Murders are rare things, but it's all happenin' this week.

Feeling worried about a close Facebook friend of mine who actually cut himself and showed a photo on his page. Not just for his health and sanity but also the possibility that the authorities could crack down on his territory if he doesn't get rid of that picture right away.

Gus Hanson wrote:Feeling worried about a close Facebook friend of mine who actually cut himself and showed a photo on his page. Not just for his health and sanity but also the possibility that the authorities could crack down on his territory if he doesn't get rid of that picture right away.

It actually makes me disgusted about today's so-called social networking culture and why they have to do these stunts but it only makes their personal problems much worse.

Tomorrow morning some clinical trial auditors are expected to ask me for documentation of the proof of correctness of an installation of Windows Server made in 2002. It was made before I joined this group, and I'm certain it wasn't done, let alone documented. I mean, how do you even do that if you're not Microsoft?

I fall back on trust of the hardware and systems, given that the servers are designed well beyond desktop system (with error-detecting memory and all that) to detect any flaw in data transmission that could cause a flaw to exist.

Back in the 1990s, even the notoriously tough FDA accepted "widespread industry use" as sufficient verification of Windows as a software package, knowing full well that there was no realistic alternative.

What I don't know is whether these people are asking for the impossible because they don't understand, or whether they do understand and want to see how I react.

pwhodges wrote:Tomorrow morning some clinical trial auditors are expected to ask me for documentation of the proof of correctness of an installation of Windows Server made in 2002. It was made before I joined this group, and I'm certain it wasn't done, let alone documented. I mean, how do you even do that if you're not Microsoft?

I fall back on trust of the hardware and systems, given that the servers are designed well beyond desktop system (with error-detecting memory and all that) to detect any flaw in data transmission that could cause a flaw to exist.

Back in the 1990s, even the notoriously tough FDA accepted "widespread industry use" as sufficient verification of Windows as a software package, knowing full well that there was no realistic alternative.

What I don't know is whether these people are asking for the impossible because they don't understand, or whether they do understand and want to see how I react.

What do they even mean by "correctness" in this context - that the OS was correctly installed (i guess you could do checksums of all the system files periodically to verify this and to guard against bitrot), or that the OS and whatever apps are riding on it operate in a provably correct manner for their intended use (completely infeasible for a general-purpose operating system)? I work partly with safety-critical systems, and there are some terms that have precise meanings in this field and related fields (eg. medical devices) that tend to get misused more often than properly used (and understandably so, because they mostly had colloquial meanings before industry groups or standards bodies co-opted them to signify specific things in a rigorous manner).

What does a rodent in an attic sound like?

I can hear a scraping noise like someone on the other side of a plaster divide knocking it or scraping it occasionally. But I've never had a rat before. Whatever's making the noise seems amplified through either a wall or the plasterboard. At first I thought it was my next door neighbor doing something; the walls aren't that thick, but it's too sporadic. No little footfalls, just the occasional scrape sounds, maybe only once or twice a day.

My imagination is thinking of something chewing on a rafter and using the ceiling as a soundboard. Or maybe its a bird. Whatever it is, it goes silent if I make a noise.

Ieyasu wrote:What does a rodent in an attic sound like?

I can hear a scraping noise like someone on the other side of a plaster divide knocking it or scraping it occasionally. But I've never had a rat before. Whatever's making the noise seems amplified through either a wall or the plasterboard. At first I thought it was my next door neighbor doing something; the walls aren't that thick, but it's too sporadic. No little footfalls, just the occasional scrape sounds, maybe only once or twice a day.

My imagination is thinking of something chewing on a rafter and using the ceiling as a soundboard. Or maybe its a bird. Whatever it is, it goes silent if I make a noise.

You've got a rat. Call the exterminator immediately.

Or leave out some snackies and welcome your new neighbor. No worse than a stray cat or a ferret, really.

Just concerned about wires, I've got halogen lights embedded with electrics that run up there exposed. I kinda don't wanna die in a fire, but I suppose I would have already if rats liked them. I've been hearing this little jerk for over a year. Sometimes I think it takes vacations and comes back.

Ieyasu wrote:What does a rodent in an attic sound like?

If you think you've got a rat, there's no harm in setting out a few traps. If the noise persists, then perhaps it might be a good idea to call somebody to take care of whatever it is.

I just had my balls cupped by the TSA. Twice. This is what happens when you have an old cell phone that can't be turned on without being plugged into a wall socket.

I guess I survived my audit - but they may be good at poker and preparing to pull our systems apart in their report. We'll see. Anyway, I told them that the FDA had accepted that Windows and SQL Server are widely enough used in the industry to require no further validation by us, and that suggested that validation of the programs running on top of them validated the platforms implicitly - and they didn't argue with that. I expect their main complaint to be that we don't sufficiently log our processes (especially for backup and disaster recovery) when we feel that the system logs are adequate.

Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:If you think you've got a rat, there's no harm in setting out a few traps. If the noise persists, then perhaps it might be a good idea to call somebody to take care of whatever it is.

Was thinking about it, though I don't have personal access to the space where the sounds come from. I'd have to get the landlord and I didn't want to haul him over if it wasn't really a rat or something up there, but... there's no other way to find out without access. I guess I'll have to. Might be amusing since we don't get along anyway to watch him try squeeze up in there and aggravate his allergies.

