forum.thinkpads.com favourite quotes

[automobus]

How about a collection of our community's favourite moments, funny or sad or words of wisdom.

Here are three of my favourite funnies. Stadsport is so funny, eir story made me cry.

Thank you for your input. While I agree with you that installing new parts into an outdated laptop is totally absurd (which is why there's clearly no market for inexpensive memory or hard drive upgrades for laptops), my normal schedule of annually burning laptops to replace them with new units (for the new features) was cut short by EPA agents telling me something about "harming the environment," but don't worry, I plan on breaking the laptop into several small fragments and feeding them to my dog, instead, by the end of the year. This way, rather than spend ~$80 on an upgrade, I can continue my usual practice of buying a new $1000+ computer every year.

In the time being, I appreciate your condescending financial advice and while the $85 pricetag (for all necessary parts to retrofit the webcam) is enticing, I definitely agree with you that spending $600 on an iPad is certainly a more cost-effective solution, and carrying around two large slate-shaped objects is by far more convenient than having an integrated webcam. This would carry the added benefit of being able to tell people who want to Skype with me "Oh, you use Skype? I use an iPad. You don't have an Apple product with facetime? I guess we don't need to talk, then."

Also, while I was looking for something that would take pictures and let me video chat using Skype, I think your recommendation of an SSD is a good alternative, though I'm not sure it will take the same quality of pictures as a webcam. While we're on the topic of cost-effective solutions, I was thinking about getting some Silly Putty and when someone requests a Skype conversation, I would simply mail it to them and ask that they press it to their face, then mail it back. I was also thinking about buying and training a bird to fly the silly putty parcels to my friends, and for cost-effectiveness I could probably buy a parrot. The parrot would "record" my conversations mentally and repeat them to the person with whom I am conversing. It's my understanding that African Greys have the most advanced speech center of all tropical birds, and for only ~$2000 I can pick one up. And being that birds fly, this would be far more portable than an integrated webcam. The cost of my topical bird parcel system would be offset by the money I will save when I uncheck the option for an integrated microphone when I purchase a new laptop next month.
However, I feel this route might be a too decadent and therefore unnecessary and I would probably be better off allocating funds into financing a replica of Darth Vader's holographic telepresence device. If I'm having a conversation with subordinates who don't successfully capture rebel princesses, I could strangle them with my mind.

When I was younger, I used to be an avid Pokemon fan, like many from my generation. A few years into it, a new craze called Digimon entered the market as a virtual competitor to Pokemon. Despite spending hundreds of my parents' dollars on Pokemon merchandise, when Digimon came out, my brother immediately jumped ship because he felt they were way cooler than Pokemon. When I explained to him that Digimon had no special abilities over Pokemon and that, in any given situation, there was a Pokemon out there whose skills could satisfy your requirements, he exclaimed "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!" and kicked over my Lego town (which I had affectionately and creatively dubbed "Poke Town", for which I had also made a label using the Pokemon logo's font). While my father's assertion that my brother should "stop being a little *****Expletives removed by Moderator*****" was a compelling one, this experience taught me a lot about having different needs or wants from other people, so now when people come into my burger restaurant and ask that I make them a sandwich without pickles or tomatoes, I sit them down and condescendingly explain to them that it would be much more cost-effective to just buy their own burger franchise to make topping-free burgers, and to simply FedEx tomatoes and pickles in on the rare occasion when someone decides to "rice out" their burger.

To answer your question, I suppose you would consider my car a rice rocket. It's a 1990 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo/5spd. I've spent quite a bit of energy doing blingy, ricey mods like regular scheduled maintenance and repairs. However, I once installed OEM power seats (removed from a Z which came with them from the factory) in my car, and it came with manual seats, so I guess I've done some more extreme bling mods. Although, due to the fact that older things obviously cannot be useful in a modern world, I'm probably going to break my car into several small fragments and feed them to my dog so I can replace it with a newer model.

I'm leaning towards either the Silly Putty Parrot or the Empire Hologram for the time being, but if anyone has any relevant technical input regarding the topic of installing an oem webcam into my T61, I suppose I could still consider the idea.

If I were a small bit of red rubber, I'd be pretty anxious about now.

