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Had a nice New Year's Eve, playing Nemesis with my wife at my friend's, and all three of us dying eventually. My wife almost made it, though.

Also found out a while ago that most if not all my colleagues have been either consistently throwing away the reminder emails we've been receiving twice a month about our new performance review program Dialog without even taking a look at them, or got so annoyed they marked them as spam after a while. Performance reviews are probably going to be a bit of a disappointment for HR this year...

HR:
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Had a nice New Year's Eve, playing Nemesis with my wife at my friend's, and all three of us dying eventually. My wife almost made it, though.

Also found out a while ago that most if not all my colleagues have been either consistently throwing away the reminder emails we've been receiving twice a month about our new performance review program Dialog without even taking a look at them, or got so annoyed they marked them as spam after a while. Performance reviews are probably going to be a bit of a disappointment for HR this year...

HR:
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the absolute bullshit that is the review process is why I did not go back into management. I had children instead. It's a constant 360 review process.
 
Bunch Bunch It seems the total lack of responsiveness led to HR sending us an email telling us that self-evaluation is optional but would be appreciated... I think I'm just going to tell them straight that I got annoyed with the email bombing and marked them as spam.
 
I've been considering lately starting a game that'd contain significant dungeoncrawling...

The only questions were 1) should I and 2) do I use Spellcraft&Swordplay, DCC, Maelstrom: Classic Fantasy, reworked Ironclaw, or ORE:shade:?

Honestly, having a pretty shitty time. Hoping 2022 will be at least marginally better.

E E-Rocker I hope things improve. My 2021 has been rough. I take care of my mom and she's a lot worse this year than previous years, plus my own mental health, money troubles (which partly had to do with my mom and rising grocery prices, but thankfully I hope that's turned around)

Never mind, I've had physical health issues (stupid long-term drainage issues down the back of my throat that make my already poor sleep patterns a nightmare.

I am surviving but that's about it. I'm going to try and focus on drawing this upcoming year since I haven't in a long while or at least not gotten anything remotely worth keeping.

Plus my novel has some fixes I need to do, then pass back to the editor (a second time!) Though I'm also removing some characters so the spotlight is mostly on the core ones of the main protagonist group. (Though some characters just won't get much the book isn't as much about them.)

I do talk to my doctor next week and a health counselor my insurance provides has suggested I talk to my newest doctor and explain something I hadn't felt a need to as the counselor thinks that there might be better solutions to my sleep problems. (It also may be time for another sleep test.) Joy.

Welp, I just blew up at my boss in anger over the heavy workload. It might cost me my job but I had to do it. My previous attempts at bringing up the workload have been blown off and I have been seething with anger for weeks. These guys have the gall to lay me off then rehire me two months later with a heavily increased workload expecting me to happily accept it. I have money saved up, there are tons of jobs out there, and I don't need to take this crap.
Sorry you guys are going through this. Here’s hoping the new year brings the change you need.
 
Frankly at this point I'd rather 2022 be mind numbingly boring. Like sitting through a 8 hour reading of the historic Albanian tax code boring.
2021 flew by for me, but boy howdy was it unpleasant, not as bad as 2020 but still pretty awful.
 
Sorry you guys are going through this. Here’s hoping the new year brings the change you need.
Thanks man but I will be fine. I have options. Worst case scenario they find a replacement for me (good luck!) then fire me and I go work for a competitor while I retrain for something else.

If you wanna feel bad for someone I have a junior colleague who is a young mother living paycheck to paycheck, new to the industry, and doesn't have options. The company denied her paid maternity leave because her pregnancy was "a pre-existing condition" and the heavy workload is crushing her. It's a shame because had she been born under different circumstances, I could easily see her running her own small business or on the path to senior management in a big one.
 
Frankly at this point I'd rather 2022 be mind numbingly boring. Like sitting through a 8 hour reading of the historic Albanian tax code boring.
2021 flew by for me, but boy howdy was it unpleasant, not as bad as 2020 but still pretty awful.
Same here but there is no way 2022 will be boring for me.

Things have been set in motion in my personal and professional lives that demand a resolution.

I’ll either climb to new heights or crash spectacularly.

Ah well.
 
Same here but there is no way 2022 will be boring for me.

Things have been set in motion in my personal and professional lives that demand a resolution.

I’ll either climb to new heights or crash spectacularly.

Ah well.
Well I hope it's not both in that order.
 
Same here but there is no way 2022 will be boring for me.

Things have been set in motion in my personal and professional lives that demand a resolution.

I’ll either climb to new heights or crash spectacularly.

