NobodysHome's page

NobodysHome wrote:

Well, the interview went "fine", but I'm pretty sure I won't be their best candidate.

But the person who used to have the job was on the call so it was incredibly useful. I was like, "This sounds like a staggering amount of work. How many hours a week did you have to put in?" and she laughed and said, "Never more than 40, but you do have to juggle a lot of balls."

So it's mostly remote work and it's not utterly overwhelming. And the good news is that they're not going to get back to me before Thanksgiving, so other companies have a chance to poach me before then.

If I don't get poached and they make me an offer, if it's closer to $100k than $75k I'll at least consider it.

Fingers crossed, old friend. I ended up laid off (and then half a year later my spouse died of heart disease that flared up after the health insurance went baibai) but I was lucky and ended up full-time at the Post Office. Though it only makes a little more than half of what you're looking for from the sounds of things. (On the plus side? I get to meet a bunch of enthusiastic dogs on the route. And a couple that hate me but hey. They're good dogs, just protecting their homes.)

Been quite some time since I've been on here. I actually was thinking of running WotR for my online group (who currently has five players, two of which are power gamers) and read through forum posts and your write-up of your old game and... yeah. Going to talk to the group about that, as I'm not sure if they'd be as much game if I massively nerf Mythic or keep them at Tier 2 for the entire thing. (Though it's a moot point as we're only in Book 5 of Reign of Winter and only meet online every other week - and maybe get one encounter to two if we're lucky in a session. So it wouldn't be for another year at least.)

Anyway, good luck to you. :)

Wow! Good to hear from you! I'm sorry to hear about your spouse. I was actually thinking of the Post Office since I enjoy walking while carrying heavy bags, but I heard your first couple of years are spent miserable in the sorting room before you ever see daylight.

As for the layoff, my severance package included full pay through October, then the 20 weeks of pay came in November 6, so we're *just* going to start touching savings in December. I think that's when I'll start getting nervous, but we have a good 6-8 months of savings to tap into, and even after that I can start tapping the retirement funds at 4% of gross and survive on a low budget indefinitely.

Take it easy, and I hope the game goes smoothly!

I find it funny that the most trivial things in Linux are the things that delight me the most.

Today's example? You can resize a window from any edge. None of this, "Oh, no! The top and the left are sacred! Use the bottom or the right!" nonsense that I had to deal with in Windows. With a dual-monitor, multi-windowed system, being able to resize all the windows on a monitor to exactly the right shape by being able to grab any edge for the resize is so intuitive and delightful that it enrages me whenever I get back onto a Mac or Windows machine and it's, "Nope. you can't resize using that edge. It's 'special'."

The fam-fam is watching Rrr in one-hour installments over the next three weeks.

It is exactly the piece of cheesy, over-the-top Bollywood action nonsense I was hoping it would be.

I luurv it.

Well, the interview went "fine", but I'm pretty sure I won't be their best candidate.

But the person who used to have the job was on the call so it was incredibly useful. I was like, "This sounds like a staggering amount of work. How many hours a week did you have to put in?" and she laughed and said, "Never more than 40, but you do have to juggle a lot of balls."

So it's mostly remote work and it's not utterly overwhelming. And the good news is that they're not going to get back to me before Thanksgiving, so other companies have a chance to poach me before then.

If I don't get poached and they make me an offer, if it's closer to $100k than $75k I'll at least consider it.

Amusingly enough, the job interview I *want* to fail is turning out to be the most stressful. I have to be polite, act like I'm enthusiastic about the job, and then not be very good. Or I can always say, "No," after the fact. (Amazon came after me twice after I nailed the interview then said, "No, hearing more about the job I've decided I don't want it.")

But it's stressful to apply for a job when you first got laid off so you were applying to everything, get an interview a month and a half later, then look at the job description and thing, "What the f*** was I thinking?"

NobodysHome wrote:

Well, life has become interesting. The first interview from last Monday (the 26th) hasn't contacted me back to set up my follow-up interview yet. I expect a call/text any day/minute now to set things up. So of course my primo U.C. Berkeley job contacted me late yesterday afternoon to let me know that yes, I'd reached the interview stage, and they want me making that presentation ASAP.

