@JCPhoenix@beehaw.org avatar

JCPhoenix

@JCPhoenix@beehaw.org

Internet Addict. Reddit refugee. Motorsports Enthusiast. Gamer. Traveler. Napper.

He/Him.

Also @JCPhoenix. @jcphoenix

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JCPhoenix,
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A motorcycle back in the late 90s when I was like 9 or 10?

We were at a dealership because my dad was thinking about buying a motorcycle. At one point, they put my younger brother on a motorcycle because it was cute or whatever. After they took him off the bike, and my parents and the salesguy moved onto another motorcycle, I wanted to try. So I did. And I tried to be careful, knowing it could fall over.

Getting on was no issue. And getting off was no problem either. Until I was like a few feet away from the bike…and it fell over. Shattered the windshield.

Even though it was an accident, the dealer tried to get my parent’s to pay up. And I think my parents would’ve been willing to pay something…except the dealer wanted, I believe, $800. The bike was probably only a few thousand bucks – I actually have no clue how much the bike was, but, as an adult, I know how much bikes are. No way a windshield was a third of the price of the bike. Not in the 90s, not today. So my dad and the dealer got into a shouting match. We left, and the dealer tried to get our license plate number as we drove off.

Nothing ever happened with that. No cops were called or anything, as far as we know. Besides, the dealer should have insurance for these situations. But since I wasn’t supposed to be on the bike in the first place…I got in tons of trouble. Got my ass beat by my mom, got grounded, couldn’t go to a sleepover I was supposed to go to…

Definitely the most expensive thing I broke. At least based on what the dealer was demanding.

What was your most recent dream?

This post was inspired by a dream misadventure I had last night where I was just minding my own business getting gophers out of the rice field, then suddenly on the intercom/announcements (which I did not expect to have in my dream, since I was outside, not in a building), a voice said “attention, this is a representative of...

JCPhoenix,
@JCPhoenix@beehaw.org avatar

So this morning, I had a dream where I was going to a coffee shop. After trying to figure out if I could order like a Frappuccino or other blended drink, I realized this coffee shop had really good bread. I guess it’d be more aptly called a bakery. So I ordered a loaf of their bread, and then they had some kinda really good honey butter. So my friend – I was there with a friend apparently, one I hadn’t talked to in several months – and I tried some. And it was really good. Though I also remember it not tasting sweet or like anything. So Idk how that worked.

And then I woke up.

When was the last time you answered a Lemmy or Reddit post/thread that was more than five months old?

I think there should be some incentive for that, like make those kinds of comments a spotlight or something. Maybe make a community called “late replies” that showcases the best such replies, or have a rule saying they grant free karma (in Reddit’s case).

JCPhoenix,
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Within the last year, I’ve definitely had some replies to old threads of mine. And if it’s a question, I’ll respond. And I think I did comment on another’s thread at least once, confirming and thanking them for the solution. All of these were tech support related. I feel like that’s one of the few topical areas where that’s acceptable.

JCPhoenix,
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Busy week at work. I took Monday sick as I was tired and just mentally not there. But that didn’t really change that I had a lot to do this week. At least I was able to get things done and make headway. My title has “manager” in it, but I manage no one but myself. But I felt like I actually did a lot of managerial and even pseudo-supervisory-type work this week. I’m starting to understand why my boss made me a junior manager at work. It only took me a couple years to understand it. That said, I still don’t want to be a director at this place. It’s not the right place for that level of responsibility. I still probably wouldn’t manage anyone (nor do I want to), and the pay wouldn’t be commensurate with what an actual director in my position would make. And I’m supposed to be leaving anyway…if the government would hurry the hell up with all the processing and checking for this job I was offered literally 10mo ago. My current employer knows about this new job, but thank god their cool with it and understanding of my situation.

Aside from work, not a lot going on. My dad suggested I visit my parents for Mother’s Day as a surprise for my mom. So booked tickets today. Decide to use points for once, so it only cost me like $60 RT on Southwest. Which is damn good, considering that’s only like two weeks away. I didn’t go anywhere this month since my Feb/March travel was way more costly than I expected, and I just zeroed out the credit card I used for that, so a cheap trip to see my family in May will be good.

For this weekend, no Formula 1, but there is an IndyCar race I’ll be watching. I’ve seen F1 communities on Lemmy. I assume there are IndyCar ones, as well. Anyone have recommendations on active communities for IndyCar?

JCPhoenix,
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Is the idea something to improve your and/or your coworkers workflow or processes? Because that’d be good at least.

