[ror!] @merlosaurusunactive - Tumblr Blog

Wow my queue ran itself out. In case anyone was wondering since I don’t tag my queue, I think I’ve been away since May or April. So if you thought I was active and wanted to talk to me, I wasn’t actually here. Sorry if that happened.

fyeahsupermanandloislane

lois lane week: day four | comics

#my main homie #deecee

yesterdaysprint

Great Falls Tribune, Montana, October 13, 1906

#history #this is some disney shit

videoflesh

the second opening animation for Sailor Moon is literally one of the most aesthetically pleasing things I’ve ever seen so here’s the creditless / textless version

#the best #sailor moon #sm #animation #video

harljordan

I do not kill with my gun. I kill with my heart. ∟ Idris Elba as Roland Deschain (’The Gunslinger’) in The Dark Tower (2017)

#I am reaaaaaaaaaaady #the dark tower

prostheticknowledge

laurenocuma-deactivated20121206

brivonnet:

What happens when a tree branch falls onto a powerline?

Answer: Dramatic Annihilation

Only 17 seconds long - stick to the end.

Submitted by: nonniebyrd

THAT IS BEAUTIFUL.

Did that shit…just explode rainbows?!

biglawbear

THIS IS AMAZING

#oh my god #science #kinda #fire #electricity #idek

myzuer

Mushroom

valoricky

Wow!

#art #illustration #fashion

drawingden

Exercise 49: Leatherworking Step by Step by CGCookie

#coool #process #tutorial #my reference #rendering

keiid-deactivated20181203

Just some tips.. ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

#my reference #anatomy #tutorial

thorffour-deactivated20190920

name something purer than this. i’ll wait

#this is such a cute idea #instagram

fyintothebadlands

Veil & Henry in the ‘Leopard Stalks in Snow’ sneak peek

#I love how she's always associated with green #into the badlands

soft-butch-cassidy

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin.

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on.

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised.

Here is every religion in the world.

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

thejovianmute

An exceedingly useful list of lists for writers.

#writing #my reference

completed-nihilism-blog

labiodentist-deactivated2015021

what. why? someone pls explain to me pls i wasnt born yet in 1999 why turn computer off before midnight? what happen if u dont?

awhdjksadaluigsjkdfasdk-deactiv

y2k lol everyone was like “the supervirus is gonna take over the world and ruin everything and end the world!!!”

jibini

This is the oldest I’ve ever felt. Right now.

the-ilyasaurus-deactivated20160

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WEREN’T BORN YET IN 1999.

faisdm

Ahh the Millenium bug.

It wasn’t a virus, it was an issue with how some old computers at the time were programmed to deal with dates. Basically some computers with older operating systems didn’t have anything in place to deal with the year reaching 99 and looping around to 00. It was believed that this inability to sync with the correct date would cause issues, and even crash entire systems the moment the date changed.

People flipped out about it, convinced that the date discrepancy between netwoked systems would bring down computers everywhere and shut down the internet and so all systems relying on computers, including plane navigation etc. would go down causing worldwide chaos. It was genuinely believed that people should all switch off computers to avoid this. One or two smart people spoke up and said “um hey, this actually will only effect a few very outdated computers and they’ll just display the wrong date, so it probably won’t be harmful” but were largely ignored because people selling books about the end of the world were talking louder.

In the end, absolutely nothing happened.

ralfmaximus

Oh gosh.

I’ve been a programmer working for various government agencies since the early 1990s and I can say with some confidence:

NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WORKED VERY HARD FIXING SHIT THAT MOST DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON 1-JAN-2000.

One example I personally worked on: vaccination databases.

My contract was with the CDC to coordinate immunization registries — you know, kids’ vaccine histories. What they got, when they got it, and (most importantly) which vaccines they were due to get next and when. These were state-wide registries, containing millions of records each.

Most of these systems were designed in the 1970s and 1980s, and stored the child’s DOB year as only two digits. This means that — had we not fixed it — just about every child in all the databases I worked on would have SUDDENLY AGED OUT OF THE PROGRAM 1-JAN-2000.

In other words: these kids would suddenly be “too old” to receive critical vaccines.

Okay, so that’s not a nuke plant exploding or airplanes dropping from the sky. In fact, nothing obvious would have occurred come Jan 1st.

BUT

Without the software advising doctors when to give vaccinations, an entire generation’s immunity to things like measles, mumps, smallpox (etc) would have been compromised. And nobody would even know there was a problem for months — possibly years — after.

You think the fun & games caused by a few anti-vaxers is bad?

Imagine whole populations going unvaccinated by accident… one case of measles and the death toll might be measured in millions.

This is one example I KNOW to be true, because I was there.

I also know that in the years leading up to 2000 there were ad-hoc discussion groups (particularly alt.risk) of amazed programmers and project managers that uncovered year-2000 traps… and fixed them.

Quietly, without fanfare.

In many cases because admitting there was a problem would have resulted in a lawsuit by angry customers. But mostly because it was our job to fix those design flaws before anyone was inconvenienced or hurt.

So, yeah… all that Y2K hysteria was for nothing, because programmers worked their asses off to make sure it was for nothing.

spytap

Bolding mine.

jaybushman

Absolutely true. My Mom worked like crazy all throughout 1998 and 1999 on dozens of systems to avoid Y2K crashes. Nothing major happened because people worked to made sure it didn’t.

Now if we could just harness that concept for some of the other major issues facing us today.

shananaomi

this meme came so far since i saw it this morning. god i love tumblr teaching tumblr about history.

forloveofreason

As a young Sys Admin during Y2K, I can confirm that it was SRS BZNS. I worked for a major pharmaceutical company at the time. They spent millions of dollars on consultant and programmer hours, not to mention their own employees’ time, to fix all their in-house software as well as replace it with new systems. Sys Admins like myself were continually deploying patches, updating firmware, and deploying new systems in the months leading up to Y2K. Once that was done, though, the programmers went home and cashed their checks.

When the FATEFUL HOUR came along, it wasn’t just one hour. For a global company with offices in dozens of countries, it was 24 hours of being alert and on-call. I imagine that other large organizations had similar setups with entire IT departments working in shifts to monitor everything. Everyone was on a hair trigger, too, so the slightest problem caused ALL HANDS ON DECK pages to go out.

Yes, we had pagers.

For hard numbers IDC’s 2006 calculation put the total US cost of remediation, before and after, at $147 billion - that’s in 1999 dollars. That paid for an army of programmers, including calling up retired grandparents from the senior center because COBOL and FORTRAN apps from the ‘60s needed fixing.

Also note that there were some problems, including $13 billion in remediation included in the figure above. Some of these involved nuclear power plants, medical equipment, and “a customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, the cost of renting the movie ‘The General’s Daughter’ for 100 years.”

Y2K was anything but nothing.