The Terrible People Thread

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My girlfriend got a dog over the weekend. From Monday through Wednesday she dropped the dog off at my place, so it wouldn't bark all day and annoy her neighbors in her condo.

On Wednesday one of her neighbors on the same floor as her complained that the dog was barking all day. WELL IT MUST HAVE SOME BIG FUCKEN LUNGS because it was 10.2 miles northeast at the time.

Welcome! This is a thread to talk about terrible people.

Mostly myself. I have some theories on who complained and even though I don't live in that building, I will destroy the woman who complained about ghost dog.

[Flack]

For the most part we've had decent neighbors, although there are always those exceptions.

Our last house was the sale from Hell. It was the one where the couple was going through a nasty, violent divorce and the court ordered them to sell their house. The woman was living in the house and the man was not (restraining order). So every story we heard was about how crazy the man was (and he was, trust me. We had the pleasure of dealing with him several times.) So right after we moved in one of our next door neighbors introduced himself and I said something like, "yeah, we got a good deal on this house from some crazy guy" and then the guy went off of me and said that we were assholes for ruining this guy's life and all this stuff.

When we had been looking at the house, at one point the deal had fallen through (because the man went into the title company to sign the title and then stole it .. another long story) so the realtor and the woman gave us a key anyway so we could go measure for curtains and stuff. So we went over to the house (before we owned it) and that neighbor called the cops on us and reported us for trespassing and the sheriff came and escorted us off the property.

Oh, and when we looked at the house originally there was a cool fish pond in the backyard with a bridge that went over it. So when I met that neighbor who was a dick he goes, "Oh, and I took that bridge. I bought it for a dollar." That's when we noticed that the bridge was gone. I looked over the fence once and sure enough it was in my neighbor's backyard. He didn't even have a pond or anything, just this bridge sitting in his backyard.

Anyway other than that first day we didn't talk to that guy for 3 years and eventually he moved.

[AArdvark]

I have had bad neighbors but really don't want to go into details. It's just not that interesting.



THE
IF I HAD ONLY VIDEOTAPED THEM
AARDVARK

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

So I was at the 1UP with some people from work tonight.

Right before I leave, this 50-something guy at the bar asks me if there were any pubs around here. Christ -- the guy was in the middle of downtown Denver. Walk a block. I gave him directions to a brewpub.*

So he asks me what I do and I tell him. He starts GRILLING me about my work. I swear it went from 0 to 60 in three seconds. He asks about my job, my company, what we do, etc. Because it was a subtle shift from asking about a different bar to crazed baboon I unfortunately give him real information at first.

(Keep in mind, I can't think of anything I like less than talking to strangers when I am out. Pinback and I were out playing pool once when a guy drops money on the table because he wanted to have the next game. I gave him his money back because I was trying to hang out with my fucking friend, not some random asshole. Of course, he got pissed. I will never understand this about humanity.)

Anyway, the guy starts getting condescending with me. Stuff like:

DB: "So, who are your investors?"
ICJ: "I don't know."
DB: "You don't know who your investors are?"
ICJ: "Not really, no."
DB: "How much have they invested? Do you turn a profit?"
ICJ: "Sure."
DB: "But you don't know how much profit?"
ICJ: "Nah."

He then asks what we do (we "move data around") and tries to challenge me along the lines of, "Can't your customers do it themselves?"

The short answer is no, some have tried, it really does take a small company to pull it off and the cocky IT departments for our customers can't handle petabytes of data anyway.

But I'm not even going to give the short answer at a crowded bar on a Friday night where we can barely hear each other.

The guy made a point of telling me he was from San Francisco. I did not tell him his football team is filled with pre-kickoff waggling pieces of shit, which was nice of me. I told Flack that I stopped escalating things recently, and I have tried to do it. HOWEVER, this is everyone who works in technology in California in my mind, by the way. This is how they all act.

Eventually the Milker called me over because I think he could tell how little I wanted to be in that conversation. I had my hands in my pants on my phone trying to press the "fake call" app at the time, so that was helpful. Let's all think better about the Milker.

*Leaving, I realized my directions to the brewpub at the beginning would have sent him completely in the wrong direction. I was pretty proud of my lack of sense of direction really coming through in the clutch there.

[Flack]

Hah, how awkward. That's like the makings of a reality show challenge. Corner random guy who doesn't want to be cornered, ask him questions about his personal life, and then pick apart his job.

