#Mia #RoninWarriors

And do you know how real cowboys settle their differences, Cowboy Slim?
Shootouts? #CowboyWho

The incident traumatised air controllers, and triggered delays at one of New York's busiest airports.

Two pilots sustained minor injuries after the latest mishap involving the carrier in the Middle East.

In brief: The Houston region will see one final round of showers and potentially severe weather today, but only the southern half of our area is at risk. After this morning, the bulk of the heavy rains and thunderstorms will shift east. We then can look forward to a pleasant, sunny weekend.

Storm status

After some central and northern portions of the Houston metro saw storms on Tuesday and Tuesday night, it is now the turn of coastal counties to see widespread activity. An atmospheric disturbance is propagating up the coast, and it will drive showers and thunderstorms in our area, primarily south of Interstate 10, with the greatest activity for locations right along the coast. Although the likelihood of severe weather is lower than Tuesday, we cannot rule out the possibility of a tornado.

Rain accumulations may briefly flood some streets, so we are maintaining a Stage 1 flood alert in place for areas south of I-10. (Most areas north of I-10 will see limited to no rainfall today and tonight). Areas right along the coast may pick up 1 to 4 inches of rainfall, with lesser totals further inland. By mid- to late-morning the bulk of this system should have moved off to the east, clearing the region, and ending the possibility of widespread showers and thunderstorms.

Wednesday

As noted above, your weather this morning will depend a great deal on how far you live from the coast. However most of the region should see clearing skies this afternoon, and this will allow high temperatures to jump into the low- to mid-80s for most locations. Winds will generally be light, from the east. Lows tonight will drop only to around 70 degrees.

Thursday

This should be a mostly sunny day, with temperatures reaching the mid- to upper-80s. There will be a slight chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms, perhaps 20 percent. Temperatures on Thursday night will drop into the upper 60s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

A weak front will slowly drag some drier air into the Houston region, and this will lead to some nicer days as we approach the weekend. I’m not sure whether this will be the final front of the season to make a meaningful impact on temperatures and humidity, but it may well be. Anyway, we should see three mostly sunny days, with highs ranging from the upper 70s to lower 80s, with moderately drier air (dewpoints in the 50s, probably). Nighttime temperatures will likely drop to about 60 degrees for a few mornings, with some inland areas hitting the upper 50s. Again, this is not cold by any measure, but it is far cooler than the weather that lies ahead of us for the next four to five months. Finally, we cannot entirely rule out some rain chances, but they’ll be quite low each day.

Next week

As high pressure builds in most of next week looks hot and sunny. By Thursday or Friday we could start to see daily highs in the vicinity of 90 degrees, with plenty of humidity. Summer will be on our doorstep.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Coworker who (probably) has a crush keeps hanging out at my desk

I was hoping I could get your advice on dealing with a coworker who won’t leave me alone (“Greg”) and is making me increasingly uncomfortable. I’m a woman in my 20s and Greg is a decade older than me. He asked me out a few months ago and I rejected him, and he hasn’t asked me out since. We are under the same organization and our work overlaps somewhat.

Greg works in another building and frequently comes over to mine. While he says he has meetings in my building, he will often come to my desk and sit next to me to chat. He starts awkward, banal conversations (for example, how an energy drink I once casually recommended makes him sweat a lot) and absolutely cannot take a hint that I am busy or not interested. It also feels like he’s watching me (he will immediately look over when my eyes move in his general direction). I feel trapped when this happens, and it’s impacting my productivity when I go into the office. I enjoy chatting with my other coworkers but only when we’re on the same wavelength.

I know I need to be more direct with Greg, but I don’t know what to say. I suspect he is infatuated with me, but I fear telling him I’m not romantically interested will make him defensive and not fix the root of the problem. What are some things I can say to get him to leave me alone without souring things too much?

It’s fine to start with hints because often they’ll work — but once you see that they’re not, that’s a sign that you need to say it more directly. In this case, that means:
– “I can’t talk, I’m really busy.”
– “I can’t have you hang out here, I need to focus.”
– “I’m swamped, can’t chat.”

Also, since you said he’s sitting next to you, is he using a chair you can temporarily move to make it harder for him to plop himself down? If not, it doesn’t really matter because you can still clearly say the sentences above, but if there is a way to make it physically harder for him to linger, it might be worth doing that too.

I don’t think you need to tell him you’re not romantically interested — you presumably made that clear when you turned down a date — but if a week or two of consistently saying the things above doesn’t stop the drop-by’s, you might need to say, “This feels awkward to say but I’m uncomfortable with you dropping by to chat so often after asking me out, and I’d prefer you stop.” My guess is that you’re going to feel rude saying that (since you haven’t felt comfortable telling him directly that you can’t talk to him), but it’s not rude; at that point it’s the clearest way to deliver the message, and it would be warranted. (In fact, I’d argue it’s kinder to just rip the band-aid off and say it.)

2. How can I improve staff morale in hard times with little flexibility?

I am a director at a state agency managing a staff of about 30. We are currently short-staffed by about 10 positions and in a hiring freeze where I have to write lengthy justifications as to why I need those positions. Needless to say, hiring has been slow to non-existent in a process that already took forever.

Staff morale is not great and any time I announce any change, I am faced with negativity, no matter how I phrase it. I would love to try to increase morale somehow. I already began an Employee of the Month program last year, and I make homemade baked goods out of my own money each month for our staff meetings. But I can’t do anything about pay, time off, flex time, or any of those types of perks since we’re state and union. We also have no budget for employee food/parties/gifts. Do you have any other suggestions?

Employee of the Month programs and baked goods aren’t the place to focus. People are demoralized because the team is short-staffed (and I’m guessing overworked as a result), and neither of those things get close enough to addressing that. In fact, sometimes things like Employee of the Month programs run the risk of making the problems worse, by increasing cynicism/frustration if people feel like you expect them to be distracted by a mildly shiny object when there are massive problems. (That doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for not being able to do anything about those problems — just that you don’t want to seem oblivious to them, or like you’re expecting your team to be oblivious to them.)

