The Obama Administration just screwed us again, in ways that will make my day-to-day work a lot harder. After assuring us they wouldn't.
I believe Ned and Peep, but I'm having a hard time believing Kraabie.
I hate that my boss brings up the fact that I don't have a CS degree every time he talks to me, so I started taking classes to get a CS degree. Now he complains that I'm not billing enough. I feel like I've given my whole life to this firm and it's still not enough.
I don't ever have fun anymore because I'm too busy with homework and work and I feel like I'm at the breaking point. So I'm trying to see a therapist to see what I should do and she just tells me very obvious things like it appears I'm a very anxious person.
I have stupid hormones coursing through me and sometimes I start crying over nothing. It's only a matter of time before I do it in front of people who will use it as evidence that I'm just an emotional woman and I should go home and tend house like a proper Utah woman.
Also pregnancy is supposed to make me warmer, but I'm still as cold as always.
Holy crap. I just realized that Xmas is the week after next. Someone should really alert me to those things.
I had scheduled vacation for three days last week and I ended up being (mildly) sick the whole time. Now I'm back at work and slightly checked out mentally -- I just want to be away from work and not sick.
I have eaten all the chocolate that is mine to eat. Also Lee is really mad at me because we're both emotional about kid things and bickered about how to deal with stuff that got destroyed during the meltdown, so I know nothing I do for her birthday will be good enough and she'll probably be mad again.
I have an irritating cold. The neti pot has it kind of controlled, but half my throat is sore and I can't hear out of one ear.
It's only a matter of time before I do it in front of people who will use it as evidence that I'm just an emotional woman and I should go home and tend house like a proper Utah woman.
Surely that would NEVER happen at a law firm?
It would be economically irrational, which means it's completely implausible, right?
Our new flat is plagued by a relentless low frequency industrial noise which sounds like a compressor or generator. It comes from outside the building, and is either the factory over the river [bad, because it's probably not going to stop] or the building site next door [maybe a pump? which is better as it'll probably stop soon when the building gets occupied].
I've been there a week, and I've not gotten used to it yet. It's still constantly there at the edge of conscious awareness, or, looming huge right in the middle of conscious awareness.
Further to 15:
It's not like traffic noise, or airport/aeroplane noise. Both of those I can tune out, on problem. It's low pitched enough that it's both audible, and present as a kind of constant pressure wave on the ears.
My new (hopefully interim) job has me doing completely un-challenging engineering type work. Nothing I have done in the past two months required anything more than an undergrad mechanical engineering degree, if that. Also I'm not sure about the boss. I fear he may be a Randroid. Certainly he treats the employees like labor units rather than people.
We had our work Christmas party yesterday and I'm still terribly hungover.
Also, the contractors the council has hired to do structural repairs/painting on the house my flat is in want me to leave the windows open during the day for all of next week. This cannot be a good idea.
People keep asking me to do things. If I get an email, or someone comes to my office, or my kids are in the same room as I am, its because someone wants me to do something for them. Just once I'd like someone to offer to do something for me.
19: Hi Rob!
Is there anything I can do for you?
peep
I want to buy gifts for people but I'm enough of a miser that I get thrown into an indecision spiral.
I just found out I could go to London for a business trip in February the week the kids are off school so we could all go as a family trip and my flight would be paid for, but flights are really expensive for everyone else. Boo hoo.
Also February.
I'm having a hard time believing Kraabie
Admittedly I'm a cold weather wuss, but it went down to 30 degrees last night! That totally counts.
My complaint: JunOS is a total piece of shit and Juniper should be laughed out of the telecommunications industry for claiming to have an enterprise-class firewall line. Dumb fuckers do nothing but cost me time. Ahem.
Indeed!
I even dropped a link to a post-appropriate Kids in the Hall sketch in that thread about the ambulances. If one doesn't like Kids in the Hall one probably just ought to watch it more and more, over and over, until Stockholm Syndrome sets in.
25: geez the guy just showed back up and already you're griping about him?
22: If it's any consolation, London in February is a bit shit.
I just dumped a bunch of chocolates on the floor so now I don't know where they go in the container and don't know which one is which.
Also: it's way too easy for me to evade leechblock.
Also: still don't want to grade.
Just found out my options are going to do a reverse split, so the number I thought I had is going to go down dramatically. Theoretically I'll get the same amount of money, but that money is less than I had been daydreaming since I'd been daydreaming that the target price at IPO would apply to my pre-reverse split options. Feh.
re: 29
It's rather more present and localised.* But yeah. It's crazy-making.
* I suspect a walk around the area in the early evening will let me pinpoint it to a building or a block.
it's way too easy for me to evade leechblock.
"So, I was just about to treat this total hottie for ague and quinsy, and then the other apothecary stepped in and totally leechblocked me."
"Bad news, dude."
Agreed on the grading. Do not want to do it at all.
Despite my best efforts to not give a shit about my birthday, I'm stressing out a bit about the fact I'm turning 40 next week. Not helped by having found a birth announcement my parents sent out.
I suspect a walk around the area in the early evening will let me pinpoint it to a building or a block.
Maddened Insomniac Librarian Arrested For Kicking Electricity Substation To Death While Screaming Abuse
Neighbours Say, We Should Have Seen This Coming, He Did Tell Us He Was From Falkirk
Obligatory musical accompaniment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs6BiPwqBU0
I just dumped a bunch of chocolates on the floor so now I don't know where they go in the container and don't know which one is which.
