The unanimous ruling from the panel upholds a lower court's decision that a tranche of Trump White House records can be provided to the Democratic-led Jan. 6 select committee.
It’s “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager, and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
We have so many updates this year that I’m going to be posting six to seven times a day for the next several weeks — so keep checking back throughout the entire day.
Thank you Alison and everyone who commented. I wrote a few months ago and it has been a whirlwind of insanity. First, many of the commenters were right that the director has other issues, and there were things bubbling under the surface that came to light later.
The day after my letter was published the CFO returned from bereavement leave for her husband and was taken into a meeting where she was told that they’d found a number of fraudulent activities and things would have to change, She quit on the spot and was gone an hour later. My director took the whole office out to lunch as a celebration for ‘finally getting rid of her’. My raise and promotion came through the next day, apparently the CFO was the one holding it up, not the ED. It was not quite as much as we’d discussed, but still very good and I was not unhappy.
My director has since succumbed to the pressure and has started regular screaming matches with the ED, and targeting people who disagree with her, so I’m surely not long for this position. I spoke to the ED about it yesterday and he promised to keep our conversation private, but I noticed he was on a zoom call with her 20 minutes later, so I know I’m going to hear about that when she returns from her vacation next week.
In an effort towards ‘growth’ the ED hired an outside HR consultant, who happens to be his wife’s best friend. Previously we were not allowed to contact her and needed to take issues to him so he could decide if it needed to go to HR. Since then, the rest of us have been allowed to meet her. She did a DiSC assessment with the team, which most of us found to be fairly interesting. In days since, all behavior is now explained away with the letter we received in the assessment. ‘Well, you know, she’s an i. You know how i’s are.’ or ‘well, you’re a C, so you aren’t as passionate about this as a D would be’. I don’t take it seriously, but a number of people at work do. (It has been explained to me that I would take it more seriously if I were an i or S – but I’m a C – so what do you expect?)
The good news is that I’ve started interviewing for other jobs. I’m being more selective this time, because I can stay at this job for a while longer and don’t want to jump into another pit of dispair. I’m riding it out and doing the best work that I can do, enjoying the perks of working from home two days a week and keeping my options open.
As the Euro terrorists fired their machine guns into the air and their leader announced he had murdered my boss, a nagging question crept into my mind: Is this a Christmas hostage situation or a hostage situation that just happens to be occurring during Christmas?
You’d think I would’ve been fully consumed by the threat to my life and the lives of my co-workers, or at least been captivated by the ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game between the terrorists and Holly’s insecure but roguish husband. But no, this Christmas question just gnawed at me.
So as Ellis sputtered on with his cocaine-fueled braggadocio, I considered what would be the appropriate criteria for determining a true “Christmas hostage crisis.” How much would the plot of this hostage crisis change if it wasn’t during Christmas? Did the hostage crisis include any Christmas themes or motifs? And was the true meaning of Christmas learned through the hostage crisis?
Regarding the hostage-taking plot itself, I have to admit a Christmas party presents a pretty perfect opportunity to hold dozens of corporate yuppies for ransom. Everyone here is either drunk, high on coke, or having sex with colleagues they barely know. On most other days, we would all be working fourteen hours straight, getting high on coke, and telling racist jokes about the Japanese taking over America.
In terms of themes, Holly’s husband did write “Ho-Ho-Ho” on the sweater of the terrorist he just killed, so that’s a point for Christmas. And, of course, the name “Holly.” Another point for Christmas.
But on the other hand, the execution of Mr. Takagi feels less Christmas-y and more like a Labor Day thing, or maybe Columbus Day, depending on how you choose to think about it. Though the dripping blood stain Mr. Takagi’s brain left on the glass window does bring to mind Santa’s bright red suit. Also, the massive building explosion is more of a Fourth of July motif than a Christmas one. Still, one could imagine the explosive spectacle was reminiscent of what the shepherds saw in the Bethlehem night sky, so there is that.
But the biggest win for Christmas themes has to be my co-worker Susan going into labor. And just like Mary, she could not lie down in an office, because the terrorists refused to let her. Instead, she had to sojourn in the main lobby. All we needed were some farm animals and a manger.
This brings me to the question of the true meaning of Christmas: family togetherness. (And yeah, I know, “Jesus’s birth,” but let’s just go with family.) Holly’s husband rescuing everyone really brought those wayward lovebirds back together, allowing them to temporarily ignore the fundamental differences they have over their life-goal visions. Believing the holidays can overcome any and all family dysfunction—what could be more Christmas than that?!
