I had it once, and I thought it tasted like most subways smell.

We have a climate chamber ("Klima-Kammer in German) at work for testing products, and my Ukrainian coworker kept referring to it as the “camera”, I thought that was funny.

And if it’s really bad, it’d be “putain de bordelle merde”, or so I’ve been told.

My favorite anecdote revolves around the many meanings of shit, which is hardly surprising, since the way this word is used in English is in no way forthcoming to a non native speaker.

So I was sitting in this call between my company (a medium size German tech company) and a big US corporation, discussing the development of a tool that we were doing for them. The people on both sides all knew each others at least in passing, and one of the people asked if one of my collegues was in the call, too.

Them: “So, is mr. X here, too?” Us: “No, mr. X had another appointment.” Them: “Ah okay. Mr. X really is the shit.” My collegues: wait…what? did they just…? Me, to my collegues: it’s good, it’s good, it wasn’t an insult! My collegues, getting more and more aggrevated: “Did you just call mr. X ‘shit’?” Them, not understanding: “What? NO!”

The Americans did not understand what the problem was, because they did not really think about what they said and that it might not be understood the way it was meant by a non native speaker.

It took a lot of explaining from my side after the call to cool my people down. They were completely bewildered, and they could not believe that calling someone “the shit” could possibly be a compliment. Me, I had a big big laugh the entire time.

Problem with that is that almost everyone who was interesting is dead. Actor wise.

What’s that about, O’Neill sitting in a fishing chair next to a pond, opening a cold one and going “yeap.”?

Renegade Nell

Didn’t the republicans have a Pee Party movement at some moment in history?

Strict name rules that still allow parents to name their children “Ralf-Rüdiger” or “Ronny-Horst”, both of which are real life examples (Ralf-Rüdiger worked at my company!).

I downloaded slackware from a BBS. It took forever. It booted from two floppies, a boot and a root disk. It did not even have X. I still loved it, because I recently got into programming, and all I had ever programmed on was DOS. In Linux, you could actually malloc() with any amount, even a full megabyte! It was marvellous! Later, I installed it on my HD on a separate partition. The installation process was really fascinating, so much choice, so many new programs! At least the first time.

ISO 9001

I checked my work laptop running W11. Recall was installed and enabled. No copilot+. IT had no idea. Disabled it right away.

Concept2 rowing machines. Even if they break, you can still buy spare parts at reasonable rates even for the very first model, which is decades old and only sold a few copies. Fantastic engineering.

Well, a punch in the face is a pretty clear communication, just with a very limited vocabulary.

Another one that I love roasted

Just don’t try that with white asparagus, that really needs to be cooked IMHO.

ATI Mach32 EISA. It looked to good on paper, but somehow, it did not make DOS go brrrrrr 😟

Lexx - The Dark Zone.

Pure Canadian-German Madness with a really great cast and the wildest stories ever. And what other show has a certified anti hero as starship captain?

Another theory is that people with children want you to have some, too, because they have no other topics available for discussion.

I’m in way over my head as it is. I can’t even imagine what it would be like having to be responsible for some gremlins, as well. We do not even dare get a cat (or two - you should always get two so they’re not lonely) for the same reason. Good thing my SO sees it exactly the same way. We’re both glad we didn’t have children.

(re)Ditched Windows on my PC a while ago, still have to use Windows at work. Just checked my work laptop running Windows 11 (standard laptop, not a “Copilot+PC”) - sure enough, that Recall shit is installed and active. Disabled it, and made a post in our main company Teams channel with screenshots. Will be interesting to see if there are any reactions to this.

To find out if it is active in Windows 11, open up ‘cmd’ and use: (typing this from memory, hope it is correct)

dism /online /get-featureinfo /featurename:Recall

to disable it, you need a ‘cmd’ instance with admin rights:

dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:Recall