This is a problem I would have no difficulty whatsoever solving.
Despite my best efforts to not give a shit about my birthday, I'm stressing out a bit about the fact I'm turning 40 next week. Not helped by having found a birth announcement my parents sent out.
Your mum must have set some kind of record.
And the original version, far superior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fCiBSMhnMc
re: 36.last
I suspect the one neighbour I've met thinks I'm nuts already. His water meter [in the cupboard outside our door] was going crazy this morning. Literally resonant with a noise like an electric drill and whirring round at a rate that meant in the time I was watching the meter it had rung up about as much as we've used per day. Since most of the flats on this floor are unoccupied I knocked the door to check if anyone was there, as my first though was that building work was going on and a pipe or something had burst inside.
He came to the door:
'[Implicit 'Dude'] I was in the shower ...'
I presume he has some sort of turbo-charged 100litres a second power shower.
Admittedly I'm a cold weather wuss, but it went down to 30 degrees last night! That totally counts.
Yes but there was a record high of 86 a few weeks ago! Let us enjoy this refreshing cold snap.
I have kind of a lingering cough that's unpleasant and distracting.
However, I gave notice at my job yesterday and so I'm doing a little happy dance while hacking out my innards.
43: There are few more greater feelings in life than quitting a job.
And my bonus is 1/4 of what it was last year. Thanks for killing yourself, here's a token!
Not helped by having found a birth announcement my parents sent out.
Ooh, is it an old-timey tintype?
38: well, sure, but in what order? Don't tell me that doesn't matter. How do you save the best one for last?
Ooh, is it an old-timey tintype?
They commissioned Albrecht Dürer to personally engrave it.
mysql keeps getting killed on the server and I don't know why. And I'm getting fat fat fat.
Inside a dog, it's... I guess it's all vomit? Sort of? Depends on what you mean by inside? This is all kind of gross?
I have a UTI, which is making me have to go pee every 3 seconds. (On the plus side, I usually sit at my desk for far too long without a break.)
I used to get those all the time, and let me recommend the over-the-counter UTI-specific-painkillers that turn your pee bright red. YMMV, but I found them incredibly effective both for the pain and for the need to pee.
I have a strong desire to build a cob building and I don't know why.
turn your pee bright red
Cranberry juice has never had that effect on me.
2 gets it right. Also, do not wish to fly.
UTI-specific-painkillers
Didn't know there was such a thing. I'll check it out.
55- Allow me to be the first to recommend...
I forget the generic name of the drug, but various brands always start with "Azo".
I'm being grouchier and less disciplined than usual at work (which is saying something) for totally understandable reasons related to my personal life, but I don't actually want to talk about those reasons with anyone at work.
53: And now I know why none of my comments about my cat would go through. I thought perhaps someone had written a script to prevent it, since I talk about him too often.
56: They work so well. Instant pain relief. Though I know doctors kind of hate them as they encourage people to avoid fixing the problem.
Azo means nitrogen containing drug. I'd get some more information before randomly picking one.
The stuff I'm thinking of is usually on the shelf clearly labelled UTI-specific-painkiller-that-turns-your-pee-bright-red, I just can't recall the exact drug name.
Is there some medication that turns your pee bright red but doesn't have any pain killers?
I have successfully resisted the urge to write "Butt! Butt! Monkey butt! Who's got the monkey butt!?" on every line of a form I had to fill out.
I'm not saying writing "Butt! Butt! Monkey butt! Who's got the monkey butt!?" would have been the right thing to do. But I think we can all agree that in this case, doing the right thing comes with a terrible cost.
67: beets. If you are susceptible to the amazingly straightforwardly named beeturia, anyway.
Rah recently read a thread as we sat on the couch and noted aloud how hard it was to read a comment thread without "like" buttons. I would like to steal his complaint and use it myself. It's very trying to sort of interact without them. Le sigh.
Apparently the drugs are just called "AZO" in gigantic letters. The website doesn't tell you right away what actual drug it contains, but it turns out to be phenazopyridine.
Rah recently read a thread as we sat on the couch and noted aloud how hard it was to read a comment thread without "like" buttons.
+1
Though I know doctors kind of hate them as they encourage people to avoid fixing the problem.
I actually asked a doctor once if there was any problem with overuse of the painkillers, because I was getting bothered by going straight for antibiotics so often (I had a long spate of frequent, maddening UTI's that, after a certain amount of diagnostic investigation all of which concluded that everything was just peachy, just kind of stopped happening), and was told that it was pretty much fine. Although I can see that if there were a fixable problem, you'd want to find it and fix it.
(The diagnostic investigation included a hilariously intrusive conversation with a four-thousand-year-old doctor of South African origin into the nitty-gritty details of my sex life. I still have trouble hearing the word "vigorous" without snickering.)
9 Holy crap. I just realized that Xmas is the week after next. Someone should really alert me to those things.
I know, right? I started panicking last night about how I have no idea what to get my mom this year.
Probably Azo Standard (phenazopyridine)?
70: My college co-op had a tradition in meetings that if you wanted to agree with or support something that someone else was saying but didn't have anything substantive to add, rather than actually speaking, you'd just snap your fingers. I found it terribly useful and pleasant, and have really missed it in every meeting I've been in since.
Another gripe: I can't figure out how to access my voicemail because of the iPhone "Visual Voicemail" feature that I can't use while I'm in Canada. But later today I won't be in Canada anymore, so that gripe won't last long.
Is there a humblebrag equivalent for griping? I feel like I have a lot of those at the moment.
