Conversations From the Professional Front Lines

[Spekio]

I wonder what kind of mental gymnastics one has to do to come to a conclusion such as his.

[Raw Shark]

No security barrier?

Nope. That's a thing that has yet to penetrate the southwest / west coast taxi market, despite its prevalence in the east. No company here wants to be the first, despite the fact that we've been demanding it since before I joined the company, and that we've had two murders that could've been prevented by a simple plexiglass barrier during that time, because of the perceived chance that we will be perceived as "unfriendly," because, as we all all know, I am at my most super fucking friendly with a knife in my head.

[Borgholio]

That's very strange...the few times I've been in a taxi here in the Los Angeles area they had a nice thick pane of glass to keep me from taking a bite out of my driver. Must be a per-company thing and not a general thing in the industry.

[Raw Shark]

That's very strange...the few times I've been in a taxi here in the Los Angeles area they had a nice thick pane of glass to keep me from taking a bite out of my driver. Must be a per-company thing and not a general thing in the industry.

I admit my ignorance of the LA market; my last experience in California was farther north. The nice, thick pane of plexiglass is more-or-less standard in the northeast, but the only thing keeping my passengers in Denver from taking a bite out of me is a general sense of common social norms and my own efforts to the contrary.

[Soontir C'boath]

I wonder what kind of mental gymnastics one has to do to come to a conclusion such as his.

Obviously Obama's charisma that took the hearts of the bleeding heart liberals will shock and awe the immigrants that were allowed in by his satanic will and therefore treat him as a demigod.

[Raw Shark]

I wonder what kind of mental gymnastics one has to do to come to a conclusion such as his.

Obviously Obama's charisma that took the hearts of the bleeding heart liberals will shock and awe the immigrants that were allowed in by his satanic will and therefore treat him as a demigod.

I strongly suspect that his poorly-articulated internal reasoning was more along the lines of, "All the evil brown people will naturally align against We Few White Heroes during RAHOWA, and Obama will be declared Brown King in its wake," but I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

On a related note, this really must be my week for 2nd-Ammendment-Themed Foilhattery:

YOUR DRIVER: So yeah, they do a fundraiser for victims of violent crimes now every July 20th, because one of the charter members of the club was one of the 12 people who got killed [at the 2012 Aurora Theater shooting].

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: That's horrible. It makes me want to puke, thinking that people's money that could go to real charities in need is going to that government scam.

YOUR DRIVER: Huh?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: You do know that that whole thing was a false flag operation, to justify taking away all our gun rights, right? That's why it happened right before the 2012 election. Those people don't need money - they're all getting fat paychecks from Obama, for doing the "job" of being "dead."

YOUR DRIVER: [realizes what he's dealing with] You think so? But what about Holmes? How would they gain his cooperation?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: He's not really on trial. That's a sound stage somewhere. James Holmes is really on a beach sipping a Mai Tai somewhere, along with all the the lying traitors who were supposedly "killed" that day just to enable Obama taking away all the guns! It's all a lie. Holmes never shot anybody: they put him in that mask so he could be switched out with a SWAT marksman who did the actual shooting. Notice how it happened right before the 2012 election!? It's just like Sandy Hook, and Gabrielle Giffords: a plot to sway public opinion at the critical moment!

YOUR DRIVER: You do know that Sandy Hook and Giffords happened over a month after that election, right? And if that was the plan, why has no sweeping gun control legislation been forced through behind the public outrage?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: Look, we have proof that this was all planned. You've seen the Lil' Wayne video, right?

YOUR DRIVER: What?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: Lil' Wayne. The video. It came out five days before the Aurora shooting, and it shows thirteen skeletons in a movie theater! Just like the number of people who died that day!

YOUR DRIVER: First of all, it was twelve, and where are you going with this? That Lil' Wayne somehow knew about the conspiracy before it happened, and tried to send you a cryptic message about it?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: Holmes was supposed to be #13! The SWAT sniper was supposed to gank him with the rest, to silence him, but he missed and Holmes ran outside and got arrested.

YOUR DRIVER: So your position is that the government conspiracy exercised precise control over the number of victims, leaked only by a rapper, and that their only slip besides that leak was to allow the escape from death of the lynchpin witness who absolutely must be silenced for this conspiracy to succeed, and has yet never, in captivity, alleged a conspiracy, after he panicked and ran despite the knowledge that fulfilling his part of the bargain meant that he was destined for sipping Mai Tais on a beach somewhere? In order to reduce the number of people killed by guns, by killing a number of people with guns?

GUN-HAPPY FOILHAT: It sounds crazy, right? That's what they want you to think!

[Borgholio]

To be honest, I think a guy with a knife would be less scary than some of these apes you ferry around town...

[Raw Shark]

To be honest, I think a guy with a knife would be less scary than some of these apes you ferry around town...

Speaking as a guy who has had a knife on his throat: Long-term, maybe. In the moment, definitely no.

[Zaune]

You ever thought about keeping a .38 in the glove compartment?

[Raw Shark]

You ever thought about keeping a .38 in the glove compartment?

