Is her name Patty Bateman? Does she obsess over business cards? Does she specialize in mergers and acquisitions? 
Here’s something really trivial which has annoyed the hell out of me. This is in the news today:
The man was a truly awful human being, and we should all be pleased that his portrait has been removed. But I am very easily distracted. This is the portrait, as it appears in the BBC article:
As you can imagine, I became immensely excited - if a photo in a news article also includes innocent parties, then their faces are routinely blurred out. And the BBC blurred out the “innocent parties” in a portrait of a (despicable) man who has been dead for more than two hundred years? Fantastic!
But who are these people, who should not be tarnished by association with Picton?
I cannot find a version of that picture with additional figures to the left and right of Picton. The less likely explanation is that my google-fu has let me down completely. The more likely explanation is that this is how the picture looks - the blurry side panels don’t exist and were only added by the BBC in order to present a portrait image as landscape (or conceivably as a prank/joke by the reporter),
After getting my hopes up, that’s just frustrating and annoying.
j
I wouldn’t say she’s not a psycho.
It’s a thing, apparently. I’ve seen it used by other articles from newspapers or magazines. I find it annoying, too.
If you look closely, you’ll see that the left panel is a blurred duplication of the middle left of Sir Picton and the right panel is the same for the middle right.
Thing is, if that was originally a painting of three people in uniform, then left and right would look similar to Picton once they were blurred. So, dammit, I just assumed.
Also (and I apologize in advance for this nitpick) it’s Sir Thomas, not Sir Picton.
j
My phone started ringing, but I ignored it since T-Mobile helpfully identified it as a likely spam call.
They didn’t leave a message, but when I googled the phone number it was listed by a website with the following intriguing teaser:
“Downtown just got hacked. Would dust behind the cloud! Most low income family? Antony was fantastic. Mimi is famous! A boot virus may be rocket men”
Now I’m sorry I missed out on what would have been an entertaining phone call.
My gf has always gotten upset with me when I do not dress “appropriate for the weather”. When we return from St Martin, for example, I like arriving in Pittsburgh in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, even though it is ten degrees. Lately she is upset that I’m still wearing slides, even though it is 30 - 50 degrees F outside.
So, a friend stopped at work to say hi the other day and she was wearing flip-flops!! I got out my phone and asked if she minded if I took a quick pic of her feet. I did, sent the pic to my gf, and we later laughed about it. But I never explained why I took the pic to my friend.
I just got a text from my friend telling me that she was getting a pedicure this weekend and she was fine with the idea of sending me pictures of her feet, and I should specify specifics that I’d like.
OMG. Not my fetish, sorry. And critically looking at the pic that started all this, her feet aren’t nice at all!
Well, that took an unexpected turn. I mean, it’s funny (but probably only for me), but that must’ve made you really uncomfortable!
My rant today is about work as usual. Today’s is complete lack of respect for time. As usual. I’ve blocked myself out as busy for the afternoon to get things done. But, some jackass decided they need me on a 4-hour client meeting, thus jacking anything I wanted or needed to do for the whole freaking afternoon. And I can’t say no because in this industry declining these meetings is verboten.
I have to rearrange my whole damn day for someone else’s emergency so I can sit on a call “just in case” I need to say something the hosts could damn well say themselves. And I know they could say it themselves because I literally scripted for them exactly what they need to say and my team trained them for several hours.
People are assholes. And it makes me want to be an asshole, too. Or look for a new job. Or both.
I’m sure we’ve all dialed into meetings and then went on with the work that actually needs our attention.
Still sucks that you have to pay enough attention in case someone needs you to confirm that T still comes after S.
“Overlyverbose? Overlyverbose? Are you on mute?”
“I’m sorry, my audio dropped and then I came back up muted. Can you repeat the question?”
Sometimes on Zoom meetings, I move my mouth and hands like I’m talking animatedly, and pretend I can’t hear the people asking me if I’m muted.
In truth, I hate Zoom calls. Sometimes I’ll set up the camera with a string on a pulley above it tied to some old desk ornaments… and if the conversation gets too long and dry, I’ll let one loose to swing to the other side.
“Excuse me… was that the the starship enterprise that just flew past your camera?”
“No, not mine. Maybe its a subconscious thing? The meeting has been going on for a while…”
One of the brand-new higher-ups (who might technically be my direct supervisor? idk, I work closely with her) is quitting.
So I have to go to work tomorrow and Saturday, which wasn’t the plan before.