Ah well.
Good luck!
My DND group started the new year with a good session so fingers crossed that it's a sign of things to come!
 
I talked last month about one of the elderly family members going into the hospital for a few weeks, and last Monday the other family member I take care of went in while I was at work; it would have been great if someone notified me before I came home. They’re still in, but seem to be on the mend.

My new new (that’s not a typo) boss is still just as good as they were when they volunteered me to work Christmas. Combined with a new co-worker who, among other things, didn’t know how to copy and paste a document…yeah….Oh, and I was asked to work New Year’s Eve, since we had it off, but I declined.

I went out to our garage this morning, and either we have a large animal in our neighborhood that I’ve never seen droppings from before, or a New Year partier wandered into our yard and took a dump in front of our garage door. I wonder it it’s an omen of how 2022 will progress.
 
I may not be around for a bit. Got a gift card for Christmas, used it for the Cyberpunk videogame, went to update my video driver, and my computer seems to have eaten itself. I'm in safe mode right now, but I may have to find someone/figure out a way to get it recovered (and all my attempts have failed so far) Just letting those I can know in general.
 
Bleh. Spent the whole day offline with no power because of snow storm. It was 60 yesterday, so I didn't take it seriously. At least the power is back on- they'd originally said 48 hours, so 10 isn't too bad. The worst part was my wife's Guinea Pigs and keeping them warm, and the fact that she had to go to work- at least they came to get her to go in, but she probably won't be back tonight.

Spending my last day off in the dark was no fun.

But at least it all ended well and all of them are safe, so I will count my blessings. And I'm thinking about calling out tomorrow...
 
I was stir crazy tonight so we went out to a local Korean bar for the first time. I was expecting lousy bar food but we had excellent thin cut bbq beef over white rice and a side of popcorn chicken that was seasoned perfectly. The house lager was light and crisp but on a whim I ordered some raspberry wine that knocked me off my ass. The place wasn't trendy or fancy but it was packed with 20-somethings on a Monday night 3 days after New Years so they are clearly doing something right.
 
I’m just going to say that my new new boss has informed me that both she and another of my peers don’t know how to copy and paste. A work item had to wait for me to come in today to add a document for them.

“WTF” fails to summarize my confusion on this.
 
I’m just going to say that my new new boss has informed me that both she and another of my peers don’t know how to copy and paste. A work item had to wait for me to come in today to add a document for them.

“WTF” fails to summarize my confusion on this.
Some people I swear.
 
And I'm thinking about calling out tomorrow...
So I decided to be good and got on. Then found out that the AWS secrets manager they specifically told us they didn't care if we used in dev (because they won't let us manage the secrets in prod, and we have to rotate them manually, so that's guaranteed to be a cluster) they disabled on the dev timetable after they'd already excluded us from the rotation policy in dev.

I felt like crap any way (I got a dose of Flu A & B and a Sinus Infection for the holidays and was sick a lot of my time off), so I just went ahead and took today and tomorrow. I'm not working through feeling like crap if they're going to start off the year like this.
 
I’m just going to say that my new new boss has informed me that both she and another of my peers don’t know how to copy and paste.
Ever since we got rid of our sole boomer data entry guy everyone who works here is proficient. Unfortunately I frequently deal with ignorant notaries. Just five minutes ago I had to explain what a hyperlink was.
 
Last week I blew up in anger at my boss over the heavy workload and general poor management. Tomorrow the president and vice president are holding private informal interviews with everyone in my department. I am meeting with my junior colleague after work to help gather evidence and present a unified front.
 
Last week I blew up in anger at my boss over the heavy workload and general poor management. Tomorrow the president and vice president are holding private informal interviews with everyone in my department. I am meeting with my junior colleague after work to help gather evidence and present a unified front.
well, that's exciting. I hope positive action is taken!
 
If you wanna feel bad for someone I have a junior colleague who is a young mother living paycheck to paycheck, new to the industry, and doesn't have options. The company denied her paid maternity leave because her pregnancy was "a pre-existing condition" and the heavy workload is crushing her. It's a shame because had she been born under different circumstances, I could easily see her running her own small business or on the path to senior management in a big one.
this boils my blood, and it's incredibly short term thinking and bad for business. Ultimately, it's very costly, especially right now.

there are options there. I imagine it's a bit late now.
 
Brock Savage Brock Savage Part of me wants to believe that I’m being put on by lazy people. Then I remember years ago when I had to explain to a section manager what the name of our section was, six months after we started.

