Useless Conversation

[Morat20]

It's true. For nearly anything less than 5 hours, I'd rather drive. Though iflyrise.com is gonna be pretty fucking tempting for Texas / random travel.

I drive every year to an annual meeting in San Antonio (Houston to San Antonio. 4 hours with light traffic. There was one hellish 11-hour trip. That was a nightmare). My co-workers seem confused as to why i drive, despite the fact that I beat them there every year.

I'm going on a trip soon, and like every family trip that involved "spending heavily ahead of time" there's ALWAYS a "oh crap" moment. This one is the realization that passports for kid's expire MUCH sooner than for adult's. My kid got a passport in 2011. It expired three months ago, as opposed to five years from now. I found that out tonight, and the trip is....soon.

Luckily, we can manage with the documents we have, but a passport is a lot more convenient. There's less attestation and paperwork. Oh well, he's 19. He can do all the paperwork for himself. :)

[schild]

Houston -> San Antonio has some pretty goddamn good food along the way. Especially if you wanna make it a 5.5 hour trip and hit Lockhart.

[Morat20]

Houston -> San Antonio has some pretty goddamn good food along the way. Especially if you wanna make it a 5.5 hour trip and hit Lockhart.

There is also that. I've added in an Austin trip at the end too. Adds maybe 100 miles to the trip back, and I've got friends there. It's a fun place to visit and it's nice to have my work offset a bit of the costs.

I do find it rather hilarious to watch out-of-staters eat Mexican food or BBQ. There's always a big group dinner that's one or the other, and watching people from Europe and Japan spaz over what is good, but not great, BBQ or Tex-Mex is fun.

I suspect I'm the same way when I travel overseas, so...fair's fair.

[Selby]

I drive from east TN to Houston or San Antonio many times a year (doing it Saturday and back Sunday actually). I'm very much a "fuck flying if I can help it" person. I'd rather suffer through 19 hours in my truck to get somewhere than get on an airplane. I even drove to Chicago and Wisconsin and back rather than pay for shipping of several large items. Flying blows in almost all cases.

[Strazos]

Meh, I find flying to be pretty easy.

However, I'm going to have to drive from Houston to Washington, DC next weekend, so that's going to suck.

[MrHat]

Meh, I find flying to be pretty easy.

However, I'm going to have to drive from Houston to Washington, DC next weekend, so that's going to suck.

I have done that drive, and that drive sucks.

[Sky]

Looks like it's time to buy that stuff I needed from the UK. 

[Trippy]

It's only dropped about 10% (so far)..

[Teleku]

Which I believe is the Pounds worst drop in history.

[Merusk]

Meh, I find flying to be pretty easy.

However, I'm going to have to drive from Houston to Washington, DC next weekend, so that's going to suck.

I have done that drive, and that drive sucks.

Just checked the route you'd be likely to use via Google Maps. It's through some of the worst areas of the South. Even driving from Wyoming to D.C. would be a better drive than that. Eww.

Best you can do is cut to Mobile and head through Montgomery but then you have to drive through Atlanta.

[Chimpy]

Could head North to Memphis on 55 then take 40 east until 81, then take 66 into DC.

Would avoid Atlanta by a couple hundred miles that way

[schild]

Meh, I find flying to be pretty easy.

However, I'm going to have to drive from Houston to Washington, DC next weekend, so that's going to suck.

I have done that drive, and that drive sucks.

Better than Austin to Providence. And if you plan it right you can eat at Husk, among other places. Also, Roanoke sucks but driving through those mountains is better than the ones in PA.

[HaemishM]

If you plan on getting to Memphis through Mississippi before heading north, make sure your shocks are new. Because once you leave the state, you'll need to get some more new ones. Our fucking roads are goddamn terrible.

[schild]

If you plan on getting to Memphis through Mississippi before heading north, make sure your shocks are new. Because once you leave the state, you'll need to get some more new ones. Our fucking roads are goddamn terrible.

I challenge you to find roads worse than Connecticut / Rhode Island. These shitass fucking states spend all their money fixing them but don't have enough to level them.

