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Today I was asked by a client to do something both creepy and also illegal in multiple countries.
It was a great day.
I have been asked again, by the same person at the same client.
The request was a report of all employees who have more than 200 unread emails in their mailbox and how much over 200.
No.
"So how am I supposed to know who is behind in their work? Open all their emails? Please advise?"
I can't tell you how to manage your employees, but I can tell you that's a useless metric for basing anything from. I can also tell you "No.". You should also STEP DOWN AS THE CEO.
Yes, I will make that speech naked. Adds to the absurdity of the request.
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"So how am I supposed to know who is behind in their work? Open all their emails? Please advise?"
(1) Unlearn any and all stupidity someone whose brain resides in the 1970s taught you.
(2) Determine the industry standard expected production from each employee based on their role.(3) Instead of monitoring their emails, or how many bathroom breaks they take, or whether they're watching YouTube or YouPorn at their desks, monitor their production as well-defined for every job in every industry.
(4) If they're meeting their production quota and their work is of acceptable quality, leave them the f*** alone.
EDIT: I swear, such requests enrage me because they show such a fundamental lack of comprehension as to why you hired an employee in the first place. You needed a job done. You hired someone to do that job. Either they are doing that job satisfactorily or they aren't. Anything else is none of your f***ing business unless they're breaking the law.
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Oh, I knew you were going to enjoy that one.
You do wonder what it says about me that I requested feedback from the entire team about my performance over the last year, but only about half of them have dared ask for me to review them.
I am the Simon Cowell of performance feedback.
And why is AI years away from taking our jobs?
I attended the first day of xxx's training on xx-xxx-2025, so I am providing feedback on his course design and training delivery.
I thoroughly enjoyed your training session and found your course design to be engaging and well-structured. Your delivery was clear and concise, making it easy for me to follow along and absorb the material. Keep up the excellent work!
Notice anything? Like the fact that my tone was entirely neutral and fact-based, and AI turned it into glowing praise? I mean, WTF? And it's been doing that every time. I even tried "AI sucks" as a prompt and it turned it into a glowing review of AI.
So, if you want everyone to win a prize...
...aaaand, regretting life decisions.
Poor Lenore. It's a perfectly beautiful, lovely name, and most people who hear it are at least vaguely reminded of Poe. But given her sheer size and aggression in pursuing food or anyone foolish enough to assault Morrigan, we now hear daily cries of, "Here comes the Bismark!"
Sorry, kitty!
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The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.
...aaaand, regretting life decisions.
Poor Lenore. It's a perfectly beautiful, lovely name, and most people who hear it are at least vaguely reminded of Poe. But given her sheer size and aggression in pursuing food or anyone foolish enough to assault Morrigan, we now hear daily cries of, "Here comes the Bismark!"
Sorry, kitty!
Eh, I don't know if it is a good name...
Bismarck had little actual success aside of destroying Hood. Yes, it stole the attention of the whole Royal Navy and their little dog too, was a PR stunt, and disrupted the convoy system for a moment, but it little good to Germany war effort. In fact, building and fielding Bismarck gobbled up resources that Germany could not really afford to waste...
Lenore definitely deserves a better, more successful name.
The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.
I gather that in the days when water was a health risk people did drink beer at breakfast, so, out of morbid curiosity, what sort of beer should one drink for breakfast, if not stout? Ale? Or is "ale" synonymous with "beer" in the most generic sense?
(I have, with great reluctance, had two beers in my life: the first with some school friends because at the time I wasn't brave enough to try my luck ordering something I would actually care for, and then the second and last with my father, who had had his heart set on having one with his firstborn once I was of age for it.
The next time I had a drink with my father, I had come out, and a fantastic (and fabulous!) raspberry martini helped clarify what sort of daughter he had had all along. :) )
A fine Pilsner is the approved breakfast beer.
There's a Belgian ale called Leffe that tastes a bit like bacon. It would make a fine accompaniment to a full British breakfast.
