Random Babbling Thread 120

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Happy Hangover Day!

 

Well, when making French toast this morning, I managed to crack a container on an egg.
Yes, I meant what I wrote, it's not a transposition error. The container broke, the egg was intact.

Spoiler

The container was over 40 years old that I inherited from my mother last year and was in fact the one she used to teach me how to make French toast with as a child.
I'm wondering if I'm not taking care of the (actual, one of her friends worked for them for a year or two when I was in preschool) Tupperware container properly and caused it to degrade or if it was just the fact that it was over 40 years old and wearing out.
I've been using standard Dawn dish detergent from Costo to clean it.

 

I'm pretty sure no amount of detergent will cause a tupperware container to crack. Most likely it's just wear and tear from 40 years of use. Constant temperature changes and exposure to UV light from the sun will eventually cause plastic to degrade, and there's probably numerous scratches all over it as well.

 

Wow BTA ... as a polymer chemist I'm impressed with your incredibly understandable answer.

 

So I've been doing some gig work for Smart Source, a lot of which is field service tech work for Insight, who does outsourced IT support for various companies like Marriott and Chase.
Yesterday I'm driving to a Chase near to and on the way to a place I used to work 15 years ago and I got a call on my cell asking my ETA. I was still early so I was puzzled, but apparently the other tech had arrived and the bank was eager for us to get started.
They asked "how far away are you" and I said "less than three miles I think". They responded with "Well, what does your GPS say?" and I said I wasn't using the GPS.
They were shocked, especially since it was at least a dozen miles from where I lived (it was between 1 and 3 miles from where I worked 15 years ago which was just shy of 15 miles).

Does nobody know how to navigate without a GPS these days?
I'm capable of finding my way home from just about anywhere on certain major roads in the Chicagoland area since I know if I stay on that road I'll get someplace familiar. My parents made sure I had some idea of the major roads and how to get home from them.
Granted I couldn't find a place without printed directions and/or a map of the area without a GPS, but this was navigating to a place I was familiar with although a lot of businesses had changed in the last 15 years. I'd say that 9 times out of ten I'm using the GPS for these jobs, even if usually I only need it for the last 10% of the journey, but quite a few times I've managed to find my way home without it, or turned it off once I got on a major road.

 

I hate GPS, I'm very well skilled in direction unlike 90% of the human population. It really seems like computers are making us more stupid but I can still get myself out of a paper bag

 

To a certain extent I like the GPS navigation, however the interface on the 2023 Honda Accord I inherited seems against actually showing me meaningful information when trying to choose a route as it doesn't seem to show street names or list the route. I have to disconnect my phone in order to pull up that information as it seems to lock out my phone when trying to do that.

 

I agree for finding an unknown destination. However going home I often turn it off as soon as I reach a major road that will take me to places I'm familiar with.
I occasionally find I like it showing me traffic ahead so I can consider alternate routes, or telling me how much farther it is to home when I'm at some place far away out of my immediate area, but easy to navigate to because it's a straight shot down a major road 99% of the way.

One exception was about a year ago when a heavy fog had set in after I was sent to a place near O'Hare airport.
Normally I could have easily found my way home from O'Hare by following the guide signs, but the fog was so thick I couldn't read the signs until I was almost underneath them and only had about a second or two to read them. Near O'Hare there is a conjunction of I-90, I-94, I-190, I-294 and others and it is important to choose the correct lane or you wind up going on the wrong road, so I kept my GPS on all the way home because I was having trouble reading the guide signs and the road signs. I'm thankful for the feature they put in around 2018 that tells you what lanes to use.

 

I must admit that I only tried it 15 years ago, I heard that it's much better now. If I'm going to take a long trip that I've never been on before, I might break down and try it again

 

I can only speak for Google Maps. They made some major changes and improvements in 2018 that unfortunately made it partially incompatible with my old circa 2013 HTC One X+ phone. For some reason it would start to lose the signal after the updates with "GPS Signal Lost" occurring semi-randomly (and in 2019 it got worse) usually following Murphy's law of not wanting to work when I needed it most and only starting to work again once I found myself on road I could navigate without it, and reverting to an older version just gave me an error that the app needed to be updated to be used. Once I got a new phone it worked better.
That said, I haven't noticed a lot of major changes since that point in time, but it still worked pretty well from 2013-2017, and again once I got a new phone in 2020 when the HTC One X+ died.

The changes were that it was programmed with the speed limits and could track your speed as you used it. That way if you don't see a speed limit sign your GPS can tell you, although the database often has errors in it and is slow to update on the rare times they change the speed limit, like when they increased the speed limit on the Northwest Tollway (I-90 from O'Hare to the State border. East of O'Hare it's called the Kennedy) to 70mph. Also it added an improved feature to show nearby restaurants and other attractions if you wish, although the top results are sponsored.

 

I don't get this. I'm doing a contract for some field service work for Insight, and both Marriott hotels and Chase banks have outsourced their IT to Insight. Insight is paying my wages.
Yet I was sent to install a "Cradlepoint SDWAN device" at a Marriott yesterday at 9am. I called at 7:30 to confirm they had the device and were expecting me, and to clarify about parking (primary reason I called, I don't usually bother to confirm because I still get paid for at least 1/2 hours work + travel & mileage just for showing up if there's a mix-up unless they cancel an hour ahead of the start time). They knew I was coming at 9 and I'd told them the first thing I was going to do was ask for the device that should have been shipped ahead of time and for access the network room.

So I get there at 8:50, clock in on Insight's app, and they don't know where the box from Insight is located, and the guy who does know is "in a meeting."
They have me wait, and then again at 9:15 the people at Insight are bugging me for updates on why I haven't started. I put them on the speaker and they get told the same thing.
They are perfectly content to tell me to wait.
Right up until I jokingly say "That's fine. I get paid by the hour. I don't mind getting paid to sit and just play with my phone doing whatever I want."
I actually meant it, but the words "I get paid by the hour" seemed to light a fire under their butts and suddenly they were actually putting an effort to find the guy and get me what I need.

Why would that make any difference to them? Insight's paying me, they don't get charged more if I go overtime.

 

I don't know, it's just not the first time casually commenting "I don't mind waiting, I get paid by the hour." after a 20 minute or more wait to begin something scheduled weeks in advance seemed to light a fire under people's butts when they heard that.

 

You know they won't get charged more for your overtime, the guys at Marriott who signed the outsourcing contract know that too, the guys in Marriott's accounts department who actually pay the bills probably know it as well, but the guys you were talking to probably aren't those guys, so they probably don't know whether or not it costs them extra to keep you waiting ... and telling them "I get paid by the hour" would probably cause them to jump to the conclusion that it was going to cost extra, even though it's not so.

 

I know it's been over a decade since Apple bought the name from Cisco, but am I the only one who keeps seeing "IOS" and thinking it's related to Cisco routers instead of iPhones?

 

Back when I was in college the operating system on high-end Cisco routers, switches, firewalls, and other devices was called "IOS"/"Internet Operating System". Every one with a CCNA 15+ years ago would know that before Apple bought the rights to the trademark/name for "IOS" to use with their iPhones/iPadds/iPods OS.

Although I concede if you don't work in IT networking you probably wouldn't have had a reason to know what operating system Cisco products use. Even many programmers or database administrators probably wouldn't know about that unless the former does double duty as the network admin.