That said, you can talk to people and ask if they have ideas for what would help! Explicitly lay out the constraints (you can’t do anything about pay, time off, or flex time) but ask them to think creatively about what would make their jobs better or easier. Who knows, maybe you’ll hear that you pushing back on Department X’s unrealistic deadlines or rude behavior would make a significant improvement to their quality of life or that they’d love to get rid of Excessively Long Weekly Meeting Y, or all sorts of other things that might not be on your radar until you talk with them.

3. I’m exhausted from being the only one with drive in my company

I am working for a family-owned business. The environment is laid-back, and the owners are nice and kind. I work remotely with little to no supervision and am considered a key employee for advising and working closely with the owners.

I have realized that, of the entire company and owners, there are only a handful of people who are competent and internally motivated to grow the business. The owners severely lack business skills and knowledge, despite having run the company for more than a decade. My boss, who is a long-time friend of the family and was hired as a consultant, runs the show. He gives them advice on everything and anything, including trivial and basic tasks like how to tally receipts.

In addition to the lack of knowledge, the owners also lack a sense of curiosity and internal drive. While I spend time after-hours finding ways to better the business and increase efficiency, the owners are unreachable after 5 pm. They are still asking me the same questions they did when I started a few years ago. Some of my tasks require input from them and I have to remind them repeatedly even though they are routine tasks.

The slack culture spreads to employees, as there is little to no supervision. When the owners introduced new processes and accountability as I suggested, employees pushed back and refused to perform the new tasks assigned to them. The owners were then afraid of upsetting employees, so they took on the tasks themselves or hired people to meet the demands. My boss asked me to take on additional executive functions because the others are “unable and won’t be able to make these decisions” (in his words) and I declined.

I am feeling exhausted from the follow-ups, having people come to me asking the same questions and fixing the same mistakes. I witness subpar performance from both employees and owners alike. I constantly feel like I am pushing a boulder uphill with a couple of people sitting on it.

The business is slowly facing consequences with reduced profits this year. I did not get my annual raise. My bonus was also lower. I am not learning new things from the job. But I have been able to exert influence and push new initiatives. I am also highly regarded for my contributions to the company. However, I am deeply dissatisfied by the lack of progress and complacency in the organization. My friends and family said that I expect too much from people. How should I navigate this situation?

It sounds like you should find a different job and quit this one! The working environment is frustrating and demoralizing, you have a radically different vision for how things should run than how they’re actually going to run, you’re seeing financial consequences coming down the pike, and it’s already affecting your pay. You don’t need to stay! You can decide to leave and do something else.

If you think over your options and decide that staying there, with all its flaws, is still better than leaving, then you’ve just got to do it with your eyes open: the owners are who they are, their limitations are exactly what you’ve seen, and most/all of what you think should change isn’t going to, but you’re choosing to stay anyway because ____. You’ve got to fill in that blank on your own, but getting really clear on why you’re staying despite all this, if in fact that’s what you decide, should help.

4. Backing out of a talk I thought was already canceled

Last August, a former boss asked if I would give a volunteer professional development session during a series he arranged at my former workplace. Even though I don’t particularly like some of the people who still work there, I agreed, and we settled on a topic where I have expertise and that would be interesting to the audience for a date in May. This March, my former boss let me know he’d been unexpectedly fired, and asked if I’d keep him in mind if I heard of jobs he’d be a good fit for. Of course I said yes, and I mentally removed the session from my calendar.

Now, the day before the originally-scheduled event, I got a text from an unknown number to confirm my session and ask if I need anything for set-up. I let them know that unfortunately, I’d be unable to make it. No one had contacted me until the day before, and they fired the person responsible for the arrangements in the first place; I didn’t realize this was still on and hadn’t done any work to prepare for it, nor would I have known who to contact to confirm.

Certainly this won’t reflect poorly on my former boss, and I shouldn’t feel bad about backing out of something that I was never officially confirmed, right?

Well … I can see how you got there in your thinking, but I wouldn’t have assumed it was off without first trying to confirm that. It was arranged by your former boss, yes, but it clearly got put on some kind of team-wide calendar and someone else took over the planning for it.

That said, it’s not a big deal. It won’t reflect badly on your old boss (he’s gone! he couldn’t have done anything about it), and it probably won’t reflect badly on you either; they’ll just figure it was a miscommunication, which it was. (And really, they should have contacted you sooner than the day before to confirm and to let you know who your new point of contact would be. What if you had needed to cancel two weeks ago? You wouldn’t have known who to contact.)

5. My company wants me to talk to an outside recruiter for an internal position

My company has hired a recruiter for a role that I am also throwing my hat in the ring for. I was told that the recruiter would talk to me, too. But is there a financial incentive for the recruiter to bring someone in from the outside? Just wondering if this means the deck is stacked against me from the outset.

Yes, there is a built-in financial incentive for the recruiter to bring in an outside candidate, assuming they have a traditional recruiter relationship with your company where they only get paid if a candidate they find gets hired. In fact, if this is a traditional recruiter set-up, it doesn’t make sense for the recruiter to talk to you at all! Typically they’d find candidates and present them to your company, and your company would decide who they’re going to interview and assess people from there.

Unless the recruiter is also part of the hiring decision itself (which would be unusual but not impossible), your company should just interview you the same way they’re interviewing other candidates, unless there’s some specific reason they want her evaluation of you (like if she specializes in X, the job is X, and no one internal has the expertise to assess X) or unless they’re not taking you seriously as a candidate.

The post coworker with a crush keeps hanging out at my desk, exhausted from being the only employee with any drive, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

WASHINGTON—In a move the Trump administration claims will reduce government waste and remove redundancies from federally funded programs, the National Endowment for the Arts announced a sweeping round of layoffs Wednesday that terminated the employment of roughly 30,000 muses. “An independent audit of the NEA revealed a significant glut of unnecessary sources of inspiration, all of which are reliant on taxpayer funding,” read a statement from the White House addressing the cuts, which are said to include an additional 35% reduction in the ingenues, figure drawing models, and strikingly beautiful baristas currently providing full-time inspiration to the agency. “This unchecked creativity has gone on for far too long, and our independent audit of the agency found that the NEA can easily make do with a mere dozen muses. Under this new budget, American taxpayers will no longer be forced to foot the bill for the inflated levels of inspiration formerly enjoyed by lazy poets, novelists, and painters.” The statement went on to advocate for additional budget cuts that would eliminate the agency’s 10,000 superfluous copies of The Artist’s Way.