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Wait, is that how we got tea? Part of boiling water to make it safe?
Pretty much.
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The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.
You are SO British it hurts!
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Wait, is that how we got tea? Part of boiling water to make it safe?Pretty much.
Tea, the original health food drink for the fashionable set! :)
The Oracle of Wiki collects a few fun factoids from various sources in their article on “Tea in the United Kingdom,” including a paper that argues for the importance of tea to help account for falling mortality rates in the mid-18th century, although in 1731 tea was still suspiciously foreign stuff. I'm not really surprised, but I know less about the earlier bit of the century than I ought to.
And about a hundred years earlier, apparently, a traveler living down to any stereotypes the Chinese might have been pleased to hold about far western barbarians called it “only water with a kind of herb boyled in it” – which, I’d like to think I’m not a snob about tea , but really!
As you know, we've been playing a lot of 5e, both tabletop and in Solasta. And it has a lot of shortcomings. But this morning's really hit home:
After playing a druid up to 15th level, I realized something about the Wild Shape ability: If I could use it as a debuff against enemy casters, I would.
So yes, one of the druid's defining class features was made so useless that it'd be better as a debuff.
Oops.
As an example, at 8th level you're allowed to transform into a CR 1 creature that ooh, ooh, can have a flying speed! But considering Fly is a 3rd-level spell, your wizard has been able to make people fly for multiple levels now, so what are you doing?
In short, they kept it in for flavor and roleplay ("I'm going to sneak into the castle as a weasel!"), but it's no longer a combat ability.
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The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.You are SO British it hurts!
Am I so British it hurts as well?
The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.I gather that in the days when water was a health risk people did drink beer at breakfast, so, out of morbid curiosity, what sort of beer should one drink for breakfast, if not stout? Ale? Or is "ale" synonymous with "beer" in the most generic sense?
Traditionally, beer was brewed with hops and ale wasn't, though I don't think that's the case any more. Back in t'day, people drank small beer as a kind of soft drink, which was far weaker than modern beers (around 2%, maybe?) - you'd get a buzz out of it if you were guzzling it down by the quart all day, but it wouldn't enliven your morning as much as LM's 6% plus Leffe would if you had some first thing.
Am I so British it hurts as well?The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.You are SO British it hurts!
Wait, I thought you were an Aussie.
Am I so British it hurts as well?The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.You are SO British it hurts!
Do you drink stout that tastes like jam and then insist on finishing your pint in spite of it?
Traditionally, beer was brewed with hops and ale wasn't, though I don't think that's the case any more. Back in t'day, people drank small beer as a kind of soft drink, which was far weaker than modern beers (around 2%, maybe?) - you'd get a buzz out of it if you were guzzling it down by the quart all day, but it wouldn't enliven your morning as much as LM's 6% plus Leffe would if you had some first thing.
Huh. I wondered if it might be something like that. And lighter brews to start the day make sense, much in the same way that how much wine the ancients drank is less alarming when one remembers that they didn't have it neat. One learns something every day!
I got to hear a fun presentation once, trying to pin down Greco-Roman prejudices against beer. If I remember correctly, part of if was that when the Greeks first encountered it, it was in cultures that used such unmanly devices as *straws* to avoids bits of chaff and whatnot that might be floating in less-than-ideally-filtered drinks.
Wait, I thought you were an Aussie.Am I so British it hurts as well?The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.You are SO British it hurts!
British, Aussie, same thing.
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Is owning a smart cat a blessing or a curse?
Blacky continues his entertainingly clueless ways, last night nearly falling into the toilet because his sense of depth perception is apparently nonexistent. And his attempts to steal the Fluffernutter's food continue in the vein of, "NobodysHome puts out food. Blacky runs up to it. NobodysHome carries him out of the room. Blacky wonders how his clever plan was foiled again."
Fluffy, on the other hand...
As I mentioned, she'd already learned that going straight for the food was a no-go, so she'd been waiting for me to leave the room before descending on it. I'd come back in, catch her in the act, and go out.
