Numbats, noombats, walpurti,
You eat termites and you're pretty!
From WA with stripes and a happy, long face,
A beautiful animal from a beautiful place.
Sometimes I wonder if the cat sees me as more than a food dispenser.
I've been sick in bed all day pretty much, and she's sitting beside me. When I fell asleep and woke up suddenly she was all alert, checking to see if I was OK.
Right now, the heater is on in the lounge room. She has a favourite spot she sits in (on top of her TP nest).
But she's sitting in the cold bedroom with me instead.
They know. I have one love bug, one standoffish queen and a sometimes spicy sausage. During the day its usually hands off the two girls, but they take turns to sleep with me at night.
Getting to work was crazy today - I somehow hit the link on my work app for the second client instead of the first, and only discovered the mistake when I was almost there - partly because a friend phoned to wish me happy birthday and proceeded to grizzle about how she'd lost something she'd bought yesterday at her local shopping centre. So has to phone the office and tell them to tell the client I'd be late. At least, given their recent track record, they were... reasonable.
Both clients treated me very well - part of the reason I agreed to work today - and the (other) papou gave me four frozen meals from Greek meals on wheels that his wife hadn't liked, so score. But I think next year I'll take the day off.
Anyway I got the notification that my click and collect from Kmart was ready so I went to pick it up and of course was behind someone who was having trouble with his order and had to return half the store. Finally got out of there and got a bahn mi and some cakey things from my favourite local bakery, as well as a bottle of pear cider.
Now relaxing with the cats after a shower, and planning on ordering whatever looks appealing from Menulog.
Times like this I am so very thankful I do not watch TV. I don't even know where the aerial cable is in my apartment, and the TV is currently unplugged in the spare room lol. If I want to watch something I use a streaming service (like taskmaster on channel 9 or whatever it is, not Netflix), or if I want news I go to the Guardian or ABC. That way I can pick what I want to know about.
Got into an argument with a mate the other day where I said he deserved to be shot. My mate was incredulous about how serious a claim that was, but what’s trumps death toll do you reckon? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? To say nothing of the people he swindled.
Meeting went poorly. But I said that if they don't retrofit a deadbolt onto my spare room I'll install one myself and they won't have a key, and they took that pretty seriously, and said they'd look into it. I more than likely won't because I have no clue how I'd do that (plus the door frames extend a few cm above the door), but they don't know that.
Besides that, I think he knocked them back for a kitchen renovation, but unfortunately it seems he knocked everyone back on anything. They're not going to fix the rotting floor or the uneven stairs, at least anytime soon.
But the property issues are the least of my concern at the moment. I'll be having that meeting with the area manager at 2. He'll bring the program manager (who'll take minutes), and I'll be recording it on my phone and bringing my support person. I need to start making some notes so I don't get all discombobulated and agree to everything he says.
Ah, it's not all bad. I'm probably going to end up with a bunch of things in better condition than the ones he stole. I'm actually working through the list now, they wanted links for everything. Ignoring the anxiety and extra teaspoon of trauma, I'm probably coming out of this better than I'm going in
Mr Woof has taken to providing a full turndown service for my bed each night. This involves piling the doona up at the foot of my bed and curling up on top of it.
Sickie = chucked. Not going into an office with a now properly sore throat, and I decided I won't even wfh today as I could do with resting up/catching up on things I couldn't do on the weekend, rather than pushing myself.
Yeah, it isn't really chucked tbh. This is a legit one! I would've had to go interact with the public for work today as well and no way I was doing that while sick. I probably could wfh if I pushed myself but... it's only Tuesday.
I think this job requires me to get a !@#$ing med cert to take sick leave though so I think I have to go and sort that out... I'll have to go and check if a stat dec can be used instead.
DT hivemind - what does a "mental health day" mean to you? or "Personal Leave day" in general?
In my brain (office work, Gen X) my personal leave is for dealing with either being sick, caring for someone else or preventing being out of action (might be doctors appointments, might be a day off because I'm processing physical or mental stress etc). I have a team member that often asks in advance for a "mental health day" and their vibe is that this is a 'not a lot on this week I'll grab a day off'....if this were me I'd take an annual leave day. Also I have worked through poor mental health and other illness because I was scared of stigma so I'm aware someone saying 'mental health' in a blase way might niggle at me for my own reasons....
It just made me wonder how people see personal vs annual leave and if it changes based on industry / age etc.
Ok so for my work a personal leave day comes out of my sick leave and it’s when I just want a day’s break either to rest or do whatever I want.
