FML general thread [7]

[Sailor Star Dust]

One of my Stepmom's brother-in-law died apparently right at age 80 the other day (yep, age difference between him and stepmom's sister). Second time I found out news of death on her side on my own instead of Dad or her telling me, so it further bums me out.

Feel so weird right now.

He was a Broadway Welshman; very interesting discussions and people he knew in the business. Still remember the first time I met him when visiting Stepmom's family, it was right when Jerry Orbach died--He was stunned because they had just met up the past week.

He had even offered to get an original story if I wrote one published, but sadly I could never take him up on the offer or attempt because I was up to my ass starting college in 2004.

So while I didn't know him terribly well, he affected me in positive ways for sure.

[pwhodges]

Second time I found out news of death on her side on my own instead of Dad or her telling me, so it further bums me out.

Families can be weird. When my son-in-law's mother died, his father forbad his brother from telling him. He only heard when his brother had a serious car crash and realised he didn't want to die keeping that secret.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Wow.

Families are weird indeed

Turns out cause of death was after a heart attack a month ago; I remembered he had some heart troubles in the past but it's all still sad.

At least into your 80's a good long life and he had an apparently amazing career.

___

In strange news, I've been having my usual bouts of winter depression since the past month or so--though as of today I've been living in Texas for 3 years. Go figure.

[NemZ]

Being a Vikings fan is suffering.

[Vegeta 20XX]

So, my dog Isis got out of the house and was put down by a reckless motorist on my street at the age of 2; I'm doing better today, but I can't look around my house too long without getting sad - she loved all of the people so damn much, and was a happy, well-loved forever-puppy until the very end. I'll never have a dog quite like her ever again, but I'm grateful for the time she did share with us, and she deserved a much more responsible owner than I.

[pwhodges]

Aw, that's too bad! But don't let it prevent you letting another dog into your heart...

[Trajan]

My Dad got engaged to a woman I don't care for very much. I knew they were moving in together, but this just makes it worse. I'm glad he's happier at least.

[cyharding]

Being a Vikings fan is suffering.

Whenever they get close to the championship, they always find a way to choke. It's one of the truths of the universe.

[Bagheera]

You would think Vikings fans would know better by now. I've observed them for the past 16 years, and their behavior never changes. It's peculiar.

[NemZ]

We're basically the Cubs fans of football. But purple is still objectively the best color and the ravens are complete assholes so what else can I do?

All these people giving Blair Walsh shit for missing that last kick need to step back and realize that he's also the only person on the team that scored at all, and it would not have come down to a single kick if many other mistakes by other players (AP's fumble, for example) had been avoided so that the offense could manage to score even one damn touchdown.

[Bagheera]

I don't even care, honestly. I just chuckle softly at their lament, relishing the fact that these people who were talking shit a few weeks ago now get to eat crow. It's very satisfying. The fact my mom lives in the state that's home to the team that handed their team their ass just makes it all the more amusing.

[MAGI_01]

Bleh, more conflict at work today. This transition to having 2 new managers (though both were promoted and are good work friends) is strange and our GM being on the warpath since it started is really wearing me down. First it was the hour cuts and then the reversal, and now getting chewed out for bad time management when having two areas to take care of and frankly, not enough hours for both is getting very old.

I get I have set duties every day, but when emergencies happen like Friday and today, me and my boss are the only two capable to see to them properly so having to divert priories is a given and getting chewed for that is not warranted in my opinion.

[Dream]

Many things have happened since my last post on the maid situation which the mods so helpfully deleted. Long story short most of it has been solved by now but there's one big sticking point remaining, in that we pawned some stuff i had and the contract i hoped would be one month turned out to be one week. If we don't give them 75 dollarinos by this friday my stuff is bye bye, and i'm all out of money and no IRL job will pay me on time (if i could even beat the anxiety). Most of the stuff i don't really care but there's a camera i want to recover for two reasons: 1, it's a really good camera. 2, it was technically a gift to my sister but she hasn't used it for months and she kinda left it in my room for some time now, so...

