reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

rustingbridges:

The concept of companies paying for their employees’ food continues to boggle me, but then my entire family works in food service, so our idea of company-provided food is “the customer changed their mind about wanting the food after I made it, and the boss let me keep it”.

Covering some food during travel is pretty standard, I think, since it’s a business expense and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it. My old roommate worked at best buy (which was by no means a great employer) and even they gave him a per diem which covered (cheap) food.

B: Nah, there are starving children in Africa future selves to think of. We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

So the question with this is kind of, where does it end? I think if I put my back into it, I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.

And even if you are counting labor costs, you can buy food at the supermarket for $1-2/day. It just gets really boring.

We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?

 

brin-bellway:

>>and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it.<<

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way. Sure, it’d be *nice* if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

(I speak from some experience here: my job *did* used to provide some free food each week (but only a small amount, and only from a limited selection of the cheaper menu items), but later switched to an employee-discount system. And every friend or family member who learned about it got angry on my behalf *even though I wasn’t angry about it myself*, and it was really annoying having to try to calm them down and defend against their attempts to instil negative emotions about it in me.)

—

>>It just gets really boring.<<

I would be perfectly content to eat peanut-butter-on-a-spoon for lunch every day for years on end. The *occasional* variety in food is nice, but as the exception, not the norm.

(Also I have a low metabolism and an appetite to match, which is helpful.)

I barely even have to try to knock my food budget down to about four USD a day, so in practice I haven’t done that much other than severely cut back on restaurants.

—

>>I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.<<

How?

—

>>Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?<<

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

(Is it something to do with, like, dignity or some shit?)

Our expenses are already extremely low by developed standards even without going full-on rice-and-beans [link]–a thousand USD per person per month would be enough, with room for a small emergency fund–but underemployment is a big problem.

(Though to be fair, I have a positive amount of money and have never been homeless, which makes me better off than most of my friends. (From multiple social circles, at that.))

 

rustingbridges:

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way.

Sure, but I don’t need to eat out. Compare: eating in the comfort of my home, at supermarket prices, with they company of my lovely girlfriend vs eating at some random nearby restaurant, at corresponding prices, with the company of some random work people (who I happen to like, and may I always be so lucky).

If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad. My job didn’t involve regular travel (I only did a few times) so I can’t comment on how that works, but while I’m sure the expectations change, I would expect it to change in the direction of more generous compensation for traveling, since traveling kind of sucks.

Sure, it’d be nice if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here. Sure, the expectations should probably with the job, but if I’m doing this for my employer he ought to cover it.

How?

In short, be places where they’re giving out food. Exact options may vary. In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.

Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste. Depending on what you’re after you may in contention with various other indigents but not necessarily – there’s a lot of stuff that’s only good if you have a kitchen and the will to use it.

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

Uh I would say I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.

 

voxette-vk:

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

I suppose I wouldn’t either… but how do you do this in practice without spending a lot of time sorting through nasty garbage?

 

rustingbridges:

Luck, mostly? I used to walk past on my way home from work a particular trash can which was usually completely full and often had that kind of thing just sitting out on top or next to it.

I’m not sure why that particular trash can was like that, but it was a popular / touristy area so it must have just been a, uh, blessed trash can in that respect.

I would not recommend actual garbage sorting as a hobby (fun fact: this is very specifically a legally prohibited activity in many public places).

I think people tend to put “nice” stuff off to the side rather than really shoving it in there, anyway.

 

brin-bellway:

[reblogging this version mostly for completeness; all of my responses are to the post immediately after my last one]

—

>>Sure, but I don’t need to eat out.<<

You don’t need to eat out at a hotel either. I always make sure I know where the local supermarkets are when I’m going to a hotel. Maybe there are hotels where you can reach a restaurant but not a supermarket, but I’ve never had to deal with that.

—

>>I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here.<<

I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t accept their lot. I want no part of it.

(I don’t even mean what *other people* do to them, just the way that the resentment makes them miserable, and the way it skews their decision-making: some of them towards risky plans for the chance of a better life, others towards denial, in both cases ending up even worse off than they’d have been if they’d buckled down and dealt with it.)

—

>>If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad.<<

Or else what? You’ll leave? Good luck paying the bills. Hell, you’re *American*: at least my dad was still able to get his broken ankle fixed.