3rik 3rik at the same job I just mentioned to Brock I stumbled onto a system trick. A woman kept insisting to me I had to show it to her, and didn’t comprehend when I said I’d rather keep it to myself so I looked better when layoffs came.
 
Pretty sure two of my bosses are having a conference call “discussion” right now, in the same way years ago two of my bosses went into an office and shouted at each other at the top of their lungs, unaware the meeting room they chose wasn’t soundproofed, so we heard every bit of them arguing over who was REALLY in charge.
 
Last week I blew up in anger at my boss over the heavy workload and general poor management. Tomorrow the president and vice president are holding private informal interviews with everyone in my department. I am meeting with my junior colleague after work to help gather evidence and present a unified front.
I cannot comment in the depth I’d like at the risk of breaking our cardinal rule (and I’m not even that much of a pinko), but… good luck!
 
Let's start with something good: I was able to see my half-marathon training plan through to the end, and accomplished my personal half-marathon on January 1st. My phone's touchscreen doesn't like the cold, so I wasn't able to stop Runkeeper until a little bit past the end. My stats, per Runkeeper:

Distance: 13.36 miles
Time: 3:07:54
Minutes per mile: 14:04
Calories burned: 1,653

This is approximately the seventh time in my life I've done half-marathon distance, but it was the first time I was able to fully complete an uninterrupted training plan leading up to the run, and it definitely made a difference.

The other times I've done it, the immediate aftermath, after a shower & food, of course, was to collapse into bed for a ~3 hour nap. This time, I was definitely tired afterwards, but I was able to just stay up the rest of the day and go to bed a bit earlier than usual. I was hoping for a pace closer to 13:30/mile, but I'm happy to have been able to do the distance and finish strong.

Onto something neutral: I need to have surgery on January 18th. I have a device implanted at the base of my spine that emits electrical impulses that help regulate the bladder issues from my spinal cord injury. It has definitely improved my quality of life, but the battery has been low for a bit now, and as of earlier this week, has completely died, so it's time to get the whole unit replaced. They said it would last 8 years, and it lasted 8.5 years, so that's cool. And the new unit I'll be getting is smaller, lasts longer, and is rechargeable.

Finally something annoying: because of the surgery, I'll have to take it easy for a bit as far as physical activity in order to let my body recover. Now that I'm in half-marathon shape, I really wanted to keep moving and stay in half-marathon shape, but I'll have to interrupt that for a bit.
 
I wonder if I should put a marathon as like, a goal. I know it will take me a long time to get there but I feel like if I could finish a marathon it would feel really nice.
 
I must thank you working stiffs for reminding me how much retirement rocks. Semi-retirement is more accurate as I take frequent on call work, but working with a 3 day rule* doing something you like is hardly working.

*3 bad days and I'm outta here


I don't miss the BS drama, bad supervisors, petty co-workers or HR one bit.

Thanks man but I will be fine. I have options. Worst case scenario they find a replacement for me (good luck!) then fire me and I go work for a competitor while I retrain for something else.

If you wanna feel bad for someone I have a junior colleague who is a young mother living paycheck to paycheck, new to the industry, and doesn't have options. The company denied her paid maternity leave because her pregnancy was "a pre-existing condition" and the heavy workload is crushing her. It's a shame because had she been born under different circumstances, I could easily see her running her own small business or on the path to senior management in a big one.

Wow, that is pretty sad.

My wife was working a job well below her skills for a large chain auto parts store when she got pregnant with number 2. The managers were jumping through hoops to get her full time "for the benefits". It was kind of funny because she was actually trying to get one of the vacant management jobs for better pay, not full time time for the benefits as she already had good benefits through my job. She had been passed over and had to train 2 prior managers neither of which stayed long. In the end it showed that they didn't really pay much attention to what she said, but at least their heart was in the right place.

I would die if I tried to run a half-marathon…even a quarter marathon…even a…

I'm a strong believer in running being done only when being chased. If I run a 1/2 marathon keep an eye out for Cthulhu as he is probably nearby.
 
I stupidly allowed myself to get sucked into an argument with a guy claiming there was never a space program and it's all been smoke and mirrors since the 60s. He kept rebutting my arguments with claims that all opinions are equal and that there's, "always another side to the coin".
You'd think after so long on the internet I could just ignore that sort of thing...


I'm a strong believer in running being done only when being chased. If I run a 1/2 marathon keep an eye out for Cthulhu as he is probably nearby.
That's always been my motivation to run... that when the time comes I need to be able to do it. Every time I run, since I was a kid, the first image my mind conjures is being chased by armed apes on horseback.
 
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