So as the police take my statement while I shake uncontrollably from the psychological trauma and adrenaline comedown, I can’t help but think: Merry Christmas to all and Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!
Bad, but not entirely unexpected news for fans of the Netflix "Cowboy Bebop" adaptation. Despite the fact that showrunner André Nemec was only getting warmed up, Netflix has canceled the audacious adaptation only a month after the first season was released on the streaming service. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the live-action "Cowboy Bebop" is no more after a lackluster reception by critics and fans alike. It turns out that Netflix just won't carry that weight.
A Big Swing And A Miss For Netflix
I'll be honest, this news is a real bummer for folks who appreciated the intensely weird experiment for what it was, and I was among the series' staunch defenders. I was in the minority, however, as critics panned the series overall and audiences felt about the same. Social media was tough on this little-adaptation-that-couldn't, with many fans decrying its release as if someone had burned their childhood photo albums. While nostalgia and reverence for the original series certainly factored into its harsh reception, the series was a messy, sometimes frustrating ride that didn't quite deliver what it promised. Some of the changes made to the series' overall plot were risky, especially regarding Spike (John Cho) and his former lady love, Julia (Elena Satine). The adaptation, much like the ragtag crew it depicts, just couldn't quite get the job done right.
The lengthy, much-hyped marketing campaign probably hurt "Cowboy Bebop" a bit, too. It gave people plenty of time to think about what their ideal live-action "Cowboy Bebop" would look like, and when those expectations weren't met, they were more sorely disappointed than if they hadn't been geared up for months on end.
THR reports that while the series did pretty well in its first month streaming on Netflix, it plummeted once initial interest had worn off. With a series as big and expensive as "Bebop," the streamer has to make sure that people are going to stay subscribed for additional seasons. With the anime adaptation's rough reception and streaming numbers flagging, it just didn't make sense for them to finance another season.
The Future Of An Ill-Fated Adaptation
It's unlikely that any other streaming services will try to revive "Cowboy Bebop," so fans who did enjoy this 10-episode run of jazzy space cowboy mayhem will just have to imagine what the second season might have looked like. While the series didn't always work, the chemistry between the main cast made for some truly fun episodes in the middle section of the season, and it's a shame we won't get to hang out with John Cho's Spike, Daniella Pineda's Faye, and Mustafa Shakir's Jet on the Bebop any longer. At least we'll always have season 1, and who knows? Maybe in time, the series could become a cult classic. Now wouldn't that be something?
See you later, space cowboy. The ride was a little rocky, but it was fun and all too brief.
Attorneys for Azael Sepulveda argue that the ordinance, aimed at auto repair shops, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Texas State Constitution.
I first visited San Antonio in February of this year. Erroneously, I thought I would get acquainted with the city very quickly, but the pandemic was still strong during the winter. I was free to travel, but things weren’t always open.
As the year closes, I’ve traveled to San Antonio for a second time in 2021. There have been studio visits, museum trips, and grocery store runs. The city seems to be much more online this time around, or perhaps I’ve just spent more time on my feet.
I decided I should get this year’s flu vaccine, both because the vaccine gets updated every year, and because we are currently living through a historically mild run of flu seasons. While it sounds like the virus is on the threat of extinction, it could mean that flu antibodies are running low. Ultimately, I don’t feel like getting sick.
I easily made an appointment at a CVS in downtown San Antonio, close enough to walk. Of the many murals in the center of the city, there is one that looms large. A girl sits upon a quadrupedal, horned animal, with braided hair and a lantern holding a shining heart. It is such a tall painting that it welcomed a closer vantage point. The experience cost nothing.
A mural in downtown San Antonio, at the corner of East Houston Street and Jefferson Street
I crossed the intersection of East Houston Street and Jefferson Street, approaching the eastern-facing wall of Texas de Brazil to see if I could find a signature for the artwork. A stenciled tag and QR code reading “*Art Everywhere Project” led me to an online mural directory. At the ground level of the mural, I found a separate, likely unrelated tag, which read “Give up your body = give up your freedom – 2021.”
An anonymous tag in downtown San Antonio
My walk concluded at CVS, where I signed in and waited for my flu vaccine. Because my health provider isn’t contracted with drugstore chain, the shot would cost $25. While doing some idle shopping, a wall of signs for discounted vitamin supplements accosted my vision with a wall of “FREE” offers. There I was, upgrading my bodily awareness of pathogens, with potential free nutrients undulating down the wall of the makeshift waiting room.
