Field Of Schemes
Winter is closing in, yet there is still a sandhill crane somewhere in the pond in back making its calls. Nature knows what to do, yet I feel concern for the bird as I know how quickly weather can turn around here. I doubt it is one of the four we had here this summer, as they seemed to have left weeks ago. Perhaps it is from farther north and is just sticking around the pond for a break before moving on. I know the weather forecast looks mild for the next week at least. I am sure the animal knows that somehow, instinctually.
I just wish it would know there's a ready food source up at the top of our hill it could be enjoying before it leaves. The squirrels certainly are.
I feel in years past they've been more aggressive and fatter than they appear now, but there have to be at least 30 out there between the front and back yard. There is one who is slowly losing his fear of me and will come within a few feet if I squat down. They all have their routines but he's not out there every morning oddly enough. Though my time is also not as consistent come the weekends.
The bird feeders really need to be cleaned, but it almost feels pointless because it will likely rain right after I do and the feeders will look terrible again. It'd be quite an investment, but I'd love to have a rotation of feeders so that I could swap out everything outside with fresh, clean ones and then clean the dirty ones at my leisure. It'd also be when a sink in the back garage would prove most useful.
Work was both quiet yet annoying yesterday. One event in particular is a doozy to try explaining, but of course I will.
I've been copied on this one email thread by accident (I believe), due to one of the I.T. consultants for Slate and Co. having the same first name as me. So I've been seeing their conversations concerning different projects. I suppose I should give a name to this I.T. firm too. Let's call them Icebox. I've had several dealings with Icebox over the past weeks, including assisting with the VPN tunnel setup and fallout from that. They had given me additional IP ranges to add to the firewall and there was an issue with access that turned out to be because I needed to set each profile individually in the VPN user config to have access to the ranges. Simple mistake.
Miss Slate was one of the folks having the issue, I corrected it and she was satisfied. Saying so in a reply to that email thread I don't think I am supposed to be on. In the interim one of the Icebox guys, the one who assisted me in incorrectly setting up the VPN, presented an issue about name resolution across the VPN. Long story short (too late), it won't work because the VPN doesn't hand out DNS when people log in. Miss Slate said she was fine with that in said reply above.
Yesterday I get this email from Lisa, one of the Icebox people, CC three other Icebox people including the VPN guy, saying that Miss Slate was having an "ongoing issue" with not being able to RDP by name and that *I* "really needed" to look into this again. Perhaps I just read it a certain way, but the email came off as slightly cuntish, or "nice nasty".
The immediate thing that stuck out to me was that Miss Slate was *NOT* CCed on the email, which I found odd. I mean, the email is directly about her and an issue she is apparently having. And these people not only love to have Teams meetings every five minutes over everything they can think up but also send out email after email CCing everyone on the planet. Yet, mysteriously Miss Slate is not included on this email.
Having had enough years of experience with shifty women in the workplace I sensed pretty quickly this was intentional. Now why they would want to send me down this route to figure out a non-issue I cannot be sure. Perhaps it is as simple as they want things setup a certain way, their way, and the fact name resolution is not working annoys them and they don't like that. Maybe they just don't like *me* and have been bitching about me because of the VPN issues, caused by their own guy. Who knows.
All I did know was that Miss Slate wasn't CCed on the email and that seemed obviously intentional.
So, I did what any observant person would have done. I replied back and said that I had seen an email the other day where Miss Slate said the name resolution thing was not an issue, and that we should check with her before I start making additional changes with the configuration. Of course, I added Miss Slate to the email chain.
Miss Slate replied a little while later saying that it was a non-issue and the ticket or whatever could be closed. After that the conniving woman who sent the email, Lisa, replied back in this apologetic tone saying she was just "following up" on "outstanding issues" and was "just making sure". A complete tone shift from her first email.
