The Random Crap Thread 2: It Hits the Fan.

Dave

Dave

Staff member
Doing a mixed rant/whine/win post. I'm lazy and didn't want to make more than 1.

  1. Win: I got my electric bill for December. It said: "No payment needed." What? So I went to my account. My balance is ($596). Uh...I think somebody fucked up. So I called. Apparently in the early 1990's when I was first married and had little to no money, we had been shut off a few times. To get turned back on we had to pay a deposit. And since then we've become financially secure so we've not been late on our bills. Like, for decades. The power department finally realized we had paid that deposit so they paid it back. With interest. Bottom line, I have no electric bill for probably 4-5 months.
  2. Whine: Remember back in 2011 when they took our house? Well, we got a check in the mail from the settlement with Wells Fargo. $2.50. I'll try not to spend it all at once.
  3. Rant: Some of you may know who (actually WHAT) Kronos is. For those of you not familiar, Kronos is an HR third party company used by several thousand businesses worldwide. They process hours worked, pay, etc. So it's really no surprise that they were the target of a ransomware attack. A SUCCESSFUL attack, I might add. Suddenly they can no longer take hours, pay employees of ANY company, etc. Guess who Cargill uses for their timekeeping? ADP. KIDDING! They use Kronos. Right now we can't put in our hours and pay is going to be eighty shades of fucked up. Now, they have a system in place that they are implementing. We will get paid for 80 hours and then overtime will be calculated using the average of the last 4 weeks. Note that this will be the same check each two-week period until such time as they fix their sht. Or pay the ransom in Bitcoin. Whichever. In any event, this is going to cause some serious issues. One guy, for example, just came off of medical leave. He's worked 120 hours to try and make up for what he's lost being gone. Guess what? He had NO overtime the last 4 recorded weeks. He's going to be severely underpaid but at the end he's going to get a HUGE fucking check. Me? I've worked my ass off the last few months but now that I'm on shift work I'm not working as many hours. My checks are going to be massive...until they "fix the glitch", then I'm going to get fucked. So I'm going to have to put every penny away and just not touch it until they get their shit together. And what's this going to do to my 2021 income for taxes? Nobody knows right now.
  4. Minor win: Because of #3, Cargill is giving everyone a flat $250 extra in their check this week. This is to make up for hours missed. If, as in my case, we are getting overpaid, Cargill doesn't care and won't ask for this money back. It's a pretty decent thing of them to do considering it's nothing they did or could control. What's interesting is almost all the people I work with are just miserable old bastards. They constantly whine and complain about EVERYTHING and are hating on Cargill for the whole thing going on with the pay. None of them understand how good they've actually got it. We make good money and all of our tools and gear are provided for us. Yeah, we work 12 hour shifts and transition monthly from nights to days to nights, but who cares? You have so many days off it's amazing. My schedule is a rotating 7 days in a 2 week period. You work 2 days and have 2 days off. If you work on a Friday you work the whole weekend, then have Monday/Tuesday off. These guys have all worked at Cargill for YEARS and none of them know what the job market outside of Cargill is. Yeah, the job can be hard, but for every hard day there are 3 or 4 that are just sitting on our asses shooting the shit playing on our phones. Maybe it's just new to me, but I think it's more that these guys are just miserable old shits who need a little perspective.
*whew* Maybe I should have put that all in three posts...
 
evilmike

evilmike

Dave said:
Doing a mixed rant/whine/win post. I'm lazy and didn't want to make more than 1.