This month has started out with significantly warmer than normal weather. So far we have experienced four 80-degree days, and the average temperature has run about 10 degrees above normal. Cooler weather has been the exception in December, rather than the norm. And this pattern seems likely to continue through at least the first two-thirds of the month. So is there any chance of a colder turn toward Christmas, the remainder of the holidays, and New Years?
NOAA’s outlook for temperatures through Dec. 22 show something of a blow-torch effect for much of the United States, including the Houston region. (Pivotal Weather)
The pattern for the middle third of the month is pretty set. We’re going to warm back into the 80s to end this work week, a strong-ish front will cool things down for the weekend, and then we’ll be back into at least the upper 70s for most of next week. So eight or even nine of the next 10 days will see warmer than normal weather. So what of the last 10 days of the month?
The European weeklies are a bit warmer than normal for the last week of December…
The Canadian model is cooler…
And the GFS model is near-normal. One of them should be right!
This extended period lies beyond the ability of our existing models for precision forecasting. However, it does look as though some sort of front may arrive around Dec. 20. After that the “weekly” models from all of our sources suggest somewhat more normal weather to end the month. That is, instead of days in the 70s and 80s, and nights in the 50s and 60s, we can more probably expect days in the 60s and nights in the 40s or 50s. At this point—and it really is way too early to say this with any confidence, but here goes anyways—I’m seeing little signal for a freeze before the end of the year. But we shall see.
The bottom line: The first two-thirds of December are going to be quite a bit warmer than normal, but the last part of the month should feel more seasonal. Probably. We think. I mean, it has to feel like Christmas sometime, right?
Thursday
There is some patchy fog west of Houston this morning, but this should burn off within a few hours. After it does, skies will remain partly to mostly cloudy, as temperatures rise into the low 80s. Some very light showers or drizzle will be possible throughout the day, but chances are less than 20 percent. Temperatures across much of the region are unlikely to fall below 70 degrees, a very sticky night for December.
Friday
This will be another warm and mostly cloudy day, with high temperatures in the low to possibly mid-80s. This will also be another day during which light showers are possible throughout the day, but accumulations should not be anything to write home about. Expect another warm night ahead of the frontal passage.
Saturday
At some point a ragged line of showers and thunderstorms will progress through the region ahead of the front. This line probably arrives in areas northwest of Houston an hour or two after midnight, reaches the city a few hours later, and arrives at the coast just before sunrise. Accumulations should measure a few tenths of an inch of rain for most. A significantly drier air mass will move in an hour or two behind the rain, and with dewpoints falling into the 30s, the air will indeed feel much drier. Highs should drop into the 50s during the afternoon hours with wind gusts reaching 30 mph. Winds start to die down a bit during the evening, with lows dropping into the 40s for most of Houston.
Low temperature forecast for Sunday morning. (Weather Bell)
Sunday
A truly winter-like day with mostly sunny skies, highs in the low- to mid-60s, and another chilly night in the 40s and 50s.
Next week
As mentioned above, we’ll see a warming trend next week, with high temperatures recovering into at least the mid- to upper 70s by Tuesday, and onward.
It’s round 2 of the Worst Boss of 2020 voting. In the first round we narrowed the pool from 12 nominees to four (see results here). The four winners from round one are paired off in two match-ups below, as we move closer to declaring a winner.
Voting closes at 11:59 pm ET on Sunday.
If the brackets aren’t showing up in your browser, you can access them directly here and here.
This little gem was still in circulation from a small public library as of this writing. I’m sure the kids today will find this book very useful when studying our 49th state. is The goal of this book is to give the reader a view of the “real” Alaska. There are narratives about jobs, crafts, culture and then an entire chapter on the Alaska earthquake of 1964.
The phrase in the second picture below describing the woman pictured as having “pretty, pert Eskimo features”. Not that I am an expert in the use of the word “pert”, but isn’t more a personality trait? I also want to know what particular “feature” is Eskimo. Of course this one is a weeder just based on its age. I think there have been a few significant events the 50 plus years since this was published. In addition, lumping Alaskan natives into one group is pretty awful.
Mary
Bonus note! When I looked at the list of books on the back cover, I found a reference to Canada, Young Giant of the North. Our website was only a few months old and it has been one of my personal favorites ever since. Please don’t miss the interior photos and the comments.
