Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[dave4shmups]

There's something the idea of worming my way into conversation with people because I want to further myself, that I find repulsive...The word network (in that context) makes me want to vomit.

This, a thousand times this. Just in case human interaction hadn't already been reduced to enough of a soulless, mechanical ritual as it is, kissing ass to get ahead not only has a shiny, euphemistic new name but is perhaps the most "valuable" skill in the modern marketplace. Y'know, because we obviously weren't already doing anywhere near enough of that.

This as well. And is it just me, or are people over-hyping the crap out of LinkedIn? I went to two different career transition groups last year, and they spoke about LinkedIn as if it's THE silver bullet to getting a good job. This young woman came in and said that she'd done data entry. The first thing she was asked? "Are you on LinkedIn?" Really? They never though that, maybe they should suggest job fields that people who have spent a long time in data entry have transitioned into? I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with LinkedIn, but come on!

And while I'm on the subject of jobs, I hate the fact that, to be a cashier these days, you also have to be a salesman for whatever card(s) the company wants it's customers to sign up for. Evidently they don't care that customers are being asked everywhere to sign up for a damn card. Oh yeah, and you have to tell people about surveys, which I personally never take. Sure, you can win stuff, but nobody's going to spend an hour filling out survey's after a shopping trip.

[Xyga]

Imbeciles who read something about 'motion persistence' a few months ago and spam it everywhere like it's some new discovery and a fatal flaw for all displays in the world that aren't ultra fast ultra responsive super hertz super strobed absolute perfect insanity (which is by the way: the new 'normal' for a display and every game ever made).
[H] = kindergaten.

[Ed Oscuro]

Haha yeah. I would like a 600Hz display and I think it would just about get rid of the motion artifacts I'm seeing, but lol it ain't gonna happen.

First games gotta run without stuttering and frame drops.

[atheistgod1999]

Being born in 1999 instead of 1979.

[Bananamatic]

atheistgod1999

[Ed Oscuro]

Man, I wish I was 20 years younger, haha

Just would have to keep all my knowledge so I didn't make all the same mistakes again

Some good things happened before 1999...but trust me, you weren't really missing much. Just a bunch of N'sync playing on the school bus, and The Fifth Element in theaters. Well, there were the early days of PC gaming, yay.

[Skykid]

Being born in 1999 instead of 1979.

I feel for you man, that must really suck.

[Ed Oscuro]

Code: Select all

02/12/2016 	9:30 P.M. 	Departure Scan
02/12/2016 	1:00 P.M. 	The shipment has been dropped off and is now at a UPS Retail Location.

Business
Day(s) Left 4

Yeah thanks for wasting that ENTIRE BUSINESS DAY, UPS. Shit's gonna be on the road until the 18th.

Thankfully there's another UPS Store location quite nearby, I'm going to use them if there's a next time (please let there not be a next time).

[Xyga]

Being born in 1999 instead of 1979.

I feel for you man, that must really suck.

1999, the last year on that planet I really enjoyed.

20th Century forever *sob*

[Mischief Maker]

I graduate from Law School in the middle of the worst legal job market in history. I attend a CLE class on the emerging field of Mediation. I find mediation really clicks with me and plays to my strengths far better than any job in my life. Unlike practicing law, mediation is a positive career that brings out the best in people, I'm not just settling cases out of court, I'm repairing broken friendships. All indications point to mediation as the future of law. I dedicate several years of my life working shit jobs with flexible schedules and spend my free time mediating for free and boning up on the theory behind the field. I become a very, very good mediator. Clients in one successful case remark, "I can't believe he does this for free!"

6 months ago I decide to hang out my shingle, running a web-based practice out of my apartment. I've met a successful mediator out of a neighboring state whose marketing strategy I copy. I get maybe four serious client inquiries in six months and all of them flake on me after a free introductory consultation.

I explore the state of the field. Mediation is completely unregulated in my state, but there is an unofficial requirement for 25 hours of classroom training -an obscenely low amount. There are many retired judges and lawyers making good money at mediation. I have coffee with a few of them and realize they don't know shit about mediation theory ("I'll never understand transformative mediation!") and the quality of service they offer is very low. These mediators brag about when both parties to a case walk away frustrated with slumped shoulders, they know they've done the job right. They may be bad at the job, but they have many contacts in the legal community after years on the bench and lawyers seem to be the gatekeepers to regular mediation work.

