We get off for holidays but we don't get paid for it.
The big ones during the season; Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day.
Also deer season, but I don't hunt so I'm literally the only person that works that week.
Yeah, I had that job too. Took some time off to visit Michigan with my friend. Vacation without pay. Doubly brutal, because not only spending money, but not making any either.
I regret spending so many years at that job. The owner bid to make money, so he didn’t always have work for us. Plus, it was excavation/earth work, so if the weather was too wet we couldn’t do it. You can’t grade a lot if the backhoe tires are leaving huge ruts.
On the other hand, we did do pipe line installation for the company I currently work for. Kind of how I got in.
Hunting season is popular at my current workplace too, but maybe it’s harder to get drawn here. But people put in for elk, and deer. Other stuff too, but those are the main ones.
I have ye olde gout, so I don’t eat much meat. So I don’t hunt.
We get off for holidays but we don't get paid for it.
The big ones during the season; Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day.
Also deer season, but I don't hunt so I'm literally the only person that works that week.
Yeah, I had that job too. Took some time off to visit Michigan with my friend. Vacation without pay. Doubly brutal, because not only spending money, but not making any either.
I regret spending so many years at that job. The owner bid to make money, so he didn’t always have work for us. Plus, it was excavation/earth work, so if the weather was too wet we couldn’t do it. You can’t grade a lot if the backhoe tires are leaving huge ruts.
On the other hand, we did do pipe line installation for the company I currently work for. Kind of how I got in.Hunting season is popular at my current workplace too, but maybe it’s harder to get drawn here. But people put in for elk, and deer. Other stuff too, but those are the main ones.
I have ye olde gout, so I don’t eat much meat. So I don’t hunt.
Thankfully, I'm in high demand so I'm scheduled out for the next year and a half and we use clearstone for both our base and our screed layer so as long as it isn't actively downpouring or thunderstorming then I'm good, so I don't lose as much time when it rains and then in the winter we have 2-3 garden shows we do so that keeps me busy. This year I actually only had 3 weeks that I didn't work.
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Super excited for this year!
Tomorrow I get to take Crookshanks in to the office to fill out the new hire paperwork and application and then I get to take her safety gear shopping to get her her own respirator mask and noise canceling earmuffs.
Edit: And she also gets her own hard hat she can personalize.
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Do you use reinforced boots, or is there a little risk regarding feet?
(I would not be surprised if Big Norse Wolf might want to dispute the latter notion)
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I was curious since I know California has deer hunting seasons but we never hear about them at work, but I was surprised to learn we also allow black bear hunting. Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.
On the other hand, all the hunters I know do it for food, and bear meat isn't exactly tasty. My uncle-in-law used to go out every deer season, bag 2-3 deer and a handful of ducks, fill his freezer, and then he was done. One great big, "Why would I hunt what I can't eat?"
Gotta respect that.
Oh, the irony and the agony of old-school software design.
As I've mentioned, since Global Megacorporation does business software rather than personal software, our approach to personal data is much more in line with, "Be even stricter than the EU's restrictions," than Google or Microsoft's, "But of COURSE we need to read all your personal emails to know how to best market to you!"
Unfortunately, that wasn't always the case, and I think our Senior Vice President would have had a stress-induced aneurysm watching GothBard struggle through her on-boarding forms. And I'd bet that she was using old-school Global Megacorporation software to do it.
SVP's mantra is, "Only ask for the minimum number of fields, and don't make any of them mandatory unless it really is vital information you need. All of the rest of the information you may want to collect can be in optional expandable 'show more' regions."
So, for example, if you're entering a potential new customer, his mandate would be that only first name, last name, phone number, and email would be shown, and you'd only have to fill out one of each (one name, one way to contact the person). Because that's the absolute minimum information you need to get in touch, and everything else (address, additional personal information) should be in expandable regions so you can put it in or not at your leisure.
GothBard's experience was amazingly the opposite of this. She had to enter contact information for every HR rep at every company she'd worked for for the last 10 years, including first and last names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. And all of the fields were required. Does her new company really need to know who her HR rep was in 2015? And it went on and on, page after page of utterly useless trivia that they will never use for any reason, but because the software designer thought, "Hey, someone might someday need this particular bit of data," it was on the page, and frequently a required field. (My favorite: "What was the exact date you moved into your current residence?" Seriously? And it had to be day-month-year or it generated an error. I'm amazed it didn't require a time as well.)
