Field trip!
Played hooky today. I was supposed to go to a meeting this afternoon, but I made excuses and we sat on the beach and drank beer. Well, I drank beer — Uncle B doesn’t touch the stuff. He took pictures.
We watched this pair come in to shore. That’s a barge laden with boulders being pulled (and, at times, pushed) by a tug. The tide was coming in and they brought the barge *right* up to the beach. Then a great big front-end loader on the deck of the ship took the boulders one by one and splooshed them into the sea, where another front-end loader on the shingle picked them up and arranged them in a sort of wall.
Boulders from France, I guess. They’re building a sea defense. They’re perpetually building a sea defenses here. This part of the shore is constantly moving and eroding and they go to sometimes weirdly heroic lengths to preserve the coastline as it is.
In other places, they are weirdly indifferent about seas and flooding that encroach quite near to houses.
I get the impression from things overheard that there are two warring camps here: sane and competent engineers versus hippies. The environment attracts both kinds. And the hippies, having come up through the academy, are often in the decision-making managerial positions. Which is usually to let nature take back land our ancestors sweated blood to reclaim from the sea.
It’s kind of like the banjo forums: divided between conservative worshippers of the Church of Earl and lefty nutbags from the Church of Pete.
September 3, 2014 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 19
Field trip!
Well, the good news is, field trips for work are to much cooler places than they used to be. The bad news is, they’re as full of stupid bullshit as ever.
Today, I had an all-day class about collecting and storing certain kinds of specimens. Instead of just, you know, telling us important shit we need to know, we started the class by brainstorming. (“You don’t know shit about this subject, so why don’t we write down several flipchart pages of ignorant shit off the top of your head”). And then we had to role-play (“break into groups of two and one of you pretend you’re a brontosaurus and one of you pretend you’re the kind of stupid shit a brontosaurus might eat.”)
Role play. I swear to god we did.
Also, most of it was about applying for grants and handicap access and…oh, I have a bad feeling this is a hotbed of lefty nonsense. Pff! Academics.
August 27, 2014 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 16
Onions.
I leave you this week with a picture of the prize-winning onions at a village fête. Not our village fête, some other village fête from a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure these onions could tell us a tale of bitter rivalries and seething hatreds.
I spent my whole day doing something terribly familiar — attending pointless work-related training courses. Three of ’em. Data protection and workplace safety and the like. Yippee! I was afraid those old cubicle-monkey braincells would never come in handy again.
We’re expecting the ass-end of hurricane Bertha to dump on us this weekend. Oh, well…we need the rain desperately. Good weekend, all!
August 8, 2014 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 10
Things that are old and give me moneys
I try to keep my secret identity as lovable, wisecracking internet weasel and my j.o.b. as far apart as possible, for obvious reasons. But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to reveal that my new employer is a historical/archeological society — because there are so many in this area that hardly narrows it down at all.
In many ways, it’s my dream job — a little light clerical work, some audio-visual stuff, photographing and cataloguing the collection when I have time. I mean, holy shit. Perfect.
On the other hand, like all organizations of this kind, most of the work is done by volunteers. So I’m working next to people who are doing it for free, which makes me feel a bit of a ratbag. Except, I end up volunteering, too. I reckon I do at least two free hours for every paid hour.
Still and all, it’s going really well. I love it. And the important thing is, I have a bunch of keys, a desk, an alarm to wake up to and a boss to push me around again. Heaven!
July 22, 2014 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 26
Guyz! Guyz!
You’ll never guess! I got a job!
It’s kind of a lousy job — a few hours a week of light office work, basically — but it’s at a way cool place and will very likely turn into something better if I stick with it and, you know, strategically murder my cow-orkers over time. So forgive me if I’m distracted for a bit until I get the hang of my new routine.
Oh, and hey — Iraq is turning to shit.
June 12, 2014 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 32
Now with added unemployment
Hate to give this guy the attention which he so obviously craves. Kind of. Whatever. I doubt he can squeeze fifteen minutes of fame out of this one.
Sainsbury’s employee tucks cynical haikus into packages of cookies. Gets fired. Apparently, being internet famous > being employed.
The only one that was approaching funny — “Been sneezing all day/ Good thing HIV cannot/ Be passed on like that” — nearly cost him the gig (the publicity gig; he’s already lost the bakery gig). Thou Shalt Not Make AIDS Jokes on the left, still.
Twitter feed. Hash tag. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be the internet sensation he hopes. He may yet look back with longing on the Sainsbury’s gig.
Still, it beats the stuffings out of #LikeABoss. Good weekend, folks!
May 23, 2014 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 11
Cheap at twice the price
Shhhh…I’m trying not to annoy Uncle B tonight. He’s working. (Hey, one of us has to!)
Today I mailed off my FLR(M) application. It’s the second visa I need. The first one let me enter for the purpose of marriage, and it’s good for six months (I’m legal on that one until the end of May). The second one lets me work and be a sort of semi-person, and it’s good for two years.
