Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!

I feel like an asshole that this bothers me so much, but our downstairs-most neighbor (we're on the third floor, she on the first) is too friendly with knocking to leave us gifts of random food. I feel like this is triggering childhood anxiety for me, when my parents would use gifts as a control and guilt mechanism.

Also we went out of our way to not tell anyone and not make it look like we left when we just went on vacation for 4 days, and she apparently left a box of milk and produce at our doorstep on monday or tuesday. Just came home to a very fly-infested box in front of my door :Leyla:
 
I feel like an asshole that this bothers me so much, but our downstairs-most neighbor (we're on the third floor, she on the first) is too friendly with knocking to leave us gifts of random food. I feel like this is triggering childhood anxiety for me, when my parents would use gifts as a control and guilt mechanism.

Also we went out of our way to not tell anyone and not make it look like we left when we just went on vacation for 4 days, and she apparently left a box of milk and produce at our doorstep on monday or tuesday. Just came home to a very fly-infested box in front of my door :Leyla:
Maybe this might be a good way to set boundaries with her without hurting her feelings. You could let her know what happened, tell her you feel bad because you hate seeing her nice gesture go to waste, and going forward, could she call you first before stopping by? This way it gives you a chance to screen her calls and make it for when YOU feel comfortable.
 
Pay them only 29%. Tell them it's good enough.
I said this to an employee once who told me that I had to understand he could only be at work "Like 50%." "Cool, do we get to pay you 50%?" He got angry. It was snarky of me, and I probably wouldn't say it again if I could go back, but he was the embodiment of entitled.
 
Moved our computer stations from upstairs to downstairs yesterday to integrate the father-in-law into one big LANcave so he stops feeling left out.

-Moved out of the room: 1 couch, 3 recliners (one powered), 1 heater (won't need that any more!), 2 area rugs, 1 rocking chair, 1 coat rack (with coats/canes/umbrellas/metal detector), 2 CD/DVD trees, and about 175lb/80kg loose assorted books/CDs/cassettes.
-Rearranged within the room: 1 computer station (f-i-l's), 1 desk,1 entertainment system, 2 bookcases (out of 5 total), 2 chairs, 1 printer, 1 collapsable sewing machine, 1 Victrola, 1 router, 1 pedestal fan.
-Moved into the room (carried down from upstairs): 1 window air conditioner (and installed it), 3 desktop computers, 2 desks, 3 monitors, 5 chairs, 2 side tables, 1 torchière lamp, 1 UPS, 1 network switch (and all the wiring), plus all the peripherals/desk organizers/knickknacks that were on the tables with the computers.
-Still to go (not yet brought down): Another window air conditioner, my system/monitor/etc, 2 more desk lamps.

Up until 1a hooking everything up, making sure everyone is powered, networked, updated, and ready to go since I have to work on Sun. Skipped hooking up f-i-l (for now) because he's on the other side of the room and needs a different setup for power/Internet, and skipped bringing down my monitor/system because if anyone has to sacrifice for time's sake, it's gonna be the dad (me). Plus this gives me the incentive to finally set up and move over to the interim system I've had waiting in the wings. I figure it'll take at least a few days (RIP my weekly quests) and I'll still have to carry it all downstairs and set it up once I'm done, of course.

Keep in mind that I'm the only person in a house of 5 people that's under the age of 65 and has a healthy BMI, which means I got to have the vast majority of the fun. My back, my neck, my legs...they hurt, SO MUCH.

--Patrick
 
This isn't so much a whine as a continuation on the "Nick is mourning his cat" from this thread.

I went to a local cat cafe, Lily Pad Cat Lounge, with some friends today. They have some cats available for adoption, so I thought I'd at least look. It's only been less than 2 weeks since I lost Diomedes, so I don't feel ready yet. But I thought I'd at least look.

As of this writing, two are available for adoption (Anders & Deacon). They were playing with each other a bit and I was half tempted to just adopt them both.

But, yeah, I don't think I'm ready yet. I know it's not, but it kind of feels like I'm betraying Diomedes.
 
This isn't so much a whine as a continuation on the "Nick is mourning his cat" from this thread.

I went to a local cat cafe, Lily Pad Cat Lounge, with some friends today. They have some cats available for adoption, so I thought I'd at least look. It's only been less than 2 weeks since I lost Diomedes, so I don't feel ready yet. But I thought I'd at least look.

As of this writing, two are available for adoption (Anders & Deacon). They were playing with each other a bit and I was half tempted to just adopt them both.

But, yeah, I don't think I'm ready yet. I know it's not, but it kind of feels like I'm betraying Diomedes.
Mourn until you are ready, But Diomedes is looking down "You have a kitty sized hole in your soul, and somebody could use a good home."
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Client completely shot down the interface I made for them, and "informed" me of a whole bunch of other functionality they wanted that wasn't in the scope of work (which was the fault of our sales/estimation team). So basically, 20+ hours of programming work just went to waste and I have to start over.

BACK TO FORMULA??


And the thing that really chafes is, they've asked for a style of control ("Just put everything in one big matrix selector but keep it simple") that I know they're going to hate. This is going on a 7 inch touchpanel, people. You don't have the real estate to build a war room.
 