(He was laid off from abovementioned cushy programming job almost thirteen years ago, and has never again made enough to make ends meet. He’s finally back in a position where he can at least make *some* money, just not enough.)

—

>>In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.<<

Who–among the set of people who care enough about how much their food costs to seek out free food, but are not living on the street–can afford to live *that* close to places where they’re giving out food? I’m pretty sure the transportation costs of getting to any place like that would be enough to buy an entire day’s worth of food, and instead you only get one meal out of it.

(Low appetite is a blessing when you’re eating supermarket food and can make the same size of stockpile last longer, but it does mean I suck at exploiting all-you-can-eat situations. I try very hard these days to avoid buffets, because compared to normal restaurants they’re more money for *less* food (in that you don’t get to take home your leftovers).)

—

>>Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste.<<

We’ve had friends go to food banks, but I think my parents think those are for people more desperate than we are. Hell, they might even be right.

(Though when said friends offer us the bits of a food-bank variety pack they aren’t able to use themselves, we *do* at least accept them. Ate a cookie bar from a food-bank-sourced bake-it-yourself just yesterday.)

—

>>And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not.<<

I’ve experimented with dumpster diving a few times. Mostly for stuff to sell, but I did once find and redeem a voucher for a free protein bar. (I turned down the spicy ramen cups, though: I dislike pain.)

—

>>I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying<<

It’s not like I don’t talk about it [link].

—

>>b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.<<

I don’t mind people calling it a bad situation, though as you can probably tell from the rest of this reply I have had more than enough [people trying to coerce me into having negative emotions] for one lifetime. (Although usually it’s people trying to get me to perform grief about [death of a relative I was not close to] or anger about [insert latest SJ Discourse topic].)

 

humanfist:

You don’t need to eat out at a hotel either. I always make sure I know where the local supermarkets are when I’m going to a hotel. Maybe there are hotels where you can reach a restaurant but not a supermarket, but I’ve never had to deal with that.

Most hotels I’ve stayed at have minimal to no cooking facilities available to guests.  Also, this massively depends on what you are making but grocery buying often requires buying more of a single ingredient than you’ll use in the course of a single business trip.

@rustingbridges responded here, and @serinemolecule responded here.

—

I knew my mom (who is in charge of deciding where we stay while travelling) was specifically selecting for places with kitchens, but I hadn’t realised they were *that* rare if you weren’t specifically selecting for them.

Also I’m not sure why so many people seem to be so attached to having a Hot Meal for dinner, even when in situations that aren’t conducive to them.

—

rustingbridges: >>I’d say anyone who’s concerned about their ability to budget for decent food at all is probably in the demo for using a foodbank<<

I expect to remain concerned about whether I can afford decent food until and unless I become independently wealthy [link]. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of runway is, empirically, not enough.

—

rustingbridges: >>If it’s mine by right I’m just taking it. If someone else wants it they can come get it.<<

You need to try *much* harder to cover your ass, or it is going to get bit.

(Also, the main examples of resentful entitlement I was thinking of are some Uber Eats drivers I am “”friends”“ with who complain (to *me*, *knowing* I can’t do anything about it, just inflicting their negativity on me to no benefit) whenever anyone doesn’t tip them, even though it says right there on the website that customers should not feel obligated to tip, and that was what the drivers signed up for. And the people telling stories from the Good Old Days™, when single blue-collar salaries were large enough to raise five children on and still pay off your mortgage early, and savings accounts gave 5% interest.)

—

Serine, I tried to respond to your post, wrote out a whole draft with links and everything. But I can’t help but react to its condescension and hostility, and probably you’re just one of those people who’s naturally splainy [link] and aren’t actually aware that you keep coming across as picking fights with me.

Tags:

#discourse cw #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #food #disordered eating? #long post #death mention

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

rustingbridges:

The concept of companies paying for their employees’ food continues to boggle me, but then my entire family works in food service, so our idea of company-provided food is “the customer changed their mind about wanting the food after I made it, and the boss let me keep it”.

Covering some food during travel is pretty standard, I think, since it’s a business expense and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it. My old roommate worked at best buy (which was by no means a great employer) and even they gave him a per diem which covered (cheap) food.

B: Nah, there are starving children in Africa future selves to think of. We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

So the question with this is kind of, where does it end? I think if I put my back into it, I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.

And even if you are counting labor costs, you can buy food at the supermarket for $1-2/day. It just gets really boring.

