Cowboy Who?

The guys recap D3 matches, upcoming TRU matches, MLR picks, Six Nations, and a little patrol down controlled det lane.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The weird thing is he was originally just printing teeth for the pure delight before he discovered the opportunity for savings.

Today's News:

top left: RGB monitor without intensity bit, bottom left: RGBI monitor without brown correction, top right: RGBI monitor with 33% brown reduction (IBM 5153), bottom right: RGBI monitor with 50% brown reduction (EGA/VGA/Tandy)

In 1980-81 IBM developed a graphics card for its new IBM PC called the Color/Graphics Adapter.  This card was designed to display 16 colors on a compatible CRT monitor via a 9-pin digital video port.  IBM defined the colors in its Technical Reference Manual using a 4-bit binary code.  The CGA could also display colors with a composite video connector on the card.  It is the evolution of the display of one of those colors, color 6, commonly but yet simplistically referred to as brown, that we are interested in today.

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Co-hosts Brandon Rottinghaus and Jeronimo Cortina delve into the latest news in national and local politics.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Editor’s note: Recently we asked our patrons to submit stories about how they use our library in their research. If you’d like to share your story, please leave comments here.

From author Larry Dieterich, in his own words:

I live in Davis, CA where I have excellent library resources. I am currently engaged in research for a book I’m writing, which contains a feminist deconstruction of the Biblical creation myth originally told in the third chapter of Genesis.

The research materials I am using for this project are often found in books; both new and old. I recently was recommended a book published in 2003; The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon R. Kass. Someone suggested this book might be useful for my research into the Biblical backstory of Eve and the Snake.

My local library does not have this particular book. I checked with Amazon and found that I could purchase a used copy and have it delivered to my home for about $9. The book contains 700 pages and since I already have many books in limited space, borrowing the book was clearly the best option: I didn’t know if the book was something I could even use, much less want to own.

I am a patron of the San Francisco Public Library and I checked their online catalog and found that they do own a copy of the book. The library’s website indicated and that the book ‘may be on the shelf’ in the main library, but I would have to drive to San Francisco to find out.

Before driving 70 miles to check the shelves, I thought to check the Internet Archive. It turns out that they own several copies of this particular book! I was able to borrow and begin reading it immediately, at no cost, without leaving my home. This saved me from having to drive 140 miles to borrow the book and another 140 miles to return it.

[T]he ability to quickly search the full text of the books I borrow from the Internet Archive is amazingly useful.

Larry Dieterich, author

The real value for my research, however, came when I perused the book I had borrowed. It turns out that the particular information I was looking for in this book was marginally useful to my research, but the digitized copy of the book was searchable in its full text. On a whim, I searched for the word “moon” and I found that the book discussed, in unexpected depth, another important subject for my research: the origins of time. I was able to quickly and easily expand my research to access some useful information that I didn’t expect to find in this book. It is unlikely that I would have looked for this esoteric content in the physical book. The convenience and power of the full-text search capability provided by the digital form of the book worked like magic.

In summary; I was able to avoid driving 280 miles to borrow and return the book, and the digitized copy I borrowed from the Internet Archive allowed me to easily find unexpected, and very useful, information for my research.

The Internet Archive is the most useful library. I honestly don’t think that the research I am doing would succeed without the resources provided by Internet Archive. The ability to access the library from my personal computer means that I can use the library at any time of day or night and without traveling. The Wayback Machine is invaluable for finding webpages that are no longer available anywhere else and I use it often. The digitized books I borrow from the Internet Archive have the ability to increase the size of the print; which is a real benefit for me as my visual acuity has declined with age. Also, the ability to quickly search the full text of the books I borrow from the Internet Archive is amazingly useful.

I am grateful to the folks at the Archive for creating and maintaining this truly awesome public resource. Please keep adding knowledge of all sorts.

If you’d like to share your story, please leave comments here.

The post Author: “The Internet Archive is the most useful library.” appeared first on Internet Archive Blogs.

ITHACA, NY—Barricading themselves for safety against an onslaught of seemingly brain-dead colleagues with outstretched hands, Black employees at Steerforth Industries reportedly boarded up their break room Friday against a ravenous horde of white coworkers reaching to touch their hair. “Braiiiiids, braiiiiiids!”…

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Buckingham Palace has asked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to vacate Frogmore Cottage, a 17th-century manor on the grounds of Windsor Castle that the couple intended to keep as their U.K. base when they gave up royal duties and moved to Southern California. What do you think?

