The Not Happy Thread

Well, I finally caved. Sort of. I've made myself a cup of hot chocolate from the cupboard, but it's bitter despite the sugar, so not quite what I wanted.

 

'Kay, I know this sounds dumb but, for me at least, taking a decently long walk in the morning and if I'm feeling super stressed, some meditation before bed, goes a long way to keeping my sleep schedule regular. It's never normal, because I'm mostly nocturnal, but it keeps it regular.

 

School starts next week, and I just realized how many composition classes I'm teaching this semester.

Have fun grading the hundreds of badly-formed essays by low-level students who are doing far better in your native language than you'll ever do in theirs, sensei.

 

My line manager forgot to tell the girls in admin that I was going to be off yesterday and on a half day today on my job search.

Good news is that they're not upset with me, but the bad news is that yesterday was apparently a bad day at reception and they got the brunt of it already.

One of them told me not to apologise as I did the paperwork as I was told. But jeez...

 

As you may know, I run a small vape shop somewhere in middle America. In the last month we've been through three new hires. This is a pretty mild job, you really have to apply yourself to screw up this gig. At one store, my general manager found herself needing to let two people go. She hired two other people. They didn't last a week. Then she hired another. He lasted two weeks.

Now we're on number four. He's going to be assigned to the central store, but they have him spending a couple days each week in each of the other stores for training before they turn him loose. It'll give him a chance to experience the atmosphere at each store, learn where everything is, meet some of the customers. Each store is a little different. At the central store the manager mostly plays movies, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and the like. One of the other stores is ruled by 'Call of Duty.' In my store I usually have some slick jazz playing. (Mine is considered the grown up store.)

Today and tomorrow new guy is supposed to be hanging out with me for his training days this week. So far, two hours into the day, he's a no-show. I haven't gotten any word that he wouldn't be coming, so I get the feeling we may be looking for another new guy.

For what I do, the pay is okay, the checks don't bounce and It's an easy job-- nice and tranquil, they really don't expect much of you. As long as the store comes first you can do pretty much what ever you want when it's slow. I actually do more writing and studying here than I do at home.

Except for stealing, cussing out a customer, or not showing up, I really don't know how someone could get fired from this place.

 

My biggest fear when I was diagnosed with MS was that my wife would run for the hills, because of what it might mean for us, we had only been married for a couple years at that point. She didn't, and we're still married today. (16 years this August) My wife is an amazing person who impresses me on a daily basis and truth be told, I'm kinda ashamed of myself for not having more faith in her than to think she wouldn't stay.

That fear, in all its manifestations, isn't selfish, it's normal, it's strong, and it gets in the way of living if you let it. Don't let it. Try to have faith that you can be seen as separate from the illness and not defined by it, and the rest will come.

 

The job I'm interviewing for tomorrow (unless it's reschedule again) is a four month, full time (and highly paid) summer job at my mother's place of work, with possibility to end up in a real job in the fall (my mother got in this way).

My mother hasn't in any way helped me get this interview. It's through an agency that I contacted last year when my old job started to get rocky.

The thing is my mother has really mixed feelings about me getting the job. She's been trying to keep me away from the job since she started... up to the point I almost said no when they called me for an interview. Now she understands it's important for me to get the job, because it's the best chance I've got for a job over the summer, and even if I don't get anything past that I'll have an economic ground to stand on when applying for new jobs.

Now every day she goes back and forth between "of course you'll get the job" to "you'll probably won't get it because I work here" and all the "you can't talk about anything I've said", "you're not allowed to talk about your salary" and the likes of it. It's just getting on my nerves. I really want this job for economical reasons (and it's going to be harder to get a job over the summer) - but she sucks the excitement out of it. "You won't be able to have any vacation" no shit, I've been unemployed for three months... I don't want a vacation, I want to be able to keep the apartment and feed myself!

Sorry for rant, but I'm ever so tired of my mother and her ability to make everything feel worse than it is!

 

I don't know your mother, but maybe she's just trying to keep you from getting your hopes too high? Or maybe she's nervous about it herself?

 

I'd say you could come work here, but the commute would be murder.

