What has you procrastinating?

@Pantheist
You sound far more productive than I.

@f00l I very much doubt that I actually am.

@PlacidPenguin
Quack Quack.

@f00l

Enjoy.

@PlacidPenguin

@carl669 #triggered

@DrunkCat

@legendornothing

Anyone know how difficult or rigorous HS is now, compared to HS they the early 1970’s (when everyone was a reader)?

Kinda curious. I could see the current HS curriculum at a decent public HS being either easier, or more difficult today. Hmmmm.

@f00l

It’s not something that could fairly determined because you’d need a person to be in both systems.

The problem with that though is that critical thinking and understanding would be more developed in that person that the test would be severely flawed.

@PlacidPenguin
I was wondering if the Educational Testing Service might have some data in the limited areas in which they collect broad data. Although a much larger % of the HS population takes those college-bounds tests now.

Surely the ETS has some metric for how difficult a given question in reading and comprehension, or in math, is, for the top x% (say top 30%, for instance), of the HS soph, junior or senior level student populations.

Of course that’s not a pure measure; there are all sorts of social and economic assumptions that make their way into those questions.

And back then, I knew and heard of exactly no-one who took an SAT prep course or worried about doing well on it, whereas I hear SAT prep courses are pretty commonplace now, so that’s another way a comparison then-to-now would be skewed. Everyone I knew just signed up, took the test once, as a late soph, junior or early-year senior, and that was that.

I have the distinct impression that at the huge, non-selective, mass-entry universities, things are definitely eased down the first two years, and those schools offer tons of remedial and prep work that wasn’t necessary back then; but that’s justifiable and all to the good; as a much larger and more diverse set of students are attempting college now. I’m for those students making a go at it, and I’m for every bit of assistance those schools and our edu systems can hand out, to get those students going close to speed.

As for the level of incoming frosh at rather selective universities and colleges, I have no idea. And few of those colleges and universities are unchanged in focus and expectations, over 40-50 years, in any case.

Big public HS’s didn’t feel “competitive” then, among the likely college-bound. No one was much muscling for grade and position. I suspect the same classes are a bit competitive now, with kids thinking about the admissions process at desired schools now.

Of course, one’s grades were/are (presume still are) determined as much by relative placement in that class as by anything else, although all the decent students got at least mostly B’s, and anyone who mastered the material passed. There was no need to grade in a curve in order to help students pass back then. Is there now? Dunno.

In any case, none of us measure our classes and performances by some Platonic ideal of the perfect classroom containing the perfect material and perfect standards for measurement. It’s just my silly Friday afternoon wonderings.

@f00l

I never took SATs.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@f00l They re-centered the scores some years back so 500 was still the average on the SAT as kids were scoring worse and the average had dropped. Don’t know if they have done it again, however you can’t compare old scores to new scores because of that.

@Kidsandliz
So all us Olde Farts can feel properly superior?

Cool!

/giphy cool

@f00l I go to a school called University High School, ranked in the top 50 United States but honestly it b l o w s

@katylava help you? Okay!

• they make automated cat feeders that you fill with food and set the timer so it will drop the pre-determined amount, thus no more interuptions from the cat.
• There are more sites you can visit: read some daily strips like Dilbert.com, or do some good like thehungersite.greatergood.com (free donation but then stay on site to check out the sponsors who paid for your donation).
• do some meditation or reading.
  Did that help?
  /image procrastinate
  

@mollama thanks! we have an automated cat feeder but my cats figured out how to knock it over, at which point the lid comes off and they can eat as much as they want.

reading in the morning is actually not a bad idea. but maybe i should just change my schedule… sleep later so i can eat breakfast as soon as i get up. stay up later and try not to do the same procrastination things before bed.

@katylava Do not turn the computer on when you first get up.

@Shrdlu
I have a friend who finally gave up on qmail. With much endless complaining and bitching about the state of the universe thrown into the conversations.

Part of his issue was that he had implemented specific qmail weird addressing features Way Back When (mid 1990’s) and hated having to re-do things.

Another, sort-of-qmail problem, was that he had I think way more than 100k alphabet spam emails, mostly originating from S America, arriving per hour to his domain. And he couldn’t just bounce the lot of it; he had originally used a complicated weird personal setup with wildcard email addresses using qmail-specific wildcard options, and this made setting up spam filtering on any new machine onto a huge PITA and forced him to keep a somewhat filtered and limited catchall open and spam-process most of his garbage (nominally adressed to real in-use addresses) instead of using the Ye Olde Bounce-As-It-Arrives method.

(He thinks his domain got out there into the spammers’ wilderness back in the days when EBay didn’t mask email addresses. I think his domain and a number of valid email addresses got out there into the spamverse due to his occasional subscriptions to iffy adult sites way back when, and his sometime (i.e. frequent) habits of being a more than a bit of an ass on usenet and on various listservs, before he thought better of it - assuming he has thought better of it. Perhaps he hasn’t.)

He finally had to go thru the pain of changing out most of his non-personal-email-addresses to new ones, so that he could simply bounce almost everything and do the remaining email sorting via his email client filters, instead of by using email addressing and qmail to do it. And this re-do finally allowed him to dump qmail after more than 2 decades of whining.

Being such an entirely compassionate and supportive person, as I am, I kept pointing out that Ignorance Is Bliss, as I didn’t have any of these bizarro email problems. I would torment him every time he moaned about it, and then possibly buy him a pizza every so often as an apology.

Well, he did bitch and moan a lot.

Oops. Apologies.

No help to offer. Clueless. I’m not doing up by own email setup after listening to him whine about his for decades.

/giphy email

Also, excepting a few human-generated emails, I hate email.

