The Bitching Thread

[complich8]

I just feel there is something inherently wrong about that, as if it is dishonest in some way, and I also feel like my friend is fucking me over by acting as if there is nothing wrong with the situation.

It's true. That's a shitty way for a person to be... but maybe you're projecting your opinion of the people in question on him, and he doesn't actually share that evaluation?

I grew up knowing a couple guys who were total dicks to me. I really hated them (I treated one of them to a particularly severe and entirely deserved pounding, after which his family immediately listed their house and moved out of the neighborhood).

They had been antagonizing me incrementally more for years, so I had a lot of antipathy for them, but I was alone in being targeted by them (apparently I was the only person they were a dick to) and in disliking them -- they were popular, wealthy, and generally considered "good kids" by classmates and their families. So, I found myself alone in my antipathy for them as well.

Anyway, my own subjectivity as essentially their victim caused to misjudge how well-liked they were. They had a lot of friends, and speaking badly about them tended to backfire.

Everyone has good and bad sides, and sometimes people will choose you alone to reveal their bad sides to. An objective evaluation would probably show that they're not as bad as you think they are, nor as good as their parents probably think they are.

If your friend really does share your antipathy for them, then he's probably as uncomfortable as you are, and being disingenuous. Consider that his bad side. On the other hand, he could genuinely not feel that bad about those guys, in which case you're on your own, and it's probably best to just forgive and not-forget.

Incidentally, I ended up being ok with most of the people in that group after a couple years went by without their defeated and exiled "leader" .

Got all four of my wisdom teeth out today. Yeah... I don't think I need to elaborate.

Pain! Mine had to come out way pre-emergence, which meant a general and some real pain. It's never fun healing after they've gotta cut away 3/4 of an inch of tissue to get to the thing they're trying to remove...

And now, for my dose of bitching for the day:

I go into work today, and immediately get a call from one of my directors, telling me that her personal laptop (she has 3 laptops: 2 work ones and a personal one) is having issues. This is a machine that I've never touched, I don't even know the hardware specs on it, and she's asking me how to fix it. Over the phone.

Well, it's probably virused, from the description of what's broken (LSASS.exe crashes on boot). There's nothing I can do about it... I'm not about to talk her through burning a knoppix cd and using it to copy her files off, and the vendor tech support people are apparently telling her "just put in the windows cd, and it'll fix it" ... so now I am stuck supporting a random virused piece of crap that is in dire need of a reformat and a better virus scanner -- things I'd be able to give her, if she had come to me to set the machine up in the first place.

I hate supporting laptops in general, because there's no good way to do it when they're out in the wild. Do I stick them on a domain and run into login-time auth problems when they're at some remote site with a horrible firewall ruleset? Do I drop a virus scanner with autoupdates and a personal firewall on the machine and let them flap in the breeze, hoping they stay on top of their own update cycle but knowing they won't? But this is beyond even that! "Here's a machine you didn't even know I had! Support it!!!"

Fuck that shit. I'm wearing my No, I will not fix your computer shirt to work at least once per laundry cycle now, and pointing to it whenever random shit like that happens. If you don't give me a chance to get you set up sanely out of the box, how the fuck do you expect me to support you when it breaks due to your insane configuration?

Oh, finally ... gotwoot's main server (ie: what you're reading from now) seems to break at odd, unusual times for no apparent reason. I think it's overloaded and needs a memory upgrade, or needs to stop hosting one of the random other websites it's hosting, or possibly just unload a certain module that may be causing problems. But ... none of that is stuff that goes over very well when I suggest it...

[SK]

It's true. That's a shitty way for a person to be... but maybe you're projecting your opinion of the people in question on him, and he doesn't actually share that evaluation?

I grew up knowing a couple guys who were total dicks to me. I really hated them (I treated one of them to a particularly severe and entirely deserved pounding, after which his family immediately listed their house and moved out of the neighborhood).

They had been antagonizing me incrementally more for years, so I had a lot of antipathy for them, but I was alone in being targeted by them (apparently I was the only person they were a dick to) and in disliking them -- they were popular, wealthy, and generally considered "good kids" by classmates and their families. So, I found myself alone in my antipathy for them as well.

Anyway, my own subjectivity as essentially their victim caused to misjudge how well-liked they were. They had a lot of friends, and speaking badly about them tended to backfire.

Everyone has good and bad sides, and sometimes people will choose you alone to reveal their bad sides to. An objective evaluation would probably show that they're not as bad as you think they are, nor as good as their parents probably think they are.

If your friend really does share your antipathy for them, then he's probably as uncomfortable as you are, and being disingenuous. Consider that his bad side. On the other hand, he could genuinely not feel that bad about those guys, in which case you're on your own, and it's probably best to just forgive and not-forget.

