You don't always get what you want.

[BLACK BART]

Didn't somebody write a song with that title?  Well anyway, today I received the NCR deposit slips that the bank ordered for me.  Only thing, they are not NCR.  They're just blank singles.  I'll live, but still...  Last month I ordered blank singles for the personal account and got NCR which I had not ordered.  But, I liked them so well I decided to order the company deposit slips in NCR too and, of course, I got the opposite.  Now, it's back to carbon paper (for youths who don't know what that is; never mind -- it would take too long to explain).

Sort of reminds me of a Seinfeld episode (also not for youths because, as a spring chicken client recently told me"...that happened way back in the nineties").  But anyhoo you may remember the one in which George, frustrated when he followed his own judgment and everything went haywire; cleverly decided to simply figure out what he thought best, then simply do the opposite, and things would work out every time.

Next time I'm ordering blank singles.

[Abby Normal]

Do they really still make NCR paper. That stuff will get you high... or so I've heard.

[JohnH]

I got a very bad sore throat one time from NCR paper.  I was preparing for an audit and was licking my thumb while flipping through stacks & stacks of invoice copies printed on NCR paper.  I learned never to do that again.

[ILLMAS]

LOL had to look up NCR paper.

[Abby Normal]

29 minutes ago, ILLMAS said:

LOL had to look up NCR paper.

Look! Young person! One day, all this forum will be yours.

[BLACK BART]

5 hours ago, Abby Normal said:

Do they really still make NCR paper...

2 hours ago, ILLMAS said:

LOL had to look up NCR paper.

 

Is there anyone, anywhere left out there who is not on the cutting edge of technological change? Yeah, yeah, I know - I've still got carbon paper (never mind NCR) and all the cool crew either fly jets or teleport themselves to work. Well anyway, if you are on that edge, then answer me this one:  Let XCO3 be a normal quartic surface with divisor class group Cl(X)≅Z[H] generated by the hyperplane section.

What can we say about the singularities of X ?

 

 

[FDNY]

FYI,

From the Rolling Stones,

you can't always get what you want lyrics - Google Search.url

As for the Seinfeld episode with George doing the opposite to get what he wants, isn't that the same as a contrarian investing strategy, only works half the time, but then again every other strategy only works half the time.

Now I've got to look up NCR. 

[ILLMAS]

1 hour ago, BLACK BART said:

Is there anyone, anywhere left out there who is not on the cutting edge of technological change? Yeah, yeah, I know - I've still got carbon paper (never mind NCR) and all the cool crew either fly jets or teleport themselves to work. Well anyway, if you are on that edge, then answer me this one:  Let XCO3 be a normal quartic surface with divisor class group Cl(X)≅Z[H] generated by the hyperplane section.

What can we say about the singularities of X ?

 

 

I asked Siri your question and she had nothing good to say.

 

[FDNY]

1 hour ago, BLACK BART said:

Is there anyone, anywhere left out there who is not on the cutting edge of technological change? Yeah, yeah, I know - I've still got carbon paper (never mind NCR) and all the cool crew either fly jets or teleport themselves to work. Well anyway, if you are on that edge, then answer me this one:  Let XCO3 be a normal quartic surface with divisor class group Cl(X)≅Z[H] generated by the hyperplane section.

What can we say about the singularities of X

 

 

Hmmm...this appears to be an algebraic geometrical question for Rita.

[jasdlm]

Carbonless copy paper (CCP), non-carbon copy paper, or NCR paper (No Carbon Required, taken from the initials of its creator, National Cash Register) is a type of coated paper designed to transfer information written on the front onto sheets beneath. It was developed by chemists Lowell Schleicher and Barry Green,^[1] as an alternative to carbon paper and is sometimes misidentified as such.

Instead of inserting a special sheet in between the original and the intended copy, carbonless copy paper has micro-encapsulated dye or ink on the back side of the top sheet, and a clay coating on the front side of the bottom sheet. When pressure is applied (from writing or impact printing), the dye capsules rupture and react with the clay to form a permanent mark duplicating the markings made to the top sheet. Intermediary sheets, with clay on the front and dye capsules on the back, can be used to create multiple copies; this may be referred to as multipart stationery.

 

Who Knew?  I had to look it up.  Is this what is in checkbooks when they create carbons?

[Abby Normal]

40 minutes ago, jasdlm said:

Who Knew?  I had to look it up.  Is this what is in checkbooks when they create carbons?

Probably. What's a checkbook? Oh, wait I remember those!

[Catherine]

4 hours ago, BLACK BART said:

What can we say about the singularities of X ?

That at the Planck limit of 10^-35cm, X loses all locality and is everywhere at once.

[JohnH]

But time was invented to keep everything from happening all at once, so everything can be where it is at any given moment. 

[FDNY]

1 hour ago, JohnH said:

But time was invented to keep everything from happening all at once, so everything can be where it is at any given moment. 

Wow....this is deep thought.  The philosophical aspect of this thread is invaluable.  And I thought taxes could be complex.