We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?

 

brin-bellway:

>>and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it.<<

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way. Sure, it’d be *nice* if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

(I speak from some experience here: my job *did* used to provide some free food each week (but only a small amount, and only from a limited selection of the cheaper menu items), but later switched to an employee-discount system. And every friend or family member who learned about it got angry on my behalf *even though I wasn’t angry about it myself*, and it was really annoying having to try to calm them down and defend against their attempts to instil negative emotions about it in me.)

—

>>It just gets really boring.<<

I would be perfectly content to eat peanut-butter-on-a-spoon for lunch every day for years on end. The *occasional* variety in food is nice, but as the exception, not the norm.

(Also I have a low metabolism and an appetite to match, which is helpful.)

I barely even have to try to knock my food budget down to about four USD a day, so in practice I haven’t done that much other than severely cut back on restaurants.

—

>>I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.<<

How?

—

>>Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?<<

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

(Is it something to do with, like, dignity or some shit?)

Our expenses are already extremely low by developed standards even without going full-on rice-and-beans [link]–a thousand USD per person per month would be enough, with room for a small emergency fund–but underemployment is a big problem.

(Though to be fair, I have a positive amount of money and have never been homeless, which makes me better off than most of my friends. (From multiple social circles, at that.))

 

rustingbridges:

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way.

Sure, but I don’t need to eat out. Compare: eating in the comfort of my home, at supermarket prices, with they company of my lovely girlfriend vs eating at some random nearby restaurant, at corresponding prices, with the company of some random work people (who I happen to like, and may I always be so lucky).

If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad. My job didn’t involve regular travel (I only did a few times) so I can’t comment on how that works, but while I’m sure the expectations change, I would expect it to change in the direction of more generous compensation for traveling, since traveling kind of sucks.

Sure, it’d be nice if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here. Sure, the expectations should probably with the job, but if I’m doing this for my employer he ought to cover it.

How?

In short, be places where they’re giving out food. Exact options may vary. In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.

Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste. Depending on what you’re after you may in contention with various other indigents but not necessarily – there’s a lot of stuff that’s only good if you have a kitchen and the will to use it.

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

Uh I would say I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.

 

voxette-vk:

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

I suppose I wouldn’t either… but how do you do this in practice without spending a lot of time sorting through nasty garbage?

 

rustingbridges:

Luck, mostly? I used to walk past on my way home from work a particular trash can which was usually completely full and often had that kind of thing just sitting out on top or next to it.

I’m not sure why that particular trash can was like that, but it was a popular / touristy area so it must have just been a, uh, blessed trash can in that respect.

I would not recommend actual garbage sorting as a hobby (fun fact: this is very specifically a legally prohibited activity in many public places).

I think people tend to put “nice” stuff off to the side rather than really shoving it in there, anyway.

[reblogging this version mostly for completeness; all of my responses are to the post immediately after my last one]

—

>>Sure, but I don’t need to eat out.<<

You don’t need to eat out at a hotel either. I always make sure I know where the local supermarkets are when I’m going to a hotel. Maybe there are hotels where you can reach a restaurant but not a supermarket, but I’ve never had to deal with that.

—

>>I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here.<<

I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t accept their lot. I want no part of it.

(I don’t even mean what *other people* do to them, just the way that the resentment makes them miserable, and the way it skews their decision-making: some of them towards risky plans for the chance of a better life, others towards denial, in both cases ending up even worse off than they’d have been if they’d buckled down and dealt with it.)

—

>>If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad.<<

Or else what? You’ll leave? Good luck paying the bills. Hell, you’re *American*: at least my dad was still able to get his broken ankle fixed.

(He was laid off from abovementioned cushy programming job almost thirteen years ago, and has never again made enough to make ends meet. He’s finally back in a position where he can at least make *some* money, just not enough.)

—

>>In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.<<

Who–among the set of people who care enough about how much their food costs to seek out free food, but are not living on the street–can afford to live *that* close to places where they’re giving out food? I’m pretty sure the transportation costs of getting to any place like that would be enough to buy an entire day’s worth of food, and instead you only get one meal out of it.

(Low appetite is a blessing when you’re eating supermarket food and can make the same size of stockpile last longer, but it does mean I suck at exploiting all-you-can-eat situations. I try very hard these days to avoid buffets, because compared to normal restaurants they’re more money for *less* food (in that you don’t get to take home your leftovers).)