At work, we have a bunch of old, lonely people. People in their mid-to-late 60s, just hanging around, waiting to retire. These people tend to migrate to the coffee shop and/or the exits, because that's where other people have to go, and then these people can just butt in to your conversations uninvited.

There's this one lady, her name is Faye and she's 60ish and retiring soon. Not only every day, but every time I go down to the coffee shop, she's there. Not where the customers sit, but in the little spot on the side in between where customers order and the cash register. She just gets a coffee and stands there. So when you go to order, you are forced to talk to this lady. And when nobody is ordering, she pivots and talks to the cashiers who cannot escape her blathering.

I've been going to this coffee shop at work (it's 50 yards from the room I work in), every day, for 17 years now. I have seen it change hands and countless workers come and go. I order skinny caramel maciatos, sometimes hot, sometimes iced, depending on the weather and how I feel. The lady who works down there has been there for 5 years. I am down there at least 3 times a day. When I walk up and she sees me she will say, "hot or cold?" and then I respond. Sometimes she doesn't even ask because she told me once I always order hot ones in the morning and cold ones in the afternoon, unless it's raining or snowing, in which case I always order hot ones. We have a system worked out.

So I go down there Friday to order my coffee and Faye is standing there. And Dee (the lady who takes and makes my order -- the barrrrrrrrrrrrista) is turned around so I say, "morning Dee, I'll take a hot one." So then this Faye lady butts in and says, "wah-huuuuuuuuuuh?" And I just look at her and then she says, "did you order a hot water?" and I said, "no, I ordered my drink." And Dee starts laughing, and Faye says, "Oh, I thought you ordered a hot water," and I just smiled and looked the other way. And then she said, "hey, what DID you say?" and I said, "I just ordered my drink." And she says, "well, I wouldn't know how to make it based off of that," and I said, "well, I guess it's a good thing you don't work here."

So now it takes like 3 minutes to make my drink and we're all standing there. So then Faye says, "Well, I'm retiring," and I said, "what, from standing there all day?" And then Dee and I laughed and Faye did not laugh. And then she explained that she is retiring and that they are having a party for her. "I just don't know what they will get me for a gift," she said. "I would get you a stool to sit right there," I said.

So I believe at this point in time, Faye and I are not friends, and I will be drinking coffee from 7-11 for a few days until the coast is clear.

[milker]

He was hitting on you Robb :) LOL

[Knuckles the CLown]

yeah Robb those friendly San Franciscoans. He was trying to figure out how much money you made to determine the price of sucking your cock.

[Knuckles the CLown]

I'm pretty much a terrible person. Last night I offered a homeless person money, then help looking for a job, then decided we had nothing in common and stabbed him to death. Oh and I curb stomped his dog.

[Tdarcos]

Anyway, the guy starts getting condescending with me. Stuff like:

DB: "So, who are your investors?"
ICJ: "I don't know."
DB: "You don't know who your investors are?"
ICJ: "Not really, no."
DB: "How much have they invested? Do you turn a profit?"
ICJ: "Sure."
DB: "But you don't know how much profit?"
ICJ: "Nah."

He then asks what we do (we "move data around") and tries to challenge me along the lines of, "Can't your customers do it themselves?"

The short answer is no, some have tried, it really does take a small company to pull it off and the cocky IT departments for our customers can't handle petabytes of data anyway.

There are some things a company can, and should do on its own. There are some things a company probably can do on their own, that it might be better to outsource. And there are some things a company either should not do or cannot do on its own.

Anything that's your core competency is something you should be doing yourself, especially if you want to justify a premium price for what you're doing. If you sell pianos, you should have your own delivery people, not farming it out, and every delivery crew should either have, or have on call, someone who knows how to tune pianos.

If piano tuning is something learnable with reasonable competence, you might have almost everyone doing this; if piano tuning is an art form, you might have just one piano tuner (pianos don't sell like hotcakes) and on the rare time when you have more than one piano being delivered at the same time, the tuner goes to one of the jobs and once done goes to the next one.

At the time of delivery the piano is brought in, and tuned, so that when you're people leave the customer is drop-in ready to use what they ordered, not wait a day or two for the piano to be voiced and tuned.

