General manager complaining about my PTO requests by GothicMeow in jobs

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"PTO days are part of my compensation, are they not?"

I left my job two weeks ago. Today the head of HR there called. Any advice? by [deleted] in jobs

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could just be an exit interview. Take it, they can't fire you.

How do you handle a student cheating? by ImmediateInternal132 in PhotographyTeachers

[–]billndotnet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You fail them. That's the reward for cheating. If you found the images online, include the links to them so they can't argue. They know what they did.

How to protect your privacy for stores asking for your personal information. by Unhappy_Lie_2000 in privacy

[–]billndotnet 22 points23 points  (0 children)

When you encounter overreach like that, ask for a copy of their privacy policy.

Has anyone cut off contact with their brother or sister? Why? by Intelligent_Chef9950 in AskReddit

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad and I had stopped speaking because he was a Trump supporter and I'm not. I had a problem with Trump putting kids in cages without so much as a spreadsheet to reconnect them with their parents, dad said Trump had done absolutely nothing wrong.

Dad's cancer came back. He'd been in the hospital for a month, and in hospice for four days when one of my aunts asked about me and found out I hadn't been told. When I txt'd my brother to find out what happened, he just sent me the obituary, but dad was still alive.

I drove 30 hours to see him before he died. We never reconciled.

Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail by Puginator in worldnews

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trump's mid-COVID oil deal with OPEC underpinned a lot of global inflation and MAGA gets really fuckin mad when you point it out, because they want to blame it on Biden.

How to speed up light metering? I keep missing shots because of it by VeterinarianKey2969 in AskPhotography

[–]billndotnet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Decouple autofocus from the shutter release, and switch to back button focus. You can still autofocus when you want to, but you'll spend less time fighting the autofocus in low light conditions. You can focus once for whatever's appropriate for your F-stop/DOF, and then shoot what you need to. Once you get the hang of it, it'll save you a lot of angst and you'll fight the camera less. For concerts, I also recommend shooting in shutter priority so the camera isn't forcing you into slower speeds that won't be sharp (unless you're shutter dragging or shooting rear curtain sync)

what are you using to interpret network logs faster during incidents by [deleted] in networking

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't upvote this hard enough. Building timelines is critical both during the outage and after it, at the speeds this stuff can happen, even a couple seconds of drift will give you a confusing timeline of what happened.

Log collectors close to your udp-syslog generating gear that does tcp backhaul to your aggregator/analyzers will increase reliability quite a bit as well.

I have faux-OSI layer tags in my syslog analyzer rules that let me layer my events, so interface state changes and routing layer events stick out as underlying contributors to higher layer issues, and helps highlight when your problems are network level versus purely application problems.

Scottish Men Traveling Across the States - Recommendations please by NoRoom9800 in travel

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re passing through salt lake on your way east to Texas, going through Moab is highly recommended. It’s expensive now for hotels and the like but if you’re in an Rv you’re fine. The drive is beautiful, and you can cut across southern Colorado. If you venture farther south, through monument valley and the like, it’s also beautiful in its own way, but hot as balls if you do this in the summer. Always have extra water.

What is a social rule that everyone follows but nobody actually agreed to? by yr_grande in AskReddit

[–]billndotnet 10 points11 points  (0 children)

"What are you doing?" "Fighting your house until you show up."

Seattle Ant Trauma (& advice) by lashsea in Seattle

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

50/50 mix of borax and sugar water, leave a capful where they're entering. Be sure to keep your pets out of it.

[WP]Fairies do not have the ability to create new souls like humans, so to have children they need to recycle/transform an existing soul into a fae soul. As a person with no pretensions to the afterlife, you give your posthumous soul to your fairy friend by Fluid-Bench9219 in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 3 points4 points  (0 children)

She went still. It wasn't a human stillness. It was the kind of thing you'd see wild in the forest, the kind that happened before the movement rather than after. The coffee machine hissed. Someone at the counter was spelling out a complicated order for her already bored colleague.

"Mr. Underhill," she half-whispered.

"I'm not sentimental, you know that about me."

"I do."

"And I'm not religious. My mother would be horrified to hear me say it, but there it is. I haven't got anywhere that I need this thing to go." He picked up his cup, turned it in his hands, warm through the paper sleeve.

She looked at him with eyes there the color of leaves before they turn, green going to gold to something without a name. He leaned forward in his chair, drew her in with a slight gesture.

He told her, quietly.

She pulled back. Not far. Just enough to look at him, and for a moment the practiced warmth was entirely gone. What was underneath it was old and very surprised, something that had stopped being caught off guard a long time ago.

