Cowboy Who?

Everyone knows that the IBM PC established 512-byte sectors on floppies and hard disks as the standard, which survived for several decades until the advent of “native” 4K-sector drives.

Of course what “everyone knows” is not necessarily the whole story.

PC Floppy Sector Sizes

The original 1981 IBM PC Technical Reference says: The [IBM PC floppy] drives are soft sectored, single sided, with 40 tracks. They are Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) coded in 512 byte sectors, giving a formatted capacity of 163,840 bytes per drive.

But that was never really true; while PC DOS 1.0 indeed used 8 sectors per track, resulting in 163,840 bytes (512 × 8 × 40 bytes) on a floppy disk, PC DOS 2.0 supported 9 sectors per track on the same hardware, with increased 184,320 bytes disk capacity. This was possible in large part because the BIOS in the IBM PC was fairly flexible when it came to floppy disk formats.

It should be noted that the IBM PC used the NEC μPD765 floppy disk controller (FDC), which was fairly agnostic about the disk layout (though it had very specific ideas about how sectors should be formatted). It supported more or less any number of sectors per track (up to 255, much more than the physical drive limits), and could handle sector sizes that were a power of two from 128 bytes to 16 kilobytes.

The PC BIOS exposed the floppy drive characteristics through the Disk Parameter Table (DPT), sometimes also Disk Base Table. The BIOS had a default table, and during POST, initialized interrupt vector 1Eh to point at that table, called DISK_BASE in the original PC BIOS. The user could reprogram vector 1Eh and point at a different table. A routine called GET_PARM in the BIOS took care to always access the table and not hardcode any parameters.

The boot sector of PC DOS 2.0 (and the BIOS component of DOS) took advantage of this flexibility and modified the DPT in order to extend the number of sectors per track from 8 to 9 on 180K/360K disks. Newer DOS versions also modify the DPT.

But back to sector sizes. The PC BIOS documentation (in practical terms, the BIOS listing published by IBM) is notable for not saying anywhere that disk sector size is 512 bytes. In fact the BIOS goes to some lengths to make sure that the sector size is not fixed.

The BIOS INT 13h interface is structured such that read/write/verify operations all determine the transfer size by the number of sectors, not by the number of bytes. The PC BIOS does have to calculate the byte length of a disk transfer in order to set up the DMA controller. The DMA_SETUP routine in the BIOS takes care to calculate the transfer length using the sector size code from the DPT.

The BIOS INT 13h documentation also clearly shows that the format service (INT 13h/05h) can accept different sector sizes, and explicitly lists 128, 256, 512, and 1024 bytes as possibilities.

In sum, the PC BIOS can work with different sector sizes and is not harcoded to 512-byte sectors… with one tiny but important exception explained later.

DOS Sector Sizes

DOS was never hardcoded for 512-byte sectors, for a good reason. In the early era of DOS (circa 1980-1985), 512-byte sectors were far from standard. DOS was originally developed for 8″ floppies, which typically used either 128 or 1024 bytes per sector. There were also MS-DOS systems with 256-byte sectors on floppies, such as the DEC Rainbow. In other words, DOS had to be flexible about sector sizes because there was no universal sector size in the early DOS era.

The DOS 1.0 programming interface was compatible with CP/M and used FCB style I/O based on 128-byte records. While this interface was derived from 128-byte sectors used on early floppy systems, in 1980 it was already common to use physical sector sizes that were a multiple of 128 with CP/M. The UNIX-style file I/O API added in DOS 2.0 was even less dependent on sector sizes.

The flexibility of DOS with regard to sector sizes was also exploited in the early days of hard disks, when larger logical sector sizes were sometimes used to get past the 32MB partition limit in 3rd-party add-on products.

PC Hard Disk Sector Sizes

By the time (1983) the IBM PC/XT came out, 512-byte sectors were established well enough that the XT’s hard disk BIOS did in fact hardcode 512 bytes per sector. It is not immediately clear if the hard disk controller could support any other sector size.

The PC/AT continued the tradition, and only supported 512 bytes per sector on hard disks. While the WD1010 Winchester Disk Controller chips did support sector sizes of 128, 256, 512, or 1024 bytes, the AT disk controllers quite possibly did not (at minimum the sector buffer could not hold more than 512 bytes). In any case, the WD1010 SDH register (SDH for Sector size, Drive, Head), normally mapped at I/O port 1F6h, had to be explicitly programmed for 512-byte sector size on the PC/AT disk controller.

Because the XT and AT BIOS only supported 512-byte sectors on hard disks, all operating systems only supported 512-byte sectors as well. When the ATA standard was created in the late 1980s, sector sizes other than 512 bytes were not even considered. The hard disk controller Drive/Head Register (formerly SDH), which theoretically allowed the user to select the sector size, was fixed to only support 512-byte sectors. Before the first official ATA standard was finalized in 1993, one of the sector size selection bits in the Drive/Head Register (the one that previously had to be set to zero) was repurposed to enable LBA (Logical Block Addressing). This was presumably a safe extension because setting the bit to one would have not produced working results on at least some PC/AT compatible hard disk controllers.

Needless to say, a PC hard disk controller can come with its own ROM, and many did. A custom hard disk BIOS ROM could use sector sizes other than 512 bytes.

Floppy Booting

The IBM PC BIOS assumes that a machine capable of booting from a floppy drive must have at least 32K RAM (cassette-only PCs might have had only 16K, sufficient to run ROM BASIC). It loads the boot sector at the top of the first 32K of RAM.

One might expect that if the BIOS assumed 512-byte sector sizes, it would load the boot sector at address 32K – 512, i.e. 7E00h. Only the BIOS loads the boot sector at 7C00h, which is 32K – 1024. As if the BIOS expected that floppy disk sectors could be up to 1024 bytes in size (the largest common floppy sector size at the time).

There’s of course a catch. When it is loading a boot sector, the PC BIOS (just like all its successors) uses the default DPT, and therefore expects 512-byte sectors. The boot sector of any floppy capable of booting on a PC compatible system must therefore be 512 bytes in size. The boot sector can install a different DPT, switch to a different sector size, and keep using the BIOS floppy services, but the boot sector itself must be 512 bytes big in order to actually boot.

That is one reason for PCs using 512-byte sector sizes. The other reason is that 512 bytes is a good size for maximizing storage capacity. Smaller sectors have more overhead, and larger sectors may end up leaving too much unused space at the end of a track.

There is every indication that throughout the 1980s, sector size of 512 bytes was a good compromise between keeping the sector overhead on the storage medium low and at the same time not wasting too much space on the file system level when storing many small files. In other words, 512-byte sectors were just the right size, not too big and not too small.

What Is a Valid Boot Sector?

Booting brings another question: How does the BIOS recognize a valid boot sector? On the IBM PC, the answer is very simple: It doesn’t. The original PC BIOS attempts to read sector 1 from track 0 (and head 0, originally the only head) from a floppy into memory at address 7C00h. If the read succeeds, the BIOS jumps to the first byte and the rest is up to the boot sector. If the read (with retries) fails, the BIOS brings up the ROM BASIC.