I don't exactly know what 81 means, but "grumblebrag" would be the obvious term for it.
I am doing better on the job market than I have ever done, and yet I still live in paralyzing anxiety about whether my phone will ring riiiiiiight NOW? or perhaaaaaaps NOW? When, no, everyone seems to be taking their sweet time to get back to applicants. Our conference is in four weeks and most of them have not decided which candidates to interview.
Another gripe: someone who disappeared from my class and only turned in one of the five papers so far has decided today that she would like to do all the work, learn all the material, and pass the course, please.
Other than that, and the fact that it's horrifically cold, I'm fine.
Good call.
So for instance, It is frustrating that I have to go rake the leaves and potentially shovel at my new house, but I don't get to live there for nearly another month.
Totes grumblebrag.
I still haven't been able to explain my bizarre negative correlation. Giddiness is slowly turning into despair.
And single digit temperatures is really unreasonably cold.
Inviting people to gripe is such a terrible idea. I could gripe all day long! I'm actually pretty content, but still, I have so many gripes.
Hang on, these are all supposed to be directed at the OP.
Heeeebieee, why is it so cooooold?! It's not even winter.
87: and I don't get to live there. You'd think if I had to complete surreal, sisyphean tasks to no conceivable end I'd at least get to retreat immediately back inside to my comfortable home afterwards.
Who can read this site and not want to build a house out of cob? People with ambitions and hobbies better suited to their actual lives than mine, that's who.
New gripe: they just announced this flight will be "completely full", which is disappointing since when I checked in the two seats next to me were both empty.
We just started a collaboration with a German company and the knocking on table thing in place of applause is awesome.
My parents are acting entitled about going out to a restaurant on Christmas Day rather than coming to my place or letting me visit without eating. (Complicated story involving my sister not wanting to see me but wanting to see them which necessitates shifts.)
I am already doing a ton for them trying to move them to a nicer place. Never mind that I am not doing so well myself right now. I had to take some leave, because I was getting depressed, having panic attacks and just not functioning at work because of my crazy boss.
Getting a break, a massage and acupuncture helped quite a bit, but I'm still only at 65% or so. I am still crying a lot. I am thinking about quitting once my sick time runs out--even without a new job. I had an interview for a job which happened to coincide with a vacation day which would pay more and seemed to be with nice people. So, fingers crossed.
Further to 22, in-laws offered to instead take us skiing in VT that week and rent a 7000 square foot villa for the whole family to stay together. Sooooo hard to choose! Grumblebrag.
91: That's got a lot of more side effects than I'd be willing to put up with for a practical joke.
"Complicated story involving my sister not wanting to see me but wanting to see them which necessitates shifts."
Are you Heebie's secret sister-in-law?
Oh you just do not want to ask me this question right now.
To the OP, I mean.
73: Yes, this specific doctor actually told me to take them in the first place, so he wasn't worried about the effects or anything -- just that once you know about them, you might start relieving the pain without dealing with the underlying cause.
And oh, hey I just read your comment properly. I had the same thing happen, and in my case it turned out to be irritation caused by aspartame.
43: Again, emdash? Did you leave the job with the boss change for one at a non-profit institution with a long-commute and then leave that one too? .
99: But you want to answer it, right?
98: Well, my sister is mad, because I tried to take her to the hospital when she was psychotic. My asshole Republican uncle told her that she was in the driver's seat, and i was being manipulative. She's a pile of mixed up emotions, because she called me on Thanksgiving and offered to help me get a new job.
I react really badly to that bright-orange-pee-for-UTI drug. It took me a couple UTIs to realize that, because I'd be on antibiotics but feeling worse and worse.
All of my usual dysfunctional behaviors have come out in full-force when it comes to job searching. A number of folks in my cohort have already gotten job offers; even those who haven't have typically applied to 100+ jobs, and have gotten a lot of interviews; I've applied to 8, and unsurprisingly gotten nowhere.
Also, I may well be selected to be on the jury for a month-long trial, starting on Friday. 'Being employed but not getting jury-duty pay for more than 5 days' would have counted as a 'hardship' for the purposes of getting reassigned to a shorter trial, but simply 'being unemployed' doesn't, even if you're not getting benefits, because obviously if you're unemployed you deserve to be, so who cares if it means you're going to stay that way another month because you won't be able to interview anywhere? (I can manage things--I have about 3 months of expenses left--but for many others this would be devastating, and it enrages me.)
Today I'm going to be positive and tackle step one of a coding test for this place, which sounds like it would be a fantastic job, but ugh I hate everything and am feeling pretty hopeless.
Oh, true. For me at least, DO NOT take that shit on an empty stomach. After eating it's fine, no bad effects at all. But on an empty stomach, wicked nauseating.
103: well ok, if I absolutely must.
I have a cold, again. I feel ok today but am coughing a ton. I am coming up on three months without a job and my funds are seriously dwindling, forget the extra payments I thought I was going to make toward my student loans with all the money I saved up to move. A job I applied for that required ten (10!) essays in the application canceled the position and just relisted it with different questions. I have no cat. I really hated Season 2 of Girls.
I think that'll do it for now.
For me at least, DO NOT take that shit on an empty stomach.
Oh I'm laughing so hard at this.
A job I applied for that required ten (10!) essays in the application canceled the position and just relisted it with different questions.
ARGH.
going to stay that way another month because you won't be able to interview anywhere
If you do get stuck on the trial, it won't be all day every day, and there's a good shot you can ask the judge if there's going to be a morning when you can schedule interviews. Might not work, but it's worth a try.
