You dog, you !

is this real? / i thought pro wrestling was fake? wrestling is 'fake' in that the fights are choreographed and the winner is predetermined, but the physicality is very real. there's no way to 'fake' getting whipped with a metal chain so hard it leaves welts.

why ARE they chained? this is a specialty fight called a 'dog collar match' where both participants are, you guessed it, fitted with dog collars which are then chained together.

is this legal? / how can this be allowed? why wouldn't it be? they're both consenting adults who planned and agreed to it.

but they could be seriously hurt! they know, and they accept the risk. pro wrestlers are well aware of the injuries possible in their line of work, and they do it anyway because they're crazy people.

IS there aftercare? of a sort, yeah - there's a medical team on hand to patch everyone up, and lots of coworkers backstage to give them a 'job well done!'

why are they wearing thigh highs? they're kneepads/shin guards for protection. looking like sexy thigh highs is just a bonus side effect!

ok, but why's that guy in a shiny speedo? personal preference. wrestlers can design their own outfits and some prefer full coverage long tights, while others wear less to show off the gams.

is that cm punk? yup! he unretired last year.

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.

"What did that error message say?" I ask.

"What error message?" asks Client.

I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.

I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.

I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.

---

Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.

She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)

She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.

So, she asked, did they ever do that?

No! Of course not, was the answer.

So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.

The next week

She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"

She said, of course, can they tell her the error?

And the message was:

Two of Swords and Nine of Pentacles

Western Lesser Siren (Siren intermedia nettingi), family Sirenidae, found int he South-central U.S.

This eel-like aquatic salamander retains its gills.

They have only 2 tiny front limbs.

They grow to a length of up to 69 cm (27 in).

HEAR ME, GUNDARR OF THE ACCOUNTING CLAN.