Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@HobbitGamer And then I wonder what's wrong with our medical system.......

I'm running low on coffee and it's killing me... 😫

@NEStalgia Well, luckily, I live in Western Europe. Wholesale corruption only happens in Eastern Europe by default...

But in all seriousness: that's a very gloomy outlook about your own country. From what I've understood from the news item yesterday, the station in San Francisco was completely finished, the only thing missing is the high speed connection to LA, which it was intended for. So, although the railroad tracks are missing, the building is completed, and the train is actually there as well. It's just a matter of completing the track to LA, which, compared to the money already invested, is peanuts, and the ROI that can be gained from getting people from San Francisco to LA in little over 2 hours, would make up for that last bit of investment needed, so it's really kinda stupid to not finish it, and leave a completely finished, and rather modern and luxurious looking building to probably serve as a hiding place for bums, squatters or worse.

In that case, even I wouldn't want to have such a place in my backyard...

@ThanosReXXX Oh, Western Europe has plenty of corruption. NED generally just seems to steer clear of it, somehow. France, Germany, UK (for a few more days ) , Italy, Spain...plenty of corruption to go around! Maybe they haven't reached our heights yet by having stronger local governments at smaller levels....but they strive for it daily! After all....we learned the trick from them to begin with!

But that's pretty typical. Build a station for a railroad that was never going to exist, connecting to a city for which the receiving station was never even planned. Who greenlights that? Someone paying someone's construction and/or land development company back, that's who. Buying a train set is a lot cheaper than running miles of track and the real estate and legal requirements that goes with it I do agree passenger rail would be profitable between those locations (it's profitable in the NEC, but so far that's the only profitable passenger railroad in the country, all the rest lose money.)

(Which isn't to say the railroad business isn't booming, the 4 freight companies are at the highest heights since the glory days of the PRR. They're even getting picky about what freight they take for max profitability again....they're closing the classification yards (the "humping yards") because they don't want to classify anymore. Too costly. Got less than a full train to ship? Get a truck. Rail doesn't want your tiny business. Freight is top tier. .com shopping is a big part of that. "Ground" across the US often means rail. UPS and Amazon alone could run a freight railroad. We have a massive, almost unimaginable rail infrastructure....it's just all freight, no passenger, and is privately owned by companies that (rightly) see no profit in passenger. If they thought they could charge $500 a ticket, the Broadway Express would be blasting through 5x a day once again.)

Look on the bright side. San Fran's rail station without any rails is still in better shape than the new airport upstate. The built a brand new airport...I forget which city in CA......and on opening day discovered one of the main support beams was cracked. Then closer inspection showed other beams may have been stressed or cracked. And it sounds like they're going to have to tear it down before it even opened. This is why we don't do infrastructure. Or it's why CA sucks. Pick two.

In another life, I was a depression era hobo just hopping trains, ducking yard bulls, and leaving my mark in grease paint wherever I went.

We should just use all those little trains that are in malls. The malls are closing, so they don’t need ‘em. Nothing bad could happen. Plus, it’s like recycling so it makes fresh air appear or something. Oh! And we can use the engine stages of nukes, and that’ll denuclearize things. Boomshakalaka, first world problems solved. I eat rice.

@HobbitGamer You do that. As you denuclearize the engines, ship the warheads to me. Once I've gathered enough, I'll solve all the world's problems in mere minutes!

@NEStalgia Well, by now, I've certainly had my fill of train talk. This is my stop, so I'm hopping off.
See you all in a more interesting topic.

P.S.

Which will also be one that will not concern any lame topics such as politics, corruption, how bad the state of the world is, and so on, and so on...

EYE SEA WATT YA DID THAR!

@NEStalgia ...I mean, I didn't say anything about actually removing the payload.

@ThanosReXXX
So....
Can we talk about My Little Pony here ? 🤣🤣

Or something like "boneless banana" ? 🤣🤣

@HobbitGamer Yup, I was free riding... Had to get off in time, before the conductor arrived and caught me without a ticket to nowhere-ville...

@Anti-Matter Nope. Only about games for real men. You know, games with jiggly boobs, lots of violence, guns, blood, chainsaws, fatalities and explosions...

Oh, and cars. Hyper-realistic cars too.

F*** My Little Pony. I'll cut 'em up and barbecue them. Probably won't even taste good...

@Anti-Matter We can talk about My Little Pony, but not Your Little Pony.
I keep mine locked in the shed on the backside of my property. It sounds harsh at first, but that's because you don't know it. At first, Pony was cool; we'd walk around town like normal, people would talk with it. Then one day Pony realized it liked hearing everyone's voice so much that it would mimic them and talk to itself. And of course, Pony copied the TV programs, too. So I had to start keeping Pony locked up away from people, because you can only hear "They're coming to get you, Barbara" so many times at 3 AM.

And that is My Little Pony. Well....was My Little Pony. It's dead now. But it's still locked up, so I can understand the initial confusion.

@HobbitGamer You should have barbecued it. Meat's probably gone bad by now...

@ThanosReXXX Well, the issue with that is I've been waitin' on Father Mahoney to come down and get rid of some demons that were hangin' 'bout. But he hasn't made it yet.

@HobbitGamer Demons around a My Little Pony? Must surely have been distorted rainbows,
or perhaps it was the unicorn that fooled you into seeing something vaguely demonic...

@ThanosReXXX Look, I'm not saying I'm wrong. I'm just not discounting the possibility it could have been pledges from a college in a pony costume, that I caught trespassing. But that could be an illusion, too. All I know for sure is the bright lights around the barn were the brightest thing ever. So bright that you'd forget I don't even have a barn.

@HobbitGamer Ah, the classic musings of a high school kidnapper....

@ThanosReXXX "One, Two, Hobbit's coming for you"
All the auditing has ruined my brain

@HobbitGamer - You’re stuck in an unending loop of horror movie quotes! The auditing has wrecked your braaaaainnssss. Be careful around those rainbows. There’s a scary little fella who wants his gold back.

@HobbitGamer Well, from what I've read so far, with you having the co-workers you have, I can completely understand you at the very least wanting to deck one or two of them every once in a while...

I could certainly relate to that. Ever tried to run a sales team?