There's not enough bitching

[Yuthirin]

Expansion tomorrow! Hope it doesn't suck!

[Merc]

It'll be like any expansion. Exciting for a month, occasionally amusing/interesting the next month, and stale for two until the next expansion comes out.

I like that you'll be gauranteed at least 1 legendary death knight and one more within ten packs so it should be more interesting from a free-to-play player's perspective. Hopefully.

[Arakawa]

More grad school stupidity:

Spoiler: ShowHide

"Oh, you were under the impression you were going to get co-first author credit based on the thing I said last summer about getting co-first author credit? I'm very sorry.

Well, I agree you played an absolutely pivotal role in making it possible to finish this paper (indeed, we wouldn't have been able to make it into Conference X without your idea that replaced our entire old approach with something else), but I just don't see how you merit co-first-author. Second author is more appropriate. Your participation in the final push lacked leadership and commitment; it's clear your heart wasn't in it. Frankly, I'm very disappointed that you even brought up the question of authorship credit. Really, I don't like politics, and I think of myself as a very generous person. But only stupid and/or uncreative people fight about author credit. You should be bigger and more ambitious than this! Look at Wall {gestures to a whiteboard labeled "wall of real world impact" listing open source projects cajoled into using research group's prior software} -- pretty sure {new project, which I'm currently finishing up alone} will be up on Wall long before {the paper we just published} yields real-world results. You are extremely talented and creative, and you will be able to publish lots more papers, much more significant than this paper. I definitely think you are potential faculty material. Hope you decide to continue PhD with me."

Note: the significant part isn't the author credit (the difference between second author and co-first author [in the second position] is a glorified gold star as far as academia is concerned), it's the manner in which the supervisor handles being questioned about it. (FWIW, the actual conversation had a lot more refusal-to-be-pinned-down-to-a-straight-answer.)

My attitude for the next couple months (that I will need to defend Masters thesis) has been upgraded from "maybe my temperament isn't suited for handling this environment" to "don't make any sudden motions that might anger the bear, but prepare to run the **** away".

[Kaldrak]

So, Saturday night my beloved little cat, Tsunami, has an allergy attack. This usually consists of her throwing up, then drooling a bunch, then sneezing and being unable to breathe through her nose. Though this used to cause me a great deal of concern, they usually only happen when the weather changes and she gets over it after a day or so.

But this time, she started sneezing up blood.

This is...disconcerting, to say the least. I became rather alarmed, but as it's Saturday/Sunday, there's not a damn vet open except the stupid pet emergency place that charges three to four times the amount of any other vet in town, because fuck weekends, vets don't work weekends. So every time her nosebleed stops, she sneezes and then sprays blood all over the place in a nice little sneeze pattern on my floor, bedcovers, PS3,(she has a little hidey hole down where it's hooked up) you name it. And then it starts bleeding slowly again.

Gross. And alarming. Very very alarming.

Now, Tsunami is fifteen years old. I understand that she's not going to be around forever, but I would really like to keep my animal companion that I've had with me for the last seven years. I consult the internet, which tells me that it could be all kinds of horrible, potentially life threatening illnesses...or just dry air/some kind of blockage in her nose.

As my cat is a Persian/Himalayan mix, she has kind of a squished face, though it's not completely flat due to her odd genetics, which as a purebred, she should not be the unique combination of colors that she is. But anyway, due to the structure of their face that means they usually have breathing problems. Mostly she's okay, but when your cat can't breathe out of its nose, it's an absolutely pathetic, wretched creature.

So I was going to take her to the vet today, till my ride came down with diarrhea at the last minute and suddenly that wasn't happening.

Her nose seems to have stopped bleeding now and she's not sneezing anymore, plus she's still eating, drinking, has energy, and is purring again, so I'm cautiously optimistic that she won't wake me up at three in the morning with her nose bleeding again, making heart wrenching 'help me I can't breathe' noises and sneezing at me.

I do however, have a lot of bloody snot spatter to clean up now.

[Anastasia]

More grad school stupidity:

Spoiler: ShowHide

"Oh, you were under the impression you were going to get co-first author credit based on the thing I said last summer about getting co-first author credit? I'm very sorry.

Well, I agree you played an absolutely pivotal role in making it possible to finish this paper (indeed, we wouldn't have been able to make it into Conference X without your idea that replaced our entire old approach with something else), but I just don't see how you merit co-first-author. Second author is more appropriate. Your participation in the final push lacked leadership and commitment; it's clear your heart wasn't in it. Frankly, I'm very disappointed that you even brought up the question of authorship credit. Really, I don't like politics, and I think of myself as a very generous person. But only stupid and/or uncreative people fight about author credit. You should be bigger and more ambitious than this! Look at Wall {gestures to a whiteboard labeled "wall of real world impact" listing open source projects cajoled into using research group's prior software} -- pretty sure {new project, which I'm currently finishing up alone} will be up on Wall long before {the paper we just published} yields real-world results. You are extremely talented and creative, and you will be able to publish lots more papers, much more significant than this paper. I definitely think you are potential faculty material. Hope you decide to continue PhD with me."

Note: the significant part isn't the author credit (the difference between second author and co-first author [in the second position] is a glorified gold star as far as academia is concerned), it's the manner in which the supervisor handles being questioned about it. (FWIW, the actual conversation had a lot more refusal-to-be-pinned-down-to-a-straight-answer.)

