Strange Horticulture…I’m probably fine.

Yeah, I plan to do in-person early voting rather than take my chances with mail-in voting.

I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.

It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.

Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.

I was only ever interested in these company’s services as a way to save money. They are no longer cheaper than a hotel, so I would rather stay at a hotel.

Apocalyptica is a symphonic metal band with 3 cellists as the core of all their work. Sometimes they also have drums, electric guitar, or vocals. It varies from album to album and song to song.

There’s a great orchestral version of “Animals” by Architects if metal works for you.

Going back to the 90’s Metallica did a concert and live album with the San Francisco Symphony.

It’s not exactly what you asked for, but Sean Townsend does great piano covers of rock/metal, especially Killswitch Engage. His music is very relaxing to listen to. Most of his material is on YouTube, which is a shame because I would buy his music if it were for sale somewhere.

I love their cover of Gasoline by Audioslave.

Long before Covid, the company I worked for started trialing work from home for some call center agents. They had a whole list of requirements for an acceptable work from home space: dedicated work area with a desk, locking file drawer (why??? I don’t know), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. Someone would actually go out to physically inspect the space to make sure every box was checked.

My guess is someone from legal wrote up the requirements from a workplace safety standpoint. They probably could have just had the employee sign a statement agreeing that they met all of the requirements, but someone in the middle got overzealous about their role. During Covid, everyone got sent home permanently without any regard to any of those rules, so clearly they weren’t that important in the first place.

This is probably a good thing. I packed on a ton of weight when I was in college because fast food was really cheap. Things like dollar menu sandwiches, 5 for $5 at Arbys, $0.29 hamburgers on Sundays at McD, etc. I remember strategically buying bags full of fast food and putting them in the freezer because I couldn’t make food that cheap. Reheated from the freezer tasted HORRIBLE, but it was cheap and I was broke. At these prices I would have made better decisions for my health.

Me measuring anything.

I love the games (haven’t played 76, but the rest are great). I watched the first 3 episodes and thought they connected well with the games thematically, but I never cared enough to continue. Every now and then I think I should get back to it, but I always have something that interests me more, including just scrolling Lemmy. To be fair, I don’t really enjoy watching TV or movies that much though.

We only feed dry food.

Apparently these rules exist in my house also. Just today, my Gen Z kid forbade me from ever saying rizz or Ohio again. Luckily, I don’t live near Ohio, so I don’t need these words for any functional purpose. In particular, she told me that Ohio has been over for, like, a year and I’m out of date on slang.

It’s been a long time since I worked in that space, but I think it is basically like a reloadable prepaid card you can get from visa or mastercard. I would assume there actually is a bank behind it, but the account is essentially being sponsored by someone else and there is less risk for the bank because you can’t write a bad check or overdraw the account. That makes it potentially useful if the reason you didn’t get an account is because the banks refused you or you couldn’t afford the fees. For people who are just anti-bank or worried about financial privacy, they would still want to go cash only.

On a side note, reloadable cards can also be useful if you have friends or relatives that you want to help out now and then, especially if they are not local and maybe make poor decisions. It’s cheaper than Western Union or a money order, more secure than mailing cash, and no risk of them having access to your bank account number from sending a check.

According to FDIC, about 4.5% of US households do not have a bank account of any kind, but that number is much higher when you only include low income households. Some choose not to have an account, some are denied accounts by banks for various reasons.

https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html

Also, most banks only offer free checking accounts with direct deposit or a minimum balance. I don’t know if this is still the case, but I worked for a payroll processor many years ago and, at that time, many small businesses chose not to offer direct deposit to their employees. Paying bank fees is very difficult for low income households.

One of the options the company I worked for had was to offer refillable debit cards to employees that their paychecks would be deposited to. This gave them the basic features of a bank without needing to create their own account.

The company I used to work for you could say “agent” or press 0, but you had to do it many times because it would keep trying to make you play along. At the start of Covid in 2020, the call centers were totally overwhelmed, so someone decided to change that path to say “sorry, I don’t know what you want, goodbye” and hang up.

Surprisingly, that change caused a marginal reduction in call volume, which was the goal. So, when the call centers stabilized later in the year, Finance balked at any suggestion that the decision be reversed unless someone came up with an idea to offset the cost of the increase in volume it would cause. It stayed like that for 2-3 years and was still very controversial when it was finally put back to the way it was before Covid.

My answers below, but for your current issue, put in a complaint with the FCC or email the CEO of the company directly. Most major companies have a process to resolve issues that normal agents can’t access if you can get to the right level. Emailing the CEO works with many companies, but telecom companies are sensitive to FCC oversight and would rather fix your issue than deal with the FCC.

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/115002206106-Internet-Form-Descriptions-of-Complaint-Issues

Yes, the agent agreed with me that the company owed me money, but told me they couldn’t do anything about it. I told them I understood, but please put in a ticket to someone that could do something about it. They just kept telling me they couldn’t help until I got mad. They eventually relented and put in a ticket, which was then denied without reason a month later. I resolved the issue by circumventing the call center entirely and getting directly to an escalation team similar to what I recommended above.

That would be a lucky outcome for Intel, they can’t compete with AMD’s current fab (TSMC).

I’ve been applying similar thinking to my job search. When I see AI listed in a job description, I immediately put the company into one of 3 categories:

1. It is an AI company that may go out of business suddenly within the next few years leaving me unemployed and possibly without any severance.
2. Management has drank the Kool-Aid and is hoping AI will drive their profit growth, which makes me question management competence. This also has a high likelihood of future job loss, but at least they might pay severance.
3. The buzzword was tossed in to make the company look good to investors, but it is not highly relevant to their business. These companies get a partial pass for me.

A company in the first two categories would need to pay a lot to entice me and I would not value their equity offering. The third category is understandable, especially if the success of AI would threaten their business.

Imagine that the flag is attached to a flagpole and the person is carrying it while walking forward, the flag would be flowing out behind them with the blue part at the front no matter which side of the person you were viewing from. In this case, the person is the flagpole.

I might be a workaholic. I said I could quit any time, but now that I’ve done it I keep looking for another job! I’ve clearly become dependent on paychecks…