The cranky thread

[death tribble]

Lost an hour in bed as the clocks when forward for Springtime.

[Old Man]

Daylight savings time exists.

[Cancer]

My son has been summoned for jury duty as many times as I have (once).  Neither of us were seated.

[tkdguy]

Considering how crappy things have been at work, and even in the general area, I can probably thnk of jury duty as a sort of vacation.

[lemming]

On 3/25/2018 at 9:47 PM, Cancer said:

My son has been summoned for jury duty as many times as I have (once).  Neither of us were seated.

This last time was the first time I'd ever got to the "interview" stage.  Only once before actually had to go to a court house.

[Cancer]

I went to the courthouse and reported in, but no juries were seated that day so I got the free pass.  My son went through another step but he too wasn't seated.

 

When I was in Indiana I was concerned about getting pressganged; there the sheriff is (or was at the time) empowered to grab people off the street if they're short of jurors, and the county courthouse was at the middle of the direct line between my apartment and my office, and I walked to work every morning.  Never happened, though.

[Ternaugh]

The homeowner's association sent me a "courtesy letter" reminding me that the beauty of our complex was compromised because someone could see the top of the lid of the trash bins in back of my pony wall in front of the house, and that it could result in fines if they're visible. My first thought was, "you've just noticed them now, after we've had our bins there for 15 years?"

[Cancer]

Is there a new anal-retentive humorless busybody with fascistic tendencies hellbent on telling others what to do who is recently installed in the hierarchy of your homeowners association?  I admit, homeowners associations officerships is the natural habitat of anal-retentive humorless busybodies with fascistic tendencies (used to be it was peacetime army NCOs, but the word may have got out about fragging).

[Ternaugh]

8 hours ago, Cancer said:

Is there a new anal-retentive humorless busybody with fascistic tendencies hellbent on telling others what to do who is recently installed in the hierarchy of your homeowners association?  I admit, homeowners associations officerships is the natural habitat of anal-retentive humorless busybodies with fascistic tendencies (used to be it was peacetime army NCOs, but the word may have got out about fragging).

 

Probably. We just had an election for the board, and I don't know the new members. My guess is that the letter was a compromise with the few old-timers on the board to warn folks before assessing fines.

 

I feel most badly about my neighbor, Betty, who has also been storing her bins in back of her pony wall. Neither of us have an actual garage (mine's recorded on the deed as the third bedroom, hers is a conversion), and, as townhomes, we share common walls, meaning that the only route to the patio is through the main house. Betty's pretty close to 90 years old, and I don't see how she would be able to drag her bins up the steps into her house, let alone somewhere to store them. I've got a ramp on my steps from when my late wife needed to be moved around by wheelchair, so I can get the bins into and out of the house, but storage is still a problem (they're wedged in my entry hall right now).

[Old Man]

16 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

The homeowner's association sent me a "courtesy letter" reminding me that the beauty of our complex was compromised because someone could see the top of the lid of the trash bins in back of my pony wall in front of the house, and that it could result in fines if they're visible. My first thought was, "you've just noticed them now, after we've had our bins there for 15 years?"

 

It should be legal to kill these people.  I'm not sure I'm joking.

[Cancer]

Hence my comment about fragging.

[Cancer]

And (speaking of fragging and urge to commit it), our glorious house of DFUA's (who in excessively polite company with no tolerance for scatological and excretory slang, F-bombs, and references to congenital mental deficiency due to N generations of consanguineous inbreeding, are collectively called "IT" so others know what we're talking about) replaced the machine in my administrator office, and had installed on the new box literally NONE of the five pieces of freeware and two pieces of costware-but-the-university-has-a-site-lisence that I indicated were necessary to do my job.

[Old Man]

Your IT department amuses me.  It's so different from the one here.

[Ternaugh]

There's a memo that went out in our IT organization several years ago that only approved software would be allowed on workstations. Of course, the approved software list hasn't been created yet.