We get allocated 3 days in a year for personal necessity leave and that’s all we need to give to do whatever we want for the day as long as we don’t take it consecutively next to each other.
If I want a mental health day I’ll call in as sick on the day or use a PNL day.
If I’m feeling crappy I’ll take an official sick day off.
Edit: I also do not get annual leave in the traditional sense due to the nature of my work.
The majority of my personal leave days are for mental health in my mind. Those days you wake up and say "nah fuck this shit, not today", or where I've had a shit sleep and could work but would be hating every second and not doing a great job. Or because work has actually been really rough and I'm stressed out and need a breather. I have no guilt taking these days off. I also do not straight up say they are for mental health, none of my companies business. It's a sick day and if they want me to get a med cert I will (but thankfully they rarely do).
I use sick leave for mental health days. With how much evidence is coming out about how our mental and physical health are connected, and anecdotally I'm more susceptible to colds when mentally fucked. I also have CPTSD and when that flares I can't sleep, and I can't work if I can't sleep.
I suspect most of my own issues will alleviate with removing myself from call centre work, however. But mental health is different for everyone. Some can work through it (I can work through my depression, for example), and some cannot. It affects everyone differently. Plus, Im not in the habit of divulging my medical history to coworkers, so I just say I'm unwell and will not be in, and I'll get a med cert/Stat Dec, and that's that.
Edit to add: I have never "booked" a sick day in advance though. Like, I've never sat at work and thought "I'm gonna take X day off next week". I use annual for that sort of thing, like maybe a day of annual after a busy period, to recharge. But not a sick day in advance.
Yeah I am getting better at taking a day when whatever issue is starting to flare, and it's not uncommon for people to have a personal leave day for not sleeping or just generally feeling crap. We are a pretty open and accepting team generally. But I think it's the booking ahead that strikes me as weird ...
Ok nope, I've hit a wall. Crawled in bed with my laptop to watch something distracting/calming/wholesome. I am watching the Tale of Princess Kaguya. Wonder what else to watch after.
The meeting went meh, but I'll share more later/tomorrow.
In the meantime though, I have news that makes me happy. I installed the new RAM and didn't break anything! I also bought the new GPU finally after being advised by the computer shop it would be compatible (I'd already checked, but I don't feel super confident in these things so would rather have them tell me it will work. At least then if it doesn't I can be like "hey, this GPU isn't fit for purpose. Gonna need to return it thanks"). But $455... Fucking oof. It better make my games happier. Now to eagerly check the order page every hour until they ship it :D
Edit: fucking of course right after I paid for it I've seen it elsewhere for 40 bucks cheaper. Ugh.
Site: When I power on your DDU our dolby stops working!!! " Me: That's ok, can you please unplug the port marked MEDIA. The IP we were given to use is clashing with your player's IP. I can change it remotely - is .8 available? Site: No it is not the IP. The dolby does not like the hardware and is refusing to connect to the servers. It cannot remain plugged in if we are to use our dolby!!! Me: The DDU literally doesn't do shit mate. It's an FTP server that sits there with its thumb up its arse until you initiate a connection from your end. If your player is misbehaving the instant it's turned on, then it's an IP clash Site: No. You're wrong. I will now prove it by turning the DDU unit off. See? Our dolby works now! Me: I s2g I WILL COME OVER THERE AND SMACK YOU SO FCKIN-
Dunning Kruger. Big time. He sent me a screenshot of a softperfect network scan result that showed our machine on that ip and see? there's no clash!!!
...meanwhile, being an actual tech I ran down the hostnames and I noticed I could not see his dolby on the list of devices. I could see our DDU had its internet interface up, so I jumped onto it via our tunnel, hopped into the logs and took a big fat screenshot of "ERROR: ANOTHER DEVICE IS USING THE IP ADDRESS ASSIGNED TO INTERFACE "MEDIA" PLEASE CONTACT YOUR NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR" and sent it back
Literally five out of eight of my team (including the boss) are out sick. I'm solo at this site today for the fourth time in a week. Winter illnesses can GTFO.
When you ask for an ETA (estimated time of arrival) and they say, "I'll let you know when I leave my place," "30 minutes" or "I'll let you know when I'm at x location on the way". All wrong answers.
The correct answer is "I should get there at 10.30 but I'll let you know if anything changes".