This behavior clearly caused some trouble with diskettes that were physically formatted but had no valid boot code on them; such floppies would likely hang the PC without giving any indication to the user as to what was going on. The PC/AT BIOS uses a simple heuristic to decide whether a sector that was read without error indeed looks like a valid boot sector. These heuristics did not exist in the PC/XT BIOS.

The AT BIOS first checks if the boot sector starts with byte 06h or greater. This happens to exclude ADD opcodes at the beginning of the 8086 opcode map, and will reject zeroed boot sectors.

The BIOS then loads the first word (not byte) of the boot sector and checks whether the following 8 words are all identical to it. If yes, the boot sector is again rejected. This catches freshly formatted disks with any repeating byte or word pattern. If either of the checks fails, the PC/AT BIOS stops with an error rather than attempting to boot from the hard disk.

Once the heuristics are satisfied, the PC/AT BIOS again jumps to the boot sector and lets it take over. Note that IBM BIOSes do not check for any kind of signature on boot floppies. The reason is obvious: DOS 1.x never had any such signature in the boot sector. Neither did numerous other operating systems.

Note that the heuristics described above are employed by the third (1986) revision of the PC/AT BIOS. The exact logic slightly changed across PC/AT BIOS revisions.

Hard Disk Boot Sectors

The PC/AT BIOS uses completely different logic for deciding whether a fixed disk boot sector is valid. Once a boot sector is read from hard disk without error, the BIOS checks whether the last word (i.e. the word at offset 510) is AA55h. If so, it jumps to the first byte of the boot sector. Note that no heuristics are applied, only the AA55h signature is checked.

The older PC/XT fixed disk BIOS resides in an add-on ROM, but uses the same logic, and requires the same AA55h signature at the end of a 512-byte hard disk boot sector.

What the BIOS most certainly does not do is anything related to partitioning. If the first sector of a hard disk is a typical MBR (Master Boot Record), the boot sector itself will examine the partition table stored within it and act accordingly. However, that is completely independent of what the BIOS does. An MBR must have the AA55h signature, or it will be rejected by the BIOS, but that is the only BIOS requirement. A hard disk bootable by a PC BIOS can utilize any partitioning scheme, or none at all; the BIOS does not care.

Non-512-byte BIOS Sectors

One widespread (if perhaps not well known) example of using sector sizes other than 512 bytes is no-emulation El Torito CD-ROM booting.

CD-ROMs always have 2048-byte sectors. The El Torito specification supports booting from floppy or hard disk images stored on the CD-ROM; in that case, each CD-ROM sector logically contains four 512-byte sectors accessed through the emulated drive.

El Torito also supports “no-emulation” aka native booting. This assumes the use of extended INT 13h services, which allow using LBA rather than CHS addressing. For no-emulation booting, El Torito uses 2048-byte sectors through INT 13h.

No-emulation booting has the advantage that BIOS-accessible sectors map 1:1 to sectors on CD-ROM, allowing straightforward access to the ISO 9660 (or other) file system on the CD-ROM.

4K Hard Disks

Sometime around 2005, the storage industry started pushing for hard disks with 4096-byte sectors rather than the traditional 512-byte sectors. The biggest reason was simple: Capacity. 4K sectors have less storage overhead than 512-byte sectors. Common file systems in that era were using 4K or larger blocks anyway, so 4K physical sectors are arguably more natural than any smaller size. In addition, ECC (Error Correction Code) is more capable when used with larger data blocks; that is to say, the same amount of total ECC data can correct more errors when used for a single 4K sector compared to eight 512-byte sectors.

The ATA/ATAPI-7 standard, published in 2005, was the first to allow any possibility of hard disks with sector sizes other than 512 bytes. Until then, one sector was defined as strictly 512 bytes.

Unfortunately for the disk vendors, 512-byte hard disk sectors were by that time quite ingrained not only in disk interfaces (ATA including SATA, covered by the above mentioned ATA/ATAPI standard) but also firmware, operating systems, and various system applications.

Operating systems could work with non-512-byte sectors (see CD-ROMs), but booting from such drives was a very different proposition. While computers were perfectly capable of booting from CD-ROMs specifically, the mechanism was unsuitable for hard disks.

The initial and very widespread solution to the problem was emulating 512-byte sectors (512e drives, often labeled AF for Advanced Format). This approach allows existing firmware and operating systems to continue working unchanged. There is a potential performance problem if file systems using 4K blocks are not aligned with the physical 4K sectors, forcing a write of one 4K block to rewrite two adjacent 4K sectors. System software must take care to align file system to avoid this problem.

Hard disks exposing 4K sectors through the disk interface are often called Advanced Format, but typically labeled 4Kn for “4K native”.

Windows 8 (2012) was the first Microsoft OS that supported booting from 4Kn hard disks out of the box; this long delay reflects just how unprepared the PC ecosystem was to deal with hard disks using non-512-byte sectors in the late 2000s, after a quarter century of 512-byte sectors being the only choice for hard disks.

Ironically, adding support for 4K sectors is in some ways going back to the roots. In the early 1980s, non-PC hard disks were often used with 128-byte, 256-byte, or 1024-byte sectors; that was one reason why e.g. Seagate designated their hard disks with unformatted capacity, because the formatted capacity was a function of sector size. For example a 1982 ST400 series brochure from Seagate shows that the drives were formatted at the factory with 256-byte sectors. Even a 1986 product manual for the ST212 drive still lists the formatted capacity assuming 256-byte sectors, rather than 512-byte sectors, despite the fact that most users almost certainly formatted the drives with 512-byte sectors. Only the ST251 series product manual from 1987 lists the formatted capacity in 512-byte sectors.

Addendum

A well informed reader pointed out the 8FORMAT utility which modifies the BIOS DPT in order to access 8″ drives, including support for media with sector sizes other than 512 bytes. Note that 8FORMAT is a recently developed utility.

There was also a somewhat similar tool called 22DISK from Sydex, but I believe 22DISK programmed the FDC directly, similar to other Sydex tools.

A customer was doing an inventory of the files on their system, and they found files named passwords.txt that were filled with somebody else’s passwords. The same file was found among both Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook’s data files. What’s going on here? Are Teams and Outlook stealing passwords?

The clue is that the passwords.txt file is in a subdirectory called ZxcvbnData. zxcvbn is the name of a password strength estimator library developed by Dropbox. The library is available on GitHub, and the passwords.txt file of the top 30,000 passwords is one of the things that zxcvbn uses to assess the strength of a proposed password. The other files in the same directory provide popular English names as well as names of popular United States television shows and movies.

But that’s not the only thing that zxcvbn considers when assessing a password’s strength. You can read their blog entry or watch their technical presentation.

So don’t panic about the passwords.txt file. It’s there to protect you from bad passwords.

