Nope, wasn't a bad internet connection



  • Reading the comments on today's article reminded me of this story from a few years ago. I decided to make a new post rather than have it get lost in the backseat electrician flamewars.

    One of my friends had just moved several states away after graduating college. He got his TV and Xbox set up and joined me and a couple other guys for some Call of Duty on Xbox LIVE. However he would drop out of our party pretty much every single match. Occasionally he'd survive a match without dropping out.

    This entire time we were making fun of him for having bad Internet. We have a term for what was going on. It's called "getting SuddenLink'd", after the local cable Internet provider who seems to have an average uptime of around 7 minutes and whose technicians also seem have an average IQ around 7.

    Our friend wasn't really saying much. Actually he was uncharacteristically quiet. This went on for a good hour and a half, and we were just relentlessly ripping on him the whole time. Eventually he spoke up and told us what was going on.

    As a recent college graduate, he didn't move with much. It turns out that his new apartment was short on wall outlets. His old place had tons of outlets so he didn't have any plug strips either. In short, he couldn't get everything plugged in at once. His solution? Plug his four-outlet Clapper into the wall and plug his Xbox, TV, sound system, and broadband modem into it. As an interesting side effect, anytime there was a loud noise such as a close grenade explosion (or him having an outburst upon dying), the noise would trigger the Clapper and turn everything off.

    We were speechless.



  • @mott555 said:

    We were speechless.

    Depending how he had the sound routed, you obviously should have been yelling rather than sitting speechless.



  • @mott555 said:

    Plug his four-outlet Clapper
     

    You may have to explain this for the benefit of non-merikanz....



  • @Cassidy said:

    @mott555 said:

    Plug his four-outlet Clapper
     

    You may have to explain this for the benefit of non-merikanz....

    It's something plugged inbetween the power cord of things and the outlet.  The clapper uses a mic to listen for loudish sounds (like clapping) to flip states between on and off.



  • @locallunatic said:

    @Cassidy said:


    @mott555 said:
    Plug his four-outlet Clapper
     
    You may have to explain this for the benefit of non-merikanz....

    It's something plugged inbetween the power cord of things and the outlet.  The clapper uses a mic to listen for loudish sounds (like clapping) to flip states between on and off.



    <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgN5tUgjb8>guess what?
    non us-ian 'ere, i knew, but i've never seen such a device irl...



  • @locallunatic said:

    Depending how he had the sound routed, you obviously should have been yelling rather than sitting speechless.

    That sounds like a LOT of fun :-)

    "That was a great headshot man, I think it deserves some recognition *CLAP* *CLAP*"


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @swayde said:

    non us-ian 'ere, i knew, but i've never seen such a device irl..

    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    The key thing is that they had commercials that stuck with you and were kinda lame (I imagine that's what the youtube link is for, but I'm not going to follow it in case it is). I think their jingle is second in mockery only to, "I've fallen and I can't get up."



  • @mott555 said:

    His old place had tons of outlets so he didn't have any plug strips either. In short, he couldn't get everything plugged in at once.
     

    How long was he there for? How much would a multi-outlet board cost anyway? Like $2?

    I have a heap of them, left over from Christmas lights.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:


    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    Pedantic dickweedery used by wisacres who point out that "American" is technically incorrect since there's two other countries on this continent.



  • Only two? I knew those Cubans and Canadians were in cahoots!

    Anyway, they have shorter names than we do. So we abbreviate and they do not. Sorry.



  • @mott555 said:

    anytime there was a loud noise such as a close grenade explosion (or him having an outburst upon dying), the noise would trigger the Clapper and turn everything off.
    You've got to be kidding me. Please tell me you all started clapping afterwards.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @boomzilla said:


    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    Pedantic dickweedery used by wisacres who point out that "American" is technically incorrect since there's two other countries on this continent.

     Not to mention another entire continent full of Americans. If you want pedantic dickweedery.



  • @taustin said:

    @FrostCat said:
    @boomzilla said:


    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    Pedantic dickweedery used by wisacres who point out that "American" is technically incorrect since there's two other countries on this continent.

     Not to mention another entire continent full of Americans. If you want pedantic dickweedery.

    Except that the United States of America is the only country in either of those continents with the word America in its name.

