General

nonamesleft wrote:


I think it's nasty, my wife likes the fried stuff but not the stewed, both her parents love both. The stewed stuff might be a generational thing at this point, I didn't see a lot of young people eating it when I was in there or walking by, but they would sell out of the fried stuff all the time.

It's definitely a traditional food, and of course you have to have all your tourist friends try it so they can feel your pain haha

Honestly, the stewed stuff looks like a big cauldron of sewage and doesn't smell any better, to me at least.

Me: The week can't get any worse

Washing machine: Watch this *dies*

If you use the word "attached" or something similar, your email alerts you if nothing is attached. It would be nice if when you send an email to a lot of people with the same domain, it notifies you if a recipient listed does not have a similar domain.

I 100% told him, but let me boast a bit. Congrats to my son on a successful little league year! First year, he hit very well, got better at fielding as the year went on. I largely stayed out of coaching during the game to minimize confusion. Some frustrations, but I'm proud of the little dude! Great experience for him and he delivered! It was nice seeing him respond to being part of a team, he did awesome!

My favorite thing to do with tofu is tofu scramble. Saute veggies, cook nutritional yeast in the pan for like 45 seconds, add tofu crumbled with your hands into the pan, add turmeric (turns it yellow like eggs,) and other spices and vegan shredded cheese, tastes pretty good

nonamesleft wrote:

I make a modified version of this with tofu: https://www.justonecookbook.com/chukadon/

I learned how to make chukadon in honor of Mr. Iwata. Because I am a soft squishy fangirl.

Stir-fry firm or extra firm tofu in sesame oil and add ALL THE VEGGIES! Serve over rice. Yum ^_^

sailorneorune wrote:
Sounds delicious.

You don't need the three different types of soy sauce in general, but I would pick up a bottle of the dark soy sauce, it's not that pricey but the flavor is great. It technically has more salt than regular (light) soy sauce but the actual soy flavor is much more pronounced. I make a traditional Taiwanese dish that my wife loves called Lu Rou Fan, and you can definitely tell the difference when you make it with both vs just the cheap stuff. I usually go with the aged from Wan Ja Shan, you can get it on Amazon but it's usually much cheaper if you have a local Asian store.

There are less shoe salesmen than there used to be. I remember as a kid, we'd go to shoe stores and some nice man would go through this ritual of measuring our feet, bringing boxes, sometimes lacing or helping us slide the shoes on, waiting while we walked around a little; until we found the shoes we liked. I haven't had that experience for many years (decades?) now. I imagine they may still exist, but there's less of them and they do less. Trying to look this up, it seems there are less salesmen in general. I could see how that's kind of nice. But, I miss shoe salesmen a little.

I'm in sales and I wish the bad ones would stop being bad because it's really made people NOT like salespeople. But you are right: they are dying out as companies think they are not needed. Salespeople definitely are but the LARGE majority of sales is still stuck in the 80s/90s with their methods.

Bottom line; you need to honestly like people and WANT to help them to make it a win/win. I don't know how lying/dishonest salespeople sleep at night and I'm not just saying that metaphorically. The value of your name and reputation are paramount to me because I honestly believe: you can't keep doing ALL the right things by people over and over and NOT be successful.

My company also, at their core, believes they don't need salespeople and that their services (which are stellar) would sell themselves if presented even online. That would be a huge mistake.

^ agreed. You might want to follow Josh Braun on LinkedIn if you don’t already, sounds like he’d be up your alley. Others too but Braun’s my favorite

lightslime wrote:
What does cooking the nutritional yeast do?

ChrisKW1 wrote:
What does wan ja shan mean?

Asian cuisine uses a lot of tasty combinations of spices. I was looking at a recipe for lu rou fan, and it's got a combo of spices that you don't often find in many non Asian dishes. Things like star anise, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, sichuan peppercorns, dried tangerine peel, and ginger. Tasty stuff.