—

>>Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste.<<

We’ve had friends go to food banks, but I think my parents think those are for people more desperate than we are. Hell, they might even be right.

(Though when said friends offer us the bits of a food-bank variety pack they aren’t able to use themselves, we *do* at least accept them. Ate a cookie bar from a food-bank-sourced bake-it-yourself just yesterday.)

—

>>And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not.<<

I’ve experimented with dumpster diving a few times. Mostly for stuff to sell, but I did once find and redeem a voucher for a free protein bar. (I turned down the spicy ramen cups, though: I dislike pain.)

—

>>I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying<<

It’s not like I don’t talk about it [link].

—

>>b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.<<

I don’t mind people calling it a bad situation, though as you can probably tell from the rest of this reply I have had more than enough [people trying to coerce me into having negative emotions] for one lifetime. (Although usually it’s people trying to get me to perform grief about [death of a relative I was not close to] or anger about [insert latest SJ Discourse topic].)

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #food #disordered eating? #reply via reblog #discourse cw? #long post #death mention

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

thezohar:

overthestars-and-offtoneverland:

lollytea:

i like how writing realistic worlds and characters is so important for so many writers to the point where they agonize over it. meanwhile lemony snicket was just like “death to reality. im gonna write this whole ass series and with god as my witness, absolutely fucking NOBODY is gonna act like a person.”

Daniel Handler, after downing whatever the hell he was on: The baby has piranha teeth and can take a trained swordswoman in a fight. 

All of us: Fucking genius. 

readers: what time and place is this set in?
Daniel Handler: Yes.

(While this is funny, also I do wonder what reading A Series of Unfortunate Events as a young impressionable child may have done to me?)

((other than a suspicion of eye doctors, I mean [link]))

(Kid!me took everything seriously. Like, I understood the concept of fiction–at least with books; lack of exposure to fictional songs meant I didn’t really understand that songs could be fictional until around early-mid teens–and to *some* extent (but only some [link]) I had a sense of humour, but I wouldn’t have known absurdity if it bit me. And indeed, I did not notice as a child how absurd A Series of Unfortunate Events was.)

Tags:

#A Series of Unfortunate Events #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #my childhood #if there’s nothing out there‚ what was that noise?

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

rustingbridges:

The concept of companies paying for their employees’ food continues to boggle me, but then my entire family works in food service, so our idea of company-provided food is “the customer changed their mind about wanting the food after I made it, and the boss let me keep it”.

Covering some food during travel is pretty standard, I think, since it’s a business expense and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it. My old roommate worked at best buy (which was by no means a great employer) and even they gave him a per diem which covered (cheap) food.

B: Nah, there are starving children in Africa future selves to think of. We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

So the question with this is kind of, where does it end? I think if I put my back into it, I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.

And even if you are counting labor costs, you can buy food at the supermarket for $1-2/day. It just gets really boring.

We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?

>>and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it.<<

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way. Sure, it’d be *nice* if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

(I speak from some experience here: my job *did* used to provide some free food each week (but only a small amount, and only from a limited selection of the cheaper menu items), but later switched to an employee-discount system. And every friend or family member who learned about it got angry on my behalf *even though I wasn’t angry about it myself*, and it was really annoying having to try to calm them down and defend against their attempts to instil negative emotions about it in me.)

—

>>It just gets really boring.<<

I would be perfectly content to eat peanut-butter-on-a-spoon for lunch every day for years on end. The *occasional* variety in food is nice, but as the exception, not the norm.

(Also I have a low metabolism and an appetite to match, which is helpful.)

I barely even have to try to knock my food budget down to about four USD a day, so in practice I haven’t done that much other than severely cut back on restaurants.

—

>>I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.<<

How?

—

>>Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?<<

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

(Is it something to do with, like, dignity or some shit?)

Our expenses are already extremely low by developed standards even without going full-on rice-and-beans [link]–a thousand USD per person per month would be enough, with room for a small emergency fund–but underemployment is a big problem.

(Though to be fair, I have a positive amount of money and have never been homeless, which makes me better off than most of my friends. (From multiple social circles, at that.))

Tags:

#food #disordered eating? #adventures in human capitalism #reply via reblog

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

shieldfoss:

It’s probably gonna get old if it keeps happening but business travel is still incredibly interesting to me.

