Political Forum Chat Thread.

I worked in IT all of my life and yes, the phone calls could come at any time if you were "on call" so I have had my share of 3 am calls when the entire system was down.

But since I didn't like getting those calls I instituted procedures and best practices to keep them to a minimum. It made for a more orderly life and now that I am retired I do not miss those conference calls at all. For the last couple of years I had a standing desk so I would always take the calls while standing. It enabled me to keep fit and when they instituted a corporate wide fitness program everyone was issued with a fitbit. No one else could figure out how I was managing to achieve 25k plus per day while they struggled to reach 10k. I would just wear my headset and walk around for the hours of those conference calls. Just another form of multitasking.

 

Yup!

Infinitely preferable to the daily commuting grind.

 

"The Canon printer isn't working."
Me "You have three other printers on your network. It's Sunday, can't you print to one of them?"
"No, I really need the Canon for this job."
Me "Are you sure you can't use the others or wait until tomorrow?"
"NO! It's urgent!"
Me "OK, I'll be there in 30 mins."
It's a 2k walk. I get there and find he's unplugged the switch to plug in a phone for charging. I plug it back in and he's good to go. I see the output and it's invitations to a party next week.
Me "I must not kill him. I must not kill him. I must not kill him. But he could breed again! I must not kill him where there are witnesses. I must not kill him where there are witnesses."

 

You are not the first to feel that way...

 

IT staff can cause damage too. At one company I worked at the Americans insisted on doing our IT support for us (they were in San Diego and we were in UK). So they sent this guy over to install some new software, and he managed to screw up the backup and deleted all the users' data files, which they'd been told to save to the server because it was alway backed up. I wasn't affected 'cos I did my own backups. He wasn't very popular....

 

Poor bloke.
While I was doing a short course at the local TAFE( technical and further education) I heard a story about a clerk who’d ordered some fly spray for the school.
He’d heard the term “ gross” and ordered a gross of cartons of fly spray.(he thought it was 2, not 144)
When the driver of the truck enquired about where to put the load of fly spray, the clerk submitted his resignation on the spot and left, hastily.

 

Me back in the days when Laptops were big and expensive so everyone had towers.

Her on the Phone: My computer wont work.
Me: What does it say on the screen.
Her: Nothing, its blank and wont do anything.
Me: Are any lights on at all.
Her: There's an orange one.
Me: Okay turn it off and wait 30 seconds before turning it back on, then tell me what it does.
Her: Done, it is still blank with nothing.
Me: Did the color change when you turned it back on, even for a second?
Her: No
Me: Okay....turn in off again and then unplug it from the wall...wait five minutes, plug it back in and turn on the computer before the monitor.
Her: Whats a Monitor.
Me: The screen you look at.
Her: that isn't the computer?
Problem Solved.

 

I studied hotel management at college and we learned to do flambé dishes at the table in a public restaurant on site.
We were told to never pour the spirit into the hot pan straight from the bottle. One previous student had made this mistake and the resulting fireball had melted the customer's nylon blouse leaving her in just her bra. She had to be wrapped in a tablecloth so that she could leave with a little dignity.

 

Snicker.

 

I kinda wish I'd been there that day.

 

Hard to carry off a tablecloth blouse with panache!

 

Restaurant and hotel management. Hooboy. When I was a chef one of the local long time restaurateurs passed and a group of us from 4 restaurants and one caterer got together in the University's test kitchens to raise funds for a scholarship in his name in restaurant and hotel management.
The students at the U decided to help us.
"I can Julian those carrots for you."
Me "OK. Here's a knife."
Student picks up knife and grabs a carrot.
Me, in horror but as calmly as possible. "Here, let me show you how chefs hold a knife and cut with their fingertips tucked in."
I was proud that I didn't utter a word about not serving bloody carrots, these people are paying a lot for this meal.

 

i retired in new york and work on my car as a hobby, tonight me and the guys are replacing the brake pads.

it is very cold here, but i enjoy the cold weather

 

What sort of car?
We used to do the brakes on our cars when young foolish and poor.
Now pay the mechanic.

 

it is a camaro, but in the olden days i slept out in it to keep home heating costs low. it was cheaper to idle for heat because i put a small honda generator on the battery.

now we can afford the 3 to 4k for heating oil yearly.

 

You must have been poorer than we were.

 

Warrior Queen is seen in the sky over Norfolk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-51235975

 

She looks pregnant!

 

She Drunk

 

no, she’s coming to sort out Boris.

 

Her's is much bigger than his!

 

eating cheeseburgers with no bun causes snoring, or 'sleep apnea'

 

I've just set up a second monitor on my PC, and worked out to get different stuff running on them. Now I can read rubbish on two screens at the same time! I can get right wing rubbish on the left screen, and left wing rubbish on the right screen! Or vice versa!
Actually I want to be able to watch the F1 races on F1TV while also playing video games or using the internet - since nothing happens 90% of the time in F1, so I can watch the interesting bits without missing anything. Will be useful for rugby matches too, all those scrum resets.

 

I have a Sky dish at my little house in the Vienne which gave me access to all their free services but last time I visited I couldn't get it to work.
I listen to a lot of BBC radio and like to keep up with the news and sport so I bought a new cable and spent a couple of days trying to get it to work without success.
Fortunately, I have a large data allowance on my mobile phone and despite being in a very rural part of France I was able to use it to tether to my laptop and watch all the TV and Amazon prime video I wanted.
Impressive considering that 5 years ago I had to go upstairs and hang out of a window just to get enough signal to send a text.
I think that 5G is going to be the death of TV as we know it.

 

I did have Sky but it got cancelled after one their purges. I can still get all the free-to-air stuff though.
F1 was on Sky which was most of what I used it for, but it was expensive. F1TV is about 190euros a year so much better value.
The internet service here is OK, I use Orange which has an excellent English language helpline. I get about 14Mb download speed so I just tested streaming F1 TV and running Diablo 3 at the same time, and no problem.
I don't know when we're going to get 5G here, but probably not soon....