My week was OK. I’m looking forward to the F1 starting again soon :)
We watched E.T on Saturday night for the first time since watching it as a kid and we had some observations:
- The mum was happy to let her kids and friends smoke, but was annoyed that they were ordering pizza
- The mum was going to go to the school to pick up Elliot, but leave her 4 or 5 year old daugher at home, alone?! She could have brought her with her
- The mum tells the kids to be back by sundown, but none of them come back. There’s a scene where she looks down because she looks like she’s home alone, but not stressing out like fuck that her kids aren’t home.
- I always assumed the grown ups in the suits who go to their house are the “baddies”, but really they’re only trying to help.
Pretty terrible, to be honest. The upstairs neighbour’s toilet broke and all the water came through my living room roof.
Oof. That’s worse than suboptimal!
Oh damn. I hope there’s not too much damage! Has someone been out to sort it?
Landlord came out to have a look on Sunday and sent someone to fix it yesterday, so it’s at least sorted now.
Jeez… not sure if I should down-vote your post to recognise how grim that is 😉
Stressful as fuck. Messed up slightly at work but over catastrophised it in my head which just made it all worse.
I did that recently, and then did the stupid thing of telling others of how stupid I am.
Pro-Tip: Everyone fucks up, the best thing to do in this post-truth world is to literally go play golf and pretend the fuckup wasn’t wholly yours [1], and if they try to give you grief over it pretend they’re giving you a light hazing and move on to actionable points to rectify it, whilst slightly passive-aggressively telegraphing that anyone getting emotional over it has never spilled milk before.
It’s shitty and dishonest and you’ll feel like a mixture of Donald Trump and Larry David, but it genuinely does work in getting people off your back
“where was the initial feedback? the oversight? who validated your changes?” ↩︎
We’ve all done it. Best you can do is learn from it.
Whenever it happens at our work, everyone piles in with their own funny fuck ups.
Dropping a bollock is half the fun of work.
I suppose what makes it tolerable enough is whether you’ve got a line manager to turn to and say “here boss, I’ve made a fuckup here, I’m away to unfuck it now” without it turning into a mega drama.
Unless you’re the manager who has to unfuck the problem that someone else did… which was initially caused by someone else who fucked somethingelse up, and the more senior managers just say: sort it out.
But, then, find another manager who you can have a laugh with and unwind…
I was off work, which was great. Even better, we saw Alter Bridge on Wednesday.
The setlist was awesome and they played great, as usual. When the first notes of Silent Divide hit in the beginning, every single hair in my arms was standing straight. On the downside, now I’ve had an ear worm since the concert.
🎶 There’s no doubt we’ll phase out the one who lies 🎶
There’s nothing better than when a band that has been around most of your life drops either a banger, or a song that is dear to you.
I remember watching the Manic Street Preachers play The Everlasting live, and even though I’m not the biggest fan of the song, I felt like a youngster all over again for the first time in as long as I can remember.
Little things. Glad you enjoyed it.
Had yet another frantic week, but, spent a good weeknd 1:1 with my Mum going through some old photos of us when we were kids, her when she was younger and just re-relating how her life was compared to my daughter’s life now…
Previous generation getting married in their 20’s and thinking about having kids… latest generation only starting their career in their 20’s and (hopefully) no thought of kids… such a difference.
We got through the last week before my wife gets back into her work! First day was today, so far so good.
Swear to god, her old bosses handicapped her from the start and ran her out at the first chance. After three years of uni, they almost blew up her career in the hangar, and to all appearances it was deliberate. It set us back ten months, at minimum. It is only a faint exaggeration to say her entire career was hunted for sport.
Anyway. It’s been a fucking nightmare and I’m just shaking with hope that we’re finally back to a dual income household. She supported me when I was at uni and I was more than happy to repay the favour. That said, there wasn’t a kid in the picture back then. It was a massive relief to get her into a job a year and a half ago, and at this point I’m too wary to feel relieved.
Next week I’ll have nice updates, no more trauma dumping from me. You okay?
Unis are businesses these days. My last prof took on a postdoc who secured her own independent funding, but needed his name on the application for formality reasons. He took her funding, badmouthed her to the entire uni, and cast her out of the lab. Vampire tactics seem to be pretty common now in this economy.
The nepotism within Unis are also shockingly bad. The child of a professor is practically guaranteed a tenureship track in academia, as the professor’s can stack bad candidates vying for the same position when the application comes. Anyone from outside their circle needs to either swear fealty to some professor or fight tooth and nail.
There’s a recent blog post about this from a German researcher that resonated with me on this. I hope your wife’s doing okay.
I’ve also just lost a good revenue stream and am wondering how I’m gonna cope, but I’m sure I will one way or another.
How horrid… But it is the times we live in. At least I tell myself that, since I want to believe people are mostly situational and could be good under better circumstances.
Uni was okay for her, but it’s this pre-reg requirement before she’s a full optometrist. Basically you swear fealty to a corporation for two years before you have a license to practise, and until you pass the assessment scheme you’re at their mercy. Specsavers basically wrote her off from the start, dumped her just in time to get a tidy break on taxes.
I hope you do find a new income stream soon, though I’m sure you will. With any luck, it’ll be nothing Bram Stoker would write home about!