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A system so strange I don't know where to begin! This is the Web It Internet Computer from Web Computers in 1999. It's effectively a 66MHz 486 PC with 16MB RAM that not only runs IBM PC DOS 7.0 and Windows 3.1, but also C64 software! To a degree. And the closer you look the weirder it gets.

● LGR links:
https://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.twitter.com/LazyGameReviews
https://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews

● Here's a download for embOS for use in a VM:
https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/embos

● All background music licensed from:
http://www.epidemicsound.com

00:00 Look at this weirdness!
01:05 The C64 Web.it Internet Computer
02:10 A web of bankruptcies and acquisitions
02:51 The new Commodore 64 for the 90s
03:14 It's Dutch? But it's German
04:01 Trackpad mouse? Nah, stylus
05:01 Ports and I/O
05:42 Powering on with dual CRTs
06:19 Say hello to embOS from IBM
07:27 A MIDI music test
07:53 Windows 3.1 except not
09:02 No hard drive, it's all flash
10:06 Stuck with preconfigured PC-DOS
10:42 It runs DOOM
11:09 Commodore 64 software
13:21 Dreaming of better hardware
14:22 Eh I'll pretend it's from 1993. This is neat!
16:01 Outroduction

#LGR #retro #computer

Don’t make people take their shoes off when boarding your yacht. You should not be using teak without providing boat shoes anyway.

You don’t have to go to all of your friends’ galas. Just be sure to send a check for the cost of your plate if your RSVP is a no.

Always split the bill evenly. However, if you’re on a potential investor’s megayacht and stop for dinner, you should at least offer to pay.

When talking to someone about a celebrity, let’s say your dear friend Madonna, always assume they know who you’re talking about and use their nickname. It’s insulting to refer to her as Madonna when you all call her Maddie. It implies that you think your conversation partner doesn’t know Madonna intimately.

Only wake up your waitstaff if there’s an actual emergency. And no, wanting a little bowl of ice cream is not a true emergency.

Not everyone should wink. Talk to your surgeon about an eye shape that would work better if your lid winks in an upsetting way.

Whoever’s PJ you ride on gets first dibs on rooms in the villa. No exceptions.

If you borrow Madonna’s Grammy for the background of a Zoom call and it’s remotely tarnished, you must win a new one to replace it.

If you’re in conversation with someone and want to leave, you can as long as you’re more important than they are. Don’t condescend to them with any parting pleasantries or fake excuses. Just leave. They’ll totally understand.

If you have to do layoffs, ensure that your employees’ email is swiftly disconnected before they can send a company-wide grievance letter. Bad for morale.

You have six months to send congratulations for an IPO.

You have twelve months to send condolences for an SEC investigation.

If you must have your assistant send out the holiday cards, ensure she knows everyone’s nicknames. For example, Madonna would feel slighted to get her card and not have it say “Maddie,” your nickname for her.

If a celebrity dies, but you knew them only via your personal trainer or facialist, you are not close enough to merit a post on social media. However, if you have a photo together and you both look really good, particularly at a red carpet event, it’s a form of respect.

Assume a host’s chef has tailored their tasting menu to your life story. Your food allergies may or not be considered in this story.

Don’t send Maddie an Edible Arrangement for any reason. However, a case of Bottarga caviar will never be refused.

If you’ve met someone before, but they don’t remember, feel free to reintroduce yourself with your first and last name, as well as your net worth. It’s rude to make them ask.

If you put out bowls of platelet-rich plasma, you must let people perform vampire blood facials inside, even if you have a white suede sofa. The bowls are not just décor.

If zooming with subordinates from the Palace of Versailles, do not do so from the Empire Rooms. There are plenty of other options, including the North or South Attic or the Gallery of Great Battles.

Don’t explicitly ask someone about their de-aging budget. Assume it’s $2 million per year. Not everyone can afford more than that. However, you may ask what they paid for their luxury doomsday bunker. Real estate is expensive, so it’s reasonable to ask what other people are paying.

Ten minutes of lateness can be excused without penalty, unless you’re boarding a ship for Earth 2. Maddie and the other passengers are understandably nervous, and if you’re being launched to another planet, that means the situation on Earth is dire, and you don’t want to hang around too long.

If you’re on the ship headed to Earth 2, and Maddie farts, you don’t have to say anything. Just be cool about it—it’s a long way to Earth 2, and everyone is going to fart on the ship at some point, so don’t be rude.