I managed to put them off 'til Thursday afternoon, but I'm sitting here desperately trying to create a professional-level presentation from memory using free tools and image libraries. It's time-consuming, to put it mildly. So now I'm desperately hoping that first company DOESN'T contact me until I'm done with the presentation at second company.

Ah, well, too many interviews is WAY better than too few...

What questions did they ask you today at your interview?

I would ask you:
** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **...

They were polite enough to send me a list, and they're pretty straightforward. I need to straighten things out with them. The job description is for a $200k+/year position. The pay range is $75k-$100k. Either the job description is a lie, or there's a reason I'm a finalist while only filling half of the requirements for the position.

Well, I'm feeling better about the interview, but not for good reasons.

This was only the fifth job I applied to, *before* I had the meeting with my colleague who said, "Keep a spreadsheet of all the jobs you apply to and their job descriptions! You're going to need it!"

And literally by the time I created the spreadsheet the job had been de-listed.

So fast forward 6 weeks and 31 additional job applications and I finally hear back that I'm up for a live interview. And I'm like, "What the heck did I apply for again?"
With no listings, I looked up jobs with similar titles at UC Berkeley and they sounded really sweet, so I decided to dedicate my time to getting this job.

This morning I *finally* got an email that let me track down the job description, and it's not exactly the plum job I was thinking. Other departments: "You'll be part of this team. You can work remotely except for 10% of the time when you'll be delivering training on the UC Berkeley campus."

This job? It's basically a one-person department. You're responsible for determining what curriculum is necessary, what format it should be in, then developing it and delivering it. Plus meeting with stakeholders. Plus managing metrics. Plus managing the learning management system where all the content will be hosted. It's easily a 60-to-80 hour a week job. And it doesn't even pay $100k.

So yeah, I have to find out whether that's really the expectation, because that would sure as h*** tell me why they can't seem to fill the position.

The human brain is *SO* annoying.

The UC job I'm interviewing for is for an HR training gig. Basically what I've been doing for the last 4 years, so I'm extremely qualified. They want me to give a 15-minute presentation. Instead of choosing something really interesting or exciting, I chose to present on the architecture of Global Megacorporation's Benefits application. I can present it well, it's in line with the work I'll actually be doing, and it shows a lot of ability to liven up presentations with animation.

But of COURSE now that it's the day of I'm second-guessing myself and thinking, "I should've done something more exciting! This presentation is too boring!"

Don't have time. Shut up, stupid brain.

Someone had fixed the floor of the train I took home from fencing with duct tape.

I do not think you are supposed to fix trains with duct tape.

I don't think you're supposed to fence with it, either...

And today's Grumpy Old Man Tirade: Heirlooms

We have a small house (for 'Merikuns) with no real storage space: No attic, no basement, the garage is currently Impus Major's room, so we have nowhere to put stuff.

And yet we have staggering amounts of GothBard's family's stuff. Five boxes of china. A vanity. A table. Clothes. Pictures. Books. And I want to throw all of it away because neither GothBard nor I have any attachment to it.

But her mother keeps remembering things and asking. "Oh, do you remember that old vanity that was in your room? Do you still have it? It's an antique, you know!"

And GothBard is unwilling to lie to her mother, and knows how much it would upset her if we threw any of this old junk out, so we're stuck storing it for another 20+ years until her mother passes away. And it's like, "WHY?!?!? Why are *WE* responsible for storing other people's old crap?!?!?!?!"

I am going to make it clear to my kids that we have -NO- heirlooms, and anything they want to get rid of, they can.

Don't force your kids to store the crap that YOU care about.

Well, that's a new one...
...I just got a rejection email from a company I don't have any record of applying to.

Preemptive rejection. What a concept!

It is truly amazing to me that people have such issues with hotel reservations. I just... haven't. My worst case was once one of the third-party sites didn't put the booking through so we didn't have a room. And we managed to get that resolved quickly and without issue.

And, whatever the issue, it's always, "Be really really REALLY nice to the person at the front desk, because they're the only person who can help you."

If any politics at all are too much at the moment, the TL;DR version is: "Sometimes the Oxford comma is not optional."

It's a quote along the lines of, "Let's eat, Grandma!" vs. "Let's eat Grandma!"