Some things you could do on your own but are probably better off outsourced is why most places just buy office supplies at retail instead of trying to buy them in huge quantities; there's storage cost issues as well as potential for waste and contamination. Keeping up to a month's worth of copier/printer paper onsite is not a bad idea; when there are sales you can stock up. But keeping six month's supply is probably excessive unless you're in some place like Mainland China where distribution and logistics systems in some areas are so primitive you really have to order everything six months in advance.

When something is expensive to do because of capital costs it makes more sense to outsource it, which is why unless you're a large factory you simply dump your wastewater into the sewer systems. Until you have to do this (in which case you can also handle your own toilets too), it really doesn't make much sense to process your own waste. Sometimes you don't have a choice - locations with no public sewer systems must use septic tanks and cesspools - but otherwise it's usually cheaper.

Also auditing. Any company can have its own auditors to balance its books and if it's a private company that's all it has to do. Public companies must have an outside auditor inspect their books once a year. Technically you can hire anyone, and for some lines of business you hire a specialized auditor because they can do a better job for less money than a major firm.

But if you're a huge public company generally you have to hire one of the big four to audit your records. It probably looks bad if some huge company hired a second or third level auditor instead of Deloitte, PWC, Ernst or KPMG. (Or why the Oscars mention how PWC does the counting for them.)

[Tgoogle]

The vast majority of piano can be adjusted. But the piano has been neglected, and sometimes the need for additional tuner (known as the spacing of fund-raising) to concert pitch (also known as A440 or standard pitch). The concert pitch is a standard to ensure that an instrument can play the corresponding notes, with another instrument with the tune to play each other. However, many people are satisfied with, so that it is in tune with itself only, rather than in the stadium concert, because they do not play the piano and other musical instruments or recording and to adjust their own piano. In this case, a single standard adjustment is often all it takes. The rust on the strings of the piano, the first adjustment of the piano itself is sometimes the best piano before the test increase the greater the tension. Note: loose tuning pins or other structures to adjust to a difficult problem, you can make some piano. Cost-effective remedial measures, depending on the seriousness.

[pinback]

Anyway, the guy starts getting condescending with me. Stuff like:

DB: "So, who are your investors?"
ICJ: "I don't know."
DB: "You don't know who your investors are?"
ICJ: "Not really, no."
DB: "How much have they invested? Do you turn a profit?"
ICJ: "Sure."
DB: "But you don't know how much profit?"
ICJ: "Nah."

He then asks what we do (we "move data around") and tries to challenge me along the lines of, "Can't your customers do it themselves?"

The short answer is no, some have tried, it really does take a small company to pull it off and the cocky IT departments for our customers can't handle petabytes of data anyway.

There are some things a company can, and should do on its own. There are some things a company probably can do on their own, that it might be better to outsource. And there are some things a company either should not do or cannot do on its own.

Anything that's your core competency is something you should be doing yourself, especially if you want to justify a premium price for what you're doing. If you sell pianos, you should have your own delivery people, not farming it out, and every delivery crew should either have, or have on call, someone who knows how to tune pianos.

If piano tuning is something learnable with reasonable competence, you might have almost everyone doing this; if piano tuning is an art form, you might have just one piano tuner (pianos don't sell like hotcakes) and on the rare time when you have more than one piano being delivered at the same time, the tuner goes to one of the jobs and once done goes to the next one.

At the time of delivery the piano is brought in, and tuned, so that when you're people leave the customer is drop-in ready to use what they ordered, not wait a day or two for the piano to be voiced and tuned.

Some things you could do on your own but are probably better off outsourced is why most places just buy office supplies at retail instead of trying to buy them in huge quantities; there's storage cost issues as well as potential for waste and contamination. Keeping up to a month's worth of copier/printer paper onsite is not a bad idea; when there are sales you can stock up. But keeping six month's supply is probably excessive unless you're in some place like Mainland China where distribution and logistics systems in some areas are so primitive you really have to order everything six months in advance.

When something is expensive to do because of capital costs it makes more sense to outsource it, which is why unless you're a large factory you simply dump your wastewater into the sewer systems. Until you have to do this (in which case you can also handle your own toilets too), it really doesn't make much sense to process your own waste. Sometimes you don't have a choice - locations with no public sewer systems must use septic tanks and cesspools - but otherwise it's usually cheaper.

Also auditing. Any company can have its own auditors to balance its books and if it's a private company that's all it has to do. Public companies must have an outside auditor inspect their books once a year. Technically you can hire anyone, and for some lines of business you hire a specialized auditor because they can do a better job for less money than a major firm.