For a long time now, it's been fairly clear that consumer safety was an afterthought for some of the more well known companies developing self-driving technology. That was made particularly clear a few years back with Uber's fatality in Tempe, Arizona, which revealed that the company really hadn't thought much at all about public safety. The car involved in the now notorious fatality wasn't even programmed to detect jaywalkers, and there was little or no structure at Uber to meaningfully deal with public safety issues. The race to the pot of innovation gold was all consuming, and all other considerations (including human lives) were afterthoughts.
That same cavalier disregard for public safety has been repeatedly obvious over at Tesla, where the company's undercooked "autopilot" technology has increasingly resulted in a nasty series of ugly mishaps, and, despite years of empty promises, still doesn't work as marketed or promised. That's, of course, not great for the public, who didn't opt in to having their lives put at risk by 2,500 pound death machines for innovation's sake. Every week there's new evidence and lawsuits showing this technology is undercooked and dangerous, and every week we seemingly find new ways to downplay it.
This week the scope of Elon Musk's failures on this front became more clear thanks to a New York Times piece, which profiles how corner cutting on the autopilot project was an active choice by Musk at several points in the development cycle. The piece repeatedly and clearly shows that Musk overstated what the technology was capable of for the better part of the last decade:
"As the guiding force behind Autopilot, Mr. Musk pushed it in directions other automakers were unwilling to take this kind of technology, interviews with 19 people who worked on the project over the last decade show. Mr. Musk repeatedly misled buyers about the services’ abilities, many of those people say. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from Mr. Musk and Tesla."
Musk's bravado, and the exaggeration of the sophistication of Autopilot, helped encourage some customers to have too much trust in the product or actively misuse it. Constantly pushing undercooked software and firmware updates without proper review also created safety challenges. But the article tends to focus heavily on how Musk repeatedly undermined his own engineers through stubborn decisions that undermined both overall safety and engineer expertise, like Musk's unyielding belief that full automated driving could be accomplished with just cameras, and not cameras and radar (or other detection tech):
"Within Tesla, some argued for pairing cameras with radar and other sensors that worked better in heavy rain and snow, bright sunshine and other difficult conditions. For several years, Autopilot incorporated radar, and for a time Tesla worked on developing its own radar technology. But three people who worked on the project said Mr. Musk had repeatedly told members of the Autopilot team that humans could drive with only two eyes and that this meant cars should be able to drive with cameras alone."
The article also makes it clear that employees that were overly happy to please Musk's whims only tended to make the overall quality and safety issues worse. And when employees did challenge Musk in a bid to improve quality and safety, things very often didn't go well:
"In mid-2015, Mr. Musk met with a group of Tesla engineering managers to discuss their plans for the second version of Autopilot. One manager, an auto industry veteran named Hal Ockerse, told Mr. Musk he wanted to include a computer chip and other hardware that could monitor the physical components of Autopilot and provide backup if parts of the system suddenly stopped working, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.
But Mr. Musk slapped down the idea, they said, arguing it would slow the progress of the project as Tesla worked to build a system that could drive cars by themselves. Already angry after Autopilot malfunctioned on his morning drive that day, Mr. Musk berated Mr. Ockerse for even suggesting the idea. Mr. Ockerse soon left the company."
None of this is particularly surprising for folks who have objectively watched Musk, but it does catalog his erratic bravado and risk taking in a comprehensive way that makes all of it seem notably more concrete. For a man whose reputation is one of engineering savvy, the report repeatedly showcases how Musk refused to actually listen to his own engineers. There's little doubt Musk has been innovative, but the report does a fairly solid job showcasing how a not insubstantial portion of his near-deified reputation is more than a little hollow.
Do zombie deer foretell a Texas hunting apocalypse? It might be decades before we know. Yet the rise of chronic wasting disease—colloquially known as “zombie deer disease” because it infects the brains of deer, essentially turning them into the walking dead—is so alarming that officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are testing deer roadkill across the state and tightening regulations on commercial deer breeders in an all-out attempt to slow the spread.There’s no cure for chronic wasting disease, or CWD. The nervous-system condition is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep and goats—and it’s always fatal. Infected deer can quietly spread the disease for two years before symptoms even appear. While deer in the late stages of CWD often…View Original Post
Some time ago, one of my colleagues shared a photo of a balloon in his neighbor’s front yard. But not just a regular party balloon. A hot air balloon.
