We’ve really struggled. They’re aging, and my husband’s mother has gotten extremely religious in her old age, the rural lack of social community, etc. The presence of the kids (my children are the only grandkids) seem to moderate the political discourse, so there weren’t any real fireworks. My husband is deeply confused about his mother’s late-in-life conservatism. But that’s his relationship to manage, even if that means me going out there so they can meet their grandkid while he’s too snowed under with the Bar exam.
11 Likes
Good luck with everything. Relatives that seem to be from another galaxy are just so much work.
7 Likes
This morning I saw that there were some things I needed to attend to at work. (Office move over the weekend, needed to verify a server came back up)
Before I excused myself, I had mentioned to my partner that I had to go back and do some work, probably wouldn’t be 15 minutes but it would wait until after we had had breakfast.
About ten minutes later, breakfast was done, conversation had wrapped up and I excused myself.
I’m not even logged on remotely when she hollers out a question about some software. I counter that some existing software she has should do that.
I’m logged on, in the middle of running some verification scripts and she keeps asking me to come out and help her do something. I say, “I’m in the middle of this, I will be out in a few minutes.”
By now she has googled something but can’t quite make it work so she asks again. Same reply.
Everything is checking out, but I still need a couple of other verifications just because I don’t want any surprises on Monday.
She’s wandered down the hall to my office and is watching me work now. I say something she took as being snippy and leaves saying she’ll do it herself.
I’m wrapping up things and she hollers one more time that she needs me to figure something out. I say just a couple of more minutes.
Now I’m typing this while I hear the exasperated sigh from the other room.
And she wonders why I don’t work from home more often.
15 Likes
Working from home is really hard, and my husband and I really had a hard time figuring out how to negotiate “here but not here.” My sympathies.
11 Likes
I know she’s really going into start-up mode for her consulting business and a lot of things are all coming together very fast.
But, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Software is all installed and configured. Went even further and got her WebEx account syncing with Outlook.
7 Likes
I’m so lucky. Both my wife and her ex used to work from home, so she’s used to it and the kids are as well.
The grandtoddler though, he doesn’t have any concept of things like work yet, and he is loud. The days he’s visiting are the only times that I have trouble with it. Partly because he pretty much only ever visits on work days and his bedtime is around when I get out of work (or earlier), so all day I’m thinking about how I need to duck out for a play break, and when’s the best time to do that.
9 Likes
A few years back I’d found a utility that looked as if it would save my team an measurable amount of time, automate some oft neglected tasks and make things better.
But as it wasn’t essential and would have taken an amount of upfront installation time and data duplication to the far off corners of our corporate landscape. I just kept tabs on it.
Last year, conditions were ripe for adding it. I had funds. I had a case. And we made it so.
-
9 months later, it took more time to implement than it would have saved in two years.
-
It required some Infrastructure changes I wasn’t happy with but could live with.
-
It mostly works for what we bought it for, but fails miserably in an area it should work and “Development has as their #1 priority”
Now I’m looking at what it will take to replace it:
-
Bandwidth. A fuckton of bandwidth. Something I already use a disproportionate amount of. (Thank you Windows Patching)
-
Time. Probably mine since the team is stretched thin and I think I’m good at engineering solutions. Because this needs to be supportable clever
-
Some sort of powershell magic because I’ll need to transfer this outside typical distro channels and then bring it back into application at the far end.
-
Honestly. A lot of fucking bandwidth. And a lot of my remote sites are in the middle of nowhere with a T1 and - if we’re lucky - some form of consumer internet as a backup.
And this at the end of two weeks of work being crap for reasons it shouldn’t
9 Likes
My team rolled out to a completely new infrastructure. Mostly it’s good, but there’ve been some issues. We can’t use a debugger on the new system, so trying to figure out and fix issues is a lot more difficult than it used to be.
