Annoyed Thoughts

I could hear my spouse’s computer going off like a fire alarm, across 2 stories. They call me up, her computer’s locked up (it wasn’t really, we’re running linux, it’s never locked up). Computer screaming a death alarm. Warning, it’s been used for illegal activities, IP address recorded, etc etc etc.
Because linux, I just flipped to that window and closed it. At which point I told them to quit clicking on stupid shit.
I was empathically assured that they ‘didn’t click on anything’. They were just on facebook.

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Isn’t Facebook, by definition , stupid :poop: ?

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Yes, more than a little bit. I use Marketplace, that’s it.
I had some guy rant on me about my profile being fake, because no picture, no back story, no nothing. Just a blank account. Too bad suckas. No data for you.

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My brother is getting married at 3:30 PM on a school day, an hour away. They thought the kids would have to miss “minimal” school to attend it (school gets out at 3:30). Of course, the kids are thrilled to have an unexcused absence.

I would have expected this would be an excused absence, as long as you requested they be excused and gave that reason (and that many weaker reasons, if requested by a parent, would get an excused absence).

i have learned that a parent calling by itself does not make for an excused absence. in public schools, they get funding based on attendance. actual attending or excused for reasons that meet the list of reasons the state will accept (or whoever the funding mechanism is where you are). they have to report the rest of absences as “unexcused”. also the dept of ed likely monitors serial absenteeism for possible intervention.

between those two views, you call, they mark it as unexcused, and its nbd. if you call for 4 weeks of family vacation…social services will call the parent and the funding source may wonder if the student is actually disenrolled

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That list may well vary by state. As far as I remember, we were never told that an absence would be unexcused. I don’t ever remember ever saying “wedding”, but “family vacation” was very common (typically 5-10 school days per year, often in two segments).

They may have been unexcused without our knowing, but we did write a “please excuse…” note each time. Only state involved for our children would have been PA.

My afternoon was five consecutive hours of meetings. FML.

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That a meeting marathon!

Only about 35 meetings this week. Quiet week.

How long are these meetings? My current job was pretty good on meetings until some new SVPs started, they are very meeting happy.

Part of the reason I quit my last job… I was averaging 32-36 hours of meetings per week. I mentioned to my boss that it wasn’t working. She suggested I lead a 3-4 hour workshop on how to have fewer meetings. Fucking great.

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Eligible for an energy efficiency rebate from our electric company. I thought I had completed the application for it. Got this e-mail from them:

OK, I knew I had initially started the application, then paused. So it makes sense they would send the e-mail, but since I thought I had finished I was going to disregard the message, as they said. Wife asked if I was sure I had submitted it OK. I said no. So she suggested I call, and, lo and behold, they said I had not submitted. So I concluded I needed to finish, and just tried, just now, starting with clicking the log in link in their e-mail.

First think at the log in link: I need to enter my e-mail. Result: “e-mail does not exist”. WTF? It’s the e-mail they used to send me the message, Guess I’ll have to try calling again tomorrow.

Fortunately most of them are 30 minutes, and there are a handful of 1-1 meetings with those on my team. So maybe 24/40 hours this week have been scheduled meetings. Most of them have been reasonably productive. I start complaining when this goes over 30 hours and the BS meetings start piling on top. I am sure I spend an hour+ on any given day responding to IMs or having short ad-hoc conversations…I am not going to move anything on my plate along at that point.

But some meetings are such bullshit. Do we really need 20+ people for 90 minutes to talk about if this powerpoint slide has all the right words on it? Between all the SVPs and consultants billing $500 an hour, is that slide now 10k more valuable? F no. That is just step 1. It has 5 more iterations of refinement and consolidation before we combine it with a dozen other slides that turns into a golden PDF of nothingness. More resource gets wasted debating if X is the right priority than it takes to just get X done.

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Family vacations are specifically unexcused. The only exception is if a parent requests for work to be given to the child in advance which they have completed upon return, AND the parent submits a lesson plan for things their child will learn while on vacation, with the student writing a report about their experiences. It’s a lot of work to make it excused. And not all individual teachers may accept the work missed, some teachers are working with external programs and the due dates are hard, so the student would have to still complete those assignments on time.

Illnesses and medical appointments (with a note) are excused, as well as college visits, religious observance, and family emergencies.

Kids are expected to take vacations during the 2.5 months off in the summer, or the week off at Thanksgiving, the 2 weeks at Christmas, or the week off at Easter. My kids are in school 156 days of the year, which is only 60% of the weekdays in a year anyway!

One nice thing about being on a different continent from my team is that I mostly don’t have days/weeks filled with meetings.

Of course, I end up paying for that with the occasional 5am meeting.

A rock kicked up from the highway by a truck cracked my windshield.

We’ve been told to use the phrase “family event.”

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Is this a civil or RELIGIOUS wedding??? Any nearby colleges you could visit??? :smirk:

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Went to pick up some coke zeroes at Kroger, the sticker said they were 2 for $3. Sweet. They rang up as $2 apiece, so I called over a worker. She gave me a $3 off coupon because she clearly didn’t know how to do that math. No complaints about that, but it’s sad.

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I double checked, my 9yo DID know how to do that math. Whew.

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