When only three people are left on the ship because you didn’t have enough food and Maddie says you should be the president of Earth 2, don’t waste anyone’s time pretending you don’t want it. Immediately accept. Humbly.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. My manager and coworker are divorcing their spouses and secretly dating

My coworker, Frank (who is above me in the chain of command, but only occasionally acts as my supervisor), just confided in me that he is dating my manager, Lauren (who is also HIS manager). We work closely together on a small team; I suspected they were having an affair for some time now, but hoped I was incorrect and never mentioned my suspicions to anyone.

Frank says they are both divorcing their spouses. I know my manager is applying for other roles in the company, but neither of them has informed HR about their relationship. They are worried that if they tell HR, Frank will be forced to move to another location, as it might be easier and quicker to find him a new role vs. finding one for Lauren. What, if anything, should I do? Their behavior already made me uncomfortable, but having it confirmed makes it even worse! We have an anonymous way to report things to HR, but they will probably guess I am who ratted them out. Should I just pretend I don’t know/keep their secret? I feel complicit now, and that’s making me feel really icky. I liked both of them and we get along just fine, but I’m really disappointed in their judgment. Especially with yearly reviews coming up soon — how is it ethical for Lauren to distribute a merit increase (or not) to Frank?

It’s an extremely serious ethical violation for Lauren to date someone she’s managing, and it’s a legal liability for your company. At a minimum, it will create the appearance of bias and favoritism once people learn about it (and they almost definitely will), and it can also mean Frank’s performance won’t be assessed appropriately, he won’t be given adequate feedback, and/or his accomplishments will be seen as suspect by everyone else, and it can open your company to charges of harassment down the road (“I wanted to end things but she implied it would affect things at work”).

Now, none of this is your problem to solve. If you want to do nothing, you can. But you’d be on very, very solid ground in letting HR know. This is a big deal and Frank and Lauren know it’s a big deal (that’s why they’re trying to conceal it), and it shouldn’t be your burden to carry around for them.

2. Boss will never award “exceeds expectations” because he has “high standards”

My previous boss said he never gives more than a “meets expectations” on performance reviews because he has really high standards, and a person would have to do a lot to exceed his expectations.

However, these ratings affect pay increases, so it seems like a penalty to be told, “You’re doing your job at a level that meets my very high expectations” but also, “You don’t deserve the highest raise I’m allowed to give you because you haven’t exceeded those high expectations.” What are your thoughts?

That is BS and not the way performance ratings are supposed to work. A company managing evaluations well will work to get all managers aligned around the same definitions of “meets expectations” and “exceeds expectations” and will clearly spell out what each of those categories looks like, so that managers and employees are all working from the same definitions, rather than each manager using their own subjective understandings. (Setting clear goals for each position makes this a lot easier, too.)

“I have really high expectations that no one can ever meet” shouldn’t be part of the discussion at all.

3. Should I include feedback from client surveys on my resume

I am in a client-facing role, and my current firm places a lot of importance in third party services that measure our net promoter score and client satisfaction. I tend to be kind of “meh” about the whole thing (I mean, our marketing team pays a lot for these services!), but in the last round of client satisfaction surveys, there was an option to provide feedback to individual professionals at the firm. I specifically received some very positive reviews in this last review cycle (for example, “Jane is always very helpful and meets the deadlines set internally.”). Can I include these reviews in my résumé? How would I present it? Also, as a point of respect, would I anonymize the companies who provided that feedback?

If some of the feedback is really impressive, yes, you could quote one or two examples — for example, “lauded by clients for ‘superb insights on some of our trickiest briefs.’” (Don’t name the client since they didn’t give permission for that.)

The big caveat: Anything you quote should be truly superlative, so don’t include the stuff like “always very helpful and meets deadlines” — that’s too close to “meets expectations” and doesn’t rise to the level of resume-worthy.

4. A question about tea

I think tea-making is an essential skill! I am pushing 40, have made tea for my team members higher and lower on the ladder all my life, and now I’m senior, continue to do the same every day without thinking about it. However, I am low-key irked when the occasional long-term colleague never offers to make me/anyone a cup, or if they don’t bother finding out HOW people take their tea/coffee (equally important). Or they make tea for visitors but apologize, saying they’re “bad” at making tea. Knowing how to make tea is not only good manners, but it’s an essential small team thing, and shows you care! It’s giving minutes of your time for Good Will.

Yes? No? Mountain over a tea-hill?

(I’m from the UK.)

I laughed at your ending parenthetical, because obviously.