 

I think the latter. I don't think she wants me to work there, but at the same time it's the most likely chance I've got this far and she know I need it.

It's just she has a way to make everything... negative, even if she preaches about positivity all the time and sometimes I just want to snap at her. Ranting on the internet has proven to be the safer option

 

The healing power of the rant shouldn't be underestimated.
[ETA: I need to find a reason for someone to have a healing rant in my WIP. ]

 

And I got back home last night with the better part of 80% left on the tablet, IIRC, plugged it into the usual charger cord in its usual spot on the table, and this morning it's a fucking brick.

What the hell do I do to electronics?

 

I did this in one of my older stories that I have to rewrite at some point. It's pretty fun to do, just have a character fly off the handle with rage, going on a Long rant.

The story had about three to four main characters.

One of the MCs, finds out that the man who he believes to be his father, who abused him his entire life, turned out to not be his father but his uncle.

And the man who he thought was his uncle, was actually his father who had a secret affair with his mother.

So he goes on a tirade about it before the spirit of an ancestor, who just sat there and listened, then asked if he was done. Which he replied almost

 

Clearly you dropped a phone when you were a kid and they swore a blood oath against you.

 

I know they don't like to run hot, or on full brightness continuously. IDK if you can backup in chunks?
My mother (75) threw her phone when the pop-ads wouldn't stop. Let's not go there. (just corner was scratched, lucky)

 

No idea, outdoor temps are around 5-20c these days, indoors probably not much warmer (no central heating), kept the brightness down to preserve battery, had antivirus installed, didn't go anywhere particularly dodgy (not that I'd put my browser history on my resume, but...), it just wouldn't start this morning. 34 days old, that's just short of ten bucks a day for a pretty crappy machine. I'll be returning/sending it in for warranty whatever, but as I mentioned elsewhere, my awesome buddy seems to have had a vision and bought me a kindle fire, so I just finished monkeywrenching that to get Google Play store into it, along with the software I needed. Still have to re-enter some class data, but I'm not up a creek at least.

 

Yikes! Had no idea this was the new one!

 

Yup. I work magic with electronics, in the past year I've mortally wounded a desktop (had to pay a healer a hundred and eighty gold pieces), killed a tablet while laying on my back in bed reading it, and killed a second tablet by sleeping in a different room. The Sony lasted three years, lets say 1100 days give or take, and cost about $800. The NEC lasted 34 days and cost about $270. So the Sony was seventy-two cents a day, give or take, and provided me with three years of job productivity. The NEC, on the other hand, was nearly eight bucks a day, and since I was on class break, did nothing but burn up my afternoon yesterday with data entry tasks that will have to be repeated and give me the start of an ulcer til I realized I could fall back on the new Kindle.

 

A hospital is waiting on me to repair their electron microscope so they can identify if their patients have heart and liver viruses, but the microscope is being a colossal pain. I fix one thing, and something else breaks. It's extremely maddening for me, the customer is getting pretty upset, and people's lives are literally waiting on the data. I really hope this part shows up tomorrow because I put in 15 hours today trying to get it work and all that's left is this one part. I don't want to make those patients to wait the entire weekend because of me.

 

That sucks, I can feel there pain but also understand that things come up. To bad, they don't have a back up/ 2nd microscope, though I am sure they are super expensive.

 

I'm sorry I read that, and I hope that Asmo, my personal electronic demon, was dozing or celebrating and doesn't make his way through the series of tubes to make your day more difficult.

 

Yeah, they're about 1 million for the lowest end, and around 10 million for a good one with all the extras. And then there's service costs,and parts costs, and so on...

Expensive tool.

 

Oh, is that all, I am sure someone has a cool million or two laying around. . But seriously that sucks, hopefully with technological advances that price will drop at some point. cant' wait for Star Trek tech, where they just wave a tri-corder over your body and it fixes all your ills.

Just a tad expensive. .

 

Advances are making that price go up exponentially. I'm not allowed to say specifically who, but those companies are more than willing to pay. I hate having to do anything with the sales guys, but that's somewhat part of my job. It's like being a seal in a shark tank.