
Drejk |

I got my first trophy in Elden Ring for doing something.
I'm sure whatever it is is pathetic in the grand scheme of Elden Ring but I'm happy with it.
I keep dying and coming back in Rogue Legacy 2...
At least I unlocked all the classes (except the alternates) and most of the castle.

Drejk |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |

More seriously, there's this bizarre mythos among men that ALL women love to be flirted with and hit on at all times because it's "flattering".
I've never met a woman over 20 who appreciates it.
Coincidentally, today I saw a very adequate, very brutal, and completely true meme pertaining to that.
"Reminder: Male attention is abundant and of low value"

lisamarlene |

I'm doing that end-of-the-school year thing where I feel inconsequential and mediocre and down in the dumps.
So I've stayed home to take a morning to myself while WW takes the kids to church, and I'm going to putter about doing small things so I'm not a complete and dismal failure.
This afternoon we're supposed to have our final gaming session before breaking for the summer, and allegedly wrap up our campaign.

captain yesterday |

After getting brutally murdered by a blood ghost nun with a HUGE sword at least ten times with diminishing results I've determined I'm done with Elden Ring for the weekend.
Much was learned, a surprising amount of foes was vanquished, and quite a few were run away from and more than enough showed me exactly how little I know and that I might actually suck at video games (which I already knew and I'm okay with).

Syrus Terrigan |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Flirting is, at best, dangerous in my part of the world. It is more commonly "hazardous to employment" -- to wit: I've mentioned before that our work team hasn't had a manager since November, except for a six-day stint from a rehired employee.
Six. Days.
Laying aside the clues and facts that indicated said individual was less-than-competent for that management position, six days was all it took for charges to be laid against this person for inappropriate behavior. Our HR department absolutely does not f$*$ around. At least, not usually.
But the most insane aspect of this narrative tidbit is this:
It's the same thing for which that individual was terminated from the company the first time!
So maybe there *is* a little f$!!ery slipping through the cracks . . . .
I think it just goes to show how desperate our organization is for staffing.
---------------
However, on that note, we finally do have a new manager joining the team tomorrow. And all the scuttlebutt suggests that this long-term employee will LAST, and be EFFECTIVE.
One can only hope!

Freehold DM |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Flirting is, at best, dangerous in my part of the world. It is more commonly "hazardous to employment" -- to wit: I've mentioned before that our work team hasn't had a manager since November, except for a six-day stint from a rehired employee.
Six. Days.
Laying aside the clues and facts that indicated said individual was less-than-competent for that management position, six days was all it took for charges to be laid against this person for inappropriate behavior. Our HR department absolutely does not f@%& around. At least, not usually.
But the most insane aspect of this narrative tidbit is this:
It's the same thing for which that individual was terminated from the company the first time!
So maybe there *is* a little f&$#ery slipping through the cracks . . . .
I think it just goes to show how desperate our organization is for staffing.
---------------
However, on that note, we finally do have a new manager joining the team tomorrow. And all the scuttlebutt suggests that this long-term employee will LAST, and be EFFECTIVE.One can only hope!
I have worked in human sexuality for several years now.
Never, ever flirt at work.
Ever.
You are at work.
Turn everyone down in a formal, courteous way while reminding them you are at work.

Drejk |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Fantasy Monster: Streaking Gauntlet
A magical, floating gauntlet that can wield full-sized weapons.
Courtesy of me currently playing Rogue Legacy 2.

Syrus Terrigan |

Syrus Terrigan wrote:Flirting is, at best, dangerous in my part of the world. It is more commonly "hazardous to employment" -- to wit: I've mentioned before that our work team hasn't had a manager since November, except for a six-day stint from a rehired employee.
Six. Days.
Laying aside the clues and facts that indicated said individual was less-than-competent for that management position, six days was all it took for charges to be laid against this person for inappropriate behavior. Our HR department absolutely does not f@%& around. At least, not usually.
But the most insane aspect of this narrative tidbit is this:
It's the same thing for which that individual was terminated from the company the first time!
So maybe there *is* a little f&$#ery slipping through the cracks . . . .
I think it just goes to show how desperate our organization is for staffing.
---------------
However, on that note, we finally do have a new manager joining the team tomorrow. And all the scuttlebutt suggests that this long-term employee will LAST, and be EFFECTIVE.One can only hope!
I have worked in human sexuality for several years now.
Never, ever flirt at work.
Ever.
You are at work.
Turn everyone down in a formal, courteous way while reminding them you are at work.
You should stop by sometime, and tell that to the women, just for a change of pace. But plenty of the men need reminding, too.