ChrisKW1 wrote:

This is good to know -- thanks -- I will pick some up. 👍

bill wrote:

Yeah, so, my wife has plantar fasciitis and, when diagnosed, the doctor recommended this "cobbler shop" about 30 minutes away. We went and they were freakin' amazing! Like, they knew their crap so well. We ended up with Hoka One One shoes for her. They are expensive, but even the shop was selling them for basically the same price that I could find them for anywhere online. So, happy to buy from them for all of their free advice/work. It was like "the old days" like you've mentioned. 👍

very cool

rayzor6 wrote:

The fact that the country is getting along fine without so many salespeople is testament to the fact that we really didn't need most of them. Most business owners only needed them because they increased profits by upselling a buyer to a more expensive product or talking them into buying additional items and extended warranties. Before the internet, salespeople were the ones that customers looked to for product information. I still like talking to salespeople for information on products like electronics and large appliances, but I don't need a salesperson to help me buy clothing or shoes.

Several years ago I was looking to buy a good used car. I explained to the salesman that I had X amount in cash and I wanted to look at cars in that range. He got wide eyed and said, "If you've got that much cash, you should be using it as a down payment on a new car!" I walked away from him immediately.

I often worked closely with the salespeople in the company I worked for and, since they were motivated by their income being tied to their performance, the temptation to put their interests above those of the customer's was great. Part of my job was Technical Service and one of the toughest parts was getting a phone call from a customer and having to dance around the lies they had been told. Then, I would get ripped for not backing them up.

John wrote:

I'm glad it worked out for you. About 20 years ago my wife had some sort of problem and was told she needed to go to The Good Feet Store. They went through all of the procedures and eventually sold her a pair of shoes for $400. I don't know what that would be in today's dollars. They hurt her feet so much she couldn't wear them.

Tony wrote:

To clarify, a doctor diagnosed the issue and then recommended several different shoe manufacturers. We then went to the shoe store so that a person could figure out which of those would fit her best -- and, again, they did an excellent job of it.

I agree with you that, lots of times, no salesperson is needed. For 95% of the people buying shoes, I think they'd rather just look and try some on and see how they feel. But for that other 5%, a "salesperson" that is an expert in what is offered can really come in very handy.

I think that applies to all kinds of things. You mentioned car shopping. I think the newer "no sales person" approach to car shopping is great and I prefer it. But I think there are still situations for that 5% where a salesperson makes a lot of sense. When you don't necessarily have a specific vehicle in mind. It's nice to walk into a place and go "Ok, I need to carry 7 passengers and be able a tow a trailer that weighs X pounds" and have someone knowledgeable enough to go "Ok, well, here are your options."

Again, I'm in the 95% when it comes to my shoes and my cars. I generally know what I want and don't need a middle-man. But I see why they make sense for that 5% too.

I remember playing Madden and players would leave with plantar fasciitis. I looked it up and was like "A sore foot? Suck it up!" Then I got it. Hooooly crap it hurt.

Tony wrote:

I completely agree with you...but you still need salespeople, but the 'bad' ones just like you described: no, you don't need them. And as a salesperson who also have a tech side that gets blindsided by stupid sales people: I'm very sorry. I deeply respect my smart people and I feel that it's horrible for the team to do that to them. When that crap happens: the salesperson's manager need to be involved if a simple conversation with them doesn't fix it. That is unfair to you and the customer...all so the salesperson doesn't have to do their job. This is a perfect example of that 80s/90s crap I was talking about.

bill wrote:

Nashua has a place called "Alec's Shoes" that is an institution. I don't see how other chain shoe stores are still open, as the whole city seems to be unified in supporting Alec's. It used to be right downtown but recently moved into a newly built building that is huge.

It's filled with tons of friendly people who do everything but measure your feet, although they do hand you a foot measure thing and guide you through the process. I think they aren't allowed to touch feet.

My wife purchases all her footwear there. I only don't because they don't carry the shoe maker I like to wear, but it seems like everyone in Nashua gets their footwear from Alec's.

It has a downtown, old-town vibe. It's really nice.