For example, my jury never met on Fridays.
Yes. Depending on where your interviews are the trial will probably be something like 10-4 every day, so you may be able to schedule around that, and there will also inevitably be mornings or afternoons not involving the jury. It's well worth asking the trial judge about his overall schedule and well worth raising your concern.
Oh good, this is a place I can ask the UTI question that I had been wondering about. Ok, so they tell girls, wipe front to back, right? But, as the father of a girl for the first time, that shit goes everywhere in a diaper, so do baby girls have, like, constant UTIs? (I suppose sometimes it got in bad places on boys too but it's pretty much every time with a girl.)
Sorry, wrote too quickly, s/b "depending on the judge the trial may be something like 10-4, and you may be able to work interviews around that."
Sorry, trapnel. At least, do you get paid for jury duty?
And now for a moment of narcissism. Sad that there is no love for me in the middle of my nervous breakdown. Sigh.
Yesterday they told us that the trial would be M-F, 9-12, lunch, 1:30-4:30. So, no: everyone I've talked to who's gotten an engineering job has had to come in for a full day of interviews, and this would pretty definitively rule that out.
114: I personally think the wipe-from-front-to-back thing probably prevents .01% of all urinary tract infections, for precisely the reason that you state. If she's on antibiotics or got some special circumstances, then sure, take more care. Otherwise she'll deal with it when she starts having sex. People just like to pretend there are other reasons than sex in order to let everyone save face on the fact that they got a UTI right after they met this new guy.
I am really frustrated at a highly-paid consultant who has been advising his clients (not us but connected to us) to act in ways that could subject them to legal penalties, and even though I've explained why it's wrong to him multiple times, he keeps going back to his approach for no adequately explored reason. And he's been doing this kind of thing for much longer than I have.
119: Wow, I think it's $50 here. Your employer has to pay the first few days.
That sounds pretty awful, BG, but yay for the interview at a better place.
Still definitely worth raising the concern with the judge, and worth it to keep fighting for interviews. If you get one you may be able to schedule it for a day where they need a break to argue motions or for some other reason, or (and this is very likely) if that's not possible the judge may allow you to be excused and replaced with an alternate. There's no reason to just completely avoid looking for interviews b/c of the jury trial
x.trapnel: I feel a tiny fraction of your pain, in that there was a really great job open very close to home with better pay and less insanity and I was manifestly the preferred candidate but it was cancelled out from under me while I waited in hopes of an offer. I have my current job, though, so my sympathy is probably pretty hollow, but I am totally virtually clapping you on the shoulder or something.
One could imagine that the act of wiping itself applies force in a way that's problematic, while in the diaper it just sits there without being pushed in.
I apparently actually meant to clap Mister Smearcase on the shoulder, but shoulder-claps all around. It sucks really badly to be looking and not finding.
122: I was getting perilously close to joining pdf23ds.
125: Sure. I endorse not shoving it up there just to see.
127: Dude, if you're feeling like that, comment, start emailing people, call anyone whose number you have. Make contact and let people help. Please.
"Emailing people" there means "email me".
There's no reason to just completely avoid looking for interviews b/c of the jury trial
Part of the despair was feeling a bit of relief--oh, look, I can't go to interviews, so I'm excused from looking, which I probably wouldn't do anyway because I haven't in the last 3 weeks and I'm doomed, etc. But yeah. I need to stop that. Perhaps by getting off unfogged and writing a test suite!
122: I was getting perilously close to joining pdf23ds.
Please don't do this.
Ack BG, let me join the chorus of concern.
Inviting people to gripe is such a terrible idea.
No, it's a great idea because my problem is solved.
A+++ WOULD READ AGAIN!
It's okay. I needed the time off. I've got a supportive fiance, and a really good psychiatrist who took it seriously. Unfortunately, he's away this week. But that was when I knew I needed to take medical leave--when the thought of losing a job or going to work seemed so much worse than jumping in front of a train that I couldn't just go on as I was.
Shit, yeah, BG. There are lots of us here for you.
(Note to self: Preview for real problems before posting.)
But your offers are very kind, and I may take you up on them.
127: I'm going to focus on the "I was" part of this sentence. It means you're ok now, right? I think you should focus on it, too. Tell yourself you are ok now.
I am reading a 200-page transcript that includes a lot of me talking and it's sometimes almost as bad as listening to a recording of myself. Plus a lot of "why did I let the other side get away with that."
Not yet fully okay, but getting stronger. Feel like such a failure for not being able to handle that job and boss but it was too much.
Oh dear yes. I just wrote a post-hearing brief after an arbitration, and direct examination is hard. I can't ask a non-leading question to save my life.
Transcripts are painful. Almost as bad as watching yourself on video.
a post-hearing brief after an arbitration
That is what I am doing. I count myself lucky that having moved across the country I am now much less likely to be on the other side of a case from you.
Honestly, I'm terrible -- this was literally the first time I've ever examined witnesses other than at deposition. Opposing counsel was running in circles around me. (Oral argument on a motion, I'm good. But witnesses are hard.)
The facts were clear, so I got everything I needed to in the record, but I did not look pretty doing it.
a post-hearing brief after an arbitration
Ugh. Kill it with fire. Dispositive motions are so much more fun.
Direct examination is so great. Hey how about we try this, I ask a straightforward question I already know the answer to, and you answer it earnestly and honestly. I wish I got a chance to do it more. It is hard not to lead, though. Also a fun way to make the leading objection is to occasionally add "and down the garden path."
