Rick's b.log - entry 2025/01/19

Entitled employers

What makes us a team?

This is not just a job, this is a vocation.

There are certain attributes which make us a great team:

We happily do a lot of extra work in our own time

We committed to this business so always volunteer to attend the events held

We always help out our fellow team members without being asked

We are always willing to go the extra mile

We do it for the love not the money

We look forward to coming to work everyday

We class ourselves as a family not just colleagues

We are happy to always contribute to the business in our own way which impacts positively

We come to work even when we are un-well as we understand the impact it has on our teammates

We tell people when we are not feeling 100% so they know why we are not our usual self

We are open and honest and if there is something bothering us, we will talk about it

We do not sit down - we understand this job means we are on the go all day

We do not moan about our aches and pains that's life

WORKING HARD
FOR SOMETHING WE
DONT CARE ABOUT
IS CALLED STRESS.
WORKING HARD FOR
SOMETHING WE LOVE
IS CALLED PASSION.

I'm sure you can see why it went viral - even the Daily Fail did an article on it.

Let's look at this.

• This is not just a job, this is a vocation.
  The difference between job and vocation is the implication that a vocation is worthy of dedication. I don't know what punkywalrus' job was, but let's just say that cancer research is a vocation. Cleaning up stuff is a job.
• We happily do a lot of extra work in our own time
  Absolutely NOT. Employers need to understand that there is a very simple agreement underpinning the whole arrangement. I trade my time, and some of my skills (those relevant to my assigned job) in exchange for money. That's it. I'm not your slave. I don't "take work home", and about the only work-related thing I'll do on my own time is applying for days off. I don't think my boss has noticed yet, but when I'm given the forms for my yearly interview to fill out, I simply load the copy I scanned years ago and overlaid text onto, change a few words, print it. The odd ten minutes I'll accept. Anything longer? Paid work time or it won't get done.
• We committed to this business so always volunteer to attend the events held
  I think that is supposed to be "we are committed". Again, if I am representing the business at a business event, I expect business pay.
• We always help out our fellow team members without being asked
  I would say "this should be normal" (my company's employee charter says the same thing), but note that some people react in a hostile manner to help that wasn't asked for. Sometimes, after enough of that, you just stop offering to help.
• We are always willing to go the extra mile
  110% effort in exchange for 110% salary.
• We do it for the love not the money
  I absolutely do it for the money.
• We look forward to coming to work everyday
  Not always. I don't dislike the job, it's certain people.
• We class ourselves as a family not just colleagues
  This is the biggest scam that businesses pull on employees. No, you're not a family. You have a shared objective, that is all.
• We are happy to always contribute to the business in our own way which impacts positively
  This is highly dependent upon recognition. If we contribute and a higher-upper always gets the kudos for our ideas, expect contributions to cease. If we make requests that are always denied or ignored, don't expect any different from us.
• We come to work even when we are un-well as we understand the impact it has on our teammates
  You goddamn idiot. The impact that turning up to work sick has is quite often making them sick too.
• We tell people when we are not feeling 100% so they know why we are not our usual self
  No, because managers and HR will be keeping tabs to use these sorts of admissions against us.
• We are open and honest and if there is something bothering us, we will talk about it
  No, because managers and HR will be keeping tabs to use these sorts of admissions against us. Plus the intermediate managers have enough problems of their own, don't think they'll pay any attention to our concerns.
• We do not sit down - we understand this job means we are on the go all day
  Unless one is a manager, in which case a good half of their workday revolves around attending "meetings", a quarter is delegating their responsibilities to ours, and the final quarter is looking like they are doing work.
• We do not moan about our aches and pains that's life
  That is true, but I feel it is quite valid to moan about the sort of manager that writes such rubbish omitting the necessary punctuation, 'cos they aren't all that and a bag of chips.

I'll throw in one for my leftpondian friends, as I've seen this mentioned a lot on "why my job sucks" posts... If a person is going to be absent from work for whatever reason, why is it their responsibility to arrange cover? You're the manager, do your bloody job.

Bronze linguine

Typical linguine is passed through a mould that is either plastic (home made) or stainless steel (industrial). This gives the linguine a shiny smooth finish that looks lovely when coated with butter, and along with the gently rounded sides is equally pleasing to eat.
Here is a photo I included ten days ago.