Thing about traps... whether humane or inhumane, pretty much every time I was around someone who had to use them for a rat problem, they didn't work. A neighbor of mine tried every fancy and non fancy method including poison to get rid of a rat and it just never worked. Those old fashioned head snappers? The bait was always gone and the trap left unsprung. The humane traps were the same. The rat poison wasn't eaten. We thought we were dealing with a super rat or NIMH escapee. Somehow the little bastard was able to trigger the humane traps, eat the bait, but still escape. Maybe all the traps just sucked but the real nasty ones were inscribed with something that talked about "guaranteed results", lol. He met his demise in the end though, all by himself by investigating her wheelie bin around the same time the bin men and their trash truck turned up.

I'm not confident a bunch of traps would work either. And from what I've seen poison is pretty inhumane to them. They go a little crazy and start venturing into open spaces and doing strange things, and I assume they're suffering badly.

I doubt they'd do anything drastic for one rat, landlord will probably just buy traps too. Awh well.

Draw the rat into your sphere with treats and teach it to kill.

Ieyasu wrote:What does a rodent in an attic sound like?

I can hear a scraping noise like someone on the other side of a plaster divide knocking it or scraping it occasionally. But I've never had a rat before. Whatever's making the noise seems amplified through either a wall or the plasterboard. At first I thought it was my next door neighbor doing something; the walls aren't that thick, but it's too sporadic. No little footfalls, just the occasional scrape sounds, maybe only once or twice a day.

My imagination is thinking of something chewing on a rafter and using the ceiling as a soundboard. Or maybe its a bird. Whatever it is, it goes silent if I make a noise.

You've wandered into the H.P. Lovecraft short story The Rats in the Walls. Evacuate the house.

Sister actually got fired from her job, after a constant string of complaints.

Considering the fact that the apartment is linked to the job, she must move out in late August.
and it's highly conflicting with my flight date home (late September). She told me she will pay for us to go to a hostel, but I'm still upset because since Japan, this is the second time she accepts a job internationally, I visit, then she quits or gets fired. I'm going to share a room with people I don't know for a month, and this is only because changing my flight is more expensive. I trusted that this wouldn't happen, and it still did. Hostel is $250 equivalent per month, which she said she'll pay for, but she told me I must work on online surveys extra, and I need to carry her bags like I did when this happened at her last job.

EDIT: so I guess at this point we're not leaning towards the hostel and moreso changing my ticket. Even though this means my days here are more numbered, it's an incentive to go out and seize the day as much as I can. Also, my dad will chip in as well as my sister, because they're the only good people in my family. My sister will pay a bit, and so will I. I just hope everything goes alright. The only thing I'm pretty grateful for is that I was at least able to come and stay for a while.

I've recovered psychologically from my stint as cashier, and now unemployment is once more taking its toll. I'm stuck in the doldrums again -- emotionally, physically, creatively, etc. There's little motivation to do anything. My sleep schedule is shot and needs to be reset with a melatonin.

Been playing a lot of video games, for sure, but a save file I put a good number of hours into announced this morning that it had become corrupted, which is life's way of saying, "Forget about this and go do something else with your life."

In a couple of days it will have been a month since I last posted an update to my story Crying Man, which is pretty sad. I stopped right when shit was about to get real. Now it's really hard to get myself back into that writing mindset. So much anxiety and self-doubt -- everything I have planned just seems like a huge pile of suck that won't work. I'll probably feel better if I force myself to write something, but I've been telling myself this for days and nothing significant has happened.

I don't really want to get too into it because of the drama that was involved with it, so long story short i had to relocate my computer to our back attic due to noise complaints regarding my 2.1 system and my film/anime watching ways. The place is actually not that bad and in fact in many ways is much, much better than i expected it to be. That said, there are some trouble areas or aspects that could be improved, from least to most important these are: Soundproofing (for neighbours), design (practical and aesthetic), ventilation, building a back wall (for acoustics) and modifying the floor (for acoustics as well). By the way, you can see pictures of the place around the day i relocated in the pictures thread to get an idea of its characteristics.

But the main thing i want to focus on right now is the acoustic problems, more specifically the floor... As you can see it's a wooden floor, but it's a *very* thin floor of around 1 cm supported by 5 cm thick/15 cm high beams. Not only is it very thin, but aged, somewhat curvy, and with more than a few cavities/holes in some areas. I guess that and the lack of a back wall is why the sub-woofer feels much worse in here... In the hallway (tile floor) i used to watch in the sub-woofer could be felt throught most of the room and in my seat you could feel the "punch to the heart" i read is the mark of a good position. But on here i feel up to my shins at most and i just can see how the bass waves "slip" or sink below the floor to the room below, which i assume is due to the relatively non-reflective nature of wood and the thinness and non-watertight quality of the floor. Add to that the fact i'm not sure how to fix this problem or if it can even be fixed, and you can probably imagine i'm not exactly thrilled about this matter.

I mean, we put an old carpet that covers most of the room and it helped substantially (can feel the resonance in my shins rather than my ankles now) but i'm nowhere near satisfied... I can still just *tell* how much of it is still drippling down throught the floor. What is it that can solve the problem? Thicker floor? A different material? a more hermetic/polished surface? I really have no idea and after many months of fiddling about with all these problems i'd really prefer to just be able to enjoy films without having to massively unfuck my watching environment.

Monday: I have to go back to the province because my grandmother just finally shut down at the age of 97, after a long period of having been locked into Alzheimer's and thus unable to remember almost anything.

Unfortunately I can only attend the wake for a day, then have to go back home.

EDIT -- can't attend because the issue of money has reared its ugly fucking head, especially as some "relatives" can be assholes expecting cash handouts from me, when we're really in the red.

So I found this article, and my faith in humanity took a fucking nosedive.