BTDT !
Seems like Mr. >2gigs is outnumbered 3 to 1… could he be replaced ?
ISTM that he would want band members with more commitment to his cause !
Went to a concert last night to see my favorite 70s band. In the row directly in front of me was a group with two 9ish year old girls. I was pleased to see the younger generation at a show with mostly 60-something males, but they spent most of the show playing slap and tickle. It was really annoying and very distracting. The group was several families and there were two adults to the right of the girls and five adults to the left.
I never figured out who the parents of the kids were, because whoever they were, they obviously didn’t give a flying fuck.
Not really a major rant, but tonight I got one of those unexpected out-of-the-blue emails from Amazon. I immediately thought “phishing scam”, but it wasn’t. Two years ago I had bought a whole bunch of equipment for setting up a home theater projector and related audio which included all kinds of switches and adapters and the like. Among those was a three-pack of USB wall chargers. According to Amazon’s email, they’re not safe and could somehow give you an electric shock.
The email references a Government of Canada website which does indeed identify this product as unsafe. Kudos to Amazon for the quick notice, within hours of it being identified as unsafe. Less kudos to Amazon for not suggesting any way to get a refund, because they’re not offering one, and I’m out $17. And even less kudos to China for continuing to make dangerous crap.
It’s okay, you can tell us. If it was the Osmonds, or the Bay City Rollers, we promise not to snicker.
To the Whole of The Internet: stop it with the goddamn gray text. Nobody can read that shit. Screw what your CSS guidebook says. Whoever wrote that “low contrast” shit is an idiot. Black text on white is just fine, it wasn’t broken, it didn’t need to be “fixed.”
For that matter, can we please decide on black text on white or white text on black? I don’t need my pupils blown out every time I switch websites. And some websites aren’t even consistent on their own pages. Fuck you! Make a goddamn decision and stick with it for fuck’s sake.
Well, the remodeling project (porch and roof) continues. On the bright side it is looking good. Last week I yelled at the contractor for driving way too fast up our lane. He approached me Wednesday and led off with “hey, we got off on the wrong foot the other day”. Honestly I don’t need his apology, he isn’t working for me, hell, I don’t even know the dude’s name.
So I replied, “wrong foot? What the fuck? You were driving like a dick and I asked you to slow down. No wrong foot there, you were driving like a dick. Don’t drive like a dick and we’re good”. And I walked away.
Last night my gf said the contractor called her. Uh-oh, I thought I was in trouble for being rude to him, but nope! He called her to let her know before she heard from our neighbors that two State Police cars showed up to arrest one of his employees. Something about a DUI and failure to appear. On top of that he had his driver’s license suspended and yet his car is there, so the Po-Po called for a tow truck to impound his vehicle.
Like a fucking soap opera.
Unfortunately his skill level doesn’t match his dreams. And if he wasn’t there, then they would never do any gigs, because no one else wants to organize them.
So it’s annoying. And it’s probably going to stay that way. When it’s going well, it’s fun. I think it’s the curse of being in any band.
To add to the annoyance.
The original request was for days in June. When given dates in June, he said those days don’t work, due to health issues. The health issues had already started when he asked for the dates, but he hadn’t yet gone to the doctor. Now he’s starting to realize that his health issues interrupt band practice/gigs. 
You know we have a poster on this board, 2gigch1, affectionately known as 2gig; Imma thinkin’ why are you referencing him?
Was doing an interval workout, last one was at 2:30:00…1/100th of a second too slow. Then I was hot so I must have opened the sunroof on the way home to get some air. Was supposed to take the car in in the morning but when I woke up, I decided to delay that as I heard rumbles & then a line blew thru & I didn’t really want to walk home in a thunderstorm. Yup, I got home at night, in the dark & didn’t realize the sunroof was open so I had wet seats. Grrr!
Fuckit. My mum is now in her early 80s. I am not a diagnostician, so I can’t really say what’s happening in her brain, but apparently short-term memory is a big issue, but the real issue is that she is refusing financial advice, from her financial adviser - who happens to be my sister - and trying to wing it by herself.
She’s a school teacher. English, Geography, History. No maths.