Not a huge deal. But 1) I’m wiped out and I don’t know if I have the strength/energy for two more full work days 2) I had work clothes and work lunches planned out for the week and didn’t take into account two extra days. I can pull something together, clothing-wise. It just won’t look as polished as I prefer. I have no clue about lunch. It’s complicated in like 37 different ways due to physical limitations. And I’m out of peanut butter. But it’s about 9:30 PM, so I guess I’d better figure it out soon. Maybe I’ll just grab the pack of flavor-blasted pizza goldfish crackers from my pantry and chuck it in my bag. Balanced and nutritious.
It’s known that to use social media sites without getting the urge to pull your hair out requires curating your feed.
Not, apparently, by Reddit’s devs, though.
This is why they’ve added a ‘feature’ which drops random posts on your front page, if they’re ‘popular on Reddit’, in a sub ‘similar’ to one you’ve subbed to, or in a sub you’ve visited once or twice.
So, since I’m a member of r/danganronpa, literally every video game, anime, manga, cartoon, or comic sub is showing up. Because I occasionally glance at an r/conservative post when it’s crossposted to r/ConfidentlyIncorrect to get context, Reddit thinks I actually want to look at it without having a chance to brace myself for the awful. Because there’s apparently a whole lot of Indians on Reddit, my front page is flooded with stuff from Indian subs. Subs that are similar to ones I’m subbed to, but I decided I don’t like the culture mixed in among the ones I want to see. And so on and so forth. Sometimes I go to my front page, and there’s more of these ‘recommended’ posts than there are legitimate posts from the subs I follow!
Well, we had a great time. Two surviving members of the original band were there, Danny Hutton and Michael Allsup. They put on a great show. They used some of the tricks older performers use; telling long stories to catch their breath, having the backing band do long intros, things like that. They’re both in their late seventies, but listening to them you’d never guess.
And my MIL had a great time, that’s what really mattered.
ETA: they were at a fairly small venue (Carnegie in Homestead) and it looked like a sellout! I was surprised.
Excellent suggestion. As it turns out I was on the call for the full 3 hours and didn’t have to speak. Which was nice (the not speaking part) but obnoxious as hell (the fact that I was on period). And Projammer, you were right - I did have to pay just enough attention. It’s amazing to me how much time we spend on training other people so they can be effective and specifically so we don’t have to be on these calls…only to need to be on those calls anyway.
And Ann_Hedonia, I’ll have to try that sometime!
My mini rant this morning is that when I went to open the curtains next to my desk the curtain rod fell on my head. Fucking curtain rod. It was easy enough to put back up, but I totally could have done without that.
Homestead? You should have let me know! We could have met up somewhere. I go through there all the time on my way to/from Kennywood.
My MIL lives in West Mifflin! We took her to VooDoo Brewery’s Homestead location for dinner/drinks before the show. I’ll message you next time we are going to be down there. 
Carnegie Homestead gets some good bands. I’ve seen Boz Scaggs, Michael Franti, and Post Modern Jukebox there. (Three separate shows. Although it would be interesting to hear them do a medley of songs together)
OK, I’ve figured out how to turn off that damn ‘feature’ (it refusing to stop giving me r/IntentionalPenis got me to poke around until I found the option in settings), but I’m still pissed about it being added as an opt-out without even so much as a pop-up saying you can.
In some suburban towns/areas during this pandemic, Bambi has been gettin’ busy. Some people say that with less commuting, deer populations are exploding. ( Have cars & trucks been killing off that many deer? Wow. ) Others say that with COVID and the sentiment against hunting, that there have been fewer hunts in safer places to hunt. Whatever the reason, they are becoming trash eaters, they’ve been drinking from unclean and unsafe water sources, and their meat is no longer fit for human consumption (at least the ones in the cities and the suburbs are not fit for human consumption).
This is a problem and I’m not seeing a solution.
Some people say “open up hunting in crowded suburbs”. I find this to be incredibly irresponsible. First, ‘deer rifles’ would put their high-power ammo right through that deer and into the house behind it. Slug shotguns? Same thing. Buck shot patterns spread and will hit more than the deer. Short arms? Oh don’t even go there… the last thing we need is the CCW brigade whipping out their Berettas while people are jogging next to them.
Some people say “put out poison”. This seems bad because it would wipe out birds, squirrels, and other small animals which help to keep the insect population down, etc. It might also wipe out local pets.
Also, there is the problem of carcass disposal. Hunters can’t be trusted to not try to bring home meat to sell, to give away, and to cook/eat. This could lead to serious illnesses… and our healthcare system is stretched too thin as it is. Would we set up garbage trucks at collection points so they could be carried to burn pits or mass graves? I’m honestly at a loss as to how we can safely cull the population in such a way people and pets are not poisoned, yet the deer are disposed of. Also, deer strikes by cars seem to be happening everywhere…