Incidentally, I ended up being ok with most of the people in that group after a couple years went by without their defeated and exiled "leader" .

You hit it perfectly.

[samsonlonghair]

No, I will not fix your computer

I feel your pain. I probably don't know half what you know in computers, but every damn time something breaks down at work I get called in to fix it. I'm a fucking DJ, not an engineer. It's my job to make fun of Federline, not to fix computers. Hell, my station has an engineer. Fixing stuff is his job. Despite this, every damn time something goes wrong with our network I hear, "Sam, the internet is broken!" to which I reply, "what?"

By now I must have told every damn employee here that at any given time our network problems could be caused by our out-of-date router, our shitty ISP, a problem on his/her local machine or something as simple as a missing cord. Don't laugh; I once actually had to "fix" a problem consisting of someone accidentally pulling out her network cable. I want to yell at all these people, "It's 2006 now; understanding what a computer does is no longer optional!"

I once tried to explain why it's almost impossible for the entire internet to be "broken". I wound up just sounding like a smug jackass of course.

I found out last week that the opposite can actually be more frustrating.

Some guys from Google came by to load new software on our computers. (It turns out that one of the many things Google under the name "dMarc" has bought recently is a software suite radio stations use called "scott studios".) Our station has been using different forms of this software for years with great success. Google's "update" has knocked us off of the air more times recently than in the entire time I've worked here. The new software isn't even a Beta; It's early Alpha at best (even basic parts of the Gui like scroll bars are missing). We get to be the lucky radio station that tests out this new software.

Despite all these screw ups these Google employees are the most self-important assholes I've ever met. They're under the assumption that anyone who doesn't work at Google knows nothing. When I try to report a problem with the software, they assume it's me. The first time this happened they actually asked, "are you sure the computer is turned on?" Even when I tell them that I understand how a piece of software works they insist on treating me like a child. They explained to me very slowly how to import data with a mysterious program called "Firefox". Thanks guys, I've never heard of Firefox before. I tried to tell them that the first time I compiled Firefox was three years ago when it was called "Pheonix," but they had never heard of that before, so they assumed that I was confused. They got really pissed when I told them that Opera still renders CSS noticeably faster.

[XanBcoo]

Fuck that shit. I'm wearing my No, I will not fix your computer shirt to work at least once per laundry cycle now, and pointing to it whenever random shit like that happens.

One of my best friends has that shirt. He's also got Let me stop what I'm doing and work on your problem. Awesome.


I've actually got nothing to bitch about. I'm on an emotional high I haven't experienced in several months. Though, I am having problems with some Python programming homework assignment (again, pretty easy stuff, I'm just inexperienced and having to teach myself). But meh.

I'm a fucking DJ, not an engineer. It's my job to make fun of Federline, not to fix computers.

Heh, don't worry, he makes fun of himself just by existing. God only knows what will happen now that he doesn't have his Britanny's money to back him up anymore.

[Board of Command]

I agree. People shouldn't be relying on others, nowadays, to fix their trivial computer issues. Anyone who actually puts a little effort into learning about computers can do so with easy in today's day and age. I mean...take me for example. I'm just about 18 and I've had no formal training in working with computers or taken any real computer course in my life but I know a lot about them. How? I do my own research. When there is a problem I've never encounted before, I try to find a solution on my own. With Google at your fingertips, chances are you'll find the answer somewhere out on the web.

[Ryllharu]

BoC, definitely. I come across the rare problem I can't fix on my own, so I ask my roommate who knows more than I do. However, I only ask him how to get me started, I do the actual work myself, because if it happens again, I need to know how to fix it next time on my own.
---------------------
Anyhow, I got a good one that happened to me yesterday. I have a professor for a Mechanical Design class, who, though hilarious, is probably senile. You laugh during the class (at 8am no less) but then come around exam time, we learn the real problem. He hasn't taught us anything, and expects us to know everything.

He gave a lecture on shaft design one class before our exam. Most professors won't include material they just taught, or that the students haven't done any homework on. Don't worry, he gets around that one. The homework we had to hand in was all about shaft design, before we had even learned it! So, shaft design, of which we had had a single lecture covering only the basics, was about half of the exam.

Now for the exam itself. Our class is about an hour and fifteen minutes long. It's open book, so it shouldn't feasibly be that hard, right? What our professor does is take examples from the book, modify a variable or two and paste it onto the exam. The problem? It's in the supplementary book that costs $100 extra. Fortunately, I not only bought it accidentally at the beginning of the year, I brought it with me. In a class of about 60 students, maybe half had it. The first problem alone takes half an hour to copy out of the book. To Copy!! It's that long. That means you have a half an hour to do two more Mechanical engineering design problems. (One of which I found the the supplementary text during the last 5 minutes of the exam.)