So, unfortunately, this is a political quote so I have to spoiler it, but I'm primarily repeating it for the hilariously poor English skills of the author:

Well, life has become interesting. The first interview from last Monday (the 26th) hasn't contacted me back to set up my follow-up interview yet. I expect a call/text any day/minute now to set things up. So of course my primo U.C. Berkeley job contacted me late yesterday afternoon to let me know that yes, I'd reached the interview stage, and they want me making that presentation ASAP.

I managed to put them off 'til Thursday afternoon, but I'm sitting here desperately trying to create a professional-level presentation from memory using free tools and image libraries. It's time-consuming, to put it mildly. So now I'm desperately hoping that first company DOESN'T contact me until I'm done with the presentation at second company.

Ah, well, too many interviews is WAY better than too few...

Borderlands 4 for half the price?

*waits for NobodysHome to show up and say it is not worth it*

We. Quit. The. Game.

It was so bad we didn't bother finishing it.

I can't give it a worse review than that.

EDIT: I mean, honestly. If Steam/GearBox gave me an apology coupon and I could gift someone the game for free, I wouldn't because I wouldn't want the person to be disappointed in my tastes. So it's a game I wouldn't gift someone for free.

Well, that's a bit unnerving...

Because of the cost of retail space in the area, the closest Spirit Halloween Store to us is the one in Fairfield.
The kids had a gathering last night where they were assembling their Halloween costumes. It wasn't worth the drive to go all the way out there for the trivial stuff they didn't have.

Wasn't worth the drive, indeed.

Yeah, AI-generated captions are a curse, especially because existing tools do it SO much better.

I am considered a plebian, anti-AI skeptic because I dare to ask the questions:
(1) Is AI actually needed here? Does it make things measurably better?
(2) What is the return on investment for using it? Is it worth it?

And somehow that makes me anti-tech and "getting in the way of progress".

Ever see that George Carlin bit about how stupid half the people are or whatever.

Yeah, i saw that s$~& in action today and it is truly amazing how dumb and low effort some people are.

I always love, "This difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

No matter how many times it happens, it still amuses me: Native Minnesotan (or other "Northerner") coming to our place in late October/early November when we still have all the windows open because it's in the 60s outside and them asking for an extra blanket so they can be comfortable watching TV in the living room.

The evolution of a skeptic's belief system is a rather entertaining thing to experience:

(1) Impus Major tells me about Mark Rober's new video detailing a new method of car theft using an amplified antenna to transmit the key fob's signal to the car. I am skeptical. He asks me to put the key fob in a tea tin anyway. Since GothBard goes through vast amounts of tea *and* it means we can always find the fob, I agree to this trivial arrangement.

(2) I watch the video and realize that now that it's in the public domain, this type of car theft will become more common, so I'm happy about our tea tin.

(3) One of Impus Major's friends who lives a few blocks from us has his car stolen and stripped by the key fob technique. It was just as brutal as in the video: From theft to the police finding the stripped shell of the car was under 48 hours. And Albany is a hotbed of property crime; once a crime ring moves in with this kind of tactic, you're almost guaranteed to get hit. (Over the course of a few months a few years ago every Prius on our block, ours included, had its catalytic converter stolen.) I'm now a firm believer.

(4) Impus Minor's GF is visiting for a couple of weeks and they're staying at an AirBnB. He takes the Void and not the tea tin. "Impus Minor! Take the tea tin! AirBnBs are likely a prime target for this sort of crime!"

So yep. I'm a tea tin convert.

I swear, the community college part-time applications are the stuff of legend. Each community college has its own custom form, essay questions, and general questions (teaching philosophy, diversity statement), so it's a solid two hours per application.

For 10 hours per week of teaching at $120/hour tops. Which translates to roughly 40 hours a week of work, plus commuting, for $1200/week.

Suddenly that supermarket work at Costco, Trader Joe's, or Andronico's looks downright competitive...

What kind of man am I?

"Nick Cage's impersonation of John Madden is worse than you can imagine."

And now I want to see the movie...

It amuses me how pessimistic other people and media can make you.

Monday: Had my interview. It went "fine", the recruiter said I was on to the next round and I should expect my next interview later this week. I sent him a thank you note.
Tuesday morning: He responded to my thank you note with, "We'll be in touch."
Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday: (Dead silence)
NobodysHome's brain: "Ah, well, guess I didn't pass after all. Back to it!"

