FML general thread [7]

[Chuckman]

Cheers, amigo. Right there with ya.

We're not alone, then. We're just far apart.

[Bagheera]

We're not alone, then. We're just far apart.

This saddens me, but yes. I am with you in spirit, at least, that I am!

[pwhodges]

Dinner party today; but no drinking for me, as I'm taking a course of the antibiotic Metronidazole with which alcohol is a strict no-no. Nor can I have my occasional evening whisky, which heaven knows I've been feeling like recently. Five more days of it...

[Chuckman]

When Q/3.33 came out somebody did a really awesome mashup of The Slam Jam song and Ode to Joy. It was pulled for copyright and I can't find its equal.

[Reichu]

We're one of the upper units of this apartment building and heating comes from the archaic boiler/radiator system. It's truly awful and I never want to live in an apartment with the things again. The things go on at night whether you like it or not, and you feel like you're in an oven. All windows are open and the AC or window fan is frequently going, and it makes very little difference. Only the bedroom is relatively cool, but even then it doesn't stop me from getting dehydrated overnight and waking up in a pitiful staggering daze that lasts hours. I'm almost always dressed in shorts and sleeveless tees, and use barely any bed covers, too.

We also have a heavy smoker next door. Sometimes he'll come out into the main vestibule to go to his car, still smoking all the meanwhile. The crap thereupon seeps into our unit and gives me headaches that last hours (on top of the headaches I'm already getting because of the heat). I don't even want to think about what the secondhand smoke is doing to the parrot, who unlike me can't throw on winter clothes and leave for a while if it gets really bad.

I've complained about both of the issues, but it's been over a day and nobody's even come by to look at the radiators yet and make sure the knobs are working. Bleh.

Today started nice and crappy, with me oversleeping and uncovering Donald to find out that he bit off all the feathers that had been coming in so nicely. This is the second time he's bitten the same cluster off on account of me keeping him covering too long. Nice big "Fuck you for being a shitty flockmate, Rachel." He refused to step up and leave his sleeping cage for hours, too, giving me a hell of an avian cold shoulder. Seems just a bit passive aggressive. I'm aggravated, since Donald really needs to let him feathers come back in, and I spent days putting aloe on that spot and trying to keep him stimulated (like supervising him while he explores the unit on the floor). Only for him to go and destroy that hard-earned work when I fuck up again. Feels unfair, since I don't even remember him giving me a clear verbal sign, as he usually does, that he was ready to wake up and be uncovered. Did both honsou and I just sleep straight through it?

On top of that, the take-out from yesterday is giving me the shits. Guess that's the last time I order there.

[Chuckman]

I presently live in a house with a boiler and radiators. The system has two settings, regardless of how I set the thermostat: "Jet engine" and "nuclear explosion". It's useful when the temp dips into the teens but that's only on rare occasions, my weather is probably fairly similar to yours. I generally leave the entire boiler system off (the pump kicks on and cycles the water every few hours, however) unless it's cold as a witch's tit outside.

You should speak to your landlord. All radiators have a valve to close them off from the system if they're getting to hot. If the system is too old turning off yours will turn off everyone "downstream" from you, so you may get complaints. If not, you can simply shut it off when it gets too hot. I'd recommend turning it off entirely unless it goes below 20 degrees for days at a time.

There's also thermostat valves you can install that will shut off the water supply to the radiator at a certain air temperature, but installing that should really be something the landlord does. Don't open or remove the valves yourself, you can flood the building or be scalded.

[Reichu]

The individual radiators do have knobs, but from what we can tell they don't actually do anything. Some of them don't even turn because some idiot basically painted the pivot point shut.

[Tankred]

The individual radiators do have knobs, but from what we can tell they don't actually do anything. Some of them don't even turn because some idiot basically painted the pivot point shut.

From my experience with radiators, the paint usually comes off if you force it enough. I don't know what your radiators look like so I cannot tell. Sometimes they seize up due to not being used, and when you try and open the radiator valve with a wrench the old brass snaps.

[Chuckman]

Talk to your landlord before you do anything, but it may be possible to close them off depending on how the system is set up.

Edit: The last issue of Playboy magazine ever to contain nudity has arrived at my home. Considering that the magazine has nothing of interest in it now and the company's main focus is an uninteresting clickbait site that farms Instagram for selfies, I can no longer support it. It's sad to see a cultural phenomenon fall apart. I'm troubled that the old school magazine's values are now considered regressive or sexist or whatever and the magazine's function as a rite of passage for young men has been supplanted by pocket computers that can deliver bdsm gangbangs with the flick of a finger.

