gran rey de los mono's page

lisamarlene wrote:

We're having a "cold snap" tonight (upper 30s overnight, 50s tomorrow).

Lisamarleneeeeeeee

Stop hogging the cold!!!!!!!!

I've got about 1/2" of snow you could have.

There is a butcher's shop near my Mom that has bundle deals for bulk meat buys. We're thinking of sharing one, so she gave me a list of the various bundles. I don't know why, but one of them tickles me. It's the "Large Beef Bundle," and it consists of:

20x 1lb ground beef
2x 5lb box of hamburger patties
3lb rump roast
3lb sirloin steaks
4x 8oz New York strip steaks
2x 3lb arm roast
3x 1lb stew meat
3x 8oz ribeye steaks
2x 3lb chuck roasts
6x chickens (cut into pieces)

One of these things is not like the others.

This song randomly popped up in my head today after God knows how long since I last heard it, and I was thinking that, with the rise of AI "singers", I wonder if any of them would cover it.

Dream I had today:

Person: "You don't understand? What are you, stupid?"
Me: "Maybe, but mainly because English isn't my first language."
Person: "Really? What is?"
Me: "'Murican."
Person: "That...that......that explains everything, actually."

The phrase "I've been hanging streamers for my daughter's birthday party" can create two very different mental images nowadays.

I saw this and enjoyed it. Maybe some of you will too.

"I got called in to HR today because, apparently, telling a coworker that I could tell he was a C-section baby by how he avoided labor is unacceptable in the workplace."

I'm not 100% sure, but I think he's trying to rant about the unsanitary living conditions and general immorality of catching sentient beings and forcing them to fight each other for children's amusement.

Also, there's a food delivery that has already been sitting here for like 6.5 hours. I'm guessing it was delivered to the wrong address, but there's no address on the tag, so who knows?

Some of the "highlights" from the work log for the weekend:

1) Someone tore the automatic closer off of one of the stairwell doors. Why? Who f!##ing knows. How? Also a good question, as they are held open by electromagnets and should only close in case of a fire or power outage. Neither of which happened.

2) Lots of complaints about the pool being closed, as I predicted. But it has been drained, cleaned, and (mostly) refilled. They had to stop filling it because someone claimed that the sound of the water through the pipes was "so loud I can't hear myself think". Which is, frankly, bullshit. Especially since their room is one floor up and across the hall from the pipe. They're supposed to finish filling it and work on getting the chemical balance right tomorrow.

3) A guest yelled at 2nd shift because their TV didn't work. When she went up to look at it, the picture was working, but no sound. So she took the remote and turned the volume up. That's all it was, the previous guest had turned the volume all the way down, and he didn't think to turn it back up. Instead, he felt it necessary to yell at the desk clerk about it. Great guy.

4) Another guest yelled at the same desk clerk because they were charged for 3 nights instead of 2. They stayed for 3 nights. But apparently they feel that they should only have to pay for 2, because reasons? Another great guy, no doubt.

5) Guest checked in, went up to room. Called back down and asked about a feather-free room. Was told that "Sorry, all of our feather-free rooms are occupied. I can replace the feather pillows with foam ones if you'd like." He said "No, that's fine," hung up, and immediately filed a complaint with central saying that we didn't honor his (non-existent) feather-free request. At least he didn't yell at the desk clerk.

Finally, 6) A guest was extremely upset that we wouldn't put 3 roll-a-way beds into his room. He had a room with 2 queen-sized beds. Due to fire code, we can only put roll-a-ways into rooms with a king bed, and then only 1 per room. When told no, he flipped out, and almost got thrown out. Which he should have been anyways, since there were 9 adults in that room, and you are only allowed 5 (fire code again).

Sooooooooooooooo glad I don't work weekends anymore.

Heya cap. Sounds like there is some major suckage going on, but that the good outweighs the bad.

I saw a note that a Mom left for her (presumably teenage) kids before leaving them alone for the weekend. It said:

"Don't add to the population. Don't subtract from the population. Don't damage or destroy physical property. Stay out of the hospital, newspaper, and jail."

Maybe that would some in helpful for some of you.

I lost my sweet bippy in an earlier wager. What other things might I offer. I would like to get back my bippy. It was sweet.

Do you have someone else's sweet bippy to wager?

Put up a sign pool closed due to alligators and hope there isn't a druid for whom that's a bonus?