Anyways i really ought to recover that camera, and since sunday i've been looking into an option other than begging or hope to acquire it: E-commerce, A.K.A. online jobs. They are no Eden, but i don't mind working hard and fast if the pay is good enought. Now, if i lived in a good country like the U.S it'd be a simple matter of getting a paypal account and applying to Amazon MTurk... and when it told me to fuck off because i wasn't a yank, it set a good tone for many of the things that would follow.

SPOILER: Show

See, it'd be easy if i lived in the U.S., but i don't live in the U.S., i live in one of the most backwaters banana republics of a sub-continent already infamous for its corruption and bureaucratic dystopia. If you guys think Obama or McCain is bad you haven't met our president, businessman and head of a drug empire. This is the country where one of the longest-standing senators was found having sex with two underage girls and not only no one gave a shit, they congratulated him.

What i'm getting into with all this is that Paypal doesn't work in Paraguay, in fact in a leaked list of future countries SA they had planned, we and Cuba didn't even appear on the list. It's a bit of a long story and the common people is not very in the clear of why exactly it's taking so long, interested parties within the country started inquiring since as early as 2008, and only around 2010 some clues started surfacing. Anything from bribes to lack of market potential to fight/protectionism of an analogous Bancard or Western Union services have been thrown out, but most likely speculations i've seen was that the goverment hasn't made a proper legislation on e-commerce and proper bank/privacy security and thus Paypal can't operate here whilst honoring their standards. Another is that they don't want to touch the fuckhorrible joke of a banking system we have with a ten foot pole, and part of that is some administrative/contract/legislative differences with U.S. legislature where Paypal resides.

Of course i understand that i can't reasonably be too angry at Paypal because it's not their fault things are so screwed up here to the point they're not able to reach a consensus with the joke of a goverment/banker elites we have here. Neither could it be exactly be called their fault that they have established themselves so much as to become the go-to standard for 90% of the e-commerce market (if anything the onus is on the sites to take a few minutes of their time to set up an account with other perfectly decent services like Skrill or Merchant), but neither knowledge puts me in any less of a terrible situation. Intentionally or not Paypal has a monopoly on e-commerce, and if you have the bad luck to be born into one of the countries left out of its services then the doors of at least 60% of the online job sites are completely closed to you. Oh you can tell them of your situation and ask if they can set up something sure, but when the expected answer of "sorry, we only do Paypal, don't bother registering since we can't pay you" comes the only thing you can do is take your business elsewhere... to be told the same thing. Even if making a Skrill account would only take a few minutes at most (and could well be more satisfying/less anal retentive than Payfreeze), they can't be bothered doing so for a wetback when there are already enought wageslaves in the many countries that do accept Paypal. I understand the business logic of course, but it doesn't make it any less reprehensible in my view.

As i've said there are some payment systems that do operate in Paraguay (namely Skrill, Payza, and Clickbank among others) which i've hoped could allow me to work on at least some sites, but it seems their availability is vastly overrepresented in "toil two hours for 25 cents" slaver types or survey sites of which the latter is... well not that bad really but i was hoping for a door into something more decently paying and commited like transcription or tutoring or online researcher. If i want to progress anywhere forward of survey-monkeying or maybe bets, it doesn't seem that these paypal alternatives have my backs.

And that's leaving aside the sites which only offer services within the U.S. or those that only accepts workers from NATO-tier countries. Even if paypal were a direct option and even if i dared used a proxy/VPN, i doubt it'd work. So those ones seem like they are defintively and unchangeably out of my reach.

Finally, it is with no small irony that i note how if i did try to engage in some virtual piracy or fraud as U.S. banks seem to expect of us and which our elites are certainly so accustomed to, it'd be way better off and closer to my goals than doing things by the book. Guess that's the way it goes in South America.

What can i do, EGF? All i've wanted was honest pay for honest work, and instead of that since a week ago i have been researching 24/7 on payment processors, which sites accept what processors, what restriction sites have to what countries, and whole host of things that wouldn't be a problem if i didn't live in this backwaters shithole. Worst of all is that after all i've gone throught i now find that the paypal wall is even more insurmountable than i thought, and at this point i just can't be ok with walking away with my tail between my legs. But what options are there? Are there any options at all?

