Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[Giovanni Schwartz]

The real question is: Does anyone actually WATCH the little-black-orb eyes in the skies?

[Digit]

Either the watchers are horribly overtaxed (which is probably very likely given the number of screens they must have, even if they were multiplexed) or these two were very lucky for a long time. Still, I'm surprised they could open boxes, hide stuff, and stuff $2 million worth of merchandise before ever being caught.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

1) I'm not surprised, but I AM impressed. Toys 'R' Us is like a freaking graveyard.

2) I love how he used the Toys 'R' Us credit card to do it. It's like "I am robbing you, and you WILL give me cash back!" They were funding his robbery!

[Whistler]

somehow this scene seems like it would be out of a bad comedy... can you imagine the little old lady acting as lookout? "Well my granddaughter's favorite color is purple, do you have it in purple? What? No need to shout!"

[Genuine Article]

My sister used to work at Target behind the customer service desk, and she said people do this same thing, but in reverse when they make returns. They'll bring in a box that's supposed to have a PS3 or a George Foreman grill and they'll stuff it full of newspaper or old clothes or something and hope no one checks.

[Marduk]

I once had a guy try and get a refund for pizza. Pizza which, he said, smelled so bad he had to take it out of the box. And he stuffed it into a black garbage bag. Using my expert pizza sense, I looked at the pizza. It was from five buck. And he was trying to return it to pizza hut. Buy a half dozen five dollar pizzas, and return them to a place where they cost almost three times as much.

[Digit]

To this day I can't stand returning things even legitimately. A lasting impression from a time when as a teenager a store employee gave me a hard time and treated me like I was pulling something. Funny how some singular events stand up to rational thought.

[krebscout]

So how far do you have to walk to burn off an m&m? Or, if you'd rather, how many m&ms do you burn off in walking the length of a football field?

Ha. The way you phrased this question made me relook at my numbers, and I actually reported them wrong to her, and the original factoid is much closer to the truth than I thought...if you don't weigh very much. Oh well. In answer to your question...

A football field is .07 miles. A 180 pound person burns approximately 100 calories walking a mile, so they would burn 7 calories walking a football field. There are 3.44 calories in a single m&m. You could burn off a little more than 2 m&ms walking a football field as 180 lb. person.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Experimenting with partitioning, installing OS's (namely, Windows 8 beta), etc. for the first time. I'm thoroughly entertained.

[Unit of Energy]

I want a new computer. I don't need one though, I just want one. I'll probably not get one until I need to, I'll just buy a TV and pay off my loans in the meantime.

[Laser Jock]

Experimenting with partitioning, installing OS's (namely, Windows 8 beta), etc. for the first time. I'm thoroughly entertained.

I'm curious what you think of Windows 8, once you've had a few days to play around with it. I've heard a lot of complaints, but that might be affected by the sites I frequent.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

BAH Except I can't get it to install right, because the stupid hard drive on this computer is a dynamic drive, so it won't use the partition I made. LAME. And the only Windows acceptable solution is to wipe your hard drive to convert it to basic. The other options I've found aren't working either. The search continues.

[yayfulness]

GAH. My dad appears quite committed to making sure I don't come home at all until next April. (He wants to go out to Utah for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 1000 miles is kind of a long way to travel on a shorter break than those.) Not that I've loved being here for four months on end, but I do kind of like the idea of stopping by for a week or two or even a day or two at some point during the year...

[Laser Jock]

BAH Except I can't get it to install right, because the stupid hard drive on this computer is a dynamic drive, so it won't use the partition I made. LAME. And the only Windows acceptable solution is to wipe your hard drive to convert it to basic. The other options I've found aren't working either. The search continues.

Huh, interesting. If you just want to try a new OS (and it doesn't have to be Windows), there are some good Linux options out there; Ubuntu is the usual recommendation, but I've heard a lot of people prefer Linux Mint. Linux also tends to share a hard drive better than Windows does. (Windows usually wants to be the first thing on the drive, but Linux is fine being second/third/whatever.)

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Yeah. I've done that before. I actually had Ubuntu bootable from the USB drive that I put Windows on. But I'm mostly stuck to Windows out of familiarity and 3rd party application support.

But I figured the easy way out. I downloaded VisualBox, and am gonna see how that works out for me.

Update: my laptop doesn't support virtualization, so now I'm trying to install a new boot-from-USBable version, using a previously successful Linux program in order to install the boot image.

[C is for]

Windows 8 is a lot like Windows 7, I've heard, except it is made for tablets. (My boyfriend downloaded it right away, being that kind of nerd.) It does the touch-screen swipe thing (which is annoying on a laptop) and stuff. But the dashboard (right term?) is cool...if you put it on a tablet.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Well, I the thing is, is that they are going to start putting it on everything, not just tablets, so we might as well start to get used to it.

[C is for]

Guys, I fail at moving. I packed all my stuff in my car to take to my grandparents' for the night so that my sister could have an empty car to move her stuff today, but turns out I'm going to need the car again tonight because I forgot all of my clothes. They are still hanging in my closet. Plus I've been sleeping on my bed complete with all the sheets and blankets. Plus various other things like a few dishes and my snack food, which I don't keep in the kitchen so my roommates won't steal and eat it.

Oh and then there's the part where I still haven't figured out where I'm moving yet. That's always a bonus.

[yayfulness]

Hahaha. I hope that you don't mind that that makes me feel good about my packing experience so far.

[Zedability]

So I work with a guy who used to work for the Canadian Government, doing military explosive research. He said a lot of their business was actually for the US government, because you guys have too many regulations for some of the research your military wants to do. For some reason, the idea of the Americans outsourcing their military research to Canada because there's more freedom there really amused me.