I worked at 2 hotels in Florida that had outdoor pools. Gators were always a possibility. Never happened while I was there, but heard about it happening previously, and another hotel nearby had it happen while I was down there.

And in case anyone is thinking "20gpm isn't that small," that is the max flowrate listed on the box, so take that with a grain of salt. Also, it has a 4.5' vertical rise to get out of the pool, followed by about a bunch of coils, and then about 10' straight to the drain. All of this constitutes about 50' of corrugated plastic tubing with a diameter of about 1". So, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of loss of flowrate because of that. I've been here for about 3.5 hours so far, and it has gone down by an inch, maybe an inch-and-a-half.

Pool update:

They got a little pump from somewhere, and are using it to drain the pool. And when I say little, I mean it moves about 20 gallons per minute. So it's taking a while. The level has dropped by about a foot since this morning, but there is still another foot-and-a-half or two feet to go. So, maybe they can get it cleaned out and filled tomorrow, but more likely Saturday in my mind.

What disturbs me the most is that, being a Northern Californian, I gripe constantly about Southern Californians and their staggering pool maintenance (during one of the droughts one fairly large area down there was averaging 3000 gallons per household per day). Shiro had a pool and refilled it a couple of times.

So I looked it up: Home pools should be refilled every 2-5 years. Hotel pools should be refilled every 3-5 years... but there are no regulations that they have to do it.

I'm now truly curious as to how long it's been since gran's hotel's pool has been drained. Will they find Amelia Earhart?

I mean, you can see the bottom of the pool, so there's no bodies in it or anything like that. And I know it was drained about 6 or 7 (or 8 or 9) years ago so they could fix some broken tiles, try to fix a leak, and switch it to a salt water system.

Pool update:

After seeing the pool wasn't draining any more, we called the company who sells us all our cleaning supplies, as well as pool chemicals. They said "We don't really do that, but I'll ask around." A while later, they called back and said "So, the manager says that since if we tell you something wrong there is serious risk of property damage and/or injury, we're not gonna be able to help you." Which is fair. Next, we called around to various other hotels asking if they could let us borrow their maintenance person for a while. Eventually, one agreed. The guy came over, looked around a bit, and said "Yeah, your shit is f$*!ed. Call the pros." So, we called around to several pool companies. They all basically said "Well, that sucks. We can't really give you a quote without knowing exactly what is wrong, but can tell you it would be $X per hour, plus parts. Also, we're booked out for at least a week."

Which means we likely won't have the pool up for a while, and this weekend is not just a football game, but Dad's Weekend for the university. So rates are jacked through the roof (like some people are paying over 5x our normal rate), and we won't have the pool open. Now, usually this wouldn't be a problem, because people rarely use the pool on those weekends. But you can bet your sweet bippy that there will be complaints aplenty about it being closed, mainly from people who wouldn't be using it anyways, but are just trying to get a discount.

Have I mentioned how glad I am that I don't work weekends anymore?

gran rey de los mono wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Guide to life improvement: Set reasonable, achievable goals.

NobodysHome's goal for tonight's game: Mute my mic before I fall asleep during the session.

Or at least don't snore too loudly.

Well, seriously. This is the second three-hour session of just casually meeting the various council members. Each meeting is 10-15 minutes of, "This is what the building looks like. This is what the person looks like. He asks you the same questions everyone else did. Did you want to ask him anything?"

No plot. No point. Just meeting after meeting after meeting with NPCs irrelevant to any sort of plot. Imagine roleplaying out meeting every member of parliament. And thus I sleep.

EDIT: I mean, it really did feel like we were a small group of British schoolkids who were randomly selected to meet half a dozen members of the House of Lords. We'd be introduced, the peer would ask who we were, what our parents did, and whether we enjoyed school, and then they'd ask whether we had any questions for them. And we knew we'd get in trouble if we asked anything sassy, so we said, "No, no," and they said, "Good lad," and we moved on to the next peer.

For two. Solid. Sessions.

Noble NPC of the type you described: "Do you have any questions for me?"

Guide to life improvement: Set reasonable, achievable goals.

NobodysHome's goal for tonight's game: Mute my mic before I fall asleep during the session.

Or at least don't snore too loudly.

Iirc, when I was in elementary school/scouts, we had one adult per room. But Jesus that was a long time ago.