I think where I fell down was witness prep. My primary witnesses were really scatterbrained, and despite my (I thought) having gone over all of their testimony in pretty great detail, they kept on losing all clue as to what they should be talking about if I asked questions that were openended. There's got to be a way to prep witnesses to testify better than I was doing it, but I do not have that technique down yet.
My college co-op had a tradition in meetings that if you wanted to agree with or support something that someone else was saying but didn't have anything substantive to add, rather than actually speaking, you'd just snap your fingers. I found it terribly useful and pleasant, and have really missed it in every meeting I've been in since.
Me too! It was perfect, like those dials that show approval during presidential debates. Instant feedback that didn't interrupt. Why don't all meetings have this.
Indeed, snapping for approval is the best.
151: This is all to make me feel inadequate.
Now someone will say, well, if you can't snap your fingers, you can whistle instead.
And then I will weep.
There's got to be a way to prep witnesses to testify better than I was doing it
If you haven't tried it already, I really recommend getting a video camera, doing a few mock rounds of questioning, and playing back the video with the witness there. Really helps to give people a sense of how they look answering questions. Of course there are some witnesses you just can't do anything with.
Of course there are some witnesses you just can't do anything with.
Breaking Bad has led me to believe that's what acid and plastic barrels are for.
I can't imagine snapping without feeling dreadfully beat.
Saul Goodman is such a great lawyer character. You could do a great legal ethics class just with clips from Breaking Bad.
In the Madison co-ops you "sparkle" -- you raise both palms to face the person and wiggle your fingers.
Direct is fun. Cross is hard. My words transcribed make me sound like an idiot, or maybe I'm just way too self critical.
I prefer the snapping thing to the sparkle thing.
Cross comes more naturally to me -- you can basically just testify yourself, and then finish off with "Isn't that correct?"
In the Madison co-ops you "sparkle" -- you raise both palms to face the person and wiggle your fingers.
That sounds really unbearable.
I'm sick, and I'm never getting better, and all my students are irritating me, and so are all my coworkers. Also I'm cold and bored. Finals week is terrible.
I think cross is a much harder skill to learn, but once learned it becomes hard to shut off.
I prefer House of Commons-style mumbled remarks that don't require the speaker to stop or even acknowledge the response.
Cross examination is a harder skill to learn than direct examination, isn't that right?
You previously indicated that once you learn how to conduct a cross examination, it's hard to shut that mode off, didn't you?
Cross is useful for dealing with kids, though. I'm not even a real trial lawyer and I can still nail down my 5-year-old on key factual matters at least half the time just using what I've picked up.
The problem with using techniques like that on the kids is that they pick them back up and use them on you. At twelve, I'd back Newt in oral argument against most first year associates I've met.
166: I have a new theory about certain trolling being like kid tantrums, but it's not really a gripe except that I don't always have sufficient patience for either. But seriously, if you always blame somebody else for your behavior, you're doing it wrong and who gives a shit if she shoved you first, etc.
167 gets it exactly right, and my kid's only six. Also she already uses "yes, but that's not the whole story" and "I don't recall."
167: I know what you mean. It wouldn't be too much of a problem if the kid were just learning from me. The problem is that she's also learning from her mother, who can beat me hands down.
169: You really start worrying when she starts addressing her kindergarten teacher: "With the utmost of respect, Mrs. Krabappel..."
Totes grumblebrag.
If we're doing that, do I get to complain that I feel like I've wasted the last six months (since I quit my job)? I had such plans for this time off and I've barely done any of them.
Back to the OP: I spilled coffee in my knitting bag at lunch. I thought I'd managed to save my actual knitting, but just realized that the ball of wool is damp and smells like coffee. It's dark blue, so I think any discoloration should wash out and not show up after I finish, but I'm really annoyed.
I'm stuck with the task of exporting 40,000 bibliographic records from one inane library management system to another. You would think librarians would be good about not randomly deviating from their standard way of assigning call numbers, but you would be wrong.
Who can read this site and not want to build a house out of cob?
I briefly considered building a pizza oven out of cob, but I'm not going to have the kind of time it would take to wait around for it to cure. Definitely going to go with brick. Or maybe some kind of brick-like, space-age polymer.
I have a million! I have papers and exams to grade, my car is dying more quickly than expected, I will find out tomorrow if I have pre-diabetes, and the one day I have free is being slowly sucked away by family obligations and errands
direct examination is hard. I can't ask a non-leading question to save my life
Relatedly, I recently got sent through forensic interview training using the NICHD investigative interview protocol. It's mostly for interviewing juvenile sex abuse victims but there's applications for adults as well. Leading questions will kill your interview at trial so there's a whole framework on avoiding that along with training on investigative utterance types, mock interviews, etc. Do lawyers get anything like this in law school?
For direct, I find it pretty useful to have the witness write out the answers. And then, if they leave anything out, you can ask narrower non-leading questions to get to them.
Cross is easier, sure, because you don't just know the answers, you're giving the answers.
I went to watch the Glacier Park newlywed trial for a bit yesterday -- it's two blocks away, and worth watching Judge Molloy at work -- and wasn't that impressed with the PD's cross of the FBI agent. He didn't have much to work with, it's true, but the guy took the defendant's confession, and if you can't draw blood from him, you haven't got much. That's what I thought yesterday, anyway, and today I see that the PD thought pretty much the same: resting the defense after 2 hours (no testimony from the defendant) and then making a plea deal (guilty to 2d murder, 1st dropped) before closing arguments.
