First World Problems

[Nkc]

Same here. I can't work on my laptop anymore when I'm on the road. Best I can do is read emails and hit this forum but I can pretty much do that on my phone. I have been working with a quad monitor setup for about 5 years now and it's impossible to go back to 1 when you need to open 2 spreadsheets and a website to answer an email. Makes things so much easier and faster.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Billup

I've been working on some tooling solutions and machining operation solutions on a new valve lifter line for GM here at the plant. We were going to generate about 3.5m parts a year, so the work/coding/tooling I organized was already going to generate a large sum of savings over the year.

I learned yesterday that GM has cut off all orders past July, at least until January and even then it will be very very limited production. The problem is that we've only been running these parts for about 2 years now, and we JUST started normal production last month on the second valve lifter line.

FWP: Dealing with the unknowns from day to day and month to month now, and trying to buy my first house is a little overwhelming because I don't want to go back to having nothing again.

That sucks. Hope it works itself out. We're waiting for the big hammer to drop here. New governor wants a 31% funding cut to all universities. That will be very bad if he gets it, although I doubt he will. Still, the cuts so far have started resulting in layoffs. You never like to hear that word where you work.

[Billup]

Originally Posted by M_Six

That sucks. Hope it works itself out. We're waiting for the big hammer to drop here. New governor wants a 31% funding cut to all universities. That will be very bad if he gets it, although I doubt he will. Still, the cuts so far have started resulting in layoffs. You never like to hear that word where you work.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It's just funny how they keep everyone out of the loop until the last second, now there'll be at least 3 shifts worth of people that are potentially going to be out of a job in this small town, and not many places to transfer, if any. The next couple months are going to be very interesting.

What kind of effects will funding cuts have on your position if it goes through?

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Billup

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It's just funny how they keep everyone out of the loop until the last second, now there'll be at least 3 shifts worth of people that are potentially going to be out of a job in this small town, and not many places to transfer, if any. The next couple months are going to be very interesting.

What kind of effects will funding cuts have on your position if it goes through?

If it's 31%, there's no telling. That would require laying off about 1/4 of the workforce here. Considering tenured profs are untouchable, that limits the layoffs to nontenured profs and staff. You can't lay off all the lowest paid folks because your support services fall apart. You need a minimum compliment of IT hands-on people or your IT infrastructure goes to pot. Our IT services dept is already down something like 13% of their workforce.

That leaves middle management types, which is sort of where I am. But I'm also civil service with 12 years service time, so others will go before me. The boss says I'm safe, but who knows. He may not even be safe, so there's no guarantee for me.

Wifey is tenured faculty, so unless they close down the whole campus, she'll still have a job and we could live on just her salary if need be. Not something I want to try out, though.

[John 070]

Originally Posted by M_Six

That sucks. Hope it works itself out. We're waiting for the big hammer to drop here. New governor wants a 31% funding cut to all universities. That will be very bad if he gets it, although I doubt he will. Still, the cuts so far have started resulting in layoffs. You never like to hear that word where you work.

Education is becoming haves, and have nots (what isn't?).

Look at all the universities going out of business. I suppose the bottom line is it's no different than a co. going out of business.

The elite universities which weren't "that" hard to get into when we were in HS, typically have <5% acceptance rates and yield rates of >82%. that makes it really tough for kids to get in nowadays, and I hear even legacy kids.

BUT, they are so doggone dirt cheap. As long as your household income <= 200k, $20k or less on a sliding scale. My friend is sending her kid to NYU, and after grants, loans, work study, she has to come up with $30k? WTF. For NYU? And an elite school would be free in her case as her income is around $55k.

No governor can solve the above. The only person who has any control is the student....

[NEFARIOUS]

When you're so bored at work, you're tempted to revive an old fad just for the hell of it, but realize your boss has a "die-hard engineer" mentality and therefore is kinda on the strict side... And no, this was part of a mix, not something I purposely searched out.

[NEFARIOUS]

Don't know if this is FWP or just plain FAIL...

But my dumbass boss upgraded servers, but instead of waiting until after work and moving all the files so nothing is missing (which he's there daily until 8PM anyway), he does the migration apparently on morning of the 31st (because every single file has a "date modified" of that day), compresses EVERY file so that it'd open slower and consume more resources (which the slowness was why we even performed the infrastructure upgrade in the first place), and worst of all, everything stored on the server between March 31 and this morning... GONE. All without consulting the IT guy (me), and the graphic designer who did most of his work during those days (also me).

