Posts made by Too Old For This

@silverfox Lucky duck! I will live vicariously though floofy pics! XD

@sunny Finding out that Microsoft bought BlizzAct actually made me interested in possibly returning to D3/WOW in the future. And has me newly interested in D4!

@silverfox You get so many floofs!!!

Microsoft also owns Double Fine Productions, which has been doing pretty steady with Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, and Broken Age. Psychonauts 2 came out under the Micorosoft banner and actually did pretty damn well. Ninja Theory is another of Microsoft's IP's, and they're responsible for one of the more popular series, Devil May Cry. There's also Obsidian Games (a personal favorite of mine). Outer Worlds has been INSANE with how much it keeps growing. And I know my son is still nuts over Forza.

Edit to add: I am also SUPER SUPER looking forward the new Fable. I have missed being able to play that game.

@macha My personal PC is in the living room (work pc in the bedroom because I'm weirdly protective of the work stuff), but there's just barely enough room for the couch and one recliner. XD

@macha YAY FOR NEW FREEZER! I got SO excited for my first deep freezer. Hell, I'm still celebrating my first set of matching furniture!

@ganymede My supervisor will do this. When it's a quick note, he'll IM me on Teams or email me with the doc in question. When it's going to be A Thing, he calls.

IT'S GIRL SCOUT COOKIE TIME!!!

Help a girl scout and her troop kick butt and win a camping trip... and get some tasty damn cookies in the bargain!

Exactly. As mentioned, I have absolutely nothing but wonderful things to say about my son's teachers. They've been working hard under impossible conditions and they still do everything they can to help him succeed. I wish I had a more adequate way to show them my appreciation for their efforts.

My issue comes in with the administration of the school telling me that my son cannot access something that is currently in use by other students, even though they provided him with the tools to access that very thing that is currently in use, and that by NOT allowing him to access it, they are directly impacting his mental health negatively and putting his physical health at great risk. People that are fully vaxxed and boosted are getting Omicron, and Delta is still circulating.

The school has so many students and faculty in quarantine or out for positive COVID tests that they've CANCELED midterms. But he's still not allowed to school from home using the tools and teachers that are already in place and in use.

@pyrephox said in The Work Thread:

One of the complicating factors is that pretty much none of the schools which went virtual or hybrid did so with any real understanding of the support that virtual learning requires for teachers. Which isn't unusual: even a lot of purpose-made virtual schools aren't aware of best practices in virtual instruction and don't provide their staff with the training and support necessary to really succeed at virtual learning. It's not as simple as chucking a teacher without specific training in front of a Zoom and having 30+ students log on, give the teacher no additional assistants or support, and expect that to go well. It's not.

I think it ended up burning out a lot of teachers and students, and convincing districts and many parents that virtual learning was a non-viable option, and now everyone is exhausted and stressed and at the end of their mental ropes. Everyone, from the kids all the way up.

This is a HUGE thing. I try to keep in touch with my son's teachers. I want to make their job easier if I can, and I know my son's disabilities can make things difficult to accomplish even small tasks. A number of them were excited about virtual learning, they'd done research over the summer, they'd found different tools and means of teaching that were maybe not super conventional but would make virtual learning easier and less stressful all around. And then school started. And there was little in the way of IT support for them, and some of the tools they'd been excited to use were deemed to be outside the allowable range of what they could access. Some of them required fees that the school wasn't willing to pay. So it became a battle for them, every day, on what they could use since what was typically allowed wasn't an option. They wanted teachers to stick to the pre-pandemic curriculum and methods, even though a lot of them don't translate well or at all to virtual teaching or learning.

Now even the ones that were excited approach it warily and cautiously, and the ones that were already cautious don't want it at all.

@Ganymede What's infuriating to me is this 'Do This or Fail' stance they've taken. They're holding basic employability or secondary education over my son's head like some fucking Sword of Damocles. Put your health (physical and mental) at risk, or you will never be eligible for even the most basic fast food job or community college. Regardless of any other requirement for employment/schooling/training, the one thing everyone requires? A high school diploma/GED certificate. Something that ALL of us take for granted is being used as a weapon to keep him in the building. He will be present, or he will be denied the one thing he will need to have any sort of life as an adult. And they know it.

