Whew it's hot out here! Summer Mini-Rants

  • Thread starter Thread starter LavenderBlue
  • Start date Start date
Dear supervisor,

I know that since I am your lowly grad student, you expect that I will do whatever unpleasant lab tasks you see fit to asssign to me. I'm okay with that, I really am. You know what I'm not okay with? When one of those tasks is to order semi-expensive lab materials that you know full well I don't have one sweet clue about! What makes you think I am a good choice for this job, huh? Don't you think it's maybe a teensy bit unreasonable to expect a person to order equipment for a test they've never done, to be run on a machine they've never seen? Because I do. Poo-flinging monkeys would have a better chance of choosing the right things than I do.

This is stressing me out bexause I'm pretty sure you already think I'm dumb and in a couple of weeks you will have further proof of that. But seriously, dude, I am about to spend hundreds of dollars of your research grant on a bunch of useless crap AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!
Grrrr.

Also, I really wish my officemate would learn that when he has earphones in he can't hear us, but we can still hear him. He mumbles and sings and laughs at his inane YouTube videos all day!

Arg. I'm so damn irritable lately.
 
I've had it with this melonfarming dirt on my melonfarming baked potatoes. Am I totally out to lunch, expecting a baked potato skin so clean that I can actually eat it at a restaurant? I finally complained to a manager about it yesterday, and he brought me a second potato that was as dirty as the first. If I can rub a bunch of sandy black dirt off the potato, it's not clean. I've given up on trying to eat the skins of potatoes in restaurants - apparently their idea of "clean" is not the same as mine. Funny how mine get completely clean when I give them a quick scrub with a scrub brush at home, though. :dubious:
 
I know this is not uncommon practice for the airlines (at least here in the U.S.,) but how the fuck does this make sense? I am trying to book a flight from Charlotte, NC to Harrisburg, PA. on short notice (next week.) The non-stop round trip price is about $950 (because of the lead time, I assume) when normally it runs about $300 - $350. So, in the course of searching for better fares I see that there is a 1-stop fare from Greensboro, NC (about 85 miles from me) to Harrisburg for $350.

Where's the 1 stop? Yep, Charlotte! As a matter of fact the 2nd leg of the flight is the same one I'd be taking if I went non-stop.

So essentially, I could save $600 by driving to Greensboro, flying back to my home town of Charlotte, and then on to Harrisburg.

This is all on US Air, and Charlotte is their hub, blah blah blah. It's still ridiculous.
 
niblet_head said:
Sigmagirl said:
My sorority alumnae get together once a month for breakfast. Very informal, whoever wants to show up. Sometimes we have four people, sometimes we have 15. Yesterday there were about a dozen. Range in age from mid-20s to mid-80s.

After most of the people had cleared out, there were five of us left. One of them was a lady in her 80s. Dear, wonderful woman, widowed. Three master's degrees. Generous, known for her philanthropy and community involvement. My husband and I have been a little worried about her lately; she seems to be forgetting things. She's recently retired after a long career and doesn't have a secretary anymore. She uses a cell phone and only recently learned how to set it to vibrate, when I showed her how. Doesn't have any idea how to use a computer or e-mail.

She announced that she had seen an ad in the paper that the first 200 people to respond to the ad could get a very low-priced computer, so she had called. The rest of us looked at each other uneasily, and then at her in disbelief. I asked her if she had given her credit card number over the phone.

She couldn't remember. I asked if she still had the ad, or could remember when it was in the paper or the name of the company. She said she might still have the ad. I didn't want to alarm her, but I told her that it might not have been a good idea for her to have called the number, and that I would very much like to see the ad. She said she would try to find it. Another sister asked why she wanted a computer, but there was no response. (This lady has a history of ordering things from infomercials and QVC, but she has never been scammed that I know of; she just orders knickknacks and gives them away: She gave me a set of cake decorating tools once -- they weren't good quality, but at least she ordered them, received them, and nothing bad happened.)

But now? This terrifies me. I don't remember her former secretary's last name if I ever knew it, and her relatives live out of state and are as old as she is. I'm going to keep on her about this ad and where she saw it.

The woman sitting between us chirped: "I'm sure the paper has somebody checking those ads."

FAIL.
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Do you have a way to call her and "chat"? Get her started talking/reminiscing about her secretary - what was her name again? what ever happened to her? - or ask her how she likes her doctor and can you get her name to call for your mom? Does she have other friends she mentions that you could track down?
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Well, my mom's been dead since 1967, and her friends other than our mutual sorority sisters are all her age, but I was thinking about asking her for her lawyer's name. That wouldn't alarm her; we all refer people to each other all the time. I am not too worried that she'll lose her life savings, as her career was in financial services and she would have locked down her pension funds and all that long ago. It's the possibility of shorter-term identity theft that concerns me more. I'll call her mid-week to see if she's found the ad, and suggest she call her credit-card provider to see if it was charged. I'll talk to her later in the week.
 
