The EPIC WIN Thread

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Gusto

Gusto

This was created to be the positive sister thread to the popular RANT.

Post your stories of excellent luck or success!

I'll get the ball rolling with mine.

Today, I was cleaning up a part of my bedroom I've just been using mostly for storage. Stacks of boxes, CDs, old movies, etc.

Anyway, near the bottom of the stack I found a cardboard box that was really heavy. I couldn't remember what I had put in it, so I cracked it open. It was full of coins that I had rolled while sitting in front of my computer 3 or 4 years ago, and I guess I'd forgotten about it. This brought a huge smile to my face.

You know how awesome it is to find a $10 or $20 bill in your winter jacket pocket? Imagine finding ~$300!
:teeth:
 
W

Wasabi Poptart

My husband took our son to the zoo. I've got at least another hour or so to myself. :thumbsup:
 

Time to oneself and found money (especially large sums) are epic!

Mine is epic in my own tiny corner of the world.

Backstory and sorry if you know this already: I've been teaching English writing and grammar to underprepared deaf college students in a transitional program to get them ready for mainstream (i.e. hearing teachers and mostly hearing students) classes. Some of them arrive at college having been passed through English even though they can't write a simple sentence -- not due to low intelligence at all, but a mismatch of linguistic expectations is the best way I can summarize the problem.

Anyway, this past semester was my last because my disability is preventing me from keeping a regular schedule, like teaching a class. I'm calling it a leave of absence just to be optimistic, but it's been kind of devastating for me (blah blah dramacakes, that goes in the other thread).

This semester was also the first time a number of our students were ready for mainstream English classes. They still don't count for transfer credit, like our classes, because they're the hearing version of our deaf program so everyone is starting out below college level. But it's still taught in English as opposed to American Sign Language (ASL), and the students have to use an interpreter. Five of our students were in the mainstream class; four were my current or previous students.

All of them passed. :D :aaahhh: :D

I consider this my "fuck, yeah!" on my way out, not that I plan to stop teaching altogether.
 

Gusto said:
Your "I'm out, bitches" ? Very nice!
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More like a "hell yeah I/we won" kind of thing. Leaving on a high note, with a sterling teacher evaluation and students who are ready to become mainstream college students. That's really exciting for me and counteracts the suckiness of having to leave at all.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Today, I did something that 3 other programmers in our department said couldn't be done easily.

Long story short: We are doing OCR forms recognition. We use templates to OCR forms in bulk. The existing in-house app for template generation is clunky and takes a technically trained person to understand and use. It requires typing in lots of text and numbers, and takes the lead developer and primary user about 17 minutes to make a template. The developers have sworn that they've made it as simple as possible.

I've had the working source code since Friday--after a huge "I'm not giving up the source, it's my project" penis-waving contest. I grabbed the guts of their C# code, threw a nice simple VB interface on it, hid all of the non-essential stuff, and auto-generated all of the typing and numbers via context algorithms. Now the end user has a shiny point-and-click interface with heuristic aids to generate a template. You select a data point, you click on the on-screen picture of the scanned document, and the software helpfully boxes the entire word it thinks you're selecting and asks if that's what you meant, and tells you what it thinks the word is via OCR.

Now, it takes less than 2 minutes for an untrained person to make a template, and anyone can sit down, understand the app, and start using it right away (I tested on the guy in the office next door who has no relation to the project). I look forward to Monday when I show off my prototype and I shove it in the other developers faces, since they've given me such political crap about it over the last couple of weeks. Now I need an emoticon where a guys is rubbing his hands malevolently while lighting strikes in the background. ;)
 
Gusto

Gusto

Tinwhistler said:
Today, I did something that 3 other programmers in our department said couldn't be done easily.

Long story short: We are doing OCR forms recognition. We use templates to OCR forms in bulk. The existing in-house app for template generation is clunky and takes a technically trained person to understand and use. It requires typing in lots of text and numbers, and takes the lead developer and primary user about 17 minutes to make a template. The developers have sworn that they've made it as simple as possible.

I've had the working source code since Friday--after a huge "I'm not giving up the source, it's my project" penis-waving contest. I grabbed the guts of their C# code, threw a nice simple VB interface on it, hid all of the non-essential stuff, and auto-generated all of the typing and numbers via context algorithms. Now the end user has a shiny point-and-click interface with heuristic aids to generate a template. You select a data point, you click on the on-screen picture of the scanned document, and the software helpfully boxes the entire word it thinks you're selecting and asks if that's what you meant, and tells you what it thinks the word is via OCR.

Now, it takes less than 2 minutes for an untrained person to make a template, and anyone can sit down, understand the app, and start using it right away (I tested on the guy in the office next door who has no relation to the project). I look forward to Monday when I show off my prototype and I shove it in the other developers faces, since they've given me such political crap about it over the last couple of weeks. Now I need an emoticon where a guys is rubbing his hands malevolently while lighting strikes in the background. ;)
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This might be apt.

 

I have acquired a ticket to the playoff game between the Carolina Panthers and the Arizona Cardinals.

