Back when I lived with my parents, I had an extended family member who worked in hospitality in Atlantic City. Normally her hotel doesn’t allow pets, but I guess this one guy was rich enough to be an exception to the rule, as he wanted to stay and gamble but had a new puppy that couldn’t be left alone. She made a social media post asking if anyone would be available to dog-sit for him last-minute. I was the first to reply.

I made several hundred dollars by sitting in a random hotel room and playing games on my computer while a sweet puppy slept on my lap. The man expected to be out late, but he came back early and still paid me for the full time.

It was awesome. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Those poor kids. The presents under the tree were the last gifts from their mom they’d ever receive. Thank goodness the mom had the awareness to send her son out of the house, and that the baby was unharmed. No matter where they go from here, the older kids, at least, will never be able to look at Christmas the same way again.

I learned recently that Yoko Ono was a huge inspiration for the B-52’s. Apparently John Lennon once heard them playing (before they broke out in fame) and immediately recognized her style in their music.

I thought it was an interesting bit of trivia.

There’s a dessert place near where I grew up that used to have a punchcard system, a “buy 10, get 1 free” kind of deal. It was great.

But at one point, they ended that. With a proud announcement, they instead said customers would get a free treat on their birthdays.

They close at the start of autumn and open just before spring.

Boy, this deal really worked out well for us winter-babies! 🙃

It’s such a strange thing to get hostile about. Ironically, it low-key bugs me that we put the dollar sign before the number it’s indicating. “$64” is read as “sixty-four dollars,” not “dollars sixty-four.” So why write it like that? (Not rhetorical, I really want to know. I tried looking up this question to find out the answer, but haven’t found anything conclusive.) Putting the currency symbol behind the number makes more sense, like how some countries write the Euro. (Which also explains why some people might not intuitively place the dollar sign before the number - it’s their native convention and it follows clear logic.)

So maybe the point was ignorance or fear of the foreign? Or a misguided attempt at English language purity? Or they’re a former Redditor who hasn’t quite shaken off the Reddit “pointless, hostile hot-take” mentality?

I don’t have control over a lot of things with my work laptop, since it’s owned/controlled by the company. However, if it doesn’t require an install, then I’ll try that when I get back on Monday. We use Chromebooks (ugh), but any way I could get around ads would be a blessing. Thank you for the suggestion, I’m open to any ad-blocking options I could use.

I’m proud of y’all. My friends in high school in the 00s were the ones doing such hacking, so I can easily imagine this. Good times, good people. I’m glad to hear about other defiant, tech-savvy types out there.

Yep, it bugs me too. As an educator that uses YouTube because some things simply aren’t available on my work computer, there’s only so much I can do. I mute the ads when I can, and skip them as soon as the option becomes available. Sadly, I can’t control my coworkers.

I mentioned this in a different comment on this post, but one thing I’ve been doing to counteract the ad-onslaught is to say, “Boo, ads” whenever they play. My kids think it’s funny. One has started to imitate me.

I can see other kids (that I don’t work with) reacting properly to ads. When my coworker put music from YouTube on for them on the day before Christmas break, one of the kids took it upon herself to go up to the laptop and skip the ads every time they came up. It was heart-warming in many ways.

So yeah. I can’t do much, but some of us are trying.

I use YouTube sometimes with the kids I work with. For like a solid week in November, every single ad was for the new Furby. I mute ads when I can and skip them as soon as the option becomes available, but the ads made me cringe (the new one looks freaky. It’s long. Like the original wasn’t nightmare-inducing enough.)

I was worried the ad would influence the kid. But thankfully, he showed no interest in it when asked what he wanted for Christmas. In fact when the ads started getting replaced, he made some comment about Furby going bye-bye.

It also helps that he looks up to me, and at some point months ago I started saying, “Boo, ads” whenever they came up. Now he thinks it’s funny to boo at commercials. It makes me smile. :)

I’m a sheep for people I get a crush on.

By which I mean, I become reduced to a fuzzy, mindless creature that can’t say anything beyond incoherent bleating sounds.