So she's started hiding until after my first revisit. The only way I caught her this morning was because I like to do a kitten check in the morning and after a search of the house didn't reveal her I went back to the bedroom, and there she was, happily nomming the Fluffernutter's food. She'd hid through multiple revisits until I took long enough that she was confident I was gone for good.
She is too clever by half, that one.
Is owning a [...] cat a blessing or a curse?
...
Curse. Owning a cat is a curse.
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The Bay Area's microclimates are a neverending source of amusement. We've been getting warnings about a massive heat wave for about a week now, and I keep checking the weather and see nothing remotely akin to a heat wave locally...
...and apparently it's here...
...and it's still struggling to break 70°F here in Albany...
EDIT: Oh, I know that we'll get ours come late September or early October, when we get a week's worth of 95-105°F weather in uninsulated houses never designed for that kind of heat with no AC, and we'll listen to the hand-wringing about how, "It's never been so hot around here before," when it happens every. Single. Year. But that's months away. It's July. It's cold. (57°F and foggy at the moment.) I'll be smug all the way up 'til when the heat wave actually hits me.
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So, when your infant is 6 months old and crying for 2 hours every morning because your pediatrician told you to "just let him cry", that's a parental choice. I disagree with it, but I may be in the minority.
When your toddler is 2 years old and walking and talking and still crying for 2 hours every morning, it really feels like something is wrong there. But you can't exactly walk up to your neighbors and say, "Hey, I'm really concerned that your toddler is crying all the time. You should get that checked out."
*SIGH*
...aaaand, regretting life decisions.
Poor Lenore. It's a perfectly beautiful, lovely name, and most people who hear it are at least vaguely reminded of Poe. But given her sheer size and aggression in pursuing food or anyone foolish enough to assault Morrigan, we now hear daily cries of, "Here comes the Bismark!"
Sorry, kitty!
Eh, I don't know if it is a good name...
Bismarck had little actual success aside of destroying Hood. Yes, it stole the attention of the whole Royal Navy and their little dog too, was a PR stunt, and disrupted the convoy system for a moment, but it little good to Germany war effort. In fact, building and fielding Bismarck gobbled up resources that Germany could not really afford to waste...
Lenore definitely deserves a better, more successful name.
Terpitz? Graf Spee?
All of Taxi is free on Pluto.
I missed that rule in solar quest
Traditionally, beer was brewed with hops and ale wasn't, though I don't think that's the case any more. Back in t'day, people drank small beer as a kind of soft drink, which was far weaker than modern beers (around 2%, maybe?) - you'd get a buzz out of it if you were guzzling it down by the quart all day, but it wouldn't enliven your morning as much as LM's 6% plus Leffe would if you had some first thing.
Huh. I wondered if it might be something like that. And lighter brews to start the day make sense, much in the same way that how much wine the ancients drank is less alarming when one remembers that they didn't have it neat. One learns something every day!
I got to hear a fun presentation once, trying to pin down Greco-Roman prejudices against beer. If I remember correctly, part of if was that when the Greeks first encountered it, it was in cultures that used such unmanly devices as *straws* to avoids bits of chaff and whatnot that might be floating in less-than-ideally-filtered drinks.
I saw some ancient Egyptian beer in a museum once, and the display indicated it was more like alcoholic porridge than anything else, so I shouldn't wonder that people who could get wine preferred to drink that instead.
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Apparently, the biblical "land of milk and honey" is also more like "yogourt and fruit syrup," but accuracy on that point is rather low on the list of ongoing problems for exegesis to the laity, for scriptural scholars.
An Amazon van decided to do a left turn right in front of me on my motorcycle today. I got stopped with about two meters of space. So that was fun. It was on a blind curve. More than 90 degrees angle turn. Lucky, I wasn’t hauling ass.
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You know of dust bunnies, but have you heard of cobweb sheep?
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You know of dust bunnies, but have you heard of cobweb sheep?
