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Oh, speaking of hotels (and before I have to really bear down at work, 'cause I've been really lazy today and my manager may notice), here's a question for Vidmaster and Gran: Do you guys have any control over which rooms get assigned, or is it some computer algorithm?
'Cause it's really weird. We reserve 35 rooms: 28 for the kids, 4 for the chaperones, and 3 for the bus drivers. We identify which are the girls' rooms, which are the boys' rooms, which are chaperones' rooms, and which are the bus drivers' rooms. All that works out great.
But then we want to keep 3 rooms for an extra night. And all the wheels fall off. It's as if the reservation system just wasn't designed to handle the possibility of a group keeping only some of its rooms. So we do it every year, and every year there's this desperate scramble to figure out which of our rooms we can possibly keep, and it takes two shifts of front employees leaving each other notes and voice mails as to exactly when to release this room and transfer the reservation to that room and whatnot.
It's just a real, "WTH is wrong with your system that you can't specify which rooms to keep an extra day?" moment.
EDIT: Just ask Vidmaster or Gran. Everybody interacts with the front desk naked...
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Nice one, NH!
Glad you're nearly out of the krankenhaus, TS!
Sorry your head's bad, JN!
This post brought to you by twin swords victory and additional stout.
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** spoiler omitted **...
Yeah bringing along a big group is one of those things I'd never do. It's like all the responsibility is on your shoulders and you really need good perception to make sure they don't get into trouble. Eh I don't have a good perception score. Besides I don't do the people thing. Is that girl living with her Dad or her Mom, because usually in divorce cases, Mom gets custody. I hope her mom. Otherwise it's just a s*cky family problem again.
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Hope the low pressure zone passes - has the doctor given stronger meds for your headache?
Oh no, rangers are quite scrappy at high levels in 5e, I'm going rogue for more dps, that is if I could find out what my initial blueprints for that character was..
For some weird reason I do not understand, everyone multiclasses in 5e and the reason you multiclass is it vastly improves your character power.
Yeah I don't really get it myself either, and looking at multiclassed casters just gives me a headache...
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Yeah bringing along a big group is one of those things I'd never do. It's like all the responsibility is on your shoulders and you really need good perception to make sure they don't get into trouble.
Yeah, I live for that, er, "manure". Makes me feel alive.
Eh I don't have a good perception score.
My family's standard approach is, "Dad/NH, I've spent 10 minutes looking for this and I can't find it. Can you get it for me?"
Besides I don't do the people thing.
Hi's battered and broken body would beg to disagree...
Is that girl living with her Dad or her Mom, because usually in divorce cases, Mom gets custody. I hope her mom. Otherwise it's just a s*cky family problem again.
Exactly why I'm so pissed. Her mom seems to be a dedicated career woman with no time for a kid, so she let Dad have custody. And grandma helps, because she knows her son is a flake.
You KNOW the family life is bad when grandma openly says, "Yeah, my son's a basket case, so let me take care of his responsibilities for you..."
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I was Googling something else and found this, which is a pretty cool summary of Albany High.
We're #127! We're #127!
(Sounds pretty bad 'til you Google and find out that California has 4,495 schools, so Albany's in the top 3% of all schools in the state.)
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Oh, and John -- Carnegie Mellon University has a HUGE computer science department. You should check the university's web site for openings. I'm betting they'll have something for "part time late night sysadmin" or something that would get you in the door to both a computer-related job AND eventually a job with good health benefits.
Good luck!
EDIT: From my experience, university jobs always boil down to "whom you know" rather than "what you know". And it's not just for academic positions. Typically, you take a wage-slave, part-time job just so they get to know your face. They hire "strangers" for those positions. Then, as full-time positions open up, their "official" position is that the opening is for the "best-qualified" person, but somehow that "best-qualified" person is ALWAYS one of their part-timers. So it's surviving for a year or two on part-time, no-benefit wages until they're convinced they like you and a position opens up. It's a waiting game. No more, no less.
Blackmail also works. If it's a traditional university, look for someone high up in power who is male and imply you know a few things of an unsavory nature about them, but are willing to keep quiet if hired. If a medical facility, target one of the doctors instead; doctors are usually a lot harder to replace than administrators.
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Tonight marks the end of my third week in hospital. Tomorrow will be another lung test, and if my docs like what they see I will finally be going home...!Lung test came back at my baseline!!! Haven't gotten official word from my docs, but I fully expect to be discharged today...unless some cruel god interferes, of course. Still have to wait on the hospital bureaucracy though, so it'll probably be a few hours...