I have no clue why this chick would have it out for me or want to throw me under the bus. I am not sure I've ever even been on a call with her. Nor had I interacted with her at all before she sent me that email. I am sure I rankled her feathers, but why she would send me an email without Miss Slate CCed is beyond me. From the start of this whole transition she has been copied on every single email I've received from any of these people. How could I not see it as some kind of game. I've had years of training with the likes of Miss Managed and Rozz. I *know* how these people think.
Later on in the day the HR chick at the Meat Packer decided to tell me they have a new employee starting Monday and that she is "sorry" she didn't tell me till the last minute. Again, I knew this was coming because it was mentioned in the Teams meeting Tuesday about the email transition with all these other people. Yet, they wait till the last minute to let me know they need a new laptop for the guy.
Now I would usually, and quite intentionally, delay delivery of the laptop as punishment for this. But next week is a bit of headache for me. The kittens are going in Tuesday morning to get fixed and will need to be picked up Wednesday. So I can't risk not being on time for either of those events. And I am out the following week for Thanksgiving, so I don't want to put this off till Thursday because any issues that come up (and they always do) will happen that week. And I assure you, the Meat Packer for *years* has intentionally found things to complain about, knowing I am off that week. The CFO specifically would produce literal lists of issues that he just happened to want to mention knowing I am off for those five days.
I am not paranoid, it is absolutely intentional. It happens every year. It's almost like they are mad they have to work and I take the time off.
Due to those factors I ordered the laptop quickly and paid the $80 (or they did) for overnight shipping. So I will be going there Monday, which sucks. I specifically do not plan customer visits on Mondays and I am not sure I've been anywhere on a Monday in a year. But, to deal with this idiocy I had to.
One of the other issues was that I did not order Microsoft Office with the laptop as I normally would do. They are transitioning to Office 365 the first weekend in December, so it would be stupid to pay $300 for the software just for it to be uninstalled in two weeks. So in my email I said that the guy could probably just use the Gmail's web interface and their version of Word and Excel until then. Nothing was said about this before I placed the order, the HR chick just replied back "Thanks".
Well, two hours later she replies back to my email, copying Miss Slate and the new owner's HR person. Her email is very cryptic and I am not sure exactly who it is meant to get a response from but it was in regards to the laptop not having Office. After a while there was no response from the other two, so I could only assume *I* am the one that is supposed to respond.
It is annoying because Slate has their big plan for changing the Meat Packer up to conform to their way of doing things. Yet, they are hiring new people in the middle of some of these transitions with absolutely not thought put into some of the factors that affect things. And then I am given three days to deal with things before said new person starts. And this Office thing is just tossed out there and *I* am the one expected to find a solution. Had I known they were going to be this annoying with it, I would have just ordered the laptop with the copy of Office on it and wasted their $300. What do I care?
I replied back and said I could try using an Office license from a decommissioned workstation. A trick I've used before and one I am not sure conforms to the licensing guidelines, but whatever. After I let them know this, the dimwit HR chick from the new owners replies back that that would be a very good thing "because he's going to be using Excel a lot".
Perhaps you should have thought of that before you dumb cunt. Then again, they all just get paid to heat up their lunches and gossip in the break room. They're not actually paid to *do* anything. This is the same girl who told me she was working on setting up some empty cubicles for their employees to use when onsite there. And I get there to setup monitors and docking stations one day and nothing has been done, the cubes haven't been cleaned, no decisions have been made about boxes of paperwork in them.
So what exactly have you been "working on"?
I don't have a good feeling about today, as these people all seem to love to find things to do on Fridays. Well, when I say "find things to do", I mean find things to complain about to me, so *I* can work on them. I am still not convinced these people do anything other than have meetings.
Regarding the upcoming email migration, I really need to get my own ass in gear as far as taking backups of the autocomplete files from all the people who use Outlook. And then also determine who doesn't use Outlook, as they will be fucked and their autocomplete info won't be transferrable. Which means they either have to create contacts for all their email addresses, which they won't be able to because these people are all helpless and incompetent... or they just have to accept they are going to lose them all.
