There's YouTube content generators that could run circles around late night and even premium channel (I'm looking at you, John Oliver!) comedy shows. Some put out a new show 3-5x a week. Writers simply help fill out a 22 minute show, but good hosts should be able to pull it off on their own in the event of a strike.
As someone who doesn't give a fuck, it's amusing to see everyone argue about what food is healthy or not. Just eat whatever you want, there'll be some study to back it up, and chances are the lower stress you feel regarding something you do 3x a day will do more for your health than any diet.
The federal employees are pawns though. In the end, procurement is decided by the politicians. Lobbyists for $corp donate to $pol. Coincidentally, shortly thereafter $pol has a great idea for $project where a certain $item is needed. $item happens to be produced by $corp. Contracts go out for bid, $corp is selected to the surprise of no one, despite the fact that $smallbiz could have done it for a fraction of the price, but $smallbiz does not have some $obscure_capability that can only be provided by Oracle. I mean, $corp.
I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment, they swarm like flies to honey. With that type of environment you simply will never see disagreement, people have better things to do than shout at a wall. Since Slashdot has people with higher average IQ, and a marginally better moderation system, dissenting thought isn't punished and can be debated on it's merits (to a point).
There's also the simple fact that a percentage of people will naturally shift right as they get older. So, if slashdot's reader base has good retention without much "new blood" being injected into it, this change could manifest as a result.
The official policy is that all work goes through tickets. As in, we are not following the proper procedure when we directly work off of an email/email chain. The type of person who whines to middle management when their email is ignored is most certainly going to bring attention to work done outside of the approved channels if we accommodate them (as in, if we do something nice once, they'll expect it every time and complain all the way to the top when we don't, at which point we'll get yelled at for having done something nice). The type of person who follows up without ever including management understands how things actually work, and they get the cookie.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but I will typically CC the boss if I'm asking for something that should be questioned. For example, if I'm asking for access to a system or application managed by a different team, or card access to a new building, or creation of a new vlan. Usually simply CC'ing the boss is enough to bypass any questions, but in case they do ask "is there approval for this" the boss is already on the chain to say "yes".
Heh, that approach doesn't get very far with me. Emails are prioritized by me based on how many top priority tasks I have, followed by how much I like the person requesting, followed by how easy the task is. Someone who does that very quickly gets the "I'm sorry you must submit a ticket for that" cold shoulder. The officially published SLA is 2 weeks for my group's ticket queue.
That's easy to avoid - rarely are those professors the only ones for that particular course, so pick a different one.
Also I saved a ton of money by not buying any textbooks until the first time I needed them. While all the used copies are typically gone by then (unless you're lucky enough to grab returns from those who drop the course), buying 5 out of 20 "required" books new each semester is an order of magnitude cheaper than buying 20 out of 20 used ones.
Do you do mostly city driving? I could understand that. Highway though, an inane conversation is safer for me. It keeps me from "highway hypnosis" while staring at endless trees, dotted white lines, and the occasional other car. On road trips I require conversation from whoever gets shotgun - I want both of us awake, alert and looking at the road, and talking about random bullshit insures this. As a passenger I once saved us from hitting a wild turkey flying across the road (simply interjecting "turkey!" mid-sentence did the trick); I expect no less of my navigator!
In rural areas it does protect more than they kill, even the people who don't have one. If 1/3 the property owners in a zip code are armed, none of them get robbed (the robbers go elsewhere for easier targets). Being followed by a road rager? Call a buddy to come out onto his porch with his rifle and pull into his driveway. When the cops are 20 minutes away, that's how it works. Think of it like the Nuclear Umbrella.
That's only if you are engaging in the demanding conversation, which is what the testers were doing. The rare occasion I talk while driving (using the built in bt connection), if the conversation goes anywhere above inane chatter, I hang up suddenly. I might call back while stopped and say "oh sorry, bad reception out here in the sticks", or just not bother.
Yes! The texters on my morning commute create an opening on the long entrance ramp line to the highway once the traffic light changes. If I see one of these gaps I scoot in. If no gap I take local roads (so I'm not one of those assholes who jumps the line and forces my way in when there's no openings).
I'll add, when stopping the car it automatically pauses, so when you get back in later, it resumes. So if I don't close the player at some point during the day, I never even take the thing out of my pocket - meaning if I *don't* get my music playing the moment I start the car, I know I left it at my desk / at home.
