They really named their #BB28 alliance FAP? LOLOLOLOL
Wife: I want to blend into the wall g not be noticed.
Then quit doing things that make you get noticed!
Technically, I’m in Middle Management at my job. I manage a team of two people doing data cleanup & enrichment for one database of a Fortune 100 business as part of a larger initiative and am nominally in charge of QA. Effectively, I’m a 1st Sergeant to the 2nd Lieutenant that is my ‘boss’.
I should have his job, but for two things; I didn’t go to college (Officer’s school) and I consistently am much too blunt in my communication style.
I’m the son of a carpenter & a housewife, I was fair-looking in my youth, I’m semi-confident (now), smart -too smart to have not gone to college, but dad dying the week you graduate from high school after a long illness has a way of neutering that- and I have gotten where I’m at by working hard and adapting to what the company/project needed. I am a non-comm by birth & circumstance & have essentially graduated from the Hard Knocks training academy.
My boss grew up the son of a professor and went to & graduated from college, but due to choices he made & being a ‘short king’, he hasn’t been able to maximize those privileges. He is a 2nd Lieutenant by training & choice.
I saw a piece of content online recently asking if a 1st Sergeant outranked a 2nd Lieutenant and the response was, technically no, but in practice? 2nd Lieutenants are fresh from the classroom with zero practical experience. Classroom training is the initial battle plan and as the old 19th Century saying by Helmuth von Moltke goes, “No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy”.
It’s not like he just joined the company; he’s been at the company for 12 years (one short of me), but he consistently solves the problem in front of him while not realizing how that ‘resolution’ impacts other parts of the program. I have to frequently come in & recommend a course correction before we end up trapped in a figurative firefight.
Like this week… Our new training class has been chirping that the job is too hard, so in an effort to ‘ease them into the role’ after training, he thought it was a good idea to allow the unseasoned people who whined about the difficulty of the job to work on the already assigned work that is the responsibility of the seasoned agents and thus likely negatively impacting their results.
But he can speak kiss ass, so he gets the job…
I probably should not be online today. Feeling very ‘burn this fucker to the ground’.
What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals?
- I Don’t Know
- I Don’t Care
- I’m Not Hungry
Holy fuck, the mental midgetry all around me lately!
What does your ideal home look like?
At one time, when I was married to my ex, her mom asked me what my ideal yard was because I hated yardwork with a passion. I answered “Asphalt.” We eventually moved into the manager’s apartment of a self-storage facility.
I’ve since made choices in life where I’ve had the following domiciles after my divorce 16 years ago:
Friends couch
Ex-SiL’s spare room
Aunt’s basement
Grandma’s spare bedroom
A 2-bedroom apartment when I needed 3
Rented the top half of the worst house in a good neighborhood
Bought that house & replaced a roof, a dishwasher, a hot water heater, all the windows and updated the electrical panel.
Now? I think my ideal house is one on wheels where I’m not tied down to anywhere except where I want to be at a particular time.
I have worked remotely since the beginning of the pandemic & my employer outgrew their office building while we were all thus separated and have only been required to be in office for 2 days in 4.5 years. I’ve also not had a single one-on-one in 5 years. So you could say my bosses (yes, multiple) don’t care how or where I work as long as the work gets done.
Therefore, the wife (who also just basically moved to full remote) and I have recently started kicking around the idea of selling the house and shedding all unnecessary possessions to buy an RV to live in full-time and work from wherever we want. Still trying to decide what exactly ‘ideal’ looks like there, but that idea sounds perfect.
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
Nothing.
Let’s assume that individual to each person, there’s a default level of joy from a zero emotion state where upon being reached, tears of joy would be a physiological response from your body.
If that were the case, I’ve never been THAT level of happy, EVER.
I’ve been that level of angry/frustrated, where I couldn’t help but cry. Never that happy where it produced salty discharge from my eyes.
When Social Media first began, I wasn’t an ultra-early adopter, mostly because I have few friends.
MySpace was originally mostly about keeping up with your friends and then finding new bands; both things I didn’t really need.
Facebook was originally a creepy peep show no one really agreed to participate in. Now it’s a really creepy peep show you agree to participate in.
Twitter was more my jam and I built up a good network of people I liked interacting with, but after Musky took over and has left moderation in the scrap heap, it became untenable. I had mostly insulated my account from all the hate speech (aka 21st Century politics), but that still left a good chunk of stupidity and you can only shout down so many idiotic posts before that’s no longer fun; especially since even that gives them a signal boost. Now it seems like it’s just a bunch of shitty trolls trying to replicate the success of famous accounts like 3 Year Letterman, FauxPelini, & SkipBayless or a bunch of dick measuring sports wars. All of that got too much & I deactivated my account.
Those two traits now seem to be taking over other places as well, and it’s making me sad.
What do you love about where you live?
I love where I live because within 4 driving hours in any direction I have the following: skiing, hunting, fishing, mountain scenery, desert scenery, red rock, 4-wheeling (mud & slick rock), symphonies, stage plays, gambling, NBA, NHL, NFL, AAA baseball, world class golf, summer cabins, winter condos & all four seasons (sometimes in the same week!)
I don’t participate in even a majority of those, but I’m glad I can.
Stories and Musings of J. Todd Hubbard 