Grats! And no worries. You are not on my radar and the rest of the cruel gods have the night off.
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I found out at work today why the students have been complaining so much over the past year.
A little over a year ago, we started enforcing rules and guidelines for the kits they turn in. The students are unhappy there is more required of them and we're not accomplishing more. The amount required of them is only growing in response to their complaints, since some of it can only be fixed on their end.
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John - I'll check with Challenger if they have the plug in USB soundcard thing.
Did Hi contact you? Id like to see how he's handling the stairs of Japan ;) OK, I'm evil. Just evil.
It might not be so bad depending on where he's going(like if he takes a rail tour all around Japan nothing will happen), but the last time I was in Japan, I whined, "Why does it have to be stairs."
I've got quite a bit of absent minded professor in me, in the way I go through life. Oh uh I left things behind again?
John - do you carry your headache meds with you?
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Did Hi contact you? Id like to see how he's handling the stairs of Japan ;) OK, I'm evil. Just evil.
It might not be so bad depending on where he's going(like if he takes a rail tour all around Japan nothing will happen), but the last time I was in Japan, I whined, "Why does it have to be stairs."
NobodysWife saw him logged on to Final Fantasy, but amusingly enough he was using a Japanese keyboard so neither she (nor he) had any idea what he was typing at her.
Fun times!
But at least we know he's alive and in Japan! :-P
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What would I do if I was a kid on a school trip. Probably go to bed early since I'm a morning person not a night person, otherwise have my room in a mess, flop on the bed and watch looney tunes. My room mate was saying my reaction to cartoons was a tad excessive. Since I was laughing like a loon.
That comes from having a no television family background I suppose. Since my leisure time was either spent on playing heroes of might and magic, age of wonders, diablo series, web based browser games like utopia or reading.
Now... I think I'd just go to bed early. Heh. Or PBP. Or maybe some animal planet, national geographic, Japan hour, NHK TV. They don't do cartoons like they used to.
Yeah I know I sound like a grumpy old codger when I say that.
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I like to watch comedy when I want to relax.
Be it cartoon or not makes no difference.
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I don't ever remember going on ANY overnight trips while I was in grade school. Several long day trips, but we were always back home and waiting to be picked up by the parents at the end of the day, even if "end of the day" was 12 AM or later.
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..watching looney tunes... playing heroes of might and magic, age of wonders, diablo series... reading...going to bed early...
You just described my post-grad-school experience...
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I don't ever remember going on ANY overnight trips while I was in grade school. Several long day trips, but we were always back home and waiting to be picked up by the parents at the end of the day, even if "end of the day" was 12 AM or later.
Albany is a "relatively" wealthy public school district, in that parents donate around $600 per year per kid to support non-core stuff such as field trips and music programs.
In 4th grade the kids used to go on a sleepover to Point Bonita and go on nature hikes. That got canceled after the Second Worst Chaperone in the world took 9 of the other chaperones on a 3-hour day hike, leaving the remaining two chaperones (myself included) and 3 teachers to manage over 100 4th graders. It... did not go well.
The music department is much better-funded, so up until last year choir kids in 6th-8th grade did an overnight to Santa Clara and Great America. Last year the Second Worst Chaperone in the World came on that trip. Now the overnight is only for 8th graders.
Choir kids in 9th-12th grade do a 2-night (well, technically 3) trip to Anaheim, though Disneyland passes have become so expensive it isn't really feasible any more; notice that 20% of Albany High students are on financial assistance of some sort, and if their parents want them in a music program the only one that's free is choir. So we get a disproportionate number of low-income kids. I fund 4 extra kids a year (it's in tomorrow's story time but a parent of a kid I funded finally tracked me down and thanked me. Nice, but awkward), but I can't do much more than that, and realistically to keep doing Disneyland Ms. S would have to raise the price by $50-$100, and we'd lose a lot of students.
Up until this year band kids in 9th-12th grade got a 3-night trip with 2 days in Disneyland because band kids are ludicrous rich (I heard several of the kids are carrying around $8000 instruments, so a $700 trip means nothing to them, while $385 is more than many choir kids can afford). But the band teacher has always been lax and teased Ms. S about her strict policies, so of course this year he had a serious alcohol/drug incident.
Oops. Time will tell how it affects that particular trip.
But yeah, kids in choir will have done maybe 14 nights by the time they graduate, and kids in band 18.
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Yeah we were small-town school that never made a trip longer than a day out.
I did manage to think of one exception, though. A handful of us took a week-long trip to DC my senior year on a Government class trip. We had to fund it ourselves, though, soliciting donations from people and businesses around town, and that included raising the cost of two-way plane tickets.