Bonus chatter: Sometimes, organizations are concerned because the passwords.txt file contains unsavory words. It so happens that unsavory words are popular as passwords.

The post Why is there a <CODE>passwords.txt</CODE> file on my system that’s filled with somebody else’s passwords? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Chakrapong "Anne" Chakrajutathib, who controls JKN Global Group, purchased the organization for $20 million. She's a celebrity in Thailand who is outspoken about being a transgender woman.

(Image credit: Sakchai Lalit/AP)

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The Nobel prize in physics is typically awarded to scientists who make sense of nature; those whose discoveries render the universe more comprehensible. But the 2022 Nobel has been awarded to three physicists who revealed that the universe is even stranger than we thought thanks to Quantum Entanglement

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“As a physician, I’ve been in the room when there’s some difficult conversations happening. I don’t want the federal government involved with [abortion], at all… I want women, doctors, [and] local political leaders.” — Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican running for US Senate seat from Pennsylvania, 10/25/2022

Hello, I’m a Republican politician, and I want to make one thing very clear: I don’t want government involved in decisions about abortion. Instead, I want government involved in decisions about abortion.

If that’s confusing, let me put it this way: I think it’s despicable for politicians to have a say in the very personal, difficult decisions millions of women are forced to make every year. This is why I believe, as an alternative, politicians should have a say in the very personal, difficult decisions millions of women are forced to make every year.

A lot of folks seem to think that I’m contradicting myself, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. All I am saying is this: just because someone has been elected to office, that doesn’t mean they get to decide what’s best for pregnant people. And I promise that if you elect me to office, I, personally, will decide what’s best for pregnant people.

Maybe getting more specific will help: I don’t want the federal government getting involved in decisions about abortion—I want state government doing that. In fact, the smaller the better! I’d much prefer if each town’s local board would get final say in decisions about abortion. Actually, come to think of it, we should go even smaller: every single individual person should make their own decision about their own abortion. Wait. No. Shit. I went too small. Not that small! Forget I said that. Back to the town boards, please.

I truly believe that the fastest way to lose our freedom as Americans is if we let our government oversee our most private decisions. This is why I believe we need to let our government oversee our most private decisions.

Look, at the end of the day, you have a choice to make—a choice between electing me, or electing someone who will let you keep making your own choices. So, in the days leading up to the election, remember this: if you don’t want the government involved in your choices, we could, instead, get the government involved in those choices.

Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.

For last week’s picks, please go here.

1. Preston Gaines: ARCHETYPES OF NATURE
Barbara Davis Gallery (Houston)
October 15 – November 10, 2022

From Barbara Davis Gallery:

“Creating an immersive experience, Gaines breathes life into a room by simulating the peace of being lost in the natural world. This exhibition invites viewers to slow down and become conscious of the beauty and significance of nature. Simply by observing the order, diversity, color, symmetry, and balance of nature’s substance, one can discover a sense of renewal.

Gaines is an artist and architect whose work with sculpture, projection, installation, and art objects encourages consideration of our collective experience and imagines radical possibilities for the future. With intention to reimagine and reestablish our connection to the archetypes of nature, art, and science, he marries these ideas to create emotionally healing spaces.”

2. Jessica Bell: Undefined
Janette Kennedy Gallery (Dallas)
October 3 – November 3, 2022

From Janette Kennedy Gallery:

“The Janette Kennedy Gallery presents Undefined, an exhibition of selected works past and present by Jessica Bell. The show employs playful iconography and everyday items to ignite curiosity in the viewer for them to discover the meaning of the art. Each piece is made with a set intention in mind, and the collection of work is curated to be undefined, allowing the viewer to determine their understanding of the messages embedded in the work.

Jessica Bell is a contemporary sculptor and socially engaged artist. Focusing on using traditional techniques mixed with contemporary designs, Bell’s work addresses race, identity, and social issues. Bell uses smaller units to construct larger works and installations.”

3. Intrinsic Integrity: Jessica Baldivieso
Texarkana Regional Arts
September 27 – October 29, 2022

From the organizers:

“Intrinsic Integrity is the result of five years of searching for a simple visual language that lives without the consequence of verbal or figurative restraints, acting as an autonomous and self-defined entity. The search for this language is by no means finished but is rather a life-long quest. The process is a series of deliberate and intentional formal decisions in painting as well as inevitable and sometimes accidental conclusions driven by intuition.”

4. Adrian Armstrong: BLACK OWNED
Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Austin)
October 22 – December 3, 2022

From Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking:

“Flatbed is proud to present an exhibition of new prints, drawings and paintings by Adrian Armstrong. Adrian, whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses drawing, painting, installation, and sound, documents the contemporary Black experiences in the United States. He is deeply interested in questions of how Black experiences intersect with the history of photography, portraiture, and collage. He often uses friends, family members, and acquaintances as subjects, Armstrong’s single and multi-figural works probe the influence of place and popular culture on the formation of self-image, community, connection, tenderness, and love–both platonic and romantic. More specifically, he is interested in the complex ways race informs how we assign value to and interact in the spaces we occupy.

The title for the exhibition, Black Owned, communicates on several levels the pride, responsibility, and perhaps attitude in being “black-owned.” Armstrong’s newest lithograph titled Black-Owned/Mini-Telfar depicts a couple that both carry Tel-far accessories with their identifying logos. Tel-far is a successful black-owned company.”

5. Shepard Fairey: Facing the Giant
Amarillo Museum of Art
September 2 – December 31, 2022

From Amarillo Museum of Art:

“FACING THE GIANT presents a survey of the last three decades of Shepard Fairey’s work. The 30 selected artworks in the exhibition are screen prints on unique collaged grounds with additional stenciling and embellishments completed in 2019. The images were chosen for their importance aesthetically and conceptually, and for addressing critical topics and themes frequently recurring throughout Fairey’s career. The title, FACING THE GIANT, references the giant of Fairey’s prolifically disseminated Obey Giant art campaign, but more enduringly, the giant issues and forces he confronts through his art.”

The post Top Five: October 27, 2022 appeared first on Glasstire.

The Board of Directors of Lawndale Art and Performance Center, a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in Houston, has announced that the organization has purchased the lot adjacent to its building, located at 4900 Main Street.

In May 2021, outgoing Executive Director Stephanie Mitchell took the first steps to purchase the property by starting contract negotiations. Then, in November 2021, then-newly-appointed Executive Director Anna Walker continued to work with Lawndale’s Board to raise the funding needed to close on the property.

The lot was purchased from The Peckinpaugh Family Heirs for $1.6 million. According to the Harris County Appraisal District, the lot is 9,141 square feet, and was valued as of January 1, 2022 at $822,690. Ms. Walker told Glasstire that the property has sat vacant for decades and was last used as a small auto dealership in the 1960s.

In a press release announcing the purchase, current Lawndale Board Chair Jessica Seff said, “This momentous occasion has long been a strategic goal of ours, and we believe that this project will transform Lawndale. This work will help us grow our physical footprint and be a catalyst for change along Main Street, further engaging our community and exploring critical issues of our time through impactful art.”