This is sort-of how I usually eat linguine (cheese depending on mood).

By contrast, linguine made in a bronze mould has a much rougher texture. This is what it looks like when uncooked.

This is quite a difference.

Perhaps because of the roughness, while regular linguine cooks in about 9 minutes, this requires about 12.

Cooking by wiggling magnetics.

Here is a close-up of the rough linguine after the usual tossing in butter (not marge!) and a light peppering. The difference in texture is very apparent.

Handling is quite different as it doesn't slide off itself.

Eating it in that state was peculiar. I didn't dislike it, but my regular methods didn't work as it clung on to itself. It was, like normal linguine, sufficiently firm whilst also being correctly bendy. I find some pasta has an annoying habit of going just a little over and getting a bit of a soggy mess, but linguine retains its inner firmness even if it is cooked a little too long (just because something bleeps after n minutes doesn't always mean I'm in a position to deal with it immediately).

But in order to give this linguine a proper workout, I added a little brick of white butter sauce with shallot, which is normally intended for use with fish.

Now this is something else.

Two obervations were immediately apparent. The first is that this is a wonderful sauce to go with pasta.
The second thing is that they were not joking when they said that this method of creating pasta really holds the sauce. It wasn't unlike popping a piece of lemon into your mouth and having an explosion of juice. Well, okay, you're probably not me, so replace lemon with orange or whatever your preferred citrus is. It was the same here. Expecting a nice mouthful of pasta, it was able to squeeze out a huge amount of sauce in a way that normal linguine just can't manage.

I think... I may have found my new preferred meal. But not a comfort food replacement because it's a pain in the arse cleaning up the sauce. But very close. I think I'm going to have to stock up on that sauce, or learn how to make it myself (unless it's fiddly and annoying).

In other words, a culinary experiment that wa pleasingly successful.

Lidl grater

I went into Lidl the other day to get a pH meter, and they either didn't have any or had sold out. But I found this marked down to ten euros.

A scan of the side of the box.

It's a simple enough device. An AC motor inside a plastic body, which is geared in such a way as to rotate a clip-on 'cone' that performs the grating.

There are five of these 'cones'. There are two slicers (wide and narrow) for things like sliced cucumber, onion, apple, cheese, potato, and so on. There are two graters (wide and narrow) for cheese, chocolate, carrots, and such. Finally there is a special grater for parmesan, nuts, dry bread...

If I had to give one criticism of this device, it would be that the insertion tube is rather narrow so you won't get onion rings unless you use a very small onion. It also appears to be slightly narrower at the bottom. My second piece of cheese got stuck so I had to take everything apart to push it out and insert it diagonally.

Other than that, it did a fine job at making a mess...

Warm water got rid of this fairly easily.

...and a jar of freshly grated cheddar.

A jar of grated cheddar.

As it happened, I needed to use the entire piece of Cathedral City because they screwed up the pack closure, rendering the zip-strip thing essentially useless. I had to cut it all off to get the pack open. Bravo!

Packaging fail.

I can't help but think if mom was alive, she'd be using this for all that salady crap she used to like eating. Cucumber rings? Grated carrot? Sliced radish? Yes, yes, and more yes. She used to grow loads of radish, and eat them about as fresh as they could be.
Me? I rather imagine this won't find much use beyond the red cone (wide grating) and cheddar. I don't like sliced cucumber (it's the skin) or grated carrot (needs to be cooked), or... you get the idea. I suppose it might be useful to prep. shallots or onion quarters prior to frying, as they're a bit fiddly to slice'n'dice with a knife. But I got it with cheese in mind.

Billions of stars

Behind the house looking south west.

The insanely bright thing is Venus. The dot just to the left is Saturn and it almost looks as if the long exposure has picked up on the rings, but this is likely an optical illusion as they're not that large - they're only just visible with a 3" telescope...but it would be cool if those were the rings.
If you follow the roof up to the chimney, just to the upper right of the chimney are three stars in a diagonal line like a backslash. Moving away from the chimney are three more stars in a similar pattern. If you follow the two lowest stars in each diagonal, and keep going for about one and a half times the distance between the two diagonals, you'll come to a faint dot. That's Neptune.
The badly-scaled bright line (it's much smoother in the original photo), is that a comet?