The post National Endowment For The Arts Lays Off 30,000 Muses appeared first on The Onion.

Washington DC – After months of Trump pontificating that Canada would make a great state, the US Department of the Interior has updated its “Statehood Waitlist.” Canada now has the top spot on the list while long-suffering territories Puerto Rico and Washington DC have been bumped down the list. The updated list, posted to a […]

The post Canada upsets Puerto Rico and Washington DC by cutting statehood line appeared first on The Beaverton.

I graduated in 2019 from Vassar with a degree in PR and communications. After studying abroad in Italia (check out my Instagram highlights), I thought I was qualified to apply for jobs abroad. I submitted my profile of reels and posts on Handshake, and by the grace of God—and a Canva Premium subscription—got a response. The Vatican was looking for help jazzing up their profile, and who better to run their brand than a Gen-Z American?

Catholicism has 1.2 billion followers, so they were influencers before it was a thing. I’m tasked with converting centuries of solemn tradition into swipeable, digestible, algorithm-friendly vibes for all of these people. I have to turn the oldest influencer into the newest, trendiest one.

Officially, my title is Director of Digital Evangelism and Brand Stewardship. Unofficially, I am the Vatican’s social media intern and sole poster on @TheVatican. I walk around the grounds and take photos of stained glass, Loewe-coded red loafers, and sometimes, the pope’s shadow looking “mysterious but approachable” (his words) against an eighth-century basilica wall.

This conclave, however, might be the biggest campaign of my career. I think I am approaching my viral moment. When the new pope is elected (still confirming with HR, things are weirdly hush-hush in the papal Slack), how should I go public?

None of my PR classes covered papal transitions. No one at Vassar taught a course called “Crisis Comms for When the Pope Dies and You Need to Announce the Next One Using Instagram Carousel Posts.” Either way, millions of people will be watching when the white smoke rises and the balcony doors creak open. I’ll be crouched behind a marble column, AirPods in, caption ready, thumb hovering over “Post."

There is talk about having a “progressive pope,” and I am, of course, on board. It is great for metrics to use trending #socialjustice hashtags. What am I doing if not adapting to the algorithm? Maybe I can even change the new pope’s profile picture for whatever History Month it is.

I really hope this will rid me of my Catholic guilt.

I have my emojis prepped. Praying hands . Dove with olive branch . Fingers crossed . Heart eyes . The caption is still TBD, but am thinking something like, “Heard y’all were waiting for #NewEra” or “It’s giving divine appointment. #PopeDrop2025.”

Soon, the world will ask: “Who is the new pope?”

And I will have the answer: “Swipe to find out.”

I don’t think the Beef Fizz has ever come up before in a comic, so I’ll just direct you to the source material and you can make your own. Let us know how you get on in the comments. I don’t know how this story got so beef broth obsessed.

The post My second unexpected run-in appeared first on Bad Machinery.

The Canadian PM responds firmly as the president proposes a "wonderful marriage" of incorporating Canada into the US.

Since the founding of our august institution, we have awarded promotion and tenure based on how many pages of your research we could read before falling asleep and the rumors we heard about the time you insulted that emeritus professor’s new vest. In short, we awarded tenure based on vibes.

But thanks to a lawsuit that we can’t discuss and probably never even happened, we have formalized our promotion and tenure criteria so that everyone can be held to the same nearly impossible standard. These guidelines were written by almost-retired professors who never could have met these standards back in the 1980s, when all you needed for tenure was 1.5 publications and a bottle of scotch in your desk.

Research

To demonstrate excellence in research, achieve all of the following:

• Publish at least nine studies in journals that charge $39.99 apiece to access paywalled articles.
• Write a scholarly monograph that The Chronicle of Higher Education dubs, “The book people will pretend to have read for the next twenty years!”
• Discover at least one quasar, two nebulae, three undersea mountain ranges, four kinds of beetles, five Egyptian pharaohs, and six lost love letters between Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.
• Develop a research agenda that inspires at least twelve hyperbolic clickbait headlines (e.g., “According to Science, Eating Too Many Papayas Will Make Your Face Explode.”)
• Argue convincingly that Julius Caesar never existed but that both Gladiator movies are 100 percent historically accurate.
• Demonstrate through scientific, psychological, philosophical, legal, and historical principles that the assistant dean has the moral high ground in his contentious divorce.
• Get your last name associated with capybaras, kind of like how Pavlov did with dogs.
• Prove that Shakespeare’s plays were written by his mom for a school project.
• After further discussion, we really think you ought to publish at least eleven studies in journals that charge $49.99 per article. Honestly, you should shoot for at least thirteen articles in journals that charge $69.99, just to be safe.

Teaching

Teaching is a cornerstone of this university, as evidenced by the mission statement posted on our website, which currently leads to a 404 error page. We have no idea how to evaluate teaching, so to receive tenure, you must accomplish all of the following, plus several additional things we haven’t thought of yet:

• Lose a month of sleep over one negative student evaluation despite receiving thirty-seven positive comments from the same class.
• Win at least three teaching awards from our university and at least one teaching award from another university you don’t work at.
• Get students to embrace at least three disappearing cultural touchstones from your youth, such as Rocko’s Modern Life, the Cabbage Patch dance, that “Summer Girls” song by LFO, or the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito film Twins.
• Inspire at least twenty students to throw their lives away by going to graduate school.
• End every lecture with a literal, justifiable mic drop.
• Cultivate a teaching style so inspiring that you will be played by Jeff Bridges, Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali, or Saoirse Ronan in a prestige movie (immediate promotion to college dean if you inspire the role that finally wins Glenn Close her Oscar).