For non-UK readers who don’t know about this, the UK has very specific rules of engagement for tea-drinking at work.

Unfortunately, though, I can’t answer this question because U.S. office culture has no equivalent to the UK’s tea-making expectations, not even with coffee. The American viewpoint on this is that while it’s lovely to offer to grab others a beverage when you’re getting one, there’s no obligation to do that, it’s not weird if you don’t, and you definitely don’t need to learn how to prepare a beverage you don’t drink yourself. In fact, many non-coffee drinkers here make a point of not learning to make good coffee so they’re not conscripted into coffee duty. (There are some exceptions to this, like if you’re an assistant who needs to get coffee for visitors.) But the American viewpoint is irrelevant, because that’s not the culture you’re in.

All of which is to say, I’m no help here but I’m sharing this anyway as a fascinating look into a different work culture.

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“The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical on Tuesday of the legality of the Biden administration’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt, heightening the prospect that the justices would thwart efforts to forgive the loans of tens of millions of borrowers.” — New York Times

Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court,

As I stand before you today, I need to make one thing absolutely clear: I’m a realist. I call things as I see them. And I just have to ask—how can we afford to bail out student loan borrowers when we can barely afford to bail out Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Bear Stearns, the entire airline industry, General Motors, Chrysler, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Savings & Loan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and then the entire airline industry for a second time? I just don’t see how we can swing it.

Besides, we recently forgave PPP loans for Tom Brady, Khloe Kardashian, and Jared Kushner—three completely average Americans. How many more run-of-the-mill citizens do we need to help? For God’s sake, when will it be enough?

Look: I care about people. I do. But people aren’t people. Corporations are people. And so when I say I care about people, what I mean is that I care about corporations, not people. Instead of bailing out American people, we need to save our money for the next time we need to bail out American corporations. Because American corporations are the real American people. Does that make sense?

In any case, I just don’t see how we can pay for student loan forgiveness when we’re on a very strict budget of spending trillions of dollars every year forever with no end in sight. It seems like we’d be turning a responsible, manageable situation into total and utter disaster. Heck, I think I speak for everyone when I say that money is completely made up, and we can add more of it at any time—except when it comes to helping people.

Now, I predict the defense will argue that student loan forgiveness is just a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of our spending. But I’m here to tell you that our bucket is already full to the brim. What’s it full of? Water. Where’s the water from? Eastern Ohio. And it’s contaminated. And they’re calling a hearing. This means at some point soon, we’re going need to use every penny we’ve got to bail out an entire rail company.

That’s right, a company. If you were listening earlier, that means a person. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let a person drown in potential debt—unless, of course, that person is a literal person.

DESIGNER HILARY: So tell me about your house.

HOMEOWNER AVERY: It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, not far from a Starbucks. It has a charming llama habitat, and I love the wood built-ins in the dining room.

HOMEOWNER TRENT: There’s only one bathroom though. It’s accessible by shimmying through an abandoned mine shaft and riding a rusted minecart to an open pit.

AVERY: Even though I love this house, I’d really like a faucet in the kitchen. Right now, we have to lower a bucket into a well, and the water is full of toxic metals.

TRENT: I want to sell it. I have double vision from mercury poisoning, and there are demons in the basement.

REALTOR DAVID: You absolutely should sell it. This ugly house makes me retch.

AVERY: I want to stay. Our toddler is possessed and crawling up walls, but the dining room is Jamaican mahogany.

HILARY: What would I have to do to make you stay?

AVERY: All we need are a few touch-ups, including an area where I can drink wine with my many friends.

TRENT: We need the kitchen and bathroom gutted. We need the interior walls knocked out and the ceiling raised to form one large circus-tent-style living space. We’d also like to do something about the demons.

HILARY: That’s asking a lot. What’s your budget?

TRENT: Seventy-nine dollars and a Twix bar.

HILARY: I can’t do everything you ask on that budget. And it would be a terrible mistake to remove the kitchen wall.

TRENT: (angrily jamming a Twix bar into his mouth) Kitchen walls are an abomination. The budget is now seventy-nine dollars and half a Twix bar.

(David shows Avery and Trent a potential new home.)

DAVID: This house has seven luxurious bathrooms and a fresh mountain stream that runs directly through the kitchen. It even has that llama habitat you requested. It came in right at your $10 billion budget.

TRENT: I’m sold.

AVERY: This house is nowhere near a Starbucks, and the so-called llama habitat is at sea level. David, what part of “grassy plateau” did you not understand?