For me that's exactly how it is. It takes a few seconds while initially parked to set up (if Amazon Music or whatever wasn't already running/paused) and from then on, steering wheel controls. And I have an "older" car system, newer ones can probably communicate more than next/previous song and cycle playlists/albums.
FWIW they recently (and surprisingly quietly) raised the minimum annual salary for overtime exemption from a paltry $23,660 to $47,476 as of December 1st. Still laughably low, but a step in the right direction. Complete text. Also notable is the number is now pegged to a calculation with an automatic update every 3 years.
So people making less than that now have a cattle prod to get a raise.
Regarding the crime rate: Outside of major cities in the USA, the crime rate can be incredibly low. That said, we can always visit Canada if we want to vacation in a safe city...
Now I'm just waiting for some wise-cracker to say "If you hate government so much, you should move to Somalia." I don't hate government, but I do hate corruption, waste and bureaucratic red tape. Apparently, being against those things makes you some sort of anarchist with Somalia being your only option, instead of returning your federal government back to a limited, constitutionally defined role.
The real country to use as a model is Singapore. The Gov't stays out of the way of business, thus business prospers. Singaporean government regularly tops the charts of "least corrupt" countries in the world. Of course it's not a Libertarian utopian paradise either, as on social issues the government is extremely strict (some speech is restricted, and there's that whole death penalty for drug trafficking thing).
If you have to micromanage like you have shown here, then you're a shit manager who doesn't know how to hire properly or manage a team and you should be fired. I'm not a manager, just an employee who had to fill out such a form, except form being a simple list of "task" and "hours". If you can't succinctly put the things you've done over the past week in that format, I'd argue you're the terrible employee trying to deflect. I'm not talking about minutia here, just "Project for customer x: 5 hours. Troubleshooting issue y: 3 hours. On-site consultation with customer t: 6 hours. Training on topics a, b, c: 10 hours. Research on topic d: 2 hours".
Without that, how can you charge back your time to the customers, versus your employer? How much is coming out of the internal training budget? Pull numbers out randomly, how does your company function?
That is the rule in New York (though it is closer to 1 year), and locked a lot of Independent and Republican registered folk from voting for Sanders in the primary. It also prevented the Trump family for voting for him in the primary because they were registered Democrat!
Have the employees who work from home write out a weekly summary of all they've done, and a rough estimate of hours for each task. A freeform bullet point list is enough. I worked in a place that made all employees (even the non-remote ones, as well as management) fill such out. I jumped at any opportunities to do more work simply so that I'd have a lot to put in the report. A side benefit is, if your team is understaffed, the reports make it easier to illustrate the problem up the chain.
Voicemail requires more time to obtain the same amount of information that a quick glance at an IM would provide. It also puts the onus on the listener, the one who is being asked something, to figure out what is being asked from a rambling thought stream. When people are forced to put their desires in text form, they will subconsciously organize it coherently and completely before sending it off to you.
To discourage people from leaving me voicemails I check them only when the system starts emailing me warnings that the box is full. And because the red light has been repurposed in my mind to mean "the telephone is working," I usually pick a short one to not delete so that the light remains on after I've deleted the other ~50 messages.
There is a fix; if your city has such congested freeways during rush hour, a light rail, S-bahn type commuter rail or subway that serves the CBD with park and rides sounds like the answer. Bus is *not* an answer because it will simply sit in the same traffic as the cars, bus lanes cause frustration, and bus service is too easy to alter at will to be any meaningful metric. The bus that goes from my apartment to my office does not run for any work schedule other than 8AM-4:30 PM. When I first moved there, the span of service was 7AM-7PM. No one would dare do that to a light rail, subway line or even a commuter rail.
The US Highway System unfortunately runs at the whims of the states it passes through. I try to use it where possible, but US20 through Massachusetts takes twice as long as I90. There are sections where the speed limit drops to 20, or the number of lanes drops to 1 each direction. The Interstate standard of: * grade separated * 2 lane per direction minimum * 55MPH speed limit
Are what make them better.
The worst of these is US15 in VA. Through MD and PA it is a breeze. The section in Virginia is a 1 lane/direction hell, likely by design. I *wanted* to stop and eat but feared never being able to merge back onto the road; I can't be the only one. All those businesses who have to put up with the passing traffic don't even get to benefit from it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's YouTube content generators that could run circles around late night and even premium channel (I'm looking at you, John Oliver!) comedy shows. Some put out a new show 3-5x a week. Writers simply help fill out a 22 minute show, but good hosts should be able to pull it off on their own in the event of a strike.