And honestly, the fastest hire I've ever been involved in took over a month, so I don't know what I'm thinking, other than, "He said 'this week' and didn't deliver and it's a psychotically bad job market right now."
I'm sure I'll get another interview on Monday or Tuesday. People need time to get organized.

I think I took the recruiter aback by sending him a thank-you note.

I'm old school. I play the game the way it used to be played. And amusingly enough, all those stupid social niceties existed for a reason to prevent ghosting and grar.

I'm more and more interested in this "job to end all jobs", but what'll really tell me whether I want it is when I talk to the people who actually do it day-to-day, and whether they're more focused on educational theory (hate so much) or results.

So it's funny. At this point the one person on their side is, "We want him!" and I'm, "I'm not sure whether I want this job."

After next interview the tables will likely be turned -- yes, I'm horrifically overqualified, but so are a good 10-20% of all applicants to high-end jobs right now, so I'm competing against other Godzillas for this one. I'm arrogant, but not arrogant enough to believe I'll automatically beat them all out. I'll have to work for it.

OK, they may pay for squat, but California unemployment's really gone out of their way to try to be friendly. The whole site is pretty much, "Welcome! Glad to help!", and right at the top is, "Check for additional benefits," and I could qualify for food assistance, low-cost medical insurance, or child care assistance.

I don't, but they're working really hard to make sure I know what's out there.

It is a VERY different interface from the one GothBard used in 2022, when it was pretty much, "You cheating scumbag! How dare you pretend you deserve unemployment?"

TriOmegaZero wrote:

I always withhold at the single rate despite being married.

I only ever choose 1 exemption on W2 work -- just so the box will not autofill to zero.

Keep your money. Invest your money. Then you get to keep the interest at the end of the year instead of the IRS.

If you give it to the IRS, they earn interest on it, but do not have to give the earned-interest to you. Only any excess nominal dollars over your tax.

If you underwithhold by over 10%, there's a penalty. So yes, keeping and investing the money is sound advice... as long as you know you're withholding at least 90% of the taxes you're going to owe. Which is a delicate art form, so my goal is to always be within $2000 of my actual taxes. Which I'll miss this year 'cause I can't withhold any extra on the severance. And then I have to file as to why I don't owe a penalty. It's a PITA. And it happens every time I get any kind of income where I don't get to choose the tax rate.

So, I was curious about California's unemployment rate over the years, and since I meticulously track my financial records:

August, 2003 - April, 2004: $370/week.
September, 2022 - March, 2023: $450/week.
October, 2026 - ???: $450/week.

So, according to the CPI from the BLS, inflation from 2004 to 2026 was 78%. Unemployment payments have gone up by a little under 22%.

Ouch.

Is complaining about taxes political?

I am eternally enraged by stupid rules that lead to stupid consequences.

"The maximum amount that the IRS can penalize you is the amount you owe," is one of those rules. The result is obvious: The IRS always underwithholds.

So I'm mapping out our finances for 2027 under the assumption that I won't get a job (hope for the best, plan for the worst), and, since we're in the 24% tax bracket but the IRS only withholds 14% of our paychecks, I have to plan for a solid $5,000-$10,000 hit in April. (When I was employed I compensated by taking an additional $400 per paycheck out of my pay, resulting in an extra $10,400 in deductions to make up for their stupid. But I'm about to get a $50k severance check that doesn't have that extra deduction, and that's going to massively impact our taxes.)

Because stupid rule.

Grr...

I aten't dead.

The past two weeks are something of a blur now, between infections, fever, pain, and so so so many doctor visits.

Turns out that fever fried my brain a little bit. Those knife-like stabbing sensations were the result of nerve damage. I'm on an additional medication to treat that, as well as cycling tylenol and ibuprofen every few hours to keep the pain itself to a minimum.

Almost everything else I had planned for October has been cancelled or postponed as I focus on recovery. Thank fhtagn I don't have to work, or else I'd be either having to struggle through a 40-hour workweek with this still on the mend and further slow recovery as a result, or missing out on two weeks of work and pay and risking getting fired.