Right now, it seems the last bastion of TP design, beyond the color black, is that little drop of red. I think it needs a pat on the back...or the head.

Manual typewriters, IBM selectrics, and a generation of PC's and a decade of notebooks enabled touch-typing without palmrests.

But for the OP, worry not.

The Thinkpad design team (heaven help us if its "engineering") is working overtime to make the non-optional palmrest and touchpad tall enough to land a C919 on, while trying to figure a way to shrink the keyboard beyond its remaining six chiclety rows. Just look at what they did to the Edge Twist.

edit add : When the bump button stops working, a seller might decide to tack a reply to our sale ads. These are some of the best manual bumps I have seen.

o/` ...just sit right back an you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful bump... o/`
o/` ...here's the story, of a man named bump... o/`
o/`...Green Acres is the place to bump... o/`

[BillMorrow]

there was a time when i was pretty funny or had a dry wit or something in between..
so reading the first (and longest) commentary about cameras and silly putty (WHO in these days speaks of silly putty anymore?) and birds with a focus on parrots i could not resist the urge to remark on the whole bird angle..

tropical birds can and do often in my experience parrot what they hear (thus the term "parrot" which means to repeat what has been heard) and i am reminded of a current radio (radio, remember radio!) and TV commercial by some web page maker named WIX.com..

and here is that TV spot, which, having 9 of these creatures sharing my nest space, i can attest to be accurate:
SO, enjoy experiencing a small sample of life with tropical birds, none of which are African Gray parrots..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LvJh16FjC0

[Temetka]

Bill,

That ad is hilarious. Thanks for sharing it.

Wish I had something more to contribute to the thread than that comment, but I never really though about saving people's comments to a quotes file for future reference. The entire Thinkpads.com community can now sleep more comfortably at night knowing that I am on the job and such a heinous oversight has been duly corrected.

Carry on.

[ajkula66]

My favourite post/quote - bar none - from the long-gone-missing-and-sorely-missed brainpicker:

Maybe this is out of place but I had to rant.

For some reason I decided to read all of this thread and many others, and it seems to be the same sad story played over and over and over whether buying or selling any item these days. There are people who are smart, and people who think they are smart. I'm not making judgement on specific forum members, but think about this when buying or selling, reading posts, or posting yourself. I am in support of the seller here as I have had fair trading with him and when I read his sales threads his pricing always seems fair to me, someone who trades a LOT.

Smart people know that value is in the eye of the beholder, as many factors determine a fair price. People who think they are smart only look at the price vs. what others have paid for what they believe to be a similar item.

People who are smart know that the quality of the seller is often one of the most important aspects of the purchase and thus adds value, whereas people who think they are smart discount this heavily. Whether you are a buyer or a seller a smooth transaction has enormous value that only smart people realize.

People who are smart know that a delivered price is a true price. People who think they are smart are busy telling fair sellers how the item price is too high compared with deceptive sellers (and their outrageous delivery charges).

People who are smart know that 500-watts doesn't make an amplifier better, a speaker is not just a speaker, RAM is not all the same, etc. People who think they are smart think most everything is a commodity these days. Quality parts, quality build, reputation and track record mean little to nothing to these people.

People who are smart treat rebates like playing the lottery (if you really DO receive it in a reasonible time with little effort then yippee!). People who think they are smart treat rebates like they are an important part of their long-term retirement saving plan!

People who are smart see a fair deal quickly and spend their time USING the item purchased. They know time is money. People who think they are smart have no comprehension of this. They will search and search, hour after hour, to find something, anything, "cheaper". They have to brag about getting a better deal! It's their thing and their way. They don't realize that if they value their free time at only $10 an hour spending an extra 10-hours looking for that "deal" costs them $100 plus time they could have had using the item (assuming they find it in only 10-hours). I can't value another's free time, but I can say that most people undervalue their own!

People who are smart know that there are "blips" in any market, sales that go off at prices much higher or lower than others in the whole of the market, and while they pay attention to these blips they give them proper weight when determining value. People who think they are smart live by these blips and feel if they don't buy (or sell) at these prices they feel they are truly being cheated. These people will wait so long to be able to get the same "deal" that someone else bragged about receiving (whether true or not) that they may never buy (or sell). They are paralyzed by constantly comparing market price to these unusual sales and can't act. If they can't get that price or better then *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** it they are not going to buy (or sell)!