Now...let's think for a moment. Half the class has the book, and so they will be able to finish on time. If you're familiar with college Engineering problems, you know that a single problem can very possibly take upwards of an hour to do on your own, unless you know exactly what you're doing. On a shear and bending moment analysis of a shaft with two bearing supports, a gear on one end, and a pulley putting torque on the middle at an angle, no one knows exactly what they are doing.

So, half the class is basically screwed. They can do the other two problems without too much effort, but they still have a third of the test to do without any idea how to go about it, since we just we half-assedly taught this two days ago. With the book, the test takes about an hour to do. Without the book, it would easily take 3 hours to do. We had an hour and fifteen minutes.

Fair? hell no. I had the book, so I think I probably did okay, but I've been in the other position before. This man is insane, he changes his basis of grading arbitrarily after assigning something but before it's due, gives us essays to write that require a book to do (of which there are exactly 3 copies in the library for 60 students), and does not know how to write a test in order to pace it so undergraduate students can possibly do it.

College is fun, isn't it?

[Assertn]

It's my job to make fun of Federline, not to fix computers.

Speaking of making fun of Federline......this has to be the worst web site on the internet. It seriously takes 10 minutes just to load the news section so you can see federline walk forward a little bit xd

[IFHTT]

Speaking of making fun of Federline......this has to be the worst web site on the internet. It seriously takes 10 minutes just to load the news section so you can see federline walk forward a little bit xd

What the fuck, is about the only phrase that comes to mind, after seeing the loadtime and the associated walking video coupled with HOW FUCKING USELESS IT IS.

I hope his divorce allows his 15 minutes in the spotlight to fade away...

[Board of Command]

What the hell...is that hosted on some 14.4K server? After seeing how long it took to load 2%...I just closed the window.

[masamuneehs]

first off, i'm in a course that is listed as 4 credits (out of 20 total for the semester) but because the Prof is doing his last year, and because he's a hardass, i'm working more like it's 7 or 8 credits. The amount of work I have to do for this class is so disproportionate to what I'm going to get out of it, and meanwhile it's dragging down my grades in other classes. But naturally Cornell is as inflexible about this as they are everything...

and the group i'm in are a bunch of pricks (except the girl who I hooked up with, she's alright). They're all City and Regional Planning majors, and i'm the only one who isn't. So they have all the group meetings on the other fucking side of campus, at their building AND insist on using a program that is based in a lab that only they have access to and that I'd need to pay $140 to buy for my PC (they get it free). And then they complain about me not doing enough work! GODDAMNIT FOOLS I DONT HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME SHIT YOU DO! And so I'm laboring in Excel to do shit that it takes them about 5 minutes to do, and they throw more work on me because I'm "slacking" and they think I can do more.

and the bitch in charge of the group even told the professor that she thought I should get marked down for it. She also is the one who set up our weekly meetings with the Prof at 730 on Monday, when I always always always have work, and this I told the group when we started. I told the Prof he can expect a formal complaint on grading if he marks me any less than the rest of the group.

oh, and I was up all last night fighting and breaking up with my girlfriend. Drove home from her place at like 6am. This is the second time we've broken up, but I made it pretty clear that this was the last end. I'm graduating soon anyway and things just weren't working out. Most importantly, she never really earned my respect, and in turn I probably didn't treat her as well as I should have. Guess when you fuck on the second date and the whole relationship is based around sex it retards any deeper intimacy, but it's partialy her fault for never showing that she wanted to move beyond that.

and now i'm working away on my "slacker's" portion of the project. hurrah

[complich8]

... AND insist on using a program that is based in a lab that only they have access to and that I'd need to pay $140 to buy for my PC (they get it free).

Mathematica?

And yeah, your group is a bunch of asshats.

[woofcat]

****Warning, this is a long story, also it is not finished. I will edit it later. to add ending****

Ok, today over all was shitty. But more shitty than normal. First, i got stuck watching our 2 dogs today since other people were out doing stuff. They ate various things that pissed me off but not that much.

Since everyone was out of the house, my step sister decided to go to her grandma's house. Cool i thought, house to my self. Watch some anime, browse the web etc.

Well around 8 at night my step grandma? calls. She wants to know if my parents are home yet. I say no, and she says "I didn't think they would be"

So the night progresses, to 9. and i get the same phone call. But ok, then a hang up.

So at 9:37 (yay caller id) she calls again. She tells me to call Karen(my step mom) and have her call her now. I say ok.

at this point i am already pissed off. Are her fingers broken. She can call me but not her daughters cell phone.