I understand that, I’ve lived with gas ovens most of the time as well. Interestingly, the studio I just moved into (which is freshly converted from a garage) has a new fridge and an electric flat-top range. But I rent from a lone guy, not from a standardized apartment community. So maybe that’s why he invested in the good stuff. Renovating an entire complex is way pricier than setting up a single apartment.

I also think I just got lucky. It’s not a perfect place - the insulation sucks, there are paint flecks on the floor and kitchen cabinets, the shower hot/cold are backwards (which confused the hell out of me at first. I thought my hot water wasn’t working) and I saw a mouse recently. But I can’t complain, because the landlord is responsive and the good appliances help balance out the negatives.

I used to prefer gas ranges. I grew up with one and really liked that we could still cook when the power was out. Also, fire. I just… kinda like fire.

But learning about the dangers has changed my view. Funny enough, I recently moved into a new place and have an electric stove for the first time. My heart is upset at me, but I can’t deny that it’s better. Not only are there fewer dangers, but it seems to heat up really fast. Much faster than any of the gas stoves I’ve used (which have been in almost every house and apartment that I’ve lived in til now.) I set a pot to boil, go sit down, and it’s bubbling before the YouTuber I’m watching finishes gargling their sponsor’s balls.

(Kidding, of course. I always skip the sponsor placement.)

Wait, what? Writing things down helps promote memory. Quite the contrary to your claim, writing is a type of exercise for the brain.

It bugs me when people complain about weather forecast inaccuracies. They’re pretty accurate overall. Even when they’re not perfect, I like to ask people, “What other job involves predicting the future and gets it right as often as they do?” Meteorologists are human, they’re not magic.

There seems to be this pervasive and ignorant idea that just because advanced technology exists, literally everything should be possible. From expecting a perfect forecast, to wondering why blind people still exist. (I once dated someone with ocular albinism. The source of his blindness was a deficit of melanin production in his retina. There is no surgery to fix that, but even grown adults would ask, “Why can’t he just get Lasik?” I mean, where to even start…)

I would consider that a relief, tbh. Now if it were the other way around…

I know nothing about IT and most of your comment went over my head, but this -

The moment, and I mean the first sign that she’s not 100% totally understanding what’s being discussed, she shuts down, gets dismissive and short, and refuses to hear anything further.

is a situation that I’m intimately familiar with. That’s my mom. Me, I’m the autistic daughter that had to learn and develop her social skills on her own, in her adulthood years.

I have bad news. Despite nearly 37 years of knowing this type of person, I have not found any way that can consistently bypass their issues. Their reactions are built on how they feel, emotionally. Once that emotion is tied to an idea, they are stuck there until their feelings change.

For the dynamic between me and my mom, she’s stuck in some old school thoughts (though she would deny it if told so.) Me, I’m a progressive weirdo living alternative lifestyles, and it started young. The idea of her kids making decisions she doesn’t like makes her upset, but she doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead, when she hears an idea she doesn’t like (even if it’s something we’re excited about, like going to college), she goes silent and refuses to respond beyond little snippets of, “Stop it.” Needless to say, such a response makes us feel terrible. That’s why we’ve long since stopped sharing information with her. One of my brothers even got married without immediately telling her. Yeah, and she wonders why we don’t call more often.

The good news is, there can be conditions to have things be understood. The bad news is, your relationship with her is a factor in having it go well. You’d also need time - my mom only softens up to ideas after a period of time had passed since she first learned of it. Sometimes it was weeks, sometimes it was months, but it seems she always needs a processing period to come around to things.

An important thing to note about such emotional thinkers is that the person giving them the information holds a lot of sway in how they receive that information. I’ve got a leg-up by being my mom’s daughter, as that emotional attachment carries weight. For a boss, there’s a lot more work to do… and I do not envy your situation.