[Trippy]

Wow Connecticut really is that bad:

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-states-with-the-worst-roads-2015-7

[HaemishM]

I cannot believe those statistics. I feel like I'm driving through Beirut anytime I leave my driveway.

[schild]

Wow Connecticut really is that bad:

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-states-with-the-worst-roads-2015-7

And so is RI. Particularly considering how few roads are up here at all.

[Chimpy]

Illinois is number one in functionality deficient roads!

Which is not surprising given that we are number one in functionality deficient government.

[Sky]

Friday afternoon.

Hot day out.

AC dies in office.

New hire decides to call out the sysadmin browsing imgur to the entire office.

Sysadmin warns new hire to shut the fuck up.

New hire thinks he's joking, doubles down.

She has made a critical error and a terrible enemy.

[Teleku]

If your sysadmin isn't spending a good hunk of time browsing the internet, then your network is in deep shit.

[Strazos]

If you plan on getting to Memphis through Mississippi before heading north, make sure your shocks are new. Because once you leave the state, you'll need to get some more new ones. Our fucking roads are goddamn terrible.

I challenge you to find roads worse than Connecticut / Rhode Island. These shitass fucking states spend all their money fixing them but don't have enough to level them.

Mexico, but I suppose that's cheating in this case.

[schild]

If you plan on getting to Memphis through Mississippi before heading north, make sure your shocks are new. Because once you leave the state, you'll need to get some more new ones. Our fucking roads are goddamn terrible.

I challenge you to find roads worse than Connecticut / Rhode Island. These shitass fucking states spend all their money fixing them but don't have enough to level them.

Mexico, but I suppose that's cheating in this case.

Not a country. Tourist Trap/Warzone. Also, correct, it is cheating as it is not and will not ever be a state.

[Selby]

I cannot believe those statistics.

I can.  I drove through Wisconsin and Illinois last month and through Mississippi a few weeks later (and again tomorrow).  Wisconsin was hands down the worst roads of the bunch I drove on, and Illinois was pretty damn horrid too.  Not that Mississippi is in any way not guilty of having shit roads.  Arkansas is pretty terrible too...

[schild]

I miss the beautiful roads of Texas. Less so in-city Austin, but mostly all of Texas.

Edit: I do not miss the roads of the west, central, and south portions of Houston. Get it together, oil people.

[Selby]

She has made a critical error and a terrible enemy.

Reminds me of my sysadmin days.  New "special" hire from a professor as a programmer to complement me and I have desks next to each other.  I tend to sit at my desk all day programming away while reading Lum's site and posting to forums (nothing obscene time-wise).  New guy gets bent out of shape over that so he asks me why I don't have more to do.  I explain that as the sysadmin if I'm not doing anything it's because there's nothing really to do as I've got everything running nicely and upgrades aren't coming any time soon.  Plus the code gets done and on time so why should he care?  New guy dislikes answer, goes to his (and my) boss and complains that I spend all day on the internet.  My boss says that I can do whatever I want because I have the system running so much better and smoother than it has ever been, plus I saved the entire department's research bacon when a hacker managed to get past security due to an incompetent former sysadmin who was fired.  He tells new guy in no uncertain terms that he will NOT complain about me and he WILL treat me with respect.  New guy never says another word about it...

[Samwise]

I had a similar experience when I was doing tech support during college; used to work odd hours with occasional bursts of very high productivity and either play games or do homework when there was nothing to do.  At some point, somebody went to my manager to complain about me playing games instead of working.  She pulled up the call handling metrics and showed him how I was taking twice as many calls as anyone else while claiming half as many hours worked.  (I was probably making half as much per hour as my "peers" too.)  "Whatever he's doing, I want him to keep doing it," she said.

[schild]

I was outselling my team so much at a job that my boss wouldn't let me come to sales meetings, wouldn't let people ask me for advice, and let me roll in literally 3-4 hours late, take me into an office and pretend to berate me.

Low level tech and sales are a fucking joke.