Service

Service barely counts for tenure, even though the university would literally fall apart without it. (English faculty, we do mean “literally” here; the roof of Chester A. Arthur Hall would collapse tomorrow without untenured faculty supporting its joists on their shoulders.) To get tenure, we expect you to do all of the listed items, even though we will spend approximately forty-five seconds discussing your service during your four-hour tenure review meeting:

• Chair the Committee for Writing a Recommendation Report to the Vice Chancellor That Will Sit Unopened in Her Email Inbox for Five Years.
• Maintain your department chair’s perfect daily streak in The New York Times Connections puzzle.
• Take department meeting minutes and edit out all the personal attacks.
• Advise all the student clubs that seem like a real handful, including the falconry club, those kids that act like they’re playing Quidditch, the Society of Students who Misinterpret Stoic Philosophy, the Organization for Students Who Just Discovered Hunter S. Thompson and Now That’s Their Whole Personality, and the second falconry club that broke off from the original falconry club.
• Start a pyramid scheme to pay the librarian’s salary.
• Dress as our lovable Fighting Elk mascot “Elkvis Costello” for all track and field meets (make sure you can do a back handspring and land in the splits).
• Figure out how our Tutoring Center can steal Wi-Fi from the apartment complex next to campus.
• Save a prospective student’s life by shielding them with your body during a bear attack.

Remember, these standards exist to help us decide whether you have a job in academia forever or will never work in academia again. If you have questions about them, please ask three different people and get three contradictory answers. But just some friendly advice, definitely publish fifteen articles in journals that charge at least $4,000 for an annual individual subscription.

Good luck!

Since Windows 3.1, the moricons.dll file contains, well, more icons. What were these icons for?

Windows 3.0 added the ability to run MS-DOS programs in a window. One of the preinstalled program icons was called Windows Setup, and if you ran it and selected Set Up Applications, it offered to search your hard drive for existing MS-DOS applications and “help run them more easily in the Windows environment.” If you accepted this offer, it showed a list of recognized programs, and you could select which ones you wanted to set up.

The mechanism for recognizing programs was by searching for the names of well-known executables such as 123.EXE for Lotus 1-2-3. Sometimes, there were multiple programs that used the same executable name. For example, MAIL.EXE was used by PATHWORKS Mail for MS-DOS, cc:Mail for MS-DOS, and XcelleNet X/Mail for MS-DOS. In that case, the program asked you, “Hey, like, I’m not sure which program this is. Can you tell me if it’s any of these guys?”

Once it identified a program (possibly with help from you), it created a PIF file that described an MS-DOS configuration that worked best for that program, created a Program Manager group called Non-Windows Applications (if one didn’t already exist), and created an icon in the Non-Windows Applications group which used the PIF file to launch that program.

In Windows 3.0, the icon for the program was just a plain gray icon that said “DOS”.

In Windows 3.1, Set Up Applications gained a feature: In addition to setting up the PIF file, it also set an icon in Program Manager that represented the program. When you clicked it, it still ran as an MS-DOS program, but at least the icon was prettier.

Initially, these icons were placed in PROGMAN.EXE, but as the number of icons grew, it became clear that they needed their own home instead of squatting inside the Program Manager binary. So the icons started getting added to a DLL called MORICONS.DLL because, well, they were more icons.

This MORICONS.DLL icon library has carried forward ever since. Windows itself created those Program Manager icons, and those Program Manager icons turned into shortcut files in Windows 95, and those shortcut files would then migrate forward as you upgraded Windows. In theory, the compatibility chain could have been abandoned with the introduction of 64-bit Windows since there was no upgrade path from 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows (clean installs only), and because 64-bit Windows didn’t support MS-DOS programs any more, so you couldn’t reinstall them onto your 64-bit Windows system.

I suspect this cleanup didn’t happen because the focus of the 64-bit port was bringing Windows forward to 64-bit, and most of the porting was mechanical: You could port a large chunk of code without even understanding what it did. The focus was not “looking for old 32-bit code that we can delete.”¹

Furthermore, the entire DLL was only 12 kilobytes, and it didn’t pose a security risk,² and there was a compatibility risk that somebody was still using those old-timey icons for their shortcuts. Better to let sleeping dogs lie and eat the 12 kilobytes.

Next time, we’ll take a peek inside progman.exe and moricons.dll and enjoy the old-timey icons.

¹ Not that deletion didn’t happen, but the deletion of 32-bit code was done when the mechanical porting was not good enough to get the code running. At that point, you had to make an engineering decision whether the effort spent reverse-engineering and debugging the 32-bit code was worth the benefit of having a 64-bit version available.

² Unless you consider “these icons are so ugly that if an attacker could get the icon to be displayed, it will cause lasting mental pain and anguish to everybody who sees it” to be a security risk.

The post What were the intended uses of those icons in <TT>moricons.dll</TT>? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Last time, we learned the history of moricons.dll, and along the way learned about legacy icons in progman.exe. But what are the icons?

Today, we’ll look at the bonus icons in progman.exe. Some of them were auto-assigned by Windows to some programs. Others were just fun icons that you could use for your own Program Manager items.

	[MS-DOS word processor] Brief 2.1/3.0 Brief 3.1 DisplayWrite 3 DisplayWrite 4 DisplayWrite 5 DisplayWrite Assistant Formtool GW BASIC IBM Personal Editor IBM Professional Editor   IBM Writing Assistant 2.0 Microsoft Macro Assembler Microsoft Quick Pascal RightWriter Soft Kicker Volkswriter 3.0 WordStar 2000 WordStar Professional WordStar Professional 5.5 Writer Rabbit XY Write
	[MS-DOS spreadsheet] Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus Access System    Supercalc 4.0 Supercalc 5.0
	[MS-DOS database] Ashton Tate dBase III Ashton Tate dBase IV IBM Filing Assistant Insight Microrim R:Base 3.0   Microrim R:Base 5000 Microrim R:Base Clout Microrim R:Base System V Paradox Q & A Report Writer Quick Verse 2.0
	[MS-DOS communications] Microsoft Online 1.0 PC3270 PFS: Access Procomm   Prodigy QModem Smartcom II TeleMate
	[MS-DOS generic program] Managing Your Money Microsoft Advanced Basic Microsoft Basic Microsoft Fortran Compiler 5.1 Microsoft Macro Assembler Microsoft Make Utility   Microsoft Pascal Compiler Microsoft Spell PFS: Plan PFS: Professional Plan Ready! Turbo Tax
	[paint] PFS: First Graphics
	[bar chart]
	[camera]
	[CD-based program] Microsoft Bookshelf
	[chart or file system] Norton File Find PFS: First Choice 3.0   PFS: First Choice 3.1 PFS: Professional Network XTree Gold
	[clapboard]
	[drafting] Autocad Autosketch 2.0   Autosketch 3.0 Generic CADD
	[desktop publishing] PFS: First Publisher Soft Kicker Ventura Publisher
	[filmstrip]
	[graphing] Microsoft Chart GraphWriter
	[handshake]
	[utilities] Norton Utilities 4.5 Norton Utilities 5/6.0   Sidekick 1.0 Sidekick Plus
	[mail] Lotus Express
	[fine art]
	[newspaper]
	[telephone]
	[plain document]
	[spreadsheet]
	[sticky note]
	[cassette tape]
	[typewriter] Norton Line Printer
	[briefcase]
	[door]
	[large envelope]
	[mailbox]
	[safe] CP Anti-Virus
	[help] Norton Time Mark