  1. Win: I got my electric bill for December. It said: "No payment needed." What? So I went to my account. My balance is ($596). Uh...I think somebody fucked up. So I called. Apparently in the early 1990's when I was first married and had little to no money, we had been shut off a few times. To get turned back on we had to pay a deposit. And since then we've become financially secure so we've not been late on our bills. Like, for decades. The power department finally realized we had paid that deposit so they paid it back. With interest. Bottom line, I have no electric bill for probably 4-5 months.
  2. Whine: Remember back in 2011 when they took our house? Well, we got a check in the mail from the settlement with Wells Fargo. $2.50. I'll try not to spend it all at once.
  3. Rant: Some of you may know who (actually WHAT) Kronos is. For those of you not familiar, Kronos is an HR third party company used by several thousand businesses worldwide. They process hours worked, pay, etc. So it's really no surprise that they were the target of a ransomware attack. A SUCCESSFUL attack, I might add. Suddenly they can no longer take hours, pay employees of ANY company, etc. Guess who Cargill uses for their timekeeping? ADP. KIDDING! They use Kronos. Right now we can't put in our hours and pay is going to be eighty shades of fucked up. Now, they have a system in place that they are implementing. We will get paid for 80 hours and then overtime will be calculated using the average of the last 4 weeks. Note that this will be the same check each two-week period until such time as they fix their sht. Or pay the ransom in Bitcoin. Whichever. In any event, this is going to cause some serious issues. One guy, for example, just came off of medical leave. He's worked 120 hours to try and make up for what he's lost being gone. Guess what? He had NO overtime the last 4 recorded weeks. He's going to be severely underpaid but at the end he's going to get a HUGE fucking check. Me? I've worked my ass off the last few months but now that I'm on shift work I'm not working as many hours. My checks are going to be massive...until they "fix the glitch", then I'm going to get fucked. So I'm going to have to put every penny away and just not touch it until they get their shit together. And what's this going to do to my 2021 income for taxes? Nobody knows right now.
  4. Minor win: Because of #3, Cargill is giving everyone a flat $250 extra in their check this week. This is to make up for hours missed. If, as in my case, we are getting overpaid, Cargill doesn't care and won't ask for this money back. It's a pretty decent thing of them to do considering it's nothing they did or could control. What's interesting is almost all the people I work with are just miserable old bastards. They constantly whine and complain about EVERYTHING and are hating on Cargill for the whole thing going on with the pay. None of them understand how good they've actually got it. We make good money and all of our tools and gear are provided for us. Yeah, we work 12 hour shifts and transition monthly from nights to days to nights, but who cares? You have so many days off it's amazing. My schedule is a rotating 7 days in a 2 week period. You work 2 days and have 2 days off. If you work on a Friday you work the whole weekend, then have Monday/Tuesday off. These guys have all worked at Cargill for YEARS and none of them know what the job market outside of Cargill is. Yeah, the job can be hard, but for every hard day there are 3 or 4 that are just sitting on our asses shooting the shit playing on our phones. Maybe it's just new to me, but I think it's more that these guys are just miserable old shits who need a little perspective.
*whew* Maybe I should have put that all in three posts...
Click to expand...
For the near future, I'd recommend staying away from monkey's paws and also frogurt.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Every year, our company sends out an e-mail from management that on the last day before CHristmas and New Year's, we can stop 2 hours earlier. Every year, our team manager specifies thzt the early shift can take off early ,the late shift has to stay to ensure the helpdesk can be reached. In return, the late shift gets 2 hours (per holiday) to recoup later. I usually just use these to start 2 hours later the first day after.

This year, we got a mail from our own team manager, that EVERYONE could knock off at 14h00. That's the time the early shift would be allowed to quit. So....We just get a 5-hour work day? Or what? It wasn't very clear.
And now we just got a message that in return, EVERYONE is expected to work the early shift.

In other words, as a "reward"/compensation for working on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, I....get to get up 2 hours earlier. Fuck that. My manager posted "this is in the interest of fairness, if anyone doesn't agree, please speak up". So I spoke up - thanks, but no thanks, I don't want to get up earlier than normal on my frickin' birthday. Keep the 2 hours, I'll happily work the regular shift and do helpdesk all on my own - it's calm anyway. Ah, no, sorry, when she said "please speak up", apparently, she meant "..;but if so, sucks to be you". I asked if there was any way to change the systme for NY. Nope. get up earlier, and be forced to use the two horus you get at a point where you don't want or need it. I do'nt want ot stop work ar 2PM, my wife isn't home yet at that time, I'm not interested in being home alone for two hours - I'll probably end up having to use that time for dinner or something.

BLEGH. Motivation down the drain right now.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

My wife and I met and became a couple when we were in university. When she told her friend and roommate at the time that we'd started dating, her roommate had apparently made a face and said, "Are you sure? You could probably do better than him, you know." (I don't know the exact details because this was relayed to me afterwards.)

Sometimes, for no particular reason, I randomly think of the roommate saying that. I actually agree with the roommate. She could do a lot better than me.
 
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Reactions: Cog
bhamv3

bhamv3

Fun fact! The origins of the name "Boxing Day" come from all the boxes that were left after Christmas. Not from the Christmas presents though, because the practice of putting Christmas presents in boxes and wrapping them in paper didn't start until around the Second World War. People did wrap gifts in paper and twine, but they wrapped the gifts themselves instead of putting them in an extraneous box first. Interestingly, this means that most modern depictions of stories like A Christmas Carol (first published in 1843) and The Gift of the Magi (first published in 1905) that show gifts in boxes are actually anachronistic. So where did the boxes that gave their name to Boxing Day come from? They came from the wooden boxes that were used to transport the foodstuffs that would be turned into Christmas dinner. Turkeys came in boxes, vegetables came in boxes, bread came in boxes, basically everything was shipped to your home in a box, and then afterwards you'd have these wooden boxes and crates that you often couldn't reuse, because they had giblets and other stuff stuck to them. So Boxing Day refers to spending the day breaking down these wooden boxes into kindling and fuel, which could be used for cooking and warming the home and other purposes okay I just made this whole thing up but it sounds plausible doesn't it.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