(Back at the house remodel.)

HILARY: I have good news and devastating news. The devastating news is that when we removed the kitchen wall of your home, the structure collapsed, killing our entire crew. It also caused the crack in your basement to become a gaping chasm, fully connecting this universe to a dimension of hell.

AVERY: Sounds expensive.

HILARY: The good news is that I painted over all the Jamaican mahogany, and it really brightened up the dining room.

TRENT: How much will it cost to close the hell portal?

HILARY: Five billion dollars.

TRENT: Can’t we just leave the portal open?

HILARY: (stepping over the still-twitching body of the general contractor) I’m afraid not. All of humanity would be cast into eternal suffering.

AVERY: We don’t have much choice then. Fix it. I have faith in you, Hilary.

(David shows Avery and Trent a different potential house.)

DAVID: It wasn’t easy, but I found a house that checked all your boxes. Best of all, it’s in the same neighborhood, near a Starbucks.

AVERY: How could it have been difficult to find? It’s literally two doors down from our current home.

TRENT: I want this house. There’s a grassy plateau for Avery’s llamas, and the basement has foosball instead of everlasting anguish.

AVERY: I hate to admit it, David, but I really enjoy the potable water. This place costs $15 billion though. We could never afford it.

DAVID: Surprise: your old house used to be worth only $10 billion, but now that you’ve spent $5 billion fixing it up, you could sell it for $15 billion.

TRENT: That means we can now afford to buy a $15 billion house.

AVERY: That math totally adds up. We’d even have half a Twix bar left over.

DAVID: Let’s check in with Hilary and see how she did on your remodel.

HILARY: Here is your remodeled home.

TRENT: Is this really the same house? It’s so muted and cavernous.

AVERY: Now that the hell portal is sealed, I can picture my many friends and me drinking copious amounts of wine in here.

TRENT: But the only bathroom is still down the mine shaft.

HILARY: I didn’t have the budget for a complete bathroom remodel. But look, I lined the minecart with faux fur and added matte black hardware.

AVERY: I could drink wine in it.

HILARY: So what’s it going to be, Avery and Trent? Will you love it?

DAVID: Or list it?

(Avery and Trent confer with each other. Suspenseful music plays.)

AVERY: We’ve decided to love it.

DAVID: (spits out his Starbucks Iced Caramel Macchiato) Damn it.

HILARY: (to David) Ha ha. I win. You are trash.

The post Sisyphus Myth appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

2005 was a simpler time. Bjork was getting drunk in bars and cats were thinking about buying boats. Anyways, here’s Triumph of a Heart:

That bar scene looks like it was super fun to film.

null

A security vulnerability report arrived that went roughly like this:

• Create a new user “Attacker” with Administrator privileges.
• Log in as “Attacker”.
• While logged in as “Attacker”, browse to a folder that require Administrator privilege.
• When Explorer tells you that you don’t have access, click “Continue” to gain access.
• Log out as “Attacker”.
• Log in another administrator account.
• Change the account category of “Attacker” from “Administrator” to “Standard user”.
• Log back in as “Attacker” and browse to those same folders.
• Notice that the Attacker has retained access to the folders, even though the Attacker is no longer an administrator.

This story is all accurate, but is there a security vulnerability?

Let’s go through the usual questions.

Who is the attacker? The attacker is the user we called “Attacker”.

Who is the victim? The victim is the other administrator who created the “Attacker” account and then later reduced the “Attacker” account’s privileges to Standard User.

What has the attacker gained? The attacker gained persistent access to resources.

But wait, this all assumes that the attacker was able to log on as the Attacker account and exercise its Administrator powers. The attacker is an administrator on the system. You have already lost!

Once you let the attacker into your system with administrator privileges, they can do all sorts of things to establish persistent access. They can add themselves to the security descriptors of various resources. They can plant a backdoor that gives them an administrative command prompt. They can install malware that steals passwords.

In fact, they can even patch the “Remove a user from the Administrator group” user interface code so that it says “Yup, totally removed Attacker from the Administrator group” without actually doing it.

Once you give away the farm, you can’t take it back. It’s gone.

Note that the system did ask an administrator for permission to grant the Attacker account permanent access to the folder. The prompt from Explorer says, “You don’t currently have permission to access this folder. Click Continue to permanently get access to this folder,” and the Continue button requires administrator privileges. So it requires administrator privileges to gain persistent access to a folder. Fortunately, there’s an administrator right there to grant that privilege: The Attacker!