JCPhoenix,
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Like 5yrs ago, I took a drug test for a new job. A few days before they called me, offering me said job, I had taken a gummy or two. Because I didn’t think I was going to get the job. They scheduled me for the drug test, but I pushed it out as far as I could, like 3 weeks, and I passed. Now it’s not like I was consuming THC regularly. It’d probably been months since the last time I’d consumed any in any form. I don’t know what your habit is like, but if you’re in a similar situation, you might be OK.

And even if they do detect it, that could be a false positive. It happens. Then they make you take another, right? Maybe push that out a little, too, to give your body more a little more time to get rid of it.

JCPhoenix,
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While I have work friends, and we do go out and drink, it’s almost always within or adjacent to the context of a work event. Like maybe we’re doing a co-workers happy hour. Or we had some work function that stretched into the evening, so we’ll go out for dinner and drinks together afterwards. There’s definitely been a few times where we were drinking for like 8hrs after a late lunch! But it’s very rare for me to hang out with them outside of that. Like I can count on one hand the times I met up with co-workers on like a weekend just to head to a bar.

As far as topics, they’re still friends, so we talk about all sorts of stuff. But there’s definitely more of a focus on things happening at work and less about our private lives, especially spouses/SOs. My current “work best friend” will sometimes call me afterhours and we’ll chat and vent about stress at work and stuff, and even some of our stresses at home/personal lives, but the latter tends to be more surface level. With my non-work friends, we’d certainly get deeper into those topics if desired.

It comes down to professionalism. That’s really the “firewall” between my work friends and non-work friends. Yes my work friends and I can have fun, joke around, get a little loose when drinking, share deeper stuff about ourselves, but we never want to cross that line. Sometimes it’s thin, and sometimes it’s even a little blurry or dotted. But we all still strive to never (or very, very, very rarely) cross it.

JCPhoenix,
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Just saw this other article about the UK arresting two alleged spies for China. Wonder if the German and UK investigations were a joint op. And if we’ll soon hear about other countries arrests of others for working with Chinese intelligence.

JCPhoenix,
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FYI on the rules:

Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.

Not removing the post, but just for next time, please.

JCPhoenix,
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I bought a few boxes of checks when I started working. I still have most of them.

In the first several years of working, I mailed in paper income tax returns. The govt would even send the blank forms out to everyone via postal mail. I think paper submissions were the norm, though electronic filing certainly existed.

JCPhoenix,
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Yeah it was waaaaay earlier, which I found out too when I was writing my comment. But I did start working in the early/mid 2000s, when I was 16. Even in 2000s, it was still typical to go to the public library and grab tax forms. Or print them out from the IRS website.

JCPhoenix,
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NO MOM NOOOO

JCPhoenix,
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The DNC has been later in August in the past, according to this page on wikipedia. Same goes for the RNC.

But I don’t know if Ohio’s law has always been this way or if it’s newer. Either way, it sounds like in the past that various states have had provisions for this scenario, knowing that this could and did happen. So if I had to guess, the issue is that, like many things in our political system, we relied on traditions and cooperation to maintain the system. And of course, Republicans for the last 8yrs (longer than that, really) no longer want to do that. They’d rather see it all burn down in the name of DJT.

JCPhoenix,
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They should also pressure producers/sellers on their market to do the same. I have a box of cat water fountain filter things. Comes in like packs of 8 in a cardboard/paperboard box. That’s good, easily recyclable. Except the filters are individually plastic wrapped, for no discernable reason.

JCPhoenix,
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I think taking the time in the morning to enjoy myself. I WFH these days so it’s a easier (yet sometimes harder) to do that, but when I was commuting, I’d wake up early enough to get ready of course, but also take sometime to have a cup of coffee and read some news and such. Maybe even have a breakfast sandwich or something. Because for many years, I did the whole wake up the last minute, get ready, and get out the door ASAP thing. I always felt like I was in a panic.

I can’t say it led me to be more productive or whatever. But it just felt nicer. To not be so rushed. And that’s worth something.

Anyone ever swap careers from Corporate to Non-Profit or some other Cause: If so, how?

I worked in the food industry for a while before returning back to school to get a degree in tech thinking it would be my path to a better life. While at first I thought where my career was taking me provided exactly that, I’m absolutely miserable working a corporate job in tech. I’ve seen several layoffs, AI is taking over,...