Sounds like a cool store.

Maybe part of what happened is that touching feet became not OK and thus the shoe salesmen of legend faded into history.

bill wrote:

Perhaps taking precaution nowadays. I wonder if foot fetish people were getting to handy with customers.

Account Managers are like sales people to me... Good ones are fine, but the bad ones get on my nerves... they're supposed to communicate things or they make a sale by promising some stupid crap that makes things ridiculously harder on us to do things.... it could also be someone else that's not the account manager doing that, but it's the impression I get.

"WHY AREN"T WE GETTING THIS?!?!" "Because it does not follow the proper legal guidelines to allow us to sell it to you." "WELL WE WEREN"T TOLD THAT!!!" "I'm sorry, but I'm telling you now, so you know. Please follow the directions I've given you and re-submit as soon as possible. Thank you and good day."

Something along those lines of thought...

HybridCRoW wrote:

Account Manager are salespeople.

The problem with your example (being true, I may add) is that there is no penalty for what they when they set up the customer and the support team up to fail.

In sales, when you find out about something that is questionable: you go to your support team and ASK. But there is too much of the "oh, the smart guys will figure it out" kind of mentality while salepeople are strutting around because of their numbers. It's a two way street. Number are king but so is doing right by the customer AND your team. I could go on and on about it.

You need a sales engineer to level set the solution with the customer.

*sees Death move a thing in the abacus*

Could you hurry it up? I'm not dying fast enough over here

What if Musk and Zuckerberg fight and one of them actually kills the other.

lol idk about that, but I really want to see them fight.

loztdogs wrote:
You need salespeople who are not simply in it just for themselves. I had salespeople tell me they pushed a more expensive product on a customer simply because they made more money. More than once, I ran studies that showed our product had no effect in a customer's process. The salesman told me to leave the Control that shows what happens without our product in the process out of my report so they could sell it to them anyway. For being truthful and not fudging results, I got labeled "negative" and "uncooperative". A salesperson convinced the Executive Committee that our department would be "more responsive to Sales needs" if he were in charge. He was made a VP, demoted me and replaced me with someone willing to lie for him, and eventually fired me.

The company actually had some lower level sales people quit because the Sales VPs kept changing the way they paid commission to benefit themselves more.

@Tony i don’t disagree but where are you going to find sales people that arent in it for themselves? Their lively hood is based on quotas and commissions. In the situation you described, I would have put your findings in writing/email. Those scenarios have a tendency to surface quickly and ELT typically starts asking for some form of reimbursement of lost revenue or the like. That’s when you get to bust out the report and say “I told you so” and avoid the repercussions that generally follow. At least in my experience.

In your situation that dude sounds like a dick and was gunning for you.

nonamesleft wrote:
Tastes different than uncooked

lightslime wrote:
Interesting. In what way? I didn't know that cooking it changed the taste.

loztdogs wrote:
Upper management needs to take steps to protect the integrity of the company and either keep the more dishonest salespeople reigned in or remove them. In this case, however, Sales had the support of some in upper management. I can't say much more. In order to get my severance, I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn't disparage the company. It is unlikely anything could come of what I say here, but even after all this time I could possibly be sued if I say anything that might cost the company any business. You never know who might work for who, so, as a precaution, I refuse to even say who I used to work for.

I hope salad bars make a comeback.

Tony...all you stuff about sales people: it's all accurate and is WELL into being the rule, not the exception. Management loves those sales too so they can't going to really go after the salesperson. I 100% agree with you. I'm in sales and I'm definitely in it for myself...but I believe 100% in teamwork and nurturing your customer base rather than exploit it. I'm in the GREAT minority on this one.

Here is the freaking thing they don't understand: if you treat the customer RIGHT and sell them like you are a trusted adviser rather than a POS sales guy: they are going to trust you and like you. FROM THEN ON, loyalty allows you to cover MORE ground and keep a fair commission.

