Xaphanos @ Xaphanos @lemmy.world

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301

Joined

2 yr. ago

I am also unique-except-one. Mine is similarly unrecognizable.

Or real orthotics. Mine completely changed my ability to get through my day.

I was a lazy jerk that just bombed out of the local college in record time. I figured I'd try photography trade school. She was a natural artist with no plan and picked the same trade school. We were in the same 6-month program. She specialized in lab work, I went into product photography. Class started October 1984. We had several family deaths, financial ruin, and other calamities - but supported each other through it all. Lived with family and in the car. Got my life on track in my 30s. Bought a house in 2000, married in 2004, kid in 2009. Now a boring but desperate suburbanite staring down the next downsizing wave and big medical bills.

I was a manager of a team with rotating 12 hour 6 to 6 shifts.

It was a datacenter. We had to staff the building 24x7x365. Billions of dollars of equipment, not to mention the transactions flowing through. No mistakes allowed here.

We paid $15/hour in 2010. Entry level. But it was a foot into the industry for someone without experience. Tasks were light security, walk the floor, swap drives, be on hand for server emergencies.

We used the rotation to onboard. No one did nights solo (no one else in the building) until they knew the job. Two weeks days, two weeks nights, back and forth. Two days on, one day off. 6-day rotation meant no one person was always stuck with weekends. And overtime pay every week.

We managed the schedule with a staff of 4.

Prior, the night shifts were handled by sysadmins who would work a day shift, go to the break room and get a few hours of sleep between tasks, then shower and go back on day shift. That really sucked. I did it for more than a year.

We had plenty of applicants every time a position opened. Folks tended to like the rotation as no one would get stuck with repeat holidays or all overnight. It sucked in a fair way to everyone. And if someone missed a shift (sick, emergency, etc.) I would have to fill the shift. It happened at least once a month. It was a good team. I liked all of my people, and after I got canned, they all wrote recommendations for me on LinkedIn.

Yes. Migraines. It wasn't my parents but an early job in the late 80s. Dude next to me smoked so much it was a problem with fouling the equipment. We had to re-do jobs all the time for failure to clean the settled soot. I left the job and one of the reasons was the constant migraines.

Does CC BY-NC-SA meet your intentions?

Slackware. About 1994 or so.

I am in the local club and have two over-the-top scopes and still can't pull it together.

I have overnight work. Uninstall software on a server, reboot, reinstall, tweak until it works. Probably 2 hours of work. Gotta be off hours or everyone freaks out. PITA.

Then a lot of critical errands Saturday. Probably early to bed to catch up.

The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, and The Left Hand of Darkness - by LeGuinn

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion

Dune

The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

Stranger in a Strange Land

I have two.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Brink%27s_robbery Summary: an armored car was robbed by desperate "most-wanted" types. Bug national new.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilchrest_Road,_New_York,_crossing_accident Summary: school bus full of kids hit by a train. The reason why "this vehicle stops at all rr crossings" is a thing.

I live in a NYC suburbs and work in another. It is possible to take a bus/train to NYC from each, but no direct way between them. So I drive the 18 miles. I have to cross a bridge. That makes for a traffic bottleneck. Without traffic, it's less than 30 minutes. With traffic it can be 1.5 hours. One snowstorm made for a 5 hour ride home.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" was published in 1936 and is still useful.

A foot-in-the-door job is colo datacenter tech. I know a major national company that pays about $20/hr and will take what they can get at that price point. Not interesting, not promote-able, bad schedules. But a resume item. Exposure to enterprise-grade equipment. While there, get the advanced certs you realy want and work on networking with the customers and vendors.

When my father died, people we never heard of turned up at his wake. Some told stories of a man we did not know. Two refrigerator-sized mobsters in suits showed up, sat 15 minutes then left - never saying a word. And the half-sister we never knew of. His wallet had half a dozen credit cards - all with different names. It's safe to say we barely knew him.

My mom is still alive. She's almost as mysterious. Her youth was in an abusive household - so she doesn't talk about her family. We have gotten some more hints of how bad it was only recently.

VisiCalc

I have inherited about that many photos. Old family photos back to 1900. I'd like to know how you manage that many. Scan, sort, search, index, store, etc.

We had a difficult move. In that first chaos, we saw the folks across the street with their kid - the same age as out kid (6 years old). Now, I know where they live, and it's a nice neighborhood, so I asked if they would mind a "playdate" at their house for the next few hours (aka babysit). They were happy to do it.

But I should do this in order:

Directly behind us was Agnes. She had the bad kind of dementia, and her daughter (a nurse) was trying to hold it all together. But there was a LOT of screaming as Agnes had no recall of her daughter and thought she was a robber/killer. I had been in a similar situation years earlier and gave our sympathies to the daughter. Agnes died that year and they sold the house.

Clockwise, our left-side neighbor is retired. They winter in Florida. The son is a mental case - shouting profanity and obscenities on the phone at all hours on his back deck. We can't use our deck for the first three years. It mitigated later on. But no relationship there.

Across-left is a VERY private family. Eastern European accent. Grandmother, mother, 3 teen kids, dog. We are told the dog bites. Always pleasant. Never much to say.

Across the street is a busy house. He does some kind of dirt-moving-landscaping thing. Wife is smiley and quiet. Older boys, and a girl in middle school. We ask for a quote for some work like he did for his left-side neighbor. Says Sure, then blows us off. Three times. We don't talk now.

Across-right are the folks from the first story. They have TWO kids. Girl is 2 years older. We became close and still are. The boy becomes a stand-in brother for my son. Like brothers, they have nothing in common, but make it work.

Right-side has the opposite: boy is 2-years older and the girl is the same as my kid. So that's 5 kids at the grade-school bus stop. Every morning the three families stand out front with coffee and chat. wait for the bus, send off the kids, chat some more, head off to work.

The right-side folks have become our closest friends. Wonderful people. We mow each others' lawns, depending on who gets to it first. Outside movie nights in the lawn between the houses. Built matching COVID gardens next to each other. Kids do homework together.

Oh, and back to the backyard. The folks that moved in have a Brooklyn mentality. Squirrels are rats and need exterminating. Every yard needs a fence. Loud music at parties. Suspicious of any new folks. My wife had a bit of that when we met, but lost it after a year or two. I doubt these folks will warm to us, since the fence they put in is 8' high.

There are others further off. "The folks with the Red Setter". "Old Italian Cranky guy". "The guy whose wife died". There's a zombie house on the block - unoccupied for 7+ years. "ZZ-Top dude" - he has a long beard). All folks that walk around the block in nice weather. We wave and smile. Chat about dogs or the weather or the garden if everyone is cheery.

It seems a good idea to remain civil (or silent) - neighbors with grudges make life miserable all around.

If you can find a new one. They are $45+ on ebay used. None of the usual US sellers has any.