Some people would recommend attempting to befriend the boss. But if you’re like me, you know that’s not going to happen. Even if you possessed the social skills to go that route, I imagine you’d find yourself exhausted by the effort in no time. I sure would. One of the reasons I dropped the idea of professional piloting was because I realized that in order to get a good job, you need to network with lots of (often rich or arrogant) people. I just plain don’t have it in me to keep up such a charade.

Regardless, I’ve encountered the same behavior in bosses before as well. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to properly deal with them… short of going to their higher-ups or HR. Sometimes the higher-ups are as bad as the boss. Sometimes HR doesn’t care. Sometimes somebody does care, but the bad boss targets you for having reported them. I’ve seen it all, I’ve worked under their thumbs, I’ve seen how rusty the gears are all the way up the machine.

Of note, I have learned that the phrase “hostile work environment” is more likely to get HR to stand up and act. This is a situation worth documenting. You might want to start taking note of the conversations, the specific words she uses, along with times and dates of when they occurred. Showing a pattern is important. It’s also worth writing down the ways in which her behavior impacts your job performance.

As to dealing with immediate issues that need to be communicated to your boss, you might want to check your colleagues and see if any of them have better luck when talking to her. Although direct communication is usually the best option, it’s possible your boss already has unclear negative feelings about you, and that’s making it more difficult for her to listen to your words. (Sorry, bud.) Maybe having someone be the liaison between you would help her listen to the issues you’re dealing with. I’ve had to do that before, and though it sucked to need another person to do the talking, at least some problems got taken care of.

Anyway, best of luck to you and your colleagues. I don’t personally expect such a person to change, so I hope you find a way to wriggle out from under her irrational control.

Edit: Oh, and Merry Christmas to you, too!

When somebody unfamiliar with reading ingredients lists wants to get me something, I tell them to look at the allergen list first. Yeah, a lot of things aren’t listed, but depending on the product, it can work as a cheat-sheet to easily know when something won’t work.

My management team at work is pretty good to me. The management wants to include options for me when they do things like bring in ice cream for everyone. The first time they tried, they bought Lactaid brand (for those that don’t know, it’s a popular option for those with lactose intolerance. However, it still explicitly uses dairy.) I had to be the gentle bearer of bad news, but it was an opportunity to show them how to read an ingredient list. I pointed out the allergen list first and showed how milk was the first advisory listed. I told them that most vegan ice creams will explicitly say “vegan” these days, and you can find them at most supermarkets where we live. My bosses felt bad, but promised to make it up to me.

And they did. They got So Delicious ice cream bars next time. 🙂

I can’t speak for other countries, but dairy farms are absolutely subsidized in the US.

Just yesterday I was in a health food store examining the ingredient list on a bag of popcorn.

“Natural butter flavoring.” No source listed, hmm…

Allergen alert, “Processed on equipment used by dairy.” Okay, that’s not a dealbreaker.

But the thing that made me put the bag back on the shelf was the fact that other products by that brand (which I can’t recall the name of right now) made notes on the packaging when they were vegan. The one I was looking at just said “gluten-free.” I figure that if the company wants to put little symbols showing when things are gluten-free, allergen-free, vegan, etc., they probably would do so with everything that fits the criteria, right? To appeal to more customers? The fact that it didn’t specifically say it was vegan, even though other products did, made me suspicious.

I’m in the US, our laws concerning labeling the source of food additives suck. I can’t imagine why the company would’ve omitted explicitly saying the product was vegan if that was the case, so I erred on the side of caution. I ended up getting Hippeas and Vegan Rob’s puffs instead.

This reminds me of people who get upset when somebody in a wheelchair stands up or walks. Some people have disabilities where they can physically stand and walk, but only for brief periods. So if they need to reach a can high on the shelf and nobody’s there to help them, yeah, some wheelchair users will stand up and get it themselves. It doesn’t mean they’re faking, or looking for attention, or whatever other bullshit such judgemental asswipes come up with.

Likewise, people with allergies can have reactions that differ from person-to-person and that range in severity. It appears so obvious, which makes it wild how some folks can’t seem to comprehend that people can be different from each other.