177: Nothing that's a standard part of law school. You might get it as part of a clinical or other special course. Otherwise you're expected to pick it up in practice.
The link in 177 is very thorough and looks useful to me. I like that it establishes rapport since you're not able to be emotionally supportive while asking the questions but the rapport can still make them relatively gentle. I'm really glad I don't have to take full interviews.
|| I just clicked on C-Span to see how Senate debate was going on the nomination of Justice Morris (of our Supreme Court) as district judge, and it's Orrin Hatch going on and on about how the Republicans haven't really been filibustering or obstructing anything . . . Oh well, it comes to a vote soon. |>
There's all kind of interesting things in that training that weren't intuitive to me at all. Things like how direct questions yield a surprising amount of bad information because there's a tendency to want to give an answer, any answer, so people will often guess rather than say "I don't know". In the protocol one of the first things you do along with rapport is explicitly instruct the victim on how they are to correct you and then run them through a examples where you intentionally say something obviously untrue and make sure they stop and correct your statement. And how using open ended questions coupled with cued recall prompts yields more details and more accurate information because they're telling you everything they recall rather than a short answer where they feel obligated to give some kind of response whether they actually recall that information or not.
Also, role playing interviews where you're playing the vic it quickly becomes apparent that lying is much easier when responding to short answer questions. Constructing a whole narrative about an event and being asked to elaborate on aspects of that narrative is way more difficult.
direct questions yield a surprising amount of bad information because there's a tendency to want to give an answer, any answer, so people will often guess rather than say "I don't know"
This I did learn in practice, very early on, when assigned to a large internal investigation. The things people will say as though they knew them to be true when they have no idea at all!
Oh that was me. Fucking head lice stole my name.
Grumble: four different clients, none terrible, but all sucking attention away from the writing I want to be doing. At least it's down from six.
185: Cops learn it early the same way and it's mostly attributed to "people are idiots and/or liars". Which is often true, but there's other things in play as well. And there's no training when you join up on how to go about mitigating those factors. So now the dept. is putting together a shortened version to give new recruits.
I should have found this thread 11 hours ago when I had so much grading to do, instead of now, when I want to gloat about how my grading is done. (Note that this comment is in fact in the form of a gripe.)
Investigation questions (whether or not from a cop) are very different than what a lawyer does on either direct examination or cross where -- and I hope I'm not ruining anyone's innocence here -- the point isn't just to get the story out in the most unvarnished and accurate manner possible.
That said the link in 177 is really excellent.
I have a pile of 137 exams staring at me. They're not going to grade themselves. Also, as an exercise in making myself miserable, I looked back at my fall calendar and learned that I averaged 3.1 meetings/day. In related news, I may have isolated the variable that's made me like my job less than I once did.
On the other hand, I seem to have accomplished the task I set out to accomplish. Unless, that is, the deans pull the rug out from under me next week. But, given that the chair and vice chair of the academic senate and the provost have all given me the thumbs-up, that seems pretty unlikely. We'll see!
On yet another hand, having accomplished this task almost certainly means many more meetings and a great deal of additional administrative work for me, so I'm a complete idiot.
Also, as an exercise in making myself miserable, I looked back at my fall calendar and learned that I averaged 3.1 meetings/day.
Holy shitballs.
Indeed. An average of 3.1 balls of shit/day.
You know what one shouldn't do if one doesn't enjoy meetings? Agree to administer/overhaul programs in a large educational bureaucracy. Or probably any bureaucracy, I guess. Lesson learned!
I have a student whose last name is Ouch. Please become a physician, young Ouch!
Every year I am surprised by how much sugar, butter, and cream is consumed by candymaking. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.
That is a ton of meetings. How awful.
I was at a meeting where I felt like the men in math/science were being unnecessary assholes to a new female program director. Afterwards I went out to lunch with some women who had been there and was pleased to see that they were all pissed off. They're older than me, and I wasn't sure how they'd perceived the meeting.
Hmm, something to gripe about. Ah, our godamn CI (Confidential Informant) budget. Auto theft is in a bureau that includes robbery, domestic violence, other larceny, etc. Narcs and vice are in a different unit so the other units in our bureau don't really use CI's. Separating auto theft into it's own unit is a new thing here (fuck if I know why we're so behind on that) so we've been pushing for access to the CI money allocated to our bureau thinking we'd basically have it all to ourselves. And it turns out that's going to be as awesome as it sounded. I was pinning down a higher up on numbers for available CI money and he said a number of several thousand. I said "a month"? He replied "a year", and I burst out laughing. So we're mostly going to have to get CI stuff by making them work off charges rather than be able to give them money. Whee, here's 50 bucks, try not to get shot in the face for snitching out someone on a charge that can land them in prison.
193 is great. Suck it up, limpy!
I would like Zardoz to stop getting sent home from daycare just because she poops all over everything. Blah blah blah, loose stool. You just don't want to clean the carpet, toys, boppy cover, clothes, burp cloth, and etc., well-meaning and objectively awesome daycare providers. Suck it up.
Re 177, did anyone see the recent New Yorker article (paywalled) on the Reid interrogation technique ? Scary as shit -- it sounds basically like a technique for bullying people into false confessions, and it's widely used in police departments.
BG, please know that there are many of us here, including me, who recognize how much you have done to support and nurture yourself through immensely challenging circumstances. I'm glad you took steps to get the leave you did, and I hope you continue to reach out to us and to others in your support network.