At around sunset of a pleasant summer day, you can occasionally spot a hot air balloon floating above the Sammamish Valley between Redmond and Woodinville. But what goes up must come down, and since hot air balloons are at the mercy of the winds, they sometimes need to improvise a landing site.
If a hot air balloon lands on your property, tradition dictates that you receive a bottle of champagne as a gesture of apology and goodwill. This tradition dates back to the first manned untethered hot air balloon flight.
On November 21, 1783, Jean Françoise Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Françoise-Laurent D’Arlandes packed champagne for the first manned untethered hot air balloon flight, and it came in handy, for according to legend, when they landed in a vineyard, the local farmers were rather suspicious of this fire-breathing dragon that descended from the sky and were prepared to attack it, as well as the two demons who rode it down from the heavens. To defuse a volatile situation, the two pilots shared their champagne with the farmers.
Thus began the hot air ballooning tradition of celebrating a successful voyage with champagne, as well as offering a bottle of champagne to the owner of the property your balloon lands in.
Another of my colleague’s neighbors (not the one whose property the balloon landed in) had young children, who were so excited by the balloon in the neighbor’s yard that it was impossible to get them to bed.
I do not know whether anybody excitedly shouted, “I can see my house from here!”
I wanted to write in the moment I saw the call for updates, but I wanted to incident good news, so I waited a bit…. And OH BOY. Ok. So I’ve got SOME UPDATES for y’all. It’s A LOT.
So, before this letter was even posted, anger and emotions got the best of me and I asked my coworker exactly what she said, and exactly what she was hoping for. She said she just told HR and the president that they should try to keep me if they could. I asked her if she they had said anything else to her. She said the president called her to ask if they should try to give me a large raise than they had planned on to try to keep me, and asked if my work merited it.
I told her that by them posting my job I felt like I was going to just walk in and be fired. She said she has never seen that happen. I told her the names of those it happen to. She said they were fired because they made disparaging remarks about the company, someone overheard them, and “snitched” to the President about it. So they were confronted and fired. She said she thought to highly of me and my work to let that happen.
Later that night I got an email saying that job I had interviewed with was not going to be making any decisions right now because they were entering their busy season, but they would keep me in mind and get back to me in a month or so. That seemed expected since I had applied for a job that wasn’t “official” available, it was more of a “friend of a friend referral.”
The next day I took your advice and told my current job that I was not hired for the new job, and that I would be staying. My coworker actually squealed joy at that. She also told me she knew I was upset, but she was too happy to care. The online posing for my job stayed up for several days before they finally took it down.
Over the next few months the job I interviewed with and I stayed in contact. I would email in asking if they had any updates and they said not yet. I interviewed at a few other jobs as well, but none of them ended up working out.
Then, three months later the job I interviewed with called me back asking if I could come in for another interview with a few other people in the office. It went AMAZING. One week later, the offered me the job.
When I went to talk to HR and put my notice in, asking what I needed to do to get my vacation payout. She said they would pay out my “accrued” vacation if I worked out a two weeks notice. I agreed to that, and then asked a follow up question via email, and she let me know that what was showing online that I had available wasn’t correct so instead of the 27hrs, they were going to payout…. 3 hours.
My coworker took my notice HARD. She was on jury duty and working from home the day I put my notice in so I texted her. (I had only texted her one other time about a work matter, this was not a common occurrence.) But I wanted to make sure she heard it from me. She never responded. When she came back to the office, she was almost in tears about losing me.
The next few days while trying to find a transition plan for my duties, we got to talking. At this point in my mind, I had nothing to lose so I told her all of it. She said she knew the company might react badly to my initial leaving, but she really wanted to keep me around. She also apologized for the way everything went down, and she said that she knew by betraying my trust and going to HR to begin with, that she wouldn’t get any more information from me about it. She also said she was upset to be losing the one person she knows she can count on. She told me how much she wants me to text her all sorts of updates on my life.
I reminded her of all the things that this company had done. That their first message about the COVID shutdowns was a company wide email that said “I spoke to our lawyers and they said we have a case to stay open so we won’t be shutting down” and they only allowed salaried people (aka managers) to work from home and everyone else had to come in. That I got written up for going home sick with a migraine. That we went through 4 HR reps on the two and a half years that I was there and I never knew who was supposed to approve anything. The one thing I didn’t tell her, was that when I was moving to her department, MULTIPLE people who heard I was moving there, told me in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to stay on her good side. I had spent my whole time there making sure that she saw me as an asset because of it. It has been FREEING to leave her and that place in my rearview.