I'm hoping to be back to fully normal by mid-November, Thanksgiving at the latest, but I also was expecting to be back to standard by the week after I got on antibiotics, and here we are.

Still, better than the alternative. And at least we have solid insurance here, I would never be anywhere near this well-off back in the states for a host of reasons.

Did they ever figure out what the heck it was?

Have you learned what are you supposed to do, though?

Meh. He was only the recruiter. He has no idea. I'll talk to one of my future co-workers later this week and ask the classic two:

That tells you everything you need to know about the working conditions.

Benefits are solid, pay is solid, they just have to not expect me to work myself to death and I think we're a good match.

I think I won him over when I started lecturing him on why prompt engineering wouldn't work to fix that particular AI issue and so you'd have to put it in the training data or the guardrails, but I worried about the training data modifications because...
(recruiter's eyes glazed over)

Next steps are one-on-ones with various future team members (three or four of those), then a meeting with the director as a final formality. So I'll get to see how things roll.

No surprise. Passed round 1 with flying colors and he's trying to get me in as quickly as possible. I think I outclass their other candidates by a lot. I've never had a recruiter say, "I'm moving you on and setting you up for your next interview as soon as possible," before.
Plus he told me to ask for $10k more than I was asking.

I think I impressed him.

And I'm going in in 8 minutes and it'll be fun trying to figure out a polite way to ask, "Just what the h*** IS this job anyway, and how many hours to you expect me to work a week?"

(1) "The Senior Learning Experience Designer is responsible for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of world-class programs for the Learning and Development team. This role will continuously improve learning programs using an array of creative. The Senior Learning Experience Designer (LXD) provides advanced, wide-ranging experience to lead the development of highly complex learning and development objectives."
Yep. That's what I do.

(2) "Direct the application of existing design principles and guide the development of new policies and ideas for the learning organization."
Umm... that's what the Director is supposed to do...

(3) "Orchestrate the design of complex, large-scale workforce upskilling initiatives that drive enterprise-wide digital transformation."
Umm... now you're up to VP-level...

So someone took a scattergun to the requirements for this role, and either they're hoping to bring in someone willing to work 80+-hour weeks or someone just got carried away with the job description.

I'm guessing they had AI create the description and didn't bother to check it. But Round 1 is with the recruiter and I'm going to politely ask what I'm *actually* supposed to do in this job.

Why does this make me think of Captain Yesterday and his co-workers?

And now YouTube spams me with Enshrouded videos, some of them months old...

Just checked in with Shiro and GothBard and they confirmed my memories: It wasn't a bad game, but the gameplay just wasn't that great so the moment one of us found something more interesting (I forget what it was), we moved on and didn't look back.

Didn't get another position I wanted. AH well.

Yeah, I think I mentioned it, but it's hilarious -- I'm dreading tomorrow's interview not because I think I'll bomb it, but because I'm really, really good at interviews and if the job is anything like the LinkedIn AI made it sound, there's no way I want it.

I know, I know. Don't stress. Talk to the human and find out what the job really entails. And if it really sounds that sucky, "No," is a valid answer.

But it's the usual: First interview after the layoff. You're a top-tier candidate for the job and they're likely to offer it to you, and it pays just as much as your previous job. Do you dare say, "No," even if you'll hate it?

Fortunately, when GothBard was suffering the same dilemma a few years ago I was adamant that she wait for a job she'd be happy in. She succeeded, and she's throwing that back in my face every day to remind me that the only person who's going to suffer if this job is as bad as it sounds and I take it anyway is me.

My Halloween decoration is complete.

Gizmodo has its biases and its quirks, but usually when they go out and ask "experts" about things they try to get a wide variety of opinions. They tried it for Daylight Savings Time and it didn't work; 100% of the sleep experts and neurologists agreed that permanent standard time is the healthiest choice.

NobodysHome wrote:

Except Godzilla really likes the job description and the perks, and with GothBard's job $80k is fine for a cushy job I enjoy.

About where I am, as long as this job keeps us floating while Cyz gets established with her PhD, I'll be happy. Just need six years to be fully vested in the 401k matching.