It appears that at the start, the visual language was that MS-DOS programs were represented as a program running inside a frame, the frame representing the GUI frame around the MS-DOS session. (Also known informally as the MS-DOS “box”.)

Windows used the information in the APPS.INF file to identify these executables and associate them with icons and PIF file configurations.

Next time, we’ll look at the icons in moricons.dll.

The post What were the MS-DOS programs that Windows used the <TT>progman.exe</TT> stock icons for? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Trump dominated the discussion, but Carney made his position clear on issues like tariffs and Canada becoming America's 51st state.

In brief: The next 12 to 24 hours will bring the potential for severe weather into the greater Houston region. Impacts include heavy rainfall that may lead to street flooding, damaging winds, large hail, and potentially tornadoes. Please be weather aware.

So far, today, the Houston region has been spared direct impacts from severe weather. The storms have remained well north and west of our area. However, that is likely to change in the next few hours as a line of storms, now impacting the College Station areas, is advancing from the west.

These storms will likely reach the northern half of the Houston area this afternoon and early evening. They will bring all of the threats described above, and may make a mess of the Tuesday evening commute for areas along and north of Interstate 10. Not everyone will experience strong storms, but the risk is there.

This evening, and into Wednesday morning, these storms will probably spread across the entire region, including into coastal counties. The storms will lose some of their severity tonight, with the loss of daytime heating. This will diminish the threat of tornadoes and hazards such as damaging winds and hail. But the potential for strong thunderstorms and heavy rain will persist.

By Wednesday morning the majority of action will likely have shifted to the coast, or possibly be pushed offshore. Even so, you’ll want to remain weather aware as you get up and about on Wednesday morning.

Just to repeat myself here: Not everyone is going to be bombarded by severe weather, but the atmosphere above our region appears to be primed for storms during the next 12 hours or a little longer. Please remain weather aware this afternoon, evening, and on Wednesday morning.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Tandy Corporation's first home computer was the TRS-80, released in 1977. The TRS-80 was fairly affordably priced for its time but limited to monochrome text and extremely blocky semigraphics. 1979 saw the release of the TRS-80 Model II, a business machine with an 8" floppy disk drive incompatible with the previous computer or the budget of a middle-class family. With color computer systems like the Atari 400 and TI-99/4 being released in the late 1970s, Tandy realized that if it wanted to have any chance of capturing the growing home market for personal computers, it would need to offer a low-cost model with colorful graphics and a family-friendly appeal. Fortunately it had an ace up its sleeve in the form of the thousands of Radio Shack company and franchise stores dispersed across the United States and Canada that could sell a lower cost computer. That computer turned out to be the TRS-80 Color Computer, released in 1980. Having recently acquired one, let me go over some of its features and quirks.

Read more »

A reader writes:

I manage the recruiting of volunteers for a small nonprofit, and there’s an otherwise strong candidate, Jane, who has a past on the Internet. Another volunteer and I interviewed her for an open position, and it was wonderful. She presented herself as warm, professional, and knowledgeable in our work, and she was one of my top choices. However, a different volunteer recognized Jane because of a small “incident” that had happened at the volunteer’s alma mater, and the volunteer showed me evidence of what happened online.

Six years ago, Jane’s then-high-school-aged sister had applied for a university in the midwest and wanted to be on a particular sports team there. Before any actual confirmation had been sent from the admissions office that the sister was accepted, the head coach of that team had sent an email congratulating the sister for her acceptance into the university. The sister had taken this at face value, but the official acceptance letter never came. When the sister reached back out to the coach, the coach confirmed that he had mixed up the “recently applied” and “accepted” lists of applicants and gave his sincerest apologies to her.

Jane, however, decided to go on a public campaign to name and shame the coach online on her sister’s behalf. She shared screenshots of emails from the coach on her Twitter page with his personal phone number, encouraging people to call it to demand “answers.” She also made a post on a popular website (with enough details to match the information on her Twitter page) to ask if she was in the right, which had hundreds of comments. She was very combative and vitriolic both on both sites, and nobody on either platform supported her cause. Those who had responded on both platforms tried to be gentle and constructive, and some even gave advice on how the sister should move forward. But Jane was digging her heels in and snapping at everyone.

There are enough photos of her with personal information on the Twitter profile (including one on her LinkedIn) to verify that it was her, although I wonder if there’s a way I can ask her directly to verify.

Again, this was all six years ago. The person we interviewed seemed like a very different person than the one online. One could perhaps make a case that the coach’s disorganization had led to a completely avoidable mistake and could’ve saved heartbreak on the sister’s part. However, the coach was entirely apologetic, and the overreaction from Jane at the time gives me pause. If there’s any conflict that involves her in the future, how will I know that she won’t blow it out of proportion online and dox people?

I’m disappointed because she was such a great candidate, but this has sullied my opinion of her. But part of me wonders if I am being unreasonable to hold her against something that happened back in 2019. Should I ignore this and assume that she has changed for the better since? Is there a way to address this with her before deciding whether to accept her? Should I perhaps call her on the phone to specifically ask her questions on how she would handle adversity and conflict?

How old was Jane when it happened? If she was barely out of her teens at the time … well, people grow up a lot in their 20s and she may be a different person now and mortified at what she did. On the hand, if she was already solidly into adulthood when it happened, that’s different.