But if you're a huge public company generally you have to hire one of the big four to audit your records. It probably looks bad if some huge company hired a second or third level auditor instead of Deloitte, PWC, Ernst or KPMG. (Or why the Oscars mention how PWC does the counting for them.)

What did we JUST GET FINISHED TELLING YOU?

About keeping your posts SHORT and ON-TOPIC?

Didn't we just talk about this?

SCORE:

[ ] SHORT
[ ] ON-TOPIC

That's ZERO PERCENT.



JONSEY!!!!










SPLIT THAT SHIT!!!!!!

[AArdvark]

Perhaps having their own moving people is a NOT a good idea.....

[Flack]

Just remember, you can tune a piano, but you can't tunafish! Tunafish! Two cans of tunafish!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Paul, QUIT DOING THIS SHIT.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You do this shit again and you are banned for a month. Fucking Christ. I've had to mod this site more in the last month than in its previous 10 years combined.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Fuck it. Paul, you can post again in a month.

[Tdarcos' Legal Department]

Paul, QUIT DOING THIS SHIT.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You do this shit again and you are banned for a month. Fucking Christ. I've had to mod this site more in the last month than in its previous 10 years combined.

You know, it would have been helpful if you'd allowed me to see this before you decided to just drop the hammer and cut me off. It's rude, you don't give me a chance to find out I've done something you disapprove of, and give me no chance at all to know that I've done something wrong.

But, it's your place and you can run it as you please. Even if that means you act like a dick where you say you're going to impose some sort of punishment for something I did wrong and then give me no chance at all to discover that I'm going to be punished.

I'm sure you're probably not interested in having me finish the web-based Hugo interpreter since you're so upset at me, so in the absence of you saying something to the contrary in the next two days I'll consider the contract cancelled.

[Tdarcos' Legal Department]

I'm sure you're probably not interested in having me finish the web-based Hugo interpreter since you're so upset at me, so in the absence of you saying something to the contrary in the next two days I'll consider the contract cancelled.

Naah, you had a full 5 seconds to look at my posting, you had enough time just like you considered I had enough time to see your warning that I was about to be banned, so I'll consider the contract cancelled since you failed to respond during the 5 seconds the above message was posted.

[Hubble Telescope]

You know, it would have been helpful if you'd allowed me to see this before you decided to just drop the hammer and cut me off. It's rude, you don't give me a chance to find out I've done something you disapprove of, and give me no chance at all to know that I've done something wrong.

But, it's your place and you can run it as you please. Even if that means you act like a dick where you say you're going to impose some sort of punishment for something I did wrong and then give me no chance at all to discover that I'm going to be punished.

I'm sure you're probably not interested in having me finish the web-based Hugo interpreter since you're so upset at me, so in the absence of you saying something to the contrary in the next two days I'll consider the contract cancelled.

No kidding, man. Even I didn't see it coming, and I'm a really powerful telescope.

When your legal team begins putting a case together against Mr. Jonsey and his Merry Band of Miscreants, I would be willing to testify that this was completely from left field and nobody ever saw it coming.

Not even I, the HUBBLE TELESCOPE!

[RetroRomper]

What did we JUST GET FINISHED TELLING YOU?

About keeping your posts SHORT and ON-TOPIC?

Didn't we just talk about this?

SCORE:

[ ] SHORT
[ ] ON-TOPIC

That's ZERO PERCENT.

You've spoiled my favorite midnight drinking game: read through Jolt Country and take a hit whenever Tdarcos has a new post that is neither...

1) Short

2) On topic

A few rules...

1) No drinks for a post that encompasses both traits.

2) Take a double if his response to someone pointing out how he is ruining a thread, is neither short and / or on topic.

3) Triple shot for a guest account that is obviously Tdarcos trying to be relevant.

4) Double shot if a post of his tries to point out the logical fallacies of an argument against him.

5) Take a double if Flack responds in a humorous manner that acknowledges but doesn't directly respond to whatever Tdarcos wrote.

6) Finish the bottle if whatever Tdarcos did causes Jonsey to remove a feature from the forum that everyone else was using both sparingly and in a positive manner.

[AArdvark]

How about he can only post his new food prep videos. I mean, only youtube links.


THE
WORKING PROBATION
AARDVARK