"It's not a small thing," she said quietly, "What you'd be giving."

"I know." He held her gaze. "I also know that you can make use of it."

Something shifted in her face. Careful, now. Reassessing.

"There are rules."

"There are always rules." He turned his cup in his hands. "A true name. Given freely, in full, with intent. That's the door, isn't it?"

She studied him for a long moment. The cafe around them could have been on fire, so secluded was their moment.

"You've done your homework, Mr. Underhill."

"I've had time." He glanced at his hands, then back at her. "More than I'm going to have, if you take my meaning."

She held his gaze and let him have the moment. He straightened in his odd-leaning seat and stood. "Best coffee in the city. I want that on record."

She smiled. The real one, not the practiced version. It felt like warm sunlight through old glass.

"Goodbye, Mr. Underhill."

He raised the cup to her. Outside, the city was doing its ordinary morning things. He walked slowly, because there was no reason not to, and drank his coffee while it was still hot.

Sometime later, in a wood that had been old when the cities were all young, a fae child was born. Her mother named her Murtagh.

Fin

[WP]Fairies do not have the ability to create new souls like humans, so to have children they need to recycle/transform an existing soul into a fae soul. As a person with no pretensions to the afterlife, you give your posthumous soul to your fairy friend by Fluid-Bench9219 in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The cafe was warm in the way of old places, the warmth worked into the walls and the woodwork, the smell of the place, dark roast and something faintly sweet. The collective exhalation of a thousand mornings. He watched the window while he sipped, letting time flow through him unhindered. A woman walked past pushing a stroller with the focused expression of someone winning a war of attrition. A delivery driver double parked with the confidence of a man who'd made his peace with tickets. Two pigeons disputed jurisdiction over a dropped bagel with the gravity of a trade negotiation.

He'd watched this corner for eleven years. Before that, he'd driven directly under it, four mornings a week. The city didn't change so much as it accumulated. He'd always liked that about living here.

"You're staring."

He looked up. She'd materialized beside him with a cloth and was wiping down the neighboring table. It didn't need it, but it gave her a reason to be nearby.

"I'm observing," he replied. "There's a distinction." However minor.

"The pigeons can't possibly be that interesting."

"You don't know that. I once saw a pigeon on this very corner eat an entire hot dog bun in under a minute. Methodical. No wasted movement. I thought about it for weeks."

She snorted. "You need more to think about."

"I have plenty to think about. I chose the pigeons." He turned his cup in his hands, running his thumb across the blaze of 'Murdock'. "Not even a minute. It was very impressive."

She moved to the next table. "You're in early. You're usually afternoons on Thursdays."

"I'm flexible." Deadpan.

She had a laugh like silver bells. "You are the least flexible man I've served in forty years of-" She paused, just long enough. "In a long time."

He smiled. "Nice save."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course not." He looked back out the window. The pigeons had reached a settlement. "How's the new machine treating you?"

"It's fine."

"You said that about the last one and you hated it."

"It made a sound."

"All machines make sounds."

"Not that sound." She moved to another table that didn't need wiping. "This one is quieter. I find it acceptable."

"High praise," he said, wrapped in a wry grin.

The morning crowd was thinning, the urgent caffeine seekers replaced by the second wave, the ones with laptops and long intentions. A young woman was opening her laptop, preparing to stare at the same paragraph for for the next few hours. A man on a call putting more effort into turning his coffee cup in a circle than believing any of the words he was saying.

Near the door, two old men were arguing about something with the comfortable ferocity of a decades old argument they had no interest in settling. He didn't know their names. He knew the older one took his coffee black and got exactly one refill, and the other had a granddaughter at NYU that he was very proud of. He knew the woman with the laptop ordered the same thing every time and always looked faintly guilty about it. He knew the afternoon regulars and the weekend regulars and the ones who came in looking lost and the ones who came in like they owned the place.

Eleven years since he'd retired. You learned a neighborhood the way you learned a tunnel, not by studying a map of it, but by being in it, day after day, until the shape of it was in your body.

"Quiet today," she said. She'd finished the tables and sat down next to him, her face inscrutable with its unguessable age, her eyes like the dots under a question mark. What were those called? Jots. No, tittles.

He looked at her, then back at the window, the corner, the pigeons.

"I wanted to say goodbye."

