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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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Something the AV Club pointed out to me - the way the Emmys are judged involves taking three episodes from a television show and presenting them as being representative of the show. This means that the judging of the Emmys is really different to the experience of watching a television series, and why a show like The Wire, which builds and builds, isn't capable of demonstrating why it is excellent to the Emmy judges.

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eBay does not have an email address anymore. They don't have a live chat client or any active customer service presence online. They have a FAQ tree that can easily be made to go in circles and an automated telephone number that's the same. How I'm supposed to get a refund for a label I voided two months ago (which was partly their fault anyway, allowing me to buy postage on a day when the post office was closed) I have no idea.

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Are you sure you never got the refund?  Part of our sales are on eBay, and it's not uncommon for us to void several labels a month, and we've never had a problem with the refund coming through.  For the post office, it takes up to 30 days for the refund to be processed, so it can be easy to miss seeing it in your statement.

 

As for postage, for future reference, you can hold onto a label for days and days before you use it without a problem, even though there is some language in there that says it needs to be used same day or within 24 hours or so. 

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Are you sure you never got the refund?  Part of our sales are on eBay, and it's not uncommon for us to void several labels a month, and we've never had a problem with the refund coming through.  For the post office, it takes up to 30 days for the refund to be processed, so it can be easy to miss seeing it in your statement.

 

As for postage, for future reference, you can hold onto a label for days and days before you use it without a problem, even though there is some language in there that says it needs to be used same day or within 24 hours or so. 

 

Nah, there's no activity in my Paypal account after the payment for the package for which I bought the postage. I've never had a void take this long, and I've had to do it fairly often because the ladies down at the post office do reject incorrectly dated postage, as well as postage where the weight is incorrect by a couple of ounces even if it doesn't change the amount I'd have to pay.

 

The main issue is that I can't contact eBay, Paypal's adamant that it's not their fault, and I'm not even sure how or if I can escalate with the post office.

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Wow, you've got a harsh post office then. Though a huge factor for our experience may be that we've known all the employees at hour post office for a decade, we know a couple of people really well as our kids were all in school together.

Was it paid for with PayPal funds, or a credit card? At this point, rather than dealing with anyone's customer support, I'd think about filing a chargeback or dispute on the charge, might be the easiest solution.

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Due to a quirk of mental phrasing, I am mentally drafting plans to make a Not Allmanac.

A compendium of facts on various topics, telling you about general trends that apply to most members of different groups but not ALL of them.

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"Surely it can't be that long until a piece of wearable technology will be able to tell when its owner is temporarily judgementally impaired as a result of illness or blood alcohol poisoning, and then moderate its wearer's online interactions as a result, perhaps with a short text warning or even a block.

 

I mean you can't always tell if you're coming down with something but a fever or virus can still alter the way you behave, sometimes quite substantially"

 

 

I wrote that last night after spending the day being sick, but my browser wouldn't let me post.

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"Surely it can't be that long until a piece of wearable technology will be able to tell when its owner is temporarily judgementally impaired as a result of illness or blood alcohol poisoning, and then moderate its wearer's online interactions as a result, perhaps with a short text warning or even a block.

 

I mean you can't always tell if you're coming down with something but a fever or virus can still alter the way you behave, sometimes quite substantially"

 

 

I wrote that last night after spending the day being sick, but my browser wouldn't let me post.

 

Maybe you already have that technology installed, then?

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Zombie ashes, I foresee a future where massive, sentient flesh devouring storms made up of zombie ashes rush across the Earth. Man only ventures out when the wind is still.

Kansas is abandoned, because the wind never quits blowing here.

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Maybe you already have that technology installed, then?

 

When you've got the fever, anything is possible.

Really it's just that I can't post to Idle Thumbs from Firefox for Android when it defaults to Full Version.

(If I switch to Mobile Version it also switches me on desktop Firefox, even though I don't have syncing turned on?)

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I think a good argument for cremation is the prevention of zombies.

 

Is there any popular zombie fiction right now that support reanimation of corpses? All the ones I can think of in recent memory favor the viral or parasitic varieties that'd only affect living or recently dead people.

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Is there any popular zombie fiction right now that support reanimation of corpses? All the ones I can think of in recent memory favor the viral or parasitic varieties that'd only affect living or recently dead people.

 

Yeah viruses and stuff are the modern versions.  I suppose cremation would be a defense against the Romero type zombies who rise from the grave.  The modern fast zombie would also likely be able to defeat the treadmill defense.

 

Zombie-treadmil-defense.jpg

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After a week of constantly trying, I've given up my attempt to get my money back for a voided label I bought from eBay back in August. Between the other three parties with a hand in the transaction, only the post office has actually given me a positive response. Unfortunately, they're the ones least responsible for this mess. They approved the void fourteen days ago, eBay just never gave me my money for it. Meanwhile, I am entirely unable to contact eBay and Paypal has rejected both attempts by me to revoke the charge. I guess I've just learned a $11.34 lesson that turns a good sale on my part into an average one.

 

Honestly, I'm really impressed at just how effective it is for a popular business not to have a customer service presence online. I have literally no recourse, no matter how much eBay has cheated me, because both the post office and Paypal only have resolution methods predicated on both parties being in contact with each other.

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12 in. = 1 ft.  What a fucking dumb system.

 

I didn't know the band Twelve Inches Equals did a collaboration with the rapper What a Fucking Dumb System!  :blink: 

 

I'm sorry.

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I hate measuring things in inches.  12 in. = 1 ft.  What a fucking dumb system.

I read somewhere (might've been "What is Math" or something along those lines) that a lot of old measurement systems were derived from groups of 12 units because it's a highly divisible finger-and-toes countable number, and the fact that in English we have unique words up to twelve (then it's thir-teen, four-teen) is an artifact of that. Also French goes up to "dix-sept" with unique names for numbers, implying a similar situation with units of 16.

 

Edit: ah yeah it was "What is Mathematics" by Richard Courant http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Ideas-Methods/dp/0195105192

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I do like the base 12 number system, but there's still a lot of arbitrariness going on with US imperial.

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I read somewhere (might've been "What is Math" or something along those lines) that a lot of old measurement systems were derived from groups of 12 units because it's a highly divisible finger-and-toes countable number, and the fact that in English we have unique words up to twelve (then it's thir-teen, four-teen) is an artifact of that. Also French goes up to "dix-sept" with unique names for numbers, implying a similar situation with units of 16.

 

Edit: ah yeah it was "What is Mathematics" by Richard Courant http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Ideas-Methods/dp/0195105192

 

That's really interesting. 12 is also the last unique number in German (zwölf). However, once you get up to big numbers, more unique words show up in each language (hundred, thousand, million, etc.).

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That's really interesting. 12 is also the last unique number in German (zwölf). However, once you get up to big numbers, more unique words show up in each language (hundred, thousand, million, etc.).

 

Counting that high in Chinese is actually kind of tricky.  Instead of a new word every power of 1000, it's powers of 10,000.  What I mean by that is there's a word that means "ten-thousand".  So 100,000 is "ten ten-thousand"; 1,000,000 is "one hundred ten-thousand"; 10,000,000 is "one thousand ten-thousand"; 100,000,000 is a new word; etc.  It takes me a second to figure out how to say large numbers in Chinese because I have to do some math in addition to the translating.

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