@faraday Charter schools are choice schools, but there's still only so much space for kids in each school. We have to apply for charter schools because there are SO MANY parents that want their kids in charter schools (they have a reputation for being 'better' than just whatever school happens to be yours by district) that they couldn't take every kid if they wanted to. So, applications. Preference is given to kids that have siblings already attending a charter school. So yes. Charter schools are 'Choice' schools, but if all the charter schools are full (as they inevitably are long before the school year even begins) then you still can't join it.

@silverfox This isn't scary for me. This is infuriating. You have choices for your mental health, for being able to take an administrative position, or move jobs. He doesn't get that option. I am his police wellness check, and I'm here, every day, watching his mental health deteriorate because he is every bit as cognizant of what's going on but has zero agency. Be in school or fail and have to repeat his senior year. Those are his choices. No appeals. No other position, no other job. Be present or fail. That's the choice he gets. I am sorry that your mental health is in jeopardy. So is his, and he has infinitely fewer options on what to do about it.

@faraday You have to qualify for a charter school before the school year begins. It is insanely difficult to move into a charter school in the middle of the school year without 'good reason' and 'I don't want my son to get COVID' doesn't count.

@silverfox I can't afford to pay for him to school from home and there is no free online high school he can attend. The school he's at provided all the kids with laptops specifically because the school year started out at home. It transitioned to in-class during the year, and there are still kids at home right now because returning to school was opt-in. I wanted my son to be able to enjoy his last year of high school. Make friends, join clubs, have fun. Instead, nearly all the clubs are cancelled, and making friends is difficult when you're discouraged from being within easy talking distance, and he is miserably struggling through these months.

He could be schooled from home, via laptop. There are students getting that right now. He could be, too. But I am told that because we opted into in-school before Omicron was even a known quantity, we cannot now opt for at-home to finish the year. Even though he has all the tools and there is staffing dedicated to the online schooling of the students that chose not to come back.

@silverfox My son's school has started mandatory masks because over 80 cases of COVID happened in a single day. Granted, it's a very large high school... but I've gotten no less than five calls in the last 4-5 months letting my know my child was potentially exposed to COVID.

Thankfully he's vaxxed and boosted and all tests have come back negative, but I still spent an hour on the phone with his school today trying to insist he be allowed to finish out the year from home. Because holy shit that's a lot of cases for ONE DAY.

This is where I praise my overlords for having the foresight that having people at home means fewer people are sick with COVID which means more people are working instead of using valuable company time being sick.

Granted, it makes training more difficult, but given my supervisor's haphazard training techniques? I don't know that in-person would honestly be much better.

@greenflashlight Right! I... totally didn't derp my response at all. >.> <.< ((Thank you for the correction!!))

@ganymede said in The Work Thread:

@greenflashlight said in The Work Thread:

But your health and safety are impediments to your bosses making as much profit as they want to make, so they will command you to pretend everything's fine to remind you what your place is: silent and still beneath their boot.

Or continued operation is necessary for the business's continued existence, which means failure to adhere means everyone losing their jobs.

I would agree, but @GreenFlashlight said they already sent them to be WFH already. Which means they have the capability of keeping people safely at home without damaging productivity. Continued operation does not require in-office attendance anymore, at least not for many positions. Which means someone higher up the chain is willfully ignoring the health risks to everyone for some antiquated idea that there must be faces in the office for productivity to occur.

TBH, I mostly have Netflix as a one-stop repository of a lot of the older shows I enjoy (mainly old versions of Star Trek). If they ever drop Star Trek from their lineup, I will likely let the account lapse.

@macha Fair enough!

@macha So my mother SWEARS by these headphones, and I have to admit that the sound on calls with her has been MUCH clearer since she started using them. She apparently uses them for work, too.