Yeah. Sometimes you just don't know how long something will take, and that's okay too. But bullshitting an answer always works out worse if you have no clue how long it'll take. I guess the bloke from Port Douglas learnt that the hard way. (Warning: Reddit. Couldn't find a non paywalled non Reddit link)
Why is there a minimum hold time of 30 minutes when calling any government service? Always “we’re experiencing a high volume of calls”. And the hold music is terrible. Such a drainer.
Ratio of calls to operators. If people are unwell, and/or the place is understaffed, you have a high volume of calls. Low employee retention plays into this too, as it is the cause of being understaffed (and budget), because who wants to stay in a call centre? Especially in gov where you can move around with relative ease.
It's better business to waste your time rather than theirs. Twenty years ago they'd offer to send people home without pay on quiet nights at my call centre. Often it'd get mad busy half an hour later.
I heard they feed multiple calls into the same line with the hold music. It means they can have more people on hold with less lines, but the quality of the line drops with each call added to it.
But that was in the old days, you'd think everything would be internet based now
Why is there a minimum hold time of 30 minutes when calling any government service? Always “we’re experiencing a high volume of calls”.
It's particularly bad for Centrelink, where you might not even make it to the hold queue, and just get a busy tone/automatic hang-up.
They're basically never not "experiencing an unusually high volume of calls". At some point, you'd think that the high volume of calls would just become the norm. Your average worker is juggling a whole bunch of different people all at once, and that doesn't seem at all sustainable.
And the hold music is terrible.
Tom Scott did a video on it. It used to be better, but newer computerised systems, where they're both using old files, and it's crushed to death because it's cheaper to store/process that way.
As an aside, I feel like the sound quality has also gone downhill. it used to be either clear, or at least somewhat audible, but now, it's just incomprehensible gibberish at times.
I like scorpy. That's where I got my pre-built from. They had super good customer service, unlike centrecom. Nothing wrong with it thankfully, but I did notice that they have the option and make a fuss about adding transit insurance on the checkout page. That annoys me even more than coffee shops charging their 10% holiday surcharges and 2.8% card fees, do I didn't buy it out of protest
Ugh, I fucked up a couple of things at work and now I need to have a 'Mediated Goal Setting' session with management.
I do feel like this is on me. Work has been pretty quiet, I don't have much on, but I'm fucking things up. This should be a sweet gig but I look at myself and I'm like, 'Bro is folding under zero pressure.'
Fingers crossed for you it all goes well. If they're being genuine and supportive and you're self-aware and trying to improve I reckon you'll be ok. But it's stressful.
Driving in the SUV i spotted 2 identical Mazda CX5's just in slightly different colours parked next to each other. A snide thought forms in my head about everyone buying the same cars till I spot the exact same car (colour included) as my own driving the opposite direction closely followed by a green one, both same models as mine. Couldnt help but laugh and smugly repeat the comment back to myself.
Ah unfortunately I’m not really a fan of Burt’s. The beeswax kind of just leaves a soft dry waxy layer over the lips and I can taste the rosemary preservative through any flavour
Hilarity with the Menulog order - poor bugger was circling around for 15 minutes. I finally went out to meet him when it looked like he was on the corner and he was just coming up the driveway, apologetic because he was 'having trouble with his GPS. Seemed quite surprised when I said I could see his progress.
The cheesy garlic bread was cool but the Nasi Goreng was piping hot and delicious - could only fit in half and one piece of the bread, so I'm well sorted!
Meh. I found it easy enough and lodged my first one when I was 16. If you've given your employer and bank and anyone else who gives you money your TFN, they'll prefill pretty much everything. But I can't remember if you sell your books or not, if you do, that probably complicates things a bit. I don't know how that works. But I've found the ATO to be pretty friendly when it comes to asking questions. Their website has a lot of general guidance, otherwise I've found them to be pretty helpful when you call
Also, they seem pretty chill if you unintentionally fuck something up. If they notice it first, they'll probably just send you a letter saying you fucked up and telling you what to do next, which will usually be either giving them back any money they overpaid, or entering a payment plan to do so. If you ignore that then they will get feisty, but as long as you didn't mean to make the mistake and we're not talking about 40 million bucks, their first response won't be to send the AFP to kick in your door
It's incredibly easy to lodge on your own. The one time I used an accountant was because my tax status changed halfway through the FY from a WHM to an Australian resident and there was some BS that needed to be worked out with the ATO.
Every single other time I've done it myself, granted I have never been self-employed as I understand that can sometimes be complicated (I can't remember if you have some income from self employment).
