Re: the office music. When I started a couple jobs ago, all us nerds were at one end of the building. Mike had some service streamed through his computer to wireless speakers for the cubicle farm.

Nothing loud or obnoxious of course, just some background music. We used to have somebody different pick the channel each day to mix it up some more, and give everyone a chance. It was nice to be introduced to some stuff I wouldn't normally have heard.

this midlife crisis isn't very exciting...

I feel your pain from years ago. I also quit a job once because of a crappy radio station.

Are y'all referring to bro-country?





Country music is awesome and exciting, punk!

A bad sound setup is often a symptom of a wider problem in the office. We can see from golddog's post upthread that a healthier team dynamic will get that sort of thing solved.

Cool! Something new to check out when the workday is through and I'm sipping cheap whiskey and politarding on the Internet.

It's ongoing. Here we're revisiting some of the root causes of the crises and confirming some of the decisions as being conducive to my mental well-being.

I always hated the backstory part of a movie.

I want the fight scene now!!!

Speaking of boring and crisis, I solved a technical/engineering issue today, and that's not normally anywhere near my wheelhouse. But failing to solve it quickly would turn it into a big customer service issue, and customer service is where I live for these two weeks.

A customer wanted to replace a plastic bowl for a filter. The bowl is designed to catch filtered oil and deal it back to a metalworking machine in measured doses through the clever use of an automatic float switch.

I sold the guy up to a metal bowl; coolant in the air of the factory environment eats away at plastic quickly (and what does it do to people's lungs btw?) so the metal bowls last around 20x longer than the plastic.

The customer's big moneymaking machine is about to be shut down over this failing plastic bowl, so they order my metal bowl replacement next day air, the shipment of which costs twice as much as the bowl.

And that's typical low inventory, just-in-time maintenance logic: pay 5x more every year on next day air shipping than you would on extra inventory taxes if you'd instead kept some maintenance and repair items on hand.

So of course UPS screws up the next day air shipment and, without warning or explanation, takes 3 business days to deliver the bowl. A lot of these rush packages go on passenger flights, so I'm guessing the 'rona airline slowdown is causing less space to be available. Solution: fill the middle seats up with packages--but that's neither here nor there, and the passengers would probably end up swiping some.

Today, the customer calls me and tells me that his brand new metal bowl is spewing oil all over the factory floor. What do? I call the bowl mfg's tech support and they don't have the slightest scooby about what's causing the problem or how to fix it.

The owners at my old business hate giving refunds and they especially hate eating next day air shipments. So if I send another metal bowl next day air on our dime, I'm asking for trouble. And what if I send a second metal bowl, but there's a heretofore unknown difference between the plastic and metal bowls which makes them incompatible? That would mean sending a third bowl, plastic this time, next day air, and that would not be looked on with kindness by the owners of this business.

So I ask the customer to send me pics of his old plastic bowl. I get those and then I get to work, as I have the new plastic and metal bowls here in stock, along with pics of the old bowl: I'm going to try to play Spot the Difference.

The floating automatic drains look the same on both new and old bowls; but what do I know? There's only one little difference that I notice: the new plastic bowl has a plastic cap bolt below the drain that is screwed on tightly, and the new metal bowl has a metal cap bolt below the drain that is screwed on loosely.

What happens if my man tightens up the metal cap bolt on his new metal bowl and hooks it up to the pneumatic filter? Will that stop the oil spew, or will the pressure ramp up and blow the entire filter to splinters, spreading deadly metal shrapnel everywhere? I'd hate for it to be the latter, but it's the only functional difference I can spot between the metal and plastic versions, so...



I float the idea past the bowl mfg's tech support and they don't know nuthin. Here goes. I suggest to the customer that he tighten up the metal bolt and resist the urge to advise him to stand back at least 50 meters. And...it works! The machine's up and running, no more oil on the floor, and I don't have to send another bowl flying out through the stratosphere overnight.

Nice work!

I think I can speak for fidstar and say we would have preferred the explosion.

This guy gets it.

I'm trying to imagine Aussie country acts singing in an American fake country accent and I can't come up with much that's good.

Outside of the battlefield and the 4th of July, there is a notable dearth of cool asplosions IRL, Playing good video games can mitigate that.

Not sure about Aussie but Colin Farrell played some mega country singer star in Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges.

I might be crazy but it seems like you’ve got more satisfaction in this past week as a working stiff than the past year in Vegas.

I think it's a matter of having fun spending a few quick minutes goofing off on the Internet when I'm supposed to be working, along with the novelty of getting out of the apartment in which I'd sequestered myself for 5 long months.

As far as the office job goes, I still don't like it.

After 3 1/2 days of unsubscribing the owners' emails from hundreds of advertisers, it occurs to me that an easy malware exploit that would catch email safety savvy victims would be to simply mass email a major brand-appearing ad and make the unsubscribe link the malware link.

Classic Aussie country music

Interesting. The musical arrangement sits on the the Western wing of Country & Western, but you could fit the lyrics into any polka song.

What if we had some rock, country, disco, and polka?

I respect Rush. I have tons of respect for a band that's been fiercely innovative and technically brilliant over decades of time. But they've never really rang my bell for whatever reason. I liked Tom Sawyer a lot when I was a kid, as the lyrics had one of my favorite books and one of my favorite video games* in it, but that was about it.

*I heard "And the space he invades, he gets by on you" as "And the spacey invaders get by on you."

I almost sent the following email reply today to a very nice vendor. Caught it milliseconds before I hit <send>

Thanks, Yuki!
You tool

Yuki would’ve just assumed he’s useful like a tool.

Well she's been here in the US for over 30 years, so it wouldn't have gone over well.

We do have one Japanese vendor--a major hardware company--who responds to all of their webform requests with..

Dear Sir & Madam,

IMO the greeting targets an overly narrow demographic of hermaphrodites, ladyboys and the gender fluid. They've been doing this for years and I haven't seen fit to correct them yet, and apparently no one else has. I did advise them to change their "flame-******ed" product description to "flame-******ant," so they have that going for them.

So, how many of you who work at home due to the 'rona now work on Saturdays? I put in a few catch-up hours at the office yesterday and I was surprised to see that a lot of my customers were reading my emails to them.

Before the virus, when I'd put in some (very occasional) Saturday work, I'd see almost no 'read' email receipts from customers. That has changed. Fortunately, although they looked at their emails, no one wanted to reply to them and thus start a work conversation on a Saturday, which would have gotten in the way of my intention, which was to tear through a bunch of work without any distractions.

And this brings us to the paradoxical idea that many businesses would run a lot smoother if it weren't for those pesky customers.

You're one of those annoying guys that sends out read receipt emails.

I've never sent one of those back in my life.

Yeah, I never liked the read receipt requests. I believe it's bad customer service to put people on the spot like that, but the owners have always insisted on it, and they have followed through on that insistence. And when you're a worker bee you do what you're told.

Happy Monday!