Either way having to deal with this idiocy is all on me. The idiot users will just play helpless and the new owners will say that *I* have the relationship with these people... line that has been brought up before. Even though they are the ones taking control of email and aside from installing Office I'll no longer have any administration over it.
Everyone is useless but me.
I just wish it would know there's a ready food source up at the top of our hill it could be enjoying before it leaves. The squirrels certainly are.
I feel in years past they've been more aggressive and fatter than they appear now, but there have to be at least 30 out there between the front and back yard. There is one who is slowly losing his fear of me and will come within a few feet if I squat down. They all have their routines but he's not out there every morning oddly enough. Though my time is also not as consistent come the weekends.
The bird feeders really need to be cleaned, but it almost feels pointless because it will likely rain right after I do and the feeders will look terrible again. It'd be quite an investment, but I'd love to have a rotation of feeders so that I could swap out everything outside with fresh, clean ones and then clean the dirty ones at my leisure. It'd also be when a sink in the back garage would prove most useful.
Work was both quiet yet annoying yesterday. One event in particular is a doozy to try explaining, but of course I will.
I've been copied on this one email thread by accident (I believe), due to one of the I.T. consultants for Slate and Co. having the same first name as me. So I've been seeing their conversations concerning different projects. I suppose I should give a name to this I.T. firm too. Let's call them Icebox. I've had several dealings with Icebox over the past weeks, including assisting with the VPN tunnel setup and fallout from that. They had given me additional IP ranges to add to the firewall and there was an issue with access that turned out to be because I needed to set each profile individually in the VPN user config to have access to the ranges. Simple mistake.
Miss Slate was one of the folks having the issue, I corrected it and she was satisfied. Saying so in a reply to that email thread I don't think I am supposed to be on. In the interim one of the Icebox guys, the one who assisted me in incorrectly setting up the VPN, presented an issue about name resolution across the VPN. Long story short (too late), it won't work because the VPN doesn't hand out DNS when people log in. Miss Slate said she was fine with that in said reply above.
Yesterday I get this email from Lisa, one of the Icebox people, CC three other Icebox people including the VPN guy, saying that Miss Slate was having an "ongoing issue" with not being able to RDP by name and that *I* "really needed" to look into this again. Perhaps I just read it a certain way, but the email came off as slightly cuntish, or "nice nasty".
The immediate thing that stuck out to me was that Miss Slate was *NOT* CCed on the email, which I found odd. I mean, the email is directly about her and an issue she is apparently having. And these people not only love to have Teams meetings every five minutes over everything they can think up but also send out email after email CCing everyone on the planet. Yet, mysteriously Miss Slate is not included on this email.
Having had enough years of experience with shifty women in the workplace I sensed pretty quickly this was intentional. Now why they would want to send me down this route to figure out a non-issue I cannot be sure. Perhaps it is as simple as they want things setup a certain way, their way, and the fact name resolution is not working annoys them and they don't like that. Maybe they just don't like *me* and have been bitching about me because of the VPN issues, caused by their own guy. Who knows.
All I did know was that Miss Slate wasn't CCed on the email and that seemed obviously intentional.
So, I did what any observant person would have done. I replied back and said that I had seen an email the other day where Miss Slate said the name resolution thing was not an issue, and that we should check with her before I start making additional changes with the configuration. Of course, I added Miss Slate to the email chain.
Miss Slate replied a little while later saying that it was a non-issue and the ticket or whatever could be closed. After that the conniving woman who sent the email, Lisa, replied back in this apologetic tone saying she was just "following up" on "outstanding issues" and was "just making sure". A complete tone shift from her first email.
I have no clue why this chick would have it out for me or want to throw me under the bus. I am not sure I've ever even been on a call with her. Nor had I interacted with her at all before she sent me that email. I am sure I rankled her feathers, but why she would send me an email without Miss Slate CCed is beyond me. From the start of this whole transition she has been copied on every single email I've received from any of these people. How could I not see it as some kind of game. I've had years of training with the likes of Miss Managed and Rozz. I *know* how these people think.