I want to treat a customer so well and help them that I can stop by, unannounced, and see them and get them to sign a new agreement. What the shady salespeople don't get is when you don't establish a trusting relationship: you gotta fight tooth and nail and then not make a fair amount. You gotta give it away to keep the business because they don't like/trust you.

Their way is easy and pays off immediately, but make the job HARD down the road.

My way is HARD and doesn't pay off right away, but after about 5 years: you are coasting and THEN you can use that time to find new business AND (more importantly) provide even better service to your customers to cement the fact that you are their best option.

I ate yogurt today with chopsticks. There weren't any spoons or forks where I was.

I didn't chopstick the yogurt. That's quite impossible, unless you've got super ultra thick yogurt. It was a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks. Instead of breaking them apart, I kept them together and used them as a surface to pick up yogurt. Took awhile, but it worked.

Someone tried to burn the place down with the microwave this morning before I came in to work. At least the coffee was fine. I didn't get a good look at the item in question other than it looked like somebody burnt something heart shaped on a paper plate...

nonamesleft wrote:

There is a way that if the lid is tinfoil in nature, you can fold it up and use it as a spoon for yogurt..

shadyfozzie wrote:
That works. I've done that before with certain foods. But this was a big container of yogurt that I had poured some into a cup from. No foil lid.

I keep hearing about carnivore diet on twitter. Not only the body absorbs less than 2 percent of the vitamins/minerals in vegetables, but they supposedly are loaded with defense chemicals which poison you. Ppl are saying you should only eat steak and eggs.

By the way, I once saw a yt video long ago by SwitchUp or NintendoLife or a similar channel, where they looked at eshop titles. I think it may have been a top 10 games on sale list, or something to that effect. There was a top down slashing game, looked completely rubbish, but the presenter said he used it as a "_ game" which is to say he plays it when he first turns on the Switch, while deciding what to play for real. I was trying to remember what the term was. I wonder if anyone knows. I wonder if it's a real term, or something he made up. (if it's the latter then I am screwed, lol)

For that matter I can't even remember the game. I thought for sure it was Katana Zero but that's something else. But I remember it having a neon cyberpunky vibe, female avatar possibly, and almost definitely a roguelite.

egg wrote:

You should definitely get all your dietary advice from Twitter. Also, any other life advice too.

nonamesleft wrote:

My mother, bless her soul, would NEVER let us get food outside of meal times. So when I was between 8-10...the only way I could get food to eat was to grab it and run outside before my Mom hearing the refrigerator door closing could question it.

I ate a LOT of yogurt with a stick I found outside....thanks for that memory back...haha

rayzor6 wrote:
Love the visuals of that. Running outside before the noise of the refrigerator door. Eating yogurt with a random stick found outside. Ha! Made me smile.

nonamesleft wrote:


Same.

Was fishing with the kids when I heard what I can best describe as a hollow thwack immediately after casting. As I peered up a swallow was spiraling towards the water. I killed a sparrow with my lure. For a brief moment I felt like a (more) redneck Randy Johnson.

That's freaking awesome KC

rayzor6 wrote:


For the record I did try to fish it out of the water in an attempt to save it but to no avail. Such a freak occurance.

rayzor6 wrote:

You’re a monster!

Is it possible for a perfect sphere to be sharp? Not if it's tiny though. That's just a metal pellet. I mean a large sphere. Not possible, right?

Apparently tomato juice tastes very good at high altitudes? Hmmm. Interesting.

Anyone here tried tomato juice on a plane?

I love tomato juice with ice when I fly.

So, the question is then: what do you think of it at ground level? Same?

Sid_Ceaser wrote:
You've tried it then in the air. Perfect. So I can ask someone who's actually tried it. Does it really taste better at high altitudes?

i dont see why it would taste better, never heard that. Is it just tomato juice, for some reason lol

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:
I think it has something to do with the senses being affected by the air pressure. The tomato juice actually tastes different (supposedly).

We need @Sid_Ceaser to tell us more.

One of the worst things about living here during the summer is the fact that I can't just open the faucet to wash my hands because the water comes out at near boiling temperatures.