This has been one of the cooler hotel rooms. (Not featured because it films poorly in the dark: The ocean past these east-facing windows)

tumblr_inline_po66hmmufz1tl8dj9_500

 

shieldfoss:

how is the hotel internet?

Internet is your standard Big City Scandinavia internet (75 MBps so less than at home but fast enough for my purposes – fast enough that I didn’t even think to check it before you asked)

and how is business travel interesting to you?

I’m just not super used to travelling, nor staying outside my own home. I don’t have to worry about breakfast, lunch or dinner and while I hear that hotel food becomes bland once you get used to it, I sure haven’t yet. Also if I was at “regular” work tomorrow I’d be writing some astonishingly dull product design specs for a new component in our software but tomorrow and Tuesday I’m ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ instead and that’s kind of cool.

 

shacklesburst:

Fair. Also that makes me want to finally visit Scandinavia and try out your hotel internet.

I hear that hotel food becomes bland once you get used to it

I’m not even business traveling that much and this rings extremely true to me and I’ve reached that point way faster than I’d ever have anticipated. I mean it’s probably different if you’re a high-class executive staying at really upscale hotels, but the usual buffet fare at 3-4 stars gets old pretty fast. Same with airport lounge food – I still eat there though, not least because it the hot buffet sure beats shelling out like €20 for a small sandwich.

 

rustingbridges:

So are y’all like, actually eating at the hotel? I can see the occasional convenience but isn’t there the option of just going down the street or whatever for something more interesting.

 

brin-bellway:

I don’t know about them, but why would I pay money to eat food from down the street when hotel food is free?

(Valid answers include “the meal the hotel was serving today was a food I find actively repulsive” and “they only serve dinner Monday – Thursday and it is dinnertime on Saturday”, but do not include “the hotel food was bland”. It’s not like I’d be able to enjoy paid food anyway, haunted by the knowledge that it was a waste of money. Plus I kind of like blandness, tbh.)

—

Context: I have not business-travelled *per se*, but when we do travel we tend to stay at hotels catering primarily to businesspeople. I am thinking of hotels mostly in Massachusetts, with occasional other states plus a couple in Ontario.

 

rustingbridges:

Possible answers:

A) it’s a business trip, I’m expensing dinner. It’s free either way. Also how common is free dinner anyway, don’t most hotel restaurants charge.

B) I regularly pay money for the purpose of eating food I like more, and regularly turn down free food.

C) I value the cluster of food novelty related goods. The associated opportunity cost of staying in is especially high if you’re traveling anywhere decent (although this goes down if you go the same places a lot, but in that case, haven’t you found anywhere you like?)

A-1: The concept of companies paying for their employees’ food continues to boggle me, but then my entire family works in food service, so our idea of company-provided food is “the customer changed their mind about wanting the food *after* I made it, and the boss let me keep it”. (Although occasionally my brother will be rewarded with a free meal for training a newbie or agreeing to show up on a day he would normally have off.)

If the marginal increase in food quality is free, then absolutely maximise quality.

—

A-2: IME, free hot breakfast 7 days/week and free dinner Monday – Thursday is standard for business hotels. (Slightly lower-tier hotels offer cold breakfast and no dinner.) Many also keep cookies by the front desk, and some keep packets of hot-chocolate mix by the coffee machine.

I think I have been to one (1) hotel with a restaurant that even theoretically charged money, and that was at Disney World. (And in that case my mom had managed to wrangle some promotions into getting us a meal plan for free, so in practice even *that* hotel food didn’t actually cost anything.)

—

B: Nah, there are starving children in Africa future selves to think of. We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

—

C: I *can* enjoy food, but I seem to have a lower cap on how much pleasure I can experience from a meal than other people do, even when the cap *isn’t* further lowered by the meal’s distance from the financially-optimal meal. (If a meal cost more than about $7, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I will get net-negative utility from it. Meals in the $3 – $7 range are increasingly iffy.)

(For anyone wondering “but if you’re that much of a miser, why do you even *know* what hotels above the bottom price tier are like?”: early on it was because Dad had a cushy programming job, in the middle it was because my parents were hiding the extent of the problem from their kids, and later it was because they–while not *oblivious* or anything–seem to be incapable of fully *grokking* the severity of the problem and occasionally drag me to sub-optimal places.)

