Posts made by Auspice

@jibberthehut said in Critters!:

@auspice You know, I have a client who crates her cat at night. It's not an uncommon thing :stares at her kitten: I might try this.

I mean, I know they make those big uh... cat cages? With the multiple shelves and... those things cost like, $300 or so. I know someone with one, but he uses it like: 'the front door has to be open for the next half hour while we carry something in and out.' 'I'm going to have a repair man over and I don't want the cats in his way.'

It's very short-term.

And they have room to really sprawl out, jump around, get up high like they like. Plus that $300+ price tag also pays off your guilt for caging up your cat.

And then I've seen the stories of people who keep their cat in them full-time and I feel utterly terribly horrified.

But this is just a cat I am trying to train into behaving at night. Most cats know what cat-mom sleepy time is damnit!

@insomnia said in Video Dump:

Holy shit but the internet is a weird place.

This is pretty obviously someone's transmedia marketing campaign. I don't know to what purpose (a game? movie? TV series?). Might just be a major project for school. I had to do a transmedia campaign for a project for school. I went with Twitter/Tumblr/maps.

I don't think it's some crazy, creepy malicious thing like the video leads to. They need to up their creepypasta game.

@packrat

They are so freakin' adorable.

@wretched said in General Video Game Thread:

Every game developer in the history of developing plots for the game, male or female, since the internet and likely before, has had people thinking they could do it better, and vocally explaining how it's done.

And some of them are very, very wrong.
And some? Aren't terribly far off-base. This guy had a few good points. He wasn't spouting off on some mythical, insane concept that is just... not possible or making accusations that are just sigh worthy (let's look at PUBG and Assetgate there).

I've had a lot of chats lately with narrative designers and how some of them have broken in and suggest doing so. Twine. Of which I've built a small game in and I'm working on another small narrative piece for. Twine is available to anyone.

Now, it used to be that everyone used Excel and there's a certain standardization within Excel that gets used for narrative design. I know this standard because of school. It's kind of weird, clunky, and confusing. Would Average Joe Gamer know it? Probably not.

But Twine? Well. It's open source! The most basic functionality of it is pretty gosh darn easy! Anyone can write a narrative little fun game. Spend some time with it, you could do a fair bit. Companies like Telltale Games require their narrative design apps to come with at least two Twine games in the portfolio.

Then, you have Unity having gone open source. A lot of people are using it and Udemy courses to learn how to build their own games.

So the era of 'pish posh you have no idea what you're talking about!' is coming to an end. A lot of people don't. Some are still assholes. But you can't blanket assume that no one does. Some of these people may be designing things on their own time. Writing on their own time. How many authors wrote award-winning novels alongside their full-time job (The Martian, Andy Weir)? There's been breakout, indie games that have been developed the same way. There's other aspiring devs, writers, etc. who are on Twitter, networking, doing the grind (like me) who do know things and...

...it's disheartening when some of these people will take that stance that 'if you don't work for a major company, I'm going to discredit whatever you have to say right off the bat.'

Fortunately, a lot of them don't, but I could see the ones that do just absolutely crushing an aspiring dev early in their school career. And that's sad.

@stabeest

Double-post:

Yes. It's a numbers game. And I work for a company that has a client. The client is probably the one that named me and my company wants to make them happy.

Because the client sees the numbers. See, we get progress reports sent out every week to the team. And it calls out who the top performers on the team are. A 'So our top agents this week...' Some weeks there's as many as six or seven of us. Some weeks there's only one of us.

Guess whose name has been on that list almost every week for the past three months? I think the only week I missed being on it was when I was sick a couple weeks ago.

So yes, the client is pretty much guaranteed to pull my name. All I am to them is a name and a number. I'm not a face. I am not a person. I'm numbers in a database that crunch to a positive integer that make their investors happy.

That is all I exist to be.

And it's why I desperately, intensely hate customer service.

I have a phone interview Friday (it's been rescheduled a couple times this week because the person conducting it has been busy) that I think should be good. I interviewed with the company earlier this year. They really liked me, but the job itself wasn't a good fit. This job really is. And I put the resume in Saturday evening and they emailed me Monday morning. That's... a really good sign. That's a 'you hit the top of the pile' hit.

@ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@derp said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Just refuse. Cite medical necessity. You've got the documentation for it. If they try and take retributive action, you've got a mile of proof that their actions were unreasonable given the circumstances.

And I will never understand how they would have concluded that the person with crippling social anxiety would be a good test agent for call taking.

We call this "malice."

Probably some "well she's our #1 agent for tickets and chats" YES BECAUSE THAT IS ALL TEXT-BASED.