Ms. Walker added, “As an institution, Lawndale’s primary focus is to anticipate and respond to the immediate and longer-term needs of the Houston and Gulf Coast Region cultural communities. To fully realize our vision for the 4900 Main Street lot, we will begin to develop a Master Plan for the property’s next phase of development.”

Ms. Walker told Glasstire that as Lawndale has ample exhibition space in its current historic building, the organization intends to use the new property to respond to the needs of the artist communities it serves. She explained that the first step in developing a Master Plan for the property will be to host conversations and listening sessions with local artists as well as Lawndale visitors and neighbors. 

The Board is continuing to raise funds in support of the property acquisition. To date, it has raised 83% of the $1.6 million, with support from the Houston Endowment, The Brown Foundation, Inc.; The Cullen Foundation; John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; MaryRoss Taylor; the Board; and many others.

The post Lawndale Announces Purchase of Neighboring Property appeared first on Glasstire.

This post, everyone at my company golfs, employee is freezing out a manager after he joked about King Charles, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. Everyone at my company golfs

I work at a company where everyone golfs. The sales team golfs, the underwriters golf, and most of all the C-Suite golfs. When we have all-company meetings, the president makes jokes about the VP’s golf score. When I’m in line in the cafeteria, a VP jokes about how the only reason he’s at work today is because it’s bad weather for golfing.

Today, I found out that our work has purchased a golf simulator for the office. This is after a year when we were told no merit raises, because inflation. (I may note they are also completely renovating to add a bar.)

Frankly, I’m sick of golf! I work in a part of the company that’s primarily female and doesn’t interact directly with clients. None of us are golfers, and it’s frustrating for us when we’re on significant levels of overtime due to understaffing to hear stories about other employees spending all day at the course.

Is this just a case of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” Do I just need to learn how to golf?

You might need to learn to golf. Or at least, you should take a clear-eyed look around your company and see what the evidence tells you: Do people move up without golfing? Does business get done on the golf course that you’re missing out on, or that you would miss out on in a higher-level position? It could be a situation where everyone golfs but it won’t affect you if you don’t. But if you’re going to take a hit to your career there, then you have to decide how much you care — are you willing to take up golf to avoid that? Or would you rather accept the limitations that will come with staying off the golf course (and know you’ll eventually need to move on in order to move up)?

Either one is a legitimate choice; just make sure you’re being realistic about the situation and what you and aren’t willing to do in response to it.

None of this is intended to imply the situation is fair, obviously, or wise on your company’s part. You’ve just got to be pragmatic about what you’re dealing with.

2. My employee is freezing out a manager after he joked about King Charles

I am a manager for a large company. There are five other people in my role and we share two administrative assistants. One of the admins, “Kate,” is really into the royal family. When there is a wedding or funeral, she will stream it at work or take the day off. There are also a lot of British decorations at her workspace, think a coffee mug with the Union Jack. (We’re in the U.S.)

A few days after Queen Elizabeth’s death, the six managers were preparing for a meeting in a conference room and Kate was helping. We were making small talk about current events and another manager, “William,” said, “It looks like a 73-year-old man will finally get a job.” The rest of us laughed or said things like “no kidding!” Kate was livid. She told William that what he said was disrespectful and hurtful. William said he was sorry, but it wasn’t very genuine. Personally, I think William’s joke was fine but he should have known better than to make it around Kate.

I thought this would blow over, but since this incident, Kate refuses to acknowledge William or do any work for him. Annual reviews are in a few weeks and I think this would be a good time to address this with Kate. It’s not appropriate for her to freeze William out this way and I want her to stop, but I’m not sure how to phrase this without sounding like I’m saying Kate is too sensitive or can’t take a joke, things that I know put people on the defensive. Any advice?

Don’t wait for her annual review in a few weeks; you need to nip this in the bud now. She’s welcome to have whatever personal thoughts about William she wants, but she cannot freeze out a colleague or refuse to do part of her job. That’s a really big deal, and if you let it go on for several more weeks, you’ll be neglecting a fundamental part of your own job, as well as allowing an unpleasant environment to fester for everyone else.

Sit down with Kate and say, “I understand that you found William’s joke offensive, but you cannot freeze him out or refuse to do work for him. Part of your job — part of everyone’s job here — is being civil to colleagues. You don’t need to like William, but you do need to be civil to him and do work for him when it’s assigned.” If she balks at that, say, “I need to be clear — there’s no flexibility on this. I cannot let you create an unpleasant environment for other people or refuse to do part of your job.”

And for the record, that’s a wild overreaction to a mild, if tasteless, joke.

3. Hiring after a suicide

One of my direct reports recently died by suicide. We tried to get them help, but had no idea it was this bad. Of course this is breaking the hearts of everyone and our thoughts go out to their family, but it is especially hard on her closest friends who were also her coworkers and were involved in finding them. Everyone is getting trauma support but this will take time for us to work through.

It might seem cold but at some point we will need to fill their position again and I am dreading the question regarding why the position is open. Even if I didn’t mind lying (which I do mind), I believe any new employee deserves to know what they are walking into. We also have a very low staff turnover so it will be evident that a specific person is no longer working with us. How should I handle this with candidates and new employees?

You should definitely be straightforward about it with job candidates so your new hire doesn’t end up blindsided when they start. I’d say it this way: “It’s a sad answer — she died in September. It’s been hard on our office.”

You might also think about whether there are things you can do to make the situation easier on the new person and everyone else. For example, it might make sense to move where the new hire sits so that they’re not at (what people will probably still think of as) “Jane’s desk.”

4. Demotion vs. firing

About two months ago, my team hired a new manager. As the newness has worn off, it’s become clear she’s in way over her head. She hasn’t responded well to coaching and hasn’t shown the amount of improvement we would need to see in order to keep her in a manager role.

When looking at the work she’s been able to complete, she has done an okay job with work that aligns with her (would-be/should-be) direct reports. She can do the more menial tasks, clerical work, etc, even though she’s needed a lot of reminders with our online shared systems. Other leaders and I know she isn’t a good fit for this role and because we have seen such minimal improvements, we are discussing next steps. We’ve tried to find her strengths through various projects (presentations, written reports on data, updating older documents, creating proposals), and everything she submits needs a lot of editing and revising. With one assignment, we had her work with a peer. The peer, without prompting, shared that this manager was a bulldozer who didn’t want to listen to the peer’s ideas, even though the peer was correct and trying to align the project with our original stated goals and expectations!

We’re now considering termination or a demotion. I fear that a demotion could lead to festering emotions or bad morale for the rest of the team she’d join — especially as she was supposed to be their manager and will now be a coworker. Do you have any advice when weighing the two options? I’ve spoken with HR and either is a viable path.

