
NobodysHome |
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So, what's it like working for a Global Megacorporation™?
I met with an instructor and, in excruciating detail, showed her how to create users in the application. I emphasized that a certain field had to be set to Sales or a lot of underlying automation would break. She recorded our session.
And then hand-created 50 users with the field set to "Service", did a complete run-through of the class with live students, and signed off on the users.
Which means we had to re-create them in the master image. And with that field set to "Service", we can't auto-generate them. We can't discipline her for her mistake. We can't put them at "Sales" because we have to match whatever she did.
So I got to spend two hours this afternoon doing mindless data entry. Due to someone else's mistake.
Whee?

NobodysHome |
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My condolences.
Well, there's "fun" data entry, where you're copying names and addresses into spreadsheets or databases, and you can sit there wondering, "Who is that? I wonder if they know I'm typing about them? Do they still live there?"
And there's, "You have to enter 50 students, named student01 - student 50, and each one is about 2 minutes of filling in fields with the exact same data, and if you miss so much as a capitalization we have to start all over again."
There's data entry, and then there's boring data entry...

Rosita the Riveter |
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Rosita the Riveter wrote:Yea, the teacher's an unprofessional jerk, but so are most authority figures. When I get seriously ill, I can't just call out of work. That's the thing about the service sector. Even in situations like food service where you legally need to, you don't have paid sick time (if you're tipped, sick pay still loses you money, anyway), and kitchen managers don't tolerate anything not resembling toughing it out, anyway. You show up if you want to pay your bills and keep your job. Retail is similar, minus the legal requirements to call out. If you want to keep your job, you come in barely functional and tough it out. Just how it is. It's s$+@ty, reduces productivity because sick people can't work well and infect others, and it's not fair, but it's how the modern low wage economy works. Later in life, he's gonna be expected to just tough it out even when that isn't fair or reasonable, and better to learn now before he learns it the hard way in adulthood.So, this is uber-political and probably offensive to most, so
** spoiler omitted **...
I wouldn't say offensive, just utterly foreign to my own socio-economic experience. I just left a job over a month ago for rescinding a vacation promise, and it came very close to torpedoing me financially and emotionally. I don't actually think it was a sound move, and I probably would have been better off missing the vacation. I'm employed now, but come January I have no job security and no promise of a strong job market.
I guess I'm just used to not really being able to rely on financial security, and when you're of my socioeconomic bracket, sometimes you have to let yourself get taken advantage of to pay the rent.

NobodysHome |
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NobodysHome wrote:Rosita the Riveter wrote:Yea, the teacher's an unprofessional jerk, but so are most authority figures. When I get seriously ill, I can't just call out of work. That's the thing about the service sector. Even in situations like food service where you legally need to, you don't have paid sick time (if you're tipped, sick pay still loses you money, anyway), and kitchen managers don't tolerate anything not resembling toughing it out, anyway. You show up if you want to pay your bills and keep your job. Retail is similar, minus the legal requirements to call out. If you want to keep your job, you come in barely functional and tough it out. Just how it is. It's s$+@ty, reduces productivity because sick people can't work well and infect others, and it's not fair, but it's how the modern low wage economy works. Later in life, he's gonna be expected to just tough it out even when that isn't fair or reasonable, and better to learn now before he learns it the hard way in adulthood.So, this is uber-political and probably offensive to most, so
** spoiler omitted **...I wouldn't say offensive, just utterly foreign to my own socio-economic experience. I just left a job over a month ago for rescinding a vacation promise, and it came very close to torpedoing me financially and emotionally. I don't actually think it was a sound move, and I probably would have been better off missing the vacation. I'm employed now, but come January I have no job security and no promise of a strong job market.
I guess I'm just used to not really being able to rely on financial security, and when you're of my socioeconomic bracket, sometimes you have to let yourself get taken advantage of to pay the rent.
Well, I'm *very* happy you're back -- I was worried I'd gone too far and chased you off.
And yeah, being Lawful and all, employers who take advantage of their employees' financial situations to cheat them out of duly-earned time off really hits a sore spot with me. Working retail sucks. Working retail and not being allowed to take sick time/vacation time/lunch breaks is unconscionable to the point that I actively boycott any stores that I hear doing it. And I don't want my kids supporting any such store by working for them, consequences be damned.
Trouble is, it's not reported nearly enough, because even making a peep about it also endangers you, whistleblower laws be damned.
So two sore spots (kids and unfair labor practices) and it just got me a'fumin'.
Sorry if I came off too strongly.

John Napier 698 |
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Which is why I oppose "force-feeding" students Math. Not everyone has the same aptitude for everything. I failed Biology in High School simply because cutting open dead frogs with a dull scalpel wasn't all that exciting. Once a subject becomes too difficult for any given student, the teachers should stop.
I'd like to point out that even though most programming is heavily math-based, it won't be visible in the finished products. Consider Skyrim. There's a lot of math in the simplest ray tracing algorithms that determine what landscape features are visible to the player. But none of that math is ever printed on the screen. Having half a dozen books on game programming, I can state that as a fact.

lisamarlene |
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The audit/site visit that I was planning for since last month, that I sacrificed weekends and sleep for and prepared for for so long....
Has been postponed until next week.
Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
::leaves kids with Nobody's Impii::
::hops on JetBlue::::takes taxi to Brooklyn::
::arranges for small, exceedingly localized snowstorm::
::leaves plate of scones next to window looking out over the snow with a little cartoon drawing of a buxom goatherdess in a snowflake-bedecked corset::
::flies home, picks up kids::

lisamarlene |
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Crookshanks wrote:Why when I was young growing up on the farm not only did we have to dissect a cow brain I had to watch as your grampy and Henry the crazy old guy that lived down the road ate it afterwards (thankfully I only had to try it).We get to cut open cow and sheep brains
Yeah
Aw, man. You guys had all the fun. The brains were all in the supermarket. All we got to dissect were deer hearts and sheeps' eyeballs. And worms. Worms were boring. Deer hearts weren't bad after you got past the smell.

NobodysHome |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

Which is why I oppose "force-feeding" students Math. Not everyone has the same aptitude for everything. I failed Biology in High School simply because cutting open dead frogs with a dull scalpel wasn't all that exciting. Once a subject becomes too difficult for any given student, the teachers should stop.
I'd like to point out that even though most programming is heavily math-based, it won't be visible in the finished products. Consider Skyrim. There's a lot of math in the simplest ray tracing algorithms that determine what landscape features are visible to the player. But none of that math is ever printed on the screen. Having half a dozen books on game programming, I can state that as a fact.
I'm going to politely disagree. I'd always start off on my first day explaining to my students that, while they were exceedingly unlikely to use anything I was going to show them that semester in their careers, research has shown that studying math trains the brain in logical thinking, and is vital to an educated society. (OK, the second clause was my addition.)
Math hurts because it shapes your brain.
EDIT: But yeah, as I've written before, when my students would say, "I can't do math" I would respond, "No, you just had a bad math teacher", and they'd always come up with a name.

Vidmaster7 |
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Happy Birthday my olde friend.
It seems this horror show will never end.
Any moment's your last breath,
Here is to another day closer to death.
The cake is on the table,
And it is awfully bright,
'Cause there's so many candles on top.
But you are so decrepit,
Your chest so tight,
When you blow them out your lungs are gonna pop.
You cannot complain
Each time you feel a pain,
Though you have arthritis and gout.
'Cause when you start kvetching,
All your teeth fall out.