A lot of people without anxiety, without depression, and who have never really had someone in their life who has truly suffered from one of those things have zero comprehension of what it really, truly means.

I've been fighting to get it understood, to get it across to people at work. Unfortunately, my doctor has been delayed in her end of the paperwork, so it's all just in a sort of grey area. I don't know if I can refuse under medical necessity since it's not all completed and right now it's just on my say-so and 'here I have meds.'

@killer-klown said in Critters!:

@auspice Gotta show 'em who's boss. Bunnies - and apparantly this is a thing - love to do their exercises at like 5 in the morning. So mine get thrown in indoor hutches overnight. There, they can bounce off the walls all they want and I don't have to worry about someone finding out that fluffy paws+hardwood floors+darting around at mach 9 and turning in a manner that would give a Lightcycle whiplash don't necessarily mix.

I just would have thought that after TEN MONTHS of spray bottle to the FACE repeatedly throughout the morning, he'd have gotten the message.

I have a love-hate relationship with AJ. He breaks things. He is hyper af (there is no cuddling: he will flop around, climb you, start biting at you). But Ike loves him and she needs a companion for when I am out of the house or she gets really stressed out.

But his biggest issue is he does not let me sleep. Ike sleeps through the night with me. I go to bed, she settles down between my legs and it's happy snuggle time. AJ wants to play. I'm sure at some point he naps, but within a few hours of me lying down, he is bouncing around in the window: trying to climb it, slamming himself into it (bugs outside maybe??). He climbs around my head. He's biting me. I have learned to sleep with a spray bottle in my hand. My accuracy is impeccable.

But it sends him off for 15, 20 seconds before he is back.

I am a walking zombie. This has been my life for ten months. He has not learned. But if I shut him out of the room, all he does is sit at the door, clawing at it, yowling, and slamming it around. It doesn't matter if I put Ike out, too (so that he's not alone). She ends up so miserable she just sits at the door mewling... while he joins in on his tirade.

So I took out my travel carrier from Ike's cross-country flight. The one that opens up nice and huge. I am crating my cat. I've done it twice now. I figure: ffs if a dog can handle being in a crate overnight (with less overall space), my cat can do it for a few hours.

And you know what? It's working. I put him in only once he starts acting out. He fusses at it trying to get out for a few minutes, then he just settles down and naps.

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

the lack of reports of her going on twitter rampages before

She celebrated the death of TotalBiscuit, who died from cancer. That was just at the end of May.

Now, a lot of people didn't like him, but she didn't even give the people who did (or his family) time to mourn before doing so. And his death wasn't from something self-destructive. It was cancer.

She has had a definitive record of poor behavior on Twitter before. This was not a one-off.

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

But do you honestly believe that should be a fireable offense? Or even if more than a "hey chill out on twitter girl" offense? If so then we will just have to agree to disagree.

Like I have said, prior in the thread: as a first time offense? No. But it is indicative of a greater problem. It was a massive overreaction (the guy was very polite; we have all seen vitriol and 'nerd rage' and that was very, very much not it) and she's a professional.

We probably won't find out how she is towards her coworkers / in the office unless someone comes out and tells us. But maybe this was a 'final straw' situation. Maybe she's been warned before.

And if she has? Then they did what they had to do.

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

@auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

She didn't engage in hate speech herself, but she sure did encourage it.

Also... are we talking about the same thread? The one I read was just her rant-replying to somebody whom she perceived as mansplaining and calling them an "asshat" for doing it. I don't think that's how people should treat each other on the internet, but that's still a far cry from "encouraging hate speech".

In the tweet where she RT'd him, a lot of her fans insulted him, lashed out at him, etc., and she agreed with many of them. That can easily be seen as encouraging the behavior. She may have later deleted those tweets since it very quickly blew up. But a few of those tweets did delve into hate speech. She should have ignored those. But again, she shouldn't have RT'd him in the first place. That was where the mistake was made and where this incident diverges from most others.

@faraday said in General Video Game Thread:

Now if there was some kind of larger pattern, prior warnings, a company policy against engaging with users on your social media, etc. (none of which have come to light but admittedly we don't know the whole story) then that's different.

That's why I'm saying we don't know the whole story. The way she retweeted him and attacked him? That's really, really poor behavior and shows someone incapable of taking.... well, I mean, it wasn't even criticism. She was basically trying to call attack dogs down on someone she didn't like. You just don't do that. She didn't engage in hate speech herself, but she sure did encourage it. The people who did engage in it on her behalf got replies of agreement/appreciation from her.

I'm not going to defend her. Should she have been fired? Maybe not. Not if it was a first incident. But I'm not going to call her blameless, either.

@arkandel said in Random links:

@auspice said in Random links:

@arkandel said in Random links:

@auspice You had me at Alyson Hannigan.