That is literally what is happening with these teams. Every room is parent/parents and their kid, sometimes with other siblings as well. And yet, they won't watch their kids, and often encourage the kids to do shit. School groups tend to be less trouble, though not always. School athletics groups actually tend to be the least troublesome, because the kids are worried that the coaches won't let them play if they cause trouble. (High school wrestlers seem to be the exception, mainly because when they are in town it's for championships, so they figure the coach will let them wrestle anyways. Also, they tend not to make a lot of noise, it's usually them setting off their smoke alarms while trying to "sauna" in the room to lose weight. Which, of course, causes the fire department to come out, so that's a whole other issue.)

Pool update:

I think the drain is fully clogged, as it looks the same tonight as when I left 16 hours ago. I suppose it's possible that they closed the drain for some reason, but I don't really care.

Or as I saw earlier today:
"Behold the field in which I grow my f##+s. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren."

I've never understood the failure of hotels to take legal action against such groups. If the youth soccer league was sued for damages, it sounds like they'd be out a few thousand bucks. You have physical evidence of everything. If your hotel has security cameras, it's a slam-dunk case.

I understand that suing youth groups is bad PR, but how much do hotels lose every day having to deal with undisciplined monsters? I've chaperoned many a middle and high school trip, and surprise surprise, if the chaperones are willing to do their f-ing jobs this kind of stuff doesn't happen. Send one or two kids home on their parents' dime for misbehavior (yes, we've done it) and the rest fall in line pretty darned quickly.

I assume it's because the fees would be more than the money recuperated. And we only have cameras at the desk, but I'm not sure that they even record. They're mainly so we can see if someone is there while we are doing laundry, and so the manager can "spy" on us from their office. I just wish that they would stop accepting the groups. If the groups are getting refused by all the hotels (or at least the halfway decent ones), then maybe they would learn that there are consequences to their actions. Maybe. Alas, the owners only care about the money, so they keep demanding that we take the groups, because most of them bring in more money than the damages they cause. And who cares about the stress it brings to the employees?

According to 2nd shift, they figured out how to drain the pool. Sort of. It's been draining for about 12 or 13 hours, and has only lost a foot. So I'm guessing that it is mostly clogged up with something. That also means it's gonna take a couple of days to drain. But I guess it's progress.

gran rey de los mono wrote:

I assume they know at least that much.

... have you been listening to your own stories about them? :)

Also yes, "its clogged, we have the valve open down here, someone go up there take the cover off and poke it with a broom" is the exact response i expect from management. Nope.. get a submersible pump and drain it if you have to. )(#&*$ the water bill.

You have a point. I'm hoping that whoever is doing maintenance (we don't actually have a maintenance person on staff anymore) would know that. Or that they hire a pool contractor to come look at it, who had better know.

gran rey de los mono wrote:

(Also, because of the possibility of glass in the pool, we have to drain it to clean it out thoroughly. But apparently no one knows how to. There is a drain in the bottom of the pool, but they can't figure out how to open it.)

IT DOES NOT OPEN FROM THE POOL DO NOT PULL THAT YOU WILL DROWN

... hopefully you pool has more safety features than the one I worked at from the 1940s but when you describe the place I'm not sure....

I assume they know at least that much. I'm guessing that they just don't know which valve or whatever in the pump room is the one that opens it. I also wouldn't be surprised if it was clogged with something, so when they opened the correct whatchamadiddle, it still didn't drain.

In other news, I found out today that the manager is quitting. Her last day is Tuesday. Apparently she can't stand the new owner, so she found a job at a different hotel. This could be a very bad sign.

Once again, we can see why I refuse to work Fridays and Saturdays anymore.

There was a youth league soccer team staying at the hotel this weekend. I think the kids were in the 10-12 year old range. They absolutely trashed the place both nights. I'm talking the halls, the stairwells, the elevator, the exercise room, the lobby, the public bathroom, everything. Especially the pool. On Friday, they left he pool room full of trash (including lots of glass bottles), there was food debris all over the place (including in the pool), and they had thrown about 30 towels into the pool and left them there to be fished out by us. Saturday, however, they did all that and more. They broke the clock, which for some reason had a glass face on it instead of plastic. This led to there being broken glass all over, including possibly in the pool itself. The desk clerk on duty chased them all out of the pool room, which was apparently harder than you might think. I guess the parents didn't care if their kids stepped on broken glass. One of the parents kept saying it was "an accident" and "no one was to blame", but the clerk heard the kids talking about how they had been throwing things at the clock to see if anyone could hit it, so it sounds pretty intentional to me. Today, one of the guests (specifically the one who complained the most about everything, despite everything they complained about being their kid's fault) filed a complaint with corporate, specifically that they "weren't allowed to use the pool during the full listed pool hours".