Acceptable in the 90's as well, at least in large cities. We were taught the suburbs were filled with pedos in vans, though.
Some say 100% apple juice is worse than soda.
As someone who doesn't give a fuck, it's amusing to see everyone argue about what food is healthy or not. Just eat whatever you want, there'll be some study to back it up, and chances are the lower stress you feel regarding something you do 3x a day will do more for your health than any diet.
The federal employees are pawns though. In the end, procurement is decided by the politicians. Lobbyists for $corp donate to $pol. Coincidentally, shortly thereafter $pol has a great idea for $project where a certain $item is needed. $item happens to be produced by $corp. Contracts go out for bid, $corp is selected to the surprise of no one, despite the fact that $smallbiz could have done it for a fraction of the price, but $smallbiz does not have some $obscure_capability that can only be provided by Oracle. I mean, $corp.
I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment, they swarm like flies to honey. With that type of environment you simply will never see disagreement, people have better things to do than shout at a wall. Since Slashdot has people with higher average IQ, and a marginally better moderation system, dissenting thought isn't punished and can be debated on it's merits (to a point).
There's also the simple fact that a percentage of people will naturally shift right as they get older. So, if slashdot's reader base has good retention without much "new blood" being injected into it, this change could manifest as a result.
The official policy is that all work goes through tickets. As in, we are not following the proper procedure when we directly work off of an email/email chain. The type of person who whines to middle management when their email is ignored is most certainly going to bring attention to work done outside of the approved channels if we accommodate them (as in, if we do something nice once, they'll expect it every time and complain all the way to the top when we don't, at which point we'll get yelled at for having done something nice). The type of person who follows up without ever including management understands how things actually work, and they get the cookie.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but I will typically CC the boss if I'm asking for something that should be questioned. For example, if I'm asking for access to a system or application managed by a different team, or card access to a new building, or creation of a new vlan. Usually simply CC'ing the boss is enough to bypass any questions, but in case they do ask "is there approval for this" the boss is already on the chain to say "yes".
Heh, that approach doesn't get very far with me. Emails are prioritized by me based on how many top priority tasks I have, followed by how much I like the person requesting, followed by how easy the task is. Someone who does that very quickly gets the "I'm sorry you must submit a ticket for that" cold shoulder. The officially published SLA is 2 weeks for my group's ticket queue.
That's easy to avoid - rarely are those professors the only ones for that particular course, so pick a different one.
Also I saved a ton of money by not buying any textbooks until the first time I needed them. While all the used copies are typically gone by then (unless you're lucky enough to grab returns from those who drop the course), buying 5 out of 20 "required" books new each semester is an order of magnitude cheaper than buying 20 out of 20 used ones.
Do you do mostly city driving? I could understand that. Highway though, an inane conversation is safer for me. It keeps me from "highway hypnosis" while staring at endless trees, dotted white lines, and the occasional other car. On road trips I require conversation from whoever gets shotgun - I want both of us awake, alert and looking at the road, and talking about random bullshit insures this. As a passenger I once saved us from hitting a wild turkey flying across the road (simply interjecting "turkey!" mid-sentence did the trick); I expect no less of my navigator!
In rural areas it does protect more than they kill, even the people who don't have one. If 1/3 the property owners in a zip code are armed, none of them get robbed (the robbers go elsewhere for easier targets). Being followed by a road rager? Call a buddy to come out onto his porch with his rifle and pull into his driveway. When the cops are 20 minutes away, that's how it works. Think of it like the Nuclear Umbrella.
That's only if you are engaging in the demanding conversation, which is what the testers were doing. The rare occasion I talk while driving (using the built in bt connection), if the conversation goes anywhere above inane chatter, I hang up suddenly. I might call back while stopped and say "oh sorry, bad reception out here in the sticks", or just not bother.
Yes! The texters on my morning commute create an opening on the long entrance ramp line to the highway once the traffic light changes. If I see one of these gaps I scoot in. If no gap I take local roads (so I'm not one of those assholes who jumps the line and forces my way in when there's no openings).
I'll add, when stopping the car it automatically pauses, so when you get back in later, it resumes. So if I don't close the player at some point during the day, I never even take the thing out of my pocket - meaning if I *don't* get my music playing the moment I start the car, I know I left it at my desk / at home.