Later on in the day the HR chick at the Meat Packer decided to tell me they have a new employee starting Monday and that she is "sorry" she didn't tell me till the last minute. Again, I knew this was coming because it was mentioned in the Teams meeting Tuesday about the email transition with all these other people. Yet, they wait till the last minute to let me know they need a new laptop for the guy.
Now I would usually, and quite intentionally, delay delivery of the laptop as punishment for this. But next week is a bit of headache for me. The kittens are going in Tuesday morning to get fixed and will need to be picked up Wednesday. So I can't risk not being on time for either of those events. And I am out the following week for Thanksgiving, so I don't want to put this off till Thursday because any issues that come up (and they always do) will happen that week. And I assure you, the Meat Packer for *years* has intentionally found things to complain about, knowing I am off that week. The CFO specifically would produce literal lists of issues that he just happened to want to mention knowing I am off for those five days.
I am not paranoid, it is absolutely intentional. It happens every year. It's almost like they are mad they have to work and I take the time off.
Due to those factors I ordered the laptop quickly and paid the $80 (or they did) for overnight shipping. So I will be going there Monday, which sucks. I specifically do not plan customer visits on Mondays and I am not sure I've been anywhere on a Monday in a year. But, to deal with this idiocy I had to.
One of the other issues was that I did not order Microsoft Office with the laptop as I normally would do. They are transitioning to Office 365 the first weekend in December, so it would be stupid to pay $300 for the software just for it to be uninstalled in two weeks. So in my email I said that the guy could probably just use the Gmail's web interface and their version of Word and Excel until then. Nothing was said about this before I placed the order, the HR chick just replied back "Thanks".
Well, two hours later she replies back to my email, copying Miss Slate and the new owner's HR person. Her email is very cryptic and I am not sure exactly who it is meant to get a response from but it was in regards to the laptop not having Office. After a while there was no response from the other two, so I could only assume *I* am the one that is supposed to respond.
It is annoying because Slate has their big plan for changing the Meat Packer up to conform to their way of doing things. Yet, they are hiring new people in the middle of some of these transitions with absolutely not thought put into some of the factors that affect things. And then I am given three days to deal with things before said new person starts. And this Office thing is just tossed out there and *I* am the one expected to find a solution. Had I known they were going to be this annoying with it, I would have just ordered the laptop with the copy of Office on it and wasted their $300. What do I care?
I replied back and said I could try using an Office license from a decommissioned workstation. A trick I've used before and one I am not sure conforms to the licensing guidelines, but whatever. After I let them know this, the dimwit HR chick from the new owners replies back that that would be a very good thing "because he's going to be using Excel a lot".
Perhaps you should have thought of that before you dumb cunt. Then again, they all just get paid to heat up their lunches and gossip in the break room. They're not actually paid to *do* anything. This is the same girl who told me she was working on setting up some empty cubicles for their employees to use when onsite there. And I get there to setup monitors and docking stations one day and nothing has been done, the cubes haven't been cleaned, no decisions have been made about boxes of paperwork in them.
So what exactly have you been "working on"?
I don't have a good feeling about today, as these people all seem to love to find things to do on Fridays. Well, when I say "find things to do", I mean find things to complain about to me, so *I* can work on them. I am still not convinced these people do anything other than have meetings.
Regarding the upcoming email migration, I really need to get my own ass in gear as far as taking backups of the autocomplete files from all the people who use Outlook. And then also determine who doesn't use Outlook, as they will be fucked and their autocomplete info won't be transferrable. Which means they either have to create contacts for all their email addresses, which they won't be able to because these people are all helpless and incompetent... or they just have to accept they are going to lose them all.
Either way having to deal with this idiocy is all on me. The idiot users will just play helpless and the new owners will say that *I* have the relationship with these people... line that has been brought up before. Even though they are the ones taking control of email and aside from installing Office I'll no longer have any administration over it.
Everyone is useless but me.