So i dial my step mothers phone it goes to voice mail so i hang up. Then i call my fathers cell phone and i hear it ring in his brief case. So i hang up. Walk back up stairs, sit down. and the phone rings.

At 9:35 my step brother calls. He is at collage. He asks if they are home yet. I say no, still out and that his grandmother called telling me to call Karen, but neither are available via cell phone. He says he will call his grandmother and see what she wanted.

A few moments later he calls back. Asking me for my grandmothers phone number (were they went for the day) because it was some sort of emergency. I comply and give the number.

What part of this you might be wondering is about bitching? Well. I feel semi bad for not working my hardest now knowing that it is an emergency of some sort. But why the fuck would you not point that out when you call someone Its sorta like lets call 911 and just ask for an ambulance but not tell them why. I viewed the phone call as a general request. Not a priority matter.

And due to there shitty communication skills i will be blamed for something. Most likely failing to contact them in under 10 minutes. But what ever.

I'll update later when they get home and tell you what happened and what they yelled at me for later.

[Board of Command]

So at 9:37 (yay caller id) she calls again. She tells me to call Karen(my step mom) and have her call her now. I say ok.
.
.
.
.
At 9:35 my step brother calls. He is at collage. He asks if they are home yet. I say no, still out and that his grandmother called telling me to call Karen, but neither are available via cell phone. He says he will call his grandmother and see what she wanted.

Wait...is this a typo?

Anyway, I don't see much to bitch about. Just a series of phone calls.

[RyougaZell]

I don't see why can't he bitch about it.

A lot of calls, none stating its an emergency till the last one. And he could be blamed for not being "helpful", but like he stated, they never stated it.

He couldn't know that way.

Its annoying when people want something, don't tell you what they want, and then blame you for not doing so.

[woofcat]

Its more of. I will get in shit for.

a) not giving a damn (i don't care)
b) not calling my grandmothers since it was an emergency

A lot of it has to do with tone. Apon reading it, i can understand it not making sense. I am sorry.

When my step brother called, the second time. it was more of "Its an emergency thats why she said now." As if i were to know, and care.

Same thing will happen with my parents when they get back. It will have been expected of me to interpret "now" as emergency and not as impolite.

Example. If i say. "Get me a glass of water now" in a monotone voice, and i am chocking, then later blame you for not acting swiftly.

[xDarkMaster]

I can see why woofcat is angry. I know I some times get annoyed even when someone calls me right after I got through with them.

As for the whole emergency thing, I know I have a monotone voice so I feel you.

[XanBcoo]

Tonight I went to a concert for The Who. Fucking amazing. I loved it.

So what am I bitching about? My friend, who lives near where the concert was, agreed to drive me to it. I drove to his house, left my car there, and he took me to the concert. He was a little concerned that he might not make it to the stores by midnight to pick up a Wii, but he said that as long as the concert was over before 11:00, he would definitely come and pick me up. Chances are, I could go get his Wii with him, and we could play for a while before I went home. That would been kinda cool, actually. A nice way to end a really rockin' day.

Half way through the concert, he texts me saying "shit, the lines for the Wii are long. I'm getting in line now."

...

So...I call him when the concert ends at 10:45, and he says he's still in line, and won't come and get me until he gets his Wii, which would have been after 12:00. Given travel time, among other things, that would mean I would have to wait about 2 hours for him outside the concert. I ended up walking 3 miles through Downtown Houston (which is not a nice place) to get to my car.

Y'know, I don't even care that he made me walk to my car. The fact is, he promised to pick me up, and then buggered off to buy his video game console, leaving me alone. I was on a major buzz after this concert. It was the first one I've ever been to, and it was for my absolute favorite band. The show was awesome. Things could not have been better. I had built up all this excitement and hype beforehand, released it all during the concert, and was in a seriously good mood afterwards. And then he killed it. He fucking killed it for me. That's borderline "unforgivable" in my book. It'll take me a while to cool off. I hope he enjoys his Wii.

[Board of Command]

People these days are way too serious about game consoles. It happened with X360. It's happening right now with Wii. It's about to happen with the PS3. People just can't seem to wait a few days, or even a week, to buy the new hot thing out there. Sure, you'll be "out of the loop" for a couple days but who gives a shit? It's just video games. Well I guess the people setting up tents outside Best Buy do...

[Kraco]

While I'm not trying to justify him breaking his promise and not picking you up, it could be that for him getting his Wii might have been just as important as it was for you to be in the concert.

[Animeniax]

That's true Kraco, but then his friend shouldn't have agreed to pick him up, or at least he could have texted him an apology.

@XanBcoo: You could have taken a taxi home.

I'm getting pretty fed up with unreliable "friends" myself. Don't tell your friend (me) you're going to do something, then not do it.