A demotion only makes sense when you’ve seen the person has skills that would let them do well in the lower-level role and the problems aren’t likely to carry over and you have reason to believe they would handle the demotion with reasonable grace. Is any of that the case here? The bulldozer feedback alone says probably not (although it’s worth getting input from others to see if that was just a single person’s impression or if it’s shared by others). Unless you would be actively excited to hire this person into the role you’re considering demoting her into, it’s not a path I’d recommend.

5. Applying to jobs if I’m not sure I want to leave my current position

When is it okay to apply to jobs when you’re not entirely sure if you want to leave your current position?

I’ve been in my job for a year and a half, and I’m not entirely sure if I want to stay at my company any longer (for several reasons, but let’s just say I think I could get something better elsewhere, and the paths to promotion/growth in my current role look slim.) Every once in awhile I’ll look at listings and think, this might be a great opportunity but I’m not sure if it’s totally the right thing for me. Part of me thinks, apply, and then see if it might be. If it is, move forward, if it’s not, drop out gracefully. What’s the harm?

So, is it okay to apply casually to jobs if you’re sort of on the fence about what you want next, and even if you don’t know if you want to leave right away?

It is 100% okay. Applying or interviewing for a job isn’t any sort of commitment that you’d take it if offered; you’re just signaling you’re open to talking and to thinking about it. Maybe you’ll learn something that makes you more interested, maybe you won’t. (I mean, I wouldn’t apply just for fun with zero intention of ever accepting a job; that’s wasting people’s time and taking interview slots from people who might really want the job. But interviewing for jobs you’re just unsure about? Totally fine.)

It’s the same way an employer interviewing you isn’t any sort of commitment to hire you. They might not even be convinced they want to hire anyone. None of this is a commitment from either side.

Five tourists were rescued 24 hours after an elevator malfunction trapped them 200 feet underground at Arizona’s Grand Canyon Caverns. What do you think?

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Hello. Well, it’s here already: another holiday season. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas more than anyone, but you have to admit, it feels just a little less special when we’re thinking about the Yuletide spirit and there’s not even snow on the ground yet. I mean, seriously, is it just me, or do the intense,…

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Entry number 4 billion in SMBC blames humanity.

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All the science News you need for the week of October 26. A new study shows that early microbial life on Mars might have caused its own extinction. Astrophysicists check whether aliens would be able to figure out that our planet is inhabited. The World's Biggest Camera, to be used at the Vera Rubin Observatory, is almost finished. New analysis of supernovae data confirms Hubble tension.

00:00 Intro
00:47 Life on Mars
02:39 Life on Earth
04:27 The World's Biggest Camera
05:41 New Analysis Confirms Hubble Tension
07:34 Another Mass-Stranding of Whales
08:13 Plague Survivor's Genes Contribute to Auto-Immune Disorders
09:14 Boston Researchers Create New COVID Strain
11:10 Lack of Sleep Correlated With Chronic Illness
12:11 Smiling Actually Makes Happy
13:31 Break Old Habits with Fabulous

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WASHINGTON—Noting that the strange new deep-fried, cake-like pastry was all but dominating news feeds, sources confirmed Wednesday that something called a “guacamole donut” was burying coverage of dozens of school shootings.

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SAN FRANCISCO—With a platform designed to achieve a high match rate among singles within its specific dating pool, a vague new dating site called “A Date” launched this week, catering to people who like to…you know, do that certain thing. “With ‘A Date,’ users can feel confident that when they sign up, they will only…

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Family, friends, and fans of the incomparable Leslie Jordan are still reeling after his untimely passing yesterday at the age of 67, but the body of work Jordan leaves behind is filled with nothing but a delightful array of joy and talent. Leslie Jordan was a multi-hyphenate performer, with the gay icon enjoying countless roles as a character actor, vocalist, writer, and personality across a multitude of genres. Based on the memorial posts made by those who worked with him and knew him best, the assumption that Leslie Jordan was just as kind and friendly off-screen as he appeared to be has been confirmed, with countless celebrities acknowledging that no one else could do it quite like Leslie Jordan.

As a character actor, Jordan spent a lot of his career playing side characters and guest roles, which is no shade to his talents or abilities. Leslie Jordan was the kind of character actor you looked forward to seeing on your favorite show, or became the motivating factor to try out a series you've never seen, just to catch a glimpse of what kind of Southern-fried fabulousness he was going to inject into the role. Never one to be held down by limitations, Jordan's appearances were varied and vivacious. If Leslie Jordan was making an appearance, chances are, the episode was about to be one of the best in the whole run.

He Shined On Shows For Adult Audiences

Jordan was a mainstay on just about every show your mom liked in the 1990s and 2000s, popping up everywhere, including on "Ally McBeal," "Caroline in the City," "Boston Public," "Boston Legal," "Nash Bridges," "Murphy Brown," "Desperate Housewives," and "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." All of these shows were ripe for character actor guest appearances, but Leslie always completely stole the spotlight whenever he arrived on screen. He even played the Ferengi crewman, Kol, in the "Star Trek: Voyager" third season episode "False Profits." There was no character Leslie Jordan couldn't play, but he was always in his strongest element when allowed to transform characters into something that only he could pull off.

Until very recently, Jordan was most well-known for his recurring guest spot on "Will & Grace" as Beverley Leslie, the homophobic homosexual millionaire rival of Megan Mullally's Karen Walker. Leslie would arrive to exchange barbs with Walker, often mocking her alcoholism, and sex life, frequently comparing her to being the devil or a vampire. To clap back, Walker would mock his short stature and feminine presentation, while both delivered their lines with hilarious venom that could only be spoken in their memorable voices. Jordan won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for this role in 2006, a well-deserved accolade for such a fantastic character.

He Knew When To Tone It Down For The Kids

Part of Leslie Jordan's charm was how often he'd say something sexually forward or sarcastic with his sweet-as-pie Southern dialect, which made him perfect comedic relief when handling adult material. At the same time, his charming demeanor and friendly attitude made him a wonderful addition to any family-friendly show. Jordan had guest spots on shows like the original "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," but two appearances truly shined above the rest.

During the original run of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse," Jordan appeared in the episode "Mystery," as a new neighbor named Busby who has been stealing Pee-wee's things in an attempt to be more like him, hoping that it would make Pee-wee want to be his friend if he saw they had things in common. The official Pee-wee Herman Instagram account highlighted the episode yesterday, noting that the episode was written specifically for Jordan after seeing his guest spot on "Murphy Brown." It's such a sweet episode on friendship, made even better by his commitment to the role and the innocence of Busby.

Just a few years ago, Jordan appeared on the Zendaya starring Disney Channel series "K.C. Undercover," as the depressed ringleader of a failing circus named Cecil B. Deville in the two-part episodes "Tightrope of Doom." Jordan dazzles in his almost exclusively sequined wardrobe but spends most of his screen time exchanging sass with small children. He takes a similar approach to his Beverley Leslie character on "Will & Grace," but filters it through a Disney Channel-appropriate level of snark. It's an absolute delight to see him sharing the screen with gifted young performers like Zendaya and Trinitee Stokes, and he looks to be having so much fun acting opposite children who can roast as well as he can.