More importantly, there’s something quirky going on that results in replicated requests and the database basically overrunning itself. That’s been corrupting data and making a mess. I don’t know these new systems well enough to figure out what’s going on or how to prevent it. I can only try to block it at the code level, and try to make code to fix up the messed-up data that’s been the result, but that’s a mess in its own right. So I’ve spent most of the last month making a mess to try to clean up a worse mess.
I don’t blame the infrastructure people, they’ve been working 18-20+ hour days to get this done. But knowing the details, it’s kind of amazing that any of this works.
I can’t wait to get back to actual productive work, but that’s not likely to be soon.
8 Likes
I wasn’t really sure where to put this, but as a foreign transplant for a few years, it alarms me to learn that poor tourist behavior and entitlement is on the rise in prime tourist destinations.
So many interesting click-throughs, especially ones about Iceland becoming the world’s outdoor toilet and grafitti wall.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/08/the-global-tourism-backlash/566228/
9 Likes
So tonight I was supposed to meet a bunch of friends for dinner and drinks, plus knitting.
One of the friends insists on organising, and the others want her to because it’s psychologically supportive (we used to go to her place before the divorce six years ago). We can suggest places, but ultimately she’s supposed to be in charge.
And she ALWAYS fucks it up.
Last month she picked a place with only two tables. They were very polite, but they said they couldn’t afford to have a group of 4-6 taking up one table for hours whole they turned other customers away.
Tonight we agreed on a place… and it turns out they’re not open Tuesdays.
Now okay, any one of us could have checked the Web site – I noticed when I Googled directions to it tonight – but the friend who always organises doesn’t like… well, getting criticisms like “the restaurant isn’t open on that day”.
So instead, we are supposed to show up in good faith, then mill around on the sidewalk arguing about where we’re really thing to go. And if it bugs you, you’re not “easygoing” enough.
And here’s my thing. We meet on weekdays because one friend works weekends and has to get up early. Okay cool. But I work Monday-Friday and have an hour commute, before I spend half am hour getting to wherever we’re not-really meeting. We spend nearly an hour figuring out where to really go, then get settled etc, and by the time we order food I am well and truly hangry. Then it’s, “ooooh, are you okay?”.
So tonight I saved the transit fare, emailed everyone from the bus stop that the restaurant was closed, and told them I was going home. I picked up a pizza on the way. The rest of them texted where they were going to a different place instead, but it was after I’d ordered the pizza, and they didn’t provide an address – or a name they all agreed on (people texted the names of different places, even though they were supposedly all there already).
And I’m just fuck this shit. Unless we are actually orienteering, this is not what a fun weekday out looks like.
19 Likes
I have a group of friends like that. I plan to show up 30 minutes late so they can spot the flaws in their inevitably flawed plan, sort it out, then I roll up.
10 Likes
It doesn’t really grind my gears as such, but…nostril pimple.
#owowow #pluckthathair #paindance
14 Likes
Ouch.
8 Likes
Ow. You have my sympathies.
7 Likes
I reached over to pick up a package on the porch and felt a sudden pain on the back of my hand. There was a yellow jacket stinging me. Yeouch! It hurts, but to the best of my knowledge, I’m not allergic, so it’s a minor inconvenience. Still, ow!
16 Likes
I sometimes get hemangiomas, which are benign bright red spots that appear on my skin. They sometimes cause a brief stinging pain. I got one in the shower once, that hurt more than usual.
Turns out it was a wasp. My SO said, “Oh, did you find it?”
ETA: Sorry to hear that. Ouch!
11 Likes
So apparently, ‘Mercury is in retrograde’ again.
I fell on the escalator when I was coming out of the subway this morning; banging my knee and then my head, when I went to catch myself. I’ve been alternating keeping ice on both and I now have a lovely goose egg on my forehead as well as discernible limp.
O_O
18 Likes
Oh, dear. 
6 Likes
I’m lucky I had my hat on; otherwise, I might have cuts from the treads on my forehead, instead of a goose egg.
12 Likes
I’ve always thought escalator treads looked mighty blood thirsty.
Glad you had your hat on, hope the swelling goes down quickly.
10 Likes