bhamv3 said:
Fun fact! The origins of the name "Boxing Day" come from all the boxes that were left after Christmas. Not from the Christmas presents though, because the practice of putting Christmas presents in boxes and wrapping them in paper didn't start until around the Second World War. People did wrap gifts in paper and twine, but they wrapped the gifts themselves instead of putting them in an extraneous box first. Interestingly, this means that most modern depictions of stories like A Christmas Carol (first published in 1843) and The Gift of the Magi (first published in 1905) that show gifts in boxes are actually anachronistic. So where did the boxes that gave their name to Boxing Day come from? They came from the wooden boxes that were used to transport the foodstuffs that would be turned into Christmas dinner. Turkeys came in boxes, vegetables came in boxes, bread came in boxes, basically everything was shipped to your home in a box, and then afterwards you'd have these wooden boxes and crates that you often couldn't reuse, because they had giblets and other stuff stuck to them. So Boxing Day refers to spending the day breaking down these wooden boxes into kindling and fuel, which could be used for cooking and warming the home and other purposes okay I just made this whole thing up but it sounds plausible doesn't it.
Click to expand...
That's all well and good, and be that as it may, but did you know that
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Ugh, have you even bothered to check that on Snops.com or anything? That was a complete fabrication pretty much inventend out of nothing by the Britisch Historical Association for Mediavel and Victorian Times (BHAMV).
The fact of the matter is, while everybody instantly assumes it's related to boxes and not the sport of boxing it actually isn't. The name originated from one of Muhammed Ali's last great fights, the Drama in Bahama, which took place in December 1981. It was near the end of his career, and interest was waning. The sponsors of the fight started a major campaign to turn the second day of Christmas into "Boxing Day" as a new tradition - with plans ot have a yearly big fight on the day, in the vein of other sports-and-holiday traditions like watching football on Thanksgiving. or hockey on NY Eve.
The plan backfired, as Muhammed Ali lost the fight spectacularly and no other major boxing star wanted to be associated with the fight the year after. But the name stuck.
 
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Bubble181

Bubble181

Sources are conflicted. Most seem to say the holiday itself is the 26th but the associated bank holiday is the first workday after Christmas.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
PatrThom said:
Just get @Dave to build you a house.

—Patrick
Click to expand...
Okay this is an inside joke that needs explanation.

I like playing open world survival games. I also build for utility, not pleasure. So my "houses" are merely shelters from being attacked or from the elements. They are always two story boxes with no furniture or decoration unless said decoration serves an actual purpose. If it's cosmetic only I just won't bother wasting the resources to make it.

So everyone makes fun of my boxes in these games.

But god damn it they are useful! You always know where the entrances & exits are, all the production benches are on the outer walls, and there's room to maneuver. Box house rules!
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

It's been a local tradition for an "anonymous" donor to drop a $1000 bill in a Salvation Army kettle. Only this time someone has noticed that this year's bill is the same as a previous year. Which suggests, and wouldn't surprise me in the least, that the "donor" is actually an employee making the drop with the same bill every year.
 
Squidleybits

Squidleybits

Dave said:
Okay this is an inside joke that needs explanation.

I like playing open world survival games. I also build for utility, not pleasure. So my "houses" are merely shelters from being attacked or from the elements. They are always two story boxes with no furniture or decoration unless said decoration serves an actual purpose. If it's cosmetic only I just won't bother wasting the resources to make it.

So everyone makes fun of my boxes in these games.

But god damn it they are useful! You always know where the entrances & exits are, all the production benches are on the outer walls, and there's room to maneuver. Box house rules!
Click to expand...
I rate this funny, because I build the opposite way. I had pretty things in my animal crossing tent. Just because lol :)
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

So I decide, on my last "real" day of vacation this year, to go out and do a few things. One involved going over to the LEGOland Discovery Center Arizona in Tempe to get some Pick-A-Bricks. Another was bumming around for a few things, and by the time I was done, it was lunchtime. So, I chose to visit a certain burger place where you go in 'n out and double-doubled - with some french fries, well done. (That's "secret menu" speak for "make the fries crispy, dammit.")

So, as I'm driving home, I'm sampling on the fries, and I realize I didn't ask for them without salt. I figure, meh, I can manage. But then I take a bundle out of the bag - without looking, as I'm waiting at a stoplight - and begin to munch. As I do so, I think, hey, they may have done some over-salting here. And did some of the cheese from my burger get down into the bag?

That's when I taste something that is definitely not meat, cheese, or french fries. It's paper. I do the typical "spit it OUT, man!" thing - and realize I'd grabbed a salt packet along with the bunch of fries I'd taken from the bag.

I'm not used to that much salt on my fries, so my Atorvastatin and Losartan are doing a little bit of unexpected duty this evening...
 
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