Most amusingly, the President NEVER SPOKE TO ME ABOUT THIS. He didn’t say anything. Never met with me, never emailed, never said anything the one time he passed me in the hallway. I think if he had taken the time to actually talk to me, rather than passing messages back and forth through HR, this whole thing might have a different ending.
I’ve been at my new job almost two weeks now. It’s a steep learning curve at my new job. But the coworkers at this job are amazing. The owners of this company VALUE their employees. It is an amazing place to be compared to where I was. It’s a small business that certainly has its own quirks as well, but I will work for a company that cares about its employees over being a cog in a much larger machine any day.
Today I got a text from her asking how my new job is going and letting me know how much she misses me. I don’t plan on answering that.
Lastly, I thank everyone who commented, I read ALL OF THEM. And thank you Alison for the advice. :)
Remember the letter-writer angry that someone else brought “cheap-ass rolls” to an office potluck when she had already signed up bring rolls herself (#2 at the link)? A commenter recently mentioned that she believed she worked with this letter-writer and — as said letter has become somewhat legendary in these parts — she agreed to share more about her experience:
So this is the story of the Cheap Ass Rolls person at my company, who pretty much identically matches your post except for the being new part. I suspect it is my coworker and that was added in so that if anyone recognized her they would assume it was someone else, just a guess. Or there are two of them out there!
Background on this person – even before the roll event, they were abrasive, would take everything the wrong way, snide comments, get offended if you said hi in the hallway, get offended if you didn’t say hi in the hallway, etc. It was ridiculous and I would go out of my way to avoid her. Just a draining, toxic, personality. She was in a different department from mine and I was lucky that she didn’t work at all with my team, but the people that did work with her complained that she flat out would refuse to do certain aspects of her job and essentially made people miserable.
So my company had a Thanksgiving potluck lunch each year where everyone signed up to bring something beforehand, sign-up sheet on the kitchen door style, the company provided ham and turkey. When I went to place my dish in the conference room she was in there, very upset (think red faced and angry – not crying upset), and loudly questioning everyone – it took a minute to figure out what was going on, but she had brought King’s Hawaiian Rolls, pretty much every flavor they had in the cute little 12-pack roll size. I believe there were three stacks (by flavor, maybe 3 or 4 packs per flavor?) and then several bags of assorted store brand rolls – it was likely Kroger or Publix, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. She was asking everyone who brought the other rolls in a very irrational manner, asking for opinions on if people liked Hawaiian rolls in an accusing way, kept whining about people bringing things they didn’t sign up for (I think we – gasp – ended up with more than one mac and cheese and more than one green bean casserole). Even when I said what I brought – holding the dish in my hand – she demanded to know if I was sure I didn’t bring the other rolls. I dropped my dish off, labeled it, and excused myself from the room as quickly as I could, it was pretty uncomfortable. More and more people were bringing their items in as I made my escape and I could hear the same accusations being made.
So… 30 minutes or so goes by, everything is set-up, it’s time for everyone to pass through the conference room to get food. She stood at the door to the room, asking people (some for the second time, like me) if they were sure they didn’t bring the rolls, going on and on. The door to the conference room was close to the end of the table that had the rolls on it, so she could see who was taking which roll, loudly berating those who took the offending rolls, asking people not taking any rolls why they weren’t taking hers, etc. I made my way around the table and then escaped again, she was still accusing people of bringing the store bought rolls, it was very uncomfortable. And yes, the phrase, “who brought these cheap ass rolls” was mentioned a few times. I forget how close the lunch was to your post, but it was close, only a few days.
Days later I heard her ranting and raving about the rolls, who brought the other ones, why would people bring something they hadn’t signed up for, it kept going. To my knowledge the offending extra roll bringer was never outed, if it had been me I never would have admitted it as I am not sure what she would have done. Again when I saw your post I just knew it was her…there was a Secret Santa thing that had just been started, there was a big meeting for her team after the lunch…there were new people who had started, but she wasn’t one of them, she had been there about a year and a half. Now she may have been new to working with a team that I am not aware of vs meaning new to the company the way it came across, but this also could all be a big coincidence.
I really wanted to ask her if she read AAM, but I figured that would cause issues if I was correct that it was her, and I didn’t want to get into it as she was so aggressive.
Another story about her – I don’t know the details, but I believe she created a fake dating profile for someone in her department and was responding to the people that responded to the ad as if she were the coworker (who knew nothing about it), and I believe HR got involved in that situation but it was all very hush hush, so no more dirt there. But again, the toxic personality. I honestly don’t know how she is still employed, but she is.