    Or are you the kind of people who would call Chinese people "peoplesrepublicof-ians"?



  • @boomzilla said:

    "I've fallen and I can't get up."
     

    ~

    I fell to the ground and I couldn't get up

    After drinking a pint

    Of that Johnny Jump Up

    ~



  • @Ben L. said:

    Except that the United States of America is the only country in either of those continents with the word America in its name.
    That's because you guys were too lame to come up with a proper name.

    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Severity One said:

    After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...
    There wasn't an Orleans in Britain at the time of the Mayflower....



  • @Severity One said:

    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...

    New York isn't named after a place.



  • @Gurth said:

    @Severity One said:
    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...
    New York isn't named after a place.

    So it's not named after York - where the Grand Old Duke came from?

     

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Cbuttius said:

    @Gurth said:

    @Severity One said:
    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...
    New York isn't named after a place.

    So it's not named after York - where the Grand Old Duke came from?

    Apparently, not directly - it was named after the then Duke of York in the 1660s. Who, of course, was named after the city.


  • @PJH said:

    @Severity One said:
    After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...
    There wasn't an Orleans in Britain at the time of the Mayflower....

    @Gurth said:

    @Severity One said:
    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...

    New York isn't named after a place.

    There was an Orléans in France though, after which La Nouvelle-Orléans (a.k.a. New Orleans) was named; originally it was a French colony. Similarly, New York used to be called New Amsterdam, as in the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam, seeing as it was originally a Dutch settlement before it fell in British hands.

    Must Europeans 'EU-ians' teach Americans 'US-ians' their own colonial history now?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @FrostCat said:

    @boomzilla said:


    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    Pedantic dickweedery used by wisacres who point out that "American" is technically incorrect since there's two other countries on this continent.

    That's true only in places where "technically incorrect" is the same as "correct." America isn't a continent. US-ian could equally apply to the United States of Mexico, which is commonly referred to as...Mexico (if anyone cared enough to talk about Mexico much).

    But hey, if you want to sound stupid by being incorrect, please don't let me stop you. I have some supercooled liquid that you might like to buy.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I have some supercooled liquid that you might like to buy.
     

    Cool! How much?



  • Pardon me for derailing the thread back to the OP, but I can't help but wonder:

    why didn't he just turn down his sound?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Xyro said:

    Pardon me for derailing the thread back to the OP, but I can't help but wonder:

    why didn't he just turn down his sound?

    Or put a pillow or something over the Clapper? TRWTF is the duration of this WTF. I mean...for a week or so after you moved in, until you got around to buying a new power strip, I could understand.



  • @Xyro said:

    Pardon me for derailing the thread back to the OP, but I can't help but wonder:

    why didn't he just turn down his sound?

    We wondered that too.



  • @mott555 said:

    Reading the comments on today's article reminded me of this story from a few years ago. I decided to make a new post rather than have it get lost in the backseat electrician flamewars.

    One of my friends had just moved several states away after graduating college. He got his TV and Xbox set up and joined me and a couple other guys for some Call of Duty on Xbox LIVE. However he would drop out of our party pretty much every single match. Occasionally he'd survive a match without dropping out.

    This entire time we were making fun of him for having bad Internet. We have a term for what was going on. It's called "getting SuddenLink'd", after the local cable Internet provider who seems to have an average uptime of around 7 minutes and whose technicians also seem have an average IQ around 7.

    Our friend wasn't really saying much. Actually he was uncharacteristically quiet. This went on for a good hour and a half, and we were just relentlessly ripping on him the whole time. Eventually he spoke up and told us what was going on.

    As a recent college graduate, he didn't move with much. It turns out that his new apartment was short on wall outlets. His old place had tons of outlets so he didn't have any plug strips either. In short, he couldn't get everything plugged in at once. His solution? Plug his four-outlet Clapper into the wall and plug his Xbox, TV, sound system, and broadband modem into it. As an interesting side effect, anytime there was a loud noise such as a close grenade explosion (or him having an outburst upon dying), the noise would trigger the Clapper and turn everything off.

    We were speechless.

     

    Must have been a cheap knock off of a clapper! Real clappers don't listen for claps, they listen for the silence between the claps, and after the clap. A single sharp loud noise can't trigger it, you need a clap, .5s silence, clap, .5s silence, no 3rd clap; incidently this is how the clapper is supposed to filter out applause from say a TV. 