People who are smart all but ignore the advertised price for an item that is not in stock (or is seldom so), and they ignore retailers who regularly live by the practice of claiming the "best price" by selling a couple of items before stock mysteriously dries up (but the advertised price stays). People who think they are smart will always use these artificial prices to tell legit sellers how high their prices are. People who think they are smart all but worship sellers who offer low prices with little or no stock, while complaining how legit retailers are cheating their customers.

People who are smart know that ANY difference in the sale of two seemingly similar items can be important, to them or someone else. A minor issue to one buyer can be a big issue to another, therefore no two sales are really the same unless all details match. They are good people to buy from or sell to. People who think they are smart also know that differences have value, but they drastically overvalue differences when they sell and heavily undervalue them when they buy. Their items are priceless (and seemingly never depreciate!), while other seller's items are highly inferior. And while they want all the extras and goodies top line items include, they never want to pay for them so they will do their best to tell a seller how little value they add. These people are like ticks and whether you buy from them or sell to them you will be lucky to end the transaction without an issue (blackmail and fraud are serious issues that are far more common in transaction with these people in my experience). It's truly buyer (or seller) beware, and my level of desperation (and medication!) determines if I pick one of these folks as a trading partner.

http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=46248

Come back John, we could still use your wit and wisdom around here...

[Norway Pad]

Ok, Stadsport's post above qualifies as the some of the funniest I have read in a long time.. I would like to see his dog eat the small fragments that used to be his T61 and 300ZX.

[dsvochak]

Come back John, we could still use your wit and wisdom around here...

I second that, and he's not the only one.

[GomJabbar]

hey guys... so i vacuum the hell out of my keyboard and 3 keys got sucked in.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12824

[pianowizard]

I found this joke by killer hilarious:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71489

[killer]

@pianowizard: Thanks for that. I have to say that RBS posts most of the really funny stuff on this site. Most of what I find funny seems to confuse a lot of people.
Each to their own.

[automobus]

I tried my hardest to be funny when I had to convince someone not to buy an 15.6-inch 1366×768-pixel squatscreen.

I will commit this phrase to memory:

Change for the sake of change warrants complaining for the sake of complaining.

About new 'slim tip' rectangular power connector, by zsero.

They had to invent something rectangular after the new circular keys.

Amusing expectation of durability, by dr_st.

You know that old Arcade/DOS game - WWF Wrestlemania, and there The Undertaker has this move: Forward - Forward - Power Kick to smash opponent's head with a tombstone? And if you continue tapping Kick real quick, you can score a total of 4 tombstone hits?

Well, this is what I do with my Thinkpads regularly to random folks at work. If it doesn't survive that without a scratch, it's not a Thinkpad.

New ThinkPad smell, by Laptoplucknow.

The 600 series "smells" because that particular model of Thinkpad was built to a specification so exact. Once they get 15-20 years old some of the new pad smell tends to leak out.

'Re: Thinkpadders Rejoice (*LARGE PICS*)' has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. Only one or two posts per page are worth reading.

Nigellus wrote:
>When … stopped clock, I have to wait until one of the two times of day when the clock is right in order to get my needs met.

The problem with the companies that have decided to follow the stopped clock is that their clocks are moving, but never on time and hence never right...not even twice a day...

"Big Moves from #Lenovo: We #hire actual #labor to do #nothing but #generate posts like #this and call #them #Social #Media #Experts"

When a fleaBay seller gave foul tongue to RealBlackStuff. Serious advice to all ThinkPadders: before buying anything through eBay related to ThinkPad, search in this forum for seller's eBay user ID.

Another one for on my RealBlackList.

For when one wants to clean dust from laptops, but does not want to use canned air, ArtShapiro has a suggestion.

I'd just like to relate to everyone the solution I found for getting dust out of long-unopened computers. We Don't Need No Steekin' Wimpy Can of Compressed Air! I use my electric leafblower, held far enough away such that the computer doesn't go flying. It's sobering to observe the mushroom cloud of dust that results.

Sounds like something "Tim, the Toolman, Taylor" would heartily agree with :) !