More importantly, how big is the volunteer role? If it’s relatively small, not high-profile, and doesn’t have much focus on interpersonal communication or conflict resolution, I might not pay any attention to this at all, figuring it was years ago and this is a minor volunteer job rather than than your director of communications or similar.

But if it’s a pretty significant role and/or if Jane handling a conflict in a similarly combative manner could do real harm, it’s reasonable for this to give you significant pause.

I wouldn’t just call her up and ask how she would handle adversity and conflict, though. First, that’s easy for someone to BS their way through and second, it won’t necessarily give you the info you need. Instead, if that’s the situation, just ask her about it! “We think you seem great, we found this online, it gave us some pause because this work requires handling conflict at times, and I wondered if you’d talk to me a little about what happened back then and whether you’d handle it any differently now.”

You might hear that she’s mortified by how she handled things six years ago. Or you might hear that she still feels justified in her response. Or she might be outraged that you’re even asking her. However she responds, you’ll come away with a lot more data than you have now about whether she’s someone you’re comfortable moving forward with.

The post should I ask a candidate about her past online behavior? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

WASHINGTON—Angrily claimings the populace had neglected its patriotic duty to support domestic manufacturing, President Donald Trump issued a statement Tuesday decrying the lack of U.S.-made products lodged in American rectums. “Sad how much cheap ‘Made in China’ GARBAGE is still being stuffed into people’s asses while Great American flashlight and curtain rod makers suffer,” Trump wrote in a fiery Truth Social post, adding that “real Americans” should be absolutely sure any long, cylindrical objects they had obtained for anal penetration were manufactured in the United States before inserting them. “Same goes for imported cucumbers and carrots. Every one you get stuck in your rectum is a dollar stolen from proud American farmers! Back in the 1950s we lodged PURE AMERICAN STEEL in our backsides, but now we settle for chintzy Chinese knockoffs with NO FLARED ENDS. It’s a national disgrace! And don’t try to say you ‘just fell’ on that permanent marker made in Mexico—you should have had the handle of a beautiful American-manufactured feather duster crammed up there already!” Many top economists criticized the president’s statement, claiming Trump’s tariffs on foreign objects would not boost domestic manufacturing and would instead only leave American asses empty.

The post Trump Decries Lack Of U.S.-Made Products Lodged In American Rectums appeared first on The Onion.

BURNABY, B.C. – Facing increased scrutiny since leading his party to a painful election day loss, former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has revealed his future plans to be, “A whole lotta not much.” Speaking from the basement couch in his home in Burnaby, B.C., Singh said he’s ready for a “super chill summer” featuring a […]

The post Jagmeet Singh looking forward to chill summer, maybe taking an improv class appeared first on The Beaverton.

HOLLYWOOD, CA – After accidentally watching the South Korean film Parasite on Air Force One, Donald Trump has signed an executive order placing a 100% tariff on any movie that forces him to read. “Stop showing me that goddamn garbage!” bellowed Trump at Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, after throwing a chicken leg at […]

The post Trump puts 100% tariff on movies that force him to read appeared first on The Beaverton.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The real step-change will be when it insists it's not doing any of that stuff.

Today's News:

The US data center industry has warned that the Trump administration’s crackdown on renewable energy could slow its growth and undermine Washington’s goal to win the global artificial intelligence race.

Renewables have become a flashpoint since Donald Trump re-entered the White House, with his administration suspending clean energy developments on federal land, pausing federal loans, and last month canceling high-profile projects such as Equinor’s $5 billion Empire Wind site.

For tech companies struggling to secure reliable energy supplies to power and train AI, a clampdown on renewables could create power bottlenecks, drive up costs, and push operators towards dirtier energy, experts said.

Read full article

Comments

Today's links

• The Adventures of Mary Darling: A cracking read, a virtuoso act of gender jiu-jitsu, a Sherlock story like no other, a rough trip to fairyland, and the real, true story of Peter Pan. What a book!
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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The Adventures of Mary Darling (permalink)

Science fiction great Pat Murphy has written some classics – including books that were viciously suppressed by the heirs of JRR Tolkien! – but with The Adventures of Mary Darling, she's outdone even her own impressive self:

https://tachyonpublications.com/product/the-adventures-of-mary-darling/

The titular Mary Darling here is the mother of Wendy, John and and Michael Darling, the three children who are taken by Peter Pan to Neverland in JM Barrie's 1902 book The Little White Bird, which later became Peter Pan. If you recall your Barrie, you'll remember that it ends with the revelation that Wendy, John and Michael weren't the first Darlings to go to Neverland: when Mary Darling was a girl, she, too, made the journey.

Murphy's novel opens with Mary Darling and her husband George coming home from a dinner party to discover their three children missing, the window open, and their nanny, a dog called Nana, barking frantically in the yard. John is frightened, but Mary is practically petrified, inconsolable and rigid with fear.

Soon, Mary's beloved uncle, John Watson, is summoned to the house, along with his famous roommate, the detective Sherlock Holmes. With Holmes on the case, surely the children will be found?

Of course not. Holmes is incapable of understanding where the Darling children have gone, because to do so would be to admit the existence of the irrational and fantastic, and, more importantly, to accept the testimony of women, lower-class people, and pirates. Holmes has all the confidence of the greatest detective alive, which means he is of no help at all.

Neither is George Darling, who, as a kind of act of penance for letting his children be stolen away, takes to Nana's doghouse, and insists that he will not emerge from it until the children are returned. He takes his meals in the doghouse, and is carried in it to and from the taxis that bring him to work and home again.

Only Mary can rescue her children. John Watson discovers her consorting with Sam, a one-legged Pacific Islander who is a known fence and the finest rat-leather glovemaker in London, these being much prized by London's worst criminal gangs. Horrified that Mary is keeping such ill company, Watson confronts her and Sam (and Sam's parrot, who screeches nonstop piratical nonsense), only to be told that Mary knows what she is doing, and that she is determined to see her children home safe.

Mary, meanwhile, is boning up on her swordplay and self-defense (taught by a Suffragist swordmaster in a room above an Aerated Bread Company tearoom, this being the only public place in Victorian London where a respectable woman can enjoy herself without a male escort). She's acquiring nautical maps. She's going to Neverland.