For me that's exactly how it is. It takes a few seconds while initially parked to set up (if Amazon Music or whatever wasn't already running/paused) and from then on, steering wheel controls. And I have an "older" car system, newer ones can probably communicate more than next/previous song and cycle playlists/albums.
FWIW they recently (and surprisingly quietly) raised the minimum annual salary for overtime exemption from a paltry $23,660 to $47,476 as of December 1st. Still laughably low, but a step in the right direction. Complete text. Also notable is the number is now pegged to a calculation with an automatic update every 3 years.
So people making less than that now have a cattle prod to get a raise.
Try to build wraith, end up building command center. Sounds legit!
Meanwhile all you needed to do was research cloak for your Banshees (A10s).
Regarding the crime rate: Outside of major cities in the USA, the crime rate can be incredibly low. That said, we can always visit Canada if we want to vacation in a safe city...
Now I'm just waiting for some wise-cracker to say "If you hate government so much, you should move to Somalia." I don't hate government, but I do hate corruption, waste and bureaucratic red tape. Apparently, being against those things makes you some sort of anarchist with Somalia being your only option, instead of returning your federal government back to a limited, constitutionally defined role.
The real country to use as a model is Singapore. The Gov't stays out of the way of business, thus business prospers. Singaporean government regularly tops the charts of "least corrupt" countries in the world. Of course it's not a Libertarian utopian paradise either, as on social issues the government is extremely strict (some speech is restricted, and there's that whole death penalty for drug trafficking thing).
If you have to micromanage like you have shown here, then you're a shit manager who doesn't know how to hire properly or manage a team and you should be fired.
I'm not a manager, just an employee who had to fill out such a form, except form being a simple list of "task" and "hours". If you can't succinctly put the things you've done over the past week in that format, I'd argue you're the terrible employee trying to deflect. I'm not talking about minutia here, just "Project for customer x: 5 hours. Troubleshooting issue y: 3 hours. On-site consultation with customer t: 6 hours. Training on topics a, b, c: 10 hours. Research on topic d: 2 hours".
Without that, how can you charge back your time to the customers, versus your employer? How much is coming out of the internal training budget? Pull numbers out randomly, how does your company function?
That is the rule in New York (though it is closer to 1 year), and locked a lot of Independent and Republican registered folk from voting for Sanders in the primary. It also prevented the Trump family for voting for him in the primary because they were registered Democrat!
Have the employees who work from home write out a weekly summary of all they've done, and a rough estimate of hours for each task. A freeform bullet point list is enough. I worked in a place that made all employees (even the non-remote ones, as well as management) fill such out. I jumped at any opportunities to do more work simply so that I'd have a lot to put in the report. A side benefit is, if your team is understaffed, the reports make it easier to illustrate the problem up the chain.
Voicemail requires more time to obtain the same amount of information that a quick glance at an IM would provide. It also puts the onus on the listener, the one who is being asked something, to figure out what is being asked from a rambling thought stream. When people are forced to put their desires in text form, they will subconsciously organize it coherently and completely before sending it off to you.
To discourage people from leaving me voicemails I check them only when the system starts emailing me warnings that the box is full. And because the red light has been repurposed in my mind to mean "the telephone is working," I usually pick a short one to not delete so that the light remains on after I've deleted the other ~50 messages.
There is a fix; if your city has such congested freeways during rush hour, a light rail, S-bahn type commuter rail or subway that serves the CBD with park and rides sounds like the answer. Bus is *not* an answer because it will simply sit in the same traffic as the cars, bus lanes cause frustration, and bus service is too easy to alter at will to be any meaningful metric. The bus that goes from my apartment to my office does not run for any work schedule other than 8AM-4:30 PM. When I first moved there, the span of service was 7AM-7PM. No one would dare do that to a light rail, subway line or even a commuter rail.
The US Highway System unfortunately runs at the whims of the states it passes through. I try to use it where possible, but US20 through Massachusetts takes twice as long as I90. There are sections where the speed limit drops to 20, or the number of lanes drops to 1 each direction. The Interstate standard of:
* grade separated
* 2 lane per direction minimum
* 55MPH speed limit
Are what make them better.
The worst of these is US15 in VA. Through MD and PA it is a breeze. The section in Virginia is a 1 lane/direction hell, likely by design. I *wanted* to stop and eat but feared never being able to merge back onto the road; I can't be the only one. All those businesses who have to put up with the passing traffic don't even get to benefit from it.