Well, test took place, at least over here one customer at the government office tried to let all that offices would close. No zombies here… some customers though make wonder…
Yeah. Only three of us in our section hadn’t turned our phones off. Either that or a bunch of us were out in the field.
Now we go on to stage two, where stories of zombies are posted. Yes, they say they’re fine, but they can’t prove they’re not zombies.
Or lizard people masquerading as zombies. Those are the worst kind.
Well, I work for the government, so I have no defense.
If your battery needs tested, do your dungarees needs warsh?
If the government shuts down, neither do we.
( This is The Pit. I tap my keyboard and type the following sentence: Fuck You Putin…!)
I chose to respond here instead of the ATMB thread. Because what I want to say is, first, that no one doubts that you were sober, given that the constraints of your (prior) occupation and your general demeanor on this board are suggestive of an excess of sobriety. What I will call into question is your claim to recreational indulgence in Caesars. I believe this to be a mythology expressly constructed to try to endear yourself to Canadians, in anticipation of rising sea levels, soaring temperatures, and the proliferation of MAGAts eventually making your own domicile uninhabitable. There is no need for this obsequiousness, however, as I will happily vouch for you as a worthy climate/political refugee. 
I survived a funder meeting. Didn’t have to say much, though I said some stuff, just enough I hope to build a little more confidence at my next such meeting. But I am wiped. I took an Ativan before. I wish I could walk around in a permanent state of Ativan. It’s like for fifteen or twenty blissful minutes, calamity isn’t inevitable. I’m not totally anxiety-free, but I can reason.
Then it wears off.
It pisses me off sometimes how much work there is to do on myself. It never ends.
I died a thousand deaths before this meeting. I woke up at 5am this morning with my heart hammering. But I survived.
Thank you for your kind (albeit conditional) offer of refuge oh fine and noble dog. On present trends my remaining lifespan and the increasing depth of seawater at/near my abode ought to dovetail nicely. The political wackiness is another matter.
Not that it would repay anyone the effort, but a careful review of my total posting oerve after about 8pm compared to earlier in the day would certainly give the lie to any mistaken beliefs about me being a teetotaller. “Instant a**hole, just add booze” has been (one of) my mottos for 40+ years now. Sometimes it leaks through more than other times, but the signal is there to be seen in the noise.
As an anecdote, I’ve had great experiences with the “Halo” brand. I’ve ordered them from Amazon for work. I’ve bought them for our fraud investigators and electrical inspectors because they’re out all day long on the road and need something to keep their laptops running. Especially investigators who go on stakeouts for hours at a time collecting evidence on people. (Folks claim to be too injured to work and draw workers compensation but are filmed carrying heavy loads or doing athletic stuff, then faking an impairment when going to a doctor’s appointment.)
They also drive big trucks and they’ve used them for emergency jump starts successfully. They run $80-130 so aren’t cheap but really do the job.
Here’s an example:
https://www.amazon.com/Halo-Bolt-Air-Emergency-Interchangeable/dp/B08KJNJJL2
That one even has an air pump for a low tire, that’s a new feature, huh.
Turned out it was the starter.
This morning when I tried jump-starting it it wouldn’t even try to start, so I had it towed to the repair shop and they replaced the starter.
YES! A very good friend gave me one after it saved him in a situation. I’ve used it to charge my phone, and to jump start a car as well as my lawn tractor. It’s a necessity once you have one.
Guilty as charged. Totally unaware.
(Then again, I’m sitting on our pond dock with my dogs, waiting for the sun to set while drinking a mug filled with Kraken (apparently it’s 91 proof), ice, and Rummy Grapefruit Soda, and smoking my vape pen.)
Luckily I only need to walk 100 yards to be home.
My gf is doing girl stuff tonight.
ETA: corollary I’m doing boy stuff tonight.
Now I’m picturing you seeing how far up a tree you can pee, drinking straight out of any container you can find (milk, OJ, BBQ sauce…), and dropping a Porsche engine into the wife’s Prius.
Fucking administrative bullshit. ALL of our federal progress reports are either past due or have past due amendments and my report writer, who needs guidance, has been trying to contact their main office for over a month with no response. Now our fucking drawdown is suspended along with some other things we need that were NEVER communicated to us. I fucking hate how bad this makes me look because of the sheer incompetence of the federal agency managing the grant. This is very stressful. There’s no way it should ever have gotten to this point. I just want one day where my blood pressure isn’t going through the roof, please.
Gorgeous day today- topped around 81F. This is most likely the last summer-like day of the year- temps are falling off a cliff starting tomorrow.
Knocked off work early and I’ve been sitting outside, beverage in hand, enjoying the last rays of the sun on these quickly shortening days. Absolutely beautiful out here.
But a goddam chorus of leaf blowers throughout the neighborhood are driving me nuts!
Proper grammar is “Do yinz need your dungarees warshed, n’at?”.
Cross-posting from previous month’s rants … there’s a connection. If dear reader recalls, I started driving for Uber Eats to make a little side money but I was not too impressed with the operation so I was on the fence whether or not I wanted to continue to drive for them. So, without further ado:
The verdict is in: Fuck Uber Eats. Their app is worthless. I went out for deliveries three different days. I had to call tech help in the middle of orders every single time. I just went out this afternoon to give it another chance and the very first order fucked up on me. I picked up the food no problem but then the app wouldn’t let me press the “Complete Pick Up” button. Oh, I could press it, but nothing happened. The thing is, you don’t get the delivery address until you complete the pick up, so I was stuck. Fucking tech help again, where I had to explain everything to the guy three times, via text, that the Complete Pickup Button was disabled.
This was the final interaction:
“Have you completed the delivery?”
“No, because, for the third time, the COMPLETE PICKUP BUTTON is disabled.”
“We’re sorry this is causing inconvenience for you.”
Two minutes of nothing while I sat there in the restaurant parking lot wondering what I was supposed to do … followed by:
“Would you like to complete the delivery or cancel the order?”
“Cancel it. And remove my account. This is ridiculous. Every time I’ve delivered tech help has screwed up on me. Unacceptable. I’m done.”
And he then has the nerve to come back with: “We have canceled the order and now you can continue with other deliveries. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I closed the app and went home. Fuck Uber Eats, and sorry Kathy S, but your spaghetti marinara is delicious.
The problem with “apps” these days is that the era of software designed by disciplined well-educated software engineers is way, way behind us. Today they’re mostly written by kiddies who are quite possibly still in diapers. Now we have the era of Microsoft kiddies inspired by the methodologies of a mercenary college drop-out.
Software reliability is considered to have no value, and methodological software testing considered to be a waste of time. Software that works even in rare boundary conditions has morphed into software that doesn’t, and is increasingly morphing into software that doesn’t work, period. To make matters worse, the thin-client paradigm has insidiously transmogrified from a simple presentation layer to one where the client side is expected to do a tremendous amount of processing, guided by standards that are often ill-defined and/or poorly implemented.
Also, get off my lawn!
Regards,
– An old guy
You’re an old guy who ain’t wrong though.