What follows is a very rough guide to fairyland. It's a story that recovers the dark asides from Barrie's original Pan stories, which were soaked with blood, cruelty and death. The mermaids want to laugh as you drown. The fairies hate you and want you to die. And Peter Pan doesn't care how many poorly trained Lost Boy starvelings die in his sorties against pirates, because he knows where there are plenty more Lost Boys to be found in the alienated nurseries of Victorian London, an ocean away.

More importantly, it's a story that revolves around the women in Barrie's world, who are otherwise confined to the edges and shadows of the action. In Barrie's Pan, Wendy is a "mother," Tiger Lily is a "princess," and Mary is a barely-there adult whose main role is to smile wistfully at the memory of when she was a girl and got to serve as Peter's "mother."

And Holmes? Apart from one love interest and a stalwart housekeeper, Holmes has very little time or regard for women. This is so central to the Holmes canon that the Arthur Conan Doyle estate actually sued over Netflix's Enola Holmes movie, arguing that Enola displayed basic respect for women, a feature that doesn't appear until the very end of the Holmes canon, and – the estate argued – those final stories were still in copyright:

https://www.cbr.com/why-enola-holmes-has-nice-version-sherlock/

Murphy's woman's-eye-view of Peter Pan, Neverland and the Lost Boys dilates the narrow aperture through which Peter Pan plays out, revealing a great deal of exciting, fun, frightening stuff that was always off in the wings. She gives flesh and substance to characters like Tiger Lily, by giving her the semi-fictionalized identity of one of the many American First Nations people who toured Europe and Africa, putting on Wild West shows that won eternal fame and cultural currency for the "American Indian," even as the USA was seeking to exterminate them and their memory.

Likewise, Murphy's pirates are grounded in the reality of pirate ships: democratic, anarchic, and far more fun than Robert Louis Stevenson would have you believe. While Murphy's pirates are about a century too late (as are Barrie's), they are in other regards pretty rigorous, which makes them extraordinarily great literary figures.

If you read David Graeber's posthumous Pirate Enlightenment, you'll know about the Zana-Malata of Madagascar, the descendants of anarchist pirates and matriarchal Malagasy women, who pranked and hoaxed British merchant sailors for generations, deliberately creating a mythology of south seas pirate kings:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/zana-malata/#libertalia

This hybrid culture of bold, fierce matriarchal Malagasy women and their anarchist pirate husbands play a central role in the book's resolution, and Murphy's pirate utopia is so well drawn and homely that I found myself wanting to move there.

This is a profoundly political book, but it's such a romp, too! Murphy has a real flair for this kind of thing. Back in 1999, she published the brilliant There and Back Again, an all-female retelling of The Hobbit (in spaaaaace!) that was widely celebrated…right up to the moment that Christopher Tolkien used baseless copyright threats to get the book withdrawn from sale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_and_Back_Again_(novel)

Billionaire failsons of long-dead writers notwithstanding, you can still read There and Back Again by borrowing a copy of the book from the Internet Archive's Open Library:

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15436385W/There_and_back_again

Murphy's mashup of Holmes, Pan, South Seas pirate anarchists, and other salutary and exciting personages, milieux, furniture and tropes of the Victorian adventure story is an unmissable triumph, a romp, a delight.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Locus Fundraiser 2025 https://www.indiegogo.com/at/locusmag2025 (includes personalized, signed copies of my books!)

• Out of Order Book Series! https://www.torforgeblog.com/2025/05/01/out-of-order-book-series/

• Who Broke the Internet? https://app.magellan.ai/listen_links/coryunderstood

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Space Needle to be converted to WiFi antenna https://web.archive.org/web/20050506113417/http://www.komotv.com/stories/36658.htm

#20yrsago How tech could replace the US healthcare system https://web.archive.org/web/20050427012918/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/view.html?pg=5

#20yrsago DRM and music research https://web.archive.org/web/20060106133157/http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/plamere/20050505#listen_only_music

#15yrsago How I got phished https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

#15yrsago Stross explains why he’s voting LibDem https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/party-election-broadcast.html

#15yrsago HOWTO Tell a debt-collector to go to hell https://web.archive.org/web/20100507214045/https://consumerist.com/2010/05/this-is-how-you-tell-a-zombie-debt-collector-to-buzz-off.html

#15yrsago Scholarly essay nails Gilligan’s Island’s hidden subtext https://web.archive.org/web/20100508025302/http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/Humor/island.htm

#15yrsago Canadian Prime Minister promises to enact a Canadian DMCA in six weeks https://web.archive.org/web/20100508202357/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5008/125/

#10yrsago House Republicans hold hearing on politics in science, don’t invite any scientists https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-holds-hearing-politically-driven-science-sans-scientists

#5yrsago Teen Vogue on socialist feminism https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#wages-for-housework

#5yrsago A federal jobs guarantee https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#jobs-guarantee

#5yrsago Pandemic profiteering could create social chaos https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#pandemic-profiteers

#5yrsago Leaked Trump doc projects 3000 US deaths/day https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#lethal-incompetence

#5yrsago Negativland's "This is Not Normal" https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#letter-u-numeral-2

#5yrsago What "writing rules" actually mean https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#said-bookism

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
  https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515

• Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
  https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

• Virtual: Writing to Resist (California Writers Club Berkeley):
  https://cwc-berkeley.org/writing-to-resist-5-18-25/

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• PDX: Picks and Shovels with bunnie Huang at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
  https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0

• London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
  https://howtoacademy.com/events/cory-doctorow-the-fight-against-the-big-tech-oligarchy/

• Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1308451968059

• Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
  https://www.uk.coop/events-and-training/events-calendar/co-op-congress-2025-book-your-place

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Cloudfest)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ai-fC-2Bpo

• Move Fast and Break Kings
  https://flipboard.video/w/2aH2AFNTPjcdWCMqjPB5N3?start=2s

• Beyond the Web (Ostrom Workshop)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WfO-9G4EgQ

---

Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

---

Upcoming books (permalink)

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Nimby and the D-Hoppers CONCLUSION https://craphound.com/stories/2025/04/13/nimby-and-the-d-hoppers-conclusion/

---

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

A reader writes:

I’m a new-ish manager in a small company. I have two direct reports. One is professional and a joy to work with. The other is a recent hire (he’s been here two months) who is right out of college, Jake.

