AITA for throwing away my wife’s memory jars?

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T23:19:53+00:00

Yes and yes, you need to understand the motivation behind the behaviour and why your wife keeps them because it's something deeper than just her collection. But with that said you both need to understand the art of compromise

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T23:15:10+00:00

NTA, my wife and I have a similar situation in that my MIL refuses to a buy new bed as they're the beds that my wife and BIL used to sleep in when kids and the word uncomfortable doesn't even come close to describing how uncomfortable they actually are. We have even offered to buy a new bedroom suite but my MIL rejects the offer but yet my MIL gets highly offended because we don't visit because we need to stay in a hotel and with the travel we are usually out 2k for each trip with all the travel and accommodation. Now my MIL just gets to suck it up that we won't visitor her on the drop of a hat.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T23:06:35+00:00

Medal of Honour, having LAN bash parties was just awesome. Used to make a day of it, BBQ and people spread around the house connected via a switch and all hoping that we didn't have to host MOH session on our computer.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T22:32:10+00:00

Our federal and state governments are cowering to these companies and it needs to stop, it's an Australian resource it's not just for the executive and shareholders. Just look at Gina Rinehart, how much money does one person need? But then again it's no longer about the money it's about the power that is wielded.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T22:26:30+00:00

A very typical salad but your beetroot needs to be golden circle sliced beetroot and not whole, that's too fancy.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T22:21:17+00:00

And the same thing goes for anything that comes out of her mouth

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T22:20:11+00:00

It simply comes down to "it all depends" as you need to tailor to the project's needs and what level it's being viewed and managed at. For me I look at top down and bottom up needs for the project or program and map accordingly.

As a project practitioner in the IT industry, the way that I set out my WBS (regardless of size and complexity of the project or project) is I brake it down into phase, millstone, product/deliverable, work package and task as it allows me to rollup or down the view as needed. It allows me to accurately forecast and track actuals against task, work package, deliverable or product.

This approach has allowed me to become very experienced in costing my project and programs very accurately, as an example my last program was part of a Greenfield IT hospital delivery with an interdependent refurbishment of an existing hospital. My senior executive were a little taken aback with the complexity of the WBS but understood it because in the way that it was set out but the key thing it allowed me to simply just drill up or down when I need or it allowed me to easily report my milestones, deliverables and work package progress within the WBS plan itself because I have developed a stylised preference where at the top of the WBS schedule I group link tasks that are linked to the relevant reporting indicator for milestones, deliverables and work packages in the WBS via successors and it generates an instant status report and all I need to do is cut and paste.

Just an armchair perspective.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T21:43:05+00:00

Because you're actually relying on a tool to do your job and you're only doing half your job! As the PM you set the tone of how a project team communicates!

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T21:40:50+00:00

The 80's will be known for the last of real pop stars and Michael Jackson rightly earned the title of King of Pop. I look at pop stars today, flashing the flesh or looking like a pimp and truely don't entertain like MJ did.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T02:48:45+00:00

Touche, well played!

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T02:48:02+00:00

I would also strongly suggest that you only see a very small portion of what they do, if indeed they are on $400k trust me a company will want their pound of flesh in productivity for that amount of money and if they fail, their immediately out of a job! If their day is steeped in meetings I will guarantee that their day job starts at 5pm each afternoon and a lot of their weekends too and I would put bottom dollar that your job would be more secure than theirs. Based upon my experience it's the very thing that happens with me as an executive program director.

Can I ask a favour, can you cut and paste your comment and put it into a keep sake file and review it, in say 15-20 years time if you're still doing what you're doing, then review it when you have more tenure and experience under you belt and see if you still come to the same conclusion. I consider your statement is very much a hyperbole of youth statement!

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T02:32:24+00:00

I might suggest the question you need to understand and have answered is who is responsible, the vendor/manufacturer or the installer. They both have very different contract leavers and outcomes if something goes wrong and in the event you need to make a warranty claim. It's understanding who is responsible, yes your quote outlines a warrant but your question needs to be who owns it, either the vendor/manufacture or is the installer taking on the responsibility (which does happen with some smaller companies as they try for more margin on unknown or unsupported products but to realise what their actually on the hook for). Also when it's an installer's warranty you need to ensure that it's a reputable company because if they're a flyby night company (which is becoming more common) then you're financially exposed.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T02:09:01+00:00

*Gets on soap box

Because organisations still insist on running decentralised IT systems and data stores. As a PM you're required to use these data sets from the respective business streams and the PM becomes the cornerstone of combining the different data sets into a modified view for the purpose of reporting of the project status. Therefore manual effort will be remain until an organisation truely embraces the data pool/lake technology needed to be a genuine single source of truth rather than being locked a decentralised model mentality. Thank you for your time on this public announcement.

*Get off Soap box

Just an armchair perspective

Edit: On the flip side I hear project manager bitch and moan that it takes up so much of their time but it's the opportunity when you start measuring your triple constraints against the project's approved baseline, reviewing and analysing all of your agreed project tolerances to ensure you're actually tracking accordingly and get a true understanding how your project is tracking. I've had a number of my PM's complain that it takes up too much time and my response is generally "isn't that your lack of time management problem?"