It’s taking an average of 14 weeks to process those ones at the moment, so (assuming all is well) I expect to remain blissfully employment-free until July, mayhap.
Mayhap longer. The visa fees go up (again!) on Wednesday, April 1, so I imagine the Home Office will be buried in applications tomorrow. Heh heh heh.
The picture? That there’s a Thermionics Vacuum Products FLRM Series Push-Pull Linear-Rotary Feedthrough. It’s a linear-rotary feedthrough based on the FLM series push-pull linear feedthrough mounted on a standard 2.75″ O.D. flange. Strokes of up to 36″ are feasible, dependent upon payload, orientation and acceptable deflection. All metal construction for bakeability. It costs about three grand. It turned up on a Google Images search of “FLR(M)”.
I have no fucking idea what that sonofabitch does.
March 30, 2009 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 23
Positively the Last Ever TGIF
I’ve tried not to think too many “this will be my very last…” thoughts. I don’t do finality. Or change; even change from bad stuff to good stuff gives me the shivering willies. But, well…this will be my last TGIF. Next Friday, I’ll be unemployed and headed to Nashville to visit my dad, and whatever I do to earn my keep in the UK is unlikely to involve a traditional five-day workweek.
This will be my first significant period of unemployment since I was 15 and shelved books in a university library. I have baked pizza and I have slung doughnuts. I have worked freelance and I have punched a time clock. I’m not a big fan of making things mandatory, but paying your way working shit jobs for a few years is an enormously educational experience. I could think of an awful lot of people who would benefit from this education, many of them in Washington at this moment.
By shit jobs, I mean jobs that don’t pay for shit. I actually loved my minimum wage jobs. They were fun and physical and no big deal if you screwed up. And every day started anew; no leftover junk from the day before. If I could live on that kind of money, I’d still be doing them.
I have, however, held two jobs I absolutely hated, in succession, the Summer before I went away to college. That, too, is an educational experience.
The first was drawing pastel portraits at Opryland. I was in the New Orleans section. A live band would march down the street every half hour playing When The Saints Go Marching In until I sincerely yearned to be hauled behind them in a coffin.
I’m not good at quick sketches. Or portraits. Or pastels. I always loathe doing work I’m not good at. Also, you have no idea how many people with serious facial deformities elect to sit for their portraits at these things. There is no perfect way to say, “So, first trip to Nashville? You want the portrait with the hairy mole covering most of your forehead, or without?”
I think I lasted six weeks in Dixieland. The next job was my official Worst Job Ever: driving an icecream truck. The guy didn’t want to give me a chance. He told me it was no work for a girl; that I couldn’t handle it. That did it. I had to prove him wrong.
The physical part — loading the van in the morning — was tough, but I could manage. The driving an unairconditioned Chevy van around Nashville in Summer during a heat wave? Not so much. I’d wet down bandannas and freeze them in the icecream freezer and hold them to my fevered brow.
My territory was considered excellent: it was extra slummy neighborhoods. Rich people think icecream should be a rare treat. Poor people will spend their very last buck buying the kid a creamsicle. Of course, the occasional driver gets mugged at knifepoint in those places, but wuddryegonnado?
One day, it reached 110° outside the van, and I went home and collapsed under the aircon with a headache like an icepick to the eyesocket. I quit the next day. Told my boss that an aunt had died and left me a small legacy, so I didn’t need the work any more. I am a lying sack of weasel, but I suspect he figured out that I was, in fact, a girl and I could not, in fact, handle the job.
So…you? Worst job? Best job?
November 14, 2008 — 12:33 pm
Comments: 78
Can one of you fiscal sooper geniuses explain something to me, please?
Twenty six years ago, before I was a corporate little Eichmann, I worked part time, minimum-wage-type jobs while I tried to establish myself as a freelance illustrator. My total income, including illustration work, was under $8,000 each of those years (yeah, wow, did I suck, or what?).
I got a little money back at tax time, but certainly not everything that had been withheld. In other words, I paid income taxes. Teeny, tiny taxes in proportion to my teeny, tiny income, but it still hurt.
So, ummm…what gives? Does almost half the population really not pay taxes at all now? Or are they counting benefits against taxes and calling it a wash? Or has everything changed since I were a lass?
Money make weasel doesn’t understand good.
October 20, 2008 — 4:40 pm
Comments: 38
Math isn’t exactly my strong suit, but…
Let’s say you owned a single McDonald’s franchise open 360 days a year (round number make Weasel happy)…that that would imply a gross daily intake of under $700. Ridiculous! If you ran a shift of five people for eighteen hours at seven bucks an hour, that’s $630 right there, just in wages. Plus materials, utilities, rent, advertising…
So what the fuckity fuck are they talking about?
October 16, 2008 — 12:24 pm
Comments: 43