It was a remarkably unpleasant experience.
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Do you use reinforced boots, or is there a little risk regarding feet?
(I would not be surprised if Big Norse Wolf might want to dispute the latter notion)
She already has reinforced boots.
It's one of those things that everyone in the Midwest gets upon reaching adulthood regardless of profession or need.
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Does this ring a bell?
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Do you use reinforced boots, or is there a little risk regarding feet?
(I would not be surprised if Big Norse Wolf might want to dispute the latter notion)
She already has reinforced boots.
It's one of those things that everyone in the Midwest gets upon reaching adulthood regardless of profession or need.
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My favorite: "What was the exact date you moved into your current residence?" Seriously? And it had to be day-month-year or it generated an error.
A proof of their exquisite sophistication, or at least sign of being civilized people.
I was curious since I know California has deer hunting seasons but we never hear about them at work, but I was surprised to learn we also allow black bear hunting. Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.
How much do hunting tags and ammunition cost? That might be a factor.
Soooo...
I started recently Baldur's Gate 3...
And then this-month's Humble Choice had Afterimage, which I installed on Tuesday... And fully finished today. I have seen most of the endings (though I had to check some guides to reach them because the game is not really helpful with guiding you across).
The game is gorgeous - beautiful graphics, fine music, great animations, and detailed enemy sprites (after ending the game I spend extra time just going through the bestiary and admiring their design).
Combat starts rather slow and clunky, but after a few hours of getting better equipment, getting hang of it, and, crucially, getting some key abilities, particularly invulnerability frames during the dash (which is only available for acquisition relatively late into the game, and that is the biggest problem of the game in my opinion because that ability really changes the combat dynamics).
The map is vast and contains various secrets, shortcuts, and details.
The story is dosed very slowly, and spread between occasional notes and echoes of memories, descriptions of items, and actual events taking place in game. You don't really know what is going until the very end. Some steps needed to progress are rather arcane.
The character power grows quite significantly and certain weapon and gear choices are overwhelmingly better than others. Most of the end-game bosses where very easy to defeat once you knew their attack patterns, unlike some of earlier bosses (which were very uneven).
The game also offers multiple endings, depending on what you managed to find AND the choices made, though they are generally only prerequisites for the true best ending.
I have to say that enjoyed it much more than Hollow Knight, where I haven't passed the true final boss yet.
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Second day of Spring Break: catching up on the piles of laundry to be done, laundry to be sorted and folded, laundry to be ironed and hung, bringing spring/summer wardrobe from the garage and packing away the fall/winter clothes, etc.,and vacuuming.
Tonight, I'm making my Auntie's spaghetti and meatballs. She died on Wednesday. It was sudden, but she was 102, and had a good life. She was still playing cards and swimming every day right up to the end.
Sorry to hear that. Sounds like she lived well, as you say.
I was curious since I know California has deer hunting seasons but we never hear about them at work, but I was surprised to learn we also allow black bear hunting. Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.How much do hunting tags and ammunition cost? That might be a factor.
Not much. A bear license for a Californian is $56.98, and while Shiro complained about the cost of ammunition, he was buying .50 caliber for his ludicrous rifle; I'm sure you could bring down a few bears for well under $100. But again, black bear fur isn't all that great for much of anything, and their meat is terrible, so why hunt them?
How much do hunting tags and ammunition cost? That might be a factor.Not much. A bear license for a Californian is $56.98, and while Shiro complained about the cost of ammunition, he was buying .50 caliber for his ludicrous rifle; I'm sure you could bring down a few bears for well under $100. But again, black bear fur isn't all that great for much of anything, and their meat is terrible, so why hunt them?
If their population gets out of control, they can cause quite a bit of property damage and general mayhem. Black bears have been something of a recurring problem in downstate NY-- I remember about 20 years ago, my grandparents had to spend a couple grand replacing part of their deck after bears destroyed it trying to get to the bird feeders. About ten years after that, I was passing through a nearby area area with a group of musicians, and I ended up spooking a bear that was trying to get into the tour van. That time was in the middle of the suburbs, and could have gotten ugly pretty quick if I hadn't been careful.
As far as ammo goes, after a cursory look... $30-$40 per box plus 11% CA tax for .30-06? Not to mention paperwork, range fees, etc. That adds up pretty damn quick. I picked up a new deer rifle over the winter, and even with Iowa prices, it still cost about $70 just to sight it in ($30 for a box of .350 Legend, $40 range fee).