     



  • @esoterik said:

    Must have been a cheap knock off of a clapper! Real clappers don't listen for claps, they listen for the silence between the claps, and after the clap. A single sharp loud noise can't trigger it, you need a clap, .5s silence, clap, .5s silence, no 3rd clap; incidently this is how the clapper is supposed to filter out applause from say a TV. 
    *throws 2 grenades at esoterik with a perfectly timed gap*



  • @esoterik said:

    Must have been a cheap knock off of a clapper! Real clappers don't listen for claps, they listen for the silence between the claps, and after the clap. A single sharp loud noise can't trigger it, you need a clap, .5s silence, clap, .5s silence, no 3rd clap; incidently this is how the clapper is supposed to filter out applause from say a TV. 
     

    So what happens if you slowclap someone in the dark?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @taustin said:

    @FrostCat said:
    @boomzilla said:


    I know what a clapper is, but could you explain what a Us-ian is? Is that like a misspelled sprinter or something?

    Pedantic dickweedery used by wisacres who point out that "American" is technically incorrect since there's two other countries on this continent.

     Not to mention another entire continent full of Americans. If you want pedantic dickweedery.

    No, not really.  Given they are on the continent, it's obvious from context that they are Americans, the way French people are also Europeans. But as someone else said, those other two countries have already got perfectly good names for their people, "Canadians," and "Mexicans."  "US-ian" is the kind of accuracy that's only there to be a dick, kind of like the person who prides himself on always telling the truth, even if that means saying "Bob, you look like shit," when he sees you when you're sick.



  • @FrostCat said:

    even if that means saying "Bob, you look like shit," when he sees you when you're sick.
     

    So what you're saying is the USA is a sick country?



  • Wow, I knew that using USian in my tag would set people off, but I wasn't expecting this good of a response.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @locallunatic said:

    Wow, I knew that using USian in my tag would set people off, but I wasn't expecting this good of a response.

    It's a time honored flame war to draw out the people with a false sense of confidence in their knowledge of geography. They're mostly emacs users.



  • @locallunatic said:

    Wow, I knew that using USian in my tag would set people off, but I wasn't expecting this good of a response.

    There's a difference between trolling and being a dick.

    You were being a dick. Now you're trying to play it off as if you were just trolling. We weren't born yesterday; you're not fooling anybody.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    There's a difference between trolling and being a dick.
    Explain, please.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You were being a dick.

    Oh noes, I used a term that is clear as to meaning that you disagree with due to it not matching the standard.  You are correct in that I wasn't just trolling, I used USian as I prefer it but I am aware that other users seem to enjoy arguing about it.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @locallunatic said:

    I used USian as I prefer it

    So a preference for being wrong explains your username? Or maybe you just have a problem letting go of the SHIFT key.



  • @boomzilla said:

    So a preference for being wrong

    I'm not entirely clear on how it is wrong.  I mean of course it's non-standard, but is that all that makes it wrong?  If so that would invalidate a whole lot of words and make our language much poorer as a result.



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    There's a difference between trolling and being a dick.
    Explain, please.

    There is a "KY" in the guy's location information and he really wanted to put it there because it's an optional field. This means that either he is from Kentucky (haha! Kentucky for god sake) or that he is a frequent customer of K-Y, which by itself can be explained by either "an alternative lifestyle" or by being so unattractive that his wife (who married him to spite her father) needs some additional lube. Either way he is in no position to make fun of non-Americans.

    does that qualify as Trolling or Being A Dick? join the conversation at thedailywtf.com and tell us what you think!



  • @locallunatic said:

    @boomzilla said:
    So a preference for being wrong
    I'm not entirely clear on how it is wrong.  I mean of course it's non-standard, but is that all that makes it wrong?  If so that would invalidate a whole lot of words and make our language much poorer as a result.

    It's not that USian is "non-standard".  It's that the only people who use that made up word are dicks who think they are funny, but aren't.

     



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    does that qualify as Trolling or Being A Dick? join the conversation at thedailywtf.com and tell us what you think!

    I'd probably count it as the first one, but you're going to need a proper poll to try and tell.

     

    EDIT:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    This means that either he is from Kentucky
     

    Currently in != From.  Though I'll grant you someone willing moving to Kentucky does seem pretty far fetched.