Yes. I am torn on this issue. I'd probably be in the clear if I had to defend myself, but I feel like it wouldn't make a difference in most cases of self-defense (I am getting jumped from the back seat, after all), and that if I had a gun on me at work I'd probably eventually use it in a situation where the law doesn't side with me and/or I would feel bad for shooting somebody, which causes me some concern. For example, the guy who thought it'd be cute to punch his girlfriend in my taxi last year might've gotten kneecapped instead of mildly roughed-up. I have a hair-trigger temper and don't want to risk it. [edited for clarity]

[Raw Shark]

[Around sunrise on a Saturday morning]:

COKED-UP GUY: [phone rings] Can I get everybody to be silent for a minute? I have to lie to my girlfriend.

TINY STRIPPER: Okay.

YOUR DRIVER: Sure.

COKED-UP GUY: Baby, what are you still doing up? You know you have to meet your parents in three hours... Yeah, I'm home. Those places close at two... Yeah... Yeah, it was fine. I mean, I wasn't into it or anything, but it's Duke's bachelor party and he wanted to go... No, I didn't spend a lot... No, I'm not on coke right now... No, you know I don't enjoy those, it just rubs all the skin off my dick. I may as well jerk off with sandpaper.

TINY STRIPPER: [suppresses giggle fit; does a couple bumps of coke]

COKED-UP GUY: [fast-forward small talk] Baby, I've got to go to bed... Because I'm tired, that's why. You should go to bed, too. You have to get up early... Okay... Okay... Yes, I will... Okay, good night baby. I love-

TINY STRIPPER: [lets out a thunderous yet high-pitched and unmistakeably feminine sneeze]

COKED-UP GUY: -you. [click] Fuck, really? You couldn't wait one more second? [phone rings again]

YOUR DRIVER: [can't stop laughing; blows his tip]

[Zaune]

Me: I'm going to ask Elisabeth* to clear everything important off her PC so I can put Linux on it; hers and the two front desk computers can be our testbeds before we do a full roll-out... Which reminds me. What kind of backup solution do we have in place?
Our new IT Manager (In world-weary tones): Backup?
Me: I knew I'd regret asking this...

Well, smeg.

* The general secretary to the board of trustees and one of the more technically literate staff outside of the IT department.

[White Haven]

Toss in a second hard drive, disconnect the current boot drive, and roll out your Linux testbed on the second drive. If things go to shit, disconnect the new drive and plug the old one back in.

[Lagmonster]

Me: Here's a list of the students we want back in the fall, and the labs they'll be assigned to. See that it's entered into the system so we can send it up the ladder for approval.
HR Lackey (briskly): Oh-kay, I'll ask one of the students to type it up right away.
Me (glaring): ...
HR Lackey: Problem?
Me (in my best rumbling bass): ...OR, you could do it yourself seeing as how it's sensitive goddamned information.
HR Lackey: ...Oh. Yeah, or that.

[Zaune]

Toss in a second hard drive, disconnect the current boot drive, and roll out your Linux testbed on the second drive. If things go to shit, disconnect the new drive and plug the old one back in.

That's not a bad idea, but I don't know how many spare hard drives we have. Fortunately we had a couple of proper servers turn up from somewhere or other and I think they've got onboard RAID controllers, so we'll at least have that much insurance.

[Raw Shark]

Saturday, August 2nd, ~4:00am:

DISPATCH: I'm seeing a lot of new airport permits at DIA right now. You guys know those aren't valid until August 1st.

[Kanastrous]

Crewmate: "Karl's already releasing documents, he's making the rest of us look bad."

Me: "Don't worry. They're all totally inaccurate, and useless."

Crewmate: "Good, we're all on the same page then."

[Raw Shark]

DENVER BFF: So, I'm a happily-married woman now!

YOUR DRIVER: I know! Congratulations.

DENVER BFF: That's why I feel like I should really stop kissing you goodnight when you drop me off at my house...

YOUR DRIVER: Yeah, [husband] would probably not appreciate that.

DENVER BFF: Stop sign?

YOUR DRIVER: Works for me.

[Raw Shark]

VERY DRUNK GIRL RIDING IN MY TAXI: So what do you do for a living?

[InsaneTD]

Well you might be moonlighting... might.

[Raw Shark]

That's fair. In on-theme illustration:

ALEX RIGA: Almost every taxi driver has something else that they think they really do. See that guy? He's really a boxer. That guy? An actor. Not really, but they think so.

ELAINE DENARDO: So what do you do?

ALEX RIGA: Me? I'm a taxi driver.

[madd0ct0r]

Me to porfessional data friend. "So now you've seen the model, and how much we're winging it, are you scared?"
PDF - "Yes."

[Dalton]

Working at CNBC for a day. Paraphrased.

Coworker: "So I was explaining to them how to enter a pound sign, do this, euro sign, do this, and then he asks me how to enter a dollar sign, and I just couldn't think up of something smartass enough to say to them while still being corporate-acceptable."

Me: "How about 'type a capital four?'"

Coworker loses it. h/t to Chuck Sonnenburg.

[Raw Shark]

DOUCHE #1: Oh my fucking God, we have a white cab driver!

DOUCHE #2: This can't be happening! How do you even exist!?

YOUR DRIVER: Well, once upon a time in 1977, there were two white people and they fucked, see...

[InsaneTD]

Raw Shark, I love your style.