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #food #disordered eating? #reply via reblog #I uh may be feeling guilty about acquiescing when my boss told me to go home after 8 hours on Saturday #when I’m pretty sure I could have talked him into 9.5 if I’d tried

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

shacklesburst:

shieldfoss:

shieldfoss:

It’s probably gonna get old if it keeps happening but business travel is still incredibly interesting to me.

This has been one of the cooler hotel rooms. (Not featured because it films poorly in the dark: The ocean past these east-facing windows)

tumblr_inline_po66hmmufz1tl8dj9_500

how is the hotel internet?

Internet is your standard Big City Scandinavia internet (75 MBps so less than at home but fast enough for my purposes – fast enough that I didn’t even think to check it before you asked)

and how is business travel interesting to you?

I’m just not super used to travelling, nor staying outside my own home. I don’t have to worry about breakfast, lunch or dinner and while I hear that hotel food becomes bland once you get used to it, I sure haven’t yet. Also if I was at “regular” work tomorrow I’d be writing some astonishingly dull product design specs for a new component in our software but tomorrow and Tuesday I’m ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ instead and that’s kind of cool.

Fair. Also that makes me want to finally visit Scandinavia and try out your hotel internet.

I hear that hotel food becomes bland once you get used to it

I’m not even business traveling that much and this rings extremely true to me and I’ve reached that point way faster than I’d ever have anticipated. I mean it’s probably different if you’re a high-class executive staying at really upscale hotels, but the usual buffet fare at 3-4 stars gets old pretty fast. Same with airport lounge food – I still eat there though, not least because it the hot buffet sure beats shelling out like €20 for a small sandwich.

So are y’all like, actually eating at the hotel? I can see the occasional convenience but isn’t there the option of just going down the street or whatever for something more interesting.

I don’t know about them, but why would I pay money to eat food from down the street when hotel food is free?

(Valid answers include “the meal the hotel was serving today was a food I find actively repulsive” and “they only serve dinner Monday – Thursday and it is dinnertime on Saturday”, but do not include “the hotel food was bland”. It’s not like I’d be able to enjoy paid food anyway, haunted by the knowledge that it was a waste of money. Plus I kind of like blandness, tbh.)

—

Context: I have not business-travelled *per se*, but when we do travel we tend to stay at hotels catering primarily to businesspeople. I am thinking of hotels mostly in Massachusetts, with occasional other states plus a couple in Ontario.

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #food #reply via reblog #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #disordered eating?

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lizardbros:

 

diggly:

ITS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

#always work out what year you are claiming to have been born in  #it’s easier if you’re born in a nought year (agapi42)

I generally used 1980, but that was for online stuff where I didn’t need to physically pass as having been born then.

(And no, it actually *wasn’t* porn: it was online contests. I still remember that one contest Reese’s ran that had super-common “consolation” prizes of a free Fast Break chocolate bar. My family had so many chocolate bars by the end, it was great.)

((Fast Break bars aren’t *especially* good–I wouldn’t ever pick them over the other chocolates at the checkout–but for free I was happy to take them.))

Tags:

#(I’m a week late on responding to this but oh well) #((I guess this also counts as a belated answer to that Question of the Day post about what laws I’ve broken)) #((although more of a term and condition than a law)) #((these days I *do* abide by the letter of contest rules)) #reply via reblog #my childhood #food #Hot Fuzz

Anonymous asked: You can work a round door handle no-handed, but it does make you look ridiculous (and it’s a lot easier if you don’t have a jumper on)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

serinemolecule:

voxette-vk:

Tell me of your secrets.

(I guess just using friction force from your forearm or something?)

I just tried it. It’s actually not too hard if you use both forearms and just squeeze and push in opposite directions.

I can’t get it to work one-armed, though. :(

Stand on one foot, grip the doorknob with the toes of the other foot, and twist.

(Note: must be barefoot and have reasonably good balance.)

(Yes, I *have* done this.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

moral-autism:

Laptop is in the shop almost certainly overnight at least. I can’t find the power cable for my old 2010 one. I probably can’t set up my Raspberry Pi, I know I don’t have the right adapter for it because I broke it. I might be able to use someone’s old AlphaSmart?

 

moral-autism:

Laptop still in shop. I should get info tomorrow at least, emails say I’ll be called after 48 hours. I forgot to ask about the AlphaSmart.

