I once reported an e-mail spammer to the IT department of the company they worked for. They’d used their own account, utterly naively, and reading the headers was trivial.
I got a reply saying “We have terminated this employee.” I hope that was just firing: execution should be reserved for the second offence.
I don’t mind an estimate, but I want to know rough costs before I agree
When I worked for a security company (G4S) on the Olympics, I had an email from an employee I’d had to fire saying that he had the dirt on me and that he was going to blackmail me etc. I showed the email to the Project Director who asked, “Before I do anything, tell me if he has anything.” I said no, because there wasn’t anything. So he said “Forget about it, you’ll never hear from this piece of shit again.” I didn’t and his LinkedIn profile has not been updated since (11 years ago).
I sometimes wonder what happened…
Well that was an interesting start to my journey home.
Got a few hundred yards from my parents and could smell burning, thought maybe it was a bonfire or something. Then the interior of my car started to fill with acrid smoke, like burning polystyrene.
Parked in, turned off and popped up the bonnet, couldn’t see anything and the car turned over just fine. Made the 100 mile journey without any further issues.
It’s been very windy lately, so our best guess was something had blown up against something hot in the car.
I have seen something similar when (as later reconstructed) someone drove over a crumpled polythene sheet - it wrapped itself round hot bits of the engine, blackish smoke inside, and the smell didn’t go away until both the ventilation system and the car’s upholstery had been thoroughly cleaned. I’ve made a point of avoiding them ever since.
I’ve had to do this with a plumber before after the new guy they sent out didn’t listen to me explain the problem and the weird plumbing in the house, and managed to cover my kitchen floor with sewage (which, admittedly, was due to a poor plumbing design and certainly not normal… but… not unthinkable… and exactly what I said would happen). The guy didn’t actually fix the issue (he just left while my partner and I were distracted cleaning and sanitizing our kitchen floor) and we had to re-call about 3 hours after when we realized he wasn’t coming back and we still had a problem. The company charged us full price for the first visit and after-hours for the re-call (even though re-calls are supposed to be free?). I paid the bill under protest and said I would never call them again unless they promised to not send the first guy back under any circumstances; owner said he couldn’t promise that.
And then all(!?) the other plumbers in the area folded up shop during COVID and this one company was the only one I could find the next time I had a problem – instead of calling them, I called my realtor and after probably a dozen phone calls (“Oh, we used to take these service calls, but we don’t any longer. Try my friend over at XYZ Co”; XYZ Co: "sorry, we don’t do that any more. Our old supervisor, John Doe, sometimes works freelance, here’s his number. John Doe: “Sorry, I haven’t done that in a few years. I’m fully retired. My nephew works for ABC Plumbing and he might be able to help”… etc…), found an independent guy to come out – who was great and not only fixed the problem, but figured out what caused it and fixed the root cause without even being prompted (something the other company wouldn’t do unless you specifically asked “Is this going to happen again? How about we make it not?”)
So many lessons come from failure. Finding a rolodex of good independent contractors is SO valuable. My sister in law just had a new toilet installed at my in-laws for something like $1,600. Found an independent contractor to do the other, upstairs one for half that.
I honestly cannot understand the pricing of those larger companies. You divide cost by hours on site and, even after accounting for travel and parts, they’re charging hundreds of dollars per hour.
This and free pies are the two of the reasons we keep in touch with our real estate agent event when not thinking of buying/selling. They got the point where contractor and referrals were taking too much of their receptionists’ time that they paid to have an website and mobile app developed to maintain a list of their referrals they endorse. Unfortunately, that list took a big hit during COVID and it’s been making a slow but steady return to form.
I am so tired. Tomorrow the “festive” season ends with our third big event here at our place since the 24th. And while we hosted a lot, there were a bunch of other happenings and so I haven’t really had much downtime since before Xmas and not everything that was going on was really pleasant. (At least twice I found myself escaping to bathrooms and staying there far longer than strictly necessary–this is actually a first for me I have never done this before.)
In another week, we’re going on vacation to the Alps… I am probably going to cry with relief in getting away from everything. We’ll take a few games, our skiing stuff and cook some really simple food and I have hopes that we might be bored on a couple of days. Boredom sounds like the most delicious thing right now.
I’m ok, and hopefully our fish are ok too. We have a small pond with a bunch of them, and I realised I could hear the little pump-driven waterfall still running, so I turned it off and, as we’d done a bit of DIY maintenance on that earlier today (several hours ago), switched on the outside light to check that everything looked right.
The waterfall and drainage both looked good. What didn’t look good was the fish lying in the dirt on the tiny island in the middle of the pond. After convincing myself that it actually was a fish I was looking at, I assumed it must surely be dead; but then thought I saw it twitch, so I ran out and picked it up and popped it into the pond. It didn’t move at all though, and I didn’t want a dead fish floating in there all night, so I went and got a bucket and scooped it back out, and when I was back in the house it suddenly revived and started swimming around the bucket.
I left it doing that for a bit hoping that it would shake off most of the dirt it was still covered in (it definitely didn’t like me trying to clean that with my hands and I didn’t want to cause it any unnecessary additional stress). After a little while, I took it back to the pond and scooped it back into the water, and off it swam.
The internet is suggesting to me that gold fish can live anything up to an hour out of water (I’m surprised it’s so long), but I haven’t the foggiest idea how long it had been there, nor how it got out (it would be a genuine full leap out of the water for it to do that on its own, which I’ve certainly never observed any of them doing). It may have been a cat – I’ve seen a couple of the neighbouring cats nearby at various times, and we have two cats ourselves (who have never seemed interested in getting that close to the fish, so it’s seemed like an unexpectedly safe arrangement since we moved in; but maybe one of them suddenly decided to give it a try).
Just now:
It seems that I do have a jumpy fish with suicidal tendencies after all.
At least the cats are in the clear!
It now needs to be called MagiKarp
Today the edge of the pond, tomorrow the world!
I didn’t understand that reply until Magikarp - Wikipedia and oh god why does Wikipedia talk about that as if it’s real?
Before the species multiplied, it is believed that the ancestors of Magikarp were actually much stronger than the Magikarp seen today, and this belief has led scientists to research this species.
What are these people smoking?!
I honstly they though they made that up for this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De4qRG6Vswc&list=PL1p2ZkHnREs9iU5VTVxAZJw9J38dbvyeg&index=6
I finally had my physio appointment today. I was a bit downbeat afterwards because the tone of the session was “we can’t fix the issue but we can try to make it less aggravating.”
However, having worked through some of the exercises I’ve been given, there’s one or two which really seem to hit the problem area and give me a lot of relief. So I’m a bit happier this evening.
An early birthday present to myself last night: I hit my first 180 in a competitve darts match while playing for my local Monday night team. I’ve hit at least 12-15 of them in practice and warm ups over the years plus two in friendly games, but that was my first that properly mattered. Well chuffed!
On our way to Montreal for the first oncology appointment of the year (was supposed to be on 20 December, but it got moved due to influenza on our end). Confident yet, as always, stressed out.
I hope that means a Big Score, and not the dart bouncing off the board and flying back at you.
It does - the highest score possible with 3 darts - although I have a fair few of the later too. It’s not a game to play in sandals or flip-flops.