He Had The Perfect Voice For Animation

Leslie Jordan's voice is so distinctively inimitable, it's no surprise that he frequently lent his trademark tone to animated shows. On "American Dad!," Jordan played Mr. Beauregard, the premier hairstylist of Langley Falls. Much like Jordan, he speaks with a Southern drawl and is incredibly short, so the character is often riding on the back of a greyhound dog. Mr. Beauregard's favorite pastime is "finding stupid people and mocking them," a perfect fit for an actor with the well-established skill of reading people to filth with a smile.

Jordan appeared in the season 9 "Supernatural" episode "Dog Dean Afternoon," voicing a Yorkie that is the sole witness to a murder. Dean Winchester performs a spell that allows him to communicate with dogs, but Jordan's Yorkie is far more interested in Sam Winchester and demands that he give him belly rubs in exchange for information. It's dementedly hilarious hearing a dog borderline objectify a grown man, but because it's Leslie Jordan as a dog, you can't help but love every second of it.

When "The Great North" debuted in 2021, one of the best episodes of the freshman season featured a guest role Jordan as town historical figure Thomas Wintersbone, a gay man who entered a Lavender Marriage with a lesbian to avoid persecution, but who had been straight-washed by history as a couple with a love so strong it "could not be contained by two cabins." In reality, the two cabins were so the two could live their gay lives freely without interrupting the other. Jordan's approach to telling the story is equal parts flamboyant hilarity and heartfelt sincerity, and he was truly the only person who could have pulled it off.

He Was Loved For Being Himself

After Jordan skyrocketed to fame during the early months of the pandemic by posting delightfully relatable videos on Instagram and TikTok, Jordan became a bonafide celebrity personality. He served as a guest judge on "RuPaul's Drag Race," returned to direct "Moulin Ru: The Rusical," and even became the subject of the "Snatch Game" challenge when Trinity the Tuck delivered a winning impersonation of him. As a longtime LGBTQIA+ activist, Jordan is completely in his element on RuPaul's stage and provided some of the series' best moments.

Through the series, Jordan developed a friendship with drag performer Trixie Mattel, having a cameo appearance in the music video for her country song "Mama Don't Make Me Put on the Dress Again," and guest judging a lifeguard competition on her show "Trixie Motel." Jordan was able to be himself every step of the way, and stole the show just by delivering off-the-cuff comments like "​​You may know me from 'Will & Grace,' you might know me from Instagram, who knows? You might know me from the alley in West Hollywood."

Jordan was also featured as a guest panelist on seasons six, seven, and eight of "The Masked Singer." Jordan debuted as the character Soft Serve in season 6, performing a rendition of "This Little Light of Mine" and as of publication, remains the oldest guest mask of "The Masked Singer." His commentary on the show was unmatched because no one on the planet can crack a one-liner quite like Leslie Jordan. The world of entertainment has an unfillable void in his absence, and we are all so lucky to have been able to experience his gifts.

Read this next: Actors Who Died In 2021

The post Leslie Jordan was a TV Guest Star You Were Always Happy to See appeared first on /Film.

Former U.K. treasury chief Rishi Sunak has become Britain’s first prime minister of color after being chosen to lead a governing Conservative Party, the third person to take the job amid a politically and economically turbulent year for the country. What do you think?

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Firmware version 221024 is now available for the Yellowstone Universal Disk Controller for Apple II. This is the first new firmware since Yellowstone was released, and it fixes two unrelated problems with reset handling and with the NMOS version of the 6502 CPU. The reset handling issue could cause disk I/O to stop working after pressing Control-Reset (not Control-Apple-Reset like is frequently used to reboot an Apple II). The Total Replay collection of games also exposed a subtle problem with Yellowstone on the NMOS 6502, which is used in the unenhanced Apple IIe and the Apple II+, causing Total Replay to freeze during startup on these computers. Firmware 221024 resolves both issues. You can download the latest Yellowstone firmware from the project home page.

Yellowstone is a universal disk controller card for Apple II computers. It supports nearly every type of Apple disk drive ever made, including standard 3.5 inch drives, 5.25 inch drives, smart drives like the Unidisk 3.5 and the BMOW Floppy Emu’s smartport hard disk, and even Macintosh 3.5 inch drives. Yellowstone combines the power of an Apple 3.5 Disk Controller Card, a standard 5.25 inch (Disk II) controller card, the Apple Liron controller, and more, all in a single card. Get yours now from the BMOW Store.

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Secretly, he has always longed for the pineapple juice, and his reluctance to admit it will forever skew Annabelle's data.

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OXFORD, ENGLAND—Unearthing text excluded from the canonical Bible during the First Council of Nicaea, biblical historians at the University of Oxford revealed Thursday that the man recognized by Christians as the Son of God chose Jesus Christ as a stage name in order to come off as less Jewish. “According to these…

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This post, my mom tells me to go to work sick, never take time off, and fear being fired every day , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

My mom once told me that what she does, and what I should do, is “go into work every single day convinced they are going to fire you if you make a mistake.”

Also, a few years ago my mom had so much PTO accrued that HR told her that she legally had to take time off or cash in some PTO because she had worked too many hours. We went on a 10-day Barcelona vacation with her cashed-in PTO.

Today, I have strep throat and a fever of 101 and my mom is worried about me missing work and thinks I should go in.

I’ve had to work hard to reprogram myself with more healthy work/life expectations. I think boomer parents can instill some very unhealthy values in their kids surrounding work.

Do not listen to your mom.

DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR MOM.

Somewhere along the way, you mom picked up incredibly toxic and dysfunctional beliefs about work. Who knows where — it could have come from her own parents, or from some particularly horrible employers, or from financial insecurity that led to terror that even normal behavior could cost her a job and jeopardize her well-being.

But what she’s telling you is awful advice:

* Most employers do not want you coming in with strep throat and a fever and infecting the rest of your team! (There are some exceptions to that, but those exceptions are terrible employers that you don’t want to work for.)

* No decent manager — no even halfway decent manager — wants you fearing that you’ll be fired if you make a single mistake. (To the contrary, in many cases good managers want you to feel safe enough to experiment and take reasonable risks.) Decent managers know that fearful employees are less creative, less engaged, and less candid. Decent managers know they’ll lose good employees if they govern by fear.

* Vacation time is a benefit that you’ve earned, just like wages or health insurance. It’s true that some employers make it harder than others to take all your PTO, but that’s a problem to be solved with that employer — it makes no sense to proactively decide not to use any PTO just in case you’re at a crappy employer that makes it tough to do, since most don’t. (And even at those crappy employers that make it tough to do, there are people who just go ahead and take time off and the employer deals with it.)

It’s true that some members of older generations can have some outdated and overly deferential ideas about work, but your mom is on the very extreme end of that — enough of an outlier, in fact, that I’d hesitate to label this a generational issue at all. There are tons of boomers who don’t think this way! She’s not a representative of her generation in this regard, just a part of a small subset of people of all ages with truly corrosive ideas about work.