Honestly I think the amount of stuff I’ve done and the fact that I have had chunks of happiness over the past several days and not injured myself at all is really suggestive of a lot of mental health improvement. Maybe it’s experiences, maybe it’s having more produce and sardines, but something’s working.

This is still really difficult for me, though.

 

moral-autism:

Update: Apple called this morning to say that I have a hard drive problem (that affects booting from USBs and persists when the drive is wiped, yet doesn’t present any issues when copying files off the drive? seems unlikely) or a motherboard problem. Apple wanted to charge $475 to fix it, which I declined.

I was able to install Xubuntu on it from USB, and it is “working”, in that it still can’t talk to the battery at all and that it seems to freeze sometimes. I’ll probably try to transfer files later today. I am still overall dissatisfied with this state of affairs, though.

I am happy that I have a computer right now, but this does create a bit of a dilemma. I’m not sure I can justify replacing this computer just because I want to play some video games without Linux support and be able to see how charged my battery is. I guess this might get worse in the future, which might also justify replacing it. I sure don’t know how to replace a motherboard myself, and it sounds like a huge pain.

 

moral-autism:

Laptop status update:

  • It gets completely nonresponsive and requires a forced shutdown sometimes more than once daily
  • Still doesn’t show the battery level (acpi won’t work)
  • Sleep/wake issues, does not travel well (overheats in bag)
  • Cannot shut down properly

I also still haven’t put my files on this thing. “Mount a 200GB disk image, on an HFS-formatted drive, of an Ext4 partition with logical volume management, and then figure out how to decrypt an encrypted user folder, with the password but without being able to log into it” is something which sounds like it should be technically feasible but also kind of sounds like a nightmare, and I have a feeling that my current computer setup is really not my long-term setup. I can get files from SpiderOak but that will take a while and they won’t be as recent.

What’s going on with the disk image was that booting up my computer in Target Disk Mode and getting the data off of it, using a connected Mac, was such that I couldn’t mount or even really properly interpret a partition with logical volume management, so I just frickin’ copied the whole thing. Yadda yadda I should make more frequent cloud backups or actually figure out how to do regular nice usable backups to a drive or both. At least I have the files. Probably.

I will apparently have some support in repairing or replacing this machine, which biases me towards doing so. Also, I’ll want to use it for taking lecture notes and other time-sensitive outside-the-home uses, so freezing and being a pain to store while asleep are problematic. If I repair it, I’m pretty sure it needs a logic board replacement which I would really rather not do myself. (I don’t have the right screwdrivers, a good workspace, etc.) If I replace it, I should probably replace it with a Windows machine, because the only times I’ve used OSX recently have been gaming and taking the easy route in dealing with printers/scanners.

I don’t know much about shopping for non-Macs or using whatever the latest version of Windows is. Every time I interact with recent proprietary operating systems I do get the vague feeling that they are tending in a direction my computer is not, such that my experience with Windows XP and 2016-and-previous versions of OSX won’t necessarily generalize.

If anyone has advice on any of the above, let me know.

 

brin-bellway:

For replacement laptops, eBay is great, especially for people located in the United States. The laptop I am typing this on, which I recently bought from one of the refurbished-laptop stores that sell through eBay, was USD$300 *after* international shipping and import taxes. For an American, it would have been around USD$250.

My usual strategy for laptop buying is “get the best PC USD$300 can buy”. I generally find laptops at that price point strike a good balance between “cheap” and “will keep pace with my needs for the approximately three years it takes for a used laptop to die of old age anyway” ; if you need more from a laptop than I do, you may need a higher budget.

You might not need me to tell you this, but make sure you know what kind of specs you need in a computer (RAM quantity, storage space, number of CPUs, dedicated vs basic graphics, etc), and add a little to leave room to grow. When searching, keep an eye out for laptops that have been discounted because they have problems in areas you don’t care about or are willing to live with: my previous laptop was unusually cheap because it was incapable of standby and took several minutes to come out of hibernation, which was pretty easy to adapt to for someone with my usage pattern.

Since I only just got a Windows 10 machine yesterday, I can’t say much about it. I *can* say that I’m pretty much just keeping that partition around for gaming, and intend to continue using Ubuntu for my primary OS.

—

Rather than a dedicated backup drive, I just keep a full copy of my files on my smartphone [link], where they are readily accessible and can in fact–in most cases–be accessed directly from the drive itself. I gather that a lot of people have too much data to pull that method off easily, but even if you can’t do it *yet*, maybe keep it in mind for if/when the progression of smartphones’ increasing storage space catches up to your needs.