lisamarlene |
5 people marked this as a favorite. |

I overheard this gem in the classroom last Thursday. Two girls were working together, and one said, sadly, "My Mama says I'm too young to say fart."
(But she has a speech impediment, so it came out fawwwt)
The other parted her on the back. "That's okay; maybe when you're five."
The first girl burst into tears.
"But I'm alweady five!"
It was sooooo hard not to laugh.

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

TL;DR version: A realtor (who happens to be an old classmate of mine) just sold a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house a few blocks away from us in El Cerrito.
Asking price: $1.295 million
Paid Price: $2.45 million
Time on Market: 10 days
John Oliver did a fantastic segment on the housing crisis, but the TL;DR version of that is that corporations are buying homes in "hot" areas at ludicrous prices as long-term investments.
So why is there a housing crisis around here again?
Oh, yeah...

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NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Ooog. Quite the week this week. Starting a new project at work (always "fun"), plus Impus Major's finals, plus a Nighwish/Beast in Black concert on Wednesday night (Impus Major is driving straight there from his physics final), then a 6:30 am "training for new administrators" meeting on Thursday.
I suspect I will sleep hard this weekend...

captain yesterday |

I have another wall finished.
That's 3 of 6 so far and tomorrow I should make it an even 4.
Meanwhile, across the street from me former coworker and his guy have had to change his walls twice and the patio 4 times. Thus allowing me to catch up with them. Even though I'm working by myself.
I suspect some of the changes are due to improper elevation measurements but I'm not over there so I can't say for sure.

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

That sounds like a fun concert, for those who enjoy concerts. Hope y'all have a blast.
Seeing Nightwish in concert is on my "bucket list". Unfortunately, it's not at a massive European venue so they're hardly going to be doing all their pyrotechnics and huge stage props, but on the other hand I'll be close enough to the stage that I could fling flowers at Floor (or Yannis), so I'll take the trade-off.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Question of the Day: Is there any field outside of education where a degree in the field is a strong negative indicator?
I've been paid to teach in one way or another for 38 years now. There are many degrees and credentials associated with education:
- K12 teachers need a Bachelor's Degree and a teaching credential
- Community college instructors need a Master's Degree
- Most 4-year college instructors need a Ph.D.
Notice what's missing from being able to teach? A degree in education.
Over those 38 years, I've dealt with administrators with doctorates in Education (Ed.D.s) and curriculum developers and technical writers with degrees in Instructional Design. And of the dozens I've worked with, all but one have been uniformly terrible, to the point that when I see a degree in education on a resume I'm strongly inclined to throw it out. But I don't, and we interview them, and we have another terrible experience with someone who knows all about learning theory, but who can't build a 10-slide deck or a 10-minute hands-on lab to save their lives.
It's really weird to me: Why does an education in education lead to such terrible results?
And I wonder whether any other field has such a contradiction.
EDIT: Pondering it, it may be that we're in a technical field. The people with degrees in Instructional Design come in, and their description of what they think the job will be is, "And then the subject matter expert will give me all of the content. And they'll tell me what's important. And they'll provide the flow. And once I have the content and the flow and the best practices and the graphics, all from other people, then I'll use learning theory to put it all into the best form possible."
"Well, what if you have to do your own research, build your own course, and the subject matter expert won't talk to you?"
"...I can't work under those conditions!"
EDIT 2: I'm wrong. The *ONE* person we hired who was fantastic was an MBA, not an Instructional Design grad.