What may be also be of interest is our local grocery store puts the King’s Hawaiian Rolls on sale all of the time – usually either BOGO or 2 for 5, so she didn’t even spend that much!
!!!
I had questions, which she kindly answered:
How were other people reacting while she was having the rolls-based tantrum? Were people just trying to ignore her or giving each other uncomfortable looks? Did anyone tell her to chill out?
It was more of the uncomfortable looks and ignoring her, the HR person who coordinated things being set up was trying to placate her, etc. I don’t think anyone told her to chill out and even during the lunch when she was calling people out on their roll selection or lack thereof I am pretty sure she was ignored. At least I don’t recall any of the conversation.
Did the person who brought the cheap-ass rolls ever own up to it?
Nope! If they did I never heard about it. I can’t even think of a person that it would be – no one in our office stood out to me as the “cheap” type or a disruptive off the list potluck person. I do wonder if someone on her team brought them in on the sly.
Do you personally feel like you’ve had a brush with a legend?
Ha! She was more scary than anything, maybe a brush with a nightmare! And granted I realize it still may not be the same person – but it really seems way too close to me to be someone different.
I know many of you are looking for some opportunities for continuing education. May I suggest the world of word processing? This timely topic is ripe for a librarian wanting to get ahead of all the new technology.
Over and over, Holly and I have seen some pathetic professional collections out there. They are often ignored and unused. This year, I decided to just integrate them into our regular circulating collection. This opens them up to more use and hopefully our staff will be able to see it regularly. Also, since it is on the regular shelf in the 000s, I know I will be better able to keep an eye on this collection.
I have no idea if this will work since I only started to integrate it into the collection a couple of months ago. Maybe something will happen. I doubt that we will have much call for WordPerfect 5.0.
Firefox is one of the few remaining web browsers with a fully custom rendering engine, giving Mozilla the ability to try out new web features and low-level performance changes in a way that most Chromium-based browsers can’t (without essentially becoming a fork, anyway). Firefox version 95 is now rolling out, and it has several important changes on desktop and mobile platforms.
The best improvement in this update (via Techdows) might be RLBox, which Mozilla developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas. RLBox is now enabled on both desktop and mobile platforms, and uses WebAssembly to isolate potentially-buggy code. This should cut down on potential future vulnerabilities in the browser.
Firefox 95 on the desktop also includes reduced CPU usage on macOS, reduced power usage for decoded video on macOS, and a user agent override for Slack’s web app (so you get access to more features). Firefox’s Site Isolation security feature is also fully rolled out for everyone now.
Firefox 95 Desktop Changelog
New features
RLBox — a new technology that hardens Firefox against potential security vulnerabilities in third-party libraries — is now enabled on all platforms.
We’ve reduced CPU usage on macOS in Firefox and WindowServer during event processing.
We’ve also reduced the power usage of software decoded video on macOS, especially in fullscreen. This includes streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
You can now move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to the opposite side of the video. Simply look for the new context menu option Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left (Right) Side.
To better protect Firefox users against side-channel attacks such as Spectre, Site Isolation is now enabled for all Firefox 95 users.
Fixes
After starting Firefox, users of the JAWS screen reader and ZoomText magnifier will no longer need to switch applications in order to access Firefox.
You’ll find the state of controls using the ARIA switch role is now correctly reported by Mac OS VoiceOver.
You’ll see a faster content process startup on macOS.
We’ve also made memory allocator improvements.
And we’ve improved page load performance by speculatively compiling JavaScript ahead of time.
Various security fixes
Changes
We’ve added a User Agent override for Slack.com, which allows Firefox users to use more Call features and have access to Huddles.
The changelog for Firefox on Android isn’t quite as exciting, but there are still a few highlights. Mozilla introduced a new homepage on mobile with last month’s release of Firefox 94, and starting with Firefox 95, there are more settings options available. When you open Firefox, you can now choose between always opening the homepage, opening the last tab, or opening the homepage only after four hours if inactivity (the last one is the default).
Firefox 95 Android Changelog
New features
You’ll now find the new “Homepage” section in the Settings Menu.
The “Jump back in” section now shows Hero Images.
You’ll find confirmation of snack bar “Auto-close enabled” when a user enables auto-close from the tab tray.
Pocket (Thought Provoking Stories section) now has support in Canada.