She lost basically everything in savings during the Zimbabwe inflation crisis, and was really fortunate to have inherited a large chunk of money from her own mother, which saved her financially, allowed her to move to South Africa to be near her kids and live a simple but well-funded lifestyle.
Financial shit like this is not my brother’s or my forté, and we implicitly trust our sister. In addition all three siblings have agreed that we do not want the inheritance passed down to us, we want our mother to be comfortable and have funds until she eventually dies. Her mum lived to age 95, so she probably has a while. I mean, I won’t complain if there is something left and I get a share, but I would rather (and my siblings agree) that that money could be better invested in health care, possible hospice care, whatever, The money is my Mum’s.
She’s now interfering in a complex system of trusts, retirement funds, pensions and investments, in a world she knows absolutely nothing about, and I am not sure she even understands her goals here. mean, I do not even understand basic finance.
I suggested to my sister that we get a “second opinion” from a truly independent financial advisor.
My job is cushy, yes, but it’s shit like this that reminds me why I get paid.
Three major competitive grant bids (which already fund current programs) are due on the 30th. All three are sexual assault services.
No guidance from the last time we submitted these bids. The former project director left me with fuck-all to inform the process. No saved documents, nothing. They are all sexual assault focused and I haven’t written many grants for these services so I don’t have previous language to fall back on. Previous grant applications are unavailable.
Everything from scratch.
These things are fucking beasts. Incomprehensible acronyms and lists of requirements, a shit ton of required data, so many narrative questions.
Literally our entire Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program and five people’s jobs are riding on how well I write these grants.
I had a full blown panic attack yesterday. I couldn’t even get to work.
Today I sat down and started slogging. Got through 2 of 3 RFPs and emailed everyone on staff their marching orders.
After a hard day’s work, it feels doable. I just have to hold up under the pressure. Not think about anything else but the work. One foot in front of the other.
Wish me luck.
I tried yet once again to persuade my parents (age 66 and 68) to sign up for some form of long-term health care elder insurance. They again don’t think it’s necessary. They are very much a “Don’t address an issue until it becomes far too serious to ignore” type. I can foresee a situation where they get a stroke or something and are now on the hook for $400,000 in medical bills, but may not even be conscious (coma perhaps) to recognize why they needed insurance.
Yes 
At some point, possibly even before I retired, I signed up for long-term care insurance. Yes, I’m spending money every month for something that I hope I’ll never need. But “I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it”; I also now pay money every month for a “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” alert button because I live alone, and despite my repeated attempts to do so I haven’t been able to train my cat to call 911.
Any chance you can guilt them into it? If you’re on the hook for their long-term care, that could be devastating.
Also I had no idea long term care insurance was a thing. It sounds very sensible.
Can you do that if youre not disabled?
I tried guilting and I’m not effective at it; it led to nothing. The issue is that they have a tendency to greatly inflate threats that are unlikely, and deflate threats that are likely.
My mother is highly tuned in to spiritual or political threats but not practical/medical threats. She spends a huge amount of time worrying about Biden/Islam/racial/Boeing/famine/civil-war fears that have only the tiniest chance of happening in real life, but refuses to address much more pressing problems. Then again, maybe it’s just human nature and I’m also guilty of some similar thinking in my own OCD way.
The younger you sign up, the lower the premiums (of course, you’re paying those low premiums for a lot longer). Policies may be harder to come by, as companies have found that they are not financially beneficial (to the company).
I signed up for a policy decades ago; my husband did as well when his employer offered a group policy. Hopefully it’ll turn out to have been a waste of money.
I looked into the policy that was available through work. They have a chart. They plug your height into it and it tells you the weight that you can’t be above to qualify for that insurance. I didn’t qualify. And based on past experience, I wasn’t going to.
I had gotten my ltc insurance a while back, so my premiums weren’t too bad. A couple of years ago I got a notice about a premium increase, and I was offered the choice of reducing my coverage. I discussed it with my financial advisor, just to make sure that I wasn’t going to wind up on the hook for expenses I couldn’t afford.
Do what? Get an alert button, or train my cat to call 911?
Get an alert button.