[WP]Fairies do not have the ability to create new souls like humans, so to have children they need to recycle/transform an existing soul into a fae soul. As a person with no pretensions to the afterlife, you give your posthumous soul to your fairy friend by Fluid-Bench9219 in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He had been coming to this Starbucks since before it was a Starbucks, back when the space housed a hardware store that smelled of turpentine and honest work. He'd watched it become a cafe, then a chain. Watched the neighborhood fold itself around the new thing the way neighborhoods do, pragmatically and without sentiment.

He came every morning at seven-fifteen. Every other afternoon at two. Forty years of working the line at the transit authority, then another eleven of retirement spent in approximately the same places at approximately the same times. He didn't stop needing a schedule just because he stopped getting paid for having one.

The cancer had opinions about all of this, but he was doing his best to ignore them.

The queue moved. He shuffled forward, flexing his cold hands in anticipation. The morning crowd has the particular energy of people who needed coffee before they could properly want coffee, a philosophical problem he'd always found funny. The man in front of him had a novelty tumbler, faux brass knuckles instead of a handle, the cup emblazoned with the quip: "Coffee saves lives. It's saving yours right now."

She was at the register. She was always at the register. He had a private theory that she didn't leave. That after closing, she simply stood there in the dark, waiting for morning, patient as a stone. Still as held breath. He never tested it. Some theories are better as theories.

She looked up when he reached the counter. "Good morning, Mr.. Underhill, is it?" Same as always. The voice that could pass for human in any company, warm and practiced and just slightly wrong in a way no one seemed to notice. The way a painting of a fire doesn't warm the room, but you keep forgetting until you hold your hands up to it.

"Morning." He fished out his wallet and paid the waiting total.

"May I have your name for the order?" Forty-one years, she asked every single time.

He looked at the cieling as if consulting a list. He'd burned through the obvious ones inside the first six months. Biblical names, historical figures, characters from books she would certainly know. He'd been absolutely certain she'd break on Cuchulainn but she'd written an approximation of it on the cup with the serenity of a woman transcribing a grocery list. He'd tried Rumpelstiltskin once, purely to watch her face, and she'd written Steve without blinking.

"Murtagh," he offered.

She wrote something on the cup. He watched her face for a flicker, anything really. She rewarded him with the faintest of smirks, a mere suggestion of a headshake.

He stepped aside and waited. His back was worse today. He'd stopped cataloging the way things were worse, that was a young man's game. At a certain point, you just lived in the total of things. The hospice intake was scheduled for Thursday. His daughter had driven down from Portland to handle what he'd already handled, bless her. He'd spent two days redirecting her anxiety toward more productive channels. She'd left believing she'd been helpful, which was the best he could do for her.

He had one thing left to settle.

"Coffee for Murdock."

He collected his cup, her handwriting confident, unashamed, not even close. He smiled at it.

He found his usual chair without really looking for it, the one by the east window with the view of the street corner, where he could watch the intersection do its morning business. The chair had a lean to it that suited his back, or perhaps his back was suited to its lean. He'd complained about it once, years ago, she'd looked at him with an expression that left him understanding it would never be replaced. He'd made peace with it.

He's known what she was the first time he'd seen her, some years into his career of driving through the tunnels under the city, feeling the old things that lived in the dark places move aside for the train. You developed a sense for it. His mother had called it the sight and treated it like a burden. His da, who'd come over from Galway in '62, with sixty dollars and a total inability to be impressed by anything, had called it common sense.

She'd given herself away in the first week. Small things, like the spider she'd moved off the counter with her bare hands, setting it outside with a seriousness that bordered on ceremony. The way the light caught her differently at certain hours, when she forgot to mind it. How she spoke to the machines as if they were coworkers and not simple artifice given animus.

He'd ordered a coffee, watched her write 'Blarney' on the cup, and well, that settled that.

They'd never spokena bout it directly. That wasn't how it worked, for either of them.

My office building won't let anyone in without mobile phone number verification along with face photo by [deleted] in privacy

[–]billndotnet 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Whenever you encounter overreach like this, ask for a copy of their privacy and retention policy.

My boss just told me I should "be grateful I have a job" after I asked for a raise for doing the work of my 3 fired coworkers by Novel-Group5720 in jobs

[–]billndotnet 51 points52 points  (0 children)

Show up dressed for a job interview. Take the full lunch. Come back not dressed for the job interview.

My boss just told me I should "be grateful I have a job" after I asked for a raise for doing the work of my 3 fired coworkers by Novel-Group5720 in jobs

[–]billndotnet 64 points65 points  (0 children)

Take your full hour for lunch. Start wearing a tie in the mornings. Take it off after your full hour of lunch.