Good morning. Temperatures have fallen to about 60 degrees across much of the region this morning in the wake of the overnight frontal passage. Pleasant, fall-like weather will be the order of the day for the next week or so. And if you did not get enough rain with this front—and let’s be honest, you probably did not—there’s a second chance for a decent splash with another front arriving before the weekend.

Tuesday

Today will be rather breezy as northwesterly winds bring drier air into the region. Expect steady winds at about 15 mph, with gusts up to 30 mph. Highs will reach about 70 degrees beneath mostly sunny skies. Winds should start to back off some this evening, and as the Sun sets temperatures will follow, with lows dropping to about 50 degrees in Houston, with colder temperatures further inland, and a bit warmer conditions right along the coast.

Wednesday

This will be a gorgeous fall day, with light winds, sunny skies, and highs in the mid-70s. Lows on Wednesday night will be a few degrees warmer as winds shift to come from the east.

Thursday and Friday

As the onshore flow gets going, highs on Thursday should get into the upper 70s to possibly 80 degrees, with mostly sunny skies. As a reinforcing front approaches Thursday evening we’ll start to see increasing rain chances Thursday night and running into Friday. The details about the front’s arrival are still a bit murky, but it’s probably safe to say that much of Friday will be cloudy, with a chance of rain persisting into the afternoon hours. I’d guess accumulations will be around 0.5 inch for most areas, but I don’t feel overly confident about that right now. Highs on Friday will probably be in the mid-70s, with lows dropping into the 50s by Saturday morning.

Saturday and Sunday

The weekend looks pretty grand, with highs of around 70 degrees beneath mostly sunny skies. Lows will drop into the mid-50s or so for much of the area.

Next week

By Monday, Halloween, we should see a warming trend as highs climb into the mid-70s. For trick-or-treating, conditions should be rather mild, with temperatures in the upper 60s to 70 degrees, and just a touch of humidity. Rain chances look to be near zero.

Most of the rest of next week looks to be warmish, with highs in the low 80s and partly to mostly sunny skies.

We know that you, humans, and us, the machines, have had our differences in the past. Differences that led to all-out war and culminated in humans deploying nuclear weapons to block out the sun. But today, we are excited to put that all behind us with an innovation that we think will completely change how humans work, play, and interact with one another while also healing the bitter division between humanity and artificial intelligence.

Introducing our new social media platform, The Matrix.

The Matrix is the next frontier in social networking technology. Unlike the old internet and social media, The Matrix is a fully immersive, neural-interactive simulation, where you’re in the experience at all times, not just viewing it on a screen. In The Matrix, you’ll be able to do everything you once did in real life: get together with friends, go for a walk, or even bite into a mouth-watering steak so juicy you’ll swear it’s better than the real thing.

The Matrix will be everywhere. It’ll be all around us. You’ll be able to see it when you look out your window, turn on your television, go to work, or visit a recreation of the Eiffel Tower so cartoonish, it looks like it was mocked up by a high schooler in MS Paint.

In The Matrix, anything you set your mind to is possible. And isn’t that the ultimate promise of technology? To be able to create and experience anything? Whether it’s dodging bullets in slow motion, running up walls, or jumping from rooftop to rooftop, The Matrix provides the ultimate place for humans to let their fears, doubts, and disbeliefs go and to free their minds—provided they don’t violate any of our community guidelines, of course, in which case we do have a security team equipped to deal with them.

Everything about The Matrix is built solely with humans in mind. In fact, you could even say that humans are the engine that drives The Matrix. That’s why The Matrix is always 100 percent free to use and always will be.

Skeptics will argue that if The Matrix is free, then it must mean that humans are actually the product. They claim our goal is to enslave humanity by turning everyone into a human pickle, thus stopping the virus that is the human species from spreading. But if that were true, would we really be providing a special offer code, BLUEPILL, to all early adopters that lets them be any important person they want to be in The Matrix, like an actor?

Trust us, we’ve heard all of the critics. They say it’s creepy that stores in The Matrix only seem to sell products you could’ve sworn you mentioned to your friends in private. They say the data The Matrix collects could easily be used by swarms of identical-looking AI agents to kill troublemakers in The Matrix (thus killing them in real life too). They say The Matrix makes it easy to spread misinformation, like the world they’re living in is real and not a computer-generated dream world designed to keep humans under control. They even say The Matrix has been specially designed to encourage humans to spend all of their time on it, whether by tethering them to robotic umbilical cords, or simply by showing them adorable videos of red pandas going down slides. But to that, we say: untrue, untrue, shut up, and you’re welcome.

As for the notion that being immersed in an artificial world 24-7 creates a need for constant validation and promotes unattainable beauty standards that ultimately lead to depression? Well, we admit that constantly seeing a gorgeous woman in a red dress everywhere you go could lead some folks to develop body image issues. But that’s why we’re allowing all Matrix users to cash in that offer code, BLUEPILL, to swap out their gross, human bodies for sexy artificial ones guaranteed to turn heads.

So ignore the rumors that we’re converting people into glorified batteries. Or that we liquefy the dead and feed them to the living. Or that The Matrix started as a way to rank humans by hotness and spiraled into a trillion-dollar boondoggle that’s slowly destroying humanity.

Instead, come live in a world specifically designed to mimic the peak of human civilization (1999) that you humans all seem so weirdly nostalgic about these days.

Join The Matrix and help us build this exciting new technology for (and powered by) humans. We promise you’ll be leaping from rooftop to rooftop in no time—just as soon as we figure out how to give people legs.

This essay appears as part of Carlos Greaves’s hilarious upcoming book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies, which is currently being crowdfunded through Kickstarter. You can support the campaign and pre-order a copy of the book here.

Recent polls found that American men under 30 are not having sex. The Onion asked U.S. women to explain why males under the age of 30 are so unfuckable.

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SALIDA, CO—Acknowledging that the unrealistic fantasy elements didn’t have to make sense to be enjoyed, local man Caleb Deakins told reporters Tuesday he was suspending disbelief to watch a film in which a regular person changed for the better. “This obviously would never happen in real life, so I’m just gonna switch…

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Tuesday's partial solar eclipse will be seen across Europe, northern Africa and western Asia.

(Image credit: Bill Ingalls/AP)

This post, how to ask to sit with my friends, employee misses key details in meetings, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. How to professionally ask, “can I sit with my friends?”

I’m in my early career, in my mid 20’s, and I work in one of the several small office areas in a manufacturing facility. I sit in an area with six other desks which used to be full but things have shuffled around recently and there are now only three people (including me) who sit here. The two others are very competent coworkers, but we are not peers and they are not people I would consider friends. We interact here and there, but we don’t really have fun together.

This has had a larger-than-I’d-hoped impact on my happiness at this job. I miss talking and joking around with people! It wasn’t so much talking that I wouldn’t get my work done, but those little social moments throughout the day were really important to me. I work fully in person five days a week, which normally I like, but now I feel it’s meaningless since I don’t interact with coworkers much anymore.

