LeftTurnSignal

Many years ago (early 2000s maybe), I lived on the road for work and stayed at a lot of hotels.

I would find random shares open on people's machines, then fill their entire hard drive with cat pictures. I usually left a few GB so they could save documents or whatever because I wasn't that much of an asshole.

In a previous life, I supported a local govt and I had a judge get a different variant of the cryptowall virus 6 times before I took his "work" PC away. His real work PC was controlled by the state and not me, hence the quotes.

That's the type of person who is a repeat offender. He could never tell me how he got the virus, but some recon between email and internet history showed otherwise. He loved clicking on EVERYTHING while "researching" cases. I get the research, but a lot of court cases probably aren't on page 20 of google on some shady half English sites either.

Lots of fun in local government.

/also I just restored from backups each time but they were ready to pay to have "all their data restored."

I have had some issues getting sent to collections before I get any bill, or not sending me the right bill and still sending me to collections after I try to figure out what I actually owe.

I learned to just pay like $10 a month regardless of what happens. Then if insurance decides to pay for it I get it refunded or it's put towards my deductible. The clinic sees me "trying" to pay for my bill and don't send me to collections now.

I doubt it would work everywhere, but it's beyond frustrating.

I've worked with a few police departments in a previous life. For the last few years I worked with the bigger dept they all wore cameras for their entire shift. They still let people go for small amounts of weed, or odd drinking violations (open intox usually) even though it's still illegal here.

They only review the videos if there's an incident or complaint. So it's not like there's someone watching 40 x 8 hour videos every day.

/this is a smaller rural area in the midwest US, so ymmv but these officers do use discretion and the higher ups don't care if it's nothing big. In the Chief's words, "we were all young and stupid at some point."

There was a site called something like: pleaserobmyhouse.com

It just scraped social media for posts about people going on vacation and when they'd be back.

I have had an amazon card for a few years now.

I can't say anything bad or good about it. I get 1% back (or points to spend at amazon) for any purchases, 2% points back for gas, and 3% points when I use it at amazon.

There's been more than several times where it looked like it never applied the points to my account though. I always paid it off in full every month, and sometimes it works sometimes not. When I lived on the road and used it for hotels, while getting reimbursed from them, I was able to rack up $1500 worth of points.

Other than that, it's been fine. Looking around for something a bit better though.

I wish. I used to work at an Apple repair shop years ago.

We never could figure out why they had so much in their manuals.

Yeah. The healthcare part made me lol.

I put in the "work," live in an awesome location, and I have to fight insurance damn near every time the Dr puts me through any procedures. That's not counting the awful healthcare I actually get. I guess I just need to drive 3-4 hours to get it instead of 1? Then I can't put in the "work" because I'm spending days traveling to get all this stuff done.

I guess the answer is to move. Well then that means i get to start over fighting insurance to get them to cover everything, again. I'm not doing that a third time.

This is exactly right.

I used to work at a hospital and some clinics in a previous life. The administration went forward with a new EMR system without actually getting the users to "test" it beyond a webinar.

I left before it started to be implemented. Not sure how it went, but it's been 4 years and they're still "working on it" according to some old co-workers still there.

If that's the same issue I had, it was a defective nvidia chip. I went through 2 logicboards and I know several of my friends who had 2012 MBPs went through a few too.

We used to be an Apple shop, and we had a lot come in due to that issue.

A few of my friends have spent some time in jail / prison due to smoking pot and the "three strikes" rule along with it. They were in there ranging from overnight to a few weeks to months.

One developed PTSD from it and has had major issues since he was released 15 years ago. The other one hasn't quite came back mentally either, will not talk about it and is so much worse off now than ever. After he was released, but before his court date where he knew he wasn't going to have to go back, he was contemplating suicide.

They all said they would rather die than ever go back for any significant time. I'm not sure what significant means in that respect, but dying seems to be the general theme they share now.

After working at a jail for a bit, I'm not sure I blame them at all. I like to think I'm mentally strong, but I don't know how long I could do it. I am sure I would have the same mentality they do now after spending time in jail / prison.

one of the weirder numbers I got a call from was 000000000000

it made my old phone kind of glitch out because the number was a bit too long.

I'm in a bit of insurance hell at the moment.

Depending on when I call them during the month, I might owe money or I might not....

Before the colonoscopy, they said I would owe $500 for my deductible, which is correct.

Then I got there, they said I didn't need to pay anything, and I just got a bill yesterday for $2700. The insurance line items say they covered about $1300 of it. Now I get to fight insurance again because I shouldn't be paying anything over $500. I have 30 days before collections too.

I love paying for the privilege of fighting for insurance coverage.

>> My daughter didn’t ask to have a writer for a mother, but that’s who I am. Amputating parts of my experience feels as abusive to our relationship as writing about her without any consideration for her feelings and privacy.

This part got me. To me that article definitely makes it sound like she's a writer first, and mother second. I just hope her child grows up to be a better person than that, or I hope I'm misunderstanding that article.

>> I'm sure they'd love to pursue perfection if they were paid decent wage and not pressured to be as fast / cheap as possible.

That and depending where you live, there's next to no money for road work.

At the local county govt I worked at, the first department that would get gutted was the highway department. It can easily cost millions to redo a few miles of road, and you need to fix a bridge that doesn't get used much (but it is becoming a hazard because it's been neglected for so long), magically most of the road budget is already gone for that year. Now add in the unknowns like salt prices, the equipment to do anything, maintenance, and everything else that comes with it.

Things here become "just good enough" because no one wants an increase in taxes to pay for it.

I want to believe that isn't the case for every local govt, but it is for the few smaller ones I've worked with around here.