I hate these people.

(Also, because of the possibility of glass in the pool, we have to drain it to clean it out thoroughly. But apparently no one knows how to. There is a drain in the bottom of the pool, but they can't figure out how to open it.)

I can't speak to any particular organizations, but my understanding is that a cash donation can be more effective than canned goods, assuming no one pockets it. Mainly because a) they can buy things that people in the area are more likely to eat, and b) they can usually buy wholesale and tax-exempt, thus getting more for their dollar than you do.

I have made birria, so now my house smells great and I will have tacos for the week.

...not THAT interesting!

Depends on what she's doing in the forest, doesn't it?

Managed to break the table at game tonight. Not the literal table, but the players around it.

We were setting up to defend a guy's house. He left with most of his guards, but left 2 behind that were supposed to help us. We were already suspicious that one or both of them might have been working with the bad guys, so while we were telling them what we wanted them to do, the Druid asked if he could make a Sense Motive to see if they were acting weird. He rolled really well, and the GM told him that neither of them intended to do what we were telling them to do. So he confronted them, and they said "F$@& the boss, we've been planning to leave anyways, so we're gone," grabbed their stuff, and walked out the door. The Bloodrager said "Good riddance" and slammed the door behind them. I said "I wait 10 seconds, step out on the front porch, and shout at the top of my lungs "AND I FAKED EVERY ORGASM!!!!"

Took a few minutes before we could continue.

"The thing that most non-Americans don't realize, is that the US is (at least) 50 small countries in a trench coat pretending to be one large country."

I think it's sad that even Linux proves that growth = ensh*ttification. Remember when Ubuntu was the de-facto standard for all Linux installations because it was so easy, so similar to Windows that even noobs could use it, and it could run most Windows execuatables?

And so big money moved in and even in 2018 when I installed Ubuntu it had 30-40 pieces of crapware already installed; the likes of Adobe, Spotify, Netflix, and so forth all came pre-installed on your Linux machine. Just like a store-bought Windows machine that made you decide to switch to Linux in the first place.

And now Impus Minor tells me that Ubuntu is so bloated as to be unusable.

I hate growth.

I had an old laptop that I ran Ubuntu on a few years ago. I liked it, it worked well, and I only had a few problems getting things to run, but figured it out fairly easily. A couple of months ago, a video popped up on my feed in youTube about how bad Ubuntu had gotten, and out of curiosity, I watched it. Essentially, it said that (for reasons I can't remember) Ubuntu more or less stopped caring about the individual users and focused almost exclusively on servers and corporate-level customers. So, yeah, apparently Ubuntu is pretty shit for most people now.

I had my patience tested today. It came back negative.

Friend who I've been annoying constantly: "Why are you like this?"
Me: "Well, when I was a child, they said that I could become anything. So I decided to become a problem."

Me: "There's something I really want to say, but I'm not sure how."
Girlfriend: "Just say it."
Me: "Worcestershire."

Me: "I have a phone interview tomorrow and I'm really nervous."
Friend: "Just relax and be yourself."
Me: "If I 'be myself' then I won't answer the phone."

"I don't want to be in the loop, or out of the loop. I want to be aware of the loop and its contents, but free of any loop-based responsibilities."

You know what I want to see in Star Trek? Space shanties. They're in the navy, they're working, there should be thousands of space shanties to help the crew pass the time, and I want to hear some of them!

The amount of stuff he finds in house after house after house is ridiculous. These are new-build, $400k+ homes, that have: broken/improperly installed tubs and showers; broken window frames; peeling/missing stucco; improperly installed tile floors; walls that aren't straight, flat, or square; inadequate, sometimes missing, attic insulation; improperly installed, and sometimes broken, roof trusses; HVAC systems with no filters installed; no rain caps on vents; attic insulation touching the exhaust for gas water heaters, which is a major fire hazard; broken roof tiles; it just keeps going on and on and on. And then the builders try to deny all the claims, saying that it "meets our policies" even though it doesn't meet code. And then threatening to sue him for making videos showing all of the problems.

He's on youTube as cyfyhomeinspections. I suspect he's on TikTok and/or other social media as well.