I made a resolution that if I haven't had a case by March, I'll consider the business a failure. I realize I haven't had any paid legal experience for years. What's more, Scott Walker has ruined the economy in my state and it shows no signs of bouncing back. I may have to abandon my home state and my family for greener pastures, but I haven't the slightest idea where to find them. This week I experimented with online crap work to see if I can have a source of income that can travel with me. I realize that if I bust my ass full time at this online crap work, I'll maybe earn $7 an hour.

I have a skill set that can save clients thousands of dollars, years of their time, and improve their lives in ways that lie outside the scope of the court system. I'm better at this job than the most successful competition in my state from an objective standard of competence! But I can't figure out for the life of me how to get in contact with these clients. I took a class at the business school for starting your own business and it was aimed more at brick and mortar business manufacturing and selling widgets. I met a successful legal marketing consultant at a recent CLE, but his prices are insane for my current income. How can I tell all the potential clients in my state they're being ripped off by these retired judge mediators?

AAAAAAAAAARGH!

[Aliquantic]

I misread "mediation" as "meditation" until the last paragraph, and that painted a pretty different picture

[cicada88]

lawyers

[Durandal]

Is it me, or do females in Japanese talk shows always go 'ohhhhhhhh' or 'ehhhhhhhhhhhh' when someone else is talking about something?

[Shepardus]

Being born in 1999 instead of 1979.

Don't worry, Reddit's got your back.

[Mischief Maker]

I misread "mediation" as "meditation" until the last paragraph, and that painted a pretty different picture

I'd laugh but that's a depressingly common mistake.

Even though you probably don't care, there's a HUGE difference between Mediators and Arbitrators. Arbitrators are Rent-a-Judges. All TV Court Judges are actually performing televised arbitrations. The advantage is you don't have to wait months or years to get on the court docket. The disadvantage is you usually forfeit your right to appeal the decision, and is this arbitrator truly neutral?

Mediators are negotiation enhancers. Normally when people negotiate, they come in with different solutions already in mind and bounce progressively closer offers back and forth like a frustrating emotionally draining tennis match until they meet at a number halfway between their initial offers. It's slow because it rewards stubbornness, the stress and aggravation ruins working relationships between the parties, and the resulting solution has nothing to do with the real life situation and everything to do with how high your initial ask was.

A mediator helps the parties avoid that kind of tennis match by guiding them through a superior form of negotiation. The mediator prevents parties from making offers at the start (they'll be refused out of hand anyway, no matter how fair), draws out each of the parties' underlying interests, and turns them into something concrete and positive. Then the parties and mediator collaborate to create a custom solution that satisfies as many of their top priority interests as possible. This results in smarter, win-win solutions without burning bridges between parties. Like I said, in practice it does everything from repair friendships to allow businesses to make deals that don't leave any money on the table.

Retired Judge mediators, on the other hand, have no skills at superior negotiation or keeping heated discussions civil. They usually keep the parties in separate rooms the entire mediation. The parties are still batting tennis balls back and forth, all the judge does is take turns raising doubts in the parties' minds about how well they would do in court to pressure them to move their offers progressively closer to the center, then shuttle that offer to the other room. If you already have a competent lawyer who can give a fair assessment of your chances in court, the retired judge mediator brings nothing to the table. People are paying thousands of dollars to these retired judges for a task that could easily be performed by two empty soup cans connected by a length of string.

[blackoak]

I took a mediation class in my last year of law school, and considered doing it (I already knew by then that I hated the law and couldn't practice). Ultimately I fell into a different line of work, but I believe I'm still a certified mediator in Contra Costa County. Sorry to hear you're struggling, it has indeed never been harder. I wonder what the mediation "market" is like in the Bay Area right now...

[Ed Oscuro]

I know a recent graduate who's in the DC area - trained for work at the PTO but ended up doing contract work for a while, now is with a firm doing personal injury. I wonder if that would be a better way to go.

And that bit about the judges - yeech, but not unexpected.

[Mischief Maker]

And that bit about the judges - yeech, but not unexpected.

Well I was in a rotten mood when I wrote those posts. The thing with mediation is success is spread on a continuum. If two angry people are negotiating in a room with a silent and calm third party listening, the quality of their negotiation will improve slightly because they're being watched, so a person with zero training can still have some mediative effect.

Clients can be very stubborn when they're in the depths of rage, but being double-teamed by their lawyer plus a retired judge mediator can force them into a smarter decision, same as using a sledgehammer can be an effective means of killing a fly in your house. What's frustrating is clients don't know that a mediator at my level can kill that fly with a sweet-smelling strip of fly paper without all the collateral damage.