Once you let a bad person become an administrator, you have lost the game. It is essential that you give administrator privileges only to people you trust.

The user interface to remove someone from the Administrator group does what it says on the tin: The user is removed from the Administrators group. But that is not sufficient to clean up behind a rogue administrator, because you haven’t cleaned up all the backdoors the rogue administrator may have planted while they still had administrator privileges. And you may never be sure that you found them all. As the philosopher Ellen Ripley put it, “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

The post Once you give away the farm, you can’t take it back: Recovering from a rogue administrator appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Get your privacy back: Go to https://incogni.com/sabine and sign up for Incogni. First 100 subscribers get 20% off.

Today we’ll talk about computers made of human brain cells, galaxies that are too big to exist, how the Brits prevented a global chocolate disaster, what the Milky Way’s black hole is having for dinner, how to get radioactive compounds out of water, an impossibly efficient light sensor, better lithium-air batteries, Google’s second milestone on the way to quantum computing, and of course, the telephone will ring.

00:00 Intro
00:32 Intelligence In A Dish
03:39 Webb Finds Galaxies Too Big To Exist
05:50 The Global Chocolate Disaster That Wasn't
08:01 Our Black Hole Is About To Swallow A Gas Cloud
09:47 New Method to Remove Radionucleotides From Water
11:15 An Impossibly Efficient Light Sensor
13:24 Better Lithium-Air Batteries
15:28 Google Reaches Error-Correction Milestone
17:52 Protect Your Privacy with Incogni

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👉 Transcript and References on Patreon ➜ https://www.patreon.com/Sabine
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This post, update: a DNA test revealed the CEO is my half brother … and he’s freaking out , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Remember the letter-writer who learned through a DNA test that the company CEO was their half brother … and the CEO was freaking out? Here’s the update.

My short update is that he 100% tried to fire me. The long update is complicated but this month has been unbelievable.

Just after my question was posted, my boss “Katie” met with me and told me she was aware of the situation and didn’t agree with how the CEO and HR had been handling it in regard to the nepotism training. I told her my only plan was to forget about it for the time being and she supported that. She told me to come to her if anything changed.

Things were quiet for a week until a major project I was working on was deleted from the company drive. It was a coincidence that I had backed it up on a USB. Katie was suspicious about my project getting deleted and told me to save everything to an external drive and my hardware, and sure enough, the project got deleted again. After that, anything I put on our work servers was getting deleted within hours, as well as any correspondence with clients or my team members. I started sending all my work communication and attachments to Katie and duplicating them on a USB that Katie kept locked in her office. It was like a James Bond movie.

After a mid-month project meeting where I showed up with all my work on a USB drive HR pulled me in because “an anonymous concern” was raised about me “hiding” my work from my colleagues and tried to write me up. Katie must have known something like this was coming because she handled it and BCCd me on all her correspondence with HR and the executive team outlining her concerns about the CEO’s and HR’s behavior regarding the DNA results and that she believed someone was remotely accessing my work computer to delete things. The company VP was horrified. Up until this point, I didn’t know CEBro wasn’t the owner of the company.

Katie and I had a call with the VP that day, who assured me that the owners were being made aware of the situation and that my job was not in jeopardy. The VP also apologized for the write-up attempt and the fact someone was obviously remotely accessing my work hardware. That was on a Friday, and my attempted firing was the following Monday.

CEBro’s mom contacted Dad on the homefront as all this was happening at work. I won’t get into what was said but the gist is Dad was set up as an unwitting donor for a childless couple. As a family we decided to support Dad and just drop it because we didn’t ask for the complete Jerry Springer package, we just wanted to know what part of Ireland Grandma was from.

The Monday after Dad spoke to CEBro’s mother, I was walking through the lobby when HR literally ambushed me and loudly fired me in front of a client and like twenty of my colleagues. Security escorted me out in front of my friends and colleagues who had no idea what was happening so that was pretty dark and humiliating. Katie stopped me on the way to my car and brought me back in for a video call with her, the VP, and the owners of the company. I explained what had happened since I got my DNA results back, the nepotism training, and editing as much of the personal stuff as I could for my Dad’s sake but the whole thing was humiliating. I was unfired but asked to turn in my badge, as both CEBro and I were suspended pending a full investigation by the owners and their lawyer. I was suspended with pay, which HR vehemently protested against. The suspension lasted a week and I had planned to spend that time looking for another job but I just didn’t have it in me.