[Catherine]

11 hours ago, JohnH said:

But time was invented to keep everything from happening all at once, so everything can be where it is at any given moment. 

True - but the "where it is" disappears at the Planck limit.  Just as there is a lower limit to time, as well.  The Planck limit to time is 10^-43 seconds.  Tiny, but not infinitely so.  Some think this lower limit is what was meant by "the twinkling of an eye" in 1 Cor 15:52, because - as it "just happens" to turn out - that is about the amount of time it takes light to transit through the human cornea.  

[JohnH]

Just goes to prove there is no such thing as "the present" in our perception.  The moment we perceive, it is already the past.  So there's no such thing as living in the moment.  In this mortal life we are always anticipating the future and remembering/reacting to the past. 

[BLACK BART]

Okay, okay, you wise guys; I'm throwin' in the towel. It appears the neighborhood hereabouts is swamped with physicists and philosophers.  We have the same situation here in Hicksville - the woods are full of 'em.  But on the down side, in order to pass a burgwide ordinance it takes five tavern louts and a jug of whiskey to raise a quorum.  

I don't know whether it's worse to be stuck in the seventies or in this lightweight century.

P.S. to Abby: RE: "Probably. What's a checkbook? Oh, wait I remember those!"  I'll bet you're old enough to remember what one was when you wanted to get a paycheck  out of it and weren't so dismissive back then. 

  

[Abby Normal]

10 hours ago, BLACK BART said:

P.S. to Abby: RE: "Probably. What's a checkbook? Oh, wait I remember those!"  I'll bet you're old enough to remember what one was when you wanted to get a paycheck  out of it and weren't so dismissive back then. 

  

Yeah, but I'm also old enough to almost forget. I stopped keeping a checkbook back in the 90s and the closest I have to it now is a QuickBooks check register. I realized that if I didn't keep a checkbook then I didn't have to reconcile it every month. Cross it off the list!

[BLACK BART]

1 hour ago, Abby Normal said:

Yeah, but I'm also old enough to almost forget. I stopped keeping a checkbook back in the 90s and the closest I have to it now is a QuickBooks check register. I realized that if I didn't keep a checkbook then I didn't have to reconcile it every month. Cross it off the list!

Wwwaaaayyyy back in the nineties, eh? My, how time flies (but not so the younger set, I suppose). Tell me, what do you do if some non-millennial accidentally stumbles in the office with (what was that thing?), oh yeah, a check?  Do you teleport it to the bank or list it on a (shudder) paper deposit slip?

[Abby Normal]

We could scan them and deposit them electronically, and we may someday, but for now, we actually do just deposit them... on an electronically created deposit slip.

[Lion EA]

I deposit via my iPhone.  Take credit cards via QB.  And, remember when picking up the dial phone (the only one in our house on the centrally located phone table that held the phone book and a chair, because you couldn't move away more than the generous six-foot cord) meant having to listen to see if someone else was already on our party line.  Or, when a double-click was how you accessed the operator from my grandmother's phone to have her connect you to the person you wanted to call.

[JRS]

4 hours ago, Abby Normal said:

We could scan them and deposit them electronically, and we may someday, but for now, we actually do just deposit them... on an electronically created deposit slip.

I have a grocery that I shop at.  They scan the check, imprinted with void and hand it back after you sign the credit/debit pad.

[BLACK BART]

Okay, but the point of the story was not about how it's cool being young enough or savvy enough to scoff at NCR (or anything older than yesterday) but rather that clerical service is just awful nowadays.

Abby: Is that (for now) electronically-created deposit an image on a computer screen or is it on a piece of paper that you physically hand to the teller?

Lion: No one can argue that phones are light years from the past.  But I'm (light years) enough older to have once heard a real, live operator immediately say "Number, please" and ten seconds later I was talking to the person I called.  Fast forward many decades and I can either select from a 10-20 item menu or stay on hold for half-an-hour (if lucky). Making a business call used to be a breeze - it was nothing.  Now it's frequently an exhausting, maddening task just getting past the robots and nitwits to anybody with enough sense to help.

Oh well; that's enough from an old curmudgeon -- like the flippant folks say; it is what is it is, so suck it up (and that's what I'll do).  I read somewhere that the first rule of business is that you have to keep up with the times.  But, I don't have to like it.

[Abby Normal]

3 hours ago, Lion EA said:

remember... having to listen to see if someone else was already on our party line.  Or, when a double-click was how you accessed the operator from my grandmother's phone to have her connect you to the person you wanted to call.

You're either older than me or you lived in the boonies, because I never had to do any of that. But I saw them do it on Green Acres and The Andy Griffith show!

[Catherine]

I never had to do any of that, either.  But I *do* remember dialing calls in my town and only needing five digits (then, in another, even smaller, town, only FOUR digits - almost the last town in the state to get touch-tone dialing).  And that was in the 80's and early 90's!  (19, not 18, just in case you were wondering)