I've been watching some videos from a home inspector out in Arizona, and I just love that he mentioned one of his clients having trouble getting the builders to honor the roof warranty. They claimed that the warranty was voided by a "disqualifying event". That event? Rain. It rained, and the roof leaked. So the builders claimed that rain, as an act of god, voided the warranty.

I don't think that's gonna hold up.

Me: *sees tour bus pull into parking lot, knowing we are sold out*
Guy: *parks bus out front, comes in* "Where am I supposed to park this bus? Your lot is full."
Me: "Yes, we are sold out, so the lot is full. We don't provide bus parking. They should have told you when you checked in."
Guy: "I'm checking in now, so tell me where to park."
Me: "I'm sorry, but as I said, we are sold out."
Guy: "Bullshit. My dispatcher just called you and you said you had rooms available. So check me in and tell me where park."
Me: "I didn't speak to anyone about a room for you. Maybe..."
Guy: *interrupts me* "Bullshit! She just called and spoke to someone here, so give me my f*+&ing room and tell me where to park the f+$*ing bus!"
Me: *getting angry* "I am the only one here. I have been the only one here for two and half hours. I spoke to no one about a room for you. Your dispatcher told you wrong."
Guy: "This is such f@~*ing bullshit!! I was on the phone with her as I pulled into the parking lot, and she said she spoke to you no more than 5 f+~+ing minutes ago!! So give me my f+%$ing room and f+@&ing tell me where the f~*& to park the f%+#ing bus!!!!"
Me: *had it* "Your dispatcher either told you the wrong hotel or lied to you. I don't know which. I don't care which. There is no room for you here. Even if I had a room, I wouldn't rent it to you because you're an a&*+*#&. And I'd tell you where to park your f*!@ing bus, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like the answer. Now. Leave."
Guy: *turning bright red, starts to say something, but doesn't. leaves*
Me: *treated to the sight of him trying to back the bus out of the lot (a straight shot) for 5 minutes*

People like this are one of many reasons I hate my job.

The hotel's wifi has been down since before I got in, which sucks. What sucks even more is that tech support just called and asked me to go reboot the router/modem/server thingy. This is a problem because a) the cordless phone loses the signal when you enter the room, so you have to leave the phone outside while you are trying to fiddle with the box, b) the room is mostly full of boxes of stuff for our upcoming remodel (supposedly starting this week, but I'll believe it when I see it), and c) the "walkway" left to reach the comms gear is barely big enough for me to squeeze through. Which means, tech support tells me to look for/do something, I set the phone down, squeeze past the boxes, look for/do whatever they told me to, squeeze back out of the room, talk to them, they tell me look for/do something else, lather, rinse, repeat. And, of course, it didn't fix anything because apparently it's not getting power. So, I wasted my time and energy to not fix it. Whee.

Any of you looking for a great couples' costume for Halloween? I saw an idea. One of you dresses like a tomato. The other like Denethor. Yum yum.

NobodysHome wrote:

Drejk wrote:

Incoming age flex on internet:

"I am so old that I remember when Google Search was actually finding what you were looking for."

GothBard taught me the ever-important, "Put 'f**king' into every search. That auto-disables the AI because of its 'inappropriate content' filter."

Worked like a charm for ages... until I looked up something like, "What are the current open f**king positions at <company>?"

NOT a good search...

... and that's how NobodysHome started working for P**nHub...

Really? I would have assumed it was because of all those videos...

I minced up two more of the habaneros and added them to the cold chili, letting them soak for a couple of hours. I tasted a small piece too, and it certainly was hot. The chili now has some spice, and when you eat a piece of the pepper, you definitely taste it. But it still isn't as hot as I would have expected. Maybe habaneros really get mild when heated? Or this batch just isn't as hot as they should be.

I made chili yesterday. Usually I put in a dozen or so large jalapeños, but the store didn't have any. So I bought habaneros instead. I put in 3, seeds and all. And there is basically no spice at all. They smelled plenty spicy when I was chopping them, but I sure can't tell they're in there. Maybe I got a bum batch?

Let him fight the sky. Maybe he'll win.

I have invented (but not perfected) a new dance to do when listening to C&W instrumentals set to a moderate polka beat, called the 'Dandy Walk'. I think it has potential.

I'm picturing an Elizabethan era foppish nobleman strolling around with a very confused look on his face as Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places" plays in the ballroom.

A: "If corals get stressed, they die. If I was a coral, I would have died so many times."
B: "What do corals even have to get stressed about?"
A: "Current events."
B: "...Get out."