goldendesign

Since starting in tech after leaving the jewelry industry, I've worked hard to maintain our lifestyle status quo and saved/invested all the extra. I'm still learning. If I know I'm right, or believe in the direction, regardless really of who put it forward, I become the champion of the cause. Need to settle back and not ride herd every time. I've been joking for the last decade that I keep "falling up". I figure it's another one of those opportunities. @All, thanks for the words of encouragement and support. Ya'll fucking rock. Best virtual friends a guy could ask for.

The company provided me with a phone. It was always a few years behind Samsung FE edition Galaxy on shitty AT&T shitty service in Tampa. But hey, it was free. So the phone was of course logged out of it's work profile but they did provide me with options to transfer my number to a new service/line. With the glaring caveat that I had until close of business to transfer the line! So rapid-fire research and I now have the middle "Unlimited" package with Verizon and a shiny new Pixel 8!

Last year they shed 10% of our workforce, about 1500 jobs. This year they are shedding another 2k and replacing an additional 1800-2500 in Eastern Europe and India. They've been doing rolling terminations each week since the year began. Really took the air out of the room type of "efficiency initiative"

Short-sighted on them too to do that. If they had just given me the day, I'd happily have handed over the 6k lines of various code that hadn't been committed to the Git repo yet. Now they have active test processes that are going to be executed with nowhere to pull from. Oh well. They shot their own foot. I'll land on my feet. The sting will fade.

The initial shock has worn off. What their doing is some fuckery, end-stage capitalism bullshit for sure. As for how the decision that I was the one to go, I can see at least the manager's viewpoint. I was the smartest and most prolific member of his team. I delivered 16 projects last year that directly contributed to the money-making initiatives. I did this by being loud, opinionated, and usually by riding herd on the rest of the team. He's a wet wipe of a personality and a yes-man to his boss. He's also only been in the position for about 6 months as they promoted him over the rest of us. So if he has the opportunity to select his biggest threat, why not? Of course, the trouble with that is there is literally no one else on the team with the competence or skills to do the things I did. So they'll be fine today, but when things need updating or the major projects that I was in-flight on are needed, who knows? No one on my old team does any type of coding.

Wife actually works for the same company as I did. She's probably safe.

Morning One on One with my direct supervisor had a surprise guest. HR! Seems my position is slated to move overseas in their cost savings initiatives. As soon as the meeting ended my computer was remote wiped and all credentials revoked. I had about 5 minutes to email myself some contacts and that's it. I'm now no longer slowly looking for a new role, I am for REAL looking for a job. I did get paid out till the end of the month and then my severance will last for 7 more weeks. I knew I wasn't happy with the changes and was looking for a new role, but it sucks when the transition isn't your choosing.

Tchaikovsky is one of my go to authors lately. Been reading his series Shadows of the Apt (on book 6), Children of time (book 3), and just finished Expert System's Brother.

Very much like this so far too. I think I am also on episode 5/6

You're quite right. One town we will be in in Norway has a population of 280 people. We'll be there when it's just us in port but some days they have 3 (3!?!?!) cruise ships in port. That can easily be 6k people, astounding how the logistics work for things like this. I've found that Norway has less of a "Company-owned" town concept than Alaska, and we've had more freedom in booking and getting unique combinations too.

Our family trip is about 90% finalized. Five days in London, staying right near Buckingham Palace, and trying to hit as much as we can with the full 3.5 days we can. Then onto a 14-day Norwegian Fjords tour. We usually self-book a lot of our excursions as the tours handled by the cruise lines tend to be too singular in purpose or prohibitively expensive. An example of this is last year in Alaska, a helicopter ride to a glacier was $700 per person via cruise. It was a ride to the Glacier and a 30 min walk around they called a "hike". We self-booked through an adventure charter and paid about $400 per, helicoptered to the glacier basin, guided hike and climb to the main plateau, over a mile traversing the glacier fields, then on to a sled-dog camp where they hitched teams up and rode us up further and then back to the helicopter landing. Overall 4-5 hours and was worth every penny. So this year, doing much the same. But sometimes, Norwegian to English translations don't always work. I booked a trip while in Olden in January, and just now was looking at the actual receipt and saw that instead of selecting the age of my daughter, 6, I paid for 6 kids' tickets! Emailed them today and they happily adjusted the price all while laughing saying "We figured you were just a very productive family."

I live on a "Chamionship" 18-hole course. Every year there is some Valspar invitational that loads down the guard gate with people coming in. Only reason I go to the clubhouse is for Prime Rib thursadys (occasionally), and the Mothersday/Easter/Christmas brunches they do. Oh and one time last month to get the pin code for the course bathrooms. See they recently upgraded the course bathrooms with lockable doors via pin code instead of just locking at night. I use these as pit stops on my runs. No other thought of golf.

Been to Finland, Helsinki and Vaasa. Never got far enough north, nor there in the right time for northern lights. Will be in Norway for a few weeks this summer, going all the way up to Honningsvåg and back for the fjords. But will again be in summer so no Northern Lights again.

Let me rephrase, Where the fuck is it?

In the past two oil changes, I've had to put oil in the car prior. Usually a qtr or 1.5. Honda CR-V 2005 with 110k miles. That's normally barely broke in territory for Honda motors for me. Both times I mentioned it to the Honda service people and they've come back with a clean bill of health. This last one they had a source. But it doesn't make sense to me. Here's why, I declined the $85 charge to replace the "oil pan bolt" and instead took it home to look myself. Here's the picture: I asked them which bolt was leaking they said the small ones of the two. The thing is, the oil pan is to the left of the exhaust, by several inches, and when I pulled that bolt it was 10mm about 4 inches long with about an inch of thread at the tip. So it goes into that space, 3" then screws into something. When I pulled it out, no oil was on the bare bolt. It could be the larger one to the left. It wasn't a 14mm (same size as drain plug) or 10mm and I didn't have a wrench that matched to try pulling it. I cleaned everything off and left the car to sit on Sunday. There is new shiny oil pooling at the rounded-out bottom of the larger bolt here: So, Forum mechanics, what the fuck is it? Am I better off taking it to the shop again, paying the $85 knowing it's not the fucking bolt they say it is, just so they have to "fix" it to find out what's really causing the leak?