That doesn’t sound like that much for a hobby. I spend as much on games.
I'm on kind of a tight budget. For example, I spent two years saving up for the rifle I mentioned earlier. Pretty much all of my disposable income goes into my annual trip back east to see friends and family.
If their population gets out of control, they can cause quite a bit of property damage and general mayhem. Black bears have been something of a recurring problem in downstate NY-- I remember about 20 years ago, my grandparents had to spend a couple grand replacing part of their deck after bears destroyed it trying to get to the bird feeders. About ten years after that, I was passing through a nearby area area with a group of musicians, and I ended up spooking a bear that was trying to get into the tour van. That time was in the middle of the suburbs, and could have gotten ugly pretty quick if I hadn't been careful.
Even though California's gun laws are some of the strictest in the country, once an animal is on your property and causing damage they're remarkably reasonable. You're supposed to get a permit first, but if a bear's tearing up your deck and you shoot it, you'll most likely get a, "Tut tut! Don't do it again!"
My tenant discharged a firearm to kill an animal he considered dangerous not just within city limits, but across the street from a school. They investigated the circumstances, interviewed witnesses, and determined that he had likely protected said schoolkids so he didn't even get a ticket. The law is absolute because it has to be. I appreciate it when those who enforce it practice discretion, and those who handle animal shootings around here seem to be sensible folk.
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I was curious since I know California has deer hunting seasons but we never hear about them at work, but I was surprised to learn we also allow black bear hunting. Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.... But again, black bear fur isn't all that great for much of anything, and their meat is terrible, so why hunt them?
Materials for creepy folk costumes? *Gathers flowers, assembles masks, starts constructing wicker man.* :)
This is the part of me that would be playing a Sensate in a Planescape game asking, but, uh, for the unenlightened, dare I inquire what's so unpleasant about bear meat?
My branch of the family has been urban for a few generations now, mercifully, but occasionally someone will break out a story about their great-granddad or whoever and the old homestead (now being stubbornly looked after by a couple of my great-uncles who really maybe oughtn't to), so we spoiled young'uns can sometimes be distracted by stories calculated for our horrible fascination.
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This is the part of me that would be playing a Sensate in a Planescape game asking, but, uh, for the unenlightened, dare I inquire what's so unpleasant about bear meat?
It's just kind of gristly and greasy. The taste itself is pretty bland.
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Even though California's gun laws are some of the strictest in the country, once an animal is on your property and causing damage they're remarkably reasonable. You're supposed to get a permit first, but if a bear's tearing up your deck and you shoot it, you'll most likely get a, "Tut tut! Don't do it again!"
In that case, there wasn't really all that much my grandparents could do. They would have been in their mid-70s at the time, and my grandfather had to quit hunting and shooting in his 60s due to crippling arthritis.
I appreciate it when those who enforce it practice discretion, and those who handle animal shootings around here seem to be sensible folk.
You're lucky then. It's been my experience that a not insignificant number of people in the position of enforcing the law are either incompetent, on a power trip, or both.
In the case of the bear and the tour van, we were a bunch of 20-something musicians. Even if any of us owned a gun at the time, we sure as s#~~ weren't going to be packing heat in suburban downstate New York on account of bears. Imagine explaining that if we got pulled over...
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This is the part of me that would be playing a Sensate in a Planescape game asking, but, uh, for the unenlightened, dare I inquire what's so unpleasant about bear meat?It's just kind of gristly and greasy. The taste itself is pretty bland.
Imagine a really cheap cut of beef that's full of gristle. Now soak it in vegetable oil for a couple of days.
Cook it and "enjoy".
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Materials for creepy folk costumes? *Gathers flowers, assembles masks, starts constructing wicker man.* :)
You don't put the bear in a cage. You put the Cage in a bear.
I appreciate it when those who enforce it practice discretion, and those who handle animal shootings around here seem to be sensible folk.You're lucky then. It's been my experience that a not insignificant number of people in the position of enforcing the law are either incompetent, on a power trip, or both.
Oh, if I were to get started on typical law enforcement in this state it would be a scathing hundred-page dissertation... on just the things that are wrong with it.
But it's a different breed of enforcement officer who deals with animal cases. I suspect it's because we're such a heavily agricultural state -- the USDA is probably very involved. Every animal control officer we've dealt with from city locals to state wardens have been amazing bastions of, "Spirit of the law, not letter of the law." They're good to work with.