JCPhoenix,
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I went from non-profit to quasi-governmental (which is still non-profit), to for-profit, and then back to (my original) non-profit. In like a span of 2yrs. In total, I’ve been in non-profit for like…18-19yrs now?

Like someone else said, there’s no money in non-profit. I’m a one-man IT department for a company of like 15. Along with doing other vaguely-IT or outright non-IT stuff. I get paid $65k (I am in the LCOL US Midwest).

This job, compared to my brief 18mo experience in for-profit, is a lot more relaxing and chill. I wasn’t overworked at my for-profit job, but I definitely got frustrated with the profit motive being the most important thing. Whereas in a non-profit, quality of service is more important. Sure, any business – for-profit or non-profit – needs revenue in order to grow, but revenue generation is not the same as a profit motive.

However…Do be aware that not everything is better in non-profit. Some of my past coworkers left our non-profit to go to for-profits…and it got way easier for them. I don’t know if that’s something specific to where I work where some people kill themselves for this job, or if all non-profits are this way. Perhaps that’s just a job to job thing, regardless of non- or for-profit.

JCPhoenix,
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On the work front, I absolutely had no motivation to do anything on Thursday or Friday. Like I just sat in my chair all at home, sitting on social media/news/games. I really try not to play games during the workday, but I was just completely sapped of all motivation. Idk what the deal was with that. Not like the first half of last week was a hard work, either. At least, I was able to find some motivation and work on some things today.

I finally bought a UPS for my homelab server. Only 3-4yrs after first getting the server and like 6mo since a momentary voltage sag from the wall/mains power caused the server to shutdown unexpected and corrupt one of my VMs (at least, that’s what I think happened). And this UPS even interfaces with ESXi to automatically – and ideally, gracefully – shutdown in case of a loss of power. I think I’ll test that this weekend.

Also did and filed my taxes yesterday (Sunday). At like 5am. Because what else is there to do at 5am on a Sunday, other than taxes? 🤷🏽‍♂️

JCPhoenix,
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That’s exactly why I got a UPS! The electric lines to my building are overhead instead of underground, so sometimes weather makes things flicker.

And I’m using ESXi 6.5 still. There were free licenses available, but I think for the CyberPower UPS software that I’m using, it requires a non-free license. Luckily, there are license keys floating around the Internet.

A friend and I did consider buying a proper license (I have access to non-profit pricing), but with Broadcom’s recent pricing changes and massive increases for VMWare products, that’s probably not an option anymore. I think VMWare also pulled the free personal-use licenses, as well. I may eventually transition to Promox (which I do have on another server) or something else. Broadcom really did a number on VMWare =/

JCPhoenix,
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Hell yeah, good job!

JCPhoenix,
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Ha, perhaps I’m a bad influence as well! I’m definitely like you most of the time. I’m usually the guy in my office who’s like, “People, relax; nothing we’re doing here is life or death!” I’m constantly telling my co-workers to just breathe and slow down a bit (read: a lot).

And I’ve definitely had a few (past) co-workers consider me the “lazy one” just because I’m not putting in 80hrs a week, crying in the office due to the stress, even though I still get my shit done. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve put in my 12hr days or working overnight or during the weekend to fix something. I work in IT, so sometimes I need everyone offline to do my stuff. But those are very, very rare.

But I still try to do at least some work each day. So it was unusual for two straight days to basically do nothing! You’re right though; sometimes it just happens and you have to ride it out. Definitely much more productive this week already!

JCPhoenix,
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Do you have a lot of devices that are using WiFi 7? I think I only have two devices, my iPhone and MBP, that use WiFi 6. Everything else is a mix of 5 or 4, and even a couple IoT devices that are still using 802.11G!

JCPhoenix,
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Mainly playing Rimworld, FF7 Rebirth, and a little bit of the Ace Attorney Apollo Justice Trilogy. Also finished the visual Coffee Talk last night.

JCPhoenix,
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Yeah, we used to make fun of Kansas, especially during Kansas’s Brownback years. Now they’re recovering somewhat, while we’re attempting to go even deeper into insanity than Kansas ever did. Guess we really wanted to stick it to Kansas and show 'em how it’s done 🙄

Just think; only 12yrs ago, Todd Aiken rightfully lost is senatorial election to Claire McCaskill over his idiotic abortion comments. Now look where we’re at! That would easily get a MAGA candidate elected today! Yet at the same time, we’d probably still pass abortion rights. Which is what I’m predicting will happen in November (provided the signatures all get collected and it gets on the ballot).

Missourians, get it the fuck together.

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