[Rant] Minor Rant III: For a Few Hollers More

GasBandit

Staff member
But can we get cheap, knock-off Lasik?
There are some areas you don't want to go cheap on. Eye-targeting laser cannons is one of them.

That said, I got mine for a thousand bucks an eye and it's beautimous.

(or rather, my work got it for that much, since they got me Lasik on advertising trade)
 

GasBandit

Staff member
As someone whose opinion I would at least somewhat trust, how's your night vision after the Lasik? I hear it tends to suffer after having your eyes seared by lasers.

--Patrick
Honestly my night vision wasn't great to begin with. That said, yes, there's some deterioration. For the first year after you get it, driving at night can be a bit of a challenge because the oncoming headlights cause starburst patterns. It gets better, but not back up to perfect. But I'd never trade back, not even for built in IR eyes. It's just so nice after all those years of having to keep up with glasses and wear glasses and clean glasses and replace glasses and worry about falling asleep while still wearing glasses and GET THESE GLASSES OFF OF MY FACE... to not have to worry about glasses any more, and be able to see clearly the instant I open my eyes in the morning.

The procedure itself was pretty easy, too. They gave me some valium, waited a bit for me to get niiiiiiice and mellow, then wheeled me in and said "ok we're going to cut open your corneas and shoot them with a laser so keep staring at this dot on the ceiling and try not to move your eyes" and I was all "nooooo problem, maaaaaan." And that little sponge-brush they use to keep your eyes moist and move the flap they cut feels REALLY GOOD. They make you wear goggles at night for a few weeks while your eyes heal so you don't rip them open again, but honestly if it wasn't for the valium I probably could have driven myself home from the procedure afterwards.[DOUBLEPOST=1354654829][/DOUBLEPOST]
Just curious... but what was your prescription before Lasik?
Man... I don't remember. Maybe if I found some of my old glasses at home, I could tell. But I can tell you, before, without glasses, I could see about a foot and a half clearly. I was approximately 20/400.

Which brings back another slight-but-acceptable drawback - A quirk many very-nearsighted people have, I used to be able to scrutinize tiny things simply by holding them an inch or two away from my eye, and see the tiny details in crisp clarity. I could practically read the writing on microfiche that way. That doesn't work any more after lasik. In fact, if anything is closer than 6 inches or so to my face, I can't focus on it and it hurts a little to try.
 

fade

Staff member
I went in for Lasik. I went to the consultation and was approved. I came back for the actual procedure, took the valium and was waiting my turn. Then the doctor calls me aside and tells me that he just got back from a conference, and they were no longer recommending lasik for people with thin corneas, which apparently I had.

At least I got the valium.
 
I've yet to go in for a consultation but I have a feeling that the way my pupils dilate in the darkness will make me a candiate for extreme starbursts and halos in my nightvision.
 
Which procedure would be best for people with a slight astigmatism? I do require glasses for perfect vision, but I can do mostly well without them. Only needing them to read subtitles on undersized tvs and road signs at night. This is annoying because unlike a lot of my glasses wearing friends, unless my glasses are meticulously spotless, they downgrade my vision.
 
Granted! But they work so well that the car doesn't move.

I wish I could predict the stock market for up to 6 months in the future.
 
I'd like to meet the guy who set up the brakes on my car and beat him to death with his own spanner. I cannot think of a time, under any circumstances, when it would be good to have your brakes stop working if you hit a slick surface. Keep them from locking up? Sure. That sounds great. But to have the brake pedal go all the way to the floor as soon as one (or more) of your tires hits a slick surface, and then have to pump the brakes 10 or so times before they'll work for anything more than a quick tap? No, fuck that.

I was gently braking (to briefly slow down) as I crossed an expansion joint in the rain, and the pedal went to the floor, causing me to need to pump the brakes before I could use them properly again. Would have been fine if I'd been coming to a complete stop, but I wasn't; so instead I had to leave like 10 car lengths between me and the car in front of me and use the transmission (thank god I drive a manual) for 4 miles until traffic finally came to a halt on the freeway. Who thought this was a good idea?

Edit: Stupid multiple threads open at the same time...
 
Do you ever find yourself just hating a commercial that comes on? Watching Duck Dynasty right now and they keep showing this commercial with a 911 call in it. It's just annoying as all get out. I wish I was watching this from a Tivo recording so I could just skip the commercials.
 
I'd like to meet the guy who set up the brakes on my car and beat him to death with his own spanner. I cannot think of a time, under any circumstances, when it would be good to have your brakes stop working if you hit a slick surface. Keep them from locking up? Sure. That sounds great. But to have the brake pedal go all the way to the floor as soon as one (or more) of your tires hits a slick surface, and then have to pump the brakes 10 or so times before they'll work for anything more than a quick tap? No, fuck that.

I was gently braking (to briefly slow down) as I crossed an expansion joint in the rain, and the pedal went to the floor, causing me to need to pump the brakes before I could use them properly again. Would have been fine if I'd been coming to a complete stop, but I wasn't; so instead I had to leave like 10 car lengths between me and the car in front of me and use the transmission (thank god I drive a manual) for 4 miles until traffic finally came to a halt on the freeway. Who thought this was a good idea?

