Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

What's the point of learning calculus? For most people there probably is none. What's the point of being a calculus teacher or teacher of math in general? So cool calculus-based things like GPS satellites, roller coasters, PET scanners, timed-release medicines, and just about anything with a microprocessor can continue being maintained, improved, and invented. And so that fucking cool toys like this thing can get made.

Any subject can be made boring. I believe that any subject can be made fun. I think the problem with calculus instruction and maybe all math instruction is that it tends to get taught completely outside of any context. You do these things with these variables and you get this other configuration of variables which has the property of who gives a fuck. Tell people what it's for, tell them the things they're calculating are things they could conceivably give a shit about, and I think automagically people will start feeling like math is something worth learning.

[Jarre]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Fuck angles makes those rooves flat.

There is no such thing as a flat roof as all roof that look flat are pitched between 1-2 degrees to allow water runoff.

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Hey Jarre, take your cultural elitism and shove it up your ass, there are flat rooves all over the place outside your little caucasian paradise. I should know, I live on one.

If only what you said were true. Taiwanese construction is almost entirely shit, especially whoever it is responsible for laying tile/brick. Almost all of the sidewalks, and a fair amount of the housing, is laid with tile/brick, and almost all of it is incredibly uneven. If I dare leave my room in the rain, there is invariably a giant puddle immediately outside my door. In theory, it should've been laid evening, with a slight tilt towards the drain on the far side of the roof. In practice, it was done by contractors, so it's a fucking crapshoot.

Electricity is supplied to my room by simply drilling a hole in the wall and pushing the cable through, with zero attempt made to even patch it up. The sole working outlet is two prong; this is easily worked around simply by using a power strip that has the ground plug attached to jack shit.

I am probably going to die here.

[Jarre]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

eeek don't liek the sound of that place Feba, although i know its different culture and different methods, I guess here in the UK we have so much red tape, we have "building regulation documents" which are 21 documents of minimum regulation,

Say I design a house to be built, it has to match all the requirements in the 21 documents, it then has to have a energy assessment test on it, sound tests if its not a stand alone unit, it has to be air pressure tested, electric fans have seperate tests, all the electrics and plumbing has to be certified and tested, fire safety agreed with the local fire department H&S team. It has to go through a rigerous planning approval stage and also has to be agreed as suitable by the environment agency, local drainage board, local sewerage board etc. These days my job is 30% design and 70% admin!

[DakAttack]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

sound tests if its not a stand alone unit

To ensure you can hear your neighbors having sex?

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

To ensure you can hear your neighbors having sex?

No, to ensure that your neighbors can hear you masturbating to the sounds of them having sex.

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Oh, there's a building code here, but good luck getting anyone to keep to it.

My building is a 5 story apartment building, walk up... I live in the sixth floor. Basically what that means is an owner at some point in the past decided he wasn't getting enough money out of his property, so he fanagled some basic piping and electronics up to the roof, put up some brick walls with windows and called it housing. This is so common here that not only do the locals instantly know what you're talking about, almost all the foreigners do as well.

I remember reading advice at one point not to buy a room in a building at like 11 or 12 storeys, or something like that, because they were all built at that height specifically to avoid more stringent standards for buildings with any floors above that; as in, they're all going to collapse the next time a big quake comes around.

I mean, my room will too, I'm sure. If you guys hear anything about an earthquake around Taipei, just assume I'm already dead.

[Firewind]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Whenever someone at work calls me about Building Regulations I tend to run screaming until someone who dares even touch those documents those documents hears me.

Then I tell them they got the wrong extension and dial them through to the real Building Regs department.

[Carter]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Oh, there's a building code here, but good luck getting anyone to keep to it.

My building is a 5 story apartment building, walk up... I live in the sixth floor. Basically what that means is an owner at some point in the past decided he wasn't getting enough money out of his property, so he fanagled some basic piping and electronics up to the roof, put up some brick walls with windows and called it housing. This is so common here that not only do the locals instantly know what you're talking about, almost all the foreigners do as well.

I remember reading advice at one point not to buy a room in a building at like 11 or 12 storeys, or something like that, because they were all built at that height specifically to avoid more stringent standards for buildings with any floors above that; as in, they're all going to collapse the next time a big quake comes around.

I mean, my room will too, I'm sure. If you guys hear anything about an earthquake around Taipei, just assume I'm already dead.

@Jarre -> This is why we have building regs m8y

[Firewind]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II



This did get past Building Regs though

[Etra]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

By the way, it was -8.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

So this just happened in chat (I'm J)

M: Still can't get over that the thing she found most offensive about being compared to Hitler was how bad an artist he was
J: I hadn't heard that one
J: She WOULD say that
S: right, I only told M that
S: she totally huffed to me in chat about that
S: and I was like, uh-huh
S: and then she said, the worst was that he was such a crappy artist and she is so much better
J: LOL I'm not sure what's funnier, the fact that someone COMPARED HER TO HITLER or that she's only mad about the ART comparison.
J: LIKE
J: who the fuck says that

[Armando]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Any subject can be made boring. I believe that any subject can be made fun. I think the problem with calculus instruction and maybe all math instruction is that it tends to get taught completely outside of any context. You do these things with these variables and you get this other configuration of variables which has the property of who gives a fuck. Tell people what it's for, tell them the things they're calculating are things they could conceivably give a shit about, and I think automagically people will start feeling like math is something worth learning.

I agree with you 100%. Also, mathematical notation is fucking retarded. If a programmer wrote code as cryptic as the shit mathematicians write, I'd punch him in the face. And that's an apples to apples comparison; the difference between math and programming is practically 0.

I would argue that the learning calculus is useful simply because it improves your analytical skills in general, in the same way that jogging and lifting weights don't make you better at any one sport but make you more fit in general.

[Feba]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

My statistics course went from "practically zero math" to "lol calculus!" yesterday, which is kind of a bitch move from my perspective, considering I've only ever really taken very basic algebra courses (between moving around a lot, attending different schools, and having shit math education I've never needed it. Even if I had taken calculus, it would've been years ago). Luckily it seems to be mostly superfluous; explaining shit we can understand if we want, but don't need to use.

In unrelated news, woke up today still apparently drunk, missed Taiwanese (but lol fuck that class, so easy, literally all we've been doing is reading syllable charts for the past five weeks), have Criminal Law to get to somehow in half an hour (ten minutes drinking water, ten minute shower, ten minutes biking, may be doable), and also apparently I was trying to hit on my vietnamese friend last night.

[Taskmage]

Re: Official Bored at Work / Off-Topic Chat Thread II

Kids these days. My fishing linkshell was talking about equipping fish as weapons, and I said you should get an achievement for defeating a treant with a herring, and nobody got the Monty Python reference.