[Monk Ed]

Second week as EGF big shot sysadmin. Fiddling around with logrotate and cron, cron goes okay, logrotate works too, 'cept the post-rotate script to get the doohickeys to reconnect with the thingamabobs doesn't work for some reason. S'alright, we can work it out, figure I can at least put things back as they were, wind up deleting the past two weeks' worth of access logs for the site unrecoverably due to a mistyped file-move command. S'alright, we can work it out, who needed those anyway, two weeks is a blip and we already dealt with our latest batch of half-assed hack attacks. Moving on, I get back to the doohickeys and thingamabobs problem and figure hey, let's do a service restart manually, that's always fixed what ails me.

System screams bloody murder at me, failed this, bold red text that, service cannot restart, hell breaks loose, site goes down.

Problem winds up tracing back to the fact that I deleted a test forum without removing its declaration in vhosts... days ago. DAYS. AGO. And it only became a problem now because I hadn't done a service restart since then.

Lesson learned: Don't think you can just leave dangling links to things you've moved or deleted just because it doesn't cause a problem right away.

RML upside: Great story to tell at a job interview.

[chee]

I gotta wonder how many optimists gave Hitler the ol' "Believe in yourself and think positive!" spiel when he was a kid.

[Reichu]

I gotta wonder how many optimists gave Hitler the ol' "Believe in yourself and think positive!" spiel when he was a kid.

Was that even a thing back then, let alone in Austria?

Latest FML: I think the yeast infection I got from being on antibiotics too long is either coming back or never completely went away. I'd previously gone my whole life without a single instance of candidiasis, too, so this is pretty fucking weak right here. Time to schedule an appointment with the lady parts doctor, lol.

[Ieyasu]

Americans can be the most vicious of customers.

I sell stuff all over the planet, but I never look forward to Xmas season with US sales. Never get complaints from anywhere else, never having people buying stuff and me making it to order and then someone thinking it's ok to go back on the deal after I made it, or people freaking out and literally telling me to go to hell because the Christmas postal system is being slow with their order. Last year I had the most comical guy from USA throw an absolute wobbler when he agreed to be shown proof of posting for an item in the form of receipt copies, and then he saw a UK receipt and declared it was "horseshit" and that I was obviously a fraudster and fuck those Brits anyway their eyes are too close together and he never trusts a Brit. And that I should remember when something bad happens to me next, I deserve it. No, he doesn't want a refund, he just wants me to feel bad. No shit, he actually said this. Had a few more this year too, including one person telling me because the order is late (not my fault, I posted it on time before the Christmas cut off date) their daughter's daughter's whatever who has cancer's life is now ruined... because this will be her last Christmas... even though... the item they bought was rather morbidly themed - a graveyard snowglobe? Wow. Not the sort of gift I'd be giving a terminal cancer patient, personally. Even though what the postal system does is none of my business when I post stuff well in time to make it to USA. I don't fly personally alongside the cargo plane to check it's all hunky dory, people... so I can wave my magic wand if there's a problem or whatever. What gives, USA?

Yes I know Not All Americans are Like That, and I have a lot of great customers in the USA, but Jeezus H, the really crazy ones are all from there. I considered tonight for a moment just not shipping anything to USA anymore to give myself less headaches, although that would be unfair for those who really are nice customers to suffer because of the loons.

[Bagheera]

The U.S.'s wealth and freedoms tend to engender two different sorts: really great people who want for nothing, and well-adjusted, and are extremely friendly and helpful, and entitled fuckwads who are dissatisfied with life and think they deserve more and want to make sure you and everyone else within earshot know it. Of course we have everyone in-between, just like every country, but the U.S. is a place of extremes. Sorry you have to deal with our lunacy!

[Ray]

Speaking of entitled f-wads. . . Christmas is tomorrow, and I'm dreading going to see my extended family.

If I didn't have to take a math class last semester, we would have been able to spend this Christmas in Georgia with moms family. But instead we get another Christmas with the more hostile side of my family.

Humbug. Is it New Years yet?