CEBro did not return after the suspension. I was offered my job back with an apology but I opted not to go back either and have been freelancing and taking some downtime because the last month has sucked. I did accept a generous severance package, so at least they tried to do the right thing.

While some of this sounds flippant, there have been a lot of tears and stress and freaking out because this was a LOT. I don’t like being under a microscope at work or feeling like I’m “in trouble” so it was really increasing a lot of anxiety. I was also hurt because I loved that job and my team and being marched out by security felt awful. Dad feels guilty this turned into me almost losing my job, but none of this is his fault at all. In all of this, I have to say the people I resent the most in this situation were the two goblins in HR who knew they were doing the wrong thing every step of the way and openly enjoyed the drama of it all. Rumors have reached me that both the people in HR are connected with CEBro in some way — like former college friends or exes or something. I wish them the future they deserve.

This post, interviewer scolded me for my outfit, job requires an oath of allegiance, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. My interviewer scolded me for what I was wearing

I am looking to relocate to a different city in my home state, and a couple of interviews I did with one company were video due to my not being able to do an in-person interview.

I was extremely successful in my first interview with them. A second interview was arranged last minute, three hours before the end of my work day. What proceeded to transpire was a very awkward interview.

After work, I had five minutes to get ready and prepare for my interview. I quickly throw on a dress shirt and tie because I want to be professional, and I jump on Microsoft Teams. As soon as my picture appears and I see the interview panel, the original interviewer from the first interview tells me, “You are wearing the same shirt as last time.” (It’s a different shirt but she basically scolds me. I also didn’t think she would remember what I was wearing a week ago; she probably sees tons of people every day.) Next she tells me to “take your tie off because it doesn’t fit with the company culture.” She didn’t tell me to take it off in the first interview. Is she just posturing for her boss? Safe to say that being critiqued right away killed my whole vibe during the interview.

But the end is where it got really weird for me. One of the interviewers, the president of this branch, asks, “Are you nervous, because you seem like it?” I said maybe a little bit, but unfortunately I didn’t have a ton of time to prepare to calm my nerves. Then he asks the original interviewer if I was nervous during the first interview and she says no. Then they go on a two-minute conversation in front of me about how I am nervous now but wasn’t before. I wasn’t any more nervous during this interview than my first. And I wasn’t so nervous that I was stuttering or not answering questions well. I was just blushing.

I am a recent college graduate with little interview experience for skilled jobs and this is an entry-level position, so I think most people they would be interviewing would be nervous. Was this my fault? Was the president just getting a nice little boost for himself making me feel bad about being nervous? Was this a stress test interview? Were they not very good interviewers?

They definitely weren’t good interviewers, but it sounds like much more than that. Scolding you for wearing the same shirt (whether or not you actually were) and telling you to take off your tie are both incredibly bizarre and rude. The president asking if you were nervous isn’t necessarily a big faux pas on its own, but the two of them having a sidebar right in front of you about your level of nervousness is rude and obnoxious.

These people both sound like jerks. It’s very unlikely this was some sort of deliberate stress test (those are really rare). They’re just asses. It’s a good reminder that interviews are two-way streets; you should be assessing your interviewers just as they’re assessing you, and if they don’t seem like people you’d want to work with, that’s valuable info that the process is designed to draw out (on both sides). So in that regard, the process worked.

2. Is return-to-office anti-feminist?

Like many, my company recently announced it will soon require employees to return to the office three times a week, after just about three years of fully remote work (during which, I might add, productivity improved). It remains to be seen what will happen, as many of us were hired during this period of remote work and don’t live within reasonable commuting distance of the office — but that isn’t why I’m writing.

The other day a colleague said to me in passing that they believe requiring employees back to the office hurts women the most. That it is anti-feminist. Why? Because women are generally the “default parent,” even if both partners work full-time. When a kid is sick or has to be picked up early from school or has a doctor’s appointment, the mother is usually the one who stays home and has to call out of work, or maybe it becomes clear that she cannot work full-time at all — just a few of the many, many examples. As someone who had their first child during the pandemic, I can’t help but agree. Do you see it this way? And, if so, is there anything we can be doing to further emphasize how remote work benefits everyone, but women especially?

I don’t know if I’d agree that bringing people back to the office is anti-feminist, but it’s certainly true in broad terms that it hurts women more than men because women do indeed generally get stuck with far more of the sorts of responsibilities you described. (It’s why far more women than men dropped out of the workforce in the first two years of the pandemic.) The solution to that is multi-pronged: more flexibility from employers, yes, but also better child care options, more societal support for parents, and men picking up an equal share of caretaking. Without the last three — and definitely without the last one — the problem will remain.