Edit: Stupid multiple threads open at the same time...

Sounds like he didn't bleed the brake lines properly. Nothing like air bubbles in a system designed for fluid that doesn't compress.
 
My music appreciation class is basically full of CHILDREN! Every damn class they are always WHINING about how bleeding long the class is, how hard the tests are. YOU'RE IN COLLEGE DAMMIT! The right to whine stopped being valid the moment you PAYED for this freaking class! I'll admit I'm not doing my best in class, but at least I enjoy it rather than bitching every fifteen seconds about being in a class for two hours and 15 minutes. I was once in a class that was nine hours long, this ain't SHIT!
 
I had Chinese food for lunch. I ate later than usual because the kids and I had dental appointments. I am still full and it's past 6pm. I know I will be hungry come 9 or 10 pm :/
 
Brakes are kinda important. Check your brake fluid level first. If it's low, that's a problem. Then go around and check all your brakes and make sure they have plenty of wear left in them, and that the cylinders didn't pop out. Look for fluid leaks along the brake lines. If your fluid level is ok, you don't see any leaks, and all your brake pads are ok with the brake cylinders in place, then it might be an air bubble somewhere, and bleeding the brakes will be necessary. But modern brake systems are split up so the front and back brakes are separate - if there's a bubble in one, the other should still compress and slow you down unless the bubbles were introduced due to low fluid.

This should not be happening, and you should get it fixed asap. Your engine and transmission can only slow you down so much, when you need brakes and don't have them (child darting across the road) you won't have time to pump.
Yeah, I figured it was gonna be an expensive weekend. The behavior just confused me, because it only happens when I'm already braking and happen to cross over a surface with less traction than the one that I started braking on - mainly wet metal (it's Seattle, we've got a lot of wet metal) and ice.
 
Would that behavior persist over a period of multiple years? Cuz this has been going on for a while.

It's a sealed system so if there aren't any leaks and there were air bubbles introduced... they will never have a chance to escape. So yes... it could go on for a long time if not corrected.
 
Strangely enough, mine will behave similarly, though not as panic-inducingly as Gared's. In my case, it seems to happen most often when the ABS is triggered. The pedal doesn't go to the floor, but it drops an extra inch and a half, which can be unexpected.

--Patrick
 
That sounds like a bad ABS system. Do the brakes seem to vibrate when this happens?
Tonight they seemed to vibrate a little bit, but that's the first time I noticed it. They also still seemed to slow me down when gently depressing the brake pedal, but I had to push farther on the pedal than usual, like they really wanted to make sure I meant to press that pedal at that particular moment. It just bothered me tonight because it was raining and dark, and because there were enough wrecks on the roads already. Still gonna have them checked though. Of all of the systems in my car, my two favorites are the one that makes it go, and the one that makes it stop, and not necessarily in that order.
 
So I’ve been playing on this server, right. Getting back into the groove a bit after being on a Minecraft hiatus for a long-ass time due to lack of inspiration. After a week or so of playing, managed to grab myself enough stuff to build the following:



Having made friends with one of the GM’s, I asked one of them to use voxelsniper to blow away some unslightly floating clumps nearby. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten he put his brush size to 200 for a different project. So rather than deleting those few floating clumps, he cut a hole in the server. A hole twice the size of my town. Everything you see there? It’s gone, and then some. If you turn up your render distance you can see the void.

Here’s the kicker; it can’t be undone. He tried and failed. I asked the admin for a roll-back, he says that don’t work because of the way voxelsniper does things.

Bummer.
 
So I’ve been playing on this server, right. Getting back into the groove a bit after being on a Minecraft hiatus for a long-ass time due to lack of inspiration. After a week or so of playing, managed to grab myself enough stuff to build the following:



Having made friends with one of the GM’s, I asked one of them to use voxelsniper to blow away some unslightly floating clumps nearby. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten he put his brush size to 200 for a different project. So rather than deleting those few floating clumps, he cut a hole in the server. A hole twice the size of my town. Everything you see there? It’s gone, and then some. If you turn up your render distance you can see the void.

Here’s the kicker; it can’t be undone. He tried and failed. I asked the admin for a roll-back, he says that don’t work because of the way voxelsniper does things.

Bummer.
He just didn't want to tell you about the xenomorph infestation he found there.
 
As far as the lasik thing goes:
I had -4.75 in one eye, had laser surgery (and we don't get no bloody valium for it), much better sight now. Now my other eye has deteriorated so much I have to wear glasses...With window pane for my now-good eye. Anyway, they won't do it on my other eye now because I have thin corneas as well. It was perfectly fine for my left eye, but noooo..... It just meant they had to cut away at the surface and couldn't put a little flap back over the cut as they normally do.
My night vision's about as good as it used to be; my only complaint would be that I often have stuffed up/stuck closed eyes in the morning.
 
The Mint (or is it the Bureau of Engraving and Printing?) actually tests inks and papers by running them through washing machines and other household situations.

--Patrick
 
I almost got fired this morning for not showing up to something that I was never told about beforehand. Fucking stupid people.
 
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