***
My gripe is that I find it unutterably depressing to read gswift's posts in this thread. I have spent the last five (!) years trying to push a boulder up a hill on police training and for some reason tonight it's unbelievably frustrating (rather than inspiring) to see how downright professional and competent another force can be. It makes me feel like we're living in the 1950s while SLC is in the 2010s.
One or the other (or sometimes both!) of our kids has been sick all fall. It's been quite remarkable. But both of them are actually quite healthy overall, so I really can't complain. And speaking of not complaining, I'm lucky to be employed at all, much less employed in a position that's secure and, when I'm not having meetings (which, as I might have mentioned, is basically never anymore), very rewarding. I do have a limp, though, which kind of sucks. But it doesn't actually suck that much, so I probably shouldn't even mention it. Forget I mentioned the limp, people.
I have a student whose last name is Ouch.
I have a meeting coming up with someone named D/imple. I very rarely feel the impulse to laugh at someone else's name but there's a real danger of that this time. I'm getting it out of my system now since I suspect she's had a lifetime of jokes about it.
207: also -- correct me if I'm wrong -- you took on a bunch of annoying additional responsibility with the idea that you might accomplish some fundamentally really cool things with the potential to really make a difference at your university, and have accomplished many or at least most of those things, you evil genius, you.
... which, if it's not clear, is why it's important to mention the limp, because it makes you like some sort of supervillain who does good things instead, which is a concept there should be a word for.
209: if the deans don't pull the rug out from under me, one very stupid part of this university will become considerably less stupid, yes. And all it cost was me going to 3.1 meetings/day for a period of 4.5 months. Truly, I'm not sure the cost-benefit analysis works on this one.
Also, there's still plenty of time for me to fuck things up.
Yes, yes. Should Mr. Bond fail to die as expected, the moon laser will suffer.
|| Brian Morris confirmed. Now on to Susan Watters to take the seat of the district judge who blew up a 40 year legal career by forwarding an email slandering the President's late mother. |>
Gripe?
Update on status of application to enroll in a MD Health Connection (state ACA exchange) health insurance plan:
"The application has been submitted to the agency."
Agency? Ok. A week ago I emailed the health insurance company themselves to explain that I'd applied for a plan through them, and could they tell me please whether they'd received it.
This evening I received a reply asserting that yes, sorry for the delay, they've received and processed it, and if I haven't paid yet for my first month's premium, I should do that either through the MD Health Connection or by calling them, the insurance company, directly.
OK! Sadly, the MD Health Connection site has no information whatsoever on how the hell I might do that through that site, nor does it say, actually, what I'm signed up for. You know, I'd kind of like to know what kind of subsidy has been approved.
The gripe is this: very, very few people will be able or willing to navigate through this. I have a reasonably flexible work schedule, so I can deal with it, and will.
I'm editing out any number of complications in addition: I'm actually insured through this company currently, and they've sent me a bill and new insurance card under the old/current plan, the one that costs $527/month. Stop that, you guys.
I find it unutterably depressing to read gswift's posts in this thread.
Ugh, sorry. Federalism means a wide variety in how the same job is done in different locales and unfortunately the profession breeds clannishness and resistance to change from in the clan, let alone from the outside.
The SLC PD are a front for the klan and gswift and is the unutterable buzzard of the klavern?
Buzzards are the first to circle the ones with the limp.
I believe you're trying to call VW some kind of Havelock, Sifu.
191 I looked back at my fall calendar and learned that I averaged 3.1 meetings/day
What are you counting as a "meeting" here? Like, official-type committee meetings?
220: I...don't know what you mean. Meetings are meetings. They're events during which I meet with at least one other person to talk about stuff. I don't mean lunches with a buddies. I don't mean coffee before class. I mean meetings.
3 meetings per day just doesn't sound that high to me. I feel like I've been approaching that most days lately, if I count all the students who want to meet to ask me questions they could easily answer by reading a book, which apparently kids these days don't do any more.
What about banging a grad student? Meeting?
Ah, I don't mean with meetings with students. That's a different thing. Regardless, if you're having anything like three meetings/day, you're doing it totally wrong.
Then again, those meetings have really undermined my general quality of life and enjoyment of work.
I started skipping most of the department faculty meetings, though, after realizing that nothing important ever happens there.
Regardless, if you're having anything like three meetings/day, you're doing it totally wrong.
How do I do it right?
And oh god, the emails. Now I'm getting zillions of messages from undergrads at other places whose advisors told them to write to me and ask about their prospects for going to grad school here and working in my field. I'm mostly ignoring them, so then one of these guys actually showed up at my office door. "I happened to be in town and you didn't answer my email, so I thought we can talk now!"
223: I would never have imagined that your meetings were meetings. (There's actually not a good way to urpleize your comment, but I wanted to try because the thought amuses me.)
Though I guess maybe your work is more collaborative than mine, necessitating more meetings. Or maybe you're on every committee ever -- though pre tenure you really shouldn't be. As for e-mails, I always reply, but I've become very, very terse. And I handle most of my e-mail first thing in the morning, before my brain is working well enough to do other stuff.
Almost everything that we want to do to improve our online services has to go through a part of IT that seems to be incapable of success and uninterested in learning how to do better. Other parts of the IT department seem ok.
Though I guess maybe your work is more collaborative than mine, necessitating more meetings.