"...no matter how hard you work or how good you think you are, there will always be an asian who takes it to the next level."
(Calling all @Ganymede s)

There's an Asian, superior version of Alyson Hannigan?

Probably!

@arkandel said in Random links:

@auspice You had me at Alyson Hannigan.

"...no matter how hard you work or how good you think you are, there will always be an asian who takes it to the next level."
(Calling all @Ganymede s)

Really great coin magic fools Penn & Teller

@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

It is the thing, and being naïve to the clear and present danger of venting your spleen publicly is no excuse.

There may also be a few other things at work here.

We don't know if she had previous issues within the company directly re: taking criticism. She works in a collaborative environment. If she behaved towards her coworkers as she did towards the Twitter users that responded to her (who was not, btw, a troll in his behaviors: I saw the thread, because it was RT'd on my timeline, before it all blew up), then she needs to learn how to interact in that environment and take criticism.

The user in question did compliment her and was very polite in his approach. I have seen, directly, how these guys approach all devs. Not just female (I've seen examples of 'mansplaining' before and it gets gross. This was not it), but all of them. He was polite. He was trying to engage. This wasn't a random gamer. He's a huge contributor fan-side on ArenaNet. He's had content he inspired in the game. I think the 'Reddit, we are legion hurr hurr' is disingenuous at best and Reddit assholes trying to take credit. The guy in question was probably not involved in that leg of the whole exchange.

She made it about gender, he did not. He never brought up her gender. He never pulled a 'Okay honey...' sort of spiel (which I have seen before). She's the one who brought gender into it. I personally think that if she had not RT'd the exchange with a snipe at him, it would have been fine.

But I think it really goes back to point one: we don't know if she's had other incidents. We don't know if she's had problems at work with taking criticism, too. What if she handles feedback from her coworkers in this same light? If she does, then maybe it is time for her to move on and do something else.

Do I think the gamers/Reddit/4chan at large handled it poorly? Yes.
Do I think she handled it poorly? Yes. She should not have RT'd it with an attack on the Twitter user.

There's a reason a lot of people have their 'I am a <writer/artist/dev> at company' Twitter and then their personal Twitter that doesn't have any mention of said company at all these days and carefully curate the two. She had her Twitter branded. She was posting about her job, ArenaNet, etc. on the main one. It may have been 'her' Twitter, but she was still representing the company while on it and she attacked a fan. Not just 'a fan,' but one who has been one of their community leaders.

@shincashay

All the hugs.

@Kay

My #1 concern is that this thing will at least boot up. I can figure things out until the replacement from my friend gets here, but since it didn't want to even boot up this morning (I think Theno missed that while I was personally pissing in his wheaties)... I might be SOL at some point.

Gonna start running daily backups.

OK, I'm putting this here vs. RL Anger tho it could fit there, too because it deals with a health thing.

I have anxiety. Like, on meds anxiety. Get sharp chest pains when I'm suffering an attack anxiety. Avoid large (sometimes small) social events anxiety. See a therapist when my health insurance isn't being an ass about covering it anxiety.

One of the biggest things for me is taking calls. Like not your average talk on the phone to a friend. Not even calling my doctor or other adult things. I mean working in a call center shit. Hell, one of my projects at work is essentially providing (internal) IT support for a company. I can even handle that because the people on the other hand are internal users, expected to be professional, and we can even be a little laid back and cavalier. Chat with them, be a little firm if necessary, go silent while working on something because hey: they know I'm working to fix their issue and they're probably working on stuff too!

It's customers. Customers who have that 'THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!!!!111' mindset. Customers who think it's a-ok to treat service industry people like total shit. Customers who think it's totally fine to issue threats; up to and including death threats. And the increasing number of companies that don't give a fuck that their agents are treated this way and insist: just make the customer happy!

It sets off my anxiety so bad that the last company I took these kind of calls for.... I ended up one morning waking up, getting ready to leave my house, and finding myself incapable of walking through the door. It took two months (and a few really, really difficult to even get to therapy visits, some of which were over the phone) to even begin taking short trips back into social situations.

My current job knows this. I am even working on disability paperwork with them. They are waiting on the paperwork from my doctor.

What'd they do this week? Decide that, despite me only being on a particular project for 4-10 hours a week, on weekends, I was going to be one of 5 'test agents' to start taking calls.

What the ever living fuck you fucking donkey lickers

Double-post:
honestly, if Ike wasn't so attached to asshole-cat (they cuddle and sleep together, play together, bathe each other) and didn't have abandonment issues when I leave the apartment, I'd find a new home for him.

I honestly do not like him most days. He's lucky he helps her so much.