You are all invited
5To join the revolution! For too long, the year has suffered under the tyranny and oppression of tradition! But no more! Let us rise up, and give the year what it truly deserves: a comma! As we usher out the terrible year that is 2016, let us bring in a new year. One that does not suck so much. One where maybe something good will happen. One where the year can finally have what so many other numbers before it have had. Let us welcome… 2,017!
- 9 comments, 38 replies
- Comment
How long until we declare 2017 even worse?
@TheChrisGlass Sometime on or after Jan 20th?
wait. where’s the revolution, and will there be alcohol?
@carl669 some form of whisk(e)y, please. Or gin or rum. Or even vodka.
2016 was the year that beer became inadequate for daily drinking. In one sense, this is a good thing as spirits have less calories/buzz, unless you mess them up by mixing them with sweet things.
@baqui63
I’m not joining this particular revolution until the year 10,000.
I think we’ll be needing the stronger stuff.
I’m continuing my crusade of getting people to say twenty-seventeen instead of two-thousand-seventeen. I think that puts me on the other side of this Civil War.
@dave
I say tweny-seventeen.
Sort of similar to your goal, but without the second t.
@dave Thank you for your efforts. This bugs me a bit also.
Also… A good Scotch is good enough for me…
@PlacidPenguin You will be allowed to live.
@dave
Thank you?
@dave two thousand and seventeen?
Two oh one seven?
Two zero one seven?
11111100001?
0x7e1?
2017 is prime!
@PlacidPenguin Yeah, same here. More of a “t-won-ey”, but one syllable, if I’m being honest.
@sohmageek
/giphy Optimus prime
@InnocuousFarmer
So we pronounce it the same way.
@dave Umm (in my opinion and everyone hear talking) that is how you are SUPPOSED to say it (your way).
I appreciate the sentiment, and the earworm.
@OldCatLady
The songs John could be writing now, if only …
@OldCatLady Thank you. That was fun.
I may go home and start my Beatles playlist…
@baqui63 Alexa, play ‘Beatles’.
Third up is ‘Blackbird’.
/giphy blackbird
@OldCatLady Thus far, I’ve resisted getting an Echo, primarily because I feel it is overpriced at $139 (I think it should be ~$99) but the Dots are $40 and I’m now considering one or more of them (I’d need three to six of them to cover my entire home, depending on where I placed them).
Since you apparently have at least one, what are your thoughts about them?
@baqui63 The Dot does everything the Echo and Tap do, because the actual brain is Alexa, which is online. The difference is the quality of its speaker. (You can hook it up to a better speaker.) I don’t plan to put one in the laundry room or bathroom, and my kitchen is about 20’ from the Echo, plenty close enough for commands. Just remember to put the device at the front of any shelf, b/c the microphones are in a circle on the top, and there’s no use having half of them listening to your books or plants.
@OldCatLady
So you don’t believe that books and plants talk when humans aren’t around?
@PlacidPenguin They do. That’s the problem,
@OldCatLady
Calling Pixar!
@OldCatLady what about mounting the dot on a wall or the ceiling? For example, I have an archway between my living room and kitchen and the wall is about 5-6" thick. I was thinking about mounting one near the top of the arch.
@baqui63 It’s not wireless, so the cord has to go somewhere. The microphones are surprisingly sensitive, so you may be surprised at how far away it can be.
@OldCatLady Hiding wiring isn’t (necessarily) a problem, tho not having to hide wiring is obviously easier. Based on your comments and some other reading, I’m now thinking that three Dots would likely work; four certainly would. Thanks.
To really do this right, I’m need to replace the ancient X-10 stuff in my place with something modern. Right now, I’m thinking Z-Wave, but I need to do a lot more research and plan this out with appropriate sensors, switches and devices.
@baqui63
I dunno that you wanna mount an echo device out of reach. Periodically they need to be spanked and rebooted.
@baqui63
FYI and fair warning about always listening devices:
Amazon echo data may be used in murder case
@duodec Were I ever to plan and commit a crime such as murder, I’d be using things like Alexa and cameras and other tech to prove my “innocence.” GIGO is a powerful tool when used correctly to one’s advantage.
For years I’ve presumed that “they” know more about me than I think. With few exceptions, I find it ludicrous that people believe they can both use technology that mines their data and have privacy.
BTW- I make no judgment as to whether this is good or bad. It simply is, much like the weather.
@baqui63
Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott McNealy famously said nearly 15 years ago, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
I gave in. They have my data.
I could go off-grid and live in a cave with no electronics.
Naw.
@f00l Same here. Over the years and travels and clearances, I must have had my fingerprints taken fifteen times. Every time I explain when, where and why, I get the official squint eye. I just monitor my credit etc. and shrug. It’s done, get over it. If you ever do genealogical research, you learn way more than you ever wanted to know about your ancestors.
@OldCatLady
Geneological research is on the list. I wanna know more about Dad’s family, know almost nothing.
And on Mom’s side I wanna know how much of all that glorious heritage stuff I was told is accurate.
Is Ancestry.com the best place? What/where do you recommend!
@f00l You can get a lot of free information on https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page and its subsidiaries as well as Ancestry.com. The advantage to FS is that all the databases and images are free. Some of the Ancestry how-to pages are free, too. Best approach is to join a local geneAlogy society; ask at your local library. If you have a family who stayed in one place (none of MINE did, they jumped around like fleas), join a genealogy society for that state. You might have luck finding dead people on http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi. You can also find a ton of stuff at the National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/research/genealogy/start-research.
Nintendo Switch and new MST3K come out in 2017 so I say bring it on.
Why are we adding unnecessary punctuation to dates? I have enough things to write down and/or type; therefore I reject your superfluous comma.
Twenty-Seventeen.
@Thumperchick
Uh oh. Watch out for @dave.
He’s on a crusade about how to pronounce the year. Something like that. I kinda tuned part of his post out.
@PlacidPenguin Ha, yes, I think you did tune me out. Thumperchick appears to be on my side of the war already.
@dave
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They don’t pay me enough to listen to all of the mehmployees.
(If I were to start paying attention to you, I’d have to tune someone else out…)
The funny thing is, I actually had no idea people may interpret this as pronouncing it a different way. I always say “twenty sixteen”, for example. I just thought it would be funny to start adding the comma to the year when writing the date because it looks so wrong. Hopefully at least one person would do a double take when they see it to figure out why it looks off.
@Mehsturbator i add unnecessary commas all the time. mainly to make people wonder if i still have something left to say,
@carl669
If you’ve spoken, but haven’t gone profane yet, no one fucking wonders if you have any fucking thing left to say.
@carl669 I am a habitual inserter of extra commas.
(heh, I said inserter.)
@Thumperchick
And @carl669 is a habitual inserted of extra swearwords.
@carl669. My Hero.
@Thumperchick Inserter? I don’t even know her!