@f00l Just so you know, Mailman has little, if anything, to do with qmail. It’s a program that manages one or more mailing lists, and falls in the suite of things that Majordomo and Listserv (yes, Listserv is actually a thing, and not just a description) does.

http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv.asp

http://www.list.org/ (Mailman)

http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

@f00l

But I was in middle of writing a long and boring email.

@PlacidPenguin
I like human and penguin generated emails.

@Shrdlu
Re Mailman correction:

Ok. I be clueless.
I already knew that (cluelessness) about self, as did you (regarding me). I think it’s a congenital, generative, and degenerative condition in my existence, all at once.
: )

/giphy "without hope"

@f00l Not knowing about Mailman is more a sign of your potential for continued sanity, far more than any suggestion of cluelessness. Just saying.

@Shrdlu

Not knowing about Mailman is more a sign of your potential for continued sanity

Ha ha ha.
@Shrdlu be joking with the unintended-universe today.

Ha ha ha. @Shrdlu said “continued sanity”

/giphy sanity

; )

@RiotDemon

Hate to tell you this; hope you aren’t proximate to a depressive state of mind. But …

Once you go down one, there’s no escape.

No Exit

@mikibell
You doing ok with that?

@f00l meh…after sitting in a room reading for 15 minutes alllllll by myself, my bp registered in a much better range.
Even more stress in my new job, which absolutely baffles me! Issues are more interpersonal than workload.

In addition, thyroid is outa whack, so I am gaining weight rapidly…sigh…
Looking for a new job again, and going to see the good endocrine dr next week.

Of course, I said bad words to my gp dr. again…he gave me the pneumonia vaccine and I was violently ill last week, when will he learn??? gotta love him, but he doesn’t make it easy!!!

@mikibell

They finally makea continuous BP arm monitor I think? I don’t know how they make it both continuously able to do readings and comfortable … but perhaps.

I’ll try to track it down.

Also for $30-40, or less, you can get a nice battery driven wrist or arm bp thing for home. Easy as anything to use.

Don’t please go without knowing, if your BP tracks high.

Spot checks
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Health-Personal-Care-Blood-Pressure-Monitors/zgbs/hpc/3777151

Continuous
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=continuous+blood+pressure+monitor&sprefix=Continuous+blo%2Caps%2C226&crid=1AJ6C81FF4X9O

Read reviews here. Newish tech, don’t know he w well they were TL.

@mikibell
PS sorry re prev typos that was way worse than my standing in line types and my stoplight typos. I was fueling my car and the diesel nozzle kept stopping if I didn’t hold it to flow.

When my typos are moderate I prob have a kb. When they are just plain wildly weird, it’s prob the phone: Usually using IOS, and the autocorrect just inserts crap on its own; I’ve witnessed or hallucinated this a lot.

But I leave autocorrect on because my touchscreen typing is even worse.

sigh.

@f00l I have a standard meh issued arm bp monitor and a cuff monitor from my fuko. I was tracking on a good course until all of this upheaval even my dr is at a loss of words on how to describe my immune system. I think he ended up on crazy …

Thank you for caring, and I don’t typically notice typos – unless I can’t get the context of the sentence …

@mikibell
Are you on BP meds?

Dunno if this is for you, but … people who go vegan even for a day often see their BP fall for the duration. It can be a pretty big drop. Also helps to cut out or way down the potatoes and grains, and ban all snack foods and sweets for the day.

@Bogie
Just out of curiosity …

Why go to the trouble of taking care of it?

@f00l Hey, haven’t heard from you via e-mail. You should have got your package (I also sent e-mails re-additions). Please check that e-mail and get back to me.

@Bogie
Oh damn. Forgot to look.

Ok found the email. It’s not clear to me … how much do I need to send you extra? Reply either here or by email. This time I’ll actually remember to look for your email. Thx.

@Bogie
know email came in. Still out and about at the right now.

@f00l the email I have for you must be wrong? Shoot me a quick something at bogie21 at gmail dot com

@Bogie
$ sent. Plz let me know if you did not get.

Re email addr, that’s just for one purpose.

I will send you a better email address for me from the email you already have. K?

BTW thx for the spinners and doing all this.

@djslack
/image “approved”

@Kidsandliz

I tend to do other things that need done

Kitties always need petting. I think you’re on track.

/giphy kitties

@f00l that’s actually pretty cool!

@PlacidPenguin
Hmmmm. Very Ducky.

@f00l

I feel bad for anybody who ends up receiving a duck-themed box shipped from my house (as opposed to being sent from Amazon).

Although there’s nobody here who deserves to suffer such a fate (yet).

@PlacidPenguin
I guess someone would have to call a Quack Team of Investialligators?

@f00l

An oil diffuser would probably get you to relax a bit.

@PlacidPenguin
Are you casting nasturtiums on my bird-brain?

@Shrdlu oh wow, thank you for remembering!! That’s some gorgeous work!

@Thumperchick Yeah, I would never be able to make those perfect, even cross stiches. I knew you’d like the close up. :-}

I did try to finish an unfinished piece, but I just didn’t have the patience. It was a table runner, and really, I don’t need another one, especially not in cross stitch. It wasn’t the quality of those delicate tiny stitches, either. It ended up in the rag bag, poor thing.

I do love the embroidered pillow cases, though, especially the old ones, made out of fine muslin, and soft as silk.

@Shrdlu
That is gorgeous work. It must be nice to live with it.

My soft spoken Cooking Grandmother did amazing crochet and embroidery. Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to any of it.

My Mom did nice cross stitch. Really pretty.
That’s gone also.
: (

But I do remember how lovely the finished work was.

I am super impressed about the ironing activity.