Client completely shot down the interface I made for them, and "informed" me of a whole bunch of other functionality they wanted that wasn't in the scope of work (which was the fault of our sales/estimation team). So basically, 20+ hours of programming work just went to waste and I have to start over.

BACK TO FORMULA??


And the thing that really chafes is, they've asked for a style of control ("Just put everything in one big matrix selector but keep it simple") that I know they're going to hate. This is going on a 7 inch touchpanel, people. You don't have the real estate to build a war room.
Tiny buttons. Lots of tiny buttons that are impossible for people with fat fingers to push just one. Lots of tiny buttons that are impossible to read because of trying to get it all on one small screen.

You have my sympathy.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Tiny buttons. Lots of tiny buttons that are impossible for people with fat fingers to push just one. Lots of tiny buttons that are impossible to read because of trying to get it all on one small screen.

You have my sympathy.
Seriously. If they want a single matrix, it's going to be 8x30. On a 7 inch touch panel (which has about 6 inches wide of viewable space) that'd make the buttons, at the very most, taking up every pixel, 0.2 inches wide. On a TOUCH screen.
 
Seriously. If they want a single matrix, it's going to be 8x30. On a 7 inch touch panel (which has about 6 inches wide of viewable space) that'd make the buttons, at the very most, taking up every pixel, 0.2 inches wide. On a TOUCH screen.
We use touch screens for some of our water well PLCs control and monitoring. Our biggest has about 45 buttons over 7 screens, and it’s all usable and readable by partly blind people.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
We use touch screens for some of our water well PLCs control and monitoring. Our biggest has about 45 buttons over 7 screens, and it’s all usable and readable by partly blind people.
That's what I'm trying to convince the client to take as a compromise. Those 8 rows (a "row" is an audio zone/room) become 8 screens, with 30 buttons per screen representing what sources get routed to the currently selected room.

I hope they go for it.

But my original UI was better.
 
Seriously. If they want a single matrix, it's going to be 8x30. On a 7 inch touch panel (which has about 6 inches wide of viewable space) that'd make the buttons, at the very most, taking up every pixel, 0.2 inches wide. On a TOUCH screen.
Half a centimeter? That's actually not as bad as I thought.
I mean, it's not usable for what they want, agreed, but I've seen touch screens on printers and stuff with smaller touchscreen buttons.
 
Skipped hooking up f-i-l (for now) because he's on the other side of the room and needs a different setup for power/Internet
We have 3 APs to cover the house with WiFi, all with wired backhaul (named Garage, Basement, and Porch).
I repurposed Porch to serve as an extender so I could feed wired internet to f-i-l without having to drill/tack/run/tape anything...but I could only get it to connect to Garage, which is the AP farthest away instead of the one practically right beneath it (Basement). I tried for something like 45min this morning resetting it and trying different positioning and such to get it to prefer Basement instead of Garage... before I finally realized that I had shut off Basement's WiFi broadcast sometime in December while I was trying to run down a signal issue, and never turned it back on again.

--Patrick
 
You know what word I don't like today? Application. This word has at least three definitions, and somehow the writer of my Chinese source text has managed to repeatedly put them all in the same sentence. So I'm producing translations like, "Candidates must submit an application to propose applications for the application." And then I go back and try to twist them into a more comprehensible form, such as, "Candidates must apply to propose possible uses of the software." Which still isn't great.
 
You know what word I don't like today? Application. This word has at least three definitions
As a (very!) bored kid, I remember paging through the BIG dictionary at our house (the one we used for Scrabble games) looking for the word with the most definitions. The winner was "set," which, with only three letters, had by far the most definitions. It can mean to be ready, to put something atop something else, a television, a collection of items, a specific thing, and so on, which means it is possible you could be set by Set to be set to set a set Set set on a set Set set (you could be tasked by the Egyptian god of disorder to be ready to place a specific collection of objects bearing His likeness atop one of His many prepared televisions).

--Patrick
 
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You know what word I don't like today? Application. This word has at least three definitions, and somehow the writer of my Chinese source text has managed to repeatedly put them all in the same sentence. So I'm producing translations like, "Candidates must submit an application to propose applications for the application." And then I go back and try to twist them into a more comprehensible form, such as, "Candidates must apply to propose possible uses of the software." Which still isn't great.
Too many applications of application?
 
You know what word I don't like today? Application. This word has at least three definitions, and somehow the writer of my Chinese source text has managed to repeatedly put them all in the same sentence. So I'm producing translations like, "Candidates must submit an application to propose applications for the application." And then I go back and try to twist them into a more comprehensible form, such as, "Candidates must apply to propose possible uses of the software." Which still isn't great.
"Yo dawg, I heard you like applications! So we put more applications in your applications..."
 
"Candidates must apply to propose possible uses of the software." Which still isn't great.
Especially since it no longer implies you're supposed to submit it in writing.

"Candidates must submit a proposal concerning the possible uses of the software application." maybe?
 
Brushing up my resume and cover letter after 4 years of letting them get dusty.

This does not feel good.

But, the wave of relief I felt when I got a warm response to an inquiry for another position most certainly did feel good. Like, I felt muscles un-tense that I didn't know were tense. So a-dusting I will go.
 
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