Well, I passed the initial screening and got to the, "Why do you want this job and why do you think you're qualified?" online Q&A. They may well decide I'm too arrogant/flippant/whatever and dump me before I ever get an interview. It would be a sweet gig, but I'm a little long in the tooth for it and they may look for an excuse as to why I'm not a good fit. "Overqualified" is a solid, "You're too old for this," response.

Well, the job search is heating up:
(1) I'm paying for LinkedIn Premium so I got to do a practice interview for the job I'm interviewing for on Monday. The good: The LinkedIn AI said, "Wow! You're really prepared!" The bad: The job sounds terrible. It's literally a director-level position minus the title and pay. "Design metrics, testing algorithms for those metrics, and ideal course composition to implement executive strategy."

(2) I've had three more companies say, "No," to me. I really appreciate getting an answer.

(3) I just got to the second round of a "whale in the room" job I applied to because it's right next door (Berkeley). They're literally looking for someone with 3-5 years of curriculum development experience who's at least worked with an enterprise software system before. They're willing to pay $80k, which isn't going to get them anyone.

Except Godzilla really likes the job description and the perks, and with GothBard's job $80k is fine for a cushy job I enjoy.

I find it amusing that our local bar scene is becoming insanely upscale.

Schmidt's Pub became (in)famous for openly flouting California's no-smoking laws, paying fines so that customers could enjoy a whiskey and a cigar. It's now well-known by cigar aficionados for many miles around, and even the Fake Russian will make the 45-minute drive to get there and smoke.

The Hotsy Totsy got taken over by an old high school friend of mine and his partner, and they turned it into THE place to drink in Albany. Not much of a claim, but Impus Major goes there with his friends with some regularity (apparently they have an excellent virgin drink menu), and it got some fun notoriety I posted about when some loony Republican congresswoman who claimed to have grown up here called it a seedy strip club in El Cerrito. It's *never* been a strip club, nor has it been in El Cerrito.

And then there's the Ivy Room, a.k.a. the Divey Room known for the many drunken fights outside its doors. It was the source of pretty much ALL of Albany's violent crime. "Look! Albany had 73 assaults and 36 cases of battery last year!" "Yeah. The Divey Room."

Well, apparently it got taken over in 2015 and now it's a go-to cozy concert venue. I was wondering why I hadn't seen any fights there in a while...

Every time I use it, I become more and more convinced that I got a defective PS4, because I can't imagine people tolerating this behavior without widespread condemnation:

(1) Plugged it in for the first time in months. It immediately ejected the DVD that was in it, spent 2 minutes checking the filesystem because we hadn't shut down properly (more on that in a moment), and rebooted. We've come to expect all that, so no bother.

(2) Watched our movie and shut it down properly, using the well-hidden "full shutdown", not sleep.

(3) 5 minutes later, it turned itself back on and ejected our disk. I put the disk away and put it back to sleep.

(4) Impus Major stood up. It detected movement and turned itself back on.

(5) I shut it down properly again. It turned itself back on in 5 minutes.

(6) I unplugged the d**ned thing. Which is why it gets shut down improperly every time we use it.

EDIT: I *strongly* suspect that even when it's shut down, it's connecting to our WiFi and checking for updates, finding that we haven't updated it in years, and trying to turn on and run updates on itself. Yet another reason I love Linux. "Shut down" MEANS "shut down".

Sometimes, owning California cats is a burden.

It's raining(!!).

This event is *so* unusual that the cats are not accustomed to it and meow at the door to be let out anyway.
(NobodysHome carries Morrigan out and shows her the rain and puts her paws in the wet) Oh, it's one of THOSE days! OK, nap time!
(NobodysHome carries Mephisto out and shows him the rain and puts his paws in the wet) Oh, there's water falling from the sky! I get it!
(NobodysHome doesn't bother with Lenore) If no one else is going out, I don't need to either.

(5 minutes later)
Mephisto: Let me out! Let me OUT! Let me OUUUUUUUUUUT!
(NobodysHome shows him the rain again)
(5 minutes later)
Mephisto: Let me out! Let me OUT! Let me OUUUUUUUUUUT!

Repeat ad nauseam.

NobodysHome wrote:

Drejk wrote:

NobodysHome - I think you mentioned your video gaming group bouncing off this one before (can't check for sure because search doesn't work), but apparently there is a full release of Enshrouded now with new improvements so you could give it another try if you haven't refunded it since then.