Sorry if i'm sounding too negative or caustic in this post, i'm just extremely frustrated by all of this business. And as i'm posting this or looking online for options or making calls, the clocks keeps ticking on it's way to friday...

[NemZ]

Dream, your long-term problems all seem to revolve around your living situation. To hell with the camera, figure out how to address the real problem.

[Dream]

If by living situation you mean getting out of the house/living by myself, i have been working on that finishing high school and getting some specializations/trainings on the side throught a goverment initiative as well as trying to break into freelance writing to sustain myself, latter takes a lot of time and effort to take-off but once it does it's pretty smooth. However my life was turned on it's head with the maid situation and i've been on emergency mode ever since. Setting up an emergency fund would have been cautious of me but as far as i could tell at the time, being a hiki at least had the benefit of making it almost impossible for me to get into any emergency in the first place. If you mean leaving the country i don't want to do that at least for the short term, Paraguay's great as long as you don't rely on the goverment or any service/institution.

I also can't agree with simply ditching the camera even while i see where you're coming from. I don't plan to get myself into debt for it or anything like that, but i should at least try my upmost to recover it considering it is in some way from my sister.

By the way, i've been looking some more into what to do regarding the paypal thing but the landscape isn't pretty. A member in some discussion thread said how Paraguayan users usually bypassed this by asking the help of an "aunt" within the U.S. and then she sents the money with Western Union or something. It doesn't involve the shitty SA banks so Paypal is ok with it. Unfortunately for me though, i don't have any family in the U.S. that i'm aware of or would trust with this matter. There's also a service called PayParaguay here that seemed to capitalize with the blockage, but (oh God there's always a but) their service has left me much to desire and they haven't even replied to an email i sent them about a week ago. They have mutually contradicting info regarding payments (one part of their site lists methods of receiving pay throught their service, while another section says they have stopped doing that) but the call i gave them around past monday said they do still offer payment receivement. However they really don't give me a good impression or confidence at all, and it wouldn't surprised me if they ate the pays or took ages to deliver it. Needless to say i'd prefer pretty much any other options regardless of the fees over these guys.

Also i've recently read that Paypal became avaiable on Paraguay around halfway of 2014... but only for sending payments/buying stuff. The bastards don't even allow Paraguayan accounts to receive money.

By the way if i misunderstood what you meant by addressing the real problem (which i took to imply financial indepence) then my apologies.

[Mr. Tines]

Our old cat, Jemima, had been unwell over the holiday break, but after rehydration had perked up, and with a course of steroids was eating heartily. Then she started to get absent-minded in the middle of her meals and on Sunday morning, after the normal morning care call for my wife, I went downstairs to get everyone breakfast -- and she was nowhere to be found. At that point I thought she had decided it was her time, and had gone out to find somewhere to curl up in, out of the way.

Yesterday, I came in from work to see her standing in the living-room, and then she went into her basket and curled up. By the end of the evening, she was in an uncomfortable looking twisted pose, trying to groom herself, and not making a good job of it. So this morning I called the vets, and took her in. I'm not sure how much ahead of nature the intervention came, but it would have eased her passage.

Here she is in happier times, the last really warm day we had in October--



and a few years ago

[BobBQ]

Our old cat, Jemima

RIP old cat.

[Bagheera]

Yesterday, I came in from work to see her standing in the living-room, and then she went into her basket and curled up. By the end of the evening, she was in an uncomfortable looking twisted pose, trying to groom herself, and not making a good job of it. So this morning I called the vets, and took her in. I'm not sure how much ahead of nature the intervention came, but it would have eased her passage.

Definitely the right thing to do. I come from a family that's willing to do just about anything for a pet so long as their quality of life remains high, but if things get to the point where they're struggling, or where they seem to be in pain, it's wrong to prolong their misery for our sake. Helping them pass with dignity is our final duty to them as their companions. That doesn't make it an easy one by any means, though.

Also, she was a pretty cat. Hope she's prowling about in a better place right now.

[pwhodges]

My sympathy. She looks just like one of the cats of my childhood, too!

[Ray]

I can empathize. When my first cat Wafer died when I was ten I was a mess for days. I loved that cat, it was like a friend.