And yeah, California had a natural buffer for decades: The black bears heavily populate the Sierras and the foothills are covered with cattle ranches. The bears come onto the ranches and that's all she wrote. Pretty much every rancher has a "shoot on sight" permit for bears... as long as they're only shooting 1-2 a year, nobody pays attention. As the population has increased some suburbs, especially east of Sacramento, have made the mistake of extending past the ranches and they do indeed have bear troubles. But it's a relatively modern thing, and only in the newly-built suburbs that are too close to "traditional" bear country.
This is the part of me that would be playing a Sensate in a Planescape game asking, but, uh, for the unenlightened, dare I inquire what's so unpleasant about bear meat?It's just kind of gristly and greasy. The taste itself is pretty bland.
This.
Tried it and didn't like it.
Second day of Spring Break: catching up on the piles of laundry to be done, laundry to be sorted and folded, laundry to be ironed and hung, bringing spring/summer wardrobe from the garage and packing away the fall/winter clothes, etc.,and vacuuming.
Tonight, I'm making my Auntie's spaghetti and meatballs. She died on Wednesday. It was sudden, but she was 102, and had a good life. She was still playing cards and swimming every day right up to the end.
102. Amazing. May she rest peacefully.
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And yeah, California had a natural buffer for decades: The black bears heavily populate the Sierras and the foothills are covered with cattle ranches. The bears come onto the ranches and that's all she wrote. Pretty much every rancher has a "shoot on sight" permit for bears. As the population has increased some suburbs, especially east of Sacramento, have made the mistake of extending past the ranches and they do indeed have bear troubles. But it's a relatively modern thing, and only in the newly-build suburbs that are too close to "traditional" bear country.
Very similar to downstate NY. There are still some really rural areas just north of Rockland and Westchester counties, but as property taxes and cost of living went through the roof, a lot of the farmers packed up and left while property developers moved in. Now you've got a patchwork of farms, second-growth forest, and suburbs all through Orange / Dutchess / Putnam counties. Perfect foraging ground for bears and coyotes.
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My favorite: "What was the exact date you moved into your current residence?" Seriously? And it had to be day-month-year or it generated an error.A proof of their exquisite sophistication, or at least sign of being civilized people.
** spoiler omitted **
Once I started storing all my financial statements digitally I learned that year-month-day is the *only* way to ever date anything.
I was curious since I know California has deer hunting seasons but we never hear about them at work, but I was surprised to learn we also allow black bear hunting. Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.... But again, black bear fur isn't all that great for much of anything, and their meat is terrible, so why hunt them?
Materials for creepy folk costumes? *Gathers flowers, assembles masks, starts constructing wicker man.* :)
Or materials for making sure you're the swankiest barbarian at the Manowar gig (add studs, horns, stainless steel battleaxe from vape shop, etc.)
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Do you use reinforced boots, or is there a little risk regarding feet?
(I would not be surprised if Big Norse Wolf might want to dispute the latter notion)
She already has reinforced boots.
It's one of those things that everyone in the Midwest gets upon reaching adulthood regardless of profession or need.
I can confirm this, every sane and non-silver spoon pampered upper-crust person I've ever personally known over the age of fifteen or so has simply just owned a pair, they are an assumed part of any wardrobe just like shorts for warm weather seasons or a spring/fall jacket.
I have a WFH deskjob that literally never requires me to leave my office in terms of being productive and I own two pair of sufficiently protective hard-toe/steel-toe boots. My son, at nearly four years old even has some adorable size 11 ceramic-toe winter boots, it's as normal around here as reflective shades on a state trooper.
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It's Quitting Day for GothBard and Impus Minor's 20th birthday! We informed the Cranky Calico that it was Dying Day for her, but she simply gave us a baleful look that said, "I'm still going to be peeing on the living room carpet 10 years from now."
GothBard's exit interview should be... interesting, to say the least. HR likes to find out why people are leaving, so they schedule a half-hour meeting to discuss it. None of us are under any illusion that GothBard will be able to delineate all of the issues at her current company in only 30 minutes, so she's making a priority list of the worst offenses. Which should tell HR something about the CEO's management style. But I'm sure they won't listen. To be blunt, companies that listen to what's being said at exit interviews don't have CEOs like that.
Now that both Impii are in their 20s I need to stop referring to them as teenagers. That's going to be hard.