Niblethead, could be worse. I once had a boss, as he telling me how he wanted some document set collated, etc., "This is one page. You don't have to staple this."
 
It's unusually cool where I live; I think it got up to 68F today. Ain't nobody talking about that on the national news. (Probably because all the people who make the national news would be screamingly jealous!)

Okay. Parents. Your five-ish son wants to ride his bike. You take him to the new town square thing in the middle of town to ride it. Please don't let him zip from out of sight right in front of an alley where tons of people drive down! I braked so hard my tires squealed a bit! I could have hit him so easily! And while I wasn't going fast, the last thing I want to do is mow down a kid!

At least he looked kinda freaked, even though his mom wasn't. Morons.
 
Shot From Guns said:
if I don't have to undo you fuckups first.
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So - did you undo all the fuckups you work with yet? :D

So hot in house! I feel like I shouldn't complain about that here with everyone having much hotter weather, but we're not used to it, and it's hot for us. Wah.
 
Well, an hour and a half into a commercial-free version of "Around the World In 80 Days" on television, and it craps out on me. Oh, you are experiencing technical difficulties - I noticed that when your picture when to checkerboard squares and the audio went to "ee ee aa aa oo oo pp pp..." Bah. Damn. I was enjoying that.
 
descamisado said:
Niblethead, could be worse. I once had a boss, as he telling me how he wanted some document set collated, etc., "This is one page. You don't have to staple this."
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I have a guy who will write things out, come over to me with them, and then proceed to read out everything he's written. As I'm sitting there saying, "Right, uh-huh, got it, got it, right, I'VE GOT IT."
 
ARRRGH, went to the car to go to work this morning, got in, got a "tire pressure warning" from the little screen thing. It looks like my rear passenger sidewall has been attacked by furious marmots. What the fucking fuck? The boyfriend drove it last and says he didn't hit anything. It doesn't look slashed, although I've only seen slashed tires on TV. What the hell? And the boyfriend is sick so I know I'm going to be out there this afternoon in the screaming heat changing a tire.
 
I suppose as long as we avoid going to certain eating establishments, we can hang out.
 
Fuck you you fucking fucks!

Last Thursday, my in-laws left the house to run some errands. They were gone for about for hours and came home to find their two laptops and the 42" HDTV gone. (My father in law is pretty sure he forgot to lock the back door. D'oh!) They were already planning on being gone from Friday through this Thursday on vacation.

So they came home THIS Thursday to a broken back door, and every last bit of anything remotely valuable (and easily portable) gone ... desktop computers, monitors, the 21" CRT TV they had put in place of the HDTV, camera equipment, and my father in law's guitars and dulcimer. Who the fuck steals a dulcimer?? They rummaged around for guns, but didn't bother with the medicine cabinet (too bad ... she's got Vicodin and he's got Viagra), and didn't worry about the costume jewelry.

Did I mention that Wednesday was my mother in law's birthday?

The police said they got one good hand print in the living room, but if they don't get any matches, then it's pretty much dead in the water. Property crime just isn't a high priority right now.
 
I forgot my mini-rant, I was so in awe of the most awesome rant in a long time. Not once but twice on the way home today, I was driving along, minding my own business, and the car in front of me stopped for no apparent reason and gave right-of-way to another car that was stopped at a stop sign. People, you cannot just do random things like this and get away with it forever - sooner or later someone will rear-end you for doing things this stupid. Someone here said something like this just recently (yeah, I know, that's about how well I remember things these days) - don't drive nicely, drive predictably.
 
melodyharmonius said:
For All You Staple fans:

The small company I worked for decided to hire this new CFO out of the blue - basically pissing all over my boss, the controller, who had been keeping them afloat for the past 10 years, and had been acting CFO.

So the new CFO comes up to me on the first day and asks for some staples. I show him where the supply closet is and give him a box of staples. He then explains to me that he needs staples that are sharp - chisel-point staples. Because he does a lot of stapling and he needs to make sure the staples go through on the first try.

He then takes out a strip of staples, breaks one off, and holds it up to the light. Then he lays it on my counter and bends down to eye it at level. Then he pokes his finger with the staple and decides it's not chisel pointed enough . . . .

Yeah, he was gone in a month.
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Not a rant, but just an amusing related story. Years back at a previous company, they hired a new CFO too. The assistant to the previous CFO was a very nice, but pretty flaky young woman. She was nervous about the new guy liking her and afraid he'd want to bring in his own person. On his very first day, I was in his office setting up his PC, and as he was walking in, the pocket of his pants got snagged on the strike plate of the door knob and tore. He was visibly PO'd (and probably embarrassed.) Well, the assistant, in an effort to help and ingratiate herself, ran in with her stapler at the ready (flipped open to staple on a flat surface...) The look he gave her was priceless. She didn't last much longer.
 
That stupid ad that pimps green tea as a weight loss miracle: the not-so-fine print says "With proper diet and exercise". No shit? With "proper diet and exercise" you can eat burgers and fries and lose weight.
 
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