It looks nice. I might give it a try when it will be on sale.

Enshrouded was pretty "meh" overall, but I'll mention it to the group. As I said, I even went so far as to uninstall Borderlands 4 (yep, THAT bad) and right now we're playing Icarus, but it's not a particularly addicting game so we could move on at any point.

Icarus (checks), what happened to the Bros Of The Forest?

Too much testosterone, I'm sure.

Icarus is pretty darned funny -- instead of most crafting games where you learn recipes by picking things up, you gain "talent points" and "tech tree points" to customize what you can build and what you're good at. We've been playing for about a week and I {almost*) haven't spent a point yet. Everyone just builds everything for me and hands me everything so I don't ever actually have to DO anything.

Yep. A crafting game where I do nothing. Sounds about right for this crowd.

* = I was told I absolutely had to be able to make torches and bandages, so I spent those two points. I still don't understand how bandages are used in this game. The torches are useful, though.

Firefox (NoScript and UBlock) is even better showing me a white screen with "Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker".

Just enable the top-level script and nothing else. nyt.com or whatever.

NobodysHome wrote:

There are many human behaviors I fundamentally do not understand. "Wait! Don't leave us! We'll give you a discount for the next 6 months if you'll stay!" is one of them.

Why would you stay?

They just proved that:
(1) They were ripping you off in the first place, since they can afford to give you a discount, and
(2) They're going to go back to ripping you off after a relatively short period of time.

It seems like the stupidest offer imaginable, but it must work, because the moment I started in on the second set of transfer requests, Verizon barraged me with a swarm of messages about how much money they could save me.

Yeah. Maybe you should've tried doing that before I left. Except that violates your business model, so buh-bye.

EDIT: Yeah, yeah. I'm leaving because they ran a credit report on me. But I also found out that we've been paying more than double what we should've been for mobile. Just like you NEVER rent from Hertz if you're not a corporate client because their rates are obscene compared to all the other rental companies, you never go with Verizon if you're not a corporate client. And now that I'm no longer a Global Megacorporation employee, I would've have even gotten the 12% "discount" I was supposedly getting. Ah, well. Lesson learned.

Some people like playing the "get me a discounted rate game" every x months or so. I have a coworker that has a different last name than their wife so they can cancel their cable and internet at the end of every promotion cycle and be treated as new customers at the address by swapping whose name its under.

I've known many people who've carried that on for years, but at the end of the day, if the carrier can afford to be offering that "discount" to you permanently, it's pretty likely they're already charging so much that you can get a sizeable difference elsewhere.

With my corporate discount, Verizon was charging us $243/month. They offered me a 25% discount to stay, so call it $180/month.

The full, un-discounted rate for 4 lines with U.S. Mobile is $130/month. AND we're getting MUCH better customer service. (Plus the first year discount puts our first year at $100/month.

I have no idea whether the NYT is behind a paywall (amazingly few sites seem to understand that if your paywall uses JavaScript, it doesn't work for people who use NoScript and they don't even realize they're "breaking in"), but it's funny how they report something appalling and I'm sure some San Franciscans would take pride in it.

"Yep. We're the least affordable place in the country. Yep. We give aid to people making up to $325,000/year to help them make ends meet. Nope. We don't see a problem with that..."

NobodysHome - I think you mentioned your video gaming group bouncing off this one before (can't check for sure because search doesn't work), but apparently there is a full release of Enshrouded now with new improvements so you could give it another try if you haven't refunded it since then.

It looks nice. I might give it a try when it will be on sale.

Enshrouded was pretty "meh" overall, but I'll mention it to the group. As I said, I even went so far as to uninstall Borderlands 4 (yep, THAT bad) and right now we're playing Icarus, but it's not a particularly addicting game so we could move on at any point.

NobodysHome wrote:

Well, I *finally* got my first interview, via an AI textbot no less, but I'm at the low end of the qualifications for this job so it's more likely just good interview practice. Wonder if it'll be an AI interviewer?

EDIT: Given that the link invitation isn't Zoom but rather <somethingorother>.ai, seems likely.

Thats what got me. Be careful.

Considering it's a job I actually applied for through LinkedIn with a nationally-known company, I'm pretty sure it's legit.