EDIT: It's one of the things that has really impressed me about our "new" CEO at Global Megacorporation. We were one of the worse places to work in tech. The CEO came in and changed the exit interview to, "Other than a higher salary, what could we have done to make you stay?" And then implemented those policies. Infinite vacation? Done. Work-life balance and the ability to report abusive managers to the higher-ups? Done. Actually out-and-out firing abusive managers? Done. Suddenly, without increasing our salaries at all, most Top 10 Tech Companies to Work For lists include Global Megacorporation, or at least Top 20. It just takes the will to listen and make the change. And of course, productivity has skyrocketed along with employee happiness, the stock price has more than doubled, and the CEO looks like a genius. Because they listened to their employees.
GothBard's exit interview should be... interesting, to say the least. HR likes to find out why people are leaving, so they schedule a half-hour meeting to discuss it. None of us are under any illusion that GothBard will be able to delineate all of the issues at her current company in only 30 minutes, so she's making a priority list of the worst offenses. Which should tell HR something about the CEO's management style. But I'm sure they won't listen. To be blunt, companies that listen to what's being said at exit interviews don't have CEOs like that.
Or they might be listening, nodding their heads in complete agreements, but not being able to do anything about it. What could they do? Send the CEO to a sensitivity training?
Now that both Impii are in their 20s I need to stop referring to them as teenagers. That's going to be hard.
You can still refer to them as maggots, or minions, or spawn...
Oh, right, paladin.
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I hope everyone noticed and appreciated my attempt to avoid going into one of my biannual rants about Daylight Savings Time, but I just spent 10 minutes waiting for a technical meeting to start because the host is in India and didn't realize he needed to start an hour earlier than usual.
But I'll try to leave it at that until more stupidity happens later in the day...
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Speaking of paladins...
I have just lost approval from two party members for offering to speak with druids... At the moment Astarion is on a black list for that –1 penalty I got to all rolls because of <spoilers>, but he is the sole person in the group capable of opening locks...
Being paladin (oath of ancients) is hard.
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Big day, NH, big day. Happy birthday to the impii, congratulations to your wife.
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I hope everyone noticed and appreciated my attempt to avoid going into one of my biannual rants about Daylight Savings Time, but I just spend 10 minutes waiting for a technical meeting to start because the host is in India and didn't realize he needed to start an hour earlier than usual.
But I'll try to leave it at that until more stupidity happens later in the day...
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Because they listened to their employees.
What a silly idea. It will never catch on!
LOL. Impus Minor woke up not feeling all that well so he's taking the day off and spending it in bed. I was telling him about how my birthday is in June, so throughout school, college, grad school, and my career as a professor I never once had to work on my birthday. Even the time I spent working at a video store the owner gave me my birthday off. Once I moved into tech, I had to work on my birthday for 4 out of 5 years running. I hated it so much that I've taken my birthday off ever since then.
So yeah, 56 years old and I've worked on my birthday 4 times in my life. Not a bad run. Especially considering I'm not 100% sure I worked on my birthday all 4 of those years -- depended on whether or not I had to teach classes those weeks.
EDIT: OK. I actually have my old journals behind me and I was curious:
1999: Was vacationing in Ashland
2000: Was sick in bed
2001: Worked
2002: Was vacationing in Ashland
2003: Worked -- was delivering training
2004: Was a Sunday.
So wow... I've only ever worked twice on my birthday in my life. What likely set me off more was that my family kept planning our annual Ashland trip over my birthday, and that trip was more of an obligation than a fun get-together. So I probably have unfond memories of being stuck on that trip for my birthday, and I conflated it with work in my memories.
At former Employer I would game the excrement out of my 'birthday holiday' (basically, if the Employer made you work on your birthday, you'd be 'owed' a 'day off' in either the preceding or following weeks in addition to the two regular days off.
As this would fall reasonably consistently either around PaizoCon OR a writer's group weekend I'd attend in the western PA area, I could effectively make a 'five day weekend' around my birthday time and at most cost a day or two of vacation.
It wasn't until the last year at former Employer that they made a fuss about it, and it then took them three months to 'make up the day' (which I finagled into the weekend trip for a con in the Twin Cities area).
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Which makes me wonder how we can possibly have such a huge population of them.
Hunting as a means of population control is kind of iffy at best unless you go absolutely gonzo with it. Like everyone in the area using it as a regular source of food all year round.
If you have no hunting for example, your population hits an equilibrium where competition within that species more or less equals the number being born.