I do think that when you’re talking about remote work benefiting women, you have to be careful to be clear that you’re not suggesting companies embrace remote workers caring for young kids at home as a substitute for full-time child care — because it’s impossible to do both well at the same time. But when you’re talking about older kids, or the occasional unplanned or temporary circumstance like a school closure or a sick child, it’s absolutely true that remote work benefits anyone with caregiving responsibilities — and that means disproportionately women.

3. Can I ask to make my job part-time so I can attend graduate school?

I am unsure if I can ask if my current full-time position could be made into a part-time role so I could go to grad school full-time, and how I should broach the subject.

I work as an in-house illustrator for a 150-person company, and I really love my job (it’s honestly top 10% of my specific field in terms of easy, decently paid, and fulfilling) and I know I’m highly valued by my team and supervisor. But I REALLY want to go back to school, and my dream job would be going into academia as a career instead of trying to fit in research on the side (and without the clout of an MFA or being a freelancer). I am full-time and salaried with benefits, but my dream graduate program is full-time only. I am also the only dedicated illustrator in the company that needs new graphics made on a daily basis, and I know if I went part time they would have to either find a full-time person or at least one other part-timer (or worse, the workload would be put onto people who had been really relieved I took the task off their hands). I wouldn’t be going back this year, or even necessarily the next, but how far ahead should I bring it up? Is this a huge faux pas?

It’s a really big ask. If your job could become part-time without someone else needing to be hired, that would be one thing. But you’d be asking them to hire and manage a whole additional person, and they’d be doing that to accommodate you in attending a program that would presumably result in you leaving them at the end of it. If they deeply love you — not just “you do a good job and we like you” but more like “never leave us, you are phenomenal, and we don’t know what we’d do without you” — it’s possible they’d consider it. But even then, it’s a really big ask, and the chances of them agreeing are pretty low.

If you’re going to give it a shot anyway, I wouldn’t bring it up until you have a concrete plan in place (have been accepted to a program and know exactly when you’ll be starting) … and then you’ve got to factor in all the normal stuff about whether it’s safe to give more than a standard two weeks’ notice. If you’re hoping to raise it well before then because their answer will affect whether you pursue the program at all, that’s a lot trickier. In theory you could raise it to your boss earlier as a hypothetical (“just something I’m thinking about at this stage / no concrete plans / wondering whether you’d ever be open to this”) but an answer given to a hypothetical in 2023 won’t necessarily match up with what they decide when it’s really happening in 2024. So it’s tough. Your safest route is to assume they won’t approve it, plan accordingly, and have it be a pleasant surprise if they do.

4. Working when the heat is out

Something happened where my sister works, and I would like your input. My sister works for a credit union, and she works in the loan department located in the basement area of the central branch/administrative office building. Last Wednesday, there was a very bad ice storm and that building lost power. They had a generator, but although it did power computers and at least half the lights, there was extremely limited heat. Where my sister was in the basement, it was tolerable (about 68 degrees). But on the main floor in the actual branch, it averaged between 55-60 degrees. Employees wore their winter coats and were miserable. Space heaters were not allowed since they draw a ton of power and could have destroyed the generator. This mess started last Wednesday morning and power was restored Tuesday at 6:15 pm.

Is making your employees work in these conditions reasonable? (I would like to note that they could have closed the branch and sent the employees to other branches.)

No. OSHA recommends (but doesn’t require) temperatures of 68-76 degrees. 55-60 is really cold.

5. My new job requires me to take an oath of allegiance

I am a PhD student graduating this summer, and I have just signed on to a fantastic job that I am really excited about. I’m moving from the east coast to California, where I will work for the University of California with my salary paid by a federal grant.

I received my onboarding paperwork today, and along with all the normal stuff, it included an “Oath of Allegiance.” I am required to sign it in front of a witness who is “legally authorized to administer oaths.” Here’s the full text:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”

Am I right in thinking this is insane? On the one hand, it doesn’t bother me that much because I can’t see it ever coming into play. I definitely don’t have the type of job where I’m likely to encounter enemies, foreign and domestic, seeking harm to the constitutions of my state or country (and if they do I’m peacing out, thanks). But I feel weird about signing something this intense, and I don’t really want to. Can they legally require this as a condition of employment?

Yep, they can require it. In fact, it looks like all California state employees are required to take that oath, and all federal employees have one too.

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