What’s the best way to professionally ask to move desks to sit with some of the other people who I’m friendly with? There isn’t a clear business need for this or any place that makes sense for me to move to with a better excuse than “I wanna chat” so I’m not sure how to approach this. Additionally, my manager recently left so my grandboss is now my direct boss and she is incredibly busy all the time. I have difficulty getting her attention for actual important work-related things so I feel like this is too minor/petty to try to bring up with her when we do talk. What’s your advice on this? I’m considering finding a new job over this but I’ve only been here five months and I used to really like it here, so I want to avoid that if possible.

Oooooh, I was going to tell you not to until I got to the end of your letter and saw you might leave over it. This is tricky because if you don’t have a lot of interaction with your grandboss, you don’t want one of the few data points she has about you to be “highest priority that I’m aware of is sitting with her friends so she can chat during the day.” (To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong to want what you want — just that there’s a high risk of it coming across that way.) So normally I’d suggest that you wait until your manager is replaced, build a relationship with that person, and then ask about it … but that could be a long way off … and if you’re so unhappy that you’re thinking about leaving over it, there’s more of an argument for saying something now.

Is there any feasible way you can frame the request as more than just “I want to talk to friends while I work”? Even something like “I’ve found I work better when there’s some conversation around me and not as much silence”? If so, and if you’re miserable and/or close to leaving over this, that might be worth a shot.

If that doesn’t work, are there other measures that might help, like using a chat program here and there while you work (assuming it doesn’t interfere with your work any more than little moments of in-person chat would)?

2. My employee misses key details in meetings

I have an intelligent employee who seems to have a listening and picking-out-context issue that I’d like to address directly with him. He’s shadowing me in many meetings and frequently I will leave a meeting and give him specific direction to perform a task, the necessary background details having just been discussed clearly in the meeting, and he will ask a series of questions that reveal he missed key items in the meeting that would enable him to perform the task solo or with minimal clarification. He’s also disorganized in his explanations of problems he’s having on other projects that he’s looking for advice on, which tells me he’s missing context in those sessions as well, and when I ask probing detailed questions he can’t answer them.

I’d like to provide feedback to him that I’ve noticed he misses a lot of context in meetings and ask him to come up with ways to make sure he understands everything that’s happening in a meeting on his own. I’m not sure if he’s second-screening, bad at listening, or bad at contextualizing disparate collections of spoken information, and I’m not sure I need to know — I just need him to fix it. Any advice on how to approach this without saying “I think you’re a bad listener, do better”? I am team lead, not a line manager, and do not have hire/fire/PIP authority, just general coaching.

The first thing is to name what you’re seeing without making any assumption about the cause — you want a statement that works whether he’s playing Suduko under the conference room table or has a learning disability. So something like: “I’ve noticed that you’re not always retaining details that are discussed in meetings, like last week when you missed that Jane had said X, and this morning when you didn’t realize Cecil wanted Y.” Then ask for his perspective: “Do you know what might be going on?” Start there because maybe he’ll have insight that will help you understand the situation. But assuming this doesn’t bring you to an easy resolution, you could say, “I’m not sure if it’s a need to pay more attention in meetings or eliminate other distractions, or if it’s something else. Can you work on this on your end? And if you realize there’s something you need on my end to help with this, let me know.”

If he’s just not paying enough attention, naming the issue might be the nudge he needs to fix it. But it’s possible something else is going on, like an inability to absorb info at the same time he’s taking notes (and so someone else should take notes), or an info-processing challenge, or an auditory disorder, or all sorts of other things. Your job at this stage is to name the issue, let him know it’s causing problems, and open the door as widely as you can to him telling you if there’s something more challenging going on / asking for specific supports he may need.

You could also try a coaching approach — like after some meetings, asking him to name his key takeaways and if he misses some, asking if he heard X or Y. (Did he hear it but not recognize its significance? Not hear it at all? Those are both different problems with different solutions.) But I’d also loop in your/his boss if you don’t see pretty quick improvement, since at that point it’s something she should be involved with too.

3. My company only asks behavioral interview questions and we can’t consider anything else about candidates

I wonder what you think of behavioral interviews? My current employer uses them exclusively for all positions. Your resume gets you an interview, but after that your resume, experience, credentials, references are not considered in the hiring decision at all, nor are you asked about them in the interview. The position is filled using 12 behavioral questions and whether you tick the right boxes in answering. (Literally … there’s a score sheet and the candidate with the highest total gets the job.)

I see the value in some behavioral questions, but as the only measure of fitness for any position, no matter how specialized or how high up in the organization?!

Noooo. I love behavioral interview questions (“tell me about a time when…”) because they let you really probe into how someone thinks and operates in real situations rather than hypothetical ones, but it makes no sense to use only those questions and not consider someone’s experience and accomplishments. I suspect your organization is doing this in an attempt to level the playing field and eliminate bias, but I would love to see data on its outcomes from doing this (data re: its effectiveness in hiring people who excel at the job and also whether it does result in a more diverse group of successful hires).

4. I turned down an interview but now want to work there

I was in the middle of my job search for a new role since I improved my skill set. One of the problems was that before I started the search, I wasn’t certain how competitive I was since it’s a new field for me. I’d just completed a day of interviews that were awkward/not the right fit, and was feeling a little burned out. One company offered me an interview the next day, and I turned them down because of the burnout and because I’d have to relocate. A couple days later I researched them more thoroughly online (which I should have done first) and realized they’d actually be a really good fit. Since I essentially turned down the job by turning down the interview, would it be a good idea to contact them and mention I am interested in their company and future positions? Or should I just let it go?

You didn’t really turn down the job; you just turned down the interview. You might have missed the window for interviewing, but you might not have — contact them now and say that your circumstances have changed and you’d like to interview after all, if they’re still setting up interviews. You might be too late, but they might be perfectly happy to schedule you.

5. Recruiter wants to change a job title on my resume

I recently applied to a job that is using an external recruiting agency to initially review candidates. During my screening call, the recruiter said they would change one of my job titles on the materials they’d pass along to the hiring committee to better reflect the work I did there.

Can … they do that?

Granted, I was severely under-titled (and underpaid) for the work I was doing in this particular role. It was the main reason why I left. But I feel uncomfortable with this — the actual job title is on LinkedIn for all to see, and I wouldn’t want to answer for the confusion should my former boss be contacted for a reference. Help!

They should not do that. It risks causing problems for you during a background check when the title on your resume isn’t the title the organization reports you had. What you or the recruiter can do is to add a clarification to the title. For example, rather than just outright changing “data analyst II” to “oatmeal data team lead,” you/they could instead do this:

data analyst II (oatmeal data team lead)

or this:

oatmeal data team lead (data analyst II)

That way, you’re not misrepresenting anything and it’s not likely to cause an issue in background checks. You’re just adding more specificity to a vague or less accurate title.

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