[HaemishM]

I love that my job requires me to track my time as that is the only way they can bill for my services, by selling my time - even though I actually produce deliverables that while not physical and thus tangible, are still visible and measurable. And they get antsy when I don't meet a certain threshold of billable time (vs. non-billable time, of course). And blame me for it, despite the fact that I have no control over what I work on, nor any ability or responsibility to bring billable work into the place. Like I have any choice what I work on for a given day.

And by love, I mean fucking despise. The advertising business is the only goddamn business I can think of where clients expect you to work for free, produce something and if they don't like it, not only do they not have to pay for it, they want you to keep doing work for free until you produce something they like. And then they want to pay only half because you "got it wrong" the first time.

[Strazos]

I've been pretty much coming in 30 to 45 minutes "late" for two years, and the boss hasn't cared - just as long as either I or my deputy were in by a certain time. Turns out, all my deputies prefer the early schedule, so that worked out fine...even as all the other flunkies gave me the eye as I rolled in way after they arrived.

Then again, I was almost always the final person to leave the office in the evening at 5:30 or later, and practically never took the full hour of lunch, so....nyaaaah. 

The kids were all expected to be there at 0730, ready to go by 0745...fuuuuck that, if I can help it.

[Abagadro]

I love that my job requires me to track my time as that is the only way they can bill for my services, by selling my time - even though I actually produce deliverables that while not physical and thus tangible, are still visible and measurable. And they get antsy when I don't meet a certain threshold of billable time (vs. non-billable time, of course). And blame me for it, despite the fact that I have no control over what I work on, nor any ability or responsibility to bring billable work into the place. Like I have any choice what I work on for a given day.

And by love, I mean fucking despise. The advertising business is the only goddamn business I can think of where clients expect you to work for free, produce something and if they don't like it, not only do they not have to pay for it, they want you to keep doing work for free until you produce something they like. And then they want to pay only half because you "got it wrong" the first time.

Sounds like the private practice of law and it's why I left it.

[Merusk]

I love that my job requires me to track my time as that is the only way they can bill for my services, by selling my time - even though I actually produce deliverables that while not physical and thus tangible, are still visible and measurable. And they get antsy when I don't meet a certain threshold of billable time (vs. non-billable time, of course). And blame me for it, despite the fact that I have no control over what I work on, nor any ability or responsibility to bring billable work into the place. Like I have any choice what I work on for a given day.

And by love, I mean fucking despise. The advertising business is the only goddamn business I can think of where clients expect you to work for free, produce something and if they don't like it, not only do they not have to pay for it, they want you to keep doing work for free until you produce something they like. And then they want to pay only half because you "got it wrong" the first time.

No, that last part is pretty much any design career.

Enjoy per hour.billables while you can.  Flat fee are much much harder on the production staff for design. You still work the same hours but the clients expect full team levels of work and deliverables while paying single man shop prices. Oh and the turnarounds don't get any better.  Last July the entire design staff for Department tStores had to work the full 4 th weekend because the client changed things Thursday and wanted a full DD set on a 100k sq ft project Monday.

[Viin]

Last July the entire design staff for Department tStores had to work the full 4 th weekend because the client changed things Thursday and wanted a full DD set on a 100k sq ft project Monday.

The cure for that is a single word: No

Don't let the sales guys decide if a schedule/change is ok, they don't know the word No.

[Merusk]

You assume design firms have sales people who make decisions. They don't, that was the VP of design. It was done knowing the consequences.

The reality is if they said no we would have lost the client as another firm would have said yes. Design is not valued as a process and suffers from a saturated market. It's not tech where there's only a few players and they can shut you out. In my city alone there's 5 firms who do the same thing as my old one and we are not a large market. 

[HaemishM]

Not to mention the fact that design industries have been shedding jobs like a snake does skin in the last few years, meaning there are a metric fuckton of 1- and 2-man shops out there hungry for work that can undercut your bigger firms all day.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Illinois is number one in functionality deficient roads!

Which is not surprising given that we are number one in functionality deficient government.

YAY!  We win at being the worst!  I knew Illinois to to be at or near the top is road suckage.  It's like the state has turned it into high art or something.

And now Rauner's said he plans to run again for another term in two years.  Let's see how long we can function without an actual budget!