[IronEvangelion]

Last year I had the most comical guy from USA throw an absolute wobbler when he agreed to be shown proof of posting for an item in the form of receipt copies, and then he saw a UK receipt and declared it was "horseshit" and that I was obviously a fraudster and fuck those Brits anyway their eyes are too close together and he never trusts a Brit. And that I should remember when something bad happens to me next, I deserve it. No, he doesn't want a refund, he just wants me to feel bad. No shit, he actually said this. Had a few more this year too, including one person telling me because the order is late (not my fault, I posted it on time before the Christmas cut off date) their daughter's daughter's whatever who has cancer's life is now ruined... because this will be her last Christmas...

Sorry to hear that. I deal with similar stuff almost on a weekly basis where I work. People seem to take the company's policies as a personal offense aimed at them and vent their frustration on me as if it's going to accomplish anything. They also seem to think I have direct control over whether or not their bank accepts their card. Most of the customers are alright, but there's a sizeable group who seem to think they deserve free everything.

The attitudes of American customers are largely the result of being fed entitlements and "you derserve it" advertising since the cradle. Telling somebody they are entitled to something they don't have is a surefire way to turn them into completely miserable assholes. I've seen it in action. The company I work for is one of many that offers loyalty discounts on fuel. 99% of the complaints and problems I have to deal with are about the damn points system! People always seem to think they deserve more points than what they have. And did I mention they think I control that system as well? It's seldom ever an actual problem either, usually it's a result of them not reading the fine print. It doesn't help that American culture has this mythical "master-slave relationship" that is supposed to exist between customers and low-level employees, and corporations actually perpetuate this stereotype.

[Monk Ed]

It doesn't help that American culture has this mythical "master-slave relationship" that is supposed to exist between customers and low-level employees, and corporations actually perpetuate this stereotype.

EvaGeeks might not be a corporation (or even a paid service), but we still get some pretty surprising attitude, and it doesn't seem to be keyed by country. Maybe if we charged money we'd get only the Americans kvetching at us.

[soul.assassin]

Nominally at work -- in the field -- for five days, fixing computers for three clients, earned some substantial dough, but I was really spending a bit of a vacation with my friend and his family till Christmas Eve, getting away from the dreary shit inside jokingly called home.

Then I'm back again, with the goddamn dishes, dirty floor and empty water bottles waiting. Yeah, FML.

EDIT: have to clean the bathroom too.

[Ieyasu]

Is it an entitlement culture that creates the attitudes? I have no idea. I have American relatives who are nice folks, but when I see them I only see them and not so much the culture at large in America. I don't get the impression from them or the media that most people feel entitled but... it is weird how customers from US seem to think I can control the postal system in their country, or even if they buy something and change their mind, that's somehow my fault. Is it just this "the customer is always right" thing and maybe that's how it works in the USA so if you were there you can always win in a dispute or an argument with a shopkeeper? Or is it just a real ignorance of how the world works. I don't know but some people really go off the deep end and I think they expect me to apologize profusely for their dissatisfaction. If I made a genuine mistake I will apologize and work for a solution that makes them happy, but I'm not apologizing for customs, or USPS or delayed planes or them changing their minds.

I mean just last week a lady ordered a sculpt from me, said one of its horns broke off as she was handling it and her puppy got to the horn before she could and ate it. Then she asked me for help. Not much I can do if her dog ate part of her sculpt... I offered to remake the sculpt to see what she would say, and she said she wouldn't want me to do that as that wouldn't be fair, but suggested I give her a discount on something else she might buy at a later date. Lol, I know she could easily repair/recreate the horn herself and then get something on the cheap from me as well.

...Maybe I'm the idiot here.

[PG 134]

The customer is NOT always right and NEVER will be. The person who came up with that phrase should have been tied up and dragged behind a horse over a rocky path for miles. Customers definitely act entitled. I've been surviving their attacks for over 8 years now. They think the person at the register can change/override all the company rules. They think that staff can fix everything and control everything attached to the company or items sold. A current example is customer getting pissy over not getting their photo gifts that they ordered by the predetermined date yet, as you stated, the postal service is currently overwhelmed. It's a damn shame the customer is always right is burned into people's heads. Some companies do not help the situation either throwing gift cards at customers anything the customer starts arguing. It is definitely ignorance. I'm glad to have worked with managers who have a spine though. I'm also glad we have had a good relationship with the local authorities and that they can remove the problem customers if they get to aggressive.

I'm so glad to have moved to a tourist location though as all the customers are so much nicer here. Kinda bums me out though that after 8 years I have an amazing schedule(I am very grateful for) where I could spend time with family and friends but they are all 5 states away. I will hopefully have a better job next year though.