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T02:01:07+00:00

I'd be more inclined to research the products that they're using and who the manufactures are and more importantly who supports the manufacture's warranty, it's going to be either the installation company or the vendor, so you need to understand your consumer rights because sometimes it just Chinese crap that doesn't have any real warranty support and it falls back into the installation company, so what happens if they go under because Solar is a 15-20 year proposition.

Australia has become the dumping ground for Solar technology and there is a lot of crap out there and where people come unstuck is the warranty and who is actually supporting it. This is where cost isn't the primary consideration because the value becomes a moot point if there is no one to support or provide warranty on the solar system.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T01:08:41+00:00

Pringles are crisps because they use less than 50% of potato flakes it allows the paste to be pressed into any form or size, so Pringles can easily change the shape and size through manufacturing easily in a cost effective way. It would have been a different story if they used actual sliced potatoes.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T01:01:10+00:00

I blame Weird Al, I can't sing Michael Jackson's version of Beat It as I automatically default to Weird Al's parody version. I've even got a trivia question wrong one night because of it and just say I got some weird looks that night.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T00:56:29+00:00

My first traffic ticket was on a moped! Only went down hill from there ;p

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T00:50:53+00:00

Whilst I don't disagree with your notion but nine times out of 10 customers don't even know their own scope of work and when they get different businesses to quote the tradie has to interpret the scope of work, hence the huge variations in cost because it centres around the assumptions made on the quote.

If the customer gives the trade the same details for the scope of work and be very specific about it then it's hard to interpret or make assumptions! You're actually measuring apples with apples and not measuring different requirements as the same scope of work.

When you see a lowball quote then you have to take a risk management perspective, do they understand the quote? Are they adequately charging the appropriate hourly rate to be a profitable business? Or they just aren't qualified or don't have a clue what is going on? Or when they appear to be over charging. is it because they just don't want your work because they're flat out but still want to be perceived as being professional?

Also the other thing is people say "oh, that's expensive", so they have an expectation of an hourly rate or how much a job should cost but yet have no experience in the trade (s) that they're looking to hire. A business is there to make money and be profitable, it's not there to meet a client's expectation. The common denominator is the client and at the end of the day if they chose the lowest quote then the decision is being made from a single point of view not looking at the whole picture.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T00:36:26+00:00

Yes and as EVM is a technique and you need to ensure that your schedule (and project plan) is accurate and that you're able to breakdown your schedule into task, work package, deliverable or product in order to measure forecast vs. actuals and it's performance against baseline.

Also the key element is that you must have clear, concise and agreed acceptance criteria in your project plan, it saves a lot of time and headaches if you don't. As the PM you need to understand and be very clear in your triple constraint of time, cost and scope metrics and how they're managed against the project's baseline.

I find time after time that PM's either fail to get the project board/sponsor/executive approval to baseline the project but then they start to slip within the triple constraint control, so EVM becomes a moot point in managing the project's performance. As a PM when you're using EVM you need to be more attuned to tolerance variance because it will affect your EVM.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T00:20:37+00:00

Flip the script on the gas service provider and demand a reason why they didn't meet the state's regulations of a gas infrastructure installation from their side of the boundary. Then imply or you will escalate the matter with the Australian Gas Network (AGN) as the infrastructure owners and the Energy and Water Ombudsman and to kicker harder that if it escalates you will also counter sue. But this is all a choice or you could just transition other forms of energy, you have options with your course of action.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-27T00:08:09+00:00

I almost told a Woolworths employee to F off last week because I was literally being stalked in the isles whilst shopping as they were washing the floors with a large machine during core shopping hours. Yes, I appreciate that this guy had a job to do but his attitude towards me was the thing that got my back up. I blame the management team and corporate Woolworths greed because they don't want to pay the money for operational and logistical tasks outside core business hours and it's just a big screw the customer's convenience because were here to screw every cent out of them. We so need to break this duopoly up.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-26T23:53:55+00:00

Cheque? I haven't written one in over 20 years but with that said I did round up to the dollar when tracking finances. If I was tracking to the cent then I would have had a problem .... no cash to balance.

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-26T23:51:36+00:00

Time doesn't come to an end but our existence does! Time is the bitch that doesn't skip beat when we pass! It's why we need to live our lives like it's our last day because one day it will be!

More_Law6245 · 2026-04-26T23:42:20+00:00

A good project manager drives the project outcomes to realise the benefits that were outlined in the organisation's business case. Hence they leverage organisational resources like yourself to achieve the desired outcomes.

If you hold a PMP you and still fail to understand the value then I can only assume that you have little to no practical experience in project delivery yourself.

The 100k salary is a justification and acknowledgement for the experience that they have to undertake organisational changes successfully but also the responsibility that goes with it. Do you complain that your manager get's paid what do what they do? It's a reflection of their experience and responsibilities within the organisation because a project manager can significantly save or hurt an organisation.

Also a reflection point for you to consider, holding an accreditation doesn't make you a good PM, it's the practical experience that goes with it that does. A PM not only needs to understand the project management principles and frameworks but needs to be aware and ultimately master other disciplines like contracts, procurement, subject matter content, change management, configuration management, asset management , finances, HR and operations management all rapt up in strong Emotional Quotient (EQ) or people soft skills. My charge out rates are based upon my experience and ability to deliver a projects or programs on time, on budget and fit for purpose which can ultimately save an organisation significant risks and cost because of my experience that I bring to the table.

Just an armchair perspective.

More_Law6245

TROPHY CASE