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uspol: 2A nonsense

Katy likes these YouTube channels where they teach about canning and such. One of the people in one of these videos is wearing a shirt with what looks like an AR-15 that says "defense is not a crime".

What in the cinnamon toast fuck do you need an AR-15 to defend yourself from?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

uspol: 2A nonsense

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

uspol: 2A nonsense

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Got my hair cut for the first time in probably a year because I have an interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get (and think I have a pretty good shot at).

It looks decent, but has revealed a good deal more grey than I'm accustomed to seeing.



This morning Katy noticed a rash all around my neck. I can only attribute it to the new (to me) shirt I wore yesterday. It's like my body has revolted against wearing a shirt and tie ever again.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

if humans were meant to wear clothes, we would have been born that way.


Nothing quite makes you stand out at a Latin wedding like ordering the vegetarian option.






We just filled out the card for my niece's wedding. We took some time to figure out the perfect wording, select the right ink and nib, practice my handwriting so that it was on point, and after all that, I finally came to the realisation that I'm not certain as to whether or not she's old enough to have been taught cursive.







Is there any branch of the provincial or federal government that we haven't had to deal with today?

I suppose it's possible.








My niece is getting married this weekend. I'm having to alter my suit. Thought I was done having to wear those. 🙃


#Today I was asked for the first time if I'm a senior citizen. I mean, I have some grey in my beard, but I was masked so it wasn't visible.

I feel like I'm a senior citizen. Does that count?





gig economy rant

TIL that Instacart now charges a "membership" to get higher priority on assignment of batches. This does not guarantee you anything, it just allows them to further exploit a workforce they're already working to the bone.

Do they not realize that many (if not most) of the people who are working this job are doing it because they don't really have any other options? And they expect them to pay for the privilege now?

Just when I thought they couldn't possibly get any more predatory, they pull this shit.

Bernie Luckily Does It reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

gig economy rant
Also, I get the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing. I might take that more seriously if it was actually feeding me. Mostly it just slaps me in the face.



Does anyone know if anyone's still using #CommonLisp in the Real World™?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I used Common-Lisp on a few professional production projects; a data transformation system for moving data between two companys' different systems. An event processing engine that applies weird complex rules to GPS tracking locations. A web micro-service or two to support some mobile apps. All of those services, except maybe the first, are still running in production. Plus, of course, a few personal projects here and there.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Nyxt browser is written in common lisp.

I'd say common lisp is alive and well.



For all the fancy climbers and beds and such that we've gotten for the cat, his two favourite places to hang out are a random paper bag and our boot tray.


mh
Hooray! Had a bit of anxiety today but no full-blown panic attacks.


Got a rejection letter form one of the jobs I'd applied for. I have to say, I'm not terribly broken up about this one. I applied because I'm trying not to be overly picky, but I don't see myself as having been happy there long-term.









mh

Anxiety's been bad again lately. I am moderately worried about losing the apartment. Taking steps to try to keep that from happening, but sometimes just trying to engage with the problem brings on a panic attack.

I have medication to help with that now, but it makes it hard to think clearly. I will survive this one way or another, but my life is going to have to change. I don't handle change well.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

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in reply to uoou

mh
@uoou Yeah, I actually agreed to go off ADHD meds because while functioning without them is far more difficult, dealing with this is essentially impossible.
@uoou





This probably won't help me in my current job search, but is it worth learning COBOL? I've heard that there are still a bunch of critical systems out there that use it, and that it's hard to find COBOL devs these days.

Is this still the case? The only downside I can see is that I'd have to program in COBOL.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Having worked adjacent to 4 different mainframes at this point in my career along with their "modernization" efforts. Reading COBOL, not terrible. Writing it, eh, probably not so bad but I've never done, only had to read and comprehend what it does. And there are non-MFs that provide implementation of COBOL so you can learn on your own time.

The devil is going to be understanding IBM systems "junk": CICS, DASD, DCLGEN, TSO, RACF etc

in reply to Bill Fellows

@billinkc
What he said. Mainframe basics are more important than COBOL, I'd say.

I work for a company that's doing "Mainframe Modernization" and as a result we have to understand the old crappy non-modern stuff in order to implement new stuff! (Currently my group isn't reimplementing anything based in Cobol. We do Db2 monitoring stuff.)

rocketsoftware.com
rocket.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/r…

(We have AI hype on the front page but really we're just programming. I guess some departments might be doing AI, but I think we're just scared we'll miss the bandwagon. So don't ignore us just for that.)

in reply to Judy Anderson

@Judy Anderson @Bill Fellows I was poking around with some TOPS-20 stuff on SDF. Is that perhaps a more viable route to persue?
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@billinkc TOPS 20 is dead. Only SDF hobbyists would still use it. IBM mainframe is not dead, much as people wish it were 🙂
in reply to Judy Anderson

@nosrednayduj OMG super small world. One of the projects I was on dealt with model 204/m204. We ended up building a real time synchronization between m204 and SQL Server via messaging.
It was going to be a very cool way to modernize the client's data storage while they incrementally switched the front ends.

Pity literal debt caught up to them 💥

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

If you have no mainframe experience, the first thing I would do is get some mainframe experience or study the mainframe environment. Include JES2. If you only have one or two other programming languages that you have mastered, then I would go for something else that is in current development use. If it's your fourth or fifth language, get COBOL. It's quicker and easier to pick up a language after you have a few under your belt and the concepts are clear in your mind. Oh, and a mainframe environment is not the only place it comes in handy. I did a little work for a steel company that had Critical applications in micro focus object-oriented COBOL, and they had a huge IT department, but I was the only one local with current cobol experience. You never know when that knowledge might become critical.


Dear job posting,

If you expect me to install spyware so that you can micromanage me while I work, at least have the decency not to expect me to supply the hardware.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Also, it was an expectation that I submit to random drug testing. No, I do not want to lose my job because they found amphetamines in my system (legitimately prescribed for ADHD). I already have to jump through enough hoops to get them in the first place.


Went to pick up a prescription and the guy ahead of me in line was chewing the pharmacist out about the automated system, which admittedly sucks but is certainly a decision made by corporate, not her.

He repeatedly threatened to take his business elsewhere. Were I in her position, the response I'd have wanted to give was "please do".

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I would have said, "It's against company policy for me to say, 'please do'"
in reply to Isaac Kuo

@Isaac Kuo Yeah, it's funny how when people are being obnoxious, they don't seem to realize that that really isn't the threat they think it is.



Sooo... I have a flatpak version of LibreOffice, and for whatever reason (probably sandboxing) the spellchecker can't see the text of my document.

I may or may not have sent off a bunch of resumes that said that I "wrote technical documentaiton" in a previous job.

That's just super.

There's a job I really want a decent shot at. Thank God I caught it before submitting to that one.

Edit: I typo'd my typo. 🙃

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Back in the 1990s I worked at a very large government facility on an RFP for getting an ISP. The winning bidder had in the footer of every page "Bid for Interenet Service Provider." Nobody but me noticed.

Of course, the Interenet was so new in the 1990s that maybe they thought that's how it's spelled...


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