[dave4shmups]

Pretty much everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.

People who complain about the price of new video games. I guess they don't have good long-term memory, because Phanasty Star IV cost $99.99 when it was released, and that's hardly the only example of games that cost over $50 brand new, back in the day. A lot of Renovation games, like Vapor Trail, were in the 70s.

[Strider77]

bulbousbeard's posts....

[Rob]

Pretty much everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.

Everything around the mouth as well. Never wanted to see an old man's face with tan lines.

[Zerst]

What's more, Scott Walker has ruined the economy in my state and it shows no signs of bouncing back.

But at least we have plans for a new basketball stadium! (RIP the education budget that got cut by $300 Million to fund this)

[BitFaced]

Bonus features removed off of your region's version of a DVD/Blu-ray for pretty much always inexplicable reasons. Several that come to mind are:

-TS & TS2 Ultimate Toy Box discs on the Ultimate Toy Box
-Several bonus features off of SpongeBob SquarePants Season 2
-The Violet's voice-actor feature off of The Incredibles DVD
-The Kelloggs's ads of the Top Cat Complete Series DVD
-Documentaries off of Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1

I've actually sold several copies for this reason.

[DEL]

Little things that annoy the hell out of me...Oh Gee, the Govt lies. The Hoax operations.
Coming soon to a screen near you - fake dirty bomb hoaxes blamed on the fake isis.
Anything blamed on a fake entity, will of course be....fake.
Insert psyop ribbon here.

[Mischief Maker]

What's more, Scott Walker has ruined the economy in my state and it shows no signs of bouncing back.

But at least we have plans for a new basketball stadium! (RIP the education budget that got cut by $300 Million to fund this)

What really chaps my ass about Walker is he's not special. Listen to that fake phonecall from "David Koch." Firing the air traffic controllers sent a message to Moscow?! This is not a wise man, he's a dimwitted ideologue who was raised since birth to worship Ronald Reagan as a God. I went to high school with kids exactly like him, there's an inexhaustible supply.

Once he leaves office in disgrace with a 30% approval rating, another identical young republican named Scott will take his place. My money's on Scott Southworth. And Wisconsin Republicans sick of Walker will embrace this new Scott with open arms until he also fucks up beyond redemption. Then next in this long line of kamikaze young republican Scotts, until they succeed in turning Wisconsin into the Rickets capital of America.

Meanwhile the democrats will continue to offer the most milquetoast candidates imaginable, oftentimes with a history of being directly hostile to major groups in the left, (and if they previously lost this election, even better!), because there's no such thing as an opportunity the democratic party can't squander.

Dare I hold the tiny sliver of hope that the Sanders campaign will bump the left out of this tailspin?

[Durandal]

I have defeated the final boss of Ys Origin playing as Toal, on Nightmare mode, FOUR TIMES, because the game CRASHES right after I defeat him. The only reason I replayed the game as Toal because there is supposed to be a True Final Boss after this one, which the other characters can't reach. I have tried everything Google told me to fix it, but to no avail.
This is it. At this moment, I am the angriest person to walk this gay earth.

[Rob]

Conspiracy nuts. I wish these bedroom detectives would question their conspiracy nut sources with as much rigor as they question everything else.

[atheistgod1999]

I have defeated the final boss of Ys Origin playing as Toal, on Nightmare mode, FOUR TIMES, because the game CRASHES right after I defeat him. The only reason I replayed the game as Toal because there is supposed to be a True Final Boss after this one, which the other characters can't reach. I have tried everything Google told me to fix it, but to no avail.
This is it. At this moment, I am the angriest person to walk this gay earth.

Holy shit, I feel you. I had God of War crash twice on the third and final part of the final boss on Hard mode, after beating the insanely difficult second part.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Conspiracy nuts. I wish these bedroom detectives would question their conspiracy nut sources with as much rigor as they question everything else.

It seriously weirds me out how a lot of people's reaction to the usual "the mainstream media/scientific community/etc are LYING to you!" shtick isn't to ask "yeah? and why should I believe you?", but instead to just soak up everything they say afterwards and repeat it ad nauseam to anyone who will (or won't) listen like they knew it all along.

[Strikers1945guy]

Conspiracy nuts. I wish these bedroom detectives would question their conspiracy nut sources with as much rigor as they question everything else.

Not what you directly mean but

http://www.tofugu.com/2013/08/15/conspi ... ry-totoro/

Makes me see the movie in an entirely different light regardless