My attitude for the next couple months (that I will need to defend Masters thesis) has been upgraded from "maybe my temperament isn't suited for handling this environment" to "don't make any sudden motions that might anger the bear, but prepare to run the **** away".

There just seems to be so much pettiness involved. I don't really get why there is. Is it just the environment?

[Anastasia]

So, Saturday night my beloved little cat, Tsunami, has an allergy attack. This usually consists of her throwing up, then drooling a bunch, then sneezing and being unable to breathe through her nose. Though this used to cause me a great deal of concern, they usually only happen when the weather changes and she gets over it after a day or so.

But this time, she started sneezing up blood.

This is...disconcerting, to say the least. I became rather alarmed, but as it's Saturday/Sunday, there's not a damn vet open except the stupid pet emergency place that charges three to four times the amount of any other vet in town, because fuck weekends, vets don't work weekends. So every time her nosebleed stops, she sneezes and then sprays blood all over the place in a nice little sneeze pattern on my floor, bedcovers, PS3,(she has a little hidey hole down where it's hooked up) you name it. And then it starts bleeding slowly again.

Gross. And alarming. Very very alarming.

Now, Tsunami is fifteen years old. I understand that she's not going to be around forever, but I would really like to keep my animal companion that I've had with me for the last seven years. I consult the internet, which tells me that it could be all kinds of horrible, potentially life threatening illnesses...or just dry air/some kind of blockage in her nose.

As my cat is a Persian/Himalayan mix, she has kind of a squished face, though it's not completely flat due to her odd genetics, which as a purebred, she should not be the unique combination of colors that she is. But anyway, due to the structure of their face that means they usually have breathing problems. Mostly she's okay, but when your cat can't breathe out of its nose, it's an absolutely pathetic, wretched creature.

So I was going to take her to the vet today, till my ride came down with diarrhea at the last minute and suddenly that wasn't happening.

Her nose seems to have stopped bleeding now and she's not sneezing anymore, plus she's still eating, drinking, has energy, and is purring again, so I'm cautiously optimistic that she won't wake me up at three in the morning with her nose bleeding again, making heart wrenching 'help me I can't breathe' noises and sneezing at me.

I do however, have a lot of bloody snot spatter to clean up now.

Good luck and prayers to you, man. Having a sick animal you care about is a gut wrenching thing, I've gone through it with my dogs. Just hope it's not your cat's time yet and see how it goes.

[Kaldrak]

Good luck and prayers to you, man. Having a sick animal you care about is a gut wrenching thing, I've gone through it with my dogs. Just hope it's not your cat's time yet and see how it goes.

Thank you. That means a lot.

As of right now, there's no more blood coming from her nose and she seems to be doing fine. She's in good spirits and begging me for treats at the moment.

[Arakawa]

There just seems to be so much pettiness involved. I don't really get why there is. Is it just the environment?

Eh, the advisor is using my work to prop up the more senior student (who, to be fair, was out of commission for a year due to depression and hasn't had a first author paper after 4 years -- worrying for his PhD progress) and he doesn't want to lose face by admitting this. Hence the weirdness of the conversation. If I think of it as research, it's BS; on the other hand if I think of working on that paper as a contract gig, it's interesting work (if not very useful to real people), but I could be way better paid. The graduate student stipend at this particular university amounts to less than $15,000USD/yr (the flipside of Canadian undergrad tuition being much cheaper than the US), which further reduces the incentive to tolerate being patronized.

In general, I don't think people in graduate school are worse than people in industry, but graduate school is very effective at creating subtle conflicts of interest and have people forced to treat them as business as usual.

[Anastasia]

I really wish people would keep politics out of sports. I watch them for escapism, not to be drawn yet again into political bickering.

[Kaldrak]

I really wish people would keep politics out of sports. I watch them for escapism, not to be drawn yet again into political bickering.

The Colin Kaepernick thing or...?

[Anastasia]

I really wish people would keep politics out of sports. I watch them for escapism, not to be drawn yet again into political bickering.

The Colin Kaepernick thing or...?

That, yeah.

[Kaldrak]

That, yeah.

Ah. I don't watch football, but I've heard of that.

In regards to avoiding politics...well, you can't watch late night comedians these days to do that anymore. I mean, as much as I love Colbert, Trump is pretty much almost all he ever talks about anymore. It's a ratings bonanza, so I understand why, but it just wears on you after a while. Can't seem to go anywhere or read anything without seeing Trump's face plastered all over the damn place.

Anime and video games are about it as far as I can see, for avoiding politics. Dunno about TV shows cause I watch everything online.

[Anastasia]

Yeah. It's a thing. Sometimes you want to disconnect and relax, y'know? Escapism.

(I can't really go further, SR generally has a no politics rule and most of my replies boil down to political opinions. My own fault for posting and bitching before I thought about it.)

[Kaldrak]

Yeah. It's a thing. Sometimes you want to disconnect and relax, y'know? Escapism.

(I can't really go further, SR generally has a no politics rule and most of my replies boil down to political opinions. My own fault for posting and bitching before I thought about it.)

There's a no politics rule?

Well, find me in the alps....

Had that long post all about politics a while back. Sorry again.

[Anastasia]

It's pretty informal and last came up like a decade+ ago in regards to...abortion, I think. The point of it boils down to that this is supposed to be a friendly place and politics seldom fit that.

So no harm, no foul.