Fixes
The “Jump back in” section will now always show titles or URLs.
The Inactive Tabs prompt will no longer be redisplayed after dismissing the prompt.
The download list will now refresh properly after deleting a file.
We’ve also fixed the following crashes:
When opening a history group
When a selected topic under “Stories by topic” does not exist anymore)
You can download Firefox for desktop platforms from Mozilla’s website, and it’s available on the Play Store for Android devices. Mozilla also recently made Firefox available on the Microsoft Store for Windows PCs.
I’d like to thank everyone for their input on this topic. It was interesting to see everyone’s perspectives on how to address it.
As many hit upon: Jane left a bit of a disaster when she resigned. Much of the issues were not known beforehand since she worked at a different site than me and certain audit procedures weren’t in place. Once I began looking into things upon her departure, I found a lot of incomplete work, missed processes, and even some things that could put us in a legal bind if not corrected. This is why I had to go through everything, particularly if I’m searching for missing documents/invoices/anything else that would be needed to be compliant. This definitely has opened my eyes to conduct annual audits for each of my sites to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
After everything, I decided to escalate this up to my boss. Turns out Jane had signed agreements to pay back tuition if she resigned within a certain amount of time. The company is invoicing her for the money owed back, so I guess if the non-profit money was for her then it would have been put to the proper use. There were too many variables as to what she could have received the money for, and Jane and I haven’t spoken after her departure. Even though I am disappointed she left the mess she did, the last thing I want to do is create more of a mess unnecessarily.
The company did ask me to report back on anything else that I find fishy. I’ve found an offer letter and internal employment documents from another company dated the same time she worked for us that I sent along. These were, once again, titled things that couldn’t distinguish our company’s documents from anything else. No idea if anything will come of it. As one (or two) commenter said: not my circus, not my monkeys. I just want to get my department back on track.
Hopefully everyone remembers to go through their download history and if they do keep personal items on work devices: organize your personal stuff so that you remember to delete it when you turn it back in. Avoiding real and/or potential fraud is probably a good thing too.
Here’s the part of our program where I describe a problem I’m having, and somebody tells me what I’ve done wrong, because I’m not smart enough to figure it out myself. The problem is with the Yellowstone disk controller, the Apple IIgs, and 80 column display mode. It’s a minor issue, but so far it’s defeated my attempts to fix it.
If you hold the Control-D keys during boot-up, Yellowstone will change its behavior and briefly display a text message “YELLOWSTONE DISK II MODE”, then continue booting. This works well on all the computers that the beta testers and I have tried, except for the Apple IIgs when the display type is set to 80 column mode. In this one case, the computer immediately crashes into the Apple II monitor when cold booting and holding Control-D.
Holding Control-D during a reset works OK. It only crashes from a cold boot after you turn on the power switch.
If the IIgs display type is set to 40 column mode, it works OK.
If I replace the calls to HOME and COUT (the ROM’s text output subroutines) with NOP instructions, then it doesn’t crash anymore in 80 column mode, but I don’t get my text either.
I’m guessing there is 80 column firmware somewhere that’s not yet initialized during a cold boot, or that some Apple II soft switches for 80 column mode aren’t yet configured. That would explain why it works OK when I reset the computer with Control-OpenApple-Reset, and only fails from a cold boot. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that 80 column support is implemented as a virtual peripheral card in slot 3, which won’t have been initialized yet when my card in slot 6 is being initialized, because higher numbered slots are initialized first.
According to the docs, the soft switch at address $C00C will turn off 80 column mode. I tried making the Yellowstone firmware touch this address before calling HOME and COUT, but it still crashes. I also noticed that touching $C00C interactively from the Apple II monitor prompt will turn off 80-column mode but also locks up the computer with a weird animating pattern, so I’m not sure that’s the correct method of disabling 80-column mode. These Apple II soft switches can sure be challenging to understand.
Do zombie deer foretell a Texas hunting apocalypse? It might be decades before we know. Yet the rise of chronic wasting disease—colloquially known as “zombie deer disease” because it infects the brains of deer, essentially turning them into the walking dead—is so alarming that officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are testing deer roadkill across the state and tightening regulations on commercial deer breeders in an all-out attempt to slow the spread.There’s no cure for chronic wasting disease, or CWD. The nervous-system condition is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep and goats—and it’s always fatal. Infected deer can quietly spread the disease for two years before symptoms even appear. While deer in the late stages of CWD often…View Original Post
