landing that job.

[Kippershy]

@Adder: That is quite a lot of life you've been experiencing in a very short period of time. I'm glad to see your holding up well enough for ponified memes :)

@Kipper: Was it someone you knew?

Nope, the reason it gets me is its the idea of undying loyalty. The idea that even after something bad happens, even an animal would understand what has gone on and even an animal would feel the pain, would understand their owner, their friend is gone.
The fact a dog would mourn the loss.

I know you or other people might argue it's not really mourning, but after having had enough dogs I'm pretty sure they do.
I've also had a friend say that when their dogs partner died and her puppies a day or two later, their dog went into depression and just laid around where she would lay.
So yeah, it's just me being all weird. I blame the fact I haven't slept still.

[Kippershy]

I honestly do believe that people underestimate the mental capabilities of animals.
So many people think "they're just a dumb animal, what could they know? / how much could they really think? / they don't have feelings, just impulses!"

Yeah, sure, most animals haven't got the cognitive ability to do long term planning besides their instinctive drive (fly / migrate in direction x) though even creatures as small as birds have shown personal preferences and to some extent, opinions and personalities unique to them.

They may not be as capable of as deep thought as we are, but they're just birds.
Now move up to dogs.

Dogs are known for their ability to learn. We've spent centuries training and breeding them for specific tasks and they obviously show some kind of intelligence. They have desires and if they need to they'll use their wits on how to get what they desire.
Hell, they'll even weigh the pros and cons of doing something. If they know it's a bad thing that will get them told off, they might not go for it even without an active prevention.

Ya can't tell me a dog is like an ant which is pure instinct.



Not saying you do, of course. Just saying in general.

[Ironmonger]

[Sindri]

Dogs are known for their ability to learn. We've spent centuries training and breeding them for specific tasks and they obviously show some kind of intelligence. They have desires and if they need to they'll use their wits on how to get what they desire.
Hell, they'll even weigh the pros and cons of doing something. If they know it's a bad thing that will get them told off, they might not go for it even without an active prevention.

Ya can't tell me a dog is like an ant which is pure instinct.

Training a dog is less teaching and more conditioning. You connect the actions you want them to perform with rewards, or the actions you don't want with punishments, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. With this they can perform very complex tasks for which they have been trained, but so can your cell phone. To judge their intelligence I believe you need to look how they react to new circumstances, how they adapt to situations they've never been in before and how well they deal with problems they never expected to face.

Which isn't to say dogs are particularly unintelligent animals, or at least not that they all are; stories abound of the dog who pulled their owner out of a fire without any prior experience with fire or rescue operations, or the one who found his way home across the continent through terrain he had never seen. But tricks are not a measure of intelligence, and in fact I'd argue just the opposite. Performing tricks is nothing but a way of letting outside forces do your thinking for you, it simplifies your own life but in the process destroys creativity and drive, and makes your life totally dependent on the whim of another..

As for ants, well, a hive mind is a fascinating phenomenon. A single ant is practically robotic, reacting to certain scents and sights in certain ways and going into a practically visible error state when confronted with something unusual alone. But a single human neuron is even simpler. And a hive of thousands of ants working together can solve complex engineering problems, circumvent seemingly impossible obstacles, develop agricultural systems, use complex tactics in warfare... I don't think we've seen art or manipulation of fire from them yet, but they've got almost everything else early humans had, and usually better.

[Guest]

Is anyone hungry? I have a ton of extra food money that I need to spend. I could, I dunno, send you a sandwich in the mail or something.

Seriously, though, apparently I need to spend 10.60 a day, every day, for the rest of the academic year, in order to not waste money. I really need to start buying people lunch. I (probably) can't drink $10 of caffeine every day.

[Sindri]

Is anyone hungry? I have a ton of extra food money that I need to spend. I could, I dunno, send you a sandwich in the mail or something.

Seriously, though, apparently I need to spend 10.60 a day, every day, for the rest of the academic year, in order to not waste money. I really need to start buying people lunch. I (probably) can't drink $10 of caffeine every day.

On a mandatory meal plan or something? I doubt the mail is a good option, but there are probably people on campus who blew through their plans in the first few months somehow that you can share with (or use to convert your dining hall money into real money). Might generate some goodwill in the years to come. Or if your campus has a source of pizza that the plan works for, you can order a few of those for your late night study (gaming) sessions with friends.