Yeah. The postdocs want to talk really often. Which sometimes is good, when it's about research I care about. Sometimes they want to bounce some idea I don't care about off me, and I feel compelled to listen.
And then my senior collaborator wants me to sit around and chat for hours on end because that's the only way this collaborator feels productive. That's by far the worst part of my job.
Bostoniangirl, sorry to hear that the job wore you down so terribly. It can take longer than you tell yourself you're entitled to take to recover, which engenders its own kind of frustration. I hope you find a fast way back up.
That sounds really unbearable.
No, it's quite innocuous in practice. Being told that it's called "sparkling" seems to, I don't know, prime people somehow.
239: I would find your job frustrating, especially the part about the senior dood. My co-author is in the throes of get-the-book-donedom at the moment, and he's calling me all a lot to chat. But he's a really good guy, he's doing a ton of work that I can't do, and his neediness is time limited -- the book has to be done before he leaves for Antarctica in ten days -- so I can handle it. Also, he lives on the other coast, so I don't have to meet with him in person, which is a huge relief, because who has time?
A student who had a solid A going into the final managed to write such a terrible exam -- seemingly on purpose -- that s/he'll receive a C for the course. And at least twenty percent of my students wrote "Merry Christmas!" on the back of their finals, including a student whose last name is Rosenberg. It appears that we're losing the War on Christmas, fellow conspiracists. Time to step up our game.
I'm procrastinating revising my resume and cover letter for something I'm applying for. I have to be done by the end of the workday tomorrow and I should already be asleep.
(Not a job, but I also need to apply for a new one so I can get out of this one.)
Texas A&M is paying its football coach $5 million/year. Texas is reportedly willing to pay Nick Saban $10 million/year to leave Alabama, where, for the moment, he makes just north of $5 million (related: Nick Saban's agent, who knows the meaning of leverage, is buying his family really nice Christmas presents this year). Maybe you should be a football coach, fake accent.
New, extra petty gripe: I recently spent the (to me) gigantic sum of $60 on a pair of fancy biking-plus-office trousers, and now I've shrunk them dramatically through drying at too-high a heat. Hopefully I can use baby shampoo to stretch them back out somewhat, but meanwhile I'm incredibly sad, because they were perfect and I was wearing them every day.
Actually, I rather like not coaching football.
Hand-stretched trousers are probably worth even more than $60, trapnel. Good luck!
My life is going pretty well right now, so I guess all I have are grumblebrags. The main one at the moment is all the stuff I have to get done tomorrow before I take two weeks of vacation and visit my mom.
The governor announced his proposed budget today and it includes a lot of cuts relative to previous years, including to some of our programs, but overall our agency didn't get hit very hard so I don't have much to gripe about. (The oil is running out so the state is no longer swimming in money the way it has been in recent years. In the big picture that's probably a good thing.)
Saul Goodman is such a great lawyer character.
Why, even the name suggests that he is a lawyer, in some ineffable way I cannot quite put my finger on!
There is no reason not to call Halford an antisemite, Smearcase.
Apparently he's Jewish in some sense, so I guess he's technically self-hating.
Nooooooo I'm calling the writers of the show lazy.
Halford probably represents the writers and is therefore, based on my understanding of the transitive power, a lazy antisemite.
Well, I mean, there are in fact a lot of Jewish lawyers.
(Even in Albuquerque! I used to work for one.)
I think I meant property rather than power. Having graded for six hours straight, I think it's time to call it a night.
No, I know, but they don't all have central casting names. Goodman, ok. Saul, it's not 1950, but ok. Saul Goodman, just call him Rabbi Haimy Berkowitzbergstein and be done with it.
Property is power, VW. This is basically all they teach in law school.
I dunno, Rabbi Smearcaseowitz. Lots of Jews, including Jewish lawyers, have Jewish-sounding names.
"Shmeacaseowitz" would have been better, I now realize.
I blame Rabbi Bushmillowitz, with whom I am honoring the other side of my ancestry.
Did the good rabbi also inspire your flickr user pic?
No, but some other spiritual leader probably did.
Good that you draw on diverse religious sources!
Six hours seems like a very long time for that sort of thing.
Please feel free to interpret 273 as a request for details.
If your date lasts for more than four hours, consult your imaginary internet friends.
We saw a movie and were supposed to go to a concert thereafter, but it was sold out, so instead we went to a bar which finally kicked us out on the grounds that it was closing. Also, not a date.
Shit, is that what makes something a date??
I need to reëvaluate a lot of things in that case.
Do we need one of the many, many lawyers to get the story out of you?
The presence of at least one other person is normally considered fundamental to something being a date.
Somewhere in the past few days, someone had a comment along the lines of "Whenever I see X, I want to say Y and have to suppress the urge." Unfortunately, this is a common format for Mineshaft comments, and now I can't recall the one that made me laugh super hard. It was a short response, just a few words, that might have been "Bad something!" I really hope I didn't delete it in my purge.
Smearcase is more right than he knows, or maybe he has seen the show and this is some elaborate Standpiping.
I have not seen the show. I'd love to be in on the whole cultural moment but I just don't do well with graphic awfulness.
OK -- then just to be super ultra extremely explicit (this is a "spoiler" but a very insignificant one), the name "Saul Goodman" is a prop used explicitly for its ridiculous over the top jewishness. It's a fake name used by a sleazy goy lawyer (who is also a great character!) to drum up business by getting people to think that he's Jewish, because he's sleazy.
Website here
Re: 172
Ah hah hah hah. (Hysterical laughter)