In our most recent weekly one-on-one, Jake told me that he is “disappointed in the role” and the work is “not as interesting as he hoped.” I can understand how someone could find much of the work tedious. There’s a significant amount of data entry in the position. But I never hid this. I was clear with every candidate I interviewed that there would be tedious tasks and screened for people who seemed able to figure out strategies for handling that tedium.

I’m wondering where to go from here. Jake was not able to give me any clear idea about what he wants the role to be instead, and even if he could, I hired him for the job he’s doing now.

Part of me also feels like he hasn’t given this a fair shake. He’s only been here two months! A lot of those tedious tasks will start taking up less of his time as he gets better at them so he can expand other parts of the role, and I have told him that this is what I expect.

And lastly, I’m not sure how much investment I want to put into someone who has expressed such disinterest so early. He has also had a couple of attitude problems that I have been addressing (he can come across as entitled and arrogant, which is not a good look for the most junior member of our staff), but those by themselves, I felt were coachable.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

The post my new employee is “disappointed” with his job appeared first on Ask a Manager.

The school district called the undercover videos that led to the accusations “heavily edited,” “manipulated” and “grossly misleading.”

The girl was a student from Brenham Elementary School. Support services will be available for students and staff, according to a Brenham ISD social media post.

Areas north of Interstate 10, including approximately half of Harris County, are under an enhanced severe storm risk with the potential for damaging wind, large hail, tornadoes and street flooding. 

A reader writes:

In February, I changed companies and took on a manager position for the first time as the current manager was being promoted. While the exiting manager introduced me to the different people I would be supervising I was taken aback when “Benjamin” immediately assured me that despite looking like he was 21 or 22, he had worked there for years. If you had asked me to guess his age, I would have said 41 or 42. In the moment I was stunned, not sure if it was a joke, and just said I looked forward to working with him.

Later the exiting manager told me that he’s been doing that for years. The first time at a lunch meeting with a potential client, Benjamin made a big deal of having his ID ready and despite the best efforts of the others would not let the conversation move on until he had thoroughly discussed how often he gets carded and how no one believes his actual age. During a presentation, he started by talking about how he was qualified despite his youthful appearance while everyone waited uncomfortably for him to finish and begin the actual presentation. The exiting manager claimed he talked with Benjamin several times, but Benjamin insisted it was necessary to inform people of his true age because everyone would assume he was younger and not treat him as an equal. Finally Benjamin threatened to complain to HR, who in turn told the manager to leave it alone. The manager said Ben’s usual work is good, so he just kept him away from in-person and Zoom meetings with people outside the team and hoped that when Ben turns 40 this year he’ll finally drop it.

Since I officially took on the manager role, I’ve noticed Ben will try to bring up his supposed youthful looks at every opportunity. If someone went to their kid’s school, he insists that when he went to his nephew’s high school winter concert a few months ago he was mistaken for a student. If someone goes on vacation, he talks about how hard it is to get a rental car when everyone thinks he’s too young to be the person on the paperwork. You get the idea. He is good at what he does and always volunteers to help others, so I was willing to chalk this up as a harmless if annoying quirk.

Recently, however, when Ben took a long lunch for a doctor’s appointment, I was walking by the break room and overheard his colleagues making fun of him. They were talking about how he would be in tomorrow with nothing but stories about how the doctor actually claimed he was aging backwards, how the nurses couldn’t believe his birthday, etc. in a frankly mean-spirited way. And the “jokes” and impressions of him got worse from there. I chose to eavesdrop and confirmed this isn’t a one-off conversation; Ben is the office joke. From what I heard, the consensus from the older workers was that he is competent but needs therapy, while the younger ones called him “delulu” and said he is the last person they would ask for help with anything considering how “obviously detached” from reality he is.

I don’t want to have a culture of bullying, so I tried talking to a few of Ben’s colleagues privately. Their sentiments can be summed up as: we’re always nice to his face and if he stopped talking about it we would too, but his lies are so obvious and outrageous that people are going to inevitably talk.

I’m not sure what to do. Do I frankly tell him how badly him professional reputation is being damaged and hope the whole team doesn’t implode? Do I pray this is a joke that has gone on too long and telling him so will get him to drop it? Do I try to stop people from talking about him? Do I ignore it and try to maintain the current status quo? Do I wait until I am more established to do something? Do I escalate it to someone? Do I find a picture of him when he was 20 and a picture of him now and tell him, “Corporate wants you to find the difference” a la The Office?

What on earth.

This fixation would be weird even if he did look a lot younger than he is, but it’s especially bizarre since he doesn’t (and in fact, you actually originally guessed his age to be slightly older than he actually is). Is there such a thing as age dysmorphia?

If you didn’t know the history about Ben complaining to HR when the previous manager tried to address this, I’d say to definitely just talk to him. You wouldn’t need to frame it as “no one thinks you’re that young”; you could frame it as, “Talking so frequently about your age is becoming disruptive, derailing meetings, and distracting from the good work you otherwise do. None of us here are focused on age, and I expect we’ll treat everyone respectfully regardless of what age anyone guesses they are.”

In other words, it’s not your job to correct whatever age dysmorphia he has going on, but it is your job to say this has become disruptive and he needs to stop making it such a focus.

But since there’s already an HR history with it, you’d likely benefit from touching base with them first. Explain that it has affected Ben’s relationships with others and the way he’s perceived, and that you believe it’s a disservice to him not to let him know. Who knows, maybe you’ll find out that the previous manager addressed it differently and there’s more room for you to try the approach above. Or maybe HR will tell you to leave it alone.

If you’re told to leave it alone, then I tend to agree with Ben’s colleagues that people are inevitably going to talk. That said, you don’t need to accept mean-spiritedness on your team and you overhear anything like that again, you should shut it down with something along the lines of, “Regardless of what he’s doing, I want us to speak respectfully about each other.” People will still talk about it — because what he’s doing is really weird, and it’s not realistic to expect his coworkers not to be bursting to reality-check it with others — but you can at least make it clear that they need to be discreet about it / you’re going to call it out if you hear it.

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