[Ironmonger]

Is anyone hungry? I have a ton of extra food money that I need to spend. I could, I dunno, send you a sandwich in the mail or something.

I got a laugh out of that. A few years back, I told Frost that I would mail him a block of cheese for his birthday. I wasn't bluffing.

[RoboRed]

Mmmm....cheese...

[Guest]

On a mandatory meal plan or something? I doubt the mail is a good option, but there are probably people on campus who blew through their plans in the first few months somehow that you can share with (or use to convert your dining hall money into real money). Might generate some goodwill in the years to come. Or if your campus has a source of pizza that the plan works for, you can order a few of those for your late night study (gaming) sessions with friends.

Eeyup. I went on the one that allowed me to save up "meal blocks" while giving fewer per week, 'cos I rarely eat more than 2 meals a day and the default gives 3 but doesn't allow you to save them. This lets me swipe other people in periodically when I get visitors from off-campus or when my friends lose their IDs. However, this plan also comes with "flex dollars" which you can spend on stuff like coffee or sandwiches from the college restaurant place. These carry over from first to second semester, but not from academic year to academic year. Soooo, because I didn't spend any first semester, I have like $500 or so now. =P Sadly, we can't order pizza with it; good thought, though.

@Iron
=P

[Sindri]

I have like $500 or so now. =P Sadly, we can't order pizza with it; good thought, though.

Well, whereabouts are you, geography-wise? Maybe mailing sandwiches isn't such a bad idea...

[RoboRed]

Maybe this weekend, I'll be away most of today.

I think next time we should limit ourselves to one song / track per "post", because more than that becomes a bit too overwhelming.

That and we can't spend all the good stuff at once, y'see ?

Figure out anything now? I've got another I found the other day that I'm waiting to post.

[Guest]

@Sindri
I'm along the Wisconsin/Illinois border. If anyone's willing to pay for postage, I guess, and doesn't mind a sandwich that may or may not have gone really rank by the time it reaches them, and if it's legal and okay with my school's mail system (which I kinda think it might not be), then, uh... I can provide you with some pretty good sandwiches, I guess!?

[Frost]

What you need to do, is find some nearby homeless people. You buy some nice, tasty food, and you have them gather together, and you feed them every time you hear gunshots. A few weeks later, you have them watch a war film. In the next room over, buy a bunch of weed and have a gaggle of stoners get absolutely fucking blazed. Then, you open the divider between the walls, and toss a massive Taco Bell Crave Case between the two.

Hobo/Stoner Deathmatch Round 1. Fight.

[RoboRed]

I like the cut of your jib.

[CamoBadger]

What you need to do, is find some nearby homeless people. You buy some nice, tasty food, and you have them gather together, and you feed them every time you hear gunshots. A few weeks later, you have them watch a war film. In the next room over, buy a bunch of weed and have a gaggle of stoners get absolutely fucking blazed. Then, you open the divider between the walls, and toss a massive Taco Bell Crave Case between the two.

Hobo/Stoner Deathmatch Round 1. Fight.

Sir, the Crave BOX is Taco Bell.

Crave CASE is Whitecastle.

[Frost]

What about a crave sack?

[Ironmonger]

What about a crave sack?

I snorted and laughed out loud despite that I don't know for sure if there is some sort of undertone to that.

[CamoBadger]

What about a crave sack?

[Frost]

That looks horrible.

"Sea salt and cracked pepper"

Fixed.

[Kippershy]

Someone shoot me please. I just looked at my clock and saw it was 4:20 (it's set 5 minutes fast on purpose.) and instinctively said aloud:

"Smoke weed every day"

[Kippershy]

It's my birthday :3

[Sindri]

Happy birthday, Kipper!

Now, which chemicals do you plan on celebrating with?

[Kippershy]

Nothing, I don't think.
I don't have any shrooms which is what I did last year. That was one hell of a trip but I don't feel like doing that again, haven't touched any since either June or July it was last.

As for alcohol, after my recent (near) O.D from mixing painkillers & alcohol, I really don't fancy drinking. Maybe it's just the stuff I was drinking being strong (500ml per bottle at 8.2%) but the one time I drank after that I really didn't fancy it after having done it.

So, nothing for me. Just gonna do my usual.

Was supposed to go out with my nan and celebrate but I really, really can't be bothered because that's socialising and I've hit my limit for the amount of socialising I enjoy recently.

[Ironmonger]

Happy Birthday, mate!

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