I am still hitting my head against the wall as I type this.

[bimmette]

Originally Posted by NEFARIOUS

Don't know if this is FWP or just plain FAIL...

But my dumbass boss upgraded servers, but instead of waiting until after work and moving all the files so nothing is missing (which he's there daily until 8PM anyway), he does the migration apparently on morning of the 31st (because every single file has a "date modified" of that day), compresses EVERY file so that it'd open slower and consume more resources (which the slowness was why we even performed the infrastructure upgrade in the first place), and worst of all, everything stored on the server between March 31 and this morning... GONE. All without consulting the IT guy (me), and the graphic designer who did most of his work during those days (also me).

I am still hitting my head against the wall as I type this.

Nef, you are not anonymous on this forum. You really think it's a good idea to call your boss a dumbass when you should be grateful to have to job?

[NEFARIOUS]

Originally Posted by bimmette

Nef, you are not anonymous on this forum. You really think it's a good idea to call your boss a dumbass when you should be grateful to have to job?

I never log on to Bimmerpost during work, plus he drives an Acura (so not likely to be a Bimmerpost member), plus he barely speaks ANY English... Besides, for flushing my work and that of 2 other coworkers down the toilet, I can call him whatever I want... That was some quality work with my own drawing tablet, dammit!

[grimlock]

Originally Posted by bimmette

Nef, you are not anonymous on this forum. You really think it's a good idea to call your boss a dumbass when you should be grateful to have to job?

Maybe that's the least of his worries I'm sure he finds a 100 other ways to let it known his to his boss his true feelings

[M_Six]

No backups for those days?

[UncleWede]

I hated that I had to replace all the network infrastructure on a day the company was CLOSED. No way would I do that while people were at work. I remote in way after (or before) hours to even reboot a server for windows updates, then come in an EXTRA 30 minutes before to make sure it restarts.

[UncleWede]

So, I planted some watermelon in the garden (there are certain activities you just can't trust to hired help) then while I was sitting out in the afternoon sun sipping a Steelhead, these flies kept buzzing around. The cabana-girl season around here typically doesn't start until May Day, so I didn't have anyone on hand to gently fan the flies away.

[monkeybingo]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

So, I planted some watermelon in the garden (there are certain activities you just can't trust to hired help) then while I was sitting out in the afternoon sun sipping a Steelhead, these flies kept buzzing around. The cabana-girl season around here typically doesn't start until May Day, so I didn't have anyone on hand to gently fan the flies away.

with the 25% cut of water usage, doubt you can even plant a peanut in California. Seriously, I would love to sell some water to Cali and make easy money

[UncleWede]

Laugh all you want, but I bought one of those plastic watering cans. I use a post-hole digger to get a nice depth of about 6 inches, then put the planter media in there and bury to a depression of about 1.5 inches. Then twice a week I walk around and pour water into the depression.

Habanero - 12
Jalapeño - 22
de Arbol - 2

Tomato - 15
Calabacita - 5 to start, sprouting more
Watermelom - 5
Stevia - 1

[Billup]

I was just printing some approval reports. First one came out no problem. Second one, computer starts giving me an error log for a print driver host that isn't working. Instead of fixing it, I now need to get up, go to the store, and buy a new one, then wait 2 months to get my expense check back.

[M_Six]

The fact that Apple hasn't done the obvious and built a printer into the iMac just pisses me off. What are they waiting for?

[UncleWede]

^ 3D printing just isn't quite there yet

[Billup]

False alarm guys, I accidentally picked the printer off my desk and put it on the floor and kicked it and it seems to be in working order again.


FWP averted.

[John 070]

I got a scratch on my phone. I hate having to buy new phones over and over at full retail every time one gets scratched. Instead of shelling out $899 every time, why can't they do 4 for $3,500 or give us some break?

[Billup]

Originally Posted by John 070

I got a scratch on my phone. I hate having to buy new phones over and over at full retail every time one gets scratched. Instead of shelling out $899 every time, why can't they do 4 for $3,500 or give us some break?

I usually upgrade my phone when I find out my friends upgrade their phones. I just bought an iPhone 5C for $40 off my coworker because he went to the 6, basically brand new with an otter box and all since it didn't fit his new phone.

[upstatedoc]

And speaking of cell phones has anyone taken up sprints offer to cut your bill in half?