I believe it's a flock of sheep, not a heard.
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"So how am I supposed to know who is behind in their work? Open all their emails? Please advise?"(1) Unlearn any and all stupidity someone whose brain resides in the 1970s taught you.
(2) Determine the industry standard expected production from each employee based on their role.
(3) Instead of monitoring their emails, or how many bathroom breaks they take, or whether they're watching YouTube or YouPorn at their desks, monitor their production as well-defined for every job in every industry.
(4) If they're meeting their production quota and their work is of acceptable quality, leave them the f*** alone.EDIT: I swear, such requests enrage me because they show such a fundamental lack of comprehension as to why you hired an employee in the first place. You needed a job done. You hired someone to do that job. Either they are doing that job satisfactorily or they aren't. Anything else is none of your f***ing business unless they're breaking the law.
"But the entire reason I went into management was so I can manage people! Directly! As minutely as possible! I need the power trip!"
Sometimes I forget that some people's coping mechanism is to avoid all news entirely.
NobodysHome: I hope that you and yours are safe!
Boston Friend: ???
NH: From the fire.
BF: There was a fire??
So of course she looked it up and now she's gone dead silent because I'm sure she's feeling overwhelmed with grief. But it's really hard to see a tragic disaster befall a friend's home city and not ask, "Are you OK?"
I thought most people got into management because they couldn't actually do the job, but could brown-nose the boss."But the entire reason I went into management was so I can manage people! Directly! As minutely as possible! I need the power trip!""So how am I supposed to know who is behind in their work? Open all their emails? Please advise?"(1) Unlearn any and all stupidity someone whose brain resides in the 1970s taught you.
(2) Determine the industry standard expected production from each employee based on their role.
(3) Instead of monitoring their emails, or how many bathroom breaks they take, or whether they're watching YouTube or YouPorn at their desks, monitor their production as well-defined for every job in every industry.
(4) If they're meeting their production quota and their work is of acceptable quality, leave them the f*** alone.EDIT: I swear, such requests enrage me because they show such a fundamental lack of comprehension as to why you hired an employee in the first place. You needed a job done. You hired someone to do that job. Either they are doing that job satisfactorily or they aren't. Anything else is none of your f***ing business unless they're breaking the law.
Potato, Tomato.
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Yesterday, at the age of fifty, I took my very first surfing lesson.
I spent an hour and a half falling down, looking stupid, dodging lion's mane jellyfish, and drinking the Atlantic, but it felt absolutely exhilarating.
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Awesome!
I'm planning to get back into roller skating after the Big Move. One of our PnP group had her BDay get together at a local roller rink, and I discovered I still have most of the muscle memory to get back into skating... provided I have skates that fit. (The rink did not have skates in my size, sadly, and it was painful to wear one size down.)
So going to buy skates after the move and see about getting into the groove again. There's a skate park in the city we're moving to so that'll be an opportunity.
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It was the boy's end-of-term concert today - he was in the Year 7 Music Group, who played 'Seven Nation Army', and 'Chasing Cars', by Snow Patrol, and did a grand job. There were also several numbers by a school dance group who were exceptionally good, Gloria Estefan medley notwithstanding.
...aaaand, regretting life decisions.
Poor Lenore. It's a perfectly beautiful, lovely name, and most people who hear it are at least vaguely reminded of Poe. But given her sheer size and aggression in pursuing food or anyone foolish enough to assault Morrigan, we now hear daily cries of, "Here comes the Bismark!"
Sorry, kitty!
A fine Pilsner is the approved breakfast beer.
The only beer I will drink for breakfast is Guiness, as my ancestors would want. And mom gave me as punch on occasion as I was a small, sickly kid.
As you know, we've been playing a lot of 5e, both tabletop and in Solasta. And it has a lot of shortcomings.
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I don’t drink stout (or much in the way of alcohol), and I hate coffee but love tea. Also, I’m an Englishman born and raised.
TEA FOREVER COFFEE NEVER