 

A general guideline was that no freeware or shareware was supposed to be installed, which didn't stop several Vice Presidents from installing CutePDF on multiple machines.

 

After we migrated to Windows 7, an email went out stating that the Office XP toolbar should not be installed on workstations, as it causes compatibility problems. Our phone support folks would install it anyway, and I still come across the installer or the program in the Administrator accounts on many workstations (which I usually remove).

[Cancer]

Well, the freeware I specify is python, a couple of extra packages for python, Vim, Winmerge, and a couple of other analyst/developer-type things in the same genre.  (I note that python is already approved freeware on the instructional CS lab machines here.)  The full Acrobat suite is on the box already, so I can forge official documents to my heart's content.  Someday I'll learn that so I can make cool character sheets with it.

 

I was told unofficially by someone who knows that when the contract is up a year or so from now, the current IT contractor will not be allowed to submit a new bid.

[L. Marcus]

Hah! So there are still some vestiges of sanity left.

[lemming]

On 4/4/2018 at 7:41 PM, Ternaugh said:

The homeowner's association sent me a "courtesy letter" reminding me that the beauty of our complex was compromised because someone could see the top of the lid of the trash bins in back of my pony wall in front of the house, and that it could result in fines if they're visible. My first thought was, "you've just noticed them now, after we've had our bins there for 15 years?"

You need shorter people in your neighborhood.  Perhaps kneecap the ones complaining?

[Pariah]

On 4/4/2018 at 8:41 PM, Ternaugh said:

The homeowner's association sent me a "courtesy letter" reminding me that the beauty of our complex was compromised because someone could see the top of the lid of the trash bins in back of my pony wall in front of the house, and that it could result in fines if they're visible. My first thought was, "you've just noticed them now, after we've had our bins there for 15 years?"

 

Could you solve the problem by modifying the fence to make it look like this?

 

 

[Ternaugh]

10 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

Could you solve the problem by modifying the fence to make it look like this?

 

 

 

The short answer is yes, I can add to the wall. It's a block wall, so I wouldn't be able to do anything quite as symbolic as this picture.

 

I went into the office on Friday and talked with the folks there. One of them explained that this was probably left over from the old board, and that they have one person who makes it her duty to go around finding violations. His comment was that he shreds most of them before they're ever sent out. The solution that they suggested was to add a planter box to the top of the wall, which I'm considering. I might even put a plant or two in it eventually.

[Old Man]

Cannabis?  Hemlock?  Nightshade?  Gympie-gympie?

[Ternaugh]

 

On 4/8/2018 at 10:32 AM, Old Man said:

Cannabis?  Hemlock?  Nightshade?  Gympie-gympie?

 

I'm leaning toward cacti right now. I might be able to emulate the fence picture, if I plan it right.

 

 

 

I had been on vacation last week, but I think that I have lost all of the benefits of that on my first day back today. First, I'm not really sure what my co-worker actually did while I was gone, other than to mess up the tech bench even more. I ended up clearing out several of the tickets that were on hold before he arrived today, and set him up to clear a few more. Stuff that was supposed to be delivered last week didn't arrive, and a major project that was supposed to be done last week won't have key items set up until the middle of this week. There's a VIP project that's requiring some of my attention as well, and it's going to lead to even more stress later in the week.

[tkdguy]

You know you're going to have a lousy day when everything starts going wrong even before the day officially starts.

[Cancer]

On April 12, 2018 at 2:21 PM, tkdguy said:

You know you're going to have a lousy day when everything starts going wrong even before the day officially starts.

 

It isn't the case for me this time, but there have been occasions where I'd swap out "day" and swap in "week".

[tkdguy]

2 hours ago, Cancer said:

 

It isn't the case for me this time, but there have been occasions where I'd swap out "day" and swap in "week".

 

I have those too. Slowly graduating from weeks to months.

[Pariah]

Time for another root canal. In about five minutes. Huzzah!