Bad Ju-July (monthly mini-rants) [Old]

We are having a bit of a cash flow problem, in that too much cash flows out and not enough cash flows in. Part of the problem is that childcare is extremely expensive but, when school starts again, it will get a little less expensive and things will be easier until next summer. But the other part of the problem is that things got more expensive while our paychecks just did not go up much. My husband did finally end up getting a sizable raise but I did not. So it is on me to find a better paying job. And I am reminded just how horrible job hunting is. At least I still have a job while looking but it is still so demoralizing. I feel so worthless.

I can only think of the “flawless bra” that Moss invented on IT Crowd that had the minor disadvantage of sometimes bursting into flame.

Ever go out to the grocery store for just a couple of things, needing so few items and their need so obvious that there’s no point in making a list? And then get caught up in picking up just a few more things? And as a result, forget to pick up one of the main goddam things that you went out for in the first place? Yeah, I do this constantly, due to the apparent resemblance of my brain to a kitchen sieve.

It was so goddam frustrating that I went right back out into the heat and back to the grocery store, taking the car out of the garage where I had carefully parked it in anticipation of not going anywhere for the better part of a week. What I really wanted to do in that moment was just sit on the porch with a nice cool drink.

To add to my woes, my ever-vigilant cardiologist is now asking the halter monitor people to set me up once again with a cardiac + BP monitor, a contraption that you have to wear for 24 hours. I think it’s just his sneaky way of making sure I’m taking my BP medications, which in a moment of weakness I admitted to him that I didn’t always do. I just don’t think it’s fair. I pay my taxes. I commit no crimes. I wish I could just communicate to all officialdom my desire to be just left the fuck alone.

They keep the sieves in Aisle 4, left side, down low.

All right, finally confirmed I’m NOT crazy (shut up): the Gmail search window recently changed to highlight “Create Filter” instead of “Search.” This is fucking stupid. Used to be:

(Create filter is un-highlighted, on the left, as it should be. Search is highlighted, on the right, as it should be.)

Now they’ve switched the buttons and the blue highlight, so your mouse goes to the lower-right, highlighted button which is now Create Filter every time, when all you wanted was a simple search. Sorry no screenshot, but go check for yourself, or read this.

You know that phrase “never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”? I’m not buying it. This is malice, just for the joy they get from fucking with their userbase.

I pit my husband’s left kidney. He had to have surgery last week to blast apart a large kidney stone. Turned out to be a difficult surgery and he went home with a drain. Middle of the night, he wakes up in big pain and with a fever. He’s now got an infection. Back to the hospital, where he’ll be admitted while they blast him with antibiotics and try to figure out exactly what’s going on.

Neither of us expected this thing to be a such a huge ordeal.

I really liked the show House.

I would not want to be mixed up in something resembling an episode, though.

If that bra was comfortable, it might be worth the occasional fire. I need to buy new bras, and I’m dreading the whole thing.

Swipe anti-persperant under there. It is effective.

We had dinner with a couple tonight where hubby is going to have the same surgery for the same reason as your, just 2 weeks from now. After his upcoming Monday hernia surgery heals up enough to slice him open a second time.

Nasty business getting old.

“It’s not quite perfected yet, 007…”

Well, at least then you know it won’t be one of the first three diagnoses made.

And you’re safe from lupus.

Truly a mini rant-

For weeks now, I’ve had no energy and just scrolled through facebook on my time off. Last night, I finally got around to pulling up an emulator and playing Zelda Oracle Of Ages. I was amazed at how well I did.I played for hours. Then, I finally died. I saved and quit. I took my evening medications. Then, I decided to play for another half hour. I loade up the emulator. My game had not saved. I have to start over from scratch. Very discouraging.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery. That sounds really hard.

Man. I hate it when my pretend achievements are lost. It’s one reason I’m a bit miffed that I’m going to lose all my character progress when the first season of Diablo 4 starts. I mean technically you can still play that character, but not with all the cool season stuff. I’m just now getting powerful and I have to start over.

Depending on how your Outlook is set up, you should have several avenues available to prevent these users from seeing those distressing emails. At the most basic they can set up a rule to delete them before reading based on sender and/or subject line.

That’s certainly an option, but I don’t know the propriety of filtering mail for my users. They would get other messages from Accurint and if they miss something important there could be legal implications, since these are government regulators and investigators. And Accurint access is legally prohibited as well.

They just need to not spam anyone and everyone with technical crap, or my coworkers need to not have the memories of goldfish and freak out over the same thing every couple of months.

That’s why I suggested basing a rule off the subject line. Many times companies have standard templates for these notifications making it easy for recipients to auto-delete stuff they don’t need to know about.

I’ve probably got a dozen of those active right now.

I love Google’s Find My Device. The tracker app my husband and I have on our phones is also quite handy to make the phone make noise so I can hunt it down.

Completely overwhelmed and behind at work, I had to take care of my sick kid Friday so thought I would catch up today. Nope, the VPN is rejecting my credentials. Our QA Director mentioned we’d have some changes to how we log in, but no instructions were given, no warning telling us what to do, so I am absolutely fucked. This can’t be fixed without our tech company helping out and now I’m really scared they won’t let me log in on my home PC from now on. I NEED a large monitor to work, not a stupid fucking laptop. Hell, I really need two monitors but I’m making do with one. Usually I WFH Mondays but it looks like I have to go in just to get some goddamned work done. And on top of all this my husband for some reason thought it would be fine to bring my kid in the room/office while I’m trying to work. I don’t understand him sometimes.

Well, to offset the praise for Google, I pit them for their annoying security practices. Why they’re so deeply concerned about somebody possibly breaking into my email I’ll never understand. If I’m super concerned about email security l’ll do stuff to safeguard it, but if I feel that what I have is adequate, fuck off and stop bothering me every few months about “verifying” things.

And fuck you for your “secure authentication” crap where a normal password login from an email client doesn’t work any more – it has to have Oauth 2.0 or some other newfangled crap that I don’t need. I had to find a workaround so I could continue to do my email on Outlook because the Gmail UI sucks.