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1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Now, these numbers are nowhere NEAR the average for the entire US and the region is something of an outlier in that the CoL is EXTREMELY low and historically the cost of land is quite low as well (including property taxes) so much of this may partially be due to the market "correcting" itself after decades of low costs but... after doing some more research as my family is DESPERATE to get our own home I found the following, and I have to be honest, I was FLOORED and crushed by what I learned.
The median final cost of the sale for a single residence homes in my area went up:
13% from 2018 > 2019
21% from 2019 > 2020
14% from 2020 > 2021
28% from 2021 > April 2022
Since 2018 the price for a single residence home in my area that cost $100k at that time would now cost about $199,516 to purchase. According to the same official numbers, 43% of the people living here are under the amount considered by the federal government to be impoverished/under the poverty line. Strangely enough, 46% of the population are also living in rental units, apartments, or in government-subsidized housing... very strange that those numbers are so close.
Even among those who make more than enough to get them over the poverty line only about 28% of the ADULTS in the area own or mortgage their home, the rest are either living with a family member who owns the home, are homeless, or are staying in a rental property without personally being signed to the lease or considered a dependent of the person who is actually renting it.
FHA home loans are never going to get us out of this hole, this bubble needs to pop.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

The median final cost of the sale for a single residence homes in my area went up:
13% from 2018 > 2019
21% from 2019 > 2020
14% from 2020 > 2021
28% from 2021 > April 2022Since 2018 the price for a single residence home in my area that cost $100k at that time would now cost about $199,516 to purchase. According to the same official numbers, 43% of the people living here are under the amount considered by the federal government to be impoverished/under the poverty line. Strangely enough, 46% of the population are also living in rental units, apartments, or in government-subsidized housing.
Even among those who make more than enough to get them over the poverty line only about 28% of the ADULTS in the area own or mortgage their home, the rest are either living with a family member who owns the home, are homeless, or are staying in a rental property without personally being signed to the lease or considered a dependent of the person who is actually renting it.
FHA home loans are never going to get us out of this hole, this bubble needs to pop.
Once investment firms with trillion-dollar portfolios saw the numbers you just posted, it was over.
"We can make an extremely safe investment that pays far above the DJIA and that pays dividends (in the form of rent) to boot? Where do we sign up?"
At that point you have to regulate what corporations and investors can own. "If you're a corporation worth over $100 million, you can't own a building in an area zoned for single-family housing."
That law will pass at the sunset of never, and the Supreme Court would throw it out anyway.

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Ooh... and now we have a "government incompetence test":
GothBard just got a jury summons under a name she never uses. (Think "Katherine" instead of "Kate".) Since she last served in November, she tried to sign in and found that they don't have her birth date correct either. (To sign in in California you need your juror number and your date of birth.)
So, wrong name, wrong DoB, no record of her last service... just where did the government get this information they're trying to use?
Even worse, to avoid the risk of criminal penalty she's going to have to call it in, which I described as,
"You'll be on hold for an hour, then it'll take you 10-15 minutes to get someone to understand the issue, then you'll finally get someone who says, 'Nothing we can do. Just ignore it,' or something equally unhelpful."
On the bright side, when I accidentally missed jury duty the "penalty" was getting another summons 3 months later, so not exactly "harsh". But if GothBard doesn't want to be showing up twice a year under two different names she's got to get this one worked out.
And I pity her for having to deal with it.

Freehold DM |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Ooh... and now we have a "government incompetence test":
GothBard just got a jury summons under a name she never uses. (Think "Katherine" instead of "Kate".) Since she last served in November, she tried to sign in and found that they don't have her birth date correct either. (To sign in in California you need your juror number and your date of birth.)
So, wrong name, wrong DoB, no record of her last service... just where did the government get this information they're trying to use?
Even worse, to avoid the risk of criminal penalty she's going to have to call it in, which I described as,
"You'll be on hold for an hour, then it'll take you 10-15 minutes to get someone to understand the issue, then you'll finally get someone who says, 'Nothing we can do. Just ignore it,' or something equally unhelpful."On the bright side, when I accidentally missed jury duty the "penalty" was getting another summons 3 months later, so not exactly "harsh". But if GothBard doesn't want to be showing up twice a year under two different names she's got to get this one worked out.
And I pity her for having to deal with it.
I'm guessing there is a social security number issue.
At my last job someone on my caseload was born the exact same date I was born, and our social security numbers were disturbingly close.