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Yeah we were small-town school that never made a trip longer than a day out.
I did manage to think of one exception, though. A handful of us took a week-long trip to DC my senior year on a Government class trip. We had to fund it ourselves, though, soliciting donations from people and businesses around town, and that included raising the cost of two-way plane tickets.
Interesting... maybe that's how it was done in the 1980's. Because I know for my 1987 chaperoning trip to Washington, D.C., all the kids were expected to figure out ways to fund themselves. Only the chaperones were funded.
And THAT trip had the Worst Chaperone in the World. I figure when you're a chaperone and you manage to get kicked off the trip and flown home on your own dime, you've EARNED that title...
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This was the 2002-3 school year in my case >_>
On a side note, I was in band in my high school, and it didn't cost anything to participate (many even got school-owned instruments to use), so the idea of band being a rich-kids' club has always struck me as bizarre even though I've since been educated that most places require an entry fee to be in band much less that you need to provide your own instrument.
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They cut down overseas trips after this incident.
John are there any topics we should avoid to stop causing you pain?
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Oh, speaking of hotels (and before I have to really bear down at work, 'cause I've been really lazy today and my manager may notice), here's a question for Vidmaster and Gran: Do you guys have any control over which rooms get assigned, or is it some computer algorithm?
'Cause it's really weird. We reserve 35 rooms: 28 for the kids, 4 for the chaperones, and 3 for the bus drivers. We identify which are the girls' rooms, which are the boys' rooms, which are chaperones' rooms, and which are the bus drivers' rooms. All that works out great.
But then we want to keep 3 rooms for an extra night. And all the wheels fall off. It's as if the reservation system just wasn't designed to handle the possibility of a group keeping only some of its rooms. So we do it every year, and every year there's this desperate scramble to figure out which of our rooms we can possibly keep, and it takes two shifts of front employees leaving each other notes and voice mails as to exactly when to release this room and transfer the reservation to that room and whatnot.
It's just a real, "WTH is wrong with your system that you can't specify which rooms to keep an extra day?" moment.
EDIT: Just ask Vidmaster or Gran. Everybody interacts with the front desk naked...
First let me preface this by saying different hotels have different programs and systems. That said The problems I can think of that would happen by you wanting to extend you stay past your reservation is 1 its possible other guest reserved the rooms. 2 if it was all under as a group reservation it is actually kind of a pain to separate you out after the group. So n a way your right the reservations system really isn't made to have some of the people extend their stays. I would of just made new reservations and put you guys in the same room to make it work. You wouldn't of gotten the group rate however.(which seems fair since your not keeping the rooms as a group anymore) I may even been able to give a discount close to the group rater but it would depend on how much business we were expecting. Oh and as far as the computer assigning rooms We can assign rooms but it does default to certain ones. Its just moves in a line like 100 then 101 102 etc.
Yeah so far the system sucks but is better then it used to be.
Also yes they do sometimes interact with us naked...
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Weird. You'd think that a lot of groups would say, "Yeah, we need 5 rooms for the first 4 nights, but then Grandma, Uncle Jeb, and Gumby are leaving, so we'll need only 2 rooms for the next 2 nights."
Hard to believe the programmers didn't think of that...
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Yeah. Like I said I would just put them in under a different reservation. the rate would just get messed up. now that I think about it they probably want it that way. They probably figure you shouldn't get the discounted rate since you don't have the same number of people that was agreed to for the group rate.
The other weird thing for our brand is the elite awards thing gets real wonky when a group is all under the same name and only gives a fraction of the reward points.
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(This is a joke; gg, bye)
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Wow I did not know I was that thin. Go me!
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When I found a $20 bill in my pants pocket after my wife had washed them, I felt compelled to turn her in for money laundering.
51 examples!
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Before I tell my wife something important, I always take both her hands in mine. That way she can't hit me.
See everyone he IS a smart cookie!
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Hes definetly found one of those ex-wife joke sites (I say ex-wife cause the creator was for sure divorced after making it.)
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When I found a $20 bill in my pants pocket after my wife had washed them, I felt compelled to turn her in for money laundering.
We do it pretty often here. Throw pants into washing machine. Washing machine launders pants, with money in pocket, so it launders money.
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I guess I'm a weird mix of cynicism and idealism. I want to be idealistic(since it makes me feel better about the world), but the realist in me generally wins out.
The idealist believes in the ideal.
The realist knows that the ideal is unachievable.
The wise know that the ideal is worth striving for anyway.