  • @Ragnax said:

    @PJH said:
    @Severity One said:
    After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...
    There wasn't an Orleans in Britain at the time of the Mayflower....

    @Gurth said:

    @Severity One said:
    Couldn't you have called it New Britain or something? After all, you have New York, New England, New Orleans...

    New York isn't named after a place.

    There was an Orléans in France though, after which La Nouvelle-Orléans (a.k.a. New Orleans) was named; originally it was a French colony. Similarly, New York used to be called New Amsterdam, as in the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam, seeing as it was originally a Dutch settlement before it fell in British hands.

     

    So essentially, what you're saying is:

    @Jimmy Kennedy said:

    Even old New York
    was once New Amsterdam
    Why they changed it I can't say
    People just liked it better that way!

    In all seriousness, though, "US-ian" may sound strange to us, but in South America it's perfectly normal and legitimate to use the term "estadounidense" ("unitedstatesian").  It's considered the proper Spanish term for someone from the US, used in contexts where the less formal "yanqui" would not be appropriate.  (Yes, they call us Yankees.  All of us.  Really ticked off a friend of mine first time he had that term used on him, because he's from Georgia.)

     


  • BINNED

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    does that qualify as Trolling or Being A Dick?

    I'm not sure if there's a meaningful distinction between the two.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    In all seriousness, though, "US-ian" may sound strange to us, but in South America it's perfectly normal and legitimate to use the term "estadounidense" ("unitedstatesian").  It's considered the proper Spanish term for someone from the US, used in contexts where the less formal "yanqui" would not be appropriate.  (Yes, they call us Yankees.  All of us.  Really ticked off a friend of mine first time he had that term used on him, because he's from Georgia.)

    Yes, not surprisingly, different languages use...different words...for the same concept. More amusingly, Mexicans sometimes use "norteamericano" (e.g., futbol norteamericano) where an English speaker would use American. Here, the afore-mentioned geographically-confused would have a point, since North America (the obvious, literal translation) is a continent. Of course, gringo is common, too.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    does that qualify as Trolling or Being A Dick?

    A troll posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the fact that the message was posted. The content doesn't matter as much as the reaction.

    A dick posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the message's content itself. The content matters, because they either believe they are correct/that the message is truthful, or that they are intentionally using those specific words to harm someone, or because they are completely ignorant of the harm their words will cause.

    So it's intention. The method is the same.

    Alternate:


     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    A troll posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the fact that the message was posted. The content doesn't matter as much as the reaction.

    A dick posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the message's content itself. The content matters, because they either believe they are correct/that the message is truthful, or that they are intentionally using those specific words to harm someone, or because they are completely ignorant of the harm their words will cause.

    So it's intention. The method is the same.

    100% correct. I'm glad I'm not the only non-idiot here.

    The troll is amusing himself. The dick is pissing off other people.


  • BINNED

    @Lorne Kates said:

    A troll posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the fact that the message was posted. The content doesn't matter as much as the reaction.

    A dick posts a mean, hateful or flammitory message in order to get a reaction from the message's content itself. The content matters, because they either believe they are correct/that the message is truthful, or that they are intentionally using those specific words to harm someone, or because they are completely ignorant of the harm their words will cause.

    So it's intention. The method is the same.

    The first problem with those definitions is that distinguishing the two requires mind-reading. I'm not normally a behaviorist, but I think in this case it may be appropriate.

    The other, more serious problem, is that your definitions imply that sincere but hateful posting makes you a dick.



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    your definitions imply that sincere but hateful posting makes you a dick

    So to you for someone to be a dick they have to be insincere when making hateful comments?


  • BINNED

    Can't tell if trolling or didn't read the tags...



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    I'm not normally a behaviorist, but I think in this case it may be appropriate.

    If you had more than superficial knowledge of behaviorism you would know that one can act like a behaviorist but not be one.

    I am very disappointed by your lack of accuracy, PedanticCurmudgeon.



  • @locallunatic said:

    @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    your definitions imply that sincere but hateful posting makes you a dick

    So to you for someone to be a dick they have to be insincere when making hateful comments?

    Tell me, do you by any chance get weird results when you write SQL queries that include keywords like AND or OR?


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