Look for me in the stands, I'll be the guy in the Panthers jersey! :D
 
Ross

Ross

Staff member
The last couple of weeks have been an epic win for me. Besides exercise and jogging 6 days per week (which I plan on continuing), I've cleaned my entire apartment, gotten a bunch of errands and phone calls done, and my grad. school applications are good to go.

There will be an epic win soon, as my girlfriend is returning this Sunday (she went to her parents for 3 weeks).

For now, I can relax and drum away on Rock Band 2!
 
J

JCM

Life is great, I am paying off a loan for my third real estate (an apt in malaysia, a house in brasilia, now another in Formosa), almost marrying and Im traveling 4 times a year.

Oh, and Im going to shave my long mane this month.
 
Gusto

Gusto

JCM said:
Life is great, I am paying off a loan for my third real estate (an apt in malaysia, a house in brasilia, now another in Formosa), almost marrying and Im traveling 4 times a year.

Oh, and Im going to shave my long mane this month.
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GASP!

Jeez man, congrats. Sounds like you're havin' a great time.
 
M

Mr_Chaz

I get to see my significant other in less than two days, and then less than two days after that it's my birthday! Whoopa!
 
Vytamindi

Vytamindi

In *counts on fingers real quick* 17 days my boyfriend will visit for a week! We saw Bolt while I was in IN, and we'll be purchasing a hamster and naming him Rhino :rofl:
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
I used to be so overweight that my ability to do cardiovascular exercise was extremely limited. After a while, my weight would make my feet prickle and I'd have to stop. I just finished a walk, during which I ran for two full minutes without feeling any pain at all! Go me!
 
Chippy

Chippy

JCM said:
Life is great, I am paying off a loan for my third real estate (an apt in malaysia, a house in brasilia, now another in Formosa), almost marrying and Im traveling 4 times a year.

Oh, and Im going to shave my long mane this month.
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Congrats, followed up with WHAAAAAAAT?!

But...But...Who will be Jesus?

:Leyla:
 
Gusto

Gusto

Cajungal said:
I used to be so overweight that my ability to do cardiovascular exercise was extremely limited. After a while, my weight would make my feet prickle and I'd have to stop. I just finished a walk, during which I ran for two full minutes without feeling any pain at all! Go me!
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Woo!

See, I'm a skinny little asthmatic guy, so I can run for 2+ minutes without stopping or feeling any pain, but then I'll be breathing real hard for the next 30 minutes or so.
 
Z

Zonker

So several years ago my wife got this little plant as a present. It's in a little itty bitty ceramic pot. Well, it grew really big and is really unstable, and has been kicked over (by me) several times. Little sumbitch never even blinks, keeps right on growing. We went on vacation, forgot to water it, it turns a little yellow and then once we started watering it again it kept right on growing.

Been meaning to reward the little bugger with a bigger pot for MONTHS but wifey wanted to do it right, get pebbles to cover the holes in the bottom, put sand, and then soil, etc. etc. Over winter break took the kids to the hardware store, got all the stuff, send the kids to the back for pebbles, put newspaper all over the floor, and transplanted the plant already. Roots were a solid brick. Now it is in a pot literally five times the size of the old one and looks like a Serious Plant now and apparently is very happy.

Yay. Now that I've shown that I can do the impossible, maybe now I'll get a cat.
 
M

Mr_Chaz

Zonker said:
...been kicked over (by me) several times... We went on vacation, forgot to water it...Been meaning to reward the little bugger with a bigger pot for MONTHS... maybe now I'll get a cat.
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And yet, with some selective editing it makes you seem like such an evil bastard. Poor kitty :waah:

I jest :)
 
B

Batdan

When the leaves are gone from your plant, please disregard the kitty shaped teeth marks, they were placed there to frame your cat by our mortal enemy the dog.
 
Z

Zonker

lol.

Yeah, finally realized that Dad should be in charge of living things in the house, not Mom. Although the kicking the plant over by accident thing was me. Cats move fast though, so hopefully my clumsiness won't be a problem.

Hm, cats eating plants. Yeah, that would be sad. Maybe mr. cat and mr. plant can get along. I'm more worried about our brand new $2000 drapes. That's why getting a cat is so complicated -- have to read up on kitty psychology, research kitty scratch poles, things to spray on drapes, blah blah. Would've been much easier last year before we renovated.

Well, I'll try to get a cat that is not known for scratching things.

God it's been a while since I had a cat.
 
P

Philosopher B.

I found a quarter on the floor yesterday ... it was a really shiny one, though!
 
E

EsteBeatDown

My wife and I recently started our own cleaning business, but it's been slow starting out. We've had to keep our regular 40 hour a week jobs to make things work.

Well, just a little over a week ago, we got a HUGE contract with a hospital that is paying us TWICE what we make monthly with our two full time jobs... and we only work 16 hours a week. I'm quitting my job after next week and she's already quit hers.

JOY!
 
Gusto

Gusto

EsteBeatDown said:
My wife and I recently started our own cleaning business, but it's been slow starting out. We've had to keep our regular 40 hour a week jobs to make things work.

Well, just a little over a week ago, we got a HUGE contract with a hospital that is paying us TWICE what we make monthly with our two full time jobs... and we only work 16 hours a week. I'm quitting my job after next week and she's already quit hers.

JOY!
Click to expand...

Nice! Always good to see a business take off like that!
 
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