So apparently the program leader is bringing in the director of property maintenance from child protection so she can try and get him to agree to give them money to renovate our kitchen. I was honestly rather surprised to hear about this, as there really isn't much wrong with the kitchen. I mean, they need to repaint the walls, and we could probably use a new stove, but it's just a little odd that the kitchen is what they think needs renovation. Meanwhile one of the floors is pretty much being held on by paint and appears to have almost entirely rotted out, and the stairs are wobbly and all at uneven heights.
I did ask why the kitchen is their top priority, and apparently it's because the property manager personally doesn't like the archway that leads into the kitchen. That's genuinely it. She doesn't like the arch. I think this is the sort of thing I need to just shut up and be grateful they're doing anything, but it just seemed a little odd that they're going for the kitchen. The kitchen is probably the most modern and sturdy part of the house tbh.
Also also, apparently they knocked back my request to refit all the locks with deadbolts because of fire safety issues. Truthfully I don't see how they affect fire safety, because I doubt anybody's first instinct when there's a fire is to try and stick a knife into people's locks and pry it open, and they can still be opened from outside with a key. But apparently this bloke is also the one I need to complain to about that
It really is beyond a joke at this point. The kitchen??? Far out... you ought to write an expose about how ridiculous this shit is Baku. I think most of us have no idea how farcical DHS is
I don't know about residential spaces but in commercial space, an area that you can be locked into is a no-no from a fire safety standpoint. This may be where their thinking is coming from regarding the deadbolts.
Also: I'm not sure how it works in your place, but if I install a deadbolt without my landlord's approval, I'd need to replace the door when I moved out. Who owns the actual place you are in? Some private owner or the government?
Well one good thing about being officially sick is giving myself permission to do things at my own pace which is really nice. I had breakfast (!), and I haven't taken any notice of the time or what I've "done" for the day.
Which of course means I have actually gotten a couple of simple things done (long overdue life admin emails). It's kind of nice feeling like I exist a bit outside of the usual bounds of time...
PBS FM also just finished playing the most awesome remix of You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) I mean, that song has to improve anybody's day, really. What a banger, especially when you get to the main chord trio after minutes and minutes of buildup.
Also, MIFF tickets are online! They are so expensive. There's an unimelb 15% discount code going around that is cheaper than the multipass tickets...
I finally watched Talk to Me last night. Which was really good. But man, there's a scene where the brother goes into his sisters room and she tells him to get out (basically) and he leaves and she yells out multiple times 'shut the door' and it transported me back to my childhood with my brother and doing the same thing.
Did anyone else’s house do bogan pasta sauce growing up? It’s involves a dip and some cream and maybe a protein. I made one tonight outta the Aldi sweet potato dip for nostalgia and honestly not bad.
how goods a new phone case. Makes it feel like a whole new phone. Clear cases are great and all, but that yellowing effect in time makes them look pretty crap. Black is where its at, no border on the screen.
Poor Melbcat has another uti (or more likely the last one didn’t clear and complicated). So she’s getting put on the savage antibiotic that’s bitter as hell and risks eye issues. (Enrofloxacin.)
It would be so nice if we could just catch a break.
Because of my work schedule over the weekend, I've been falling asleep before midnight. I hope now I can maintain this habit, seeing as I've gotten into a bit of a flow. Also about the wakeup time too.
My aunt got a little cavoodle puppy who is adorable.
Also grateful for deleting Tik Tok and Instagram. I'm calmer and not trying to fill a void anymore. I developed such an addiction to social media, to the point where I panicked and wondered what I would do instead. I've been cooking, going to the gym, listening to music and podcasts, watching longform stuff, writing, talking to friends, preparing for uni, and life feels a lot fuller.
Im grateful that i got to start Calisthenics last week :) Im grateful for all of the work ive been putting in to be the best version of me i can be and the positive changes i am seeing :)
Due to my early wake up yesterday I went to bed around 1030 and slept straight through 6 am. For someone who gets 6-6.5 hours a night the extra hour felt goooooood
And grateful for my energy plan that has significantly cheaper rates during the day so I don't feel so bad cranking up the heater while I feel sorry for myself. Also grateful that yesterday-me did some meal prepping and took an item out of the freezer. Though, none of it is soupy, so I think I'm going to end up making some soup with all this rainbow chard I've got.
Anyone know if those power meter monitors are any good? Was thinking of getting one that sits on the counter, since I'd rather not do it by app, but nearly all of the ones that I looked at either had no way of getting one, or needed an app.
There's a company that comes by every few weeks and offers to attach a chromecast-looking dingle to the power meter, but it seems a bit dodgy/fragile.