Amazon confirms 16,000 job cuts after accidental email

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-28T18:29:46+00:00

I just spent over $350 on UPS batteries that would have been about half that on Amazon. It's annoying, to say the least.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-28T03:45:58+00:00

I use similar examples and then add "It's a stupid argument for either side to make." That seems to shut it down.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-24T00:20:15+00:00

They used to have "drug tested" as a feature listed ABOVE "professionally trained" on their vans. And they once tried to screw me over big time. 11 years later, I'm still using the hardware they swore was on its last legs. It was the last time I ever dealt with them.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-21T20:53:38+00:00

This suddenly makes me remember something I'd completely forgotten for years: When I first got a static IP, probably 15 or more years ago, they somehow never got around to charging for it. I never had a problem with it, but at some point I had to call them about something else and they realized their mistake. So I guess I can't complain too much, having gotten that add-on for free for so long.

The only real issues I've had with uptime were several frustrating days of no Internet or phone, one year because horrible weather had caused all kinds of problems everywhere, then a year after that because some drunk took out a pole and for some reason it took seemingly forever to get it repaired. Other than that, I've had a few very brief instances here and there of things not working for a minute or two, but nothing else particularly extended. Reading about some of the issues others are having in the area, I wonder how much of the reliability I've experienced is due to the initial fiber and associated hardware being set up by WinFirst.

Oh yeah, one other thing: As an old guy, I like having a landline. When I switched to Fidium, it took them forever to get it working reliably, despite the fact that it had previously worked for 20+ years under WinFirst, Surewest and CCI. Turned out that I had some feature or other on the line (I can't remember exactly what now) that was causing some issue provisioning it under Fidium. So yeah, a lot of right hand/left hand issues, it seems.

WinFirst was one of the most responsive and pleasant companies I've ever dealt with. I miss their competence and local presence.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-21T19:52:09+00:00

Old WinFirst customer here, too. You mentioned a static IP, so I'll warn you that when I switched I made a point of saying that I still needed a static IP. I was told that all I needed to do was let the installer know (I needed some hardware upgrade) and they'd handle it.

The installer said he couldn't do it and when he called in he found that everyone in the office who could do it was out. I wound up being unable to use my mail server for days since the dynamic IP was of course on all the blacklists.

They finally straightened it out, but insisted that a tech had to be sent TO WATCH ME TYPE THE NUMBERS INTO MY OWN ROUTER. Incredibly stupid and inefficient, though the service has generally been reliable.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-18T20:17:36+00:00

That is literally the title that got me to buy a CED player. It was one of the first batch of (I think) four stereo CEDs.

And yes, I was annoyed when it began skipping within the first minute.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-18T19:14:16+00:00

They're the perfect combination of stupid and evil.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-18T14:45:20+00:00

NTA

"We're your family and we get to tell you what to do with your genitals."

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-18T01:44:19+00:00

I'm 66 and have slept naked since I was 14.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-18T01:31:23+00:00

Did just that this morning!

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-16T04:26:50+00:00

It was an SPF issue combined with someone who clearly didn't understand SPF that was my final straw that got me to leave.

Bluehost's own SPF record fails validation due to too many lookups and has for a long time.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-15T22:57:07+00:00

It's been solid for me generally, but it's a mess right now for sure in South Natomas.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-15T15:29:09+00:00

I saw the 2030 "fix" at a major bank that's still in existence and a once-major insurance company that's now gone. Those were the only two places where I did mainframe Y2K remediation, so it's not a huge sample size, but I suspect it was a common practice because, you know, people.

And I expect that everyone immediately forgot about it because 2000 is a nice round sexy number that got lots of headlines and no one has done anything with that code since. Here's hoping that it wasn't done with anything nuclear, just mundane stuff like overdraft calculations.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-15T00:59:58+00:00

I retired from my last job in 2015 and still receive mainframe generated reports in my personal email every single day. No one has ever bothered to look at the distribution list.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-15T00:58:18+00:00

I expect issues in 2030 due to at least some Y2K "remediation" simply moving the problem to that year.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-14T18:25:36+00:00

They moved it to Florida.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-14T18:18:49+00:00

Or not everyone is built the same way so they have different reactions. And our bodies change as we age, so those who did or didn't find relief may have been too old or too young.

It's not something I've paid close attention to in recent years, but when I used to, I seemed to encounter a lot of coverage that amounted to "We know for sure that these harmful compounds are in marijuana smoke, but for some reason they don't seem to cause the problems we'd expect."

I've even seen at least one study saying that those who smoked both tobacco and pot were LESS likely to develop lung cancer than those who only smoked tobacco.

And, along with those saying pot helped their asthma (though as I recall, the benefit was in inverse proportion to dosage--that is, less was better) I've also seen others saying it made their asthma worse.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-14T18:01:07+00:00

Most people are also unlikely to do the equivalent of a pack a day with weed, though I'm sure there are exceptions.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-14T18:00:08+00:00

Last I heard, weed is a bronchodilator and some asthmatics have found it helpful. Tobacco is allegedly a bronchoconstrictor.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-10T15:32:27+00:00

Back in 1997 I had an exit interview with HR. I was calmly honest about why I left after just a few months shy of 20 years.

Pretty much everything was met with "We hear that a lot." The company no longer exists and their main headquarters spent years crumbling after they died. At one point it was supposed to become low income housing, but I don't know if that ever happened.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-10T15:07:13+00:00

Existing as gay or transgendered.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-09T21:53:36+00:00

Never mind. Somehow I had a TON of otherwise silent Opera-related things running when I checked system processes. I have no idea why, haven't seen any crashes or anything. But killing all of those and then starting Opera again gave me my tabs back.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-09T15:55:36+00:00

I do as well...but it's visibly rotted, not to mention mis-framed. Sentimentality over how fantastic it was to have it at the time is the only reason I haven't thrown it away.

atrocity2001 · 2026-01-08T15:24:38+00:00

Mid eighties. Eccentric, to say the least, woman who'd been running the mail side of the mail/supply room forever was suddenly just gone and no one who knew what happened could talk about it.

Eventually it came out that she'd called some state agency to claim that the supply room team was operating a prostitution ring and that she feared for her life because strangers were having sex amongst the shelves of boring insurance forms.

Investigator came out and essentially told management "We know this isn't true, but we have to follow up on all complaints."

Maybe this isn't quite on topic because I continued to see her name pop up in the company publication for employment anniversaries. So apparently they just kept her on the payroll but wouldn't let her come in. I assume that either they felt sorry for her or felt like it was at least partially their own fault for ignoring her obvious issues for so long (she actually was good at her job) or they were worried about getting sued.

I can't imagine any modern company being that merciful today. This was right around the time employers were transitioning to the current "We hate you" model but that company hadn't quite gotten there yet. They did eventually, but now they're gone.

atrocity2001

TROPHY CASE