lisamarlene |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Ooh... and now we have a "government incompetence test":
GothBard just got a jury summons under a name she never uses. (Think "Katherine" instead of "Kate".) Since she last served in November, she tried to sign in and found that they don't have her birth date correct either. (To sign in in California you need your juror number and your date of birth.)
So, wrong name, wrong DoB, no record of her last service... just where did the government get this information they're trying to use?
Even worse, to avoid the risk of criminal penalty she's going to have to call it in, which I described as,
"You'll be on hold for an hour, then it'll take you 10-15 minutes to get someone to understand the issue, then you'll finally get someone who says, 'Nothing we can do. Just ignore it,' or something equally unhelpful."On the bright side, when I accidentally missed jury duty the "penalty" was getting another summons 3 months later, so not exactly "harsh". But if GothBard doesn't want to be showing up twice a year under two different names she's got to get this one worked out.
And I pity her for having to deal with it.
I got a jury summons from Contra Costa County forwarded to me in Texas three months after we'd moved. I sent them a copy of my lease agreement on our rental house and a copy of my employment contract, as well as a copy of my Texas driver's license.
They responded that this was insufficient proof and that I'd have to appear at the court in person.
I decided to ignore it.

Drejk |

Ooh... and now we have a "government incompetence test":
GothBard just got a jury summons under a name she never uses. (Think "Katherine" instead of "Kate".) Since she last served in November, she tried to sign in and found that they don't have her birth date correct either. (To sign in in California you need your juror number and your date of birth.)
So, wrong name, wrong DoB, no record of her last service... just where did the government get this information they're trying to use?
Even worse, to avoid the risk of criminal penalty she's going to have to call it in, which I described as,
"You'll be on hold for an hour, then it'll take you 10-15 minutes to get someone to understand the issue, then you'll finally get someone who says, 'Nothing we can do. Just ignore it,' or something equally unhelpful."On the bright side, when I accidentally missed jury duty the "penalty" was getting another summons 3 months later, so not exactly "harsh". But if GothBard doesn't want to be showing up twice a year under two different names she's got to get this one worked out.
And I pity her for having to deal with it.
Or that might be a case of erroneous address of someone else with the same name.
Some years ago, I want to an (um)employment office for a previously set date - when the clerk came back with my file that was brought from archive, I noticed that the birthdate on the file was off and told her so. Except, the date was right - another person sharing my name and surname, except some ten years younger had a visit set on the same day.
A story that might had shared before - many-many years ago, when my grandparents had still lived here, so before I was five, possibly before my birth even - my grandmother was called to a local militia department by name but the officer that requested her presence was surprised to see woman near retirement age. My grandmother thought she was called because her son-my uncle illegally fled communist Poland years earlier and settled in Western Germany. There was a prostitute living in our district with the same name and surname, but obviously much younger than my grandmother. IIRC the story - which I learned from her work colleague upon whom many years later I incidentally meet in a school I attended when she became economy teacher she - the other woman even had the same father's surname (a standard way of discerning people of the same name and surname in those times) and only comparison of date of birth in the documents revealed the error.
On the other hand, one of the old bills (electricity) had my mother's name wrong. It had male name. Polish language generally doesn't have unisex names (though like in Spanish, a man can get Maria—Mary—as a second name, though it rarely happens these days).

NobodysHome |

A story that might had shared before - many-many years ago, when my grandparents had still lived here, so before I was five, possibly before my birth even - my grandmother was called to a local militia department by name but the officer that requested her presence was surprised to see woman near retirement age. My grandmother thought she was called because her son-my uncle illegally fled communist Poland years earlier and settled in Western Germany. There was a prostitute living in our district with the same name and surname, but obviously much younger than my grandmother.
So, did you ever get an explanation as to why the local militia officer was bringing in a prostitute?

Drejk |

Drejk wrote:A story that might had shared before - many-many years ago, when my grandparents had still lived here, so before I was five, possibly before my birth even - my grandmother was called to a local militia department by name but the officer that requested her presence was surprised to see woman near retirement age. My grandmother thought she was called because her son-my uncle illegally fled communist Poland years earlier and settled in Western Germany. There was a prostitute living in our district with the same name and surname, but obviously much younger than my grandmother.So, did you ever get an explanation as to why the local militia officer was bringing in a prostitute?
Nope.
Prostitution was and remains technically legal in Poland though in the past law enforcement (militia was really a militarized police force but the communist regime wanted to distance them from both the interwar period "bourgeoise" police and the uniformed services of law enforcement that served Germans during the occupation, so they named their newly formed replacement "citizen militia") often harassed prostitutes or used them as willing or not-so-willing informers on both criminal and political targets.