This was taken on the Western Wilderness looking north.

So. Many. Stars.

The first thing to point out here is that a lot of these aren't easily visible even to dark adapted eyes. Not without visual aids like binoculars, telescopes, or a long exposure. Because of this it might be a little hard to spot The Big Dipper. It is tipped backwards and down left of the copyright marking.
If you find the two stars that are the far side of the ladle (opposite the handle) and draw an imaginary line between them, then follow that same path up, most of the way up the picture, until you come to a star that is brighter than the rest, that's Polaris, the Pole Star.

Finally, out front looking east-south east.

Out front.

Let's see then... Bright thing at the top, Jupiter. Bright thing over on the left, Mars. You ought to be able to spot Orion.
Uranus is off the top of the photo (up and right from Jupiter, but far enough up that I'd have to cut out the drive/tree), otherwise we'd have been able to spot six of the planets in two photos. Well, five isn't bad.
For reference, the missing ones (Mercury and Pluto if you're a traditionalist) are both in close proximity to the Sun so simply wouldn't be visible at the moment.

Kitty mess

Lovely.

I have, for numerous years, put Anna's discarded food sachets into a black binliner. When it's full, it gets thrown out and a new bag started.
Only something decided to rummage in the bag. And not just rummage, but rampage.

I took an old bin down, put a bag into it, and picked up all of the sachets to tidy up the mess.

Much better.

This morning there was a different sort of rampage. Packs of dogs, tooting horns, yelling and shouting, and enough gunshots that somebody ought to be taking home a trophy. I trust that the cat food mess and the dead whatever (probably a wild boar) are not coincidences. So, from me, I hope they kicked the carcass in the balls.

Vending machine key

+Sector: 8
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 9
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 10
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 11
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 12
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 13
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------
+Sector: 14
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
A0A1A2A3A4A50F00FFFF------------

Whatever encryption key is being used, it isn't one known to my software. Now, this isn't to say that it would be "secure". The original MiFare keys have a known weakness and this can be compromised using some sort of NFC reader and some cracking tool such as mfoc.
That being said, buying an NFC reader and setting up Linux on a Pi (which will probably need a newer Pi than the spare Pi1 that I have, I'm not using any of my RISC OS systems) just to see if I can get myself a free €0,35 hot chocolate might be an interesting proof of concept exercise, but it's hardly economically viable given that I don't plan on ripping off the machine using a key with an ID registered to me...
So I guess that's the end of that story. Oh well.

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Rob, 20th January 2025, 02:09

Place I worked ~2000 +/-3, boss treated us like family. Just like we were all six years old.

jgh, 20th January 2025, 20:00

I'll happily work in my own time - if it's something I'm doing specifically to make my job easier.    Close to every job I've been in I've rewritten the "process scripts" (or whatever you call them) after the first few days of scribbling loads of notes on whatever documentation they have provided, and re-written it to a) make sense, and ideally b) fit on a single sheet of A4 so I can use it as a task completion tick-sheet.    That one hour or so of sitting down and repairing their crap paperwork sometime in the first week, and a few tweeks as I go, saves me loads of time and frustration in the following months.    Plus, of course, being a contractor, I spend about a hour of my time at the end of the week going through my bookings for the following week, working out where they are and preparing the schedules and routes. I can't do that during "work" time because I don't have access to my computer, my printer, and my only access to my email is through the letterbox of attempting to read it on a smartphone.

jgh, 20th January 2025, 20:06

I'm currently fighting my work tablet trying to get the next process documents "out" of the tablet so I can actually read the ****ing thing on a an actual computer, and print it out to have as a instant to-hand reference. "Sorry, your organisation has disabled this action". G&%$££%£$!!!"£&& public sector organisation that rhymes with ghost apophis.

Rick, 20th January 2025, 21:48

"public sector organisation that rhymes with ghost apophis"  You're working for them? Oh, the shame! I hope the pay is good.

jgh, 21st January 2025, 20:20

The pay is slightly more than minimum wage. Slightly less slightly more now, as minimum wage has increased, and is rapidly approaching in the rear-view mirror.

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