 

theopjones:

Yah. Used laptops are a lot cheaper than new laptops for entry-level performance. 

The one huge downside is battery life. Batteries have improved quite a bit recently, and there are a lot more low-power CPUs on the market. So, even the low-end Chromebooks and such can trounce any used laptop in terms of battery life. 

 

rustingbridges:

Yeah my $150 2015 chromebook, after 4 years of fairly regular use, only gets 5ish hours of battery life, down from almost 10, so if battery life is of interest you can get pretty good. On the other hand, it is not a powerful machine. This is mostly okay for my personal laptop.

 

brin-bellway:

[my tags on my previous reblog, for context:

#(since I’ve pretty much only ever had used laptops I’m whatever-the-opposite-of-spoiled-is on battery life) #(1.5 – 2 hours is simply how long a laptop battery lasts and so I don’t find it a cause for concern)]

holy shit

(ftr, I tested this laptop’s battery shortly after receiving it, got a result of 2 hours, and was pleased to have a battery life near the high end of normal)

—

What do you *use* a 5-hour laptop battery for, anyway? I mean, more battery life is always better all else equal, but when I need to computer for significant lengths of time off-grid that is what smartphones are for.

(Admittedly, my smartphone’s battery also sucks, at least by smartphone standards–sometimes it dies because I didn’t check it for 4 days and it only has a 3-day standby time, and that’s in airplane mode–but it’s much easier and cheaper to get a backup power pack for a phone than a laptop.)

(yes I *did* end up getting that solar-powered phone charger I wanted [link], and so far it’s been working pretty well)

 

theopjones:

For me the initial use case that caused me to buy an ultrabook type laptop with long battery life (in my case one of the 12in MacBooks), was college classes. Namely, situations where there would be multiple hours of straight through classes or something like a long evening class that would be four hours long. 

It’s a bit less relevant now for me to have that type of battery life now that I’m out of college. 

But the other benefit of the increase in laptop battery life is that even the high performance desktop replacement laptops are starting to get to the 2hr+ level of performance. Making desktops as a whole a lot less relevant as a platform because desktop replacement/”gaming” laptops have started to become actually usable as laptops and not just in effect really shitty small form factor desktops.

(previously on; other branch 1; other branch 2)

Good point, and I’m a little embarrassed not to have thought of that. The few times I have had some form of meatspace class I used a paper notebook, but I can see how that would be suboptimal or outright unsuitable in many cases, especially for a routine event.

(It’s interesting that we’ve now *both* made remarks that make no sense to someone with the other’s experience of college [link]. I guess we’re even?)

—

Also, even though the battery-monitor section of my phone settings did not *display* anything on its list of battery-draining apps, force-stopping TunnelBear improved my phone’s standby time tremendously. I will have to remember to shut that app down completely when I am not using it (and I’m usually not), not just setting it to off.

Tags:

#Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #reply via reblog #adventures in University Land #long post #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

archonofquandaries:

kitswulf:

brin-bellway:

michaelblume:

feotakahari:

People complain a lot about the “hot political takes interspersed with anime girls” Tumblrs, but I find them less jarring than the “hot political takes interspersed with GIFs of ejaculating penises” Tumblrs.

I am once again reminded that other peoples’ experiences of the internet can be very different from mine.

Now I’m wondering how many people reading this fall into the “this is a reminder of how different other people’s experiences can be” camp and how many into the “god, do I know that feel” camp.

(Personally, I’m in know-that-feel.)

I am also in know-that-feel territory.

I have literally never encountered pornography during my use of tumblr as a content aggregation/blogging site. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the *pornography* that was the unwanted interruption.

Possibly I should have put the rest of my original reply in the main text body rather than the tags:

#there is a time and a place for reading hot political takes and it is *not* while looking for porn #look I get that you want to demonstrate your SJ-ness in order to reassure people that #just because you write *fiction* about women getting brainwashed doesn’t mean you support The Patriarchy in actuality #but you could just *link* to your politics blog from your porn blog

—

(I mean, the penis GIFs *per se* are also annoying, but I accept that a search for porn will involve wading through some of those. Plenty of people *are* in fact into that sort of thing, even if I’m not.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #nsfw text