John wrote:

I love it with ice at ground level as well.

To me, it tastes slightly different I think because of how your ears pop. Whatever that stuff is that builds up in your head slightly has an effect on taste maybe?

I dunno.

The subtle fear of death we all feel while flying gives the tomato juice a certain zing.

bill wrote:
😅

Then I guess Superman doesn't appreciate tomato juice?

Foxhack wrote:

Really? Where is home? That's insane.

MrBean wrote:

I lived in Southern California growing up and during the summer it would often come out hot initially, but if you let it run for 30 seconds or so it would get to the cool water.

MrBean wrote:

Everyone should know this already but Mexicali, in BC MX. :p Technically Calexico would also have the issue but I bet their water pipes have better protection against the heat.

benstylus wrote:

Try five minutes. :) :) :) Once the sun is high enough, it gets really, really bad. I remember when I used to be white, hahahahhaa aaaaaaaaaagh I smell like bacon all the time.

Yeah I figured the further south you go the longer it stays hot

Just looked up Phoenix Arizona weather. High of 117 degrees today.

It's 101 degrees there and it's not even mid morning.

One of our salesmen had to go to the Middle East (I can't recall which specific country) where the law was that if the temperature reached 120°F, no one could be made to work outdoors. One of his contacts told him that the signs on banks and such that posted the temperature were rigged to never show temperatures that high because everyone working outdoors (road crews, etc.) would stop working.

Tony wrote:
That's terrible.

it was consistently over 100 for the last month in tucson it was still 108 when I checked at like 6pm yesterday, water comes out boiling hot here too lol. Seems like monsoon seasons are starting and it's cooling down next week tho. We get seasonal depression in the summer here

lightslime wrote:
I've heard of seasonal depression from cold weather, but haven't heard of that from hot weather. Though I don't see why not, if it's consistently above 100. That sounds like it can get tiring.

Come to Cleveland Ohio... Where everyone is seasonally depressed, all year!

nonamesleft wrote:

You kidding? I feel like killing myself all the time!

No, really, someone help me.

MrBean wrote:
What's the weather there like? Does it fluctuate constantly?

Foxhack wrote:
Which would you rather? (Non rhetorical question)

In the 80s-90s all the time, or really cold and windy all the time?

nonamesleft wrote:

We switch from heat to a/c multiple times in the same day. "summer" is now typically about 5 weeks long. Gray is the typical color of the sky. Humidity and bitter cold are super fun.

Minus occasional small tornadoes, thankfully we don't deal with many natural disasters. Just construction every day of the year and traffic jams because everyone forgets how to drive, daily.

nonamesleft wrote:

80s is my perfect weather. Am mostly comfortable up to 95 (I am a desert ra--- fox.)

I need a sweater at 70 and below. :p

As I understand it, seasonal depression is due to the amount of sunlight - not the temperature. I used to hate going to work in the dark, working all day in an office and lab without windows, and going home in the dark. But yes, being too cold to do much outside probably didn't help.

I live in the midwest, but several years ago I went to a 4 day professional society meeting in May, in Phoenix, AZ. The local representative opened the meeting by saying the afternoon high temperature was supposed to be 103°F all week, He recommended that everyone ditch the suits and ties. I guess it is because it was a "dry heat", but it didn't feel nearly as oppressive as my humid area at 10 to 20° lower temperatures.

About 30 years ago I read that there had been a German study of room temperatures. The study concluded that 76° was the optimum temperature for office workers. At that temperature, transcribers stayed at their work stations longer and made fewer mistakes. My manager used to keep our office area below 70°. Some mornings I would come in and find the thermostat set as low as it could go. The secretary kept a space heater at her feet all year round. I would have to get up and walk around often to keep my blood circulating.

Foxhack wrote:
Oh, ha. Then my question wasn't even a challenge. So how about this: 100 degrees all year, or 15 all year?

MrBean wrote:
Wow. Do you find that all that noticeably affects people's moods?