If you reduce those numbers, you also increase the available food, so more cubs survive and the population goes back up. Doubly so since they don't usually let you hunt when killing the mother will also mean offing the offspring (slowly and painfully at that).
Even further than that, when you only kill the males you pretty much optimize the population for rapid growth. One male and a herd of females means more food for the next generation. (and a few alive but VERY happy bucks)
For coyote control for example, anything less than killing 60% of the population is going to have virtually no impact on the population. Killing 60% of the coyote population is hard. Killing the last 40% that were smart enough to avoid that first 60% is a nightmare. people think they have a problem coyote because it sits on the trail and watches their dogs. Then they shoot that coyote, and then another coyote moves in that eats their dog.
With wolves Mass hunting wasn't enough, they had to use a lot of trapping and poisoning.
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And GothBard has formally quit. And I'll give props to her current manager and director: Most tech companies I know of will respond with, "Two weeks notice?!?!? Nope! You're done today! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!"
It causes untold chaos because the person doesn't finish closing out their work and handing it off, but it saves the company a couple thousand bucks and they have this bizarre fear fantasy that the employee who goes to the trouble of formally notifying them in advance of their departure will somehow use their remaining time to sabotage the company. Er... bitter saboteurs don't tend to be the ones who give formal notice...
Anyhoo, GothBard gave them a week's notice (her last day will be Friday) and both her manager and her director said, "Cool beans. Don't bother doing any work this week. Just make sure everything gets closed out and handed off, and good luck in your new job!"
Nice guys. Too bad the CEO is such a yutz.
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what's a 'bonus'? and where does one originate?
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what's a 'bonus'? and where does one originate?
Global Megacorporation offers three flavors of incentive: Raises, bonuses, and options. And they make absolutely sure you pick the one they want; i.e., the one that costs them the least actual money.
"So, we're short on cash this year . So we can give you only one of three things: A 2% raise, a $2000 bonus, or $20,000 in stock options that vest over the next 4 years. Which'll it be?"
When you're young this is an actual question requiring calculation of how long you intend to work for them. Once you're over 50 the options become the no-brainer selection. And hence you never get a raise.
Speaking of writers succumbing to tropes, it's really depressing seeing a golden opportunity burned to the ground. City of Death (Doctor Who Season 17, episodes 5-8) started off as, in my opinion, the single-best series of the Tom Baker era. Watching The Doctor and Romana 2 toodle about in 1979 Paris brought back *SO* many memories of my own 1987 trip, or my and GothBard's 1997 trip, that I found the whole opening sequence irresistible. They set up an amazing potential story with an alien fractured through time and trying to save his race...
...and then of course went with, "Alien bad. Doctor must stop him."
ALL they had to do was have the alien actually be in need and have the Doctor help him and it would have easily been one of the best, if not the best, series of the "classic" Doctors. Instead, it crashed and burned and tumbled into the flaming dumpster inferno that is, "Television might-have-beens."
Ah, well. Still hundreds of episodes to go...
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My credit union wonders why I never use my debit card in spite of significant rewards for doing so (waived fees, increased interest on my checking account, etc.)
Last night was such a quintessential example I feel like sharing (and I'll be writing my credit union with something similar): It was Tuesday, so we were getting takeout. I made a perfectly reasonably-priced order for the area ($120 for the four of us) at a restaurant less than a mile away and within our ZIP Code. I promptly got a phone call, email, and text message alert that fraud had been detected on my card and my card had been locked until I took action to resolve the fraud.
And this happens every. Single. Time. I try to use the card.
Impus Minor had it so bad that he blocked the fraud department's number on his phone and flagged their emails as spam -- he was getting multiple calls a week for months, even after he'd called a human being and supposedly cleared things up.
Just like car alarms and fire alarms, if your system generates so many false alarms that people turn it off, then you've done worse than nothing.
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indeed -- as though Fatty Bolger sounded the Horn of Buckland ("Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!") because Gaffer Gamgee sneezed one morning.
i can only say that i am delighted that i have completely ignored all email for the last four or five years, and have blocked nearly all notifications on my devices. i have all the madness i need in the workplace; home is the one place in the world where i both can and do tell EVERYONE ELSE to shut the f#&& up.
Yum, a (work) pizza.
